It is well known that there is a system in place for everything and that system is designed to never be on your side. Let's face it..... Insurance companies thrive on people that never utilize the service. For those that happen to require help are scrutinized within an inch of a microbe and kicked repeatedly.
As I sit here, writing my thoughts in today's blog entry, I am literally feeling sick to my stomach. I managed to let out a good, long cry at a situation that is slowly killing my soul. I still happen to not have the ability to stop the waterworks to see my keyboard as I try to construct sentences that describe my myriad of thoughts that are zipping around in my mind. In all honesty, I have no clue where the brunt of the blame shall be placed. Here is my story.....
When I met DH, I was in a low place. Having gone through yet another cruel breakup of a relationship. I had serious doubts that there are any good men out there for me to have a future with. It was not like I was looking to get married and pop out that national average of 2.5 kids with that house and the white picket fence any time soon. I just felt.... incomplete. Worthless. With the track record of being a serial dater of losers that were in the categories of abusers, control freaks, insecure clingers and psychopaths and just about everything in between, I can say without a shadow of a doubt that I had zero interest in ever dating again. Relationships did not hold any appeal to me anymore. But there he was, walking into the bar at which I sat and was figuring a way to pick up my broken pieces and move forward. Looking down at my Miller Lite, I hear this person (who is DH) ask the bartender if they carry Old Style. I had to chuckle. Old Style is, in my opinion, the most disgusting thing to drink in a beer. When the bartender said, "No. We carry all Miller products here and a few foreign selections. Sorry dude, is there something else you would like?", I heard the sigh of a resigned man and ordered a MGD, complaining about the lack of this bar supplying a "good" beer. Of course, he said it in a way that made me smile. A smile that had not graced upon my face in a good, long time. DH noticed me sitting alone at the bar, laughing at him and he takes the bar stool next to me. He started a conversation with me and my evening was filled with a lot of laughing. Something I desperately needed if I was going to pick up my broken pieces and trudge onward in life. When the topic of my thoughts on Old Style beer was brought up, he kicked the bar stool out from under me. and I have said to so many.... the rest is history. We started as friends and ended up getting married. That was over 18 years ago.
With my desire to live anywhere, but where I grew up, I ended up marrying a man that bought his house in my hometown and wanted to grow roots there. Yep, I live roughly 6 blocks away from my childhood home, and have been for the past 19 years. Talk about living an adventure, right? Luckily, I at least managed to have a few vacations that happened to be in other states, so I did get to see the world (at least, the country I live in), for a little bit.
Our marriage is not the easiest, nor is it the hardest. I have carried the weight of responsibility on my shoulders for just about all the marriage. When our daughter was born, I carried even more. Sure, DH paid the bills. He makes more than I do. He makes sure we have all the necessary insurances in place (home, auto, health, and he is the only one with life insurance - I can't afford any life insurance for myself yet). On paper, we are doing okay. In life, we get along just fine. There is a lot of tension regarding how we live together. He sees things one way, and I see them in a different light. Most likely to blame for that is how we were raised differently, but we do try every day to make compromises in our rooted beliefs and make things work. We don't fight all that often, but when we do.... it is viciously fought with words. Feelings get hurt quite often, but we do try harder to understand each other. I guess that with both of us being stubborn and at least willing to try a compromise, we have lasted this long.
Sadly, when the economic crash of 2008 came about, we struggled to hold everything together. I looked for more work while DH took a HUGE pay cut to keep his business going. With threats of losing both our house and his business, we budgeted everything down to the last penny. Grocery shopping is done as a family with a list every week. Being frugal is our way of life. It is 8 years later, and we are still struggling to stay afloat. We can say that we still have our house and DH still has his business. I did manage to find more work and I contribute more than before, but when it comes down to the future.... we are nowhere near ready for retirement, nor can we even afford any surprises. DD is nearing the stage of graduating high school and we don't have nearly enough to afford to send her to college. Simply put.... we are broke, but surviving.
