I can’t believe it’s been over a month since my last post here.  It’s been quite a busy month, with a lot of disappointments.  On October 22nd, Sean and I took a trip up to New York so we could pick up the loan check at HSBC.  The following Saturday, after numerous unreturned phone calls, we found out that the place in Ohio fell through.  The complex we were looking into is currently between owners and Sean’s brother Brett is moving down to Florida to be closer to his family.  They aren’t literally brothers, but they grew up together and I’d say a 20+ year friendship is a brotherly type of thing.  So with this news we were taken back as to what we were going to do about moving into our own place.

For now we’re staying put and hoping to bank on the money that we did get from the loan.  Unfortunately we’re already down $4,000 and it’s only been a little over a month.  But I’ll fess up to a quick $2,000 being dropped on Christmas gifts, this is only because that’s the route I’ve taken for quite a few years now.  I’ve always banked at least $2,000 over the course of the year to put towards Christmas gifts, but you also have to factor in that I come from an extremely LARGE family.  My mothers side alone consists of about 16 people, that includes my mother and step-father.  My father’s side is a bit easier, but I tend to spend more money there based on my comfort level with this side of the family.  My father I tend to go over board on, same goes for my aunt and uncle.  His brother and sister truly are the greatest people in the world.  I then have to shop for my sister who isn’t really picky at all, she likes money and needs clothes - a gift card can kill two birds with one stone when it comes to her.

This year I added a few more people to the list though.  I have Sean and his mom, plus his mothers sister and her kids.  The kids are pretty easy to shop for though, I figure a $15 gift certificate to a local game store could really do the trick so it’s not that big of a deal.

Either way the shopping is completed, and now I’m slowly rebuilding the money that’s been spent over the last month.  However, it’s only the 3rd and I’m already at about $300 so figure if that’s about $100 a day on average I hope to have around $3,000 back in the account by the time the New Year rolls around.

: crosses fingers :

I haven’t been feeling very well lately so keeping myself focused long enough to think about things is beginning to take its toll on me.  Sean and I were approved for two loans so we’ll have more than enough money to get out to Ohio, purchase our new home and then begin any modifications it may need.  The house we’ve decided upon was built in the late 70’s and recently went through a complete overhaul.  This includes everything from a new furnace, a new roof, new copper piping, replacement of all appliances and so on.  We’re unsure of how old the rug is (if it wasn’t recently replaced) and something tells me that there’s going to be cheap wood paneling on the walls - something that will very quickly be painted over if that’s the case.

The kitchen more than likely won’t be as large as one that I’d like but based on the fact that this isn’t going to be a permanent residence for more than five years, it’s something I can handle for the time being.  I’m very good at organizing things and if I have to bring in a butcher block cart in order to gain counter space when I’m cooking then that’s really no big deal to me.

It’s kind of a bittersweet thing for me.  I love the fact that I’ll be out of the apartment life that I’ve been acustomed to for the last 20 years.  I hate the fact that I’m going to be eight hours away from my family.  So while it’s a winning situation, I also feel as though I’m losing out on things.  This is something that I feel I need to do though, no matter how difficult it may be for me.  I’m spending the rest of my life with someone, we’re finally going to be under our own roof, no family, no landlords, we make the rules - we break the rules.  We’ve had practice up to this point,  but it’s just going to be the two of us out there without any kind of outside influence other than his brother stopping in from time to time.  My issue is that we both work from home and the house is only about 900 sqft (at most) so we’ll be on top of each other all day long.  Both of us are worried that things are just going to be difficult but I also know that the two of us are good at working through things.  I’m just going to cross my fingers and be very patient.

I was doing rather well today until I got sidetracked helping Melinda out with her continuing quest to find reading tutors. I’ve been telling her just to check out score learning centers considering they take care of children from 4-14 years old in any program they could need help in, heck she could even throw her into the math program, lord knows her daughter could use the help there too. She’s still trying to convince me that 2+2=22. I’m still unsure of how she managed to get through kindergarten with that mentality. Then again, I think kindergarten is all about eating paste, sniffing play-do and hopefully learning your ABC’s.

