I made the phone call and had the interview.  I was really concerned that having an interview meant I wasn’t as secure in my position than I had originally thought.  The interview was pretty standard.  He asked me questions about what I would do if a student was acting out or struggling.  He asked me what I thought about the use of technology in the classroom and what classes or professional developments I had been to that had really had an impact on my teaching… and finally, what my principal would say about me.

It took 30 minutes.

And at the end of it, I had a job.  Now, I’m drowning in paperwork, and I have to make an emergency trip to Florida next week to get a physical and finger prints done.  I’ve been in contact with the other teacher who is teaching the rest of the students, and we plan to meet up and plan out the seventh grade curriculum to give ourselves an idea of what the class will look like.  I think it will help me plan out the sixth graders, since I have no idea what I’m doing.

It’s a $6,000 pay cut, so that stinks, but my income isn’t the bread winning income anymore.  This is just so we can pay the debt off faster.  I want to do a good job, and I want to enjoy it.  I didn’t enjoy teaching last year, and that made it hard to get through the day to day.

This year will be different.  I will be done with graduate school, the kids will be settled, and so it will be work and family and whatever role I take in the church we find to call our home, which I don’t imagine will be very big for right now.

I can do this, right?  I made the right decision, didn’t I?  I feel so torn up.

We’re getting Khaya registered for school.  I may just go and do it in person next week since I’ll be there anyway.

Then Erin and I will come back up on Saturday, go to church on Sunday, pack for days, then get the truck on the third, have it loaded, and everyone leaves on the fourth.  I will either go on the second or on the third, depending on when my boss tells me I need to be there.

It will probably be the second.

Holy cow, it’s less than two weeks away.  I can’t believe it’s happening.

In other news, DHEC never called me today.  This means that the chance that I have rabies decreases dramatically.  The cat’s specimen would have gotten there yesterday and it would have been positive immediately, according to the woman I spoke to on the phone.

Not having the phone ring today is probably the best thing to happen in weeks.

1. Extended Family Update

I got an update from B: she found her mom.  She’s alive, but supposedly has broken ribs and some other things, but B isn’t sure how much she believes that.  At least she’s not dead, and I think that’s all that matters right now.

2. To Rabies or Not To Rabies?

Yesterday at church, two middle schoolers found a malnourished cat by the lake on the property.  The brought it into the church, and I took a look at it.  It wasn’t walking well, stumbling and running into things.  We tried to give it water, but it didn’t seem interested.  We found some ham in the fridge and the minister’s wife fed it.  It got excited and bit her finger.  Then it curled up into my lap and we fed it more.  I piece of the ham dropped onto my arm and the cat bit my arm.

I went to the doctor and they filled out a form for DHEC, but they basically said to watch the cat for 10 days.  Someone from the church took the cat home and was going to take it to the vet today.  Except, it didn’t make it through the night.  She took the cat’s body to the vet and the vet said she thinks it was malnourished and not rabies.  They decided not to test the cat.

I got a call from the rabies control center today.  I called them back and left a voicemail, so we’ll see where they stand on all this.  Honestly, I would have tested the cat.  I’d rather know for sure instead of wondering for the next ten years if every headache I’m having is the onset of rabies.  I don’t really want to die, and it’s pretty fatal.

3. Schrodinger’s Job

In all the drama of this move, Erin and I have been back and forth about whether or not I should find a job.  I don’t have to find a job, but the extra income would go directly towards the debt, so it might honestly be helpful.  We could get ahead, but I could also be stressed out like I was at my last job.

I decided to put some feelers out: I applied to a couple places and started transferring my license.  I applied to a Charter middle school that didn’t have a posting (but I heard it through a facebook group that they might) and a local university in three different capacities.

The Charter school principal e-mailed me and we talked back and forth, then he said he had a position and asked for an interview.  I called him, and we talked over the phone for awhile.

It’s not for science.  It’s for engineering.

I told him I didn’t have my certificate of eligibility yet to teach, but beyond that, I was a biology teacher with a year of chemistry to boot.  I didn’t know anything about engineering.  Was I really the person he wanted for this job?

Apparently, yes.  The other teacher in my team is in the same boat as me, but she’s been at the school teaching science for six or so years.  There’s no standards, no testing, and the kids have to apply to take the class.  The class size would be 20-24, no more than 25, and I would teach 6 out of 7 classes.  It is supposed to be very hands on.

I could have sixth graders building and fighting robots, y’all.  I could have seventh graders creating miniature wind turbines to power a light bulb or something.  I could say, “Here’s a few supplies, figure out how to make x, y, and z happen.”  HOW COOL WOULD THAT BE!?

