ugh. we had our second hearing with the bankruptcy trustee today and it did not go well. we have to go back in 2 MONTHS and i am beginning to think we are not going to ever see resolution. today i thought he would look at the photos of our house and cars, he would see the business profit and loss, and it would be a closed case.

but the assistant to our lawyer, who is really the only person who sees our file before we all show up for court, has made some bad mistakes!!! i finally looked at the trustee and said “Look, I supplied our lawyer’s office with all the paperwork you are asking for; I do not know how she got the numbers she has filed, or what she did with the documents you want to see!” our file is a disaster and I was just looking at our lawyer with the biggest WTF look I could give without actually saying it. he doesnt have a clue about our case, either.

1. we are contesting the value of our home because it has been dismantled, and we do not have 200K in equity in this home! there is absolutely no freaking way. I supplied a real estate agent’s Comparable Market Analysis of what it could sell for if it were finished (which gave us about 60K in equity) AND a contractor’s estimate of the work needed (which was $58,500.) SOMEHOW the assistant figured our house 20K more than the CMA! and the trustee was asking me why is our house valued more now than at the last hearing, and what is this estimate, and he said it looks like we are just trying to cover our tracks and doing a really bad job of it. so now he is sending out his own person to do an estimate on its value. fine, i hope he is horrified. i just dont get where the assistant got her stupid bad numbers and why her ass isnt on the line.

The biggest bummer/reality is that matt’s business can now be shut down (we thought we had to wait until this bankruptcy was decided) BUT we have to continue to make payments PERSONALLY on the 70K it owes to the IRS. and thats more than our house payment every month. that is my paycheck from now until it is paid off. and we will never see a cent of what we dumped into that fricken business. for some reason this became crystal clear today. there is something really upsetting about having to get a job just to pay the IRS for my husband’s mistakes. I was okay back when it was just his stuff that was going to be confiscated.

i guess i thought the bankruptcy was going to make life as if his business never happened, but actually we still have this ever-lasting tax issue. and i’m just not looking forward to 3-5 years of working to pay the IRS.

i would never ever have gotten a job if i hadnt been forced to. and i cant believe how much good it has brought – i was so scared before to look/apply/interview for a job. and i never wanted my kids to spend time at a daycare, so i didnt consider that a better alternative existed. there i can say is where the blessing is, even though i cant claim to have been trusting that good things happen, or God even blesses people. i certainly didnt earn this by doing the good christian thing of trusting God, or looking for the good. i just was myself and expressed my true feelings and loving people popped up everywhere to lend a hand. that was amazing. i never want to fake false hope again because it would have isolated me from all the goodness people showered on us!

we went to the hearing for our bankruptcy. the trustee was grouchy, and i dont blame him because most of the losers ahead of us had pitiful cases: didnt bring their SSN cards, the 1040 provided had no name on it and no legible income (shady!), or the people were in hawaii and didnt show up to their own hearing, etc. the trustee chewed our case apart, and not only was he old but he couldnt even read our papers. he bellowed ” who is wiffle flute and why do you owe them $1XX,XXX!!!” and i was like “we dont owe any wiffle flute anything.” and he shows me the paper and it says WELLS FARGO–DUH! dude, thats our mortgage and thats the bank.

i about had a heart attack! our vehicles are from 1971, 1972 and 1981 yet he wants photos to make sure they arent really valuable junkers. he had a fit about the house value. the muni claims it is worth 300K+ which would mean we have equity over 200K and he wants that to pay our debts. DUDE – have you seen our house???? please, go ahead and sell it for us for 300K and we would happily walk away.

anyway, he put a continuance on our case and we have to come up with more evidence that we are screwed. do i want to be doing this 2 weeks before christmas? no, but at least i have a job and 3 kids. and a husband i want to beat.

frankly, the court can have whatever they want except my kids. thats all i want. my kids and my ability to make $$ are the best things ever.

