Nothing's easy today

Things haven't been this bad or stressful since my first husband Rich died. We received an intent to foreclose letter from the mortgage company which was a bit of a shock because we thought we were negotiating with them to try and get caught up. I went right into stressed out panic-mode but a couple of friends pointed out that it was probably just a form letter and that one department in the company doesn't necessarily communicate with the other.

When Rich died, there was an insurance policy and I initially invested most of it and kept working. I used my salary and a little of that insurance money to support the kids and me. When I met and married TB, we wanted a house. Our credit was really bad, though, and so I used the insurance money and he used his annuity to buy this house, make major improvements on it, furnish it and so on. All that money is in the house now.

It's a great house, too. We knocked down a bedroom wall to make a master bedroom suite. We modernized the kitchen and all the bathrooms and we added an upstairs half bath. There were three bedrooms upstairs but we split the largest one to make four. This is an ideal house, the house of our dreams, and we just don't want to lose it.

It's not just the house. Billy and Heidi do not make enough money to be able to support themselves. Kristin has two more years of high school. We have six cats, a bunny and a dog. What would happen to them all if we lose this house?

So this is another day when reality just smacks me in the face and knocks me down and I can't pretend that everything is just fine and post cute pictures.

What's happening isn't fair. TB and I have worked hard all our lives to provide for ourselves and our families. We've never asked for handouts, not that it would have helped any. Now that we are reaching out to various agencies for help, we have doors closing in our faces.

One agency requires that we have two months mortgage saved before they'll help with a month. If we had that, we wouldn't need help!

Another one requires that one of us be fully employed. We're both disabled but I am now actively looking for work anyway.

Another one says it doesn't matter that once TB gets surgery and gets back to work we can get caught up. What matters is that now we can't afford the payments and so we should put the house on the market.

That looks like our option. We're going to have to sell it and will we get enough out of it to start over? And what will happen to Billy, Heidi, and the pets? Will we be able to buy a new smaller house in Delaware (we sure can't afford NJ) where we could keep the pets? Or will our credit put stumbling blocks in our paths everywhere? And what will it do to Kristin to have to start her junior year in a strange place, without friends?

Now I'm going to go cry.