Update!

In my last post, I told you that Talina at ripperarts.etsy.com was going to let me know when she finished the project with my yarn, right? Well, she did! You can see her final result at http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=20099238, and the original yarn at http://www.etsy.com/view_transaction.php?transaction_id=12681483. Yay!

Now if I could just get more people to buy my yarn...

I feel so special

Ok, so I told you all that I had opened my Etsy shop. What I didn't mention is that I've made one sale so far. (I was beyond excited!)

The very sweet lady who bought my yarn just sent me a message today, to let me know that I've been featured on her blog! http://ripperarts.blogspot.com

She linked to my store, put up a picture of the yarn she bought, and wrote that she's almost done with the project she decided to make from it. I'm so excited to see what she made!

Interesting...

I really should post my issues here more often - every time I do, I get an answer within hours. This time, a brief web search on lunch revealed that, come July, there will be a new student loan program that will be amazing for me. It will reduce my monthly payments by about $200, and at the end of 25 years the government will forgive the remaining amount! (In my case, that forgiveness comes to about $75,000.)

If I had learned about this program a month from now, it would have done me very little good - you see, it requires that I file my taxes as "Married, filing seperately" so that the payment will be calculated from only my income. (I make less than T does). Is it sad that I'm looking forward to filing taxes now, in preparation for the Income-Based Repayment program?

I'm a mess

I started this blog thinking that it would be a fun way to keep everyone up-to-date on my life way out here. It seems to have turned into a place for me to bare my soul, pretending to be anonymous while knowing that friends and family are reading this. I'm not sure how comfortable I am with everyone knowing such unhappy things about me - in person, I try to stay positive even when I'm not feeling it. If my posting unhappy things here bothers you, please let me know.

Basically, I'm in a bad place right now. A place that screams at me to give up on making a life out here and just move back home. A place that has had me crying at work for the last hour.

Don't worry, I'm not hinting that I want to leave my husband or anything drastic like that - I'm just really stressed about money, or rather, the lack thereof. I realized this morning that paying rent is going to pretty much empty all of our accounts. And we still need to pay for food, gas, and some plastic for the apartment windows (it's cold in there!).

Yes, I know it is our own fault - we should have cut back even further on Christmas gifts, we didn't need the New Years Eve junk food, I shouldn't have run up the credit card during college, shouldn't have taken out so many student loans, and we never should have moved downstairs to the larger and more expensive apartment. None of these seemed like a big deal at the time, but I really should have though about how it would turn out. All I can see are the things I should have done differently - I can't see how I should move forward through this.

I don't want handouts - please don't think that's what I'm after. I know there are people out there who are in much worse shape than I am. I was just hoping that maybe you would be willing to pray for me and T. I don't want to ask for money - as nice as it would be, it feels...shallow, somehow. But maybe for reassurance? Guidance? Hope?