Quick Update

 As anyone who regularly reads my blog might have noticed, this is my first post in a while, with my last one being over a year and a half ago. Now it's not that I didn't have ideas of things to write. In fact, I was reminded of two partial posts as I sat down to write this one, and those don't even count my planned analysis of the Lenten scarf pattern I completed last year. I've had ideas for sure, but unfortunately, life got in the way of them coming to fruition.

My husband, Jon, spent most of 2024 on medical leave. He was diagnosed with Brugada syndrome in February, and his job wouldn't accommodate the restrictions he needed to work safely. He had surgery in June to implant an internal defibrillator, and he recovered quite nicely. Within a week, he was back to doing DoorDash and making Spark deliveries, with me occasionally tagging along to help. We moved in August into a bigger place with a nice yard for our dogs, and although the rent was a bit of a stretch, we were making it work.

Then, the week before Thanksgiving, Jon had to have emergency heart surgery. About the same time, there was an unexpected lapse in the short-term disability payments he was getting from his job. Suddenly, the rent payments that had been a bit of a stretch before became impossible to pay in full. We did what we could, knowing that once he was back to work, we should be able to catch up. Unfortunately, things did not work out that easily.

Jon was cleared to go back to work in January of last year, and he called his job to let them know, only to find out that they had terminated him because of his extended leave. Once he found that out, the short-term disability payments completely stopped. He found another job, but it was very part-time, so he wasn't making much money. Then one night, he overexerted himself, and even though the doctor cleared him to go back and they had some less strenuous positions, they refused to put him back on the schedule. 

In the first part of April, Jon started a full-time job, and things were starting to look up. Then he got sick on the Tuesday of what was to be his first full week of the new job. He went to see the doctor and was told to take off Wednesday as well. Thursday morning, he left the house with his doctor's note to go back to work, but only got halfway there before they called and told him not to come in. 

About a month later, Jon was offered a position driving rail crews, and he gladly accepted. However, by then, the damage was done. Even though he was always doing something, even if it was just DoorDash, and I was still working both jobs, we weren't making enough to pay the rent. We still paid what we could when we could, and we were in constant communication with our landlord throughout, but she was beginning to lose interest in working with us. 

Complicating things was the fact that I was in a car accident in April, and my SUV was destroyed. Given my need for another car and our struggles with paying our rent, I created a GoFundMe in early June, but by then it was too late. We got a notice of a court date for an eviction hearing, and we made plans to move. We were advised by a lawyer to be out by the court date so we could hand over the keys, and we spent most of the next week packing and moving. We settled into our new place and handed over the keys at the court date, glad to be done with the situation.

Meanwhile, I was trying to get everything together so my gap insurance could pay off the rest of my car loan. I figured once I got everything together and sent it in, the loan would be paid off within a couple of weeks. However, the gap insurance refused to pay because they claimed my car had been overfinanced. The value they used to calculate the supposed overfinancing was much smaller than the value listed on the paperwork I sent in. This led to a months-long phone tag with the dealership, where I had trouble connecting with the person whom I really needed to talk to. I finally went into the dealership on the Monday before Thanksgiving so I could talk to him face-to-face, and about a week later, the loan was finally paid off.

While this whole debacle was playing out, I was having issues with the credit union where I had my car loan. They had convinced me to open a checking account there, and they kept locking it despite me constantly updating them about the problems communicating with the dealership. After it got locked over Labor Day weekend, I had had enough and moved all my money to another account, including switching my direct deposit from the school. Unfortunately, there was an issue with getting that information changed, which led to my next paycheck being mailed instead of being directly deposited. Since I was out of town that weekend, I was left with severely limited resources for getting back. About a month later, the account was completely closed with no warning whatsoever.

Things in my life have finally settled down for the most part. I would be lying if I said that everything was perfect now, but at least it's a bit more manageable. I figured it would be good to write about what had been going on, not only to help any readers of my blog understand why there was such a long gap between posts, but also because I really missed writing. There were times throughout the last year and a half that I told myself that I needed to write so I'd feel better, but I couldn't get motivated enough to do so. Fortunately, I finally found the motivation I had been lacking.