Doing Something is Better than Doing Nothing

I didn't go to work today. Thank God it wasn't depression that kept me in bed. I am soooo grateful for that. I didn't go because I am damn tired. I think I've been doing too much. The last two days I've been dragging. Today I called into work and then went back to sleep...until 3:00pm!

It's 7:22pm and I'm tired still. I'm not going to stay up too late. To make up my hours, the following is my plan:

• Tomorrow: Work from 7:00am - 7:00pm (12 hours)
• Friday: Same (12 hours)
• Saturday: Work eight hours

Doing this will get me to my regular 40 hours a week and also have four hours overtime, which will be good.

I'm just going to be tired by Saturday, I can tell.

Sunday I'll need to do homework, wash clothes, clean house, etc.

It never ends.

About the attorney: I met the attorney yesterday and he spent a full hour with me. After reviewing my financial situation and pounding out numbers on his calculator, he said that I would most likely qualify for a Chapter 13 bankruptcy, which means that I will pay a portion of what I owe over a five-year period. That portion is determined by a government software program where he will enter all of my financial data and answer a lot of questions (he said it takes approximately three hours) and the magical number of what I need to pay each month will be displayed.

I wonder what that magical number will be.

Sitting there was a bit surreal because I never expected to ever even consider bankruptcy. In a way I wanted to cry because I thought of the way things have progressed that led me to sitting in that chair (I didn't cry, thankfully), but also it made me feel good that I'm doing something about this hell of a financial situation and though it's bleak and though it sucks and though it makes me feel humiliated, I'm doing something. It's better than doing nothing and having the calls and letters from creditors continue to stress me out. It also stressed me out because I felt embarrassed by all the calls and didn't want to deal with them. I felt even more that I was a failure.

Well, this failure has decided to go ahead with proceedings. It's really the only way out. It will be off my credit report in 10 years. OMG, I will be 45 by then.

In a way I was hoping that I would qualify for a Chapter 7 bankruptcy which means you are basically "graced" from your debt and don't pay back a dime. But then again I wanted the 13 because I did want to pay something towards it. I wouldn't feel as much of a failure if I did pay something.

The irony of it all is that I have to come up with $1445 before I can start the proceedings. I am completely bankrupt, really, and don't even have $384 to get a crown for my tooth that I desperately need (it's starting to hurt and become very sensitive), and I certainly don't have $1445 to pay the lawyer. It looks like I will have to wait until tax season in February and give him the money when I receive a tax refund.

So, I'll have to endure the calls and letters from creditors and hope that none of them place a lien on my house or something between now and then.

*sigh*

At least something will be done, though. I'm hanging onto that thought.

*yawn*

I am tuckered out.

Did too much today.

I can't even hardly type.

All I would like to say tonight is it would be nice if all of you could visit Happy's blog at http://happystill-nomatter.blogspot.com/. She has a nice posting out there about world events and I am curious what all of you think about it.

Today I went to the attorney.

I will go over that discussion tomorrow night.

Right now I need to sleep.

Good night!

Back to School

Did I mention that I am a college student? I attend Strayer University and hope that by the time I'm 94 I'll be able to wheel myself across the stage to receive my degree. Strayer operates in quarters versus semesters, which means that the classes go faster (11 weeks) because you can take more in a year and they are also accelerated, which also means there is a lot of material you cover in a mere week and it's difficult to keep up at times.

So far I have a 4.0 GPA and am on the President's List. It's funny because when I received the first letter from Strayer notifying me that I was on the President's List, the first I thing I did was call my Mom and tell her. I then realized that it doesn't matter how old you are, you still seek approval from your Mom..."Momma, guess what? I'm on the President's List!!"..."Oh, that is so wonderful. I am so proud of you"...*I beam with joy*

Sheesh.

I am currently a junior and seeking a Bachelor of Science in Information Systems degree. I plan to continue school after receiving my Bachelor's in order to get my Master's. I have been in the information technology (IT) field for eleven years and by the time I receive my Master’s it will be 15 years. 15 years experience with a Master's will be great and help financially in the future. Well, at least I hope that it does because I will have a student loan I need to pay.