thats where i am at. things are getting worse, but the load is getting lighter. i learned that my dad is wrong–God does NOT only bless people who tithe and who have faith/positive attitude. i learned that lots of people love us and are there for us. i learned that nothing has to matter outside of warmth, food, and family. and we are this close to being able to rebuild, and i am thankful for the ability to do that. i wanted to be a stay at home mom, but that wasnt in the cards. and its not the end of the world.

a lot has happened quickly. late last week my spouse got a REALLY GOOD JOB. it appears to be a lot of stress and work, but it is a good job. plus, he got to turn a state job down. not bad after not hearing a peep from any jobs for 5 weeks.

we got to sign our bankruptcy papers this week. there was a small window we needed to fit into between the time i decided not to wait for the inheritance to finally arrive – let the IRS have it – and the time my spouse would start to get a paycheck. both incomes could change our filing from chapter 7 (the good one) to chapter 13 (the not-so-good one.)

why have we been waiting to file since july? because of that stupid inheritance which will never come! oh well, i am over it and the IRS can have it and we just want to start over with life.

during the time my spouse was unemployed we did some really good things: we sold our nice truck and lived off the proceeds; we sold some lumber out of the backyard; it really sank into his head the extent of what we might lose; we began the process to get the value of our home officially brought down. the real estate agent who helped us valued it at 100K less than the city believes – which is an outcry that deserves its own post!

dont we still have my husbands company bleeding us of all our extra funds? and the IRS debt looming? why, yes. but i think we are going to make it, and i feel like a big stud. we have done our best.

the latest crazy thing, that really takes the cake, is that before my dad left the state for the winter he re-wrote his will and sent a copy to my brother, and maybe to some of my step-siblings because some of them signed it as witnesses. i did not get a copy but i am just going to believe that God intercepted it because he knew i could care less about being in another will, and because he knew i am beyond wanting to deal with any more family drama.

so i get a call from my brother and he is at his wits end. already it has been difficult for him to have dad remarried because that means dad doesnt want to spend time with tyson’s family like when mom was alive. and dad’s new wife runs dad’s life, not tyson. thats been a crushing blow to tyson which i have been trying to help him come to terms with, since i have dealt with that aspect of dad my whole life. you arent a priority in dad’s life unless you go to his church, or your sleeping with him. ’nuff said.

apparently dad has changed his will to divide his assets (from him and my mom) between us kids AND his stepkids equally. if one of us dies, our grandkids are disinherited. the portion gets re-divided. on the other hand, our stepmom’s assets (from her and her deceased husband) will only be divided with her children.

obviously this is messed-up. but this is how dad operates. he wants to be part of his new family and considers them, perhaps, as important a priority or maybe more than tyson and i. this is coupled with his disinterest in our kids and his overwhelming interest in his new step-grandkids, who are mostly teenagers/young adults. for example, i cannot get thru a story about my kids without my dad interrupting to one-up-me with a story about his step-grandkids.

it has felt really good to tell tyson that i am not going to care much about my standing in dad’s will. i already have the relationship that produced whatever priority/non-priority he shows me. and therapy this year has helped me deal with that and let it go. his stupid will, which seems like a pathetic effort to be accepted by his new family, is not surprising. i dont want to fight for his affection, so i am not going to fight for what normally would be considered the estate of my mom-and-dad. his new kids can also wipe his butt when he is elderly. they will certainly earn their portion.

the good thing is that instead of guilting me into confronting my dad, and throwing me under the bus when dad gets pissed, my brother is taking it upon himself to talk to dad and ask what are we supposed to feel as the second-class benefactors in an unequal will. where the holdings he acquired not only WITH our mom but also as a result of her death are going to be given to adult step-children. where, if my dad dies first, we will get nothing. and his step-kids will get to vacation in AZ in a house my parents bought outright, and drive around in an RV my parents also bought outright, and go on fabulous family outings.

