Friends and the Bipolar Hubby

This weekend again, DH has his two best friends over. Usually I abhor company, but I really seem to relax more lately if there is someone else around to keep an eye on DH.

He is still very upset about his brother and wife, every time he talks about it, he gets so agitated, I have to remind him to try not to think about it. He's truly as upset as if he was the one who had been cheated on. Every time he talks about it, he ends up needing to take a pill to calm down. From what I know, though, DH's brother is hurt, upset, depressed, but doing about as well as you could expect.

I think DH's friend Jim (the one who served in Iraq) is starting to see more of what has been going on. He's really been treating DH as if nothing was wrong, but guess what? DH has been spending Jim's money as fast as Jim can get it out of his pocket. I think Jim is starting to see that now. I know Jim gave me a weird look when DH asked me for the check card to buy food, and I wouldn't give it to him, I really wish I would've somehow been able to explain that any food in the house is there because I did NOT let DH have the check card...

Anyhow, one of the things I've been noticing is that DH's friends are really going out of their way to help me around the house, where they never did that before. Jason did ALL of the dishes before I woke up, and Jim, who is also building me the new duck/chicken setup, took care of all of them (ducks and chickens) before I left for work. I went out to do my evening chores and they were all done. It feels really good to have people being considerate again. Not that Jim and Jason have ever been inconsiderate, they're truly quality people. But before all the stuff with DH happened, they were just DH's friends and they really pretty much stayed out of the "helping the friend's wife" thing. It's been so many months where every single thing is always about DH, his ups, his downs, his meds, his appointments, his spending, his lack of job, lack of motivation, etc., and I've kind of lost sight of me in the process. And it feels really good to have someone help out, even if it isn't my DH. More "manly" stuff has gotten done at our house in the last week than has been done all year, and that feels good, too.

Oh, and since infidelity seems to be the topic of the week, don't worry about any infidelity issues with Jim or Jason, they're just nice guys who are friends with my DH. I could never ever do that to DH, and I won't. But I do appreciate them very much, that's for sure. And sometimes they both make a point out of telling DH how great I am (I believe it's an attempt by them to get DH to see how much he has been taking for granted and all that), and I do enjoy that too, because even if DH is not able to appreciate me right now, the fact that his friends think highly of me makes me remember that I am valuable.

Drama roller coaster

Today while I was sleeping, DH woke me up to tell me that his brother (my Brother In Law [BIL]) had found out that his wife of three years had been having an affair for two of those three years.

I have to say, we were all pretty surprised, I don't think any of us had her pegged for something like that....but she has always been pretty hard for me to take.

When DH's brother announced that he was getting married, we were shocked but happy--we didn't even know he was seeing anyone. I was very excited to meet her, because I have always gotten along incredibly well with all of DH's friends and family, so I just assumed that since I got along so well with his brother, I would probably find a new friend in his wife-to-be. I invited them over for a celebration dinner.

That first impression really did color all of my future thoughts about her, though, sad to say. At the time, our 15 year old cat was dying of kidney failure and I was trying to prolong his life until the quality was gone. But he was pretty skinny, and I didn't want her to think that he was skinny because we weren't feeding him or something, so I explained that he was dying of kidney failure and that I was trying to do whatever I could to keep him more comfortable. Instead of saying something like "oh, that's too bad" or even "I'm not really a cat person" or whatever, she gave me this condescending look and said "Everything dies."

That's it. "Everything dies." Because I didn't know that, I was extremely grateful to have that explained to me. Duh.

Ok, so maybe she got off on the wrong foot, right? Maybe she was nervous and said something stupid, right? I really tried hard to give her the benefit of a doubt. They were having trouble living within their means, so BIL wanted me to go shopping with her and show her how I kept our food budget down to a very manageable $125/month. We went to Aldi. That's where I buy a lot of my canned goods, because canned veggies are often $.25/can, and canned soups are .40-.85 a can. And milk at Aldi is about a dollar a gallon cheaper than anywhere else. The catch is that everything is "store brand", meaning not name brand. She would say things like "I only buy brands I've heard of". Ok.