He told me to look some stuff up online and call him tomorrow to let him know if I’m interested.  He said, “I need to move quickly because we don’t have a lot of time before school starts, and we’ll need to do finger prints and drug tests.”

He offered to higher me as a long term sub until my papers come through, he offered my daughter a seat in their school, and he told me, “I’m not really looking at other people.  You’re kinda the only one on my list.”

Well then.

That sounds like it’s mine, right?

Immediately after that, the university e-mails me wanting an interview for an adjunct science professor job, but it’ll be less secure with no benefits, even if it is in my field.  So now what?

I guess I will call the charter middle school tomorrow and tell them I’m still interested.  If they move forward with the hiring process, then I’ll contact the university and tell them I accepted a job elsewhere.  If they move forward with an interview, I will drive to Florida tomorrow.

I don’t really want to drive to Florida tomorrow (Sorry, Erin, I know you’ll read this.  Just don’t want to make that trip more than I have to!)

HPA came back on the house.  What mean is, they asked for that $4,000 off, remember?  Well, the seller said, “No, we aren’t dropping the price.”

And HPA kinda shrugged and said “okay, that’s fine, just thought we’d ask.”

So now we apparently have a house.

What that means for us in the long term, though, is that we will most likely not purchase this house because the $4,000 will go back into the house and raise the price they sell it to us for, which will then increase over the next five years, and it will probably be out of our range.

We’re okay with that because we think we can find something less expensive in different area that doesn’t have all of HPA’s requirements on it.

So long as things go smoothly, we have a move date of August 9th, which means we will probably pack the truck in 27 days, the kids will go down with the truck, Erin, two dogs, and a cat in 28 days, and I will follow in 29 days with everyone else.  From there, we will have the truck unloaded and prepare for school, which starts on the 10th.

I’ve been looking at jobs, and it’s been a pain.

The Florida DOE needs my transcripts, so I sent them.

Then the County needed them for teaching, so I sent them.

Then Florida Southwest State University needed them, so I sent them.

Then the County needed them AGAIN for substituting, so I’m waiting on that one because it’s so expensive to send them each time, and if I get an actual job, I don’t need to sub.

So far, I am in process of applying to the instructional pool for the county, and I have applied to FSW in two positions: professor of science and professor of education/dual enrollment instructor, and a position at a charter middle school close to the house.

I heard back from the middle school.  They bit the hook I dangled, and now we’re in conversation.

I’m so conflicted about all this.  I like the idea of having the extra money to help pay off the debt, but I also like the idea of not working.  At this point, I’m just going to do my best in all things and let the cards fall where they may, whether that’s me working or not.  Either way, I can always sub.

We heard back from the inspection.

HPA has asked the sellers for a $4,000 reduction in the price of the home because of the “issues” they will have to fix.

These include:

• The electrical system has a double tapped breaker (??)
• The replacement of the water heater
• The replacement of the AC
• Installing impact protection on the water heater
• The replacement of the sprinkler control panel
• And to “shock treat the green pool”

Not sure what will happen if the sellers refuse the price drop.  Not sure if that will come back on us or what, but I hope that it doesn’t mean they back out of the deal.

Gods, so help me if I posted those pictures only for the universe to crush it all again.

I. Will. Be. Pissed.

Hey everyone,

Sorry for being absent.  I got to a point where I felt like doing stuff that helped me feel better was actually a waste of time, so I haven’t blogged in awhile.  A lot of things have happened in the last few weeks, so I this post might be a long one.

Things included in this post are:

• Anxiety sucks, and I have it bad.
• We may or may not have health insurance.
• Debt update.
• House update! With Pictures!!
• How my trip to Florida went.
• The panic attack/breakdown that’s been in the works for weeks and what finally broke to make it come forth.
• Khaya is communicating with her biological brother.

I have some pretty severe anxiety.  I’ve had it for awhile.  I use to take Lexapro to help me control it, but then we started trying to have a baby, and I can’t be on Lexapro and TTC at the same time.  I also came off it when we were trying to get licensed to foster/adopt because being on Lexapro and having a mental illness is frowned upon by DSS.  I actually had to get a waiver from my doctor saying I was capable of being a parent.

My mom came a few weeks ago to help me clean out the attic.  We pulled everything out, went through it all, and then either put it in the garage, left it against a wall, or took it to the church yard sale.  Ever since then, this house has been a disaster area, and I can’t seem to keep up with cleaning it all.

