Sorry to whine....

But I just feel like I have to get this out.

We are drowning here. Financially. Spiritually. Emotionally. I'm ready to raise the white flag.

My house is a total trash heap. I am hopelessly disorganized. Molly is still in a crib (she'll be 4 this month), because we haven't saved up the money to get her a new mattress. Ruth is on a mattress on the floor, because we never did save up for a box spring. Heck, we are on a mattress on the floor because we threw out the hopelessly broken box springs and did not save up for new ones. We owe the hospital about $1,500 from Harry's sleep study, we owe a total of other debt of about $18k, most of which is sitting with collection agencies, who are simply waiting under the radar for a chance to attack. The phone rings all the time.

We have, above all else, an income crisis. Harry is on salary, so the only increase we can get from his income are bonuses that he is eligible for, but those do not happen on a regular basis. For me to work full time would mean after school care for everyone, and by the time you add up the $$ for that, we would probably be breaking even. I was hoping to do well at Christmas with toy sales, but with the economy being what it is, who knows if that will happen.

Please don't get me wrong, I know that there are others who are a lot worse off than we are, and I am very thankful that we do have a home, Harry has the best job he's had since we've been married, we are all healthy. But it seems that no matter what we do or what we've done in the 12 years we've been married, we have always been in some sort of financial crisis, and I'm just tired of it.

None of this is God's fault, obviously. We have no one to blame but ourselves. I'm praying that we are finally able to turn the corner and really change the direction of our lives.

Thanks for listening to me whine.