the other good thing is FOR ONCE tyson feels what its like to be disregarded by dad. he finally knows what i have been feeling for my whole life. invisible and insignificant, and annoying if i complain. he gets to be annoying this weekend when he has dinner and talks to dad. i cannot wait to hear what happens. i think it has brought tyson and i even closer. my rejection is not just because i was adopted, because dad is doing this to his own flesh and blood.

ok, i have to be quick here, but i went into the woods the other day and actually got my mind around losing the house. which is my last stronghold to security, and i just told God i feel really unloved and i am willing to lose the house but i will not tolerate losing my kids. am i entitled to live in a house and not a trailer like everyone else at school? what makes me so special that i think i ought to live better than others that i interact with every day? and i asked does this mean i can hope for a better house in the future or is that just christian-shmistian talk? thinking things work out in our favor so it is worth it to go through horrible pain. which i personally have thought is a crock, and offensive, and i refuse to spout that kind of “faith.” then i cried my eyes out because its so dismal to only believe bad things about God. being cynical about God isnt un-christian in my mind, but it’s…awfully…anti-faith.

THEN a friend came over today, with some bread, that has these same feelings – she has a severely disabled child who will not be resuscitated the next time she goes downhill – and we commiserated about being in the tiny camp of people who question God’s love and arent we loser christians…i think we both have been unable to claim being christians because we arent having the typical experience. but the horrible reality of a life where you 1. have to decide not to resuscitate your child or 2. (what i consider not that bad in comparison) losing all financial security MEANS also that you will be lonely, you will see other people having it easier and it will play with your mind and you will ask God: WTF? and this will happen AFTER you’ve already tried every possible form of sucking up/behaving well/figuring out what the hell God wants you to learn so that you can learn it already and be put out of your misery. all the while hoping God isnt asking you to become one of those kind of christians…the kind that act so diametrically opposite your gut feeling that it’s got to be diabolical. you even wonder if you believe in the same God.

THEN i asked her if she thought i ought to look into training as a dental assistant or if i ought to go with my degree and get more training in environmental science…i need this advice from her because she heads a company that deals with natural resources and environmental policy. she told me to go with dental assist. which i might do because yesterday we found out that the FEDs will pay for the education of any displaced housemaker whose husband has been laid off – its a Federal Program!

THEN she told me she would rather actually have her life than mine …and there isnt anybody else in the world she can say that to. and i said she has my worst agony – a kid who will not outlive her. as you can see it was a special conversation. i think we both may have said things we dont say to many people, things that make us feel awful to our core to admit. rather, when we say them publicly others recoil in horror. (i am referring to when i had to admit it was good when my mom died, a relief, and my second chance at life.)

THEN (i dont know how this happened) she said there is a project management job coming up in january, that the current mgr is going on maternity leave, and i joked and said “i cant get a job until i file for bankruptcy because it will complicate the bankruptcy more than the inheritance (that is going to the IRS) and the job-loss and the small business that needs to be shut down but which cant because it has to keep paying its back-taxes, and could she use an intern”…and she said YES! and i said “you know the job i really want is XXX’s job as your assistant” and she said “it’s XXX who is going on maternity leave!”

umm…i just totally inappropriately joked around with a friend about hiring me, right after explaining how bad our financial future is, and that i cannot even get a job if we want to be able to file for bankruptcy without more delays …did she just throw me a bone? right after we complained that not only does God not care about us but that we both HATED the book “The Shack?” and that God only loves total losers like David who, in this day and age is the equivalent of Hugh Heffner crossed with Howard Hughes?!

THEN she says if we lose our house we can live with them — we have had several NICE offers from friends to shack up — but this woman actually has an enormous house. which i blurted out, as in “yeah, your house is stinkin’ huge!” and she says “i hate my house, it is so embarrassing.” and i point to the crap on the floors and the fact that she had to wear her shoes in our house to protect her feet and said “youre embarrassed of your house? did you not look around here? but you can see how much i trust somebody by how little i clean before they come over.” and she must have felt the love because my house is a total wreck; rotting mushrooms on every surface, mushroom prints all over the walls, lichen mounds covering all the furniture in the living room. she said her embarrassment is that people come over and slobber on about how huge and amazing her house is and it feels so awkward because it is empty of things. we look around my house and i admit the inevitable: yes, i love clutter. She somehow left saying i needed to come be honest about her house, and tell her if it is too sterile, and then i watched her drive away.

