Since I have to be at home for the house leveling today, I think I might call up the state health & human services today, the branch located closest to me. It appears you can make actual appointments with them, maybe even get in person help if you do the forms via paper instead of on the website. I started on the website and uploaded a few things, but we do not have to submit forms that are not relevant to us, such as proof there is a veteran in the family or we are Hurricane Harvey victims. We lost a few tree leaves & small branches, but really that is so minor and not a desperate victim situation the way my one of my daughters' best friends had flooding in their house and lost a lot of possessions and are having to make tons of repairs and stay with other family in the meantime. And definitely I believe both veterans and Harvey victims need & deserve the help. Although the site I ran across offering artists making $50,000 dollars or less in one year could apply for help or a grant from some charity seems unfair to me as school teachers are making 50,000 dollars a year (roughly my husband's salary), why isn't there a charity to supply them aid?

My husband has to buy stuff for his classroom out of our own money. Sometimes he can use the dollar store, sometimes not. But he teaches physics and now AP physics this year, and they need to do labs. But kids come to school without notebook paper (and the teachers don't get a stash of blank paper to use), without things to write with (my husband eventually ordered golf pencils for that to cut down on the money loss if kids took them, not always on purpose, but something that just happens). Then, he has to buy lab supplies because the school won't have things like different balls in different sized shapes & weights, or toy cars to track down an angled track. Or scissors or colored pencils or markers. He has to spend a lot of our own money just to teach. He even has to spend out of pocket to buy the markers to write on the white board. So these are frustrating expenses that do not help us at all.

Anyway, I don't have panic or high anxiety the way I did yesterday, for which I am highly grateful. The foundation people are here now, but luckily, you can stay in the house while they level it; it's just a bit noisy, not unbearable though. At least not so far. And as frustrating as my mother can be, she offered to pay off my trauma surgeon's bill, which we have been paying $60 a month on, and it's still over $300 with the insurance adjustment. It says it would have been several thousands of dollars without insurance negotiation, but I am not sure I believe that if you have no insurance and trauma surgery is the only way to say your life. But anyway, it was nice of my mother to offer to pay the bill as I know my parents still struggle with money as my father's company is not very lucrative. But I did scan the bill and send it to her, as we need all the help we can get.

So at times my mom comes through for us and others not. She did come here & stay over 2 weeks when I had my trauma surgery (only going back to her home over the weekend when my husband could watch our daughter full time). However, she will send texts or emails that hurt, when you are at a time in your life when you need comfort and not blame & guilt. We used to have a very good relationship, and now it keeps getting more and more strained. But I made a delicate truce with her since she is going to pay a bill for us, I don't want a disagreement to bleed over & affect my maternal grandmother - she's 85 years old, still lives on her own - whom my mother drives to appts., grocery stores, the bank, and other errands, so surely she would talk about a bad disagreement with my grandmother. It's a complicated relationship.

Not panicky or super anxious yet, and that's good. I did not go running or even walking today as I am super tired (my period started yesterday, which is something I could to without right now), and I knew the foundation people would be coming, and at times they need to come into the house with a level to help with the outside work or to use the bathroom, things like that.