The price of happiness

Life feels like a giant roller coaster to me sometimes. As great as the highs are, the lows absolutely suck. I'd really just love to find that middle ground.

This week has been one of those weeks. Waiting on a check so I can have a birthday party for my daughter, whose birthday was LAST week. The check should have been here on Tuesday, so I planned the party for Thursday giving me one day to run all over town getting everything for the party. Instead, the check came today. And because my mailman is retarded, I didn't get it until 4:30pm. So much for a Thursday party. There's no way I'm running around in rush hour traffic to get everything.

But things were going pretty good this week. I finished writing my book and I'm really happy with it. I'm working on editing it now and want to get that done before the weekend so I can get some friends of mine to be my "test audience" and tell me what they think and if I should change anything. Then I'm off to the fun agent search again, but even that I don't mind this time because I think I can write a better query for this book.

Found out that I'm getting my financial aid back so I get to start school next Monday. But we still hadn't heard if Wren gets his back. I sat here making plans to pay for him to go if they didn't give it back to him, knowing it would mean we'd be strapped for cash this quarter, but also knowing if I did that he'd get his back in summer.

But then we found out, he's getting his back and gets to start on Monday too! Yay!!!

And then the furnace quit working.

No idea WHY it quit working. We tried changing the filter in it but no luck. I'm not about to call my mother and tell her that her furnace isn't working because I'm sure she'll blame us and it's not like she'll get anybody here to fix it. I figured, warm weather is right around the corner and by the time it gets cold again, we'll be moved out and my mom will be back here.

But here it is, April 1st, and it's SNOWING outside. It's so cold in this house that we're all bundled up in thick socks and hoodies, cuddling with the cat and dog under blankets.

Wren made a fire in the fireplace, but he used the last of the wood and since my check wasn't here yet, we couldn't really go buy more. So we turned on the oven, opened the door and set up a fan in the kitchen. lol Really, can you GET more ghetto than that?

Even with the furnace not working, I've still been in a great mood. Everything was starting to go our way.

Except for the mailman who hates us and seems to be holding all of our GOOD mail as long as possible, but that's for a different blog.

This afternoon I finally got my letter from the school saying how much I'll be getting in financial aid. And for some reason, they're not giving me ANY student loans. WTF? The amount of money I'm getting will barely pay for my classes and books, it sure as hell won't pay the other bills so I can actually GO to school instead of having to work. Oh, I know a lot of people go to school and work at the same time. I bet they also don't have 6 kids who go to 3 different schools clear across town so that they have to drive over and pick them all up at 3 different times each day. That, or they have REALLY good childcare.

Could you imagine the cost of childcare for 6 kids? I'd have to get a second job just to be able to pay it.

As anybody knows, though, when you're on a really big high, you crash really hard. So this letter crashed both me and Wren, who realizes they probably won't be giving him loans either because apparently we're both in default and didn't know it. Since when did they STOP sending out letters to tell you when a payment is due? I've never received a thing from them.

Or so I thought. I found some emails in my spam box from them, called their number and they're doing some forebearance thing to get me out of default and then I have to print off this application for deferment and send it to them along with some papers and my first born or something. And THEN I have to contact the school and hope it's not too late to get my loans back.

I swear, I had less problems getting into school than I'm having getting BACK into school. You'd think it would be easier since it hasn't even been a year since I was there.

I'm trying to remain optimistic. Even though my fingers are so cold it's actually becoming painful to type this, and my bed is covered in papers that I dug out of the filing cabinet to figure everything out, and my book is sitting here open in Word NOT getting edited, and Wren told me he doesn't WANT to make anything for dinner tonight (I'm mourning the homecooked meal, let me tell ya), and there are rather large snowflakes falling outside my bedroom window, I'm trying to remain optimistic.

Plus side: My book, Unrequited, is finished! Yay!!! I'll just focus on that thought for awhile.