i went upstairs and hubs and i “celebrated” for about 10 minutes max. then i came downstairs because the kids would be home soon, and on the front porch was a whole LOAD OF FOOD FROM COSTCO! there were all the foods we eat: bacon, half-n-half, brownies, apples and juice for kids…you name it. do i try to figure out how this happened, or what i finally did right in order to bring this about, or realize that something really good happened and it probably had nothing to do with whether i am a good christian or not? how can i not take away the idea that God loves me even when i dont have any faith, when i make jokes about Him and am cynical about all the goodie-goodie christians?

no. but i do enjoy the irony that someone in the same emotional boat as me can also “be Jesus,” and that we can both hate what we describe as being a good christian. i told her if she wasnt feeling those feelings then i wouldnt be able to relate to her and that in itself would be hopelessness. and we both hated “The Shack,” probably for its implied message more than anything. but what i just experienced – her emotional support and the amazing opportunity – AND THE IRONY of it has given me more faith than any message/sermon/passage of scripture. i am all for having to experience life in order to believe in anything.

okay, now i am sick to my stomach. today was supposed to be a good day. a great day. today we get our PFDs, as in alaska permanent fund dividends, AND we sold our truck and get to pick up the check today, AND we get our last paycheck. but then the small business that we own cant make payroll, its rent, or its taxes and so guess where our cushion of money is going? right out the door.

sure, we will probably make it. we qualified for reduced lunch at school, so the kids will at least have a meal. but i am beginning to think we might just lose the house. it is a possibility at this point. that cushion of money was going to get us through these months of unemployment (finishing month 1 soon) and while my spouse is going on job interviews or connecting with contacts like a debutante with a full dance card, this stuff takes time. a job and its fresh new paycheck could still be a month away if the interview from today pans out – hypothetically.

so no cushion of money means no mortgage payment. i guess i need to call and see how many payments we can miss before foreclosure.

needless to say i emailed the lawyer today to see when we can file chapter 7. not that it will make a difference quite honestly. all that debt is on hold anyway. the business will continue to owe the IRS even if we lay off the employees and vacate the rental space. and even if we do layoffs TODAY they will still need to be paid in 2 weeks again, and then paid their vacation accrual…

so bottom line, the continuing drain which could possibly kill us is the IRS back-taxes and whatever $$$ needed to pay off the employees.

small-business sucks. NOT the backbone of america. major corporations are who they are for a reason, people! when its all said and done, this small business venture will have taken a family that was doing okay – eeking by – to the point of complete ruin. i cry.

i have to say that there have been some surprisingly fun challenges during this time of financial chaos. maybe in the same way as a person can become disciplined with exercise and nutrition, and gain quite a bit of satisfaction from pushing themselves for the good of their own health, the same can be said for being disciplined with the budget and pushing oneself to stretch the dollar, find the good deal, trim the excess, and being resourceful.

i have felt such moments of peace during these weeks where my focus has had to shift from spending money to saving money. there is nothing to do now during the day than whip the house in shape, and then head outside for some free adventures. really, it feels like my head has cleared. i wish i could say i was this way back before i had to be, that i was naturally resourceful and industrious without having to out of desperation. that would be like faithfully running and eating uber-healthy just as a lifestyle choice. not as a way to lose the weight that needs to be lost before you end up diabetic, or to prepare for a race you have committed to run in 3 months. but no, you do it because it is good.

i would like to say that even when my spouse finds a new job we will continue to maintain a healthy lifestyle with less than 4K a month, that we will fill our days with organizing the house, selling the things we dont need or use, preparing food and stashing it in the deep freeze, foraging in the woods for free things to eat, to create with, or to cure cancer with.

