The long story long

I figured I'd put this somewhere that I can point to when friends ask what's going on with the sincere interest in the answer. While I appreciate everyone's support and concern, these are the basics that I just can't bring myself to continuously repeat to explain the situation or answer the same questions over and over about.

We've been sinking financially for some time. A few of you know about the background with Mike getting hurt on the job last year and the workman's comp nightmare that followed, including losing his job in the process. Ever since all of that started, our life has been a series of fall behind, catch up, fall behind further, etc, ad nauseum.

The shop he is working at now is falling far short of useful, and our budget deficit continues to grow. I was turned down for assistance and am now non-med-compliant, so re-applying will have to wait. We can't even afford the co-pay to go back to the psychiatrist, and even if we could, my full medication load is more than we could pay for - even with insurance.

Caedyn has been applying for jobs all summer with no results, not even callbacks for interviews. Mike's brother is having similar troubles and hasn't managed more than part-time jobs that are not covering his expenses.

About a year and a half ago, Mike and I and Caedyn had started talking about moving to Orlando after graduation with multiple goals in mind that would benefit all of us. After a few more financial set-backs in the last week or so, we've begun to work on moving that timetable up, and we've asked Mike's brother to join us. The cost of living is cheaper, the tourist influx does not slow down to deathly close to nothing for much shorter periods of time, and the atmosphere in our neighborhood (particularly in our building) has steadily become less and less conducive to maintaining any kind of hope that I will ever be able to leave my front door without accompaniment again.

The idea is to find Mike a shop in an area that is busy enough to keep him making commissions rather than minimum hourly compensation, something more substantial and sustainable than part time for his brother (as well as more comedy clubs and social activities!), and a part-time job that Caedyn can fit around school.

That's for starters.

If I find myself answering the same questions a lot, I'll add to this as we go.

As soon as we have firmer dates and details, I'll post them here. We intend to get this off the ground as soon as possible.

Thanks for reading.

Edit: I'm still dealing with the neck/shoulder pain thing and trying to get by without meds, so stress levels are still through the roof on my end.