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So, not much activity here on my part in a long time. It's been a rough few months, financially, causing the most stress really, and not for the reasons that everyone else is suffering from. Haven't lost my job, it's actually the time of year that I start making more money (go figure), and I've been doing pretty good affiliate-wise on one of my other sites. The problem is living from cheque to cheque, and once you get behind on one thing, things tend to snowball and turn to shit pretty quickly. Trust me. If you're living like that yourself, do yourself a favour NOW and cut back on anything you can and keep up to date on your bills and payments. It all started with stupid little things like one of the kids racking up an extra $50-80 a month a few months in a row using their damned cellphone, downloading games and ringtones and the like (despite every month being told that if it happened again I was going to smash the hell out of it with a hammer). I would have, except my big rubber mallet disappeared for a while around that time, coincidentally. So, fell behind on the phone bill. Next thing you know, I'm about 3 months behind and owe them close to a grand. So making payments to keep them from cutting it all off (stupid me, for combining landline, cells and internet on one bill) means that other stuff doesn't get paid, and it turns into a vicious circle, constantly behind and running out of money, even though we should technically have more than enough to cover it all. Living cheque to cheque with no wiggle room leaves you in a very bad position should something unexpected happen. The major trigger for us really, was a month after Christmas, things already stretched of course after buying for 3 kids, our oldest son had another major meltdown and trashed the place and was being extremely violent with his mother to the point that we had to call the police again to take him to the hospital, again. This time after being released from the hospital, the worker from Children's Aid made it clear that he wouldn't be allowed to come home again, for the safety of everyone else in the house. So, he ended up in a group home for about 6 or 7 weeks, which was in a neighbouring town in the region, but a good 25 minute highway drive away. So at that point, what with all the meetings with the workers there, and being expected to go and see him a few times a week, we're talking a good $15 bucks a round trip, 3, 4, 5 times a week. For almost 2 months. So that was a major pressure that we couldn't afford, but didn't have a choice.. And things just snowballed from there. So simple little problems that you think "Oh, I'll just catch up the next pay in 2 weeks" can really start to pile up and cause some serious stress and damage to your finances. I'm at the point now, that we're a month behind in rent, missed a car payment last week (thanks to the government screwing us over and telling us about it afterwards, shorted us $600 this month and about the same next month, then after that it'll be about $300 a month less that we won't have, perfect timing), overdue bills that haven't been paid in 3 months, plus screwups on my part that have ended up costing us hundreds in NSF fees all over a simple, stupid oversight, all leading up to now where the only hope of catching up would be for a bag of cash containing about $5000 to fall out of the back of an armoured car at my feet. All because I let a couple little things fall behind, and let other things take priority with the intention of it being temporary. Do your stress level a favour, and don't fall into this trap yourself. So while I'm stressing out about all this crap, a couple of weeks ago a very close friend of the family died in an apparent suicide, hit by a train just up the road from our house. The mother of my daughter's closest friend for years, the daughter of my wife's best friend. So needless to say we've all been pretty devastated by this. The apparent reason, yeah you guessed it, money..And it wasn't the biggest deal in the world, if we had only known what the situation was, we could have told her not to worry about it, that her $4000 problem could have been solved likely for less than a couple hundred bucks. The part that haunts me though on top of that is, I was coming home from the store about 20 minutes before it happened, right along that road where the level crossing is, so now I constantly wonder how far along the tracks she was, and if I had just looked out my window, would I have seen her when I drove over the tracks? And if I had gone back into the store like my wife wanted for a couple more things, would I have gotten there right as the accident happened? One other troubling aspect is that although it was ruled a suicide fairly early on, the police are (so far as I know) still investigating it as potential foul play, as based on the video from the train, there's a question of whether or not she was incapacitated or already dead and placed on the tracks, as apparently she didn't even move, flinch or anything as the train came at her, just sat there sort of slumped over with her back to the train. The last I'd heard was that they were still trying to locate someone that was seen with her that night, and they can't find him. Scary. It's hit us all pretty hard, because it just wasn't like this woman at all, she was probably the most happy, bubbly person you could ever meet, always had a smile for you no matter what. She could never even watch shows like CSI when things like that would happen on the show, she'd cover her eyes, and say "ohh I don't know how anyone could ever do anything like that".. So it really raises a lot of doubts in our minds that she really did it on her own. |