I am also thinking about getting out of IT after receiving my degree and teaching at a university. I think it's great if a professor can bring real world experience to a classroom. I don't know...we shall see.

Classes started this week...oh my...here we go again. I hope I can make it to December 16th when classes are finished.

On another note I have been very busy. Yesterday I cleaned the house, washed all the clothes, sheets, towels, etc. I also got all of the paperwork I need to take for my appointment with the attorney tomorrow. I even created a spreadsheet that has all of the information of what I owe. I'm very curious about what he will say. When printed, the spreadsheet was 28,198 pages. (Well, OK, it wasn’t that bad, but it was certainly bad enough!)

Today I was up at 5:00am (shocking for me), at work by 6:45am, worked, picked up my daughter from school to take her to the orthodontist, went to the grocery store, got home and put on my sweats to mow the yard and rake. Afterwards I washed HoneyBunny (our dog), took a shower, made dinner, made lunch for tomorrow, did dishes and am now about to go to bed.

The house looks great, the yard looks great, the clothes are clean, HoneyBunny is clean, we have what we need from the store, lunch is made for tomorrow, and I am absolutely and utterly exhausted. It's strange though...just by doing these small things I feel better about myself. It's ridiculous to feel proud because you were able to do what "normal" people do every day of their lives. I used to be a "normal" person and was able to get it all done with no problem. In fact I never even thought about it. Ever since I landed in the hospital, sometimes brushing my teeth is a chore. Silly, isn't it? I honestly don't understand it.

Anyway, I'll just take the good out of feeling successful at these small things, keep my head high and keep going. It would be nice if this continues and I can become "normal" again.

Oh, and one more thing...my husband and I haven't fought. But, then again, I haven't seen him because he's been at work so much. I am grateful that we haven’t fought today and yesterday. I hope that it continues.

Planning Out The Window

If you read my earlier post, I was supposed to be up at 6:00am and have my daughter at the dog show at 7:00am to volunteer. Well, I actually got up at 6:00am. I went to my daughter's room and she said she didn't want to go. We talked about it for a bit and we were both tired and ended up not going.

We both slept in and it was wonderful because I feel better, however I still have to go to work. There wasn't any specific time that I had to be there. I am just going in to work on the project and make extra money. I doubt anyone will be there today. Maybe some developers, but that's it.

I got my daughter up and I'm taking her to her Nana's. It's not her grandmother, but a lady that is very dear to both of our hearts. A is very excited because she loves spending time with her. After taking her there I'll go to work and then pick her up tonight.

In a way I feel bad about not making her volunteer today. She has been volunteering since she was eight years old. She's volunteered at a veterinarian's office, the library, the State Museum, at the dog show she was supposed to be at today, and at an animal shelter. She loves it. The reason why I feel bad about not making her go is because I know she was just tired. I've always tried to teach her that she needs to do what she commits to. Today we didn't do that.

Hopefully all these years of trying to teach her didn't go by the wayside because I didn't make her get out of the bed and do what she said she was going to do.

Making the Hot Dogs

I didn't cry today until driving home. Imagine that...compared to the last few days it's a miracle.



Tomorrow I have to get up at 6:00am (on a Saturday and I am so not a morning person!), get ready and take my daughter to volunteer at a dog show. She does it all day so after I drop her off I'm going in to work to make some extra money. 42 hours this week so far. Tomorrow I'll make it 50 and it will really help with the bills.



My husband has been working like a dog and has asked to work seven days next week. Whew...and he's on split shifts.



Have we fought today? Yes, once. I've seen him for about an hour and a half. At least we didn't fight for an hour and a half. I'm grateful for that. Tonight he leaves at 10:30pm to go to work all night. I feel really bad for him.

Do you know why I feel bad for him? This is why:

• 
  
  
  He's super intelligent, has a Master's Degree in Fine Art from Morocco (it translates to a Bachelor's in Fine Art with another year of college added on in America).