We went to Walmart, where I bought the big bags of Malt-O-Meal cereals. "They're kind of generic, aren't they?" she said, as she stuffed a few $6 boxes of organic name-brand cereals in her cart. Last but not least, we stopped at the local scratch-n-dent store, where I splurged $2.00 on a pound can of coffee (an off brand, of course, but sometimes we don't have coffee at all, because it's really a luxury, isn't it?). She told me that she was sure it wouldn't taste good, she only buys the beans and grinds them herself.

So, my attempt to be frugal with her didn't work. I probably wouldn't be getting any phone calls saying "Carol!!! Did you see the paper??? They've got hamburger on sale for $1.25 a pound!!! Do you wanna come with???" Sigh.

And that was kind of how things went. She was not only condescending to me, but to DH's mom and brothers, too. It got really hard for me to say anything, because I was afraid one of my little sarcastic jabs would pop out, and then the family would think I was trying to start something. But I really had a tough time finding anything to talk to her about, as she knew everything there was to know about everything, and that was that.

And she was not shy about pointing out that she knew everything about everything. Someone would complain about the price of gas. Someone else would say, "Just be glad we aren't in Europe. Gas there is like $10 a gallon." And she would say, "Actually, it's only $9.45 and they buy it by the liter there." "I know because I was there three years ago." So there.

So I didn't like her, and I think that most people who gave her the benefit of a doubt as to what my BIL saw in her, found it difficult to like her, too. My thoughts about the whole thing were that when he started thinking with the upper brain instead of the one in his pants, he would realize what the rest of us already knew, and he would get sick of it and leave her. I would've put money on that scenario. My BIL changes careers and religions at the drop of a hat. I had no reason to think that he wouldn't change wives too :-) Despite the things about her that I just couldn't find a way to like, I never would have dreamed that she was lying to him for two years. But I have to say, I guess it's good that at least I didn't have much love invested in her!

DH, on the other hand, is just devastated for his brother. His brother is planning on getting an apartment and just ending the marriage. DH is almost suicidal over it. He wants to go and tell my sister in law off. He wants to go to his brother's house, even though his brother has not requested it or even hinted at that. I keep telling DH that a situation like this isn't one where most people want their brothers or sisters in law to get deeply involved, except on the support side. "Be there when he needs a shoulder, or someone to help him move, but putting yourself in the middle of this is not going to help things." And he agrees with me, and then starts in again. I do feel bad for my brother in law, I really do. I like him a lot, and I was hoping that he had found the same thing that I had found with DH prior to the bipolar rearing its ugly head.

But he's a big boy, and nobody has a life that doesn't have problems, and he has a plan to get through it, so I think he'll be ok. And if we continually offer love, support, and assistance, maybe if he really needs it, he'll ask.

DH spent the entire day being as upset about his brother's marriage as I think he would have been if he had found out something like that about me (and I am as faithful as they come). He is just devastated. Just going on and on like the world was ending.

I get so tired of all the drama. Sometimes I just let it roll right off my shoulders and don't even react to it any more. Yeah, it's terrible, what's going on with BIL and his wife. Ok, what should we have for supper? There's not much I can do about the situation, so I am not going to waste time stressing out about it. But sometimes I still manage to get sucked in, mostly because on some level I still respond to DH as if he had rational thoughts. So when a rational person, who has always been rational before, thinks that the end of the world is here, sometimes I start thinking that it must really be awful, and I start acting as if that is the case. But not as much as I used to.

