So here we go.
Last year, my wife and I were upset that the neighbors upstairs stomp around so much. And we wanted some more space. So we thought, hey, let's look for a house. But we can't do that with the kind of credit card debt we're carrying around. Bummer.
Liz gets some money for a freelance gig she did two years ago. Enough to pay off the credit cards.
So we look for, and find, a house. It needs some work - "cute it up," the real estate agent suggested. So we hatch some plans to cute up the house before we move in - you know, painting, doing the floor in the kitchen, redoing drywall. Should be no more than a few weekends worth of work, right?
Fast-forward. We move in. Less than half the shit we want to do isn't done. So our entire life was, and remains, in boxes. Boxes, boxes everywhere. We do some of the work, but there's still a lot to go, and wherever you turn you see constant reminders of the work you still have to do: the bad seams in the living room that need molding. The bits of paint in the hallway that need to be touched up. And, of course, the cardboard boxes everywhere.
But we abide. Sure, life is chaotic, but we abide.
Then we find out that the money we received late last year to pay off the credit cards actually popped us into the next tax bracket. So we owe the IRS. We owe them a lot. Basically, we owe them what we would have owed the credit cards had we kept our regular payment schedule and not moved into the house.
OK, so now we can't spend any money on anything. A night out has become too expensive. We're eating hot dogs. And that nice house we're paying so much money for a month is a chaotic wreck.
Then, some dickless piece of shit steals our car. We get it back, thank goodness, but its broken and needs to be fixed. So away it goes, and we get a rental car that eats gas like it's getting kickbacks from Dick Cheney. When will the car be fixed? Who knows? Oh yeah, and it's still gonna cost us our deductable, plus there's no guarantee the car thief will be put away. Oh, and the brakes we wanted to have fixed won't be done either.
But that's not all, folks! Since we moved in, we've heard random skittering in the attic. The exterminator comes out this morning. Rats! Rats in the Walls! Under the house is a mess: the screens on the additions were never installed correctly, cutting every conceivable corner. There's no cap on the sewer pipe (huh?) so that's how the rats have been getting in - sewer rats living in our house! And in the second crawlspace, because the screens weren't installed correctly, a family of raccoons has taken up residence.
And how much will this cost? Another two thousand dollars that we don't have!
This downward spiral of disarray is really starting to get to me. My creative burst fled with nary a word down on paper. I'm still living out of boxes. My laundry is in a massive pile on the floor, clean mixing with dirty as if it were some insane Garden of Laundry Eden. I'm staying late at work tonight as much to catch up as to avoid the chaos that waits for me at home.
Seriously, I think I'm on the verge of a breakdown. This morning, I thought Orion (the cat) managed to either escape or go down into the crawlspace when I wasn't looking. I found him in the bedroom hiding, but then he really did escape and I couldn't find him, so for all I know he's in the crawlspace duking it out with the sewer rats and raccoons.
Everything is so far out of control I can hardly see straight anymore.