i dont know whats in store for us. it is kind of nice to get to the end of the rope – to the point where it is pointless to even care – and to realize that it has to start looking up from here.

it is also nice that our medical insurance goes to the end of the month. today i picked up my new eye glasses courtesy of the old insurance coverage.

besides the stress of scrambling to pay the mortgage, to have the utility checks clear the bank, to buy lunch food for the kids, to be able to fill up the gas tank, there are the less obvious emotional struggles with losing one’s job and filing for bankruptcy.

for starters, people who still have jobs and good credit dont know exactly what to say in support. i have discovered that the initial “i am so sorry!” is sufficient. there is nothing wrong with saying that one to me because i immediately see the emotion and sympathy behind it. believe me, i will not scold you for the literal absurdity behind apologizing for something you did not cause.

just today i dropped by the school to fill out a form to qualify for free lunches and the family advocate told me she was sooo sorry. it felt good. i was grateful that she cared, and nothing else says this as simply as she did.

another wonderful thing i have discovered is how it feels to eat dinner with another family every other night, at their house. we arent rattling around our house feeling lonesome on top of destitute. we arent forgetting to make dinner due to the mind-numbing stress, we arent rushing to the store for ingredients we dont have and cant pay for just so the meal can come together, we arent feeling like we have to forgo meat. no, we’re feeling darn lucky and we get to sit around and laugh with adults who’ve been in our same situation while our kids run around oblivious to our predicament. friends like this make it seem real that we might survive. conversely, sitting at home alone to a potato dinner after someone has told you “you will survive” does not carry the same power. i must remember to do this for someone else, because it wasnt obvious to me before the emotionally restorative power that actual acts of kindness do for someone. and maybe the lesson here is that good intentions dont always carry beneficial powers like good works do.

another instance of this is that i was on a road trip of sorts with a teacher at our school and she told me if i needed anything to just ask, that there were many who wanted to help. but when i got home i tried to imagine myself asking for help. what does that look like and when does one do that? today we are overdrawn (again) on our account and have no reserves. there are crackers and apples for school lunch – not bad but kind of paltry. i tried imagining myself calling different people asking them to run and pick up some juice boxes for the kids’ lunches. i didnt see it happening because really, they can drink water. its not that bad yet. i should save up my favors for when we’ve been jobless for 3 months, right? cuz that will be bad. plenty of other people drink water, so why not us? there are people who have been poor their whole lives and we’ve only just begun so i can be breaking down and asking for help this soon in the game.

but the teacher friend called today to say she wanted to drop something off at the house. thats when i had to weep, and i continue to well up when i think about it. instead of waiting for things to get bad enough so i could call her and ask for groceries, she had already prepared a bag of fixings to make dinner, even dessert! and what struck me is that she took it upon herself to decide when things were bad enough, or not wanting her good intent to fall through the cracks she went ahead and acted upon it. which makes so much sense.

i see now that within our stress we cant see how to be proactive, how to ask for help, how to ensure our own comfort because we are focusing on the larger picture of applying for jobs and keeping up with legal paperwork.

another friend called me when she was at costco and said “i am at costco what can i bring over to your house?” she brought vodka. my dad dropped by after a colonoscopy appt. and said they were going to costco and did we want them to pick anything up? they came back with 18 eggs and 50# of flour.

they made it easy for us to ask for help. i see now that when families are sliding into desperate times there are those months of shock that can be paralyzing. you dont know for how long you will be vulnerable, so you cant measure really when you will need to cash in on that help.

i have also learned some less-than-helpful support techniques. my dad is not so quick in dealing with emotions. right after getting hit with the job loss, then lawsuit papers, then the repo of our truck i called him to tell him the extent of our troubles. i began crying incoherently as soon as he answered his phone. i spilled the entire sack of beans. i just wanted some emotional support because i know my dad has been there, has survived his share of heart-wrenching desperation.

instead he went the route of advising me, all with good intentions, to pray with my spouse and wait to see how God provides during this exciting time of change in our lives.

this, people, is what not to do. no matter what your intentions are, no matter how good God can be, this is not emotional support. this is not the way to answer someone’s distress about the looming unknown in their present situation, and here is why:

#1. what if i have already been praying with my spouse before he even lost his job? are you suggesting i have not been praying, or that there is a connection between my level of prayer and my level of job security? do you want to bring in more feelings of doubt to someone who has just suffered a loss?