OH. And another thing. He TOLD dd about it, too!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Repeat after me: Not her business. She's 14. She should not be involved in any way in grownup problems. Especially ones that involve sex. All she would ever need to know is that her uncle and aunt had problems and split up. And she wouldn't even need to know that today. Probably not until Christmas, when BIL's wife wasn't there.
I'm angry about that. He has a hard time drawing the line between "the parents" and "the kid". In other words, if it's something he would discuss with me, he has a hard time not telling her too. And that really wasn't a problem until the bipolar stepped in, either. He used to have a pretty clear idea that there are things you don't share with the kid(s). Argh.

There are all these little things that the "books" don't tell you about mental illness. And I can't begin to put them all into words, but I'm getting better at that.

Ramblings regarding mental health parity, prescription drugs, health insurance, and more!

I've been reflecting on how our lives might have been different right now, if my "good" health insurance had truly been required to provide the care that my DH needed the first time he was hospitalized. DH was in the hospital for three weeks, which is, in itself, remarkable. But he was still suicidal when he left the hospital. His psychiatrist in the hospital had begged the insurance company to allow him another few days' stay, just to see if the meds kicked in, and to make sure that my DH was truly going to be safe. He (my DH) was not only required to leave the hospital before anyone involved in his case (except the insurance company, of course) thought he was "better", but also, two of the drugs that had been prescribed for him while he was in the hospital, were not covered by the insurance at all. (As an aside, Minnesota, the state where I live, does have a mental health parity law, but it can only be applied to insurance companies that operate out of Minnesota. Other insurance companies, like mine, that are based in other states aren't affected by the law.)

I was doing some reading tonite and I read this story about a senator's son, called "What you Don't Know Can Hurt you" and I was convinced that since issues like these mostly tend to affect us working-class people, and you typically don't think that a senator would take notice of something like this, the fact that a senator was affected and decided to try to do something about it, signifies to me that there are probably a lot of unsophisticated people out here who are just being raked over the coals by their "good" health insurance, especially for mental health coverage and issues.

There is such a shortage of prescribing psychiatrists and psychiatric nurse practitioners in our area, that if my DH has a bad reaction to his meds, or if they don't work, he has to go to the hospital to get them changed, or else he can wait 6-8 weeks for an appointment. His regular physician is comfortable ordering refills of mental health drugs, but not prescribing new ones. All of this "hurry up and wait" is really hard on the patients and their families.

To me, what all of this says, is that the fact that mental health patients are not being treated in the same way as patients with arthritis, diabetes, and heart problems (parity), is probably doing a huge favor to all those people writing about how the mental health system is overwhelmed, because if people got the treatment and medications they really need before a crisis hits, then maybe it would end up being tantamount to going to the doctor, finding out your blood pressure is high, and getting a prescription for that before you have a stroke. It all seems so common sense, and yet so full of red tape.

Some of you might remember that I briefly touched on the fact that our new prescription drug plan (through my job) is potentially going to kill us next year (See Whew! post, October 6).

I cringe every single time DH takes his pills, which, even with the copays that we won't have at all next year, cost us about $160/month, which, for this newly one-income, not-rich-by-any-standard family, is quite a hefty sum, but if he stays on the same drugs that he is on right now, we will be shelling out over $900/month for prescriptions. So. We basically will probably need to start over with the meds, trying to find cheap ones that work well, because for me to pay for those prescriptions, well, it would be either DH's sanity, or the mortgage. It's a tough call, for sure. But I know I'm not the only one struggling with these issues. I know I'm lucky that I still have insurance of any kind. Like I said, I haven't mentioned any of this to DH yet, I don't need him to be stressing out about this, that's my job for now!

One of those days

Today I really didn't have much of a chance to talk to DH at all, except for the 27 times I had to wake him up because his friend Jim (the one who is going to build the new chicken house) was knocking on the door, wanting to get going. But once he was really awake, it seems like today was probably another "good" day. I'm not sure if we can credit it to the new meds, to Jim being there, or just to dumb luck, but no matter what, I'll take it.

