Chelone, you can slam things around. That is what I do when I am having a crabby day. It must be something going around. I got up this morning just plain angry! And I don't recall having a bad dream that brought on the anger either. Saucy, I sure know what you mean about "getting the furniture presentable" before taking pics of anything. I have an additional problem....most of it is so surrounded by other items that I cannot get a clear view to take pics. I have several pices of furnishing I would like to add to that thread, if it were not for the above drawbacks. It will be fun hearing the name of the new member of Marie's family. One of the couples in our congregation have a very large family, and new great grandbabys arriving frequently. The latest is a boy, and I cannot remember the unusual name that the poor child will be living with. I am seeing a nickname in his future. Oh my! Mary, what a bummer. My sister is prone to having Strep throat almost with every cold. I do not recall ever being diagnosed with it, although it used to be thought a forerunner of Rheumatic Fever, and I 'was' diagnosed with that. Sister was not, so who knows? Thank goodness there are great antibiotics now that nip it in the bud. I hope you are already feeling better. I hope Scarlet Fever is not going around. Our Tim was telling me about a bout that he had with a "blazing red face", etc., just a week or so ago. LOL, V ! An Agave preparing to devour you! It does look rather menacing. :-) Ah, taxes...that is one perk of being in the financial condition that we are in. Filing a tax report has been a thing of the past for many years now. I certainly do not miss attempting to make out Nolon's self employment taxes. I would literally get sick every year that I did it. He was very bad at not keeping good records of any of his work and income. I always feared we would be audited and I would be hard put to come up with proof. I was very careful to err on underestimating our deductions and depreciations. After putting out extra bucks (only once) to pay for the filing, a good friend (my former employer) taught me how to do it myself. Julie, my mom was the neatness freak. If she saw us so much as to pick a piece of link off our clothing and drop it on the floor she would admonish us to " Pick that up and put it in the coal bucket"! Her house was never dust and debris covered like mine has become. :-( Part of mine is the hair clusters (like Chelone frequently speaks about). :-) And then there is all the residue from the wood stove, not to mention plant debris, and tracked in stuff from both of our shoes. I must sign off and tote in the firewood for the day, before getting ready for my Tuesday's trip to town. Marian

Having first hand experience, the alcoholic's financial and other consequences will continue until THAT PERSON stops drinking and gets help for the depression issues. First off, I encourage you to be sure to take care of yourself and your emotional state through this period. Find Al-Anon for yourself and attend meetings. You appear to be a caring person so please care for yourself. I want to state that my comments that follow are made because you mentioned the alcohol abuse. If you were ONLY talking about depression, my comments would be different. Please keep that in mind. I believe that once a person crosses the line with drinking, a different approach is called for. I believe a true friend would try and find the person and help get them medically stable. Give the person names of doctors/treatment centers to call. If the alcoholic didn't make the call for help and if the alcoholic is a danger to themself, I believe a true friend would work with the person's family and attorney to have the person committed for help...to a state facility, if needed. I don't believe a true friend would pay bills or stand in line for Social Security. Is this hard to do - absolutely yes. A friend who does these things without the alcoholic is a perfect example of someone who cares, but who by these methods of caring, is allowing the affected person to continue not facing the conseqences of drinking and not getting help. I believe a good friend has to realize that the alcholic has to help themself. I believe a true friend would do what they could to find the person and then encourage the alcoholic to get help. Initially, a good friend would identify resources for help. Without this step, nothing else (including finances) will matter. I know alot of recovering alcoholics with issues of depression. Many of them have absolutely been to the bottom...but have come back. I know doctors and lawyers who have lost their licenses for life. I know other professionals who will never work in their original field due to the distrust that resulted from their past drinking/non-attendance/dishonesty. I know people whose families would have nothing to do with them... in some cases for years and in others forever. Yet, because each of these people got to a point in their own life where they didn't want to keep experiencing negative consequences, they chose to get help. They chose to take the steps to get a life back. They alchoholic wanted it more than they wanted anything else. Struggling back isn't easy but it can be done. If you want, contact a treatment center near you and make an appt to go in and talk. You won't be turned away. As I also mentioned, go to Al-Anon for yourself. You will find from others who've been in your shoes as a concerned family member/friend the best way for you to handle the specifics of your situation. That said, an alcoholic who suffers financial and other consequences can make it back if they choose...

