Perspective (& non-bullets)

I don't want to say anything specific here, but a blogger friend of mine is having a hellish time right now and I feel absolutely terrible for her. It makes me put my own woes in perspective and realize that I really have nothing to complain about (which I knew anyway). I haven't been depressed all the time- it comes and goes- and I am trying to do something about it by getting plenty of sleep and getting back into regular exercise- which ALWAYS improves my life-outlook. 

We start classes tomorrow and I don't feel ready- another week would have been great, but that's not how the calendar is set up. I have syllabi ready for both classes and know what I am doing tomorrow, but Wednesday is still not prepared. And I have a manuscript review due Thursday. And need to finish some minor revisions of a paper. I just feel like my home office desk is a big mess (because it is) and should probably clear it off today, so that I can feel organized.

We are still progressing with the remodeling stuff, but have hit a snag with... you'll never guess... financing. We don't have enough equity to cover the whole job (which we knew), so we are looking into doing a HUD 207(k) loan. They base your loan amount on the value of the property AFTER the work is done. We have to wait for the contracting bids to come in, then have the appraisal done and see if the math works out. If not, we may do part now and the rest later. The same day we looked into this, we also got the BIG bill from our architect. He had told us an estimated amount for the whole job, but I didn't know we would get one bill that accounted for most of it. And he doesn't take credit cards. Ouch. Between that and knowing that the potential loan requires a down payment, we are feeling quite poor- which is silly given our income. We just don't have thousands of dollars just lying around to cover these things. We'll see what happens, I guess.

Otherwise, 2009 is not great so far, but it's not terrible, either. I spent the first week of the year without my car (the hybrid), because there was a part that needed replacing. They had trouble diagnosing the problem, then needed to order a part AND the tool to replace it. It seems fine now. Then our other car (almost 9 years old, 64,000 miles) needed a new muffler. And anything costing us lots of money right now is not welcome because of the remodeling plans. I'm sure we'll figure it out. 

I haven't written a really thoughtful post in quite a while- I'll have to work on that...