Tuesday, September 09, 2008 , late at night

I love you

How’s that for an emotional and mushy return to blogging?  It captures mostly what I’ve been wanting to say since April or May… I do love everyone I’ve met through my blog, and I respect you, and I consider you my friends.  Because of this, when I went into an extremely deep depression following my trip to Canada in May, I just couldn’t bear to write here.  I didn’t want to bore you with my constant whining about my low moods, especially when they didn’t seem to be getting better.  I didn’t want to bore you with talk of a new business venture which excited me, but which became progressively less exciting with every stupid government delay and red tape.  I didn’t want to write, again, about how we still couldn’t pay our server bill, our electric bill, our mortgage… it all gets tedious to listen to, doesn’t it?  Maybe I’m wrong, but I felt like I’d eventually lose all my readers anyway just because I was becoming morose, and because every blog entry contained a complaint.

As someone has said, if we didn’t have bad luck, we’d have no luck at all.  I entered a very long clinical trial to try to fix a health problem and to save money, and the medication made me quite ill, but I was stuck in the program from April through last week.  Two weeks ago, our air conditioner died, leaving our house at 100 very literally degrees, so we had to get a $3400 loan from the bank of taxed out Mom and Dad to get relief.  I honestly think one of the oldest cats we have in foster care (yes, still looking for a home for him) almost died over those few days… the poor guy needed fluids and I was so preoccupied I didn’t notice until it was almost too late.

We figured we would be well on the road to a steady ecommerce income by now, but the Nevada Department of Taxation refuses to have any contact with constituants, so I couldn’t quiz them about how to set up sales tax permits for two businesses under one umbrella corporation.  After sending them emails, phone calls, and faxes, and receiving no replies, I finally came up with a tentative answer and filed my paperwork and all my money.  I calculated a $100 deposit for each business, and asked to remit my sales tax earnings each month.  When my application was approved and sent back to me, the tax folks were demanded over $500 in security deposits and filing quarterly (which increased the deposit amount).  I have emailed, faxed, and snail mailed, and no one will change the record to be more accurate, so now we’re in a catch-22… we can’t earn money without the business license, and we can’t have the business license until we come up with $500.  Our money is non-existent… we feed the pets, and then we live on yogurt and cereal.  Bad health was never so slimming!

Both of our pool motors, just one year out of warranty, died this summer.  We couldn’t afford the $300 to replace them, so we’ve had a pool-less summer, and that really depresses me.  My FMS always feels better after pool exercises.  We’ve cut back on our doctor visits as well, because we can’t afford the visits or the meds… less pain medication makes me less productive and just takes and overall toll on my peace of mind (or last there of).

We lost our pet food sponsor, Wild Kitty, after practically a year and a half.  Suddenly our rep said it was too expensive for them to donating, even though I’d previously begged them to stop giving us the expensive frozen food, and to just send up the cheap, homemade kits.  After some panic, and pleas to other agencies which didn’t garner any response at all, I’ve started to make homemade cat food completely from scratch, using the recipe on Dr. Lisa Pierson’s website.  Here’s a link:  homemade cat food recipe.  The recipe is surprisingly simple, very few ingredients, and all the supplemental vitamins were super-cheap from iHerb.com (I even got a bunch of free books with my order).  So, it looks as though we can keep all the pets in their homemade food for many months, as it’s cheaper than canned.  Other than being a bit worried about their humans the pets are doing wonderfully, and they all look beautiful and in good health.  Las Vegas is till in such a terrible condition, pet-wise… we’re up to 120 cat euthanasias per day, from 60 per day last year.  It’s all the foreclosures… they just keep on coming.  Ours may be next.

So you see, I wanted to talk to you, but I didn’t want to become Debbie Downer.  Our household is consumed by an overwhelming sense of despair—tomorrow our electricity and cable are due to be shut off because we can’t pay our bill.  That’s what is on my mind all the time, and what I’d want to write about.  It’s horrible for me to keep it all in.  On the other hand, I wish I’d been blogging during the Olympics, which brought so many smiles to my face.  I guess every dark cloud of a life can dig up a silver lining with a bit of effort.

Today was the first day of the SuperZoo convention, which I love every year, but Flippy has been sleeping for the past 24 hours almost nonstop, so we missed the first day.  I hope we’ll get there tomorrow… we count on those samples and donations to help keep the pets fed.  I hope I might be able to post some fun SuperZoo stories for you, because someone always invents a product which solves a big pet-owner problem!  If I don’t show up to post in a few days we’ve just lost our Internet, and I’ll be back as soon as we can pay the bill or get to a library.  Ah, the exciting life of the middle-aged and unstable.

I do love you.  Many of you have been extremely kind and generous behind the scenes, and you’ve kept me going, even making me cry happy tears sometime.  I hope we’ve about hit rock bottom, and maybe we’ll start to see a light above.  Thank you for sticking around!

p.s.  I’m looking for donations of older sports trading cards, well, I’ll take donations of any sports or Pokemon trading cards if you have some you want to get rid of.  I figure it’s a nicer thing than asking for money, and it’s hard for me to get out to dig for stuff at every yard sale.  So, should you find sports cards or memorabilia while clearning, please consider donating it in our direction.  I can take care of postage if you want, and if you’ve found something valuable, I’ll let you know and buy it from you.  I’m trying to find ways to raise support for the shelter whích isn’t just “send us cash”, so I hope this is a unique idea.  My dream is to put an advertisement in the back of a magazine like “Family Circle” or “Woman’s World”, in case women end up with cards from adult kids or husbands and don’t know what to do with them.

It’s taken me 12 weeks to have the courage to write this blog entry… that’s what depression does to you.  Baby steps.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 09/09 at 11:11 PM
The Litterbox • (3) Comments • Permalink
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