Just a few more setbacks

The month of July didn't start out so well for us.  Again I had been expecting some money coming in that didn't come in.  I was told last month that it wouldn't be late again so I thought it was safe to budget on it...well that was another mistake and my car insurance bounced on me again meaning that when my SSI check came in I had to cover the insurance out of the general bill account and also the late fees.  Two payments were missed that I had budgeted on that that messed up our whole financial system for about 3 months into the future.

Just to make things even more wonderful my wheelchair tire blew out on me!  That day sitting in the heat in a chair that was hurting my hips like crazy I noticed my window AC was frozen over.  My son's had been doing that too and we couldn't figure out the problem but when his room is too hot he can go visit the neighbor.  When mine started doing the same thing, well I'm stuck in one room with nowhere else to go and on this day I was in serious pain from sitting in chairs that I can't position correctly in.  Argh...not fun!  Well we went out the next morning to try to replace this tire.  Bike shop was closed so we went to the department store.  Evidently finding a 24 X 1 3/8 inch tube is not as easy as I thought!  Not a single store had them!  Finally I'm hot, sweaty, in pain and frustrated and my son says lets just try a 2 inch tube, the worst that will happen is it won't work.  Well the tire was damaged too so we got the tube kit that has that slime sealent stuff in it.  Thankfully my sons idea worked...one less problem.

Get home and it's hot as...well you know.  Not a single AC is working!  I hopped online to get some fast ideas.  I got some good advice and we went out to get a few things to try to clean up the AC's and prevent the ice.  My son's kinda drools cool air now if it's on low.  Mine is icing up worse now that we cleaned it!  We had needed to replace my other son's AC but now we have 2 and 1/2 dead AC's.  My sons can always spend their days at their friends house and it's much cooler at night.  I however am stuck in one room all day, every day and I will need an AC in my room.

I reached into my bookbag for something and found out the screen on my camera is smashed.  My camera is used as part of my position for another non-profit I work with.  Now I will have to replace that!  Luckily I can do that pretty cheap, I don't need a fancy camera just once that does video and still shots.  It's just yet another aggrivation.

Finally the last straw...or maybe the last strap....we were headed out to a store to get something else said to help with the AC and my heel strap broke on the shoes I use with my braces!!  I attached it with a rubber band but that throws my whole gait off and is dangerous.  Now I had to buy another pair of shoes!  I don't walk much, I don't need shoes...but I need them to hold my braces on which hold my feet and ankles in the right position so my feet/ankles don't roll over and sprain when I stand up.  Really....this has been a crappy month!  I'm sure I could have found a much better place to drop $20 than on a pair of shoes!!

I had some donations on a site where I am trying to raise funds for home repair and modifications, I can't get a payout there though so those funds are useless to me so right now I don't have that extra side cash I had been depending on to make ends meet...I guess that little bit of hope is gone now.  My ac's are blown, I'm running on a temporarily inflated tire, my car is off the road in need of radiator work, the truck is still running but it needs transmission work.  We need to open this yard up!  There is absolutely no way I can cook in my office without AC that is just dangerous and the yard has needed to be opened up with privacy fencing for a few years, now it's urgent we get this done so we can collect salvage materials to start our gardens, repairs and modification.

These last few months have SUCKED!  I really need to find some kind of Internet job I can do at home, we can't keep living like this.  I have skills.....just they are useless.  My skills are wonderful to donate, I help out with Wembaster duties, forum/egroup admin, management of calendar, blog, photo gallery, member support and communication.  Lots of people are glad for my donated skills and I can offer about 16 hours at second and third shift hours...nobody wants to hire me for a real paycheck though.  I am lucky to earn spare cash now and then, then I depend on it and it's gone and we are left spinning in the wind like a leaf spiraling to the ground.

Thanks for letting me vent a little, I'm so sick of this!  Anyone hiring?  I'm a great web mistress :)

New Repair and Renovation Plans

New Repair and Renovation PlansWell, now that the ramp is in place it's time to concentrate on other things.  The ramp ate up lots of ground space in the kennel area so our immediate plans are to knock out the kennel wall to the east.  We hope we will be able to salvage the lumber and most of the chicken wire to use along the tree line to the right of the office.  We will need to find lumber and buy netting to then build another fence from the end of the tree line fence to the mobile home.  This will open up most of the land plot and finally allow me access to the whole back yard and of course will free up space for the special furry family members.  Right now my access is only to the kennel which is now eaten up with ramps.  The animals love to go under the deck and ramps so they have more space than the humans do, but the reality is we all need more outdoor space.  Most of our living is done outdoors, we cook outside, we spend our family time outside, we tend our animals, feed them and spend time with them outside.  About the only thing done inside is computer use...we would sleep outside too if we could build a yurt or keep a tent but for that we must have privacy fencing.

Opening the yard will allow us to start our gardens.  My buddy Rick from Dixie Thunder showed me how he grows his hanging gardens.  We fell in love with his tomato plants and decided we will build racks in an area of yard that will not be used for animal space...but will be accessible to me...and we will do hanging gardens rather than raised gardens.  That will drastically cut down the cost of building garden beds and filling them with good soil.  Hanging gardens can be easily made accessible for wheelchair or scooter gardening.

We have funds thanks to a friend to put walls up in the office and that will be done as soon as we can get our truck legal for the road.  We have the insulation another friend managed to salvage from a discard pile and with that insulation and some wall boards the office will be easily cooled in summer and heated in winter.  Since I spend nearly all my days in the office this necessity being taken care of will make a big difference.

