Black Friday

No, I'm not talking about shopping. Today feels like a black cloud's been hanging over us. The whole year has been feeling like that but for a moment there, it seemed as if it was starting to clear up. Now, who knows.

It all started this morning. I get up with Doug at 6:30am to take him down to the Jubitz yard where his rig is. I was planning on just dropping him off and hurrying back home but he asked me to stay a minute and when he tried starting truck, it wouldn't turn over. He tried again, nothing. Great, the battery's dead. So for the next half hour, we tried to jump his truck, all the while I'm thinking he's going to blow up my car and there's no way my vehicle is going to give him enough power to charge his three batteries. Just when I'm ready to start crying because I really need to get home and he's really got to get on the road, a lot attendant comes by and Doug asks him to help. I go home and a while later Doug calls to tell me it only took about another 10-15 minutes to get his batteries charged. Mind you, it took an hour just last week to charge his rig when he had it in the shop for some repairs he needed done while he was down in So. Cal. That was a headache.

So I get home and a few hours later I decide I need to call the bank and see where we're at with the paperwork they were suppose to be sending us in hopes of saving our house. This process started back in July. I was told in Sept. that we no longer qualified for the program we were trying for so now we qualified for a different program and that we needed to wait up to 45 days for a packet that was going to be sent to us. During those 45 days, I called numerous times to see if anything had been sent out and everytime we were told we just needed to wait. Finally one guy told us if we hadn't gotten anything by the 18th of Nov to call back. I called back on the 19th and after a lengthy time being on hold, while he was trying to get more info., he comes back on and tells me that they were going to be puting a rush on it and if we didn't get anything by the 25th to call back on the 27th. I was told today that the request was never pushed through to the loan modification department so there is no paperwork being sent out to us. Excuse me!?!?!?!?!? Then what about all those other customer service reps I had talked to? Why wasn't this addressed to me all the other times I've called? They're looking at the same screen, the same information, the same notes! She didn't know but she'd be glad to see if we qualified for one of their programs now. I was so mad I hung up on her. I thought it would be best to give myself the weekend to cool down.

So Doug makes it to his stop, delivers the load, picks up an empty trailer and heads back home. Yay, he'll be home tonight then tomorrow afternoon he'll be off to pick up another load. About an hour later he calls to tell me his truck broke down........AGAIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!! He's 104 miles away. We've lost count of how many times that dumb truck has been in the shop. After descending a hill, he notices a knocking sound when he tries to accelerate and it is also losing power and he's barely crawling, with an empty trailer. That's not good. He pulls over into a truck stop, checks his oil and notices it smoking. That's really not good. Then his check engine light comes on. He calls breakdown and after waiting an hour it's decided that he'll be towed back to Portland. It's 9:30 pm and we're down in Portland with the kids complaining they're tired and it's cold and "when are we going home?".

So, his truck is in the shop now, for who knows how long, and we still haven't heard anything from FedEx regarding whether or not he got the job. We were suppose to have known Wednesday. Now it's the weekend, he's ready to call May and tell them forget it, I quit but if he does get the new job, he'll have to start on the 7th which is a week from Monday and odds are his rig won't even be looked at until next Wednesday.

And, I've been trying to sell a few things on Craigslist to 1) get rid of some extra stuff we've accumulated and 2) try to earn a little extra $ for Christmas, which is going to be very small this year. I had some chairs posted and have faithfully checked my email to see if anyone was interested. I checked it about 9pm on Wednesday and then this morning, seeing how surely no one would be checking craigslist on Thursday. Well, someone wanted to buy them for Thursday because he was having extra family come in and needed some more chairs. He sent the request at 10:30pm on Wednesday. Ugh. I had tried selling these chairs a few weeks ago with a few nibbles but I still have them. The other thing we're selling in our waveless waterbed. It's still in good condition and I have/had a man wanting to come look at it. He was going to come over Wednesday but traffic was terrible so we scheduled for him to come tonight and he was going to be bringing his girlfriend because he was really interested. Nothing.

On the bright side of things, Doug will be here tomorrow to help with the twins birthday party.