We have been dealing with my mother-in-law recently. I love her, and actually have developed a like for her in the 6 or so years that I’ve known her. She can be very sweet and caring, and a lovely person to know. She can also be the most obstreperous, cantankerous, passive-aggressive person I know. She has been known to visit these two poles of her personality in the same conversation with you.
Currently she lives, alone, in a small one-bedroom apartment in Manteo North Carolina. Manteo is on the same Outer Banks’ island as Jamestown, the Lost Colony. It is remote and isolated. She has family living about an hour drive north in Currytuck county. Her relationship with her sisters is volatile. After an illness forced her into a brief hospital stay last January she felt like her sisters were trying to run her life. She has talked about moving away ever since.
Her goal appears to be Wilmington North Carolina, or about 300 miles farther south. During our last visit to see her in February, we drove down there, but without any objective defined, no progress towards moving was made. Now we are planning a new trip to see her in early October. Once again she is insisting that we travel to Wilmington to find a place for her to live. We have requested that she make some calls and schedule some appointments so we’ll actually accomplish something. Since she doesn’t like being told what to do, even by her daughter, it remains to be seen if she’ll follow through. If we were to call and schedule appointments she’d refuse to go, or to participate if we did get her there.
Both my wife, and my brother-in-law, feel that she would be better off if she lived near family. Either stay in Manteo, near her sisters, or move near one of her children. Michele is not interested in having her mom near us. My mother-in-law has no concept of boundaries and the only reason we get along with her as well as we do is the 1100 mile buffer zone. My brother-in-law is interested in having her live near him in Tampa. Everyone except for my mother-in-law likes this idea. When presented with it as a possibility she gets very evasive and coy about everything. Talking to her at all about anything becomes an incredibly difficult and exasperating chore.
My wife had a tortuous conversation with her mom this morning. Nothing was resolved and, from subtle clues dropped along the way, it appears her mom maybe taking a vacation. Of course she won’t say where, or when. I expect we won’t be able to get ahold of her for several days now, and then she’ll turn up in Tampa or, yikes, here unannounced.
A part of me knows that she isn’t having anymore fun with this style of life than the rest of the players in this little black comedy/drama. I wish I could unscramble the world for her so that she’d be more at peace. However I know that this is not something I could accomplish with a willing participant, much less with an unwilling one. And, as I look towards my own future and I wonder what it will be like for me, when someone starts trying to tell me where I can and can’t live. I’ll probably be a bit obstreperous too.
This article says it all. As of today more American servicemen and service women have been killed since the war “ended” on May 1st, than were killed during the official war.
My heart goes out to every family who has members in harm’s way. Your debt is one our society is ill-equipped to ever repay.
About 2 weeks ago our cleaning lady noticed that the throw rug in front of the kitchen sink was soaking wet. We couldn’t imagine how it had gotten this way, unless we had spilled water on it without realizing our clumsiness.
And we have noticed that from time to time that our new kitten, Taz, shows up in the early morning hours with damp paws. We know she is fascinated by water, and that she freely ventures into the still dripping shower after it has been used. I guess we though she was playing in the toilet bowl during the night. Where else would she get wet paws?
From the leaking dishwasher, that’s where. Usually we use the time-delay feature on our dishwasher and run it over night. Yesterday morning, however, it was full and we ran it during the day. Afterwards I happened to notice a rather sizable puddle of water on the floor directly in front of the appliance when it was in the dry cycle. Suddenly the wet throw rug, and mysteriously damp paws had been explained.
Sears is on the way.
I set a new uptime record earlier this week. Until I goofed my Powerbook had been running for over three weeks.
We have completed the initial steps in our financial plan. The old cars have been traded-in, and the new (to us anyway) car is in our possession. Our trip to the mortgage company went smoothly and we are on schedule for a closing in another 4 weeks. Finally, over the weekend we completed the paperwork for our offer in compromise to the IRS, and I mailed that package on Monday.
Now we have to sit back and wait. Wait for the mortgage company, and wait for the IRS response. This is the time when self-doubt and fear starts to creep in to my thoughts. Did I fill out the compromise form properly? Will they accept it for review, and once past that hurdle, will they grant it? We should know if they will consider it within a week or so. But it could be months before they grant or reject it.
I feel better for having been proactive and taken steps to clear up our finances. And even the hurry up and wait phase we are in now is better than the gloom and doom place we were before. Still I wish it was all resolved and we could close this chapter of our lives and move on to the next.
My employment continues to be dicey, and we still don’t know for certain if we’ll be staying here or moving on in October. I have had a series of interviews with a small company in Milwaukee that have gone extremely well. I think I will have a job offer from them soon after a still to be scheduled face-to-face meeting. That will be a tough decision to make; do I take a job offer to insure a better long term income forecast? Or do I avoid the whole trauma of having to move and stick it out here hoping that saner minds will prevail and I’ll get a new contract.
I just don’t know.
As mentioned previously more than once we have been working towards restructuring our debt.
On Monday evening we traded in our two cars for one very good used one. We lowered our monthly car payment by some 25% and dropped the annual vehicle cost by over $4500. Nice.
Yesterday we visited our favorite local mortgage company and started the process to refinance the house, and borrow against its equity to pay off our tax bill. It was very difficult to have to discuss with the banker our situation and ask for their help in addressing it. She was able to present us with some numbers that more than satisfy. Our monthly housing cost should drop by about 18%, and, we’ll have the funds available to pay off Uncle Sam.
