Still here!

So, with the crazy weather over the weekend, I thought I'd take a moment to say that the storms went around both the farm and the rental- for the most part. Steve cleared out the cupboard under the stairs yesterday in preparation, but we didn't need it. I filled my Instagram account with videos of rain, and then of the local creeks higher than we've ever seen them. Not that that's very impressive, but they were also higher than anyone's ever seen them which is much more impressive.

Please keep Texas in your thoughts, though. There are a lot of people who have lost everything, lots of people missing, and a few have died. If you are able, please donate what you can. This website is a good place to start to find out what you can do. And if you're not in a position to donate right now, just keep us in your thoughts.

Sometimes anger is justified

I am angry.

I am angry because when we contacted Progressive Insurance three months ago to let them know that we were in the process of buying a farm and would need to alter our insurance, they said that would be fine. I’m angry that when we signed all the papers and money changed hands, Progressive Insurance told us that it was all set up, the property was insured, and payments for the insurance were lumped into the mortgage payment. I’m angry because the form I got in the mail on the 7^th of May came with a letter dated the 24^th of April saying that unless we signed and dated the form within 10 days, our policy would be cancelled. Ten days from the date on the letter or ten days from receipt? Mostly, though, I’m angry that it was that letter that led us to the knowledge that Progressive Insurance had every intention of cancelling our policy regardless of what we did, but they weren’t interested in giving us much notice and no way to appeal the decision.

They had several reasons why they were going to cancel the policy on the farm. One was that there is a metal building on the property that could “blow away.” It’s difficult to get a straight answer from them, but they seem to be referring to a corrugated metal equipment shed that has been on the property for a while and is very solid. They also hinted at a handrail that was missing. We were confused as the only stairs on the property that are high enough to require a handrail already have a hand rail! We eventually worked out that what they meant was the guardrail around the back deck, the one we informed them we would be replacing as soon as possible. Another reason was the tree branches that are over hanging the roof- the same ones that we informed them the entire tree would be removed shortly. All these reasons for questioning the policy, asking for clarification, I could respect that. But they didn’t ask for clarification, they threatened.

The most appalling reason for cancellation, though, is non-negotiable, ridiculous, and an absolutely mind boggling example of what is completely wrong with Progressive Insurance’s company. One of the out buildings they required to be torn down is a chicken coop. When we questioned why, their response was that if there is a chicken coop on the property, we may be tempted to have chickens. It’s a farm; of course we’re planning to have chickens. Progressive Insurance cannot insure a farm property that has farm animals. If we have a single chicken on the property, our policy is void. One of our reasons for moving out to the country was to have chickens!

I am angry that this is the system. I’m angry that Progressive’s response was, “You should get quotes from other agencies.” We took their advice, and are collecting a few other quotes. The interesting thing is that even the “expensive” companies are coming in very close in price to Progressive’s bargain.

I strongly urge anyone who has Progressive Insurance to start shopping for better insurance now, before they decide to cancel your policy for an illogical reason that they have no obligation to inform you of.

Question everything!

Haunted

The rental we're currently in is haunted. If you don't believe in ghosts, don't come to our house. Steve didn't believe in ghosts either. Now he does.

There have been a number of times when unusual occurrences have happened here, and for the most part we're used to them, but occasionally it still gives us goose bumps, like last night.

Last night the cat was going to sleep in bed with me until Steve and I both refused to get up to turn off the light (we really need a clapper or remote or something) which turned into a tickle war that I won but he barked at me which startled me, but it scared the shit out of the cat who jumped off the bed and wanted out- the door was closed. Steve told her no, and I called her back to snuggle with me, but she was pissed so she stalked into the bathroom, I assumed she slept in the closet, because she never came back to bed.

When the alarm went off at 7am, the cat meowed at the door like she does every morning. I was still half asleep, so I thought, "For fuck sake cat! No matter what side of the door she's on, she wants to be on the other side!" And then I realized she was on the other side; she wasn't in the bedroom. Steve also looked a little freaked and asked if I had let her out during the night. No. Did he let her out during the night? No. Who let the cat out of the bedroom?

Then Steve says that she was in the room at 4:30 am when he got up to use the bathroom because she was stretched out on the bed next to me. Except she's not a stretchy sleeper, she ALWAYS curls up when she sleeps. And she always wakes me up when she curls up to sleep with me because she has to check that I'm breathing first, at least, that's what I assume she's doing. So, whatever slept next to me in bed last night was not our cat. And someone let our cat out of the room.

What the hell was sleeping next to me?!?!

I suck at blogging

So, I realized that I suck at this whole blogging thing. It's been nearly 3 weeks since my last post, but in my defense, it's been 3 incredibly hectic weeks.