Khaya has tutoring from Monday – Thursday, 10am – noon.  Zeath has karate camp every day from 9am to 6pm (minus weekends).  This house needs to be packed up, and it’s definitely not anywhere near done (or really even started), and it’s getting frustrating.  I’ve been getting really overwhelmed recently.

I need another adult in my life.  I need someone to help motivate me and help me pack and also just help talk me off the ledge every once in awhile.  I need help.  I want to go back on my Lexapro, but we may or may not have health insurance right now, and I don’t have the script anymore.  Also, I don’t have my metformin script either because when I changed OBs, they dismissed me from that practice, so they won’t give me a new script without being seen… and I can’t be seen because insurance.

I have to call on Monday to see if we have coverage through July, but there’s nothing I can do until then.

We are losing our health insurance because I resigned my position.  They bought out my contract, so I have no more pay checks coming in as of June 30th.  Luckily, that one was a nice chunk of change, so we put our first month’s rent away just in case.

I spent last week with Erin in Florida and finally saw our house.  It’s nice, but overwhelming.  We’re figuring out how we’re going to set everything up, and it’s just a lot to deal with.  I spent a lot of the time unable to shut off my brain and fighting off the panic attack that I knew was trying to come on.

My head is literally stuffed full of “What If” questions, and it’s the literal worst.

Our friends, L and A, watched the dogs for us.  They charged us $175 to watch them Thursday to Tuesday; said it was their “Friends and Family” discount.

Our money situation is shitty right now, y’all, but we didn’t have any other choice.  I told them we had the money so they watched the dogs.  When I got back, we still had the money, but then we literally had nothing else, and I was, once again, faced with some tough choices: take it out of savings (which would cause us not to have our first month’s rent and utilities) or buy groceries on the credit cards (which are, except for one, essentially maxed out again).

Here’s the shitty thing about credit card debt: You have to spend so much money on the minimum payment that you end up not having money for groceries so you use the cards again.  It’s a sick cycle, and essentially the most anxiety inducing thing I have going on in my life.

We have 21 to 22 thousand dollars in credit card debt.  This does not include the loan for Khaya’s tutoring, Erin’s car loan, or our outstanding medical bills from the miscarriage.  In terms of loans and credit cards, we don’t have a single minimum payment under $200, and the medical bills are all in need of being paid in full, which is over $1,000.

We haven’t done anything with the medical bills.  They can sit for a bit longer before we start getting into trouble with the three different hospital systems we owe money too.

In terms of the credit cards and other loans, we are paying around $950/month on the minimum payments.  Something had to give because once the next three months were up, our student loan payments may increase, and that’ll just be added money going to bills.

We decided to attempt to consolidate our loans into one monthly payment.  Generally, we can do this one one of two ways: get a balance transfer credit card or get a personal loan.  We tried the credit card route awhile ago, but we couldn’t qualify for it, so now we are attempting to take out a personal loan for the sum of our credit card debt, the car loan, the tutoring loan, and the medical bills, which comes out to around 35k.

Over a seven year period, our monthly payment will be $580-ish and some change with no penalty to paying it off faster, which we will hopefully be able to do once we start getting caught up.  And this is much much  more manageable than the essentially $1000/month we are currently paying.  Put positive feelings and vibes out there for us on this.  We really need to catch a break.

Anyway, I had a really good time seeing Erin.  I got to read every day and cuddle.  We went to the beach, we ate seafood literally every day, and went on a seven mile hike to a deserted beach on an island only accessible by boat or plane.  It was paradise.

The house has, as far as we know, passed inspection.  There are a few things that have to be done, but we met with the inspector (who was, ironically, originally from the county west of where we live currently) and she was very nice.  She told us all the things we needed to have done, and said she was going to write up a full report, but that the house looks in fantastic conditions, which is why I don’t feel concerned so much about posting some pictures from the listing:

It has four bedrooms, which means we have a guest room or an eventual nursery.  We’re going to set it up as a bedroom for now, and it’s nice and off to one side kinda by itself, so very guestly.

We got the kids registered for school while I was there.  The way that district works is by choice.  You go in and you rank all the schools from 1 to however many and then they do a lottery.  Something like 78% get into their first choice school and 95-98% get into their top three, but since we’re coming from out of state so late in the game, that didn’t happen for us.

Zeath’s IEP requires he be in a special classroom, so we have no idea where he’ll end up.  It depends on what schools have he class he needs and have the space.  Florida also doesn’t label kids as “developmentally delayed” past the age of six, so now we’re going to have to go through testing almost immediately after the school year starts.

Which is the literal day AFTER our move-in date.  Sorry, kids.