• 
  
  
  He speaks five languages fluently.


• 
  
  
  He is highly talented and creative.


• 
  
  
  His art is amazing.


• 
  
  
  His art has been exhibited in Morocco, France, Amsterdam, and Rome, Italy.


• 
  
  
  He's been interviewed in magazines, newspapers, radio, and TV in Morocco and France.


• 
  
  
  He was named "Morocco's Young Premiere Fine Artist".


• 
  
  
  He was selected and represented his country in the Biennale in Rome (there is currently a Biennale in Venice, Italy that he would love to be in. He knows artists from Morocco that are in it this year and he is sickened. He said, "To think they are in the Biennale and I am getting ready to go to work at a hotel to work all night. I don't want to know about it because it makes me sick. I should have never moved to America. Someone else should be here, not me."


• 
  
  
  He's just very talented and I feel he is resentful and probably wishes he never married me and became stuck here. I feel like I am the reason why he is so unhappy. Maybe when he visits Morocco next month he won't come back.

Other than his fine art, he has done some crafty-type things. We call them "making the hot dogs", which means he made something to sell in order to try and make money. Below is a "hot dog" he made. It's a sink called "Divas Don't Wash Dishes" and it wasn't supposed to be a hot dog in the beginning. He has an art studio and needed a sink. He went to Home Depot to purchase a sink and thought they were too expensive. He decided to make his own. He had an antique porcelain sink in the attic and decided to build something to hold it. Of course he couldn't make just any sink. He made this one:

After making it everyone told him that he needed to put it for sale. He exhibited it in several places and no one purchased it. It is now sitting in our living room and we use it to store our toilet paper in the bottom cabinet.

You may ask why we didn't install it in his studio. We had a plumber come in to do it last year, however where he was going to put it wouldn't work with how the plumbing of the house is configured and wouldn't pass state regulation codes.

(On a side note, you may notice the stain in the sink. I always wanted him to remove it, but he said that it made it more special and gave it more character.)

Truly, this sink is NOTHING compared to other hot dogs he has made or his fine art. He amazes and astounds me all the time with his creativity and skill.

It is a waste that he is here and I wouldn't blame him if he left.

Best Thing for Contacts

Do you wear contacts? I do and have since I was 16. I was that kid back in the early 80's (I was 10 in 1981) with the big glasses and plastic, transparent, light purple frames. I remember trying on glasses for the first time and being amazed. I didn't realize that people could see so clearly! I also remember trying contacts in 1987 and being blown away because for the first time I could see perfectly not only straight ahead of me, but also peripherally. I went outside the ophthalmologist’s, I had no glasses to fog up from the temperature change, the sun was shining and I squinted with happiness.

If you wear contacts, you know how it feels when one or both of them get foggy. You feel like you are in a smoky room even as the fluorescent lights of your office or school blare down on you. Sometimes I’ve even had to drive my car with one eye shut because it was so foggy and it messed up my vision more than having the one good eye.

When it gets that way I make myself yawn. That always brings a few tears to your eyes and helps the fogginess for a bit.

Well, today I had no fogginess at all. There was no way that my contacts could get dry because I was constantly about to cry. What hell. While driving I cried a bit and finally on the last street to my house, I had the following conversation with myself:

“Get a damn grip on yourself (I rarely cuss and when I do it’s because I’m upset or angry, though I never cuss in front of my daughter)! You are about to get home and see your daughter and you don’t need to look like you stepped out of an insane asylum. You don’t need to cry. You don’t need to even look like you’re about to. You need to walk in that house and act like everything is fine because it’s not her problem and she doesn’t need to be burdened. GET A GRIP!!”

I got inside the house and got through it. My husband was at work. I was able to clean up a bit and she helped out. I then asked her to sit down with me because she said yesterday there were things she wanted to talk about. She smiled and you could tell she couldn’t wait to spill her guts. She got a dreamy look on her face and told me about a guy she likes at school named Ritchie. She described him saying he had “smoky eyes that change with his mood”, he was “hot”, etc. She usually tells me every day that she has a crush on someone and gives a new name. This is the first time that I can really tell she likes someone. There is just something different about the way she described him. Her face changed when she was talking about him…he wasn’t just some guy to her. Well, I hope he realizes what a beautiful, thoughtful, special, caring and kind soul that she is. We’ll have to wait and see what the future holds with this Ritchie.

