Ugh! Not liking this new Blogger set-up very much. I'm not sure I'm going to "connect" my Blogger profiles and my Google+ profiles just yet. For one, I'm not sure what all is going to disappear from here if I do that. They made a big point to tell you to "copy" everything from your Blogger profile over to your Google+ profile before you switched. I guess I'm old and just don't like change much.
I'm sitting here this evening just feeling very melancholy, very "bleh". I'm just so tired. Tired of what you say? Just tired of everything having to be a fight. Tired of every time I think we might be getting just a "teensy" bit ahead on things, something comes along unexpected and slams us right back to where we were, or even further back. It's just beating me down.
I feel so bad feeling this way too, because I have friends who are in much, much more difficult circumstances than we are (health, finances, etc.). I guess it's just because this has been going on for so very long, and I just don't see an end to it in sight.
I have a daughter who will be 18 in less than two years. We can't help her go to college, if she even wanted to do that. It concerns me that maybe her lack of wanting to go is due to our not being able to help her, and how adamant she is about not taking on any debt for schooling. We can't even help her get into any technical training program or anything either. We are in that horrible place of making just enough not to qualify for any kind of aid, but not enough to pay for any of it ourselves. She wants a job so badly, but we live in a place that doesn't have many opportunities, and it's a lot of gas to get her to even the closest places to us, eating-up more of our money, or all of the money she would be making. She would love to someday have a car of her own, but who knows when that will happen? We can't afford to get her one, and since jobs are hard to find, it will probably be a long while before has anywhere near enough to buy one herself. We're not talking flashy cars either, just an economical car that is safe and mechanically sound. I don't even want to contemplate a wedding. I so want her to have a nice, beautiful wedding, but even the most simple of weddings seems so out of reach, even if the possibility is at least 2 or more years away.
Both of my children need orthodontic work, my son much more than my daughter. Hers is very minor, mainly cosmetic, and she has never once asked or complained. My son is in dire need of them though. Yes, we have insurance, but that pays just a very, very small drop in the bucket towards that on each of them. My son may need speech therapy after the orthodontic work as well. He's had a speech problem for years, but the thought is that it is due to his teeth being so misaligned.
Our house is falling down around us, at least it seems that way. We try to fix one problem, then another one crops-up. Our septic system has been failing for the last several years, and we've now been told it could be thousands just to repair it, over $10,000 for a new system. Neither is an option, so we continue to try to limp it along. I don't even want to know if the roof is in need of replacement or not. There are no holes, so that is a blessing. The house needs painting in the worst sort of way though, and there is probably a lot of rotten wood in places. There is virtually no insulation in the house, particularly the attic, so in the winter we lose heat through the roof and in the summer the house bakes and the poor A/C struggles to cool the house. Not helping that is the old single-pane windows that leak too. The doors are crooked too, and that causes cool air to leak out in summer and cold air to pour in in the winter. We literally keep our thermostat at 85 in the summer during the day, 78-80 at night, and in the winter a constant 60 degrees, all this to just try to keep the electric bill from creeping too high. Thankfully we didn't have much of a winter this year. That was a blessing. The summer is heating up quickly though, so we will see. We are praying it is not a horribly, horribly hot and dry summer like it was last year.
If you've made it this far, I'm sorry if I'm coming across as whining and complaining. I just had to get all of this off my chest. Things just build up. I know we will be okay, as I said, I know there are those that are much worse off than we are, and they are making it. I just continue to pray and turn it over to the Lord, but I'm human, and sometimes I just falter.
If any of you would feel led to pray for us, I'd would very much appreciate it. If you can, just leave a quick note that you are. That would be a great encouragement. Thanks!
Here's a picture of a beautiful flower we had growing shortly after we moved in here, over 6 years ago.
Here's one of our little tree frog friends too. I'm not sure how he ended up on one of our gates, but we helped him off of it after taking this pic.
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At the zoo on her 16th birthday
