Worries

I admit it, I am a worrier. I worry about most everything. I stress. I stew. I get myself so riled up when packing for a trip that I can't think straight. So right now I am in a true dither. DH's job is stable but they are client based and one of their big clients made a major cut in their job two weeks ago. This resulted in a pay cut for DH and all his co-workers. This is major scary for us. We are treading water here, trying to pay off bills without compromising our lifestyle. I know, I know, that is a serious case of having your cake and eating it too but we thought we should be able to do it. It all made sense in my head. However, things have not worked out that way and now I am in serious worry mode. This cut is going to translate to a loss of about $400 a month. That is pretty much the $400 we live on. The rest of DH's considerable income goes to bills, savings, health care, the mortgage, etc. We are not upside down on our mortgage. It is the credit card bills that are killing us. We were not good stewards of our financial future when we were younger. Now we have these huge debts hanging over us. I know that we have to take of our 4 walls first. I know that we need to make changes to adjust for the loss of income. I also know that this is not the end of the world. We will adjust. We will survive. It is the getting there that is the problem. I have to figure out the how. This is where the worry comes in. This is where I freak out. I am obsessively tracking the checking account to make sure we do not become overdrawn like last month. That cost us big time, nearly as much I hate to admit it, as we are going to lose from our income. So I am frantically trying to make sure it does not happen again.

Then there are the upcoming expenses. This is the time of year we lay out large chunks of money to different places to fill our freezer and to take care of our animals. Most of the animals will be gone by the end of August and the costs will readjust again. We will have some income from some of them, i.e. the steers we will be selling. That leads to another worry. I have got to get meat customers lined up before butcher day in August. I hate the constant phone calls to some of my customers. I hate having to bug people to get answers. It drives me nuts. The alternative is to not sell the steers, also not acceptable! So I worry and stress and wind myself up and get to the point that I can't even pick up the phone.

Which leads to another thing I stress about all the time. I hate to make phone calls. I don't mind talking on the phone as long as someone else calls me but I hate dialing the phone particularly if I don't know someone or only know them slightly. I always feel like I make an idiot of myself if I have to talk to an answering machine or stumble over myself if someone actually answers. Oyy. How embarrassing to not know what the heck I was calling about when I am the one doing the calling.

Oh boy, that is a lot of confessing for one day. I can't believe that I wrote all that out. Furthermore I can't believe I am about to post it for all my friends to see. But if I get it out there, maybe someone will have a helpful solution to at least one of my issues or neuroses. So dear friends, bring on the ideas and suggestions. If nothing else, thanks for reading all of this for me.