December 18, 2008

I pulled out It’s a Wonderful Life today and put it in the dvd player. After all it is Christmas time. I have watched it every year around this time since I don’t know when. Normally I wait to watch it on TV, but today I pulled it out for a much more personal reason.

I’m discouraged.

It’s this time of year that I would normally go out to the shops and do last minute Xmas shopping. Normally…but there is nothing normal about this year. There are Christmas presents in the back of my car that will never be mailed in time for Xmas and printed letters that will never make it at all. It makes my heart sink.

So, why today as the day this all hits me? Well…we got paid today. Unfortunately, our check was not enough to cover everything we needed it to cover. Our first months rent, daycare, and a loan payment. We are not THAT far off, just a couple hundred dollars. Normally I would prioritize, unfortunately, everything needs to be paid, and a few hundred dollars is a lot of money to be short. Besides, that is just for bills. We are not including food or gas for the car.

I knew this day was coming though. I found out this last week that our reimbursement check will not be coming in for another 4-6 weeks. That was supposed to be our saving grace before the Holidays. When I found out though, I put it to the back of my mind. No sense worrying about things that I have no control over.

Our short paycheck was not the only reason for my dismay. Today is the day we found out Jazzy, our Dalmatian, may have pre-cancerous lesions. My knees almost gave out from underneath me as I braced myself on the grocery cart. Jasmine is a finicky old coot of a dog. That’s not what hurt me as much as she is Hunter’s joy. If she were to be put down or pass away for any reason Hunter would be devastated. The thought just turns my stomach.

So what else could make this day worse? How about when your father-in-law, who is your co-signer for a student loan, calls to say that he wants to be removed because you are 6 days late on a payment and they are threatening to send him to collections.

WHAT!

Seriously, this is the call Nick received at work after the aforementioned bad news. What a petty nasty thing to do. Granted, pop-pop had no clue what we were dealing with today, BUT what he did know is that Nick and I are struggling to make end’s meat, I have been a little late on some payments, but I have ALWAYS paid and never has it dinged his credit, and we are 7 days away from Christmas. It is a foreign concept to me that someone could place their own non-tangible assets before their flesh and bloods well being. It is today that I join Nick in agreeing that his dad runs his family like Potter runs a business.

All-in-all, it is a bad day. Maybe if I just go to sleep and wake up tomorrow I will have realized this to be all a bad dream. Hah. How cliché can I get. I couldn’t fall asleep anyways. My mind would not allow me to rest. It would whirl and click trying to figure out how to solve problems that are unsolvable at this point. So, instead, I will sit here and wrap Christmas presents, thank God for the health of my family and the roof over our heads, and watch the rest of It’s a Wonderful Life. Never have I found a movie so relevant to my current situation.