We did get it fixed finally and the repair wasn't as cheap as we had hoped...but that part is done.  DMV finally found a way we could register the truck but it took a great deal of time to find the loophole and that cost us lots of fees AND late fees totaling up to $162!  I have no clue why we are being charged penalties and late fees when we have been trying to register this truck since Feb, well before the due date.  It was departmental policy that caused us to be late, not our negligence...but we are stuck with fees simply because we bought a truck out of state and the previous owner refused to sign the official state of South Carolina stationary and wrote his bill of sale on notebook paper instead.  There is no law to force him to sign the SC stationary because the stationary is also not a law it's simply departmental policy but the law does allow the DMV to require any documents they deem necessary, and that was their loophole for requiring a bill of sale on their stationary.  Without any actual law requiring this bill of sale on SC DMV stationary we had nothing to in our favor to make the man sign the stationary.  That is the flaw in the policy that caused all this trouble and racked up incredibly high fees for a truck over 20 years old that should cost less than $50 to register.

So, our fixed truck is still waiting for the tags and that is an urgent situation to comply with those pesky county ordinances that forever keep us from tackling the real work we need to do.  We are always too busy keeping our neighbors happy.

We have a plan for that too, once we fix the truck and start salvaging discarded lumber to work on the fences we will also be looking for stuff to use to screen the fences so that our yard will not be visible from the road or from neighbor view.  We will plant vines, bushes and hedges to screen the fence screens to that the fencing will not become yet another reason for complaints.  Privacy fencing will allow us to tackle other issues since then we wont be dumping all our funds into keeping the neighbors happy and we can actually concentrate on our own family.

We have the funds set aside to repair the plumbing in my accessible bathroom.  Again we are waiting for the truck to get that started, but soon there will be an accessible bathtub/shower close to my bedroom.

My son is having the last of his dental work completed beginning the first week of June and continuing on till about the 15th.  He's needed oral surgery for much of the problem, but we want to get it all finished up before he goes on Medicaid at age 19.  He turns 19 on June 18.  He's going to spend the month of June in a bit of pain but we must get all needs tended to and completed before he loses medical coverage.

That's about it for now, take care of yourselves and each other

A wing and a prayer

A wing and a prayerIt is so hard to do the things you want when you don't have a car. Sometimes I feel so helpless not having a car. Maybe because I'm so used to having one. I have worked since I was 15 years old and I've had a car since I was 18. My little girls school called me just the other day and told me that she had gotten hurt on the playground and that she probably needed stitches. My daughter had told the nurse not to call because I didn't have a way to come and get her. I jumped up and got dressed then I searched through my phone to see if there was anyone who could take me to get her. No one! I have absolutely no one! No family here with me, besides my sister, but she can't drive. She's 27 years old and still can't drive so what help is she? I didn't have money for a taxi. I could've walked a mile to get on the bus, but I would have to catch the bus to the train station, then get on the train, then go all the way into downtown Atlanta to catch the other bus that I needed and then ride all the way back to East Point on it. By then my little girl may have passed out. I cried so hard as I figured out what to do. My van was sitting outside. No tag, no emission sticker, no insurance, no life whatsoever, but what choice did I have. I drove the van. With the burning smell and the cutting off, I was so scared I would blow up in this thing. When I took it for emission testing they told me it was "too dangerous to drive". But my baby needed me. I prayed that I wouldn't get stopped or that the car would make it. I made it and sure enough my daughter needed stitches. So I took her to the emergency room they stitched her up and we came back home. We made it. On a wing and a prayer, but we made it. I really need some transportation. Next time I might not be so lucky. 

My new truck broke down!

My new truck broke down!Oh!  I can't believe it.  It's not even registered yet!

Amy was coming home last night, and we live off from a pretty dark rural road.  Anyhow as she had climbed a hill she noticed the lights going dim, radio fading out.  She slips the lights to high beam, shuts off the radio but the high beams fade out die, then the truck dies in motion and she had to pop in neutral and coast in the dark without headlights till the truck would roll no more and she had to leave it.  Remember...these are rural roads so there is no place to park a car on the side of the road here.  She walked home, got the boys and they went back to push the truck home.

My poor baby now sits at the bottom of the driveway looking sad and alone.  Her alternator has failed.

It will cost between $120 and $150 to get another one, and my son doesn't think he can replace it because it's in a location that is not easy to get at.  We don't have the right tools for that job and locally neither do our out of work back yard mechanics.  This will have to go to a pro for repair.  If we can get the battery charged up we should be able to drive it off the battery to the shop so we will probably skate by a tow charge but we are looking at about $100 in labor on top of the cost of the alternator to get her back up and running.

We have no choice but to register and fix her because if we leave her DOA in our yard we will have to have it removed from the property as it's a code violation to have unrunning cars in your yard.  Its those stupid ordinances that cause a low income family to suffer so greatly.  If I could park this unregistered, I could use the registration money towards the parts and service, but that is against the county law, so I have to register.  If I could just park it and save up the money it wouldn't be so urgent, but that is against county law, so I either have to fix it or pay for storage.  If I had privacy fencing I could park it behind a fence unregistered and could save up the money to do both...but I don't have privacy fencing.

So...we are now scrambling to find a way to get this sweet truck registered and fixed so we will not be fined for ordinance violations and well so the truck will be running too.  We have the Lumina so we are not without some form of transportation.  The lumina doesn't run well...that is the reason for buying the truck this tax return season, but at least we do have something to fall back on.

This puts us behind again in the whole repair/renovation process though.  We just moved back 3 paces for the one one pace we moved ahead.  Ah well....at least it's not a blown engine...right?