And now I have had six consecutive evenings as of yesterday without one of what had been my usual solitary can of strong (8% alcohol) beer.
As was the case with four of the previous five evenings, my younger brother drank himself insensible, and I will not sit downstairs trying to watch T.V. with a passed-out drunkard.
And since I only have one of my stocked beers whilst I am enjoying some late-evening T.V., my opportunity was taken from me by my younger brother's alcohol-enfeebled brain.
I delayed getting to bed until 10:31 p.m., and then had considerable trouble relaxing sufficiently to fall asleep because I was in something of a fluster over a realization I had made earlier concerning the massive debt that my wife has plunged me into by essentially exhausting the $43,000 that had been available in our mortgage-associated line of credit.
She did this without telling me, and committed the trespass over a period of just barely over five months.
I have always struggled to meet our monthly bills as is ─ especially the monthly mortgage. But now my chequing account is getting hit with interest payments for that line of credit ─ interest payments that do not pay the owed balance down one whit.
This month's interest payment within the past week amounted to over $230. This is money that is essentially evaporating from my chequing account and going towards absolutely nothing.
I can't even add anything extra to try and start paying down the balance of debt.
But let's say that that interest payment was an actual payment toward the debt. At the rate of $230 per month, it would take 22 years to pay off the full line of credit.
And because I am retired and have a pension income, there is no possibility of any other money source coming into the equation ─ unless I won a lottery.
I am half a year from having my 70th birthday. You can do the math and see where I would be in 22 years.
But the line of credit is not getting paid off by even a tiny portion ─ as said, the $230 is strictly a monthly interest payment and nothing more. The debt itself is not being paid off.
Consequently, I am likely going to die and never know freedom from debt thanks to my wife's selfishness.
So yes, I had trouble relaxing enough to fall asleep last night.
She is presently over in Thailand to have an extended visit at the family village home, mostly because she is concerned about her mother's health.
After I finally did fall asleep, I of course only slept in blocks of sleep. I rose once overnight just to turn on and log into my computer so that it would be all loaded and warmed up for later use.
I managed a small portion more of sleep, and was up long before 4:00 a.m. to start work on the day's content assignment for the post I have under construction at one of my six hosted websites.
My youngest stepson was still up.
I was still at work when his older brother rose around 6:00 a.m. to start readying himself for his workday.
It must have been around 7:30 a.m. or more by the time I returned to bed to try for a little more sleep.
It was raining outside.
I enjoyed a couple or more segments of sleep, and then was back out of bed a little after 9:30 a.m.
My brother tends to rely upon me to use our T9 Android 8.1 TV Box from 10:00 a.m. to fetch up episodes of some of the T.V. series we follow, so I performed that function until into the noon-hour when he broke off to return to his bedroom for some rest.
I was to learn that he was to attend a memorial service early in the afternoon for a woman he knew who was recently murdered. This could well result in him starting his afternoon drinking even earlier than usual.
I intended on adding to my own sleep quota, but my youngest stepson chose that window to have me help him fill out his income tax return for 2018.
When we got his rough draft completed, he left to take his car back to the dealership where he originally bought it ─ the dealership is buying it back. I had not realized that the lad was still making car payments each month, even though he had the car off the road since at least last October in a bid to save some money.
Now he just wants out of the arrangement entirely. I guess the luxury of driving is not as important as he once thought it to be.
In his absence I had some exercise with my 43½-pound dumbbell, and then I finally had my day's first meal.
When my eldest stepson arrived home from work, I got around to explaining that realization I wrote about earlier in this post ─ how if the line of credit interest payments were instead actual payments toward the credit debt itself, it would take me 22 years to have the debt erased.
But since the interest payments are nothing but income for the bank and do nothing by way of reducing the line of credit debt balance, the money is being thrown away.
He hadn't quite realized the situation was as bleak as that.
He seems resigned that he and his brother will be having to step up and help out with the mortgage at the very least, but he also stresses that the line of credit debt is his mother's fault and her responsibility to get paid off...somehow. It ought not to be my overriding concern.
At any rate, my wife is going to be having some interesting conversations ahead now that her two sons and I are privy to her financial shenanigans.
I started off the week feeling uncharacteristically optimistic about my lifestyle, believing that at long last I was going to be able to start placing orders with Amazon to obtain occasional nutritional supplements and so forth that I otherwise do not have access to.
I do not drive, so I am limited to shopping very locally.
Heck, I might even have looked into ordering blueberry extract ─ the following male-specific article had brought that into my consideration:
DrMicozzi.com
You may have noticed an Amazon search I made using the term "blueberry extract" at the top of this post.
I made the search, but I did not advance into actually researching how much of an extract might be adequate for protection ─ knowing that would help determine any specific product's affordability.
There is also the question about organic origins in regards to all five of the foods identified in the article ─ for instance, I recently read something about tomatoes once again being among the top 10 or 12 produce items that were found to be the most heavily polluted with things like pesticides.
Ahh! I just did a quick search for that list ─ you can find it at the Environmental Working Group's website (EWG.org): EWG's 2019 Shopper's Guide to Pesticides in Produce™.
The article also lists the "clean 15" fruit and vegetables for 2019. I am very pleased to see cauliflower and broccoli on that list.
Gosh, I have other complaints I could get into, but I do not have the time, nor do I feel in the mood.
There seems to have been sufficient sunny breaks this afternoon that I might have been able to sit out in the backyard and benefit from the exposure, but I wanted to produce this post.
Besides, I feel badly in need of a lie-down ─ I am not accustomed to missing out on that early afternoon siesta.
I will close this post with just two more photos taken last year on February 25 when my wife's niece got married ─ the photos were probably taken somewhere in the city of Udon Thani.
The groom is in the centre of both of these photos, and the bride is the beautiful woman at his immediate left ─ or the woman who is the second from your right as you look at the photos.
I don't know who the long-haired beauty beside the groom is, nor do I recognize anyone else in the photos:
No comments:
Post a Comment