Thoughts for Barter

Talk about starting the week off on the wrong foot. Hopefully this doesn’t continue as it’s been bad news after bad news for the last couple of days. My waking moments are filled with one stressful moment after another and my sleeping moments, as is evident by my last post, provide no solace either. But enough of my whinning.

Let’s recap Round 9 shall we:
bills have started to pile up,
I have no real income,
stress has outweighed and has even effected the stress relief of the gym,
my beatings during the day are so bad my nights do not provide good sleep,
I contemplated bankruptcy but decided to try out debt assistance first,
strong winds blew down yet another tree,
I can’t prop up the tree by myself,
there isn’t anyone around to help me prop up the tree,
to fix the pool heater on the vacation home will cost about $2800,
I lost power to the vacation home,
of the remaining 5 houses, 4 have just entered foreclosure.

Yeah, I took a real thrashing in Round 9. Wait. It’s already the 7th of Oct. Heh, looks like some of this occurred in Round 10. Well, Round 10 looks to be exciting too. On the bright side I may actually accomplish human hibernation through part of Fall and all of Winter. Hm, that’s not right. The bright side doesn’t seem like much of a bright side.

Ok, enough of my dramatics. It’s not that bleak. Anthony’s family, my sponsored child through Children International (www.children.org), only makes $90 a month. Now, you make wonder how someone in my situation can afford to sponsor a child for $22 a month when I can’t even pay my bills. That’s actually quite simple (I take that back. As it turns out it wasn’t so simple so if you want to save yourself from my insanity and avoid experiencing exactly how much I can stray off topic skip the whole quoted section to the very bottom).

Think about it this way. I see an ad or was approached by a representative of Children International and I was asked to help sponsor a child for less than 80 cents a day and I declined thinking “I can’t even pay my own bills how am I suppose to help someone else,” and walked away without giving it a second thought. Then I go home, turn on all the lights in my house (even the bathroom though I not going to use it), turn on my cable tv (though I not going to watch anything), turn on my radio, check my iPhone, and snack on all the junk food I just bought that will undoubtedly negate any gains I would have attained at the gym. Then as I choke on a greasy chip and almost black out I realize how wasteful I am and how I probably could afford to help someone else if I could just turn off the tv I am not watching anyway! Then I invisibly slap myself (heh heh, I like this phrase, I’m keeping it Rollie) because I realize that I must be going out of my mind because I just made all that up and have no idea why I am talking about Children International in a post that should be about my Las Vegas challenges up to date. Just to make it clear I do not have cable, do not watch tv, DO NOT have an iPhone (that stupid “sent via iPhone” I get in e-mails makes me want to put my head through my monitor), and do not have much food at all to even consider buying junk food. I was just approached by a cute girl so I signed up (hahahahahahaha, oh boy. Hmm, has anyone seen my marbles? hahahahahahaha). Seriously though (if I can even really be serious), I have thought about canceling my sponsorship due to my lack of funds and I always decide that I live a very privileged life that can afford $22 a month to help someone who has nowhere near the conveniences I take for granted in life.

Anyway, as I was saying, the bright side is that I learned a lot from this whole experience and when I am done here (before 2009 arrives) I am going to get a fresh start (handicapped by my pitiful credit score of course) and show that being knocked down does not mean being knocked out.

Enjoy the month. The new year approaches near.