Originally published at The Cat’s Meow. You can comment here or there.

I had started writing a post about some of my classes which I am finding very interesting and about some other things I felt the need to rant about. But I’m finding that I just don’t have the energy right now to finish that post so I’m posting this one instead and will finish the other one tomorrow if I can. We do have a tropical storm (Ernesto) which is heading straight for us. It always seems that the storms seem worse when they come from the west instead of the east. Supposedly the wind isn’t going to be as bad as they first predicted, but I’m sure we’ll get hit with lots of rain and winds of 40-50 mph at least.

I spent most of the day stowing and putting away things outside that might blow around and cause damage. The university has canceled classes tomorrow, which disappointed me. I was really looking forward to class tomorrow night. I have another class on Thursday and the storm should be done by then. That’s the class that only meets every other week. The other half of our class time is done online. That is my Legal Research class. But I’ll go into more detail about my classes in my other post. I’m just so exhausted right now.

Part of it is that I’m so broke and I’m worried about bills. It’s hard to do other things when you’re worried about stuff. I’m waiting on my financial aid still and I had hoped I would have at least my short term advance by now. I’ve had to put off some bills but now this week is the final, no more extensions week and of course it isn’t a week that hubby gets paid. On top of that is the approaching storm which meant I had to get a few other things I hadn’t planned on, just in case. Consequently, the bank account is overdrawn and my unemployment check isn’t even going to cover it. It wouldn’t have been so bad if the bank hadn’t processed the debits the way they did. Several came through on the same day and the very last one that we did was for the car insurance bill because it couldn’t go another day otherwise they would have canceled us. So I knew it was going to overdraw it, but the other ones we had, which were for gasoline and groceries should have gone through with no problem. But even though the insurance was the last one done, they put it through first, which caused the other debits to incur charges as well. So instead of one overdraft charge, we were hit with several. I hate banks. I know they do that on purpose. I have no problem with paying an overdraft fee when the account is overdrawn. I just have a problem with paying several of them when if they had processed the debits in the order in which they were made, we wouldn’t be paying over $100 in friggen bank fees. And of course this is at the worst possible time because I have to pay two other bills by Friday that add up to another $500. My unemployment check would almost cover that, but if I don’t try to cover the bank deficiency, then they add $6 a day as well for each day the account is overdrawn. My financial aid advance was supposed to be available last Friday and of course it wasn’t. Then it was supposed to be today, but that didn’t happen. Now I’m being told it should be tomorrow. It’s $600 and would easily cover the bills I have to pay, plus I’d have $100 left over. After all that, and my unemployment check arrives probably Thursday or Friday, I still don’t know if I’ll have enough to cover the bank deficiency, but I hope so. Of course that means I won’t have any money at all for a week for gas, food or anything else. At this point if I can just pay those 2 bills and stop the increasing deficiency in the bank account, I’ll be happy. Originally that $600 was going to go to help fix transportation, but now it’s having to be used for damage control. All of this is simply because I cannot bring myself to ask my mother for help. I know I’m getting financial aid and will have a little over $1000 left after tuition so I know I can pay her back if she were to give me a short term loan. I just don’t want to go through having to hear her bitch incessantly about why hubby can’t take care of all of this. I felt that overdrawing the account was the lesser of the two evils. Hubby’s working two jobs right now, one full time and one part time (when they need him). He’s exhausted when he gets home and many times I see him for a very short period of time where we eat dinner, then he goes to his second job, comes home, takes a shower, and is in bed and asleep by 9:30 because he has to be up at 5 a.m. to drive an hour to work.

Until we can get our transportation woes taken care of, there isn’t much point in me accepting a job offer unless it’s very close by. We only have the one vehicle running right now. I get it the two days I have to go to class and he takes it the rest of the time. If I need to go anywhere during the day, I have to ride the bike. I’ve already managed to get caught twice this month in torrential downpours on the Interstate. Lots of fun. I had to slow down a lot just to be able to see and then I was worried about someone coming up behind me and hitting me. It’s hard enough to see taillights on cars when it’s pouring. Try seeing a single motorcycle taillight in a storm. So I don’t really feel that I have ‘reliable’ transportation at this time.

I did get a call about the Demon today and the guy is supposed to come Friday or Saturday to look at it. He asked me about making payments on it. I didn’t really want to do that, but I’m in desperate need of funds that I told him I might consider it. It would have to be a lay away type of deal, though. I’m not about to let someone take possession of the car until I have all the money. I also don’t want to be waiting forever for the rest of it. I can understand if someone needs to split it up between a couple of pay periods or something like that, but I really don’t want to go any longer than a couple of weeks or so to get the rest of it. That money is hopefully going for a downpayment on a newer vehicle so we can get rid of the truck that is starting to have major problems, needs tires and gets 18 mpg tops on the highway.

I just am tired of worrying about money and bills. We were stretched thin enough to pay the bills before, but now it seems like every single bill has either doubled or gone up from a year ago. Gasoline is much higher than it was and because of the fuel costs, our electric bill is double what it used to be. It’s not that we’re using more, either. I looked at the amount we used last year versus this year and we’ve actually used LESS, but yet it’s costing more. Our water bill went up, phone bill went up, and even our grocery bill has gone up. That’s because it’s costing more in fuel to get things to the stores and the costs get passed on to us. The only problem is that while all of this stuff has gone up, salaries have not. Salaries are very stagnant down here. Hubby’s company is having a freeze on any raises or new hires. If you account for inflation, salaries have actually gone down, not up. That means there are more and more people who are having trouble making ends meet. I know we’re not the only ones in this predicament. We have many friends that are having similar difficulties. I just wish there was some way I could get a loan against what I’m expecting to receive in financial aid. I thought about asking my Mom and telling her I’ll pay her back an extra $100 along with whatever I borrow. But it wouldn’t matter how much ‘interest’ I paid her for a loan, I’d still have to hear her bitching and even then I still don’t know if she would help me out at all. So I might have to listen to all the bitching and STILL not get any help.

Well, I wasn’t going to get into ranting about this but it appears I did anyhow. Sometimes it just seems it’s taking all you have to keep your head above water and then when the waves of unexpected expenses, higher bills, vehicle breakdowns and delayed funds happen, you just feel like you can’t take anymore and it would just be easier to let yourself drown.

Anyhow, sorry this is such a downer of a post. I’ve been worried a lot about it, and it doesn’t make it very easy to get good sleep. I’ve been so excited about my classes yet all this has really put a damper on my good mood regarding my courses. Oh yeah, and to put the icing on the cake, Aunt Flo came to visit this week as well. Another night of being up until 3:30 or 4 a.m. Joy. Guess I’d better go and at least get the little bit of sleep that I can get. I’ll try to finish that other post tomorrow about my classes, that is, if I still have power or Internet connection with the eye of Ernesto aiming right for us.