The reason she’s so set on getting this accomplished is based on how far advanced the other students are in the school. See, this is supposedly some ritzy school that required a waiting list that you basically had to be on while you were pregnant, not even knowing if you were having a boy or a girl or what their name would be. They’re supposed to increase academics and still balance it out with playtime better than the main-stream public schools that they claim they’re better than. The rest of the students in the class accelerated, I won’t deny this. One of them is on a third grade reading level which is shocking for a six year old but that doesn’t mean the school did it for him, either.

Parents who spend the time with their children before school, and even during the summer, helping them with their reading is when you’ll accelerated. If she’d only spent the time with her daughter that most parents do when teaching a child to read, she wouldn’t have to search high and low for full time tutors.

I’m an avid supporter of the services provided by any drug rehab company. A recent company that I’ve come across is drugrehab.net, it’s part of a Narconon Vista Bay Company. The Narconon drug rehab program is one of the most effective rehab programs that are available. As stated on their website 76% of graduates happily choose to remain drug free and become a productive member of society.

This is all fine and dandy but I’ve heard the same kind of statistics from many drug rehabilitation companies in the past. You could tell me that 100% of your graduates have remained drug free but those results don’t help those whom have lost friends and family in the past to drug related deaths. I certainly would support those whom actually do change, please don’t get me wrong, but percentages mean nothing to me when it comes to getting someone the help they desperately need. If your program works for some, but not others, please don’t butter it up with a number so that a person who is ignorant on the subject of drug rehabilitation and detox can throw cash in your direction.

What I can say is rather, interesting, about this Narconon Northern California drug rehabilitation facility is their sauna method. Based on the description on their website One of the cornerstones of our drug rehab is our Sauna Program. Street drugs, prescription drugs, alcohol and other drugs can remain in the body for years. These residues can trigger a variety of symptoms, including drug cravings and depression. An exact regimen of medically supervised exercise, sweating in a dry sauna and nutritional supplements rid the body’s fatty tissues of these residues ensuring the person no longer experiences adverse effects from the drugs they have taken. So basically they bake you to steam the drugs out of your system so you can start with a clean slate, that’s fine and all but how would you help those whom can’t personally handle that kind of humidity? Naturally I wouldn’t expect them to just throw everyone into a heat room to detox. I know people who are so far gone with drugs that the slightest humidity can reek havoc on their body considering how over loaded it is with toxins, tar and anything else they’ve inhaled or shot up over the course of their drug-related lifetime.

While I support what drug rehabilitation programs are doing, including Narconon, this doesn’t mean that it works for everyone. There are people who are so far gone where help may not even be a possibility. A friend of mine spend a month in rehab after her addictions came public and then three days after she was out, she was gone. Her death didn’t stop the bills coming in for her mother though. They’ll fix you but even though you die, a $25,000 bill will show up at the door. And it’s a point such as this that they prove they only care about the money, not the patient.

I’m not sure why but I seem to be surrounded by people who are in debt up to their eyeballs. Many of them have been looking into debt consolidation but for the most part they’ve come up empty handed. Sean is about $2500 in debt, Karen is close to going into debt herself, even with a few thousand in the bank, that’s not going to stop the fact that bills are coming in and she’s lucky that she’s even getting a paycheck considering the company she works for is complete crap. My father was in debt for many years until he took the necessary steps in order to get himself out of it. He wound up paying credit cards off with one new low-interest card and then taking out a loan in order to cover the debt so it was completely credit card debt free. The good thing about his loan is it’s fixed interest after the first year but he’ll have it paid off before the year is even up, at least he’ll have that completely covered.

And me, while I’m not currently in debt, this doesn’t mean I’m not close to it. I live paycheck to paycheck but for the most part I don’t go beyond my means in order to get things that I don’t really need. Sure, it would be great to pull $600 out of my account right now and get myself a new monitor, graphics card and maybe even a replacement zip drive but this doesn’t mean I’m actually going to do it. I set up budgets for everything I do and at the moment, none of that is actually IN the budget. It’s mainly under my WANTS category, not my needs.