Goodbye glass, melancholy sighs
Don’t you love the dramatic title?
You know, whilst medicated I do a damn good job staying on the positive side of the fence. I know I like to complain and be a smartass about things but on the whole, I roll with the punches anymore. Maybe it’s age or maybe it’s better living through chemistry. Maybe it’s both. That’s not really important. All I know is that a couple of days ago I finally gave up my last lens minus the 50mm f1.8 to help my mom with a hospital bill she had to pay. I’m not at all blaming her or resentful; I’m just feeling kind of numb and a bit melancholy. So much for any fancy Audrey Woulard workshops or WPPI conventions any time soon. Gotta do what ya gotta do.
To add insult to injury, that day I also found out that our house payment increased by $300 a month. Yep. I know.
Anytime something like this happens, my mind starts to churn. Years ago I would have been in tears about this but now I let my brain chew on it for awhile and try to come up with a plan. So, that’s what I did. While I’ve been feeling generally down, my brain has still been at work thinking about what we can and can’t do about our situation.
Right now I’m reconsidering the build and thinking about moving in to my mom’s house and just trying to sell the one I live in currently. Move to her place, clean and stage this one meticulously and hope that we sell fairly quickly. Normally that would be easy enough or at least not that big of a deal. What makes it a huge deal is that Iain receives excellent special education services for Autism in our current city and I don’t want to jeopardize that. Granted I don’t know anything about my mom’s city’s program but after hearing so many horror stories when I’m participating in activities in the special needs community, moving out of my city is terrifying. We have it really good here and they’ve treated him very well. He’s come so far.
The above said, I also love living here. I love my city. Don’t get me wrong, my mother lives in a very beautiful area. She has a beautiful home on a large lot. She has big trees and nice neighbors. It’s just that I love where I live. It’s a quaint community on the river with a love for the arts, lots of beautiful old homes, huge trees and community activities. We have an old downtown dating back into the 1800s that has events every third Friday of the month and so much of our lives revolves around where we live. We moved here when we were married, brought our newborns home here and thought we’d never move out of the city. (Yeah, yeah, I know — never say never.)
I told myself that if I have to rent a cheap shit hole room just to have an address in this city then that’s what I’ll do. We do have the School of Choice program here but that’s still never a guarantee there will be spots. Add to that the complications and politics about the funding special ed children get and it gets dicey. This is a wonderful example of something parents of typical children don’t have to agonize over. Sure, we all want a good school system for our children but the special education department even in a school district normally regarded as excellent can suck. This is causing me the most stress and if nothing else, this is what is weighing most heavily on me with my mother and her health a close second.
Selling this home is what else causes me stress. Hell, selling anything in this market would cause me stress. This is when I get really angry at the current state of our economy, especially the economy in my state. People are losing jobs and many to foreign outsourcing. That pisses me off. The foreclosure rate is through the roof in our area and I’m not quite sure why that isn’t throwing up big enough red flags for our state and national governments to play closer attention. Eight years ago I could’ve sold this house in a week, a month tops. Today? A year isn’t unheard of. A year! Not to mention that I’ve actually lost equity in this home. Three years ago my home was worth around $30-35k more than it is now. WTH?!
So, anyhow, that’s where we’re at. Jeff is home from work today so we’ll discuss it more in depth and throw around some ideas. I’ll email the builder and schedule a meeting and see what he has to say (that I’m not looking forward to at all). He may have some suggestions that we didn’t think of or options we weren’t aware of. His business suffers from this economy, too, so he’s not going to want to let business slip away if there’s a way we can do something about it. I don’t have high hopes though.
With the way I kept jumping the hurdles when it came to bidding for the land I thought those hurdles were maybe tests to see how bad we really wanted to do this and that we jumped them meant that it was meant to be. Now I wonder if those hurdles weren’t signs that maybe we should reconsider. Of course, if that were the way life worked, any hurdle would make people stop in their tracks and what does that accomplish? The greatest minds and success stories come from those who jumped and even stumbled upon hurdles. My problem is looking for signs or meaning in things that don’t exist. Or I’m a dolt and misread everything. That’s certainly a possibility. 
If you could do one thing, please pray, think good thoughts or whatever it is that you do when someone asks something like this. In the end I just want Iain to remain in an excellent district, my mother to be taken care of and my family to simply be well. As long as Iain’s education, my mother’s health and a place to call home is in order then I’m happy. A big home fit to order is wonderful but it’s not a necessity to make me happy and I’ve said that all along. I like my little home and am thankful that I have a home and Jeff has a job when others have nothing. Sure, we’re growing out of this house but if we needed to we’d make due. My mother being ill and alone in that house that she can no longer take care of on her own isn’t working and staying here for $300 more a month also doesn’t seem smart so it’s time to come up with something better.
Sigh.