Interesting.

We ate dinner, I took a shower and here I am.

And I don’t feel like crying.

Amazing.

Thank God.

The bankruptcy attorney I called yesterday called back today and we have an appointment with him Tuesday at lunch. This weekend I’m going to finish working on all of the paperwork he is requesting to review. I asked him if it cost anything up front and he said he wasn’t sure until he saw my paperwork, but he guessed around $1,200 - $1,500. All I can say is “I’m bankrupt! I don’t have money…HELLO!!!”

But I’m not going to worry about it. I’m going to live in the NOW (thank you Linda, I read the book by Eckhart Tolle last year and I need to read it again. It was great and I remember thinking after reading it…who thinks about this stuff? Thank God he did!) Yes, I need to adopt his principles. It would help.

And Linda, thank you so much for your post. It really means a lot. You are so right – my husband is an emotional person and his culture does give him strong feelings about our relationship and how it should be and what his role should be. He told me in the past that he is “a failure” and I told him NO WAY. He feels that he failed with his business and he blames himself about the finances. I blame myself about the finances. Ugh.

We just go round and round.

HappyStill, thank you as well for your comment. Never apologize for a long comment. I love them! You’re right; I need to remember that this is temporary. It’s just difficult right now to think that way. I don’t really care about being “rich”. If anything I want to be rich in my soul. It’s just that going bankrupt and even thinking about it makes me feel like a failure. I’ve tried to think to myself today that going bankrupt doesn’t define who I am. Yet, then I would laugh inside sarcastically and think…but I am bankrupt…in every way possible…in my spirit, marriage, life, financially, in EVERY WAY. Ugh…I will keep trying to think optimistically.

A little Bit lazy a Little Bit Hypo, I’m sorry to hear that your parents fight all the time. When my husband and I fight, he yells and I stay quiet usually. Sometimes I’ve been known to yell, too, but not normally. Last night we were in his studio (part of the house is his art studio) upstairs and my daughter was downstairs in another part of the house on the computer. I doubt she heard anything. At least I hope that she didn’t. Usually if she does she’ll ask what happened. She didn’t last night, thank goodness. Tonight I’m going to visit you and leave a comment there. Thank you for keeping me mindful about my daughter.

If anyone else is reading this, ya’ll need to visit Linda and Her Surroundings, HappyStill and A little Bit lazy a Little Bit Hypo. Great blogs. I look for updates in them every night.

OK I’m signing off. Don’t want to bore ya’ll to tears and I have run out of things to say (imagine that!).

Good night everyone. Sleep well and I am grateful for your postings.

Monologues and Extreme Fatigue

I worked late tonight to make overtime pay and I plan to do that again tomorrow and Friday night and Saturday. I hope that I can get through it.

When I got home late my husband and I discussed our finances, which are in the serious shitter right now and of course he was not able to discuss it, he yelled and screamed and talked on end to where it felt like I was listening to a monologue. I did not get a word in edge-wise. When I did talk, I was interrupted and basically came away with the feeling that it really doesn't matter what I say.

I did try to create boundaries (which they taught in the hospital) and explained after listening to an hour and a half of screaming (which a lot of what he said was the same as what he screamed in my ear at work yesterday), that I couldn't listen to it anymore. I said it very nicely and my voice was never raised the entire discussion. I am just dead tired. And depressed. And it's just too much to go through our reality as it is without him adding to the destruction by the drama and yelling.

When I told him that I was going to go downstairs because my ears hurt, I was tired, worked late and wanted to go straight to bed, he said "Oh well...and I have to go to work tonight! I wish that I could go to bed." He then said, "Well, you married a Moroccan and Moroccans are not stone-cold people that patiently listen when something is wrong. We move our hands and our feet and we yell and that's the way it is. I'm not changing because this is the way I was raised. You should have known that when you married me."

