Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Just Found This....

I blogged this over a year ago and never published it. My daughter will be a senior in high school this year. Who is going to take the picture this fall when her last year of school starts?

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We have a tradition in our family that on the first day of school after my daughter is dressed and ready to go I take a picture of her with her hands displaying the number of the grade she is starting. From these pictures you can see that this is her tenth grade year.

In Hot Water

Last night I got home and went to take a shower when my husband's studio flooded with an inch of hot water. We found out that the water heater built up a lot of pressure and steaming hot water gushed out of the overflow pipe. A few weeks ago I had purchased new elements for the water heater and decided to get super duper double coil stainless steel elements. I found out last night that the elements were just too powerful and made the water boil.

I should have realized this because after installing them we burned ourselves several times in the shower and even the kitchen/bathroom sinks. We adjusted the elements to as low of a temperature as they could go and still got burned.

We now have new elements that aren't super duper and aren't burning us either.

Just another day in paradise.

Thursday, July 8, 2010

Missing

I miss my daughter a lot. Last night I cried myself to sleep. This morning I woke up and am at work and have almost cried several times already and it's only 8:00am.

I saw her yesterday afternoon after work. It was good to see her and we laughed a lot together. When I was driving her back to her Dad's house for some reason I got confused on which side of the fork in the road I should take. I took the wrong one asking her if it was the correct way and she said it was. After a bit I realized that it was the wrong way and asked if she realized it and she said that she did. I asked why in the world did she say to go that way and she said, "Well, Mom, I'm spending time with you and I don't want it to end". I so badly wanted to say, "Well you are the one that moved out, not me" but I didn't.

It was obvious that she was excited to be together. I heard about all of the things she is doing at her Dad's house and have quit asking myself why she left. I now ask myself why would she have stayed? She gets to do practically everything she wants to do no matter what. If I was 17 years old I would want to live there as well.

It hurts so much. I badly want to blog about what happened the days leading up to her moving out, but I can't just yet. It's just so very upsetting to talk about it all. I still can't believe how she left. That is what I'm more in shock about versus that she is actually gone.

It is nice to see my daughter and yet at the same time when I take her back to her father's house and drive away I just start crying and can't stop.

I'm currently taking a finance class where I learned that net present value (or NPV) equals benefits minus the cost. You want an NPV of at least 1.0 or more. In this situation I believe my NPV is -10. If it were a business it would be a bad decision to see her. It's not a business decision though and the pain continues. I wonder if it will ever get to at least a 1.0. I deserve for it to be at least a 1.0 or more.

I am devastated.

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

July 27th is the Day

I found out that July 27th is my day in court for the bankruptcy. I thought I would meet before a judge and instead will be meeting with the creditors and also the trustee that I will be paying money to every month for the next five years for my Chapter 13 bankruptcy.

For the next five years if I want to do anything like selling assets such as the house or wanting to be part of a payment plan I need to pay my attorney $350 an incident in order for them to do paperwork to get it approved by a judge. Right now I'm saving money for a car. If I went to a dealership to finance a car I would need to go in front of a judge. If I save the money and pay for it in cash there is no need to go in front of the judge. I would rather pay in cash anyway and not have a montly payment. I don't see how I can afford a car until around February of next year. Right now I've been using my parents car and carpooling with a guy that lives down the road from me who works where I do.

Today I see my daughter after work. It's been quite surreal spending time with her after what happened. I am trying to make it work, though. It is obvious when I see her that she really misses me a lot and is excited to be spending time together. I am not there yet. I suppose the pain will go away over time and it will get easier as it goes. I hope so, at least.

I am taking two courses this quarter. One is a finance course and I'm learning that I never realized how many ways you can look at money. There are a lot of formulas, a lot of homework and I hope I get through with an "A". I don't want to mess up my 4.0 GPA. I have one more quarter after this one and will be graduating with my Bachelor's of Science in computer information systems in December. I can't wait.

I am thinking about going for a Master's afterwards. I'm not sure yet.

Well, July 27 here we go. I'm still waiting to find out when my other court date will be when I meet with a federal judge about my security clearance for work. So far I've received seven reference letters. I hope the judge rules in my favor.