We had a meeting for DD's IEP plan for school this morning, too. I was so proud of her, all of her teachers had wonderful things to say, and her reading level has gone from the low 4th grade level to the high 6th grade level in ONE YEAR!!! I just beamed all the way home, I'm so incredibly proud of her!!!!

Basically, aside from that, I just slept all day, until I had to take one of our dogs (Kirby--age 14, blue heeler mix) and one of our cats (Ninja--age 1, mutt kitty) to the vet. Kirby has been having some problems with losing weight, it appears that his kidneys are not functioning very well. But I was pleased to see that he had regained all the weight that he had lost in the last few weeks, so with him, we are just going to play the "wait and see" game.

Ninja, on the other hand, has been having an eye problem ever since we got him neutered about a month ago (he was one of those strays that I always seem to end up with!) Anyhow, he has entropion, a condition where the lower eyelid turns inward and the fur/hair rubs against the eye. The vet has seen this often in dogs, but never in a cat (lucky us!) so we have to hope that we can get it fixed without surgery, but it's looking like that might be a possibility. But Ninja doesn't seem too bothered by it, he just sucks up all the attention like a sponge, then flops down on the vet table and shows off his glamorous tummy, just in case someone hasn't noticed that he needs some attention. That cat would take attention over food any day, even if he was starving to death!!!

Anyhow, I guess it's been a good day, apparently any bipolar drama seems to have been contained, and that is always a very good thing!

Hope springs eternal

Well, I was thinking that I was going to post about DH's therapy today. First, he said the therapist helped him sign up with this organization that finds jobs for mentally ill people. I had thought about suggesting that, but I didn't want to offend him, and I didn't know if he was "bad enough" to get involved with something like that, but apparently he is. So my initial take on therapy today was that it gave DH some employment hope.

My second "take" on the therapy (based on DH's description, as I wasn't there), was that DH was upset. He said the therapist was asking him all kinds of questions (for about a half hour!) about me, and that if it was anyone else besides his therapist, he'd think that they wanted to "get to know me better". I think he was puzzled (as am I) and a little upset by this. Also, he apparently discussed the possibility of going to jail for the bad checks with the therapist, and the therapist apparently told him that "it might do him good to sit in jail for a few days" and he was offended by that, too. So on second thought, I didn't think therapy went all that well.

But then tonite, DH seemed more clear-headed and motivated than he had in a long long time. He made an effort to do some laundry, and, he even folded it all!!! (Since this all started, he has been really good at taking clothes out of the dryer and leaving them sit, and that's a pet peeve of mine).

I really enjoyed talking with him tonite. I wish I could be assured that his mind would still be this clear tomorrow, but I know that the odds of that are slim. But a girl can hope, right?

Irony

It's kind of ironic, isn't it, that I have such an interest in money, how to save money, how to conserve money, how to get out/stay out of debt, etc., and I suddenly find myself married to a man with a bipolar disorder, who has such an overspending problem that it could be compared to a hardcore alcoholic needing a drink!

I guess once again I should "count my blessings", because if I didn't pay so much attention to "all things financial", we'd probably be in a much darker place. As it is, things aren't pretty, and I get discouraged, but every once in a while I see a glimmer of light (for just a brief moment) at the end of the tunnel....it's been so hard adjusting our two-income middle class bills to a one-income, almost lower class income. But for the most part, I've succeeded. It's just that discretionary income has really become a thing of the past.

But all things considered, I'm reasonably happy with my finances (today anyway!)

Great blog post on living within your means

Chock full of good advice--I love down-to-earth articles like this!

From Mish's blog:

Drowning in Debt: How do we protect ourselves?