I proceeded to remind him of my parents and how meek and quiet they are (compared to my husband, "meek" works) and how I grew up with them. I remember being younger and my biological father yelling at his fourth or fifth wife (cannot keep up) and I started crying because I wasn't used to all of the yelling and it upset me a lot. I can't stand the yelling now. Nothing has really changed where somehow I built this very thick hide that is impenetrable. If anyone knows how to do this, please let me know! I told him that he should have known how I am when he married me as well.

He said that I had to get used to him acting out like that and I told him that he had to get used to me. He said that he could never get used to me and not react. I then reminded him that if we are in stressful circumstances like that, the worst thing to do is yell and scream because it makes the energy go down to hell somewhere, nothing gets accomplished and people walk away from it heavy in their heart and soul. It’s just not effective.

So...I walked downstairs, took a shower, made my lunch for tomorrow and kissed my child good night. I am now blogging and then I'm going to bed because today has been very full and I've had enough. And when I wake up, it will feel like 20 minutes passed and I'll be dead tired and have to get ready for work again.

I've cried three times at work today. This isn't good. Yesterday I cried as well.

Today I found out that if I didn't make at least one payment on my car that it would be repossessed. That has NEVER happened to me. I was able to make one payment, but had to find a Western Union (never been there) to make a payment so that it's not taken away. I need my car to get to work and make money.

I called the bankruptcy attorney today to no avail. He was not there to make an appointment, but his secretary said he should be in the office tomorrow and to call then. I will call again because I really need to talk with him and explore my options pronto.

Not only was I running to Western Union for the car, I also had to talk with my car insurance agent. I have to make a payment by this Friday or my insurance will be cancelled. I've known the agent for years and he is a very nice guy. He also is my family's agent. I told him that my husband gets paid this Friday and if it would be possible if I wrote a check to go in Friday. He said that he needed it by 5:00pm tomorrow. His office is about a 30-minute drive from where I work and then he asked where I worked. When he found out, he said..."I live about five minutes from there. Let me give you directions and you can drop it off there so you don't have to drive all the way here." I thanked him profusely and went by his house as well and hid the check under a planter. I am very grateful to him because he didn't have to do that!

I have never in my 35 years of living had to run around like that paying money for past due bills! What stress and feelings of failure! And then when my husband sits there and gives an entire monologue on how this affects him and he yells and screams and jumps around and basically tells me that he will leave if we don't sell this house...it's just all extremely amazing. Especially when we started off the conversation very mildly in the first place. I had worked today on a budget from here until November and we discussed it. I asked that we review it every week. He agreed and I thought things were going exceptionally well. Until the monologue. And I love how he tells me hurtful things and then ends it with "I didn't want to tell you that". I said..."well don't!".

He is at work now. I am about to go to bed. I hope that I can sleep. If I don’t stop writing about this, I’ll never stop. I feel like I’m going round and round with the same thoughts in my head. I have to stop writing about this.

I want to end with two things:

The first thing is gratitude – I feel grateful that I was able to pay the car insurance today so that it didn’t cancel and the car so that it wasn’t repossessed. I feel grateful to my daughter who I could tell wanted to chit-chat tonight, but I couldn’t give her all the time she needed because I got home from work late and then had to discuss finances with my husband. I gave her a big hug and apologized saying that it was a not-so-good night for me and if we could talk about what she wanted to talk about tomorrow. I reassured her that none of it had to do with her, that I was going through my own problems and am trying to fix them and everything would be fine. She smiled at me and gave me a hug and kiss and said "OK Mom...no problem. We can talk about it tomorrow." I love her a lot.

And last, but not least, I want to say that I have had good intentions my entire life, but I am a failure. My intentions weren't good enough and in the end didn’t really matter when I look at the mess we are in today.

I failed. As Dr. Phil says, “It is what it is”.

And knowing this just tears me up inside.