I'm really getting to my wits end with life right now. Before I go on, I know darn well it could be worse. Atleast I and my family have our health, and that truly is all that matters. It all started last June. My family (wife and 6 year old son at the time) and my sister-in-law, brother-in-law, and niece booked a Disney cruise for our annual vacation. My father-in-law decides he is going to surprise us all and paid for our trips. Life is good and everyone is happy. Last year I got back in to fishing heavily. One time I come back from the lake and found a small tick on me. Fast forward 3 weeks and I am in the ER being diagnosed with lyme disease. While I'm laying on the table getting a spinal tap, my wife is trying to call her dad to let him know where we are. Long story short, my sister-in-law finds him dead at his house. Beings this all happened a week before our scheduled cruise, we cancelled it. Through all the issues with my father-in-law passing, we find out he doesn't have mortgage insureance. My mother-in-law had MS extremely bad, so he ended up refinancing his house to pay for her medical bills (she died in 2006). Normally this wouldn't be a huge deal but the house was not in the greates condition. He owed $121k on it and we would have been lucky to get $80k out of it the way it sat. So since I am rather handy, I take on the project of renovating the house. Pretty much every day from the beginning of July until November 10th (that's my birthday and I finished the whole thing that day, so I remember it well) I was at that house rebuilding everything, as well as working 45+ hours a week at my normal job. So, the house turns out great and lucky enough we have a buyer around Christmas time. Settlement Was to take place January 26th and once again life is going pretty well minus the loss of my father-in-law. The week before settlement, my wife loses her job of 17 years. She works in the health profession and I am just a dirty old mechanic, so needless to say, she was the main provider for our household. So, things change quite a bit. Looking for heathcare as that was provided through her work, obviously revamping our finances, and praying we can hold out and not have to lose our house or anything in the upcoming months. So since I am the "glass is half full" kind of guy, things seem like they should work out and we should be good for atleast a year and a half before things will get real tight. Cool! Life is pretty good again. Tonight I come home from work and am doing laundry and my son walks past our bathroom towards me and says, "daddy, why is the floor all wet?" I proceed to tell him, "I told you before, when you clog the toilet, come get me. DO NOT flush twice!" I grab some towels and start cleaning andthen start to plunge the toilet...but the toilet isn't getting unclogged. I go in the basement and find water spewing out of two pipe connections (which I now know leak and need to be fixed) and think to myself, this isn't good. I go outside and pop the cap off our septic tank and everything is fine. I pop the cap off the line going into the tank and it's like the g0dang fountain of youth, but much, much worse. So several hours later after draining the line, trying to snake the line, digging to check for broken pipes at the tank, and that lovely post processed food smell all over me, I found out I have a lot of digging and checking to do tomorrow after work. I either have a bad drainfield (house is only going on 10 years old, so I'm thinking it's not that), clogged line between either the septic tank to a pump tank we have, or the pump tank to the firld, or I have two bad pumps (there is a back up pump in case the main fails). So depending on what issues I find tomorrow night while I'm digging in the dark in 25 degree weather, our year and a half "real tight" time limit may be out the window.
Okay, end rant. Had to vent and still be the strong figure in the family, so you guys had to hear it. Sorry for the long winded post, but I feel a bit better.
