Category: News

A Mortgage on Life

Spearcarrier

Today I just had to do the heartbreaking: put out to find a home for one of our pets. And I’m guessing she won’t be the last we’ll have to give up. She’s just the first because she’s female and our horny toad Loki is trying to make her go into heat – meanwhile we had to get someone to buy dog food for us last night. God Bless Fucking America.

Things went from chancy to dire here in just a couple of days flat: thanks to the Army. Pestilence had applied for unemployment. He’s looking for a job. With unemployment, we could have had some bought time while we got ourselves together from his retirement. The Army disputed his claim. Unemployment didn’t tell us that. They just let us sit here expecting a check last Friday that never came. It took a call from the VA office to unemployment to find out what was going on.

Pestilence had sold his remaining 20 days of leave. The plan was that plus his final check would give us as least one more mortgage and car payment. By the time the Army was done, we found out today, we’re expecting a whopping $66 final pay.

I’m down to literally screaming on my Deviantart journal for help. Literally. Because I don’t know what else to do. I’ve looked for work, Pestilence has been looking for work, there’s no work. Not that I could hold down a job anyway. Menstrual migraines don’t have a cure, or a help, and they’re nothing to claim social security for. Not that we can hold out the five years it takes to fight ss and usually lose… Meanwhile – this thing that’s been driving me crazy – this guy gets $55,000 to make a fucking bowl of potato salad. What the fucking HELL.

We made a gofundme page trying to at least get people to share. Yeah. Most of the shares on it are from when it was a joke page and nothing serious at all. I’m astounded. Oh yeah, people are all about ranting about how horrible it is when a vet is treated badly… until it becomes real and in their face. Then they’re like, “Oh, gotta get me some potato salad.”

I think my patriotism for the military, which I had by the bucketload when I married into it, died completely today.

A good person tries not to be bitter in these situations. We’ve been helped so much in the past years – usually because of this Army situation – that folks just don’t want to help anymore. I get that. But you know what keeps going through my mind?

There was this guy. He needed a van. Back when Pestilence and I had a lot more money…  Pestilence asked me if we could help, and I said yes. So we cleared out our savings and gave him nearly $5000 not just to buy a van, but to get tags, insurance, go get the van, and pay for food on the way. His thanks to us was to talk badly behind my back about what a crazy bitch I was and how I wasn’t good for my husband. He never paid us back. It was me who told Pestilence, “Forgive the debt. Just let it go.”

I just think I deserve better karma than what I’m being handed day after day.

Faster Than A Silverbullet

Spearcarrier

I’m afraid I’m in a bit of a pickle. My husband has slightly spoiled me when it comes to office equipment.

We haven’t been able to get me everything I wanted and needed over the years, but I’m used to him at least trying. He tries really hard. I mean, if I had to rate husband effort I’d give him over 9000. It’s been great, for the most part.

But it also means I’m a spoiled raging brat now. I want stuff for my office. I want to be able to get work done in style. I want a working printer, a computer that hasn’t exploded in at least six months (the last part mostly thanks to my readers), and… and… I want stuff.

It’s become an addiction. I no longer want stuff. I need stuff.

The latest item we’ve been talking about adding for at least a year now is a paper cutter. I originally thought of getting one during one of my many attempts to step away from the ebook business and into something that would let me take lunches and sleep at night on occasion. I thought I’d start a shrinky dink charm business, cuz it was something I felt I’d like to do. But the cutter I finally managed to buy couldn’t cut shrinky dink paper and I had to return it to get my money back.

Months upon months later, my husband finds the silverbullet for me. It’s the cutter’s cutter, and it does all the things I would need it to do. And, the best part, it comes with a commercial use guarantee. And. I want it.

I know that, being largely invisible, getting this cutter with the thought of branching out into making arts and crafts and leaving ebooks behind is just a fairy tale fantasy. For example, my account at etsy costs me money. It never brings any in. And the Apocalypse Store, OOAKLeaf, only sees one living visitor. Me. But that hasn’t stopped me from pining day in and out, torturing myself by comparing my project ideas to what I can find done by other people, and checking the website for specs again and again. Man do I want this cutter. I’m silly for wanting said cutter. With the money it takes to buy the silverbullet, I could pay off some debt instead. And I know this.

Yet I can’t help my strangely sharp fantasies about this thing. The ideas that are flowing. The overall addictive need. Please, Santa, if you give me a silverbullet I’ll polish your damn reindeer’s hooves. I’ll do unspeakable things to your wife. Give me the damn silverbullet!!!

I even started a gofundme page.

Okay you know what? I even promote the page, I want this thing so badly.

I wonder if Van Gogh ever felt this way, I mean for more than the tip of his ear. “Phucketh, if only I could haff some damn curelean blue! I must paint the sky, I tell ye!!”

It’s either the silverbullet or I cut you with… aaah… another… cutter… Um.

Yeah I have no good conclusion to this ramble.