Lol yeah it is not easy at all. Thanks!

That's exactly what I said about the counselor. I mean shit, I can't afford my bills because I am contributing to paying hers!! I told her I wasn't trying to be rude but wanted to know if she knew how long these counseling sessions would last and she was like," Once a week for at least 3 months, and I'll add more if need be." Can't go anywhere else because the Juvenile Officer set it up.

Yeah DH tells me all the time that next month will be better. Yeah the next month is a little better but then the month after is shitty again.

DH knows how I feel but says that we are just going to have to stick through it and it will get better. He told SD if she messes up again then she will go straight to juvy. We are only giving her one chance and once chance only, if she screws this chance up we won't do anything else but to send her off to juvy to let her think about what she is doing. Therapist hasn't said much just that she wants to at least see her for the next 3 months. Therapist said they were going to work on SD's lying and sneakiness.

Yep, always something. SD has counseling, we have bills due. My daughter was suppose to go on a little 3 day basketball camp and she can't do that now. My daughter never does anything and it seems that she is the one that has to lose out on things because after all the bills we have and SD's bullshit we don't have the money and of course us all eating is more important than basketball camp.

My daughter is DH's daughter too so she is here all the time. SD lives here full time as well so she is always here too. We try to have a movie night but my husband and I are so busy that we can't just enjoy it. Like the other day. We decided that we were going to try to do something like watch a movie because really, that's all we have the money for. I think this week we had $14.00 left over after all the bills and as far as groceries right now we even have to use a credit card to get groceries.

Anyway, we worked until about 6 p.m. came in and watched a 2 hour movie. DH sat on one end of the couch and I sat on the other. During this time, I had a load of laundry I needed to fold and DH sat and watched the movie. After the movie was over, I went my way he went his. He went to take care of the goats and I went to take care of the pigs.

That would be a good idea, sometimes though I feel like he doesn't want to make time for us. If I was to say let's go for a walk, which we live in the country, he would ask me why.

Yeah I would like to know that if something comes up that I don't have to have my family eating Ramen noodles for a week just to pay for it. I would like to know that if I wanted to, me and DH could go have dinner once every 6 months at least. I would also like to know that even though all of our money is going to SD's counseling that my daughter won't have to cancel every single extra curricular that she has ever tried to enroll in. She is 7 and has only been able to play tball once year when she was in PreK. It's sad. It's not that we aren't trying, it's just we can try and try and try just to make enough money to pay the rest of the bills.

The only way we would have food this week is with the credit card, which because DH lost his job a couple years back it is almost maxed out. Like I said, I haven't bought groceries yet and after I paid the bills today, I have $14.00 left in my account. It's sad. We had about $6000.00 at income tax time and because my SD ended up with pneumonia and we didn't have insurance, because we can't afford it, it is all gone. We actually had about $300 left but that went for some of her counseling in which now we are paying out of pocket again for.

We usually do go feed animals together. It just seems like lately when we do have quality time we end up talking about SD's fuck ups or money or the animals or his work. If I say I don't want to talk about any of that then we just seem to sit in awkward silence because honestly it's been so long since we have had to spend time together that it's kind of weird for me anymore. Does that make any sense? I have been married to my husband for almost 9 years and it's weird to have a conversation with him, oh brother I just realized this.

If my DH didn't lose his job a couple of years ago I guess we wouldn't of been so bad off. We owe about $5000.00 to a credit card so right now ANY extra money goes to paying that off. Of course interest is insane and no matter what we pay it just keeps going back up every month because we can't afford to pay the suggested amount, only the minimum or a little over.

With the farm I already work 80+ hours a week. My husband works the same. After working 7 days a week 12-15 hours a day farming, I don't have the energy to hardly walk across the house, let alone get another job. The money that we make, we usually put back into the farm.

Everything seemed to be fine, until he lost his job. Now he has a job and we were catching up but like I said we have lost so many animals (income) and now I am spending about $500 a month on counseling for a kid that just don't know how to listen.

As for the part time job and scaling back, there is just no possible way. All the animals that we have, are animals that we raise to make a living. There is no such thing as hobby animals on my land because all of the animals that we have make us money. I don't keep my animals for pets, they are all here for a purpose. I have 10 goats, 20 pigs 3 cows, and 17 rabbits that need cleaned up after, hayed, fed, watered, rotated, vaccinated, trained, bred, ect. Everything I do on a daily basis is done because it has to be done. In the Summer months and winter months it's more time consuming because with the heat and cold they, especially pigs, are more time consuming.

I appreciate your advice. Truly we have been making an effort and we have been doing better. We went from having no extra money to having about $600 extra a month in about 2 months. Now that SD pulled her shit we are back down having no extra money at all. I know this counseling isn't going to last forever. There are ALWAYS ups and downs to farming we just got hit with a huge down the moment my SD decided to show her ass.

I don't expect to make a million dollars off of farming the very first day I start. Little by little we put money into it and little by litte we make more and more money each year. It's hard to do that when SD wants to pull her shit and now we don't have a pot to piss in, so to speak, because every dollar we make is used for something. There is no saving money right now because all the money we have left to save, is now going to a counselor.