Another Day Another Dollar

Yeowwwch!

So, the plumbing fiasco ended up costing $733. But it is done and it is paid. The car is going to be $800 when the part comes in. *sigh* They are both being paid with the last of my equity loan.

I received my tax return money and I am now only behind 1 oil payment and one tax bill. Hopefully I can keep paying the credit cards and they will have lower monthly payments and then I will have money to put towards other bills? It's a question because that is my best option at this point...

I spent $40 of the tax return on myself, because I felt that I should get at least something out of it with all the troubles I've had had lately. Here is the list of my loot:
Gosford Park DVD New $9
4 1950's VA CD's and 1 Dion CD $20
Vintage apron $2
Brass candle holder $3
Books: Gulliver's Travels, Ettiquite (sp?) by Emily Post, Treasure Island 1911 printing $5

Quite a nice little haul for the money I must say. I haven't really shopped for myself in a few months so I really don't feel bad about it. Life cannot be all toil and scrimp and save. Sometimes you need a treat to balance it out.

Today I paid up some bills. Some that were looming over my head causing me stress, some that are only every now and again and yet they all fall at the same time. How does that happen? It's irritating.

I am going to dig myself out of this mess. It is going to happen. I've done it before and I will do it again.

Will showed up on my porch as a surprise on Friday. Shawn and I had gone to the diner, where they had no alfredo sauce, and had just gotten back to my house. Will called and asked if I had gotten the flowers he sent me. No, no flowers here. He tells me to check the porch. I look out and there he is, sitting on the porch, with a bouquet of sunflowers. Yet again, Will has amazed me with his kindness. After the week I had he could not let me spend the weekend alone. I love him so much.

We went to the mall on Saturday and he got my hair cut, or as he put it, he got my hair did. He also bought me this amazing Alice in Wonderland print of Alice that looks like a painting on canvas. I had a green tea latte outside the mall with him by a non working fountain. The weather was so perfect. We tried to go to Olive Garden (for alfredo) but they had a 2 hour wait. After driving around a while we ended up at Garfield's. It was terrible, but funny. His fries tasted like Arby's and my pasta sauce I swear was made from Campbell's Tomato Soup. I am not even kidding. I guess pasta was not for me to have!

Sunday we slept too late to go to Chapel, ran around to Circuit City to get a plug to hook up the computer to the TV. It failed. I was so sad to see him go. I cannot wait until we can be together always. The world sparkles so much brighter when we are together. I am going to really push and renew my efforts, because this has gone on long enough. It is also costing me way too much money and sanity to stay here much longer. This city is getting too dangerous.

I'm still working on it...

Dropping in a post now, because I have a few moments where I feel relatively calm right now. These past 2 weeks have been a whirlwind of bad luck. The kind where it leaves you wondering what you could have done to deserve this. But, I know myself and I know that I have been through difficult times in the past and I will land on my feet. I always do. Really there is no other option.

A small outline of what turmoil I'm going through is:

M is moving out. She is going to live with S. This is seriously bad for me. Selfish I know. I brought her into my home to help her out of a bad situation and myself as well. However, since she has been here she has not held up her end of the bargain at all. Not responsibilities, not financial, not personal growth. It will hurt me for her to leave, but in many ways it will make some things easier. I do need to figure out how to stretch my money better in light of this though. I am also dismayed at all the bad choices she makes in her life. But it is her life, not mine. I offer gentle advice at times, but only she can make her own way.

I messed up my bank account to the tune of $500. This is the first time in my 32 years of life this has happened. I'm ok with it because I'm human and bound to make a mistake a some point. It's just happened at a very inconvenient time. I've been struggling to get my finances under control and this felt like a huge failure. It was nearly a month ago, and I am still not recovered from it, not even close.

Things with Will are wonderful as always. He has been really helping me work on the house in his visits. I really wish we had more time together. He holds my heart completely. I have so much respect for him and everything he does. It's rare to find such a genuinely good person.

My toilet on the 3rd floor backed up and is backing into the tub, so says M. I had a horrible row with the home warranty company and the plumbing company they were sending out to do the work. I won't go into all the painful details, but by the end I was crying at my desk at work at how they were treating me. The warranty company is not making me pay the $55 service fee for this ordeal and my Realtor is looking for a new plumber to do the work now. It may end up costing me upwards of $600. Very difficult for me to pay, but I have no choice, as I need to shower on a regular basis.

All the gages on my car have stopped working. It's very hard to drive when you don't know how much gas you have or what speed you are going. This happened about a week and a half ago. I took it into the shop and they said it was a pinched wire and fixed it for $20. Since then, it happened again and again. I dropped it off this morning so they can look into in detail. I await a phone call and the bill, for an unknown amount.

The computers keep not working at work. I fall further and further behind on a daily basis. It's so stressful to not be able to meet all my deadlines. I know there is not a single thing I can do about this situation, it's completely out of my hands. But with everything else going on, I just don't have any patience in reserve at this point. I worked until 8pm on Friday to try to catch up and it didn't even make a dent.

I'm sure there is more that I am leaving out, but those are the big ones. I've been head achy, sleepless, back pained and high strung. It's a terrible feeling like everywhere I turn, everything is crashing in on me.

But I always land on my feet. Because I have to, there is no other option.

It's all the small things

Spring has sprung! This picture was taken outside of my work this morning. It was the first sign of spring that I have witnessed. It took me by complete surprise! I cannot wait until warmer weather arrives and I no longer need a big, bulky coat. I'm at a plateau with my weight loss and it becomes more discouraging as the season is changing. But I'm sure that when the time is right it will happen.

I ended up not feeling very well yesterday. A bit queasy and uncomfortable. So not much actually got done. However, I did return about 1/2 of my CD's to where they belonged. I'm hoping to finish that tomorrow. I've been frustrated trying to find them when they have been all scattered about.

I started reading some blogs and websites that I've added to the sidebar that I find to be inspirational. One in particular, Home Sanctuary, has an interesting feature called Small Things. You are given one small task a day to complete. I'm going to try to keep up with it. Today's was to clean the microwave. I did it, and I'm glad that I did because it needed it.

On my way home from work today, all of my gages on the dashboard of my car stopped working. They were all pointing to the bottom! I went immediately to the dealership. Lucky for me they were able to take a look at it right then. They agreed that it would be too dangerous for me to be driving about like that. Somehow the electrical wire that powers the gages had moved and gotten pinched. Completely unexplainable. I'm so relieved that it is fixed and that it only cost me $20!

I found some frozen meatballs in the freezer the other day and I took them out to defrost. So vermicelli and meatballs it was! I haven't had pasta in a while so it was a nice change. There is a bunch left over so I get a night or 2 off cooking and can get caught up on some other things when I get home from work.

Also, I started to store my left over morning coffee in my carafe in the morning. When I got home today I was able to have a nice hot cup of coffee with no waste! Which is good because coffee, as well as all the other groceries, has gotten a bit pricey to be so wasteful with it.

Tomorrow, I absolutely must pay the bills and find my donation slip so I can get my taxes done. I have to make an appointment for next week no matter what!