The move in is officially happening. We're in the middle of the whole moving thing, and that's never pleasant. This time, we have months to get through the process, so it's much less stressful than our last several moves which were chaotic stress monkey filled days of sheer panic. So far, I've only had a handful of panic attacks. That's something, right?

But I'm so afraid that I have over committed to so very much. There's a lot of work to do on the property, and I'm not in good enough shape to do even a smidgen of it. Since we're so far away from the schools, and typical schools just have never worked very well with my son, I'm going to start home schooling him after the move is done. Steve still wants me to get a job, which I have been gloriously unsuccessful at in the past year+, and it will only be more difficult living out in the boonies, home schooling, cleaning/repairing/building the farm, running our business, and attempting to stay sane. So, I've been looking at starting a brick and mortar shop in town that could house arts and crafts from people all over central Texas. The amount of work to get that going is staggering, so it's going to have to wait until I can take a full breath.

While all these plans have been nailing me between the eyes, I've also been dealing with the day to day hassles of the necessity of working with people who have less than no respect for me or my opinion, but whom I've had to rely on. A few have given me a total run around, and so I've cut my losses and I'm not chasing them down anymore. I really just cannot waste so much of my energy on people who are so astonishingly disorganized and insist on somehow making that my problem! You contacted me, get your shit together!

Blah.

At least we stayed the night the weekend before last at the farm and had one heck of a thunderstorm while we were there. The neighbors probably thing we're nuts! Steve and I stood on the front porch giggling like maniacs.

The approaching storm

I wanted to upload a video or 2, but apparently they're too big for the blog, and I don't have any software to edit them. Bugger. It was pretty impressive, though.

Stop the inspirational stories!

As you may know, Steve and I have a home business, Batty4Arts, that we sell our arts and crafts through. For me, it's my full time job. But it's a constant struggle, and let's face it, the economy is not in the best place right now which makes selling things that really have no functional reason. We still put in the effort, though, and hope that some day it will pay off.

I've tried doing what I'm "supposed to do" with this whole thing. It was suggested, multiple times, that joining support networks would be helpful while figuring out the basics of running a small business, so I did. I'm not really finding it very helpful, though. A lot of the "information" is around tax issues- because April is tax season and people are stressed about it- but those tax issues don't apply to us. As an arts and crafts business, the taxes are pretty straight forward. And we have to file each quarter, so it's just not a big deal.

The issue I'm having with the support networks, the magazines, the blogs, etc. is they keep doing theses success profiles. They interview someone who's made it: an artist who's in high demand, a handyman who has to turn down jobs because he's so overbooked, a writer who's been on the best seller list for months now. Am I the only one who's not inspired by this?

For example, the most recent was a jewelry designer that, on a whim, decided to make some pieces, go to a random market, and see what happened. She claims to have had a constant group of people "drooling over the pieces" and made $600 that day. So, she decided to make it her full time job. Or the doll artist that submitted a doll into a doll magazine, was contacted by a convention and asked to teach a class, and now can't keep up with demand. Or the picture hanger- seriously, he hangs pictures, not frames them, they have to be already framed and ready to go, he just puts them on the wall- who is in such high demand despite raising his rates that he has to schedule his time off. This is not inspirational when we've been struggling to make this thing work for years. In fact, it's just depressing and disheartening.

Is it just me?

Stress monkey attack!

Why does everything turn to shit all at once? Have you ever noticed that? It's like some cosmic law that if something really big is about to happen, every possible thing must go wrong just before the big event.

For instance: A few weeks ago, Steve mowed the lawn. The iron cover on one of the plastic pipes sticking out of the ground in the front lawn was askew, and he accidentally hit it with the mower. The mower is supposed to have a special do-dad that means that sort of thing can occur without much damage, except our's was missing the do-dad and the drive shaft bent making the mower unusable. Literally, it wouldn't start. So, we tried to find out about getting it fixed. We called Lowe's, because that's where we bought it from, and they were suppose to get back to us within a week with information, which of course they never did. So we went in to Lowe's, and the lady at the counter said she couldn't tell us how much it would cost to repair, but we'd probably "get it back in a year" because they were so backed up. Steve called a mower repair company and it turned out it would cost as much as a new mower to fix it! Steve then decided that since it's a lost cause, he'd try to fix it himself. It's only $80 for the parts he needs, much better than the $250 to take it in to the shop. It's still in pieces, but the parts arrived yesterday afternoon. We'll probably have a mower this weekend.

I rented a mower at Home Depot for a few hours so at least the jungle of grass is manageable. The $25 rental was more reasonable than the $50-$60 to have someone come out and do it! The only problem is that while Steve mowed, I raked leaves and now have the most intensely painful blister on my thumb. It sucks.

Next, our car decided to go for a joy ride by itself! It rolled out of the garage- triggering the door to open, down our drive, across the street, made a slight turn, up the neighbor's drive, plowed into their garage, back forward slightly, and stopped. Looking at the logistics of this whole thing, it doesn't make much sense. At least it's covered by insurance, though.

