Brownies and Beer

"The heating unit has gone out and it will cost five hundred and..." The rest of what the man was saying was drowned in the immediate buzzing in my head.

  You have got to be freakin' kidding me! Five hundred plus more! Aaarrrggg!

  Welcome to my life. Let's rewind to December 31, 2009. My husband is active duty military and gets his next set of orders---to Mississippi. We own a house that we can't sell, so in July 2010, he packs up and moves to Mississippi while our children and I stay in our home in Virginia. Life is hard being apart, but we are blessed that he is only in Mississippi and not in Iraq or Afghanistan. Fast forward to January 2011. Five days in to the new year, I get a call from my boss.

"Well, I need you to take this position at another office forty-five miles away. A raise for cost of living adjustment? No, I'm sorry, the company can't do that. You pretty much have to take this job or we will have to terminate your position. Oh you can't take it? Too bad. Well, thanks for 10 years of hard work. Get with us about possible unemployment."

  Great. I now have joined the swelling ranks of the unemployed, I have two small children and a house that has suddenly gone from something I love to something I have to get off my hands--fast!

  The end of February finds me driving half way across country with two kids and a geriatric cat, my beloved home in Virginia is empty, waiting for a renter. I figure things will get better--we will be together as a family again and I will be able to find a job with no problem!
Six months later,the house is rented (yeah!), but I am still unemployed. The problem I have found isn't that there are no jobs here, but that no one is paying worth squat. Unless you are an engineer of some kind--which I am not. I have had numerous issues with my unemployment (thanks Virginia for being so understanding that a grownup can't live on $9 an hour and actually pay bills and daycare).
    Now, as if I don't have enough going, my husbands ex decides she wants to wrangle more child support out of him. Well of course she does.
So my husband pays the new higher amount with no fuss (I don't fuss out loud--this is his responsibility and he is doing a great job of not shirking),and then we start getting the phone calls from our property management back in Virginia.

"The roof is leaking. No it wasn't a result of any damage from the hurricane. It's from a bad repair job a few years back, so insurance won't cover it. $1200 to repair or $11,000 to replace"
"The plumbing in the kitchen is not working. I think we will have to tear up the floor and slab to re-route it through the garage. We will get an estimate to you soon, but probably in the ballpark of $8000.

Today was the final straw for me. My husband is out of town for work for the month so I get the call from Virginia.

"The heating unit has gone out and will cost five hundred and..."

After that lovely phone call, I thought I would have to go find a herd of cows and sacrifice them all to appease what ever god or goddess I have pissed off. A person can't have this much bad juju on them---can they???

Obviously I can.

  So I got the kids down to an obscenely early bedtime, and proceeded to sit on the couch with half a pan of brownies and some ice cold beer. Some Jeff Buckley on the iPod, the geriatric cat next to me, and my brain slowly being reduced to mush with stress overload.
Yes, there are people with much worse situations out there, but as I chase that lovely crusty chocolate-y goodness with a long pull of beer, I can't seem to care. My problems will all be there tomorrow, but tonight, tonight things are looking better through chocolate colored glasses!