Melancholy, baby

***This is just a venting post and not meant for anything to anybody but me.***

I've been down in the doldrums a bit lately. I'm not entirely sure why, but I'm certain it's probably for selfish reasons.

I found out today (quite by accident) that our house payment is going up $260 per month because our mortgage holder made a mistake in figuring our escrow account and what our personal property taxes would be. I've contacted the county because what I was quoted when we closed on the house is over $2,000 less than what the loan company says they were given. I went to the website today and can find NOTHING that supports what the loan company says. I can't even find anything that supports what we were told. All in all, it has given me one of the worst headaches of my entire life.

I'm already struggling to figure out how I can cut back on expenses over the next few months so I can get things paid off. Adding this increased amount to our payment is awful. The payment already went up $100 on January 1st so I wasn't expecting any increase again until next year. What really gripes me is they sent us an escrow overage check in November (which I used because we needed it then) and I discovered in January when I was working on taxes that they'd made a different error so I contacted them to investigate it.

Once they figured it out, they said we owed more. I am literally sick to the bottom of my feet. This is a real test of my faith and I've been sitting here all day wavering between nausea and tears, praying as I go. This is not something I can or will discuss with Ron. He's already pretty sick about the situation that we're in because of his health anyway. This would not be something that he needs to worry about when he's trying to get his strength back.

We are still having well/sprinkler issues. The well people insist it's the sprinkler; the sprinkler guy insists it is the well. The cheapest solution for us is to spend approximately $500 to hook our sprinkler up to the city water supply. Oh yeah, that's something I really look forward to. That's $2500 just thrown down the tubes with the cost of the well.

In addition to that, we have to have our retaining wall/rock in this summer. That's probably another $500-$1,000. We were supposed to have it in last summer but they cut us some slack due to Ron's health. I don't imagine they'll be as easy this summer.

On top of all of that, I still have the downstairs to finish. That will be the last thing that gets done since no one really uses the space.

We have our life savings in this house - all of the stock options that Ron has ever earned and everything else that we've poured into it. I don't think I can face saying that I failed and cost him so much. He obviously can't start over and I don't know that I can either. Maybe I can get a job at McDonald's working from 6:00 - 10:00 in the evening or 5:00 - 7:00 in the morning. I don't know. All I know is that I've just got to keep that knot at the end of my rope from unraveling and my focus on God.