With DH's health issues with his heart, DD's asthma, and my back issues.... we pay plenty for healthcare. Every spare penny we have has been squirreled away to pay for medications and co-pays for doctor visits. Little did I know that one heavy rain in May of 2016 could kill my hopes for a healthy home. Well, that and DH's inability of seeing the importance of maintaining our home. We now have water damage hitting the surface of the interior of our home. My kitchen is ruined, my lower bathroom is starting to get mold and according to the homeowner's insurance claims adjuster.... this damage is seen as long term damage and is possibly not covered by our insurance. Meaning, the tens of thousands of damage to my home, which increases in cost every day that it is not attended to, is now the responsibility of the homeowner to handle. All I can say is... great, just great! We don't have the money to do regular maintenance on our home and now we get to watch our money go to pay for insurance that does not repair damage that was never seen until just recently? It is not like I burrow into the walls of my home to see if there is a potential issue. Heck, DH never had the desire to do any remodeling of this house when he bought it. It took my one weakness of peeling off loose wallpaper in the apparent "master bedroom" to get him to invest in paint and new carpeting. Sure, we have bought furniture over the years, but that is well after there is zero ability of saving it. Heck, I still have a recliner that is so worn out that the stuffing is showing and DH has reinforced the frame once it became lopsided and couldn't recline anymore. My appliances are as old, if not older than me, and have been slapped with enough band-aid repairs by DH that I am surprised that my house has not blown up yet. I have overgrown trees that are half dead in my yard and shrubs that are so overgrown that trimming them back results in almost zero foliage on them. Just bare and dead branches. The past two weekends, with more on the horizon, will be filled with digging out yet another mostly dead bush. My living room carpet is stained from juice and Kool-aid from DD's childhood. Those stains never come out. I have tried and even paid professionals to try. The paint is peeling in my house as well as outside of it because every time I try to entice DH to paint with me, he plays dead on the broken down recliner, that is, after asking me where we can find the money to afford to do such a minimal upgrade if the rest of the house is falling apart. Something like putting lipstick on a pig I think has been said, or spraying perfume in a dumpster. Meaning, it is not really worth it. Of course, DH's drive to do anything is way off course to what is important. He spent a day in a Spring snowstorm, digging out a bush to fix the gas line to the gas lamp in the front yard. Didn't matter that we have ceramic tiles popping in the upstairs bathroom that I now hide with strategically placed bath rugs, nor is he concerned with the peeling laminate on the kitchen and upstairs bathroom cabinets, nor is he interested in replacing the downstairs bathroom vanity that is lopsided from water damage of the last flood we had a few years back. Nope, nope, nope.
Now, with the sagging and crumbling particle board of a corner kitchen cabinet that I had to empty out and throw everything away, you would think that he would feel a little inkling to fixing the damage, but NO. He at least took it upon himself to redirect the downspout on the roof for better water flow when it rains so it does not pour in the house anymore. Not exactly a ball of fire to get the roof fixed and replace the water damaged wood up on the roof. We got one estimate from a guy that is a friend of a guy that is friends with a guy that is friends with DH. This seven degrees of separation thing is getting to be a bit much, but DH refuses to get more estimates and he has not given approval for someone.... anyone... to fix this stuff. I really do not want to see my house rot away and mold over, regardless of how much I hate this house. Hated it from the beginning, but agreed to stay. Heck, when I married DH, I married this house! Should have known better!! Stupid me!!
Well, with DH's lack of enthusiasm to fixing the house, I took it upon myself to talk to our insurance agent. I took time off from work to do so. After a long discussion, I was told a few things..... 1). There is a 70/30 chance that our homeowner's policy will cover this. And 2). DH needs to reevaluate his method of insurance because he could be saving us roughly $800 a year if he upped our deductible and added our car insurance to this policy. Sure, a $250 deductible is enticing to keep if there was ever a claim to be approved, but in all the years of owning this house (or better yet, paying a mortgage on it), we have never made a claim. Not once. Figuring I could take my chances on getting a resolution that DH could get on board with, I met with the claims representative and here I am.... sick to my stomach, crying, and feeling completely defeated because after his little look around.... the words "long term damage" is prevalent and "possibly not covered" being tossed my way. I am now slinking down into the quicksand of despair. We overpay for insurance that is trying to deny us help in our time of need, I have a significant other that refuses to make headway in a solution to the problem at hand, and I have a house that will probably kill us all with the damage that has been hidden for so long behind the walls. I would love to get a loan and get everything fixed and be done with it, but we can't afford another bill in our lap. If I could be blessed with good fortune and win the lottery, that would be nice, but the state of Illinois is not paying out large lottery winnings. It is not like I need millions of dollars here. Just a million to get all the necessary things taken care of like, repair the house, pay the bills off, have money to let DD go to college debt free. and maybe.... just maybe....put a little away for the next rainy day.
So with my feeling like garbage over this whole situation.... Who shall receive the pent up wrath that is boiling under my skin? DH for not caring enough to do something? The insurance company for making me feel completely defeated because I fear that they won't help us? The system that makes it do darn hard to get ahead? Or me, because I don't know how to fight the system.
Sorry this was so long, but I had to get it out. Ending my rant here... dropping the mic.... and I am out! Thanks for reading.
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