I fell asleep almost instantly.
DarkKnight reads to me sometimes and I feel bad because we’ve been working on the Lovecraft story “The Lurking Fear” for over a month. He asked me last night what part of the story I remembered and I told him that the narrator was going up a mountain, to a spooky mansion with some guys he hired. Lol Guess what information was given out in the first sentence of the story? Lovely! He was kind of exasperated, but I fall asleep so quickly to his voice. It’s calm, measured and safe.
I definitely don’t know any more of the story this morning! However, I feel much improved, emotionally, after finally getting some rest.
Yesterday DarkKnight and I went to the bank and made a new joint account for me to pay bills out of, and I ordered a new debit card for that. The old account that we shared with PunkRock will stay active for 2 months, until we are sure all of the automated payments went through. I sent PunkRock a text about it, and he knows. Also, I am attached to his individual private checking as having access if he were to pass away, so I let him know that he needed to go to the bank to remove that permission. I think we are good on banking.
PunkRock canceled entirely his life insurance. He messaged me to know that I won’t have to pay it this month. He said that if there is a cash value, he will sign and give me the check. I am not canceling my policy - but I did call and request a new beneficiary form. It’s going to pay out 100% to DarkKnight now, rather than 50/50. Today I have to go looking for paperwork - we got a letter recently that DarkKnight was eligible to extend his policy through his old work but the deadline is at the end of this week, so I need to get the payment made. I am not sure if we will keep it long term, but we both agreed that right now we shouldn’t make any major changes until we have time to discuss it.
Car insurance - we always have had separate policies, but both of the automatic payments needed to be directed to different bank accounts now. PunkRock told me he did his but it will come out of the joint account still, due to timing. His is coming out on the 3rd, but he doesn’t get paid until the 6th. He expects me to cover this and trust he will pay me later. I will, because my name is on that account too, but it’s kinda sketchy. He says he absolutely will pay me $600 for the month on the 6th. Oh, and after he texted me about this - he actually fucking asked if I would give him $10 for gas! I was like, are you for fucking real right now dude?
I let him have $10. Old habits die hard, I guess.
The cell phones are a bit trickier, but once I looked at them, I realized that they won’t be too difficult. His is actually up for renewal, so it’s not in contract. He can just transfer it to his own name on a new account. Only, he has to wait until he has money to do this. If I were a heinous bitch, I could just shut the fucker off, but I instead told him he can keep it on until the end of the next billing cycle - like March 23rd or something. He was appreciative of that. We are probably going to have to go together when he is ready to do that. Meanwhile, I am contacting the service today and changing our plan. Dropping PunkRock and changing our plan will legit save us over $100 a month.
No longer paying his car insurance, cell phone and life insurance together will lower things $350 a month. Today will be all about budgeting. I need to know what our bottom line will be once PunkRock is no longer contributing to our household. He’s promised to pay $1200 for March, so there’s no immediate panic. I think we should be okay without that moving forward - with the $350 savings and both AntMan & BugGirl finally both paying rent starting March 1, we are going to get super close to the figure we need. I’m going to do some spreadsheets but I am not panicky about our numbers at all now that I’ve gotten some sleep.
DarkKnight and I have briefly discussed having my disabled adult son move home. We would give him a year lease and then reassess. We will have the space and it would be beneficial to get him back to baseline - he’s struggling with his hygiene, depression and lack of access to resources right now. He doesn’t have to move until June 1, so we have time to work out whether this will be helpful to everyone or not. We are currently waiting to see if he gets approved for a section 8 voucher, but he’s also in real danger of losing his disability check because he worked too many hours last year and made exactly $2000 over the allowed cap. So if he loses his disability, he’s going to have a very bad 6 months while we wait to have to have him reactivate/reapply or whatever. So his own finances will be in flux, and having him home will mean we can just assist him without having to actually pay his rent out of pocket once that shit hits the fan. If it does. His social worker has said its a real possibility. So my son will be losing $12000 in cash benefits and all of his medical insurance because he made $2000 too much. It’s frustrating.
So yeah, we need to sit down and see if it makes sense to transition him back home since we have the space. His rent payment to us would help, and also give us some breathing room to figure out his finances - we can absorb the hit to our own budget better if we can fit his rent to what he can afford. However, that depends on the amount he gets awarded from section 8, and how exactly that will work if his disability is frozen for a while. Does he immediately lose the section 8 then, or is there a buffer period? Gah! I need to follow up with his social worker. If he can hang on to section 8 for the time period, it may make sense to keep him independent if we don’t have to assist him too much.
This was all chaos I was handling previously, but it actually isn’t as daunting now that we can move him back home. It gives us a year to figure out the best way forward for him, and get him into services. He doesn’t have transportation, so again, this would help. What rent we would charge him would definitely cover the amount we need that will then be missing from what PunkRock used to contribute. Since our plan would not involve my son living here forever, we would have to figure shit out - but again, we’d have more time to see what that would look like. Lots of what ifs, so today I’m going to start making some phone calls.
DarkKnight is up for salary review, and things look positive there. When he was hired last year it was a little under market value for his position. He’s been doing research and saving his company soooo much money, he is in a good place to prove now that they need to pay him more. Minimum he should get a $500/month raise and it could actually be more. Keeping my fingers crossed because honestly he could get a bump that covers everything PunkRock was paying every month. If that happens, there won’t be anything to really reassess. Lol Instead of keeping us afloat for a while, the rent BugGirl and AntMan are paying will go into savings, and the same with my son, if he moves home. If not, we need to talk about other income streams - my kids paying us rent is definitely not a long term solution! I want them all independent and not living at home.
I feel really upbeat this morning about being able to do math. Yesterday at lunch I couldn’t even play tic tac toe. True story - our lunch table had one of the wooden peg board games, and DarkKnight and I were playing it. I kept pulling his pegs out and making it so I could win. He was like, wtf BlueBird! I would honestly space out and then look down and think, oh, if the board looked like THIS I would win. OMG I was out of it. Today so far I feel much more focused. That’s me though - if I have a plan to work, or a goal, I can for the most part stabilize myself.
I did shut down the Blessing Box until Monday, though my inbox was overflowing with offers to come and work in the overflow room and help keep it going. I can’t emotionally handle extra people in my house right now though. I am extroverted, but I am still way too raw. After the weekend I can ease back into it. I have some solid plans - friends wanna take me to a drag show Friday night and Saturday DarkKnight and I are going thrifting. I have a pre-planned murder mystery to attend on Sunday. I may cancel out of the Friday night stuff - I am not sure I am ready for a raucous night of drinking and debauchery! That is easily rescheduled though. My people are wanting to support me, and that makes everything more bearable. Oh! DarkKnight and I are signed on with a few friends to play a Harry Potter themed trivia night next weekend now too.
So yeah. Today will be some budgeting while my mind is able to handle it, and then I am going to grab the remote and binge the rest of season 3 of The Handmaid’s Tale. And cry a lot more too, I think. But the pain is less jagged today. Right at this moment.