There's been a load of other small incidental things going on, too. Stupid irritating things that just really don't need to happen, but they do. My son's school, for instance, sent yet another letter that due to his many absences, we need to have a conference so that they don't prosecute us. Thing is, he's missed one day of school this year when he was legitimately sick. The other absences he was at school but in counselling or his other class that he is expected to go to whenever he feels he needs the support. In fact, quite often he gets a note from the teacher that then marks him as absent. And they never fix their system! I can't provide an excuse for him being absent from school when he's at school! And last time they sent us one of these threatening letters, we called and they said to ignore it. I really can't ignore the threat of prosecution! Fix your bloody system!

There's also been stolen debit cards that had to be replaced making all the autopayments decline, messed up math making my prices on things incorrect, the cat disappeared for a few hours, blah blah blah. The list goes on.

You may be wondering what the big event is that has kick started this avalanche of crap. Well, we close on the house on Thursday. Of course, that's assuming the bank can sort out the mortgage stuff, we've had a few issues with social security numbers because the the Social Security Administration is a bunch of flaming assholes. Honestly, I just don't have good luck when it comes to bureaucracy! So fingers crossed for us that the shit storm calms and we survive the next few days, and then the next few months. I may actually be certifiable by the time we move!

Not the enemy

Have you ever had that feeling like you're in enemy territory and absolutely everyone is actively attacking you and doing everything in their power to bring you down in the most painful way possible? No? Well, then you must not have a severely crippling anxiety disorder. For those of you who said yes, welcome to the club. It's a crappy club that no one wants to be a member of, but you can never ever leave.

This has been a distressing week, despite good news. Unfortunately, one piece of good news does little to negate the verbal and emotional attacks that have come from within and without lately. It's exhausting, and made all the worse when sleep is a precious commodity that is chased away by the physical symptoms of stress: pain, mostly.

It all started when I decided to say something. It needed to be said, but I hate confrontation. I know it sounds odd since I always seem to be confronting something, but I prefer passive aggressive confrontation to actual out right "this is not working" because I've gotten so beat up about those direct messages so many times in the past. I'm not very diplomatic, so I normally have as many people as possibly read my negative message before sending it to the intended too make sure I'm not coming across as too bitchy. Even though I always seem to come across as too bitchy. With every good intention, I'm still told (figuratively if not literally) to sit down and shut up, I'm just a stupid little girl. It's frustrating at the best of times.

I also broke my own promise to myself- instantly beating myself up for my slip- and posted an opinion on social media. Obviously, not a popular opinion, because as most smart people know, you are only allowed to have an opinion on social media if everyone else agrees with it. You are allowed to have an original thought only if several highly educated strangers with a bunch of letters after their names had them first. And even then, only if everyone else in your social media sphere agrees with those thoughts. Otherwise you get called a sociopath by anonymous people you've never met, will probably never meet, and if given half a chance will avoid. Now, the dictionary defines a sociopath as "a person with a psychopathic personality whose behavior is antisocial, often criminal, and who lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience." Apparently that definition is being expanded to someone who expects honesty and integrity from their fellow human beings. So, fine, I'll be a sociopath if that means I get to demand an honest day's work for an honest day's wage.

There's also been an increase in unsavory characters around the neighborhood over the last few weeks. While walking the dogs, we came across two people who were obviously high on something that had fried their brains. We're not talking marijuana here, either. No, these two had all the signs of a meth addiction. Then, a few days later, while driving to the store, we had to avoid another one of these addicts walking down the middle of the street. Finally, yesterday while walking the dogs, there was a guy drinking out of a brown paper bag, using a tree to hold himself upright, muttering to himself, with a sign by his feet that may have been asking for money. I'm sorry to go back into my bitch mode, but I don't like having this kind of behavior so close to home! It's spring break for the schools around here and there are a lot of kids out and about playing in the nice weather. Knowing this is going on, I won't even let my 11 year old go to the mail box by himself. And that sucks. I also now suspect it's why Steve's phone was apparently stolen from our garage a few weeks ago.

So, with all that stress about the neighborhood turning to shit, it was really bad timing to receive notice from our landlord that the HOA has complained that our trash cans are visible from the street. Yeah, our's and most of the neighborhood's. We put the rubbish bins on the side of the house where we found them 8 1/2 months ago when we moved in! Plus, no we can't put them in the backyard because the fences are in such appalling condition that we can't open the gates. I told Steve I'll put a tarp over them.

Still, it's only our problem for another 2 1/2 months! That's the one bit of good news: our mortgage for Whanau Farm has officially been approved! I'm freaking out a little, but I can't wait to be in our own place again, far away from anything resembling the Nazi regime of an HOA.