What next?

Life, in general, still sucks. My kids and husband are really the only things at this moment that are keeping me going. Well, school too....I actually want to keep going and finish and plan on it if I have to move there, which is starting to sound like a good idea.

Our expenses with our lawyer are accruing everyday and the retainer fee we paid him is long gone. If we have to go to court, that means more money....at least a thousand bucks! Our stupid relatives, from whom we were purchasing the house, want us to pay them over eight thousand dollars, that is $100/wk, for the time we have been in the house, deed them the house, and move immediately. Uhm, if I am not mistaken, IF we deed the house back to them, does that not mean that we pretend that this arrangement never happened. I mean, we borrowed $40,000 at a loan company, paid the house off, gave them the remaining $15,000 and signed a note that we still owed them a balance of $25,000....even though the house only approved for $60,000!! So, if we sign the house back to them, and they assume our note at the finance company, why would we need to give them anymore money? I really wish they would allow a new note to be typed up so we could continue paying them and keep our house. I hate moving, and when all your resources are getting ate up due to rising lawyer fees, it doesn't make it any easier to keep paying the bills here and try to save to rent something else.

I just don't know what to do. We can't really afford to pay a lawyer to go to court, I can't afford to miss school, and Kevin can't really afford to miss work either. It's as if we are in a damn if we do, damn if we don't situation. I really want out of it but I am not giving them that amount of money. I would be glad to sign the house back to them if they payoff or take over the note in their name....but there is no way in hell I am going to let them just have the house and assume the note in my husband's name. What if something happened to them? Then, we would still be responsible for that loan.

I meet with our lawyer tomorrow afternoon to go over a proposed settlement. I know we are willing to go 2 ways: a) let us assume the payments with the relatives once again in good understanding or b) sign the house back and move....no money, no questions asked. All in all, I really don't care how it goes....I just want it to go away! It is really messing with my emotions and I told Kevin yesterday that I really felt as though I needed to see a doctor to get something to help with my nerves. It is getting to where I think about it during class and it is distracting. I get anxious about it and wind up taking it out on him or the kids sometimes by snapping too quickly. Most of the time, I just take a deep breath and walk away. I have broken down and cried on several occasions......once or twice at school. I do it when I know I can get out of my teacher/advisor seeing me because she sure would be asking about it if she saw what shape I was in. So, I tend to put on a mask for that part of my life. Sometimes, it is hard here at home. Kevin doesn't seem to understand why I let it get to me like I do. I don't know why he is like that but I mean, I worry since we have 2 children to think about. If it was just us, then it would probably be no biggie. I mean, we have nowhere to go. My granddad would gladly open his home to us but it is a small 2 bedroom trailer. Now, we have stayed with him before, but we didn't have Chris. It was just us and Megan and Kevin was also over the road trucking too, so he wasn't there much.

I am just disgusted with it all right now. I have so much work to do for school next week and I need to get it done, but it just seems as if everything tends to burst open at the time I have something to do or concentrate on. I really just want to go to bed and sleep it all away.

Hope you all are having a better-than-expected Monday!

Odds and Ends

Well, it's Monday.....again! Is it me, or do the weekends just seem to zoom by now?

I am so sleepy. I think I need to go to bed earlier than I do. I don't think it would hurt any at all. I know I will need to do that starting in March. Since I am taking Child Development II, we have to have 20 lab hours of observations. So I am going to do mine in the childcare center on campus from 8-9am for 20 days, which means having to wake up earlier than I do now. I think once I get into the habit of it, and maybe going to bed a tad earlier, it will fall into place. I know this semester is going to be time-consuming with all the projects that we were told we have to complete. In the fall, I start student teaching I, which is exciting! We actually get to work with the kids in the centers more. I am so thrilled about this major! I can't wait til my graduation in May 2010.

I think we are a little closer to getting things settled with our house. I hate to give it up, but sometimes you have no choice. I told Kevin that I just want to move and forget that those certain relatives ever existed. It really sucks that folks would do family like that. Heck, they knew we couldn't come up with that high amount of money that was left owed on the property. It took an act of Congress, practically, to even get the loan we got on this house.....and that's because it is a manufactured home. They say now that we should have gave them something, anything, as a payment. Yeah, right! I wish Kevin had recorded all those times when he told them he couldn't pay what they wanted that week and their refusal of those payments of 'something, anything'. I honestly believe they did this so they could give their daughter and grandchild a place to live. She left her husband and is currently residing with them. So they go and file for foreclosure on us.....and didn't even acknowledge the fact that we paid them anything on the remaining balance. Crappy, huh? Really, I am kinda glad that we may be able to relinquish ourselves of this place. The school district it is in is not a school I want to send my kids to and the home itself is steadily falling apart. I am not sure if we will ever 'buy' another home or just rent for the rest of our lives. All I know is that I want a place for my kids to lay their heads at night. That is all that matters to me now.

I woke up Friday morning feeling kinda blah. My head felt all gooky, my eyes burned, and I was not very balanced. My throat felt kinda scratchy and I figured I was about to be really sick. One of my instructors had been complaining about sinus problems on Wednesday and I guess it was about that time for me too. I hadn't been sick in a while. Now I feel more tired than usual and I have all this gunk in my head/nose/throat that doesn't seem to want to come out. My nose is all crusty when I wake up in the mornings and I just want to crawl back into bed and sleep til I can't sleep anymore. I tried to sleep in this past weekend only to be awakened before 8 am each day by my young son wanting milk in his sippy cup. Why dad can't do it is beyond me! LOL :) So I got up and made breakfast. Saturday morning, we had biscuits, sausage, oatmeal, and bacon. Sunday morning, I fixed us all a cheese omelette. Thank goodness I wasn't feeling that bad those mornings or I would have made them eat cold cereal....AHAHAHA!

Thank the Lord we are out of school on Monday, the 19th. That is Martin Luther King Jr.'s observed birthday, as well as the 23rd birthday of my baby sister, Terrie. I am the oldest at 31. We have 2 other siblings between us.....our brother, Charlie, who is 28 and our sister, Heather, who is 24. Dang, they are gonna catch up with me yet!

Ok I am out of here. Megan's bus should be getting close to the stop. Over and out!