Thursday, August 19, 2010

Writer's Block

I wish I could get out of this writing rut.

If I could, I would write about the following things:

*how my days alternate between two kinds of horrible: day one=Squeak pestering the baby nonstop and being mean and annoying and not listening and yelling and being too physical all day long. day two=Squeak whining and crying and having meltdowns and freak-outs over literally every minuscule thing. It is making me wonder if there is indeed something not-quite-right about him. Emotionally? Or behaviorally? Because surely this can't be normal.

*how my step-mother really and truly belongs in a Disney movie. Like of the "wicked step-mother" variety. She is emotionally about 13 years old. Maybe younger. Maybe she's more like 7. I can't quite decide.


*how we are suddenly struggling financially. Debt has gotten a hold of us and we are trying to shake it. Monthly bills, mortgage, car loan, medical bills, school tuition (did I tell you that Santiago is going back to school to get his Ed.D, or Education Doctorate if you couldn't figure it out?), rising gas and food prices. It's all getting to be a bit much. We looked into refinancing, or downsizing our house (which we bought before we knew that Tiago would be needing back surgery, and that not only would we have massive debt because of the surgery itself, but also that we would be needing to buy two new cars as a result of said surgery), but we are basically stuck. If we refinance, we pay $7K for lower interest rates, consolidate our 2 mortgages, and then have to pay PMI. Which in turn would not lower our monthly payments by a whole lot (maybe $100/month. Which doesn't make the $7K in closing costs worth it...). If we sell and get a smaller, not so nice house, we lose all our equity in realtor fees, closing costs, title fees, etc. And we lose money because we bought when the market was high, and now the market is low. Without that equity, even if we bought a considerably cheaper home, like a short-sale, we wouldn't have enough to put 20% down to avoid PMI. So we would be out our equity, and we still wouldn't have any lower payments. AND with a short-sale, we would need to put thousands of dollars of work/repairs into fixing it up. What I mostly hate about being in our financial position (firmly lower-middle class) is that when you start to struggle financially, there is no responsible thing to do. We would love to sell our house and buy one that could afford better, now that we're having troubles making ends meet, but that's not possible. The only option we would have would be to go delinquent and just walk away from our mortgage. Which we won't do. We will really need to tighten up our budget, but since having kids, everything feels like a necessity. We can't very well stop buying fresh fruit and veggies and eat the cheap stuff anymore, because now we have kids to keep healthy. We can't just not buy clothes when the kids outgrow their things. Even if we don't have money, the kids need to be dressed...

That's what I would write about, if I weren't in a writing rut.

1 comment:

diane26 said...

The thing I hate about lower middle class is that when you legitimately need help there are no programs out there to help you. You either make too much or not enough. Its truly a tough place to be in.

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