Yesterday I started journaling in an attempt to get out the emotions that are causing my sore back pain. I mentioned that pain has moved from location to location as my subconscious is trying to hold on to this tactic. Oddly enough, after lunch I noticed that my left wrist was starting to hurt. I haven’t had wrist pain in months. I thought I was over it! As I was walking to the Apple Store after lunch to get Rachel’s phone fixed, I noticed that my wrist was sore and my back wasn’t. This sort of weird movement of pain just confirms to me that Dr. Sarno’s theories are correct. The mind is a complicated and powerful thing.

Last night after dinner I started getting the cold chills. This has happened about off and on every few days over the past couple weeks. It feels like I am getting the flu, but then I generally wake up and feel fine. I don’t know if this is related to TMS (Tension Miositis Syndrome as Dr. Sarno refers to it) or AOS (Autonomic Overload Syndrome as Dr. Brady refers to it) or if it is something else. My suspicion is that it is a side effect of my Gleevec pill that I have just recently started experiencing.

I’m on the train now. It was late. It kind of frustrates me that it is late. It was colder than usual this morning. Rachel just texted me asking about my wrists. I told her my left wrist was a bit sore. She asked if she was the reason for my inner rage. Of course I said no. But admittedly she did something that has caused me a bit of stress and frustration. She called a painter to get a quote to see how much it would cost to pain our living room and the office. It came to almost $3,000. I know she has wanted it done ever since we moved in to our house two years ago, but we just haven’t had the money to do it. I reminded her that our budget is $15,000 in the hole right now. It’s not an easy task to dig out of! I said we don’t even have the money in our account to pay for it. Then I said, the only place you could get the money is from one of our credit cards. It has a $10,000 limit on it, but I just put $5,000 on it for my cancer pills. Somehow she took that as an OK and called the painter back and told him to get started.

I know she really wants this done before we have lots of visitors for Gehrig’s baptism in a couple weeks, but it is frustrating that we can’t get on the same page with the budget. She spends a lot on home decor and remodeling because she enjoys it. I wish I had the income to pay for it, but we haven’t lately. When we moved into our house I was making an extra $5,000 – $6,000 each month from one of my websites. It has dropped to $1,000 – $2,000 per month and we have had a hard time cutting back.

To add to my money stress, I still haven’t done taxes. I don’t know if we will have to pay or not. I have an accountant that does them now, I just haven’t submitted anything. Unfortunately my office is torn apart as it is being painted right now. I told myself I would get started on them this week as soon as the painting is done. It was supposed to be done Saturday, but it still isn’t done. I don’t even see it being done today. He still has touch-ups to do, the hallway to do and he agreed to replace all our light fixtures which some stupid painter that painted the house before had painted the whole house – celiing, lights & everything the same ugly red-brown color.

On top of all this, my wife paid by check – essentially emptying our bank account. So it is not on our credit card. She also paid $600 for a new chandelier with our debit card so it came straight out of checking. I doubt we will make it through this month without hitting overdraft. On top of that, I was upset at the chandelier she was sold because the light fixtures didn’t fit and ti was too dangerous to hang. I made her take it back and and the salesman there found a workable solution I think.

Whenever I get paid in my side business, I set aside 10% in savings. I’ve emptied half of it and I’m afraid I’m going to have to empty the rest of it to cover all of this.

Wow, I can’t believe how much I have written about this topic. I guess I do have some repressed rage. I don’t want to sound like I am mad at my wife, because I really don’t feel that way, and I guess that is where the repression comes in. We don’t talk about our budget as much as I like to and that has been something we just haven’t come together on. I keep hoping though that someday I will make so much money that it just won’t matter what she spends because I can out-earn it. I didn’t get a nice raise recently at work. I went from $85,000 per year to $105,000 per year. This will help greatly. We are also planning on selling our house this spring which should give us enough money to pay back Rachel’s parents for the loan they gave us to get into our house and to balance our budget. So things are not as gloomy as I make them out to be, but I have frustrations nonetheless.

It will work out though. It always does. That is why I pay tithing and fast offerings. The Lord always picks up our slack and I’m so grateful for that!