Just When You Think You've Got It All Figured Out..

It's been a rough couple of weeks. We can't make the car payment and I'm seriously considering going back to having a day job to make ends meet. But I'm not sure I can get away for any sort of regular job. I guess here is where I'll figure it out...or not.

A week ago Thursday, my husband, Troy called his father to wish him a happy birthday and learned that his father's cancer is back with a vengeance and the doctors don't expect him to live more than a couple months. They have a complicated relationship and have just recently started talking and now this. I'm sure it's worse for his father than it is for Troy, but....Friday he called from work and said that he was feeling depressed and thinking about suicide. No real plans, just thinking about not wanting to be alive. I'm not supposed to tell anyone or do anything, but here I am, wondering how serious it really is, wondering if a plan was coming.

When they originally talked, his father didn't feel like having visitors and said not to come. On Tuesday, he called and had changed his mind. We didn't have time to find a dog sitter, so I just stayed home holding down the fort. It was a nine hour trip each way so Troy left in the evening to be there by morning. He was hoping for a nice quiet visit at the house and a chance to relax before the trip home. Not so much. When he got into town he called and learned that the pain had been too much last night and his father was in the Emergency Room waiting to learn if he was being released or admitted. The man was in so much pain that he couldn't stand to be touched in any way. Troy said that he looked a lot like his father (Troy's grandfather) looked when he was near death.  It was very hard to see his own father in that condition. When I mentioned that we'd had a storm, he used that as an excuse not to spend the night but to come home that evening. I was relieved when he arrived home safe, but he was noticeably shaken.

We hoped that Troy would get in a day of work before we traveled to visit our sons, their significant others, and two of our grandchildren across the state. His dispatcher didn't have anything for him, so we knew it would be a bad week financially--one day of work just covers his health benefits.

One of our sons had come for a visit a few weeks earlier and had left some things that he wanted us to bring to him. I assumed that wouldn't be a problem, but Troy had decided that we needed to take the motorcycle and there wasn't enough storage on the bike for everything. He had gone out and arranged to buy a trailer, so we thought we had it figured out. On Friday as we were getting ready, we discovered that at highway speeds the trailer swung wildly behind the motorcycle. This wasn't going to work.

With his absolute determination not to take the car meeting with the absolute fact that we couldn't take everything we wanted any other way, we hit an impasse. I have no idea why it was such a big deal, and just kept suggesting we take the car. That just made him angry. Angry with me for even suggesting such a thing. Angry with our son for not taking everything he brought home with him the first time, Angry with himself for not being able to make the trailer work. Manic anger is anger like no other. Imagine a full grown man throwing a temper tantrum like a toddler and you start to get a picture. But of course it's much worse than that....

When we finally got going, in the Prius, he was still ranting and raving. Fortunately he started winding down before we arrived and was able to hand off the stuff to our son without making a huge deal of it.Oh, he mentioned his frustration at not being able to ride the motorcycle, but at least it was civil. That son's wife chose not to join us for a cookout at the other son's home because she wasn't sure how calm it would be.

We got to spend time with three of our four sons and their families as well as Troy's mother and it was about as calm as a day with family and a bipolar husband gets. We even stayed for brunch the next day and  had a good visit with all of them together.

On the way home, Troy started complaining that the car seat was uncomfortable and that it was bothering his back. As a truck-driver he was used to driving less than ideal vehicles for long trips, but he gave in and allowed me to drive most of the way home. He was still complaining when he went to work on Monday. By the time he got home we had decided to visit the walk-in clinic.

Shots, pills, a note from the doctor for two days off work and we were home together for his recovery. He went back to work on Thursday and was in so much pain that he couldn't concentrate and had to come home around noon. Not wanting to have to find someone else on short notice for Friday, the dispatcher didn't have work and told Troy to recover and be ready to work over the week-end or Monday. He didn't get a call for Saturday or Sunday and is sure he's going to be fired, so I ask him to call and find out about Monday. He's told to call in Monday morning and the dispatcher should have something for him. It's not uncommon, but he's nervous and we really need this paycheck.

So here I am, wondering what I could possibly do to earn enough to keep us afloat while he figures out what's going on. I'm praying that God will work this out for us--we've seen a lot of that in the past and have no reason to doubt things will work out again. I'm never sure what my responsibility is in all this. I know that my availability at home is vital to have my husband working--he still has to call me several times a day to talk and if I'm working outside the house that can't happen and he'll end up quitting his job for one reason or another. Of course, he may lose his job anyway. God help me.

Launching my business

My husband overspent on what he got me for Christmas and I’m totally excited. It’s a workshop. My husband asked if it was alright to spend the $375 to sign me up for the Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop, and while we agree that it is a lot of money for someone planning to quit their day job, it could also be invaluable for someone launching a writing career.  I’m going to Ohio in April! Alone! To meet with other writers and the people who work with writers! It’s an opportunity I hadn’t really dared to dream of!

