so... yeah... tons of stuff has happened since my last post lol. for one the long term disability came through, which we're totally thankful for. another is that it would seem that we're getting close to finding out if SSDI is going to approve or not of my husbands application for it. they've scheduled a psychological exam for him, which is in a couple weeks or so.

all in all though, things are going relatively well for us - least ways in terms of these things. for Tim though, things have been getting worse. it's getting harder for him to get through the day now... and harder for me to sit here with nothing i can do to help him. been trying hard to keep smiling for him, and most of the time it's more or less easy for me to do that, but sometimes... i mean what do you do when you have to sit there and watch the man you love, more then life itself, have to sit there unable to go anywhere cause it's so hard for him to walk now, sit there and watch him get more and more depressed over this because everything's getting harder for him to do. to have to see him constantly tell himself that he can't do anything he used to love to do anymore, cause his hand/eye coordination, mental focus and concentration are getting worse and worse...

thankfully though he's not always down and out about it. though his moods have been swinging alot more often then usual - that's actually got to be one of the harder things to deal with sometimes... the fact that one moment he can be totally optimistic about life and stuff and happy and then the next thing i know something happens that triggers a downward spiral or he gets so frustrated that he lashes out. though the frustration's actually easier to just shrug off as i know he doesn't mean any of it. it's the depression i have trouble dealing with. sometimes i wish i could take his place, even for a day or two, that way i'd know what it's like and how it feels to be in his shoes.

mood: relaxed

for those who care anyway...

A lot has happened since November. We're still in appeals with the disability company, even though all my husbands doctors and his boss have told them time and again that "no. he can -not- work". As a result though we now have nothing left. We had no choice but to live off our credit cards the past few months - so now they're all maxed out. Which means we can't pay rent for Feb. and have no food money - nothing. We've also started procedure [with a lawyer] to get him on SSDI - but that's still in the works too and it could be a few more months before we hear anything about it.

So yeah, we're kinda in a really bad place right now. With no money and living in Michigan [it's been exceptionally cold this winter], we've got no place to go should we get evicted. His parents moved into an assisted living complex over in Las Vegas, so living with them is out of the question.

I suppose you could say that i could go out and get a job, but the problem with that is that i can't leave him home alone. He can't really walk well anymore - he really should be in a chair, but 1) we can't afford it and 2) our apartment just doesn't have the room for one, so he tends to fall all the time now when he walks. I mean taking two steps for him is like running a marathon for the rest of us - it tires him out that much. Leaving him home alone for any number of hours is out of the question - he could fall, break something and he'd be stuck like that for hours alone - not happening. I've tried the whole selling my art over the internet - no one's ever interested. So I'm at a loss for what I can do. Any ideas would be helpful, that's for sure.

At any rate, it's getting harder and harder for us to keep ourselves afloat as time goes by especially when all we get is more bad news piling on top of other bad news.

why is it so hard for something to go right for once?

so tim's boss managed to "juryrig" something for him by basically putting him on "vacation" so he's still getting paid, until the 12th of this month. after that he'll be switched to unpaid leave... which basically means that come the 12th we've got no money coming in. since i'm from a different country my education counts for squat over here - i know, i've tried to get a job several times over the past few years. and besides, i can't leave him alone for 9+ hours a day -anyway-... so yeah... come the 12th, with no money coming in we'll be completetly screwed.

so we've called a lawyer, who has still to get back to us - he's been busy in court the past few days. since its friday night we don't expect a call back till monday and by then it'll be cutting it really short, if not too late altogether. i guess all we can do at this moment is pray - not like anything else can be done any time soon...

it really upsets me though. i mean you'd think that with all tim's doctors telling the insurance company that he can't work. what with his boss telling them that he can't work, that they'd take that as proof [i mean we've got like 3 doctors telling them this]. but still, to them it's not enough to warrant covering him for another 3 weeks till we can get them more information which is what they want anyway.

i wish that someone would understand for once... but so far all they keep saying is the complete opposite.

at any rate, we're prolly going to have to start canceling things and cutting things out and whatnot to conserve funds... not that we've got much to cut out anymore...

mood: depressed

Why is it that sometimes you get the feeling that when you're trying to get something done but are waiting after other people that they do it on purpose to either do it at the last minute or drop the ball entirely? Especially with the important stuff...

