There are times when I think “hey, I’m finally able to handle things just fine” ….yeah, that only lasts for a little while though.  I did have all my bills caught up so that I wasn’t constantly struggling with late fees on top of regular payments.  Had myself where my automatic debits were not reaching into empty pockets…then like an idiot I budget on funds I had expected to have.  What have I been told a zillion times?  Don’t budget on anything you can’t depend on.  Yep, I did it.  I depended on funds coming in at a certain time that would pay the regular mid month bills and carry us till the next paycheck.  Those funds didn’t come in so I wound up using funds for other bills to pay those bills that were due .  The funds still didn’t come in so there was no money to pay the ones coming due.  The bigger ones, that can cause bigger damage when they are not paid.  Now we come into the first of the month and I’m so far behind I will wind up using funds for the really big bills to pay up the bills I couldn’t cover near the end of the month when I used the end of the month money to pay the mid month late bills….UGH…I thought I was out of that cycle!!!

It would not be so bad if I were not faced with the now urgent need to open up my yard.  A few months ago it was a luxury desire, now that the ramps are in the space needed in the yard is eaten up by ramps.  Now it’s no longer a luxury to open the yard it’s a necessity and must be done YESTERDAY.  I have an unregistered vehicle that should have been registered a few months ago except that the DMV wanted to play the red tape game.  We used all our funds for bills and have no funds to register, but it must be done so now on top of all the late bills and playing make up, we have to register this truck but before we can do that we need to pay the insurance that we couldn’t pay on May 28 when it was due.  Wonderful…both the registration and insurance needed to be done by the end of the month and because I was such a moron and counted on an income I didn’t have in my pocket I got us into this huge disaster with no possible way out.

Nope, there are no programs to help with car registrations, late insurance payments and idiots who forget a the golden rule…don’t count your chickens before they hatch.

In our county you cannot have a disabled or unregistered vehicle in your yard.  We are TRYING to obey the law!!  I am just beyond frustrated with this whole mess.  For a while we were floating above water and in just a few weeks we have gone from that to having a cement block tied to our feet and are drowning yet again.  I’m so sick of this!

We have nobody to help us get these things done, there are no programs for fences so people can be allowed to have a disabled vehicle in their yard, or so they can accumulate salvaged lumber and supplies to do repair work.  We had to pluck cash out of somewhere to comply with the codes and now we are screwed and 50 paces backwards for the small step we took forward.

Is this EVER going to end??

Well, now that the ramp is in place it’s time to concentrate on other things.  The ramp ate up lots of ground space in the kennel area so our immediate plans are to knock out the kennel wall to the east.  We hope we will be able to salvage the lumber and most of the chicken wire to use along the tree line to the right of the office.  We will need to find lumber and buy netting to then build another fence from the end of the tree line fence to the mobile home.  This will open up most of the land plot and finally allow me access to the whole back yard and of course will free up space for the special furry family members.  Right now my access is only to the kennel which is now eaten up with ramps.  The animals love to go under the deck and ramps so they have more space than the humans do, but the reality is we all need more outdoor space.  Most of our living is done outdoors, we cook outside, we spend our family time outside, we tend our animals, feed them and spend time with them outside.  About the only thing done inside is computer use…we would sleep outside too if we could build a yurt or keep a tent but for that we must have privacy fencing.

Opening the yard will allow us to start our gardens.  My buddy Rick from Dixie Thunder showed me how he grows his hanging gardens.  We fell in love with his tomato plants and decided we will build racks in an area of yard that will not be used for animal space…but will be accessible to me…and we will do hanging gardens rather than raised gardens.  That will drastically cut down the cost of building garden beds and filling them with good soil.  Hanging gardens can be easily made accessible for wheelchair or scooter gardening.

We have funds thanks to a friend to put walls up in the office and that will be done as soon as we can get our truck legal for the road.  We have the insulation another friend managed to salvage from a discard pile and with that insulation and some wall boards the office will be easily cooled in summer and heated in winter.  Since I spend nearly all my days in the office this necessity being taken care of will make a big difference.

We did get it fixed finally and the repair wasn’t as cheap as we had hoped…but that part is done.  DMV finally found a way we could register the truck but it took a great deal of time to find the loophole and that cost us lots of fees AND late fees totaling up to $162!  I have no clue why we are being charged penalties and late fees when we have been trying to register this truck since Feb, well before the due date.  It was departmental policy that caused us to be late, not our negligence…but we are stuck with fees simply because we bought a truck out of state and the previous owner refused to sign the official state of South Carolina stationary and wrote his bill of sale on notebook paper instead.  There is no law to force him to sign the SC stationary because the stationary is also not a law it’s simply departmental policy but the law does allow the DMV to require any documents they deem necessary, and that was their loophole for requiring a bill of sale on their stationary.  Without any actual law requiring this bill of sale on SC DMV stationary we had nothing to in our favor to make the man sign the stationary.  That is the flaw in the policy that caused all this trouble and racked up incredibly high fees for a truck over 20 years old that should cost less than $50 to register.

So, our fixed truck is still waiting for the tags and that is an urgent situation to comply with those pesky county ordinances that forever keep us from tackling the real work we need to do.  We are always too busy keeping our neighbors happy.

We have a plan for that too, once we fix the truck and start salvaging discarded lumber to work on the fences we will also be looking for stuff to use to screen the fences so that our yard will not be visible from the road or from neighbor view.  We will plant vines, bushes and hedges to screen the fence screens to that the fencing will not become yet another reason for complaints.  Privacy fencing will allow us to tackle other issues since then we wont be dumping all our funds into keeping the neighbors happy and we can actually concentrate on our own family.

We have the funds set aside to repair the plumbing in my accessible bathroom.  Again we are waiting for the truck to get that started, but soon there will be an accessible bathtub/shower close to my bedroom.

My son is having the last of his dental work completed beginning the first week of June and continuing on till about the 15th.  He’s needed oral surgery for much of the problem, but we want to get it all finished up before he goes on Medicaid at age 19.  He turns 19 on June 18.  He’s going to spend the month of June in a bit of pain but we must get all needs tended to and completed before he loses medical coverage.

That’s about it for now, take care of yourselves and each other