In response to Is the Fed Deflating? I received several reader question similar to this one from Mike:
Thank you for your analysis. Could you please tell me, and others, what we should do to protect ourselves per your warning below?"
"Those who ignore the warnings are likely to drown."
Sincerely, Mike

Thanks for the question Mike. It's a good question and not often discussed enough. Let's add two more words to the very end of the above warning then see if we can answer your question:

"Those who ignore the warnings are likely to drown in debt."
The best way to avoid drowning in debt is to not get into debt in the first place. Those who are in debt should attempt to get out of it as quick as they can. The way to do this is simple: Live within your means or better yet live below your means.Those who carry credit card balances from month to month are not living within their means. Far too many people treated their house as an ATM, taking out cash to pay off credit cards, only to run up credit card or auto loan debt time after time. The housing ATM is now shutoff but consumers keep buying more than they can afford. The result is that credit card debt is soaring once again.

The number one rule in all of this is:
Don't Buy Stuff You Cannot Afford

Click here to see one of the funniest Saturday Night Live skits ever.

In this tenuous jobs market (see Moonbats Active Again in Massive Jobs Disaster), one needs to be prepared for the loss of a job. It can happen at anytime in any industry. The housing spillover has just started. It is highly likely the financial sector will continue to get hit. A downturn in commercial real estate and retail appears to be starting.The Wall Street Journal reported Durable goods orders declined 4.9%. Target and Lowe's both warned. See Target Warns and Blames Florida - Lowes Blames Dry Weather.Just as the housing problem spread from subprime to Alt-A to prime, job losses are highly likely to spread from housing, to commercial real estate, to retail. To protect oneself from a loss of income, it is imperative to have actual cash savings in a money market, short term treasuries, or short term CDs. Those barely able to make home payments now and who have no cash savings, will be in serious jeopardy if they lose a job. Don't be one of them.

Have a Years' Worth of Living Expenses in Cash
Before thinking about vacations, new cars, or even investing, I would recommend for people to have 12 months of living expenses in cash, short term CDs, or short term treasuries. Those who say "cash is trash" have never lost a job for an extended period of time. I have and I know what it's like. Consider a decision to have "emergency cash on hand" as sound financial planning and as an additional means test on purchases as well. Can you really afford an expensive vacation, a boat, or a new car if such purchases would deplete your savings leaving nothing for emergencies like the loss of a job?

Buy Food On Sale
Food prices seem to be soaring. Get an electrically efficient freezer and buy what's on sale. Food can easily last three to six months or longer, if properly wrapped in plastic and/or freezer paper. My parents did this. Mom would buy what was on sale, dad would wrap it in freezer wrap and label and date the package. It seems to be a lost art.
Even as non-sale prices seem to be rising, sale prices on meat (the largest part of our food budget by far), have hardly budged for six years. I routinely get center cut pork chops for $2.49 or so but the regular price is now often $4.49 or higher. Whole chickens, vacuum sealed so they don't even have to be wrapped can be purchased on sale for .49 lb. or so. I wonder how they can raise them for that price.
Last week I bought round steak for $1.49 lb. Round steak was a loss leader at .99 lb when I worked in a grocery store in 1971. That's hardly any inflation in over 30 years! Many stores will grind meat for free. Why pay $3.98 lb for ground round when you can pick up a round steak for $1.49 and have the butcher grind it for free? It's the same thing with ground chuck. Besides, you also know exactly what you are getting that way as opposed to buying a package of ground beef wondering "what the heck is in this and how fresh is it?"
Prime rib on sale is $4.99 lb not on sale is $10 lb. A 20 oz bottle of White Rain shampoo is .99. If you buy the advertised name brand shampoo it will cost over 5 times a much and it won't clean your hair any better.If you can't afford to eat out, then don't. Even if you can afford to eat out there is nothing wrong with cutting back on the frequency and saving for a rainy day.

