Thank You, IR Freakin' S

We finally got our economic stimulus check today but, unfortunately, we only got $266 because we owed taxes this year and the government took out its chunk first. I had a feeling they were going to do this, but we really needed that money to pay our rent and the letter they sent to us informing us of the check that we were to receive made no statement whatsoever that the owed taxes would come out of the stimulus check.

So now we are most likely going to bounce our check and even if we don't, we are going to be in a hole that we won't be able to dig ourselves out of because of the fees that we will get if they do cash the check.

Why couldn't they just say "Oh, by the way, we're going to take our 900-some-odd dollars out of your economic stimulus check"? I'm not even asking for them to give me a chance to tell them "no", I just would've like to have known so that we may have either held off on turning in our rent check (and incur the $20 late fee for being a day late) or we would've tried harder to make other arrangements. God damn it, I'm tired of this. We're never going to get the money back that we spent on my grandmother's funeral (which was, roughly, eleven grand), and I can't pick up more hours at work because of the limits placed on the Research Assistant position, so other than having my husband work more hours (and if he had worked his full shift, the pittance from the government would've been enough to help us squeak by), I don't know what we can do. I'm a little furious that he refuses to ask his family for money when his parents aren't in financial hell, but he's more than willing to constantly bring up trying to get the money back from my family despite the fact that my mother doesn't have a job and my uncle's savings is what is paying the bills right now.

I'm really tired. I just can't keep going like this. We'll have to conserve as much as we can because we'll have no money by Wednesday (assuming the check gets cashed), and we only had enough gas to get me to work today. I'm still convinced he's doing something stupid with the car to waste gas when he only has 4 miles to go to get to work but uses more gas than I do going 20 miles to my office. $10 can only get you so far, and there is no bus that I can take to work (this town's transit system needs a lot of work) or I would do that instead of drive which pisses me off anyway.

I'm going to bed. I was going to call the IRS to bitch about this, but there's no point in yelling at someone who had nothing to do with this. I don't see why they would care. I don't see why anybody would, so...whatever.

Dangerous Situation

This is going to be brief. I say that a lot, but I am trying to get some work done since I feel like a failure of a person who needs to really get back on track and do something worthwhile.

Taxes are due today and we owe quite a bit this year. The form will be dropped off after work, assuming I have enough gas to make it to the main post office.

We are broke. My bank decided that the best way to deal with low balance situations is to pay for everything, let you think you have a tiny amount of money left (which leaves you in the positive) and then decide that a charge that wasn't listed on Saturday morning was indeed paid on Friday and slapped on an obscene amount of overdraft fees retroactively, resulting in every charge after that being negative. We had transfered money from the mutual fund when we thought we were still positive (I checked with the bank webpage beforehand) but now they want to pretend the money isn't there so that they can charge us for 10 charges that are (now) overdraft. Our mutual fund is almost completely depleted because of the funeral expenses we paid that haven't been paid back (and I don't know when we'll see that money). We probably won't be able to pay the rent for May, the maternity costume I wanted to order is completely a thing of the past, and I just want to sleep through my birthday Saturday so that my husband doesn't spend any money on me.

And if I weren't pregnant, I probably would be very tempted to rip my veins open with my teeth. The fact that the thought is there in the back of my mind is somewhat disturbing, but I've unfortunately gotten used to that feeling. And I'd like to take out the time to thank God for taking away my grandmother in such a fashion that there was no warning, resulting in us paying for the funeral and now being so broke that I am unsure if I can scrape together enough money to put some gas in the car to make it home.

Funny, even Sinfest is capturing my week. It's humorous, but I do kind of feel like that today.

Edit: On a strangely odd note, I have a childhood friend who was born today, so I hope she's having a happy birthday. What's significant about this is that she and I were born four days apart, and her mother and my mother were born a few days apart as well. What are the odds of two women being born a few days apart (as Aries, no less) having their daughters with a similar span being born at the end of the same astrological cycle? If anyone can do that kind of statistics, let me know. These mood swings are very random, so I apologize if it makes me seem flighty, or like I'm faking the dark phases I go through.

Damnit, I'm tired

Tomorrow is my birthday. It will be officially the first day of the last year that I can declare myself to be in my late 20s. I won't be like other people (t.v. people, mostly) who pretend to be young when they're not; I'll embrace 30 when the time comes. I'll have to; I teased my older brother when he turned 30 last year, so I'll expect the sentiment to be returned in kind. I just wish I weren't so tired all the time.

I've developed some very odd insomnia where I can't get to bed before 4 a.m. most nights of the week. Something always happens where I'm up too late, whether it's because I'm not feeling well, getting caught up in a book or computer game that I had no business starting, or because I'm doing the household chores and finances. I end up waking up at the precise moment I should be on the road to work and spend the rest of the day trying not to pass out. What's more, I'm trying to lose as much weight in a month as possible so that I can get on a new rollercoaster on opening weekend of Cedar Point [The money for the ride is going to the Fireside Red Cross, so I'm just hoping that I don't go all the way up to Sandusky for nothing], and proper sleep is needed for a better shot at losing weight.

It's not just the lack of sleep, it's the stress of doing a talent show in front of my company on Tuesday (which has me freaking out), and needing to look for a job that is full-time and will pay well. And after that two-day scare where I was a complete danger to myself after doing the taxes, I'm doing what I can to stem the outflow of money so that we may be able to save and do the things we want to do this summer.

Since I'm way behind on a project I'm working on here, I'm going to go back to it. At least this post has done one thing; helped me to feel a little less upset about everything.

Money...and stress

I had originally planned on posting in this blog a missive on the current state of my finances, but I ended up moving the whole damn thing to ebloggy. I fell asleep around 6 a.m. and I have too many things to do...and bills are piling up. It's bad enough that we owe the equivalent of 2/3 of a paycheck in taxes, but our cable/internet/phone may have been cut off because we owe Time Warner as well. I've got to stay late for a charity event meeting, stop off at the library, make dinner before I run off to the Historical society to train for 2 hours for a volunteer effort that I'm doing on Friday afternoon, and then I've got to get home and work on cleaning the house before I can even think about getting some sleep.

I don't even have time to exercise. This situation is exacerbating my depression and has led me to be concerned that I'm going to end up doing something terrible if I don't just ruin my health and run myself into the ground.