Khaya got into my next to last school of choice, which I’m not at all shocked about.  The lady in line before us had the same thing happen to her, but she didn’t seem to care.  She is, however, number two on the list for our school of choice school and they think she’ll get in easy.  I’m going to call on Monday and see where we stand on everything.

Erin still isn’t full time with her job yet.  It takes three or so weeks to do an assessment and they didn’t want to give her more than one to start with, so it’s slow going, but she got an interesting call from her assistant supervisor saying that someone just put their notice in.

This other BCBA got a job offer making considerably more than what she was making there (which holy cow, I wanna know where THAT is), so now all her clients need to be transitioned other BCBAs, and they went to Erin first.  She, of course, jumped all over it, so they’re working on her schedule for next week to start that out.

Apparently, her assistant supervisor told Erin (lightheartedly, I might add), “Now, you can call your wife and tell her the good news so hopefully she won’t stress as much!”

My anxiety has been so bad that I’ve literally been asking Erin every day how her hours are looking.  This, in turn, stresses her out.  I told her she needs to tell them straight up that we stop getting my paycheck at the end of June and if we can’t make our rent and mortgage, we will literally end up homeless.

I am literally a ball of nerves fighting off a panic attack.

The last two days have been the worst of them all.  After seeing the house, I got excited but also seriously anxious.

What if we can’t make rent?  What if we get evicted?  Will we be okay?

I was sitting at the table crunching numbers and looking at loan stuff when all of a sudden…

CRASH!

Raine, our demonic cat who is seriously pissed off that his human (Erin) left him that I think he’s self destructing.  It’s as if he’s trying to go get us to make him go away so he can hopefully see Erin again.

He spends about 30 to 40 minutes throughout the day crying for Erin.  He’ll walk all over the house looking for her and calling for her.  The first time he purred was this morning, and only after I attempted to hold him the way Erin does.

Anyway, he knocked over the crock pot in the kitchen and shattered the bowl beyond repair.  Luckily, it was a small one, so not expensive, but it was the good one.  It was the one that was seasoned in a way that didn’t make everything taste like burnt teriyaki, which our larger one does.

When I saw it laying in pieces on the floor with the last bit of the BBQ sauce spilled everywhere, I just collapsed on the kitchen floor and started crying.  The kids stood next to me and stared, unsure what to do.  I just stared at the broken pieces and equated them to my life falling apart and sobbed uncontrollably.  The kids attempted to clean it up but I had them leave because my science teacher brain kicked in and said “don’t let the kids handle broken glass,” which is the number 2 rule of the lab (number 1 is follow directions).

I called Erin in a fit.  The panic attack I had been fighting off burst forth, and heaved and sobbed so much that I started gagging.  Erin tried to calm me down over the phone, but I was inconsolable for awhile.  I started stacking the broken pieces together while I leaned against the cabinet.

“I don’t even know where to begin to clean up this mess.”

Zeath got me plastic bags and handed me paper towels.  Khaya worked to keep the dogs and cats out of the kitchen.  They both gave me hugs and tried to make me feel better.  I just sobbed more.  My eyes were stinging from the tears.

Eventually, I got myself together enough to get the mess cleaned up.  I got the kids in bed and went to sleep soon after.

The last bit of big news we have is with Khaya.  Awhile back, we were trying to encourage her reading, but she would get frustrated with a book early on and call it stupid.  I finally called her out on it: No, the book isn’t stupid, Khaya.  You’re getting frustrated with it because it’s hard to read and you’re struggling.

She scoffed at me at first, but then told me I was right and that she needed help.

So we got her help to the tune of $5,500.  They tested her reading fluency and comprehension, and she was way under.  She’s 14 in 6th grade and was reading at a 4th grade, 4th month reading level.  Tutoring was slow going at first.  Her TBI and survival instincts made attempting to read for comprehension the absolute worst thing in the world to her.  They were pushing her to go deeper and that is something she just wasn’t wanting to do.

This is apparently fairly common in foster care kids.  They’re so focused on surviving that the here and now is all that matters.  They want to skate by and get to the next point, and reading for comprehension is not like that at all.

In the first month she was there, she only gained one month worth of reading.  They told us with her TBI (traumatic brain injury) that this wasn’t uncommon.  She was only going twice a week, and it was taking her longer because of her memory issues.

We use her tutoring and reading as incentives.  She goes every day now for two hours a day (minus Fridays and weekends), and once she gets 15 days in, she can earn an app on her phone.  She was working towards Instagram, and we gave it to her.