So my husbands short term disability was up for review on the 26th of last month. What do i do? I spent all the week before on the phone trying to get all the info they needed to them. And what do they do? They call us friday night, after hours to tell me that they need even -more- information. Information that it wont be possible to get for at least a month if not more. And because they dont have this new info, they've gone and canceled his short term disability and now we've got 15 days to appeal WITH the new info. Now our next doctor's appointment is on the 26th of this month and we're probably not going to get any results for at least 2 weeks past that... So now we've got to find a lawyer who can help us with this and getting Tim on long term disability... more money that we dont have... *sigh*

On a up note though, at the very least Tim's boss is being very supportive. He told Tim not to come in to work [even though technically he's kinda supposed to as we're no longer covered by the FMLA and since it was denied. But like Tim's boss said, if he can't talk well on the phone and is shaking so badly that he can't type... if he can't even stand for very long or walk properly then what use is there in his going in to work yanno? So right now we've got even more calls to make - to a lawyer and a disability analyst [with Tim's company] and hopefully all will work out in the end.

Until then... why can't we just win the lotto or something already... >_<

Tags: disability, lawyer, medical
mood: angry

not sure if 3 pixel things are considered enough to warrant calling this an "art dump" but i honestly don't know what else to title this so what the hell lol XD

first off we've got a new character of mine - Reva [she doesn't have a last name yet sadly *cries*] -- she's the pilot of a small smugglers spaceship known as Ikarus. Here she was done for a "good/evil" contest in which we had to doll an original character in their "natural/normal" form and then in their opposite form - so her natural form is the white/green haired, gun toting space pilot and her opposite is that of a calm and proper senator/politician type =D


base: www.apitchou.com/

and here we have yet another Bleach character that i've gone and dolled lol - yes so far i've done Ichigo, Renji, Zangetsu, Isane and Rangiku... now i'm adding in Shuuhei. for anyone not in the know though, in the latest chapters of the manga we finally get to see what his zanpakuto looks like in it's Shikai form as well as its name... and damn it looks cool lol - i just had to doll him lol... oh the base is mine btw =)


note: i dont know how accurate his hair is though... it just really was starting to piss me off something fierce so i kinda did it rather quickly lol... damn spiky hair... ><

Tags: art, bleach, dolls, pixel
mood: bouncy

Well thankfully, despite all the hoops we had to jump through our neurologist was finally able to convince the damn Cigna people that my husband still needed to be on disability... i mean seriously... you'd think with 2 doctors [and now btw we've got appointments with 2 NEW ones] telling them that they DON'T want him going to work, or driving for that matter... you'd think that they'd get the picture... but noooo every 3 weeks we've got to go through this damn hoop or proving to them that he still needs to be off of work... but what do i know...

Funny though, the moment the neurologist wrote on the papers that yes, Tim is NOT ALLOWED to work they suddenly were like " oh really? alright, we'll take care of this right away - you've got the disability for another 3 weeks"... bastards...

Anyhoo... enough of that lol... i'm actually relieved and happy though that they finally seem to be listening. Sides all that though, with everything we've actually been forgetting about paying bills and whatnot... not exactly a good thing to forget yanno lol... thankfully though, God's watching out for us there too - we thought we were late for rent this month... tis due the 1st... we payed it today lol... luckily there's a 4 day grace period so we didnt have that nasty little [i think it's about 75-100$, but i can't remember lol] late fee on top of our rent.

So all in all, so far despite everything, things seem to still be working out somewhat... though it's all rather nerve wracking nonetheless. We've started playing a new MMO game too - Warhammer Online... we've got a good guild that we play with, with great people, but the game's kinda... urgh... but at least its something for us to do seeing as Tim can't really even leave the house anymore - so yeah... we play an mmo cause we can't like go out to eat, or go see a movie... which kinda sucks though... =(

Tags: disability, life, mmo
mood: accomplished

What is it about maintenance and management of apartment buildings and their need to tell their tenants that that -obviously- know better?! Right now, in our apartment we're pretty sure that there's a pipe leak somewhere in the walls of our building. I went to talk to other tenants to see if they noticed anything - some hear it as loud if not louder then we do, others have problems with their water pressure... hmm... obviously there's a problem ne? This has been going on now for a few days actually - started off just once in a while, then today it's been like this all damn afternoon/night. At first we thought maybe someone was doing something with their water...