We have just learned that Social Security Disability has a “back-to-work” plan that includes 9 months of checks after a job has started. We notified them when Troy started truck driving and we were worried because we were getting checks, so he called the number for “back-to-work” information and learned that it was not a mistake and we will not be paying any of that money back, so we are using it to help launch my business. We used one check for the workshop and we will pay for a room reservation with the next month’s check. We do have to bring in the check stubs for these nine months as soon as they are over to verify everything, but with full-disclosure, we shouldn’t have any problems.

I’m a little nervous about this workshop. I’ve never been to any sort of writers’ workshop and I don’t even know what to wear, much less what to say or do. I’m pretty sure there will be other mere mortals at this event and there’s time enough that I can do some research before I get there.

Fear of Flying

I guess I should be calling this fear of trucking, but that doesn’t have such a nice ring to it. My husband is all signed up for truck driver training. He is going to get some training, get a license, and get a good job so that I can quit my day job and work on writing.

To those who believe that being self-centered is part of the bipolar disorder, take note—it may be part of some episodes, but it is not a constant for people with bipolar. If your partner is always selfish, it’s not the disorder, you’ve hooked up with a jerk.

Ok, so the thing is that he has passed the DOT physical for the license and got the doctor to sign off that his bipolar will not affect his ability to drive safely, but I am worried that potential employers will see that he has been on disability for mental illness for the last several years and decide that they don’t want to hire someone with a serious mental illness on his record.

Of course he doesn’t want to believe that it will be a problem. Neither do I, but I know that stigma and prejudice are out there and with so many people looking for work, employers may find reasons to hire people who are physically and mentally healthy over someone who has been hospitalized within the past year for mental illness. He might not be able to get health insurance through an employer because of his history.

Because between my paycheck and his disability we are earning too much money, he doesn’t qualify for financial aid, so we will be taking out a loan for the full amount of his tuition, fees, books, etc. which means that instead of getting ahead and being able to quit my job, we may be in debt and I may have to continue to work even after I’d be able to retire in order to make up enough money to pay the debt off.

Maybe the books will do well enough that I will be able to use that money to pay the student loans. Maybe I’m crazy to be worried and he will find a job when he finishes his class and he will be able to pay the bills and the student loan and allow me to quit my day job.

Whatever happens, we are trusting God and I’m not going to panic. In case I forget and panic, please remind me.

Up and Running

My schedule for the bipolar spouse project has everything up and running by now, but the only thing really running is me and I seem to be running in circles. This is a lot more time consuming than I remember. Of course last time around I started with a captive audience at Prodigy and I didn't have Facebook and Twitter and Blogspot to worry about. I just had a simple website with maybe a couple dozen articles, the class, the discussion list and the newsletter.

The good news--or the bad news, depending on how it turns out--is that I am seriously looking for ways to quit my day job. In the past this wouldn't have helped much because I have a husband home on disability who wants my attention every two minutes when I'm at home. But if he's not home to distract me I can actually get some work done.

My husband is getting manic about truck driving again, something he did for a couple years about 15 years ago, and if he can actually get his act together and do it we will have a reliable income that is sufficient to support us, and I will have whole weeks of uninterrupted time.

Not sure I can handle that--been known to sit at the keyboard and work on a book project for days on end when not interrupted by something--but if I set a schedule for myself if just might work.

Thanks to a "social networking for authors" class by Kai Wilson, I will probably have a whole "to-do" list and a marketing plan to work with. I'm not sure I can keep up with the class right now, but I'm doing the assignments on my days off and taking notes. I will probably be tweeting about my blog posts before she's done with me and I don't even know what that means now.

I'm not sure how I feel about the truck driving thing. It is probably a good fit for my husband because he enjoys almost everything about it. He has a good driving record. He is stable on his medication and stir crazy at home. He needs a job where he is pretty much on his own because he doesn't get along well with most people if they spend a lot of time together. That's his big issue with the bipolar disorder--he doesn't play well with others and he's prone to telling the boss exactly what he thinks, which isn't usually complimentary. Not a lot of jobs out there where you don't have to deal with people on a daily basis. He's not prone to road rage--thank goodness, he can tolerate "stupid people" (his term) in other vehicles. He just can't stand to share a room with someone who isn't aware of his opinions.

Still, will he drop out before he he finishes the training? Will he finish the training and be unemployable because of his illness? Will he be employable, but uninsurable because of his illness? Will he quit or get fired a couple months in?

Life is full of risks. This one could pay off big or put us into debt for a long long time. Gotta love that manic energy. We're swinging for the bleachers here.