The absolute first thing she does is look up a ton of people from her past.  She looked up her friend who was with her when she had the accident and friends him.  She looked up her biological sister, who doesn’t have an account, and she looks up her biological brother, who she starts to follow.

I, of course, see this that night when I decided to go through a random phone check.  We do those about once to three times a month as part of the contract we had her sign to have her phone after she had it taken away for deleting messages between her and her boyfriend.

I told her I was really disappointed that she didn’t talk to us about this first.  I told her I wasn’t sure we could trust her with the phone.  I went in there with the attitude of “How dare you talk to him or try to talk to him without our permission.  You are grounded, your phone is gone for three lifetimes, and you are not allowed to talk to him at all ever until you’re 40.”

And then as I’m telling her how disappointed I am and how upset we are that she would go behind our backs like this, it hits me: she’s going to talk to him as long as she has instagram, but if I tell her no, she’ll just delete all the messages and do it behind my back.

I sighed heavily and bit my lip.

“Fine!” Khaya spat at me, “If you don’t want me talkig to him, then just tell me and I’ll block him.”

He got his girlfriend pregnant at 19.  His girlfriend is 18.  It’s a cycle with her family, as her sister had her son at that age too.  I want them to break that cycle.

Then I said something completely unexpected: “I’m not going to tell you not to talk to him.  I want you to make decisions for yourself, and as much as I don’t trust him and I don’t think he’s a good influence because of what he did to you (like breaking your stuff because of jealousy and stealing money from you) and the things he said to Zeath (about how foster parents weren’t his family and he didn’t have to listen to them), he is your brother and I get wanting to talk to him.  My sister lives in Japan and I don’t get to talk to her very much, and it sucks.  A lot.  So no, I won’t tell you you can’t talk to him… but I don’t want you to lie about it either.  If you’re lying, you’re doing something that you don’t think you should be doing, so don’t lie about it.  But I’m going to tell you something, and I’m dead serious about it, okay?”

“What?” She asked.

“If he tells your biological mom about where you are or if he tries to track you down… or if he hurts you or hurts Zeath, I WILL file a restraining order against him.  I will file harassment charges against him.  I will block him and delete your account.  Because he may be your brother, but I am your mom and it’s my job to keep you safe.  If I think he’s going to hurt you or jeopardize your safety, he will utterly regret EVERYTHING.”

“I understand.”  Khaya said.  She wasn’t happy at all because she got caught and because I was scolding her for it and also because I essentially threatened him.

And that was that.  She followed him, commented on some pictures, but he hadn’t been on instagram in months, so he wasn’t responding.

Until today.

Khaya comes running up to me.  “Momma!  Can I add him??  Please??”  I look at her phone and there’s his name, requesting an add.  I talked to Erin about it, and we came up with some rules:

Yes, you can add him, but he has to add us too.  You can talk to him through instagram, but don’t give him your number.  We can talk about you getting his number and your sisters after we move so that if they give it to your biological mom, she’ll be less likely or able to stalk you around town.

I took her phone, opened up a direct message to him, and introduced myself.  I told him to please not give out her contact information to their biological mom because if/when we open up communication to them, it should be on our terms, not his.  I told him that as their brother, he was part of our family now too, and that we’d be adding him.

Then I said, “here’s Khaya” and gave back over the phone.

They messaged back and forth the rest of the evening.  He wants to talk on the phone, but I’m not quite sure we’re ready for that.  He apparently has a job making decent money.  He’s trying to do right by his girlfriend and their baby, so he seems to be getting his act together.  This is a good thing for him.  I want him to do well.  I want him to make good choices and get his life together.  I want him to be able to have a relationship with Khaya and Zeath.

But I also want to first make sure he’s not going to try an pull a fast one on us and tell the kids stuff like: you don’t have to listen to them, they aren’t your real family, which he told to Zeath when he was in foster care.

So today was a good first step.  I hope they continue.  Please let this be a good choice.

The company accepted the counter offer over the weekend.  Our agent got everything squared away and signed, and then submitted everything she needed to submit.

We got the e-mail today with the lease agreement, which Erin is scanning over to me right now.  I will print and sign it tonight and take it with our cashier’s check to the UPS store where I will have it overnighted to the appropriate people.

From this point on, the only thing between us and this house is the inspection and appraisal.  Fingers crossed that this goes well.

The only thing past this is that we need Erin’s job to get on the ball and get her to full time, but we have six weeks before that happens, so I think we’re pretty good there.

Tomorrow, I get to run around town and collect information on my kids so we can register them for school when I go down next week.  I’m both nervous and excited.

Mostly nervous, honestly.  PLEASE let this be our break.