Consider Wants vs. Needs vs. Affordability
Do you really need an SUV? Can you afford one? What about the cost of filling it up? Auto sales persons, real estate agents, and in fact nearly every sales person's job is to convince you that what you are looking at is affordable. If one has to stretch a car payment out to 5 years to be able to "afford" it, the car is simply not affordable in my book. But even if the car is affordable what about the increase in auto insurance? The salesperson is 100% guaranteed not to mention it.
Cars, trucks, and boats are depreciating assets. If they are depreciating faster than you are able to paying off the loan, then they are not really affordable. It's best to pay cash for such items. But if you can't do that, at least make sure you are not upside down in the loan a few years down the road.
Interest only loans and teaser rates on houses do not make houses affordable either. Many are finding that out the hard way right now. Perhaps the sales agent forgot to point out escalating association dues, hurricane insurance costs, property tax, and heating bills when considering "affordability".

Reduce Leverage
Paying down mortgage debt is a reduction in leverage. It's a good idea. In contrast, some financial advisors are recommending that people take out home equity loans and buy stocks. This advice is based on the premise that the stock market always goes up over time. The current advice is to Aim High. I disagree.
Didn't we just hear the same thing about home prices?
At 20% down homes are already highly leveraged. Increasing leverage for the purpose of investing stands a good chance of losing twice. All it takes is a continued decline in home prices and another bear market in equities. Both are likely. Risk is a two way street. It is not always rewarded. Leveraging up and throwing the rest into stocks is simply poor financial advice no matter how it turns out.
Stock prices and housing prices fell for 18 years in Japan. The same can happen here. I'm not saying they will, I am saying they can. There certainly have been many 10-20 year periods where stocks went down to sideways. It's a huge mistake to judge things from the recent bull market.

Consider Retirement Plans
The closer one is to retirement the more risk avoidance is likely to come into play. The key here is to understand your timeline as well as your risk tolerance. Someone five years from retirement does not have ten years or longer to break even if the market takes another slump. Someone in the S&P and holding from 2000 is just now back to even.
Look at LBOs now being balked at by Citigroup (C), Lehman (LEH), Merrill Lynch (MER), Goldman Sachs (GS), and Bear Stearns (BSC). As long as they could securitize the debt they were fine in pumping it. Buyout Bingo has now stopped. If Citigroup does not want the debt or the deals why should anyone else?
One of the reasons that earnings have been high is underwriters were able to pass the CDO and mortgage trash to pension plans and foreign investors, collecting enormous fees along the way. Another reason was that people continued to buy stuff they could not afford, primarily on the belief that home prices would continue rising.
Investors needs to understand how the credit binge affected earnings as well as the likelihood that the credit binge grinds to a halt. Traders have no such considerations.
No one really knows for sure if stocks are going to drop or not drop, but they certainly are nowhere near as cheap as most make them out to be. Historically stock market returns with this backdrop have been weak to poor. Is this time likely to be any different?
Bear markets have a way of exposing fraud and all sorts of other problems. One look at housing should be proof enough. The stock market is not immune either. Risk has increased and one should factor that risk assessment into investment decisions.

Challenge Traditional Thinking
The past several years have been rather amazing. Nearly every asset class around the globe rose in unison. This is not normal market behavior. What was correlated on the way up can easily be correlated on the way down. In that regard, diversification does not guarantee success nor does traditional thinking.Traditional thinking still boils down to a recommendation of buying a mix of stocks and bonds (with bonds specifically meaning corporate bonds). Unfortunately there is no magic formula that can properly allocate stocks and bonds in a portfolio by a person's age as some attempt to do. And if the economy is headed into an economic slowdown, default risk will rise and corporate bonds (especially junk bonds) are likely to be punished.
In general, corporate bond spreads are simply too low vs. treasury yields to make them a good buy at this juncture. But that has not stopped advisors from recommending them.
There are ways to hedge stocks but those ways are seldom mentioned by advisors. And there is nothing at all wrong with seeing increased risk and pulling some chips off the table. There are also currencies, commodities, and precious metals to consider.
Advice on all these issues has to be given individually and that advice also needs to consider the goals, risk tolerances, and timelines of the investor as well. That is what we do at Sitka Pacific Capital Management. Mike Shedlock / Mishhttp://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/