So I called management... they say they'll get maintenance out here. I called back about an hour later. AGAIN they tell me they'll page maintenance... it's now 9:30pm and I JUST got called by maintenance after I called them back yet again and reiterated that WE DON'T KNOW what's exactly wrong. That it sounds like WATER is LEAKING in the walls. Believe it or not I actually got told that they didn't think it was all -that- important and were gonna come tomorrow... ya... we can't wait that long. This needs to be checked now.

But yeah, I -finally- get a call from the maintenance guy and he sounded all pissed off and upset that our building -dared- to break down at this hour. You know, it's not like it's 3am here - it's just 9:30 pm... most -kids- aren't even in bed at this hour yet.

At any rate, lets hope they can fix this soon. If not, they'd had better provide us with some sort of recompense for this. With all of my husbands health problems, there's no way he can sleep with this noise. Believe it or not, the shrill whistling sound coming with the sound of the rushing water is peaking at around 90 decibals!

So far, in the years we've been living here we've never actually had problems with the management nor the maintenance people. But to tell the people who can hear the noise, and are pretty sure that there's a problem [it may not be serious now, but it honestly will be eventually guaranteed - i don't need to be a plumber to know that] that "we're sorry, but maintenance disagrees with you and thinks it can wait till tomorrow..." that's just wrong of them. Afterall, they aren't the ones who have to sit here and listen to it and worry about it.

Bunch of bastards is what they are I tell you. Gawd I can't wait till we can get a house...

Tags: annoyed, apartments, maintenance, management
mood: annoyed

So all in all the last little while has thankfully become rather productive. We got an extension from the disability people for my husband, though it's not a very long one, at the very least it's a huge step seeing as their nurse is the one who holds all the cards in this and she's made it rather clear that it doesn't seem to matter what both our primary care doctor AND the neurologist have to say - she disagrees with them. But at least we got a small extension, so that in itself is a battle won.

Aside from this, believe it or not, my mind is chock full of ideas and inspiration for my art - I can't seem to stop them from pouring out now and frankly I'm so happy! I was so afraid that I'd lost my love for pixeling... been under so much stress lately that I just hadn't had the gumption to do much more then play Mahjong... or Soul Calibur 4 lol.

So yeah, all in all the last little while has been quite lovely if I may say so. Maybe now that things seem to have calmed down a bit more then before I might actually be able to use this journal for more then just my frustrated rantings lol

I'm so happy and hyper right now it's ridiculous

mood: ecstatic

There are times when I can't help but feel so helpless and useless. With a husband who has some serious neurological problems - to the point where he can't drive and can't work anymore. And I can't go out to get a job, cause I have to be at home 24/7 [not that I mind that mind you] to take care of him and make sure he doesn't get hurt when he gets an "episode".

Like tonight. He had a really bad one. One where he started shaking rather badly. Where he couldn't do anything more then just sit there and stare blankly at the tv - not registering anything or anyone around him. He even, for a good 20 minutes, forgot who I was. Looked at me with suspicion in his eyes cause he couldn't recognize me.

It always makes me feel helpless when this happens. Cause I know that all I can do is just sit with him and wait for it to pass - there -is- nothing else that I can do. Afterward though is always hardest - on both of us. He always feels so guilty afterward. Like he shouldn't have these problems. Like he's brought them on himself... it pains me to see him go through this, knowing that there's nothing I can do but be there for him afterward, to remind him that it's ok. That I still love him no matter what. That I'll always be here with him, going through this with him.

I love him, and I swore to stay by his side till death do us part. I am a person of my word and do not take promises lightly. I just wish that there was more I can do to help him through this.

Since I wont be actually updating my site for a little while - that is until I get my new layout all pixeled and done and whatnot, I figured I'd use my journal to post some new stuff ^_^

So in that spirit here are some of my newer dolls

First off we have my character Nephthys [from Once and Before] - base by DHF. Secondly, we have Sango, from the anime Inuyasha - in her battle gear. Base also by DHF.  And lastly is Tifa Lockhart, from Final Fantasy VII [AC/DoC outfit] - base is mine.


Anyway, just figured I'd post some new stuff on here since, as I have mentioned, I won't be updating my site anytime very soon.

I may though post some updates on the status of the new layout. It's a rather huge [for me anyway] pixel project this layout, so it's taking me longer then I'd like to get it done. So far though, it's coming out rather nice - but then I'm rather biased about it lol XD