I am eagerly awaiting the arrival of Christmas because my children are eagerly awaiting it's arrival, and to see their excitement and wishes reminds me of what it was like when I was their age and it fills me with happiness. There are many things that I am unable to share with my little ones, such as riding their bikes, or running around the yard playing tag, or crawling around on the floor, but the excitement of Christmas is something I can share with them no matter what else is going on in life.
Unfortunately, trying to get them to understand that spending money on gifts is not exactly what the Christmas spirit is all about, and rather spending time with the ones you love and enjoying the life that you have been given are part of the spirit is a impossible concept to get across to them. Regrettably I don't have money to spend on them for Christmas and the few gifts that we were able to get them will make this the leanest Christmas they have had up to now. The problem is me.
Since I was terminated from my management job in August, steady income is hard to find. I am awaiting my determination from the Social Security Administration as to whether or not I am disabled enough to qualify for total disability. It is quite funny all of the questions that they ask you in order to see if you are eligible, and then they make sure that you know that you can't work during the process of figuring out if you are too disabled to work. What they fail to mention is that it usually takes 6-9 months for them to make this determination, and 90% of people are denied the first time around. Awesome! So I am too disabled to work, but for at least 6 months whilst awaiting their decision, I can't even attempt to work to keep my household above water because if I do, I will immediately be denied disability even though I most likely will be denied my disability the first go round anyway. On the good side, I can then request a second hearing which can take another 6-9 months for them to decide again if I am actually disabled, thus leaving 12-18 that I am unable to work as they make their decision. What fun!!!
Thankfully, my lovely wife has been able to keep her job with the same company that fired me, but it is a sales job, and we all know how that can go. Sometimes she makes good money, and then sometimes the sales just aren't there and we are left with meager paychecks that can barely pay the electric bill. Thankfully, I always wondered what it would be like to be Amish, and when the money just isn't there, we get to experience the Amish lifestyle. I can say now, for the most part it isn't too bad since we don't really watch TV to begin with and keep most of the lights off around the house, but we are completely lost without our phones and iPad.
This Christmas also signifies the end of our 12 month lease on our house on the 31st of December. Our landlord who manages this property for the actual home owner is no longer going to manage the property after the 31st, but he is closing on his new property on the 28th and has said that the new 5 bedroom house he is buying is available for us to rent since he likes having us as tenants, of course we just have to come up with the $1600 to move in and get a moving truck to move all of our stuff from this house to the new one. Sounds great, unfortunately, there is just no money there to do this. So, where does that leave us? Good question.
I know what you are thinking, ask your family for help. Great idea! Down side is that my father has bailed us out of drowning in our financial situation at least 3 times this year to the tune of several thousand dollars, and as big of a man as I think I am, I will freely admit that I don't have the testicular fortitude to ask him for any more help. The biggest hindrance is that I have always been a total failure in the rest of my family's eyes, and have brought my entire situation down on myself, and because of this there is absolutely no willingness on their part to help us out. In my mother's exact words when I spoke to her earlier, "good luck." I am not surprised by it at all, again I have always been a let down to them and this situation is all my fault. What can ya do, ya know.
So, for this Christmas I ask Santa for a home. If he could just drop a $1600 check in my otherwise empty stocking this year I would truly appreciate it. I know that the cookies we will leave him aren't the best, hey they are homemade with love, and he has many other children in the world more deserving than us, but just this one little gift is all that my family will ask of him this year. No request for puppies, or skateboards, or Red Rider BB guns, no, just the gift of a new roof over the head of me and my family. If anything, I will gladly accept further disability symptoms if it meant that we could afford to sign the lease on the new house, who knows, maybe if I traded that for some new symptoms I would have some new fodder for my blog so that I can give everyone more reading material to laugh about.
Well, hopefully my next blog entry will be more entertaining then this one was. I already have a good topic picked out with tons of laughter since I have been laughing just thinking of what I will be typing for that entry. Until then, I hope that everyone has a great holiday and enjoys the time with loved ones as I will be doing. Remember, live your life, or at least something like it...
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