"Fortunately we never used my income for daily living expenses. We are, however, missing our ability to make capital purchases." If I may be so bold, what did you use your income for? Did you use it to establish college funds for the kids and nest eggs for you and your spouse? That's the smart way of doing it, and I know a few people who have managed to do that, even where I am, in Washington, DC. What amazes me is that I own a townhome in one of the more expensive area of the nation, and I manage it on a single salary. I'll admit that my ex-wife and I bought when the market was low, but after she and I split I kept the house. It was EXTREMELY tight at times, and I'm still carrying too much credit card debt that I'm working on erasing. There were some really tight times when I truly thought I was going to have to either get rid of the house or plunge into the bankruptcy option. Then my job situation changed for the MUCH MUCH better, I'm sitting on nearly $150,000 equity in my home (housing prices in my community have gone NUTS in the last 3 years), I'm socking 23% of my paycheck away into a 401K (the maximum I can go) plus more into other funds, and I'm still keeping ahead on all of my other payments. I use my credit cards too much, there's no doubt about that, but I keep it to a dull roar, and over the past two years have erased about $5,000 of $12,000 in credit card debt and moved much of it to cards that have interest rates at or below 10%. Living within one's means isn't difficult for most people. It takes discipline and EDUCATION on the wise use of credit. That's the kicker. The credit card companies that were approving everyone and their 1-year-old brother (the agressive marketing of revolving credit to college and even high school students should be illegal, or heavily curtailed in my opinion) largely have only themselves to blame for their losses no matter how much they whine about it. They weren't educating people about credit use, and it's hurt a LOT of people. One of the things that I did with Navy Federal was write member educational materials on credit use.

Residential foreclosures 'can' be interesting & a bit exciting; but, it was the commercial ones that always kept me at the bank late with my calculator. I once shut down & foreclosed on a new Chevy/Buick dealership who had been commiting fraud & was out of floorplan with GMAC. In other words, he'd been 'cooking the books' to GMAC. When the originating loan officer came slithering into my office with the files loaded on a cart I knew it was going to be a long week! It took me days just to figure out what we had mortgages on, what was covered under our UCCs, & what personal property we'd liened as secondary collateral. In the end, I had all of the parts inventory, the land/buildings of the dealership, the personal residence of the dealer, his second home in a resort area, and a third lien on his first-born son! lol I arranged a 'sting' operation with the Sheriff & we entered the dealership by surprise shutting him down on the spot. He was taken away, under arrest, by the Sheriff. I was left operating the dealership for the rest of the day! At 6:00 p.m., I ordered all of the doors locked & the "Closed" signs put up, called all of the employees into the showroom & gave them the bad news that they no longer had a job except for half a dozen I needed for a week to help me figure out where everything was. There were huge environmental issues with the property because the EPA regs hadn't been followed for all of the used oil, etc. coming from the repair shop. About 3-months after I shut the place down, I held a 3-day auction for all of the parts inventory. We went 12-hours/day for 3 straight days! I was pooped. We tried to sell most everything in lots but eventually it was one tire at a time & one bin of bolts at a gavel. I had about 1,000 people at the auction & had to make arrangements for an ambulance/fire truck to be on-site in case somebody got faint from what they'd just paid! :) Then, after all of the 'stuff' was gone I still had to get rid of the property. Because of the environmental issues the foreclosure auction was a dud & I ended up bidding it in to REO. Undaunted, and being responsible for unloading that dog for the bank...I started making phone calls. After terse negotiations that continued over about a year period of time, I sold it to a multi-conglomerate & they built a national chain restaurant that we're all familar with on the site. Then, had to evict the man's poor family from their home of over 40 years & foreclose it. I took everything they owned (except that first-born son who was a JD & I didn't think he would bring much in the open market!). The borrower had signed a personal guarantee so I even took their boat, jet skis, even the lawn tractor. I was relentless over the course of 12-18 months. My borrower's still in the slammer for bank fraud...plus GM got him crimmally as well. He'll be out soon & I'm very glad I don't live in the same area anymore because I'm quite certain he's not my friend. But, gosh...he could have avoided the entire sorrid affair by just coming into the bank & saying, "Help, sales are down!" Instead, he chose to commit fraud. Do the crime, do the time. It's a good lesson for the Forum though. If anybody reading these threads is one of those homeowners who's having trouble with an ARM...go talk to your lender. Don't wait until you're 90-days delinquent & they don't have as many options to help you. /t