Thursday, July 1, 2010

Bankruptcy is Now Official

June 18th marked the day that I officially declared bankruptcy. I've felt physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually bankrupt for years and now I have a piece of paper to prove it.

In one way I'm glad that I finally did it. I've had financial issues since I was in the psychiatric hospital for depression about three years ago. Prior to flying into the cuckoo's nest my bills were current, I always paid on time and my credit score was 786. After being in the hospital, I lost my job for the first time in my life, went without a paycheck for a while, got behind on everything and my credit score plummeted to less than 500.

I visited financial advisors who all said I needed to declare bankruptcy. I didn't want to do it due to the stigma of it all and also I was a contractor and was worried that I would lose my job or have issues in getting another job when the contract was over. I've now been full-time for almost a year and felt that I needed to go ahead and get it over with.

I recently met with a bankruptcy attorney who said after viewing my financials that I needed to do it. I got all of the paperwork together (my gawd, the paperwork is incredible!), saved $800 to pay the attorney and on June 18 they filed the paperwork with the court. I still have to go to a court hearing to have it finalized with a judge and am currently waiting to know the date of the hearing.

Not only will I be going to court once this summer, I will actually be going twice. In my job I need to have a C2 security clearance due to the nature of my work and because of my credit issues the federal agency who grants the clearance recently notified me that they could not decide if I should have the clearance or not and said that I had a choice of having a federal judge decide based on viewing my paperwork or request a hearing so that I could make a case before the judge prior to their decision. I opted for the hearing so that the judge could see me in person and hopefully ascertain that I'm not some deadbeat person.

If I don't receive the security clearance I could lose my job. I am the breadwinner and am scared to death of this.

The federal attorney working on the case contacted me last week notifying me of the process and suggested that I gather evidence of why I'm in the financial mess I'm in. She also said it would be good to gather written character references from people to present to the judge as well as any other documentation to show what type of person I am due to the judge performing a "whole person analysis" in the court hearing. I've already asked some people to write references and have received seven so far. What people have said in these references brought tears to my eyes because I didn't expect such glowing words. I wish I could believe what people have written about me.

I've also made copies of my university transcripts to show the judge that I'm a senior holding a 4.0 GPA with only three classes left. I was able to find documents of me going to financial advisors in the past to prove that I tried to take care of my debt and will explain that I am just now pursuing bankruptcy because I am a full-time employee and was worried about claiming bankruptcy as a contract worker. I found the discharge papers from the hospital which I will present as well as my credit score reports from Experian, Equifax and Transunion that show my payment history was stellar prior to the date of me going into the hospital. I don't know if it will help, but I'm also going to present past reviews at work as well as my DD-214 (discharge papers from the Navy) showing an honorable discharge.

The person who hired me where I work now is also going to go to the court hearing with me to give an in-court character reference. I knew him years ago when I worked where I work now (yes, I now work full-time at the same place I was fired at years ago after being in the hospital). He knew me back then and will be able to testify what type of person and employee I've been and to state that he knew I was in the hospital years ago and have been doing better since then.

What's ironic is that I had this security clearance when I worked here before. I will notify the judge of this as well as telling him/her that I had an even higher security clearance while in the Navy. I hope that the bankruptcy will go through first so that I can also present the bankruptcy paperwork to the federal judge. If not I will still present the case number and paperwork the bankruptcy attorney filed on my behalf. I was scared of filing bankruptcy prior to the federal hearing and only hope that the federal judge will see that I'm trying to take care of my debt instead of just letting it go and not doing anything about it.

I have a Chapter 13 bankruptcy which I'm glad about because I will need to pay a certain sum of money every month for the next five years. To me it's better than a Chapter 7 because in the Chapter 7 you don't need to pay a thing. Though I won't be paying the exact amount I owe to the credit companies, I feel good knowing that I'm at least paying something.

It's strange to think that not only did I lose my daughter, I lost my car (I had a Volkswagen Jetta before but am now driving an extra car my parents have that has no air conditioning while saving money for a car that I can purchase outright and have no car payment), I am now officially bankrupt and yet I've still not lost my sanity.

The monster called insanity is irresistibly close and I hope I don't jump off the cliff. I'm barely hanging in there. At least I'm not in the psychiatric ward again. Maybe I'm stronger than I realized.

 
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