Gold Dollars

Throughout my marriage I've collected the "gold" Sacagawea dollars and Susan B. Anthony dollar coins, and more recently, the presidential "gold" dollars. It's been my way of saving some "emergency" cash that I have on hand, just in case something Katrina-like happens, where people can't access their money via ATMs or whatever. My collection hasn't been huge, I add a few dollars to it here and there when I have a couple of one dollar bills in my pocket and happen to be near a place where I can get the gold dollars. My logic for saving gold dollars as opposed to "regular" money has been that if I have fifty one-dollar bills, it's a lot easier to grab them and justify an "emergency" trip to WalMart, where the gold dollars would be harder for me to break down and spend, because I like them and they're different.

DH has always known that I've collected them, the last time I counted them, we counted them together, there were 260 gold and silver dollars in the bucket. That was probably about two years ago, and I have regularly added at least a dollar every week or so, sometimes as much as $15, when I'm feeling "rich". The gold dollar collection has been a huge source of security for me. I figured there had to be $400-$500 in there now. And if that relatively small amount wouldn't necessarily pay our mortgage in an "emergency", it would buy gas if we ever needed to evacuate, and it would buy food if we needed cash.

About two weeks ago, I cashed my paycheck for my second job, and got three new "gold" dollars. As I was adding them to the bucket, I thought to myself, "I wonder how much I've got now", and counted my bucket of gold dollars.

$112. That's it. The rest was gone. I knew who had taken it, because there were only two people who had access to that bucket, and I wasn't the one who had spent that money. The only other person was DH, as the bucket is in our bedroom, which is always locked due to DD stealing from us when she first came to live with us. Only DH and I have keys.

I was devastated. I had been robbed by my own husband. I knew it was the bipolar again, he had to find some money to spend, and there it was. But that didn't help me feel any better. My security, my collection, all the pride I took in that I had found a way to save cash and keep it in the house and not spend it. Even just writing this is making me feel sick to my stomach.

I left the bucket where it was, on the bed, and went for a drive to clear my head. I decided I would go back home, take care of the animals, and go for another drive. When I got home, DH was just leaving, he was suicidal because he knew what he'd done, he knew what it had done to me, and he felt like I would be better off if he killed himself. So then, as DH's therapist so gently puts it, "DH messes up big time, hurts you big time, then gets suicidal, then you comfort him, then he's off the hook for what he's done, because you are worried that if you express your anger, he'll kill himself."

And that's right on the money (no pun intended). I am not able to bring up how angry I am, how hurt I am, how betrayed and disrespected I feel, because even though it was DH that messed up, he can get suicidal and I shut up. What a dysfunctional marriage.

Anyhow, I'm trying to get past that, although every one of these incidents that happen tears away at my love for him, I'm trying to just be understanding and wait for the meds to start working. I really don't know what else to do, but I suspect that if DH ever gets back to a level where I could expect a relationship between equals, the gold dollar thing will be something that will need to be addressed in some kind of counseling, as I am stuffing a lot of anger right now.

My current problem regarding the gold dollars is this: the other day I had three dollars in my pocket, and usually, if I found myself with extra money like that, I would run and get some gold dollars. I thought about it. And I couldn't do it. I just thought to myself "what's the use, I saved and saved and don't have anything to show for it anyhow." I know I need to get back up on the horse again, so to speak, but I'm really discouraged about all aspects of my (and our) finances right now, and I have worked so hard, it's like trying to swim up a river with a cement block tied to your foot.

And that doesn't even take into consideration the fact that there is no place in the house now that is sacred, where I could trust that my gold dollar collection would be untouched. I could keep it in the bank, but the point of having those dollars in the house was for non-computerized access to cash. I have a savings account at a bank already.

I was thinking that maybe putting all these thoughts down in the blog would make me a little clearer-headed on what I need to do next, but now I'm just feeling sick and discouraged, even though I do feel a little more unburdened than I did before writing. The right answers, I guess, will come to me when the time is right.