Michele and I firmly believe that complete freedom is only possible if you take complete responsibility for your actions. We created this situation and we are addressing it. We faced the pain of admitting our situation required outside intervention. A few minutes of embarrassment and chagrin have resulted in our being on a path towards being in control of our lives again.
By owning our stuff, emotional, spiritual, and otherwise; we also get to own our lives. It’s all good.
In order to take care of myself with my parents I have always been selective in what information I shared with them, and how I shared that information. Whether I tell myself that I am taking care of me, or taking care of them really isn’t the point. The point is that I have fallen into the habit of putting “spin” on my information sharing with them. Because they are people I love, I associate careful information sharing with love. I suspect that could I travel back in time and observe, that I’d see myself learning at a very early age what to tell my parents and how to tell them, so as to keep what I felt was judgmental love coming.
When my taxes started getting out of control I didn’t want to share it with Michele because little Mark was afraid that the love he felt from her would be revoked. In order to keep that love I put spin on what was happening. Somewhere in my childhood I built a rather confused model of the world that included the idea that if you share bad information people will be angry with you, and that anger means they don’t love you anymore.
But not addressing the immature and obviously incorrect view of the world I continually leave myself open to situations where I want to tell the truth but I am afraid of the reaction I’ll get. Only by being totally honest and taking care of myself emotionally can I be free from the fear of rejection. I need to focus on my little inner child and comfort him when I need to express information that may cause an emotional reaction. I need to let my inner self learn and grow past the childish idea that emotional responses to my actions aren’t negative, they aren’t my fault, and that those emotions really aren’t about me at all.
I need to live my life in my emotional center for a time, and learn how to cope with my emotions and the emotions of others. Trying to manufacture emotional responses in others through the information I present is only hurting me, because in the end the truth will come out and I’ll have not only the original emotion to deal with but the reaction to my lie to deal with too.
Total honesty equals total freedom. No more spin. No more shielding others to manipulate the emotional feedback I want. I will give myself the emotional feedback I need, and I will take care of myself rather then hoping for someone else to take care of me.
Welcome to a (scary) brave new world.
Over the past few days Michele and I have worked very hard to find the best path out of our present financial situation. We developed a three-part plan. First get rid of the Audi TT and its damnable lease. As an option we were willing to trade the Lexus too. Second refinance the house and pool, reducing that monthly expense. Third, get a loan to pay off our taxes.
The first two reduce our monthly obligations considerably, while the third restructures the debt to make it manageable.
As of 5:30 today we will have accomplished step 1. We are trading our 2000 Lexus ES 300 and 2001 Audi TT in for a used 2001 Lexus LS 430; thus reducing our monthly car payment by over 24%. We’ll also see and annual savings in our car insurance payments that approaches 50%.
Tomorrow we are off to the mortgage company to refinance the house.
Several years ago, just after we were married, Michele and I tackled our revolving debt by using Consumer Credit Counseling Service. It was emotionally painful to realize that our debt was controlling us rather than us controlling our debt. In less than 3 years we had completely eliminated all of our credit card debt. To this day, we haven’t acquired a new credit card and that feels very good.
We went into business for ourselves full time in October of 2000. Like many small businesses we have struggled and suffered some setbacks. We weren’t prepared for our tax debt and have had to negotiate a payment agreement with the IRS. This has been a bitter pill to swallow, especially after getting our personal finances in such good order. For the past couple of months we have been struggling with how best to lighten our load and address our responsibilities.
Oddly enough the best answer involves getting a different car. One of our two current cars is leased, and neither of us is happy with or likes that car anymore. The lease is draconian in its exit terms and we feel trapped by it every time we see it. Our other car is fine, but we’ve had the same model vehicle for over 10 years now and we want something different. By trading in our two cars for one very good used one we can save money each month, and halve our annual insurance bill. We are also going to refinance our home for a longer term, again reducing our monthly outgo and eliminating a junior mortgage. With the reduction in our monthly debt we’ll be able to get a new junior mortgage to pay off the tax debt immediately. We’ll still have to pay the money back, but on our terms (and at a better rate) instead of the IRS’s.
Financially these changes will save us money over time. The initial cost of these transactions is a little more than we would like, but we’ll make that up in short order as our monthly expenses will be less. Neither of us is comfortable with scrutiny by strangers these kinds of financial transactions bring, but the result is very worthwhile to us.
We eliminate a car neither of us is happy with, and get out of the usury lease that ties us to it. We reduce our monthly car and house payments. We complete our obligation to the IRS ahead of time and for far less money. We will still have debt but it will be structured to our liking, which takes very good care of us. And we will have a car that is pleasing to both of us, emotional icing on our financial cake.
Best of all, we are taking control of our lives again. Because we are human we allowed the negative feelings that occurred when our business suffered to control how we approached our finances for a time. Instead of dealing with the pain of change we have suffered a lingering malaise that threatens to impact our lives emotionally and financially for a long time. In taking these steps we reaffirm our control over our lives. We stand up and take responsibility for past decisions, positive and negative, and in taking that responsibility we gain freedom. We regain a positive outlook on our situation, and with that outlook and new sense of energy and spirit that will positively impact our lives for years to come.
I finally got around to deleting my accumulated spam from the month of July. Last month I did this on the 1st, and a few more pieces dated in June trickled in after the purge.
I received 5,924 pieces of mail I consider to be spam in July. That’s an average of 191 spams a day. At this rate I’ll get on the order of 69,750 spams for the year.
My current total for the year is 37,785 spams. If I only had a nickel for everyone…