#2 suggesting that Things in Life Will Turn Out is not refreshing, encouraging, nor supportive. you are operating under the impression that what may be in the future affects the immediate. the fact that i may eat in the future does nothing for my stomach now. the fact that i may pay my mortgage in, say, 10 years does not help me pay my mortgage now. and anyone who has made it out of highschool already KNOWS that life gets better. so you arent saying anything new, you are throwing The Obvious into the face of The Desperate and it bounces right off, let me tell you.

#3 trying to re-package a job loss as an exciting time is plain insensitive, even if that previous employer was intolerable, or the job stressful, or the position a dead-end.  it paid the bills and sometimes that is enough excitement. the predominant feeling for us is loss of control over our welfare and the welfare of our children. then there is the fear that God doesnt care about our comfort or the comfort of our children, and that what he allowed to happen to his faithful servant Job might be allowed to happen to us – all for the glory of God. that is not exciting, the possibility that God’s glory could supercede my family’s needs does not fortify my strength through hard times. bad things happen to good people, we all know that. the Bible is full of examples, thanks for the reminder.

#4 telling me that God will show me which choice to make after implying that i need to pray more also does nothing to bolster my faith. what it does is bring up the question of what if i dont hear him? what if He is mad at me and doesnt speak to me. speaking of which, what if i have never heard Him speak to me before. ever think of that? maybe youre talking to a christian who doesnt operate under the premise that God speaks to me, and so telling me now that God will tell me the Right Choice to make doesnt account for the fact that i havent experienced God in that way.

in our desperaton we might just take the first job opportunity that comes along whether God speaks to us about it or not. and if youre one of those christians that would say “well that was God talking” then youre basically talking in circles which is not emotionally  supportive; it is confusing. do we have an array of choices? we that lost our job and are being sued and are filing for chapter 7 (or maybe 13, who knows.) we kind of are on unstable ground and our financial future kind of depends upon things working in our favor. God allowing things to work in our favor, if you may. which brings me back to needing emotional support from friends and family. because of all that unknown.

i did have a friend who said to me “if its not obvious what God’s will is for you yet that is because He doesnt want you to know. if He wanted you to know, you would know.” that took the whole Are You Christian Enough out of the equation.

we got the truck back. that weekend of repo-ing was so successful for the tow company that our truck was parked in at the far end of the lot, with other trucks nose to end, and of course the tow company had keys for none of them. but we got the truck back.

my spouse hand washed it in our driveway, in front of the whole cul-de-sac. hey, look at him massaging his beautiful truck for all to see! he even waxed it with black wax so it would glimmer like a stallion. i vacuumed and shampooed the interior. i scooped out all the random bits, the CDs, the change drawer, the hidden pair of sunglasses. neither one of use remembered to clean under the backseat, though. there are enough fries and froot-loops to take on a picnic!

with all these days “off” my spouse and i can easily arrange to do errands together, such as drive the truck down to the car lot and put it on consignment. and here is where we got our fist bit of good news in a looong time: they wanted to put the truck up at top dollar! more than what we were going to ask! and they parked it on the front of the lot – maybe on one of those steep risers where the vehicle looks like one ice storm and it will slide down into on-coming traffic.

we drove home in our other truck, a 23 year old toyota landcruiser in gunmetal grey. reliable but drives like a maverick torpedo.

i cant wait until that truck sells! couldnt we live on the profit for a month or 2? and it feels good to be rolling down the street in our old cruiser, just like old times, back when life was simple and the sun always shined. there’s a good reason olden rhymes with golden; time makes memories and the mind festoons them with feelings of well-being.