I'm not sure anyone will even read this, but I figure, why not give it another try. I have some co-workers who stumbled upon my blog recently and wanted me to post again, and my oldest daughter, Corina, had been asking about it for a while as well. So, here goes ... something.
I feel like so much has changed since I stopped blogging, and I'm not sure where to start. I'm likely going to just do some stream of consciousness typing here, getting it all out. (I'll probably add random pics too, to break it up)
I have been working at the shoe store since March of 2019. I made some really good friends there (Hi Dylan and Blaine!), and I'm so glad I decided to apply for the job afterall. I did eventually become a team lead (part of the management team) and full time after all. But last year, I requested to go to part time, because the health insurance premiums were killing us, and we needed to be able to get insurance from healthcare.gov. I think there are many families going through this out there as well. My paychecks still don't cover the bills, though there are a lot less bills then there used to be.
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| The tiny house our daughter, Faelyn, and her husband live in |
We did file for bankruptcy, and that was finalized in September of 2019. And things were going okay for us for a while after that, since I was working at the shoe store, and Christopher was also full time at Walmart. But he lost that job in February 2020, and decided to do Instacart and Door Dash instead. That was worrisome to me, but he actually did pretty great at it... of course it "helped" that COVID hit, and during the lockdown Instacart and Door Dash were booming with business. But it was also during that time that I went full time, and had to get health insurance through work, which took over half my paychecks - literally (I am not exaggerating, my take-home pay was less than the insurance premium), and it became a lot more stressful. I kept telling Chris he needed to make a certain money amount each week etc to cover the bills... and he was already pretty mentally fragile from the PTSD he developed at his last store management job. Eventually, he just shut down, and was unable to leave the house for a long time.
So, I had to start Instacarting as well as working at the shoe store, trying to make enough at both to pay the bills and have money for food and gas and sometimes extras. For a while, we were just breaking even when he was getting paid by his mom to be her care giver after she had a bad fall and broke her leg (and then her husband passed away while she was in a rehab facility during COVID and unable to even leave or have visitors - it's been a weird and rough year). But then she moved to North Carolina to live with my sister in law, so that income stopped. Since then, we got further and further behind on the car payment. I seemed to be able to make enough to pay the bills and get groceries and gas, except for the car payment. And each month it got harder and harder to catch up, and other bills started getting behind as well.
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| I turned the smallest bedroom into a library, and my oasis |
I would wake up in terror at the slightest sound outside, just positive that some repo guy had come to take our car. We do have two cars now, but the Versa is newer, has a backup camera (you wouldn't believe how hard it is to back out of some driveways after delivering people's groceries), and gets great gas mileage. Besides, we'd already paid about half of the note. I didn't want to just let the car go, but I didn't know what we were going to do.
We decided that maybe Christopher needed to file for disability. We never imagined we'd ever have to do anything like that, but he had just become a broken man. He could only go out to a store if I were with him. In fact, if I had to run to the bathroom while we were in Publix, for example, he'd start to have a panic attack. He's got a therapist, and medication from his doctor for depression and anxiety. On top of all of that, he has had a heart attack and two strokes, and continues to deal with heart disease, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, had kidney cancer and now only has one kidney, and we just discovered right before he filed for disability, that he is also now diabetic. He's also gained a lot of weight, and is over 300 lbs now. So, hopefully all of that will get his application approved, because he truly is unable to work. Some days he can't even function. But it's a long process, and while the govt is doing its red tape thing, we're still just dealing with my income.
When things got so bad that we were months behind on the car, and we were one day away from having the electric turned off, and we also didn't have any food in the house and no grocery money, Christopher finally broke down and messaged the entire family in our FB Messenger family chat. We didn't get any reply at all at first, but then the kids started telling him they were proud of him for speaking up and asking and they'd all do what they could. Not long afterwards, they all had a family meeting apparently, including my in-laws. Corina and Rhiannon, our oldest two daughters, came to our house and explained how things needed to be and Corina took our bill info and debit and credit cards and proceeded to take over everything, and they got the car and all other bills all caught up. Corina even went to Walmart and got us like $400 in groceries to get us well stocked. I still get teary eyed thinking about it. I couldn't stop spontaneously crying for days. I was finally able to sleep through a whole night!
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| In June, we had a perfect day on Roan Mountain |
The money the family donated covered the things my paychecks couldn't for a few months, and Corina made sure we had grocery and gas money. But that money is all gone now, and we're relying on just my paychecks again. Fortunately, I'm getting more hours at work than I had been. I had asked to work less hours because my back would kill me after a while on those floors, and I needed more time to Instacart. I make more per hour at IC, but the work is getting harder and harder to get, so now I'm working more at the store, just because I can budget that income. I'm considering getting a different second job. But anyway, we're back to stressing over where the money is coming from and whether we're going to be able to pay all the bills, buy some groceries, and keep gas in the car.
Oh, and this coming Tuesday is our 30th Wedding Anniversary. It's funny really, since our 26th anniversary, I've been planning what our 30th anniversary would be like. I'd had a separate savings account just for the anniversary party. We wanted to renew our vows, and invite family and friends and have a big party and rent out a huge cabin in the Smokies everyone could stay at. Back when I started dreaming about it all, we made enough to make that dream come true... and now, we will spend the day alone, just the two of us, driving to an area of the Smokies we've never been to before. I'll make chicken and dumplings in the crock pot and put it in the "Wonderbag" to keep it hot, so we can have a picnic dinner among the changing leaves in Cataloochie. We'll have to drive back home that evening, since we can't afford to stay anywhere. I have to Instacart all this coming weekend to make sure I have gas money for the trip and for the following week, and maybe a little extra spending money for drinks and snacks for the drive, and maybe some souvenirs.
So, things certainly didn't turn out like we'd hoped or planned, but we still have each other, and we have the most amazing kids in the world! Seriously, I am so incredibly proud of the human being each one of them has become. I'll be back soon (I hope and plan!), to write about each of the kids.
Thanks for reading. If you'd like to support this blog further, please consider clicking on one of the ads. If you’d like to leave a comment, that would be awesome, and I finally remembered to turn on comments (thanks Jane!) . Have a wonderful day!
Welcome back and Happy Anniversary 😊
ReplyDeleteThank you so much Jane!
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