20 cent gas.

I love grocery store fuel perks!

I'm finally going through and adding black shirts to my CafePress shops. I need the money and I figure sales will go up a lot of I add the black shirts. It's a long and tedious process because I have to recreate the graphics in a transparent format. Some of them I have in old transparent PSP files, but Photoshop CS3 won't open them and I don't have an old copy of Paint Shop Pro anymore. Anyway, I've done a grand total of one design so far:

I [heart] Bubblewrap

Ok so today I got the letter from the school saying that my residency petition had been denied. This means that in the fall I will still have to pay out of state tuition*. That's around $7,500. My financial aid total (pell grant + subsidized + unsubsidized loans) is $7,616. Then I got the merit scholarship, half of which applies to fall semester. That brings tuition down to just over $5,560, which gives me about $2,000 left over to use for rent, bills, gas, food, and all expenses for me Dominic, until JANUARY.

My first reaction was "shit! I have to drop out of school!" but Dan says I shouldn't do that. If I drop out, I forfeit my scholarship, which would suck. Also it would push back my graduation date past Dan's, which means that if his residency is somewhere other than Cleveland, we'd be moving before I could finish school. Which pretty much means that if I don't go to school in the fall, there is no point in me going back to school at the very least until Dan gets his residency, since no college will give you a degree unless you've taken X number of your credits at their school. Then it would depend on where his residency was and if there was a school with a decent art department near there. We both agreed that the chances that I'd end up never going back are pretty high. Well, maybe I'd go back years from now when I'm 60 years old or something.

There was a fairly long, hard cry over this (on my part, obviously).

My mom was able to borrow the money to pay for my spring tuition (the only reason I was able to go), but after the roof blew off of her summer house (yes, literally) and after talking to her on the phone it's pretty obvious that she isn't going to be able to pay for fall. If I'd have stayed in Georgia I'd have my tuition for free, still, because of the HOPE scholarship. However, I'd have lost Dan if I did that, and in the long run guess what's more important? Dan.

So we're grasping around trying to figure out how to pay for me to go to school in the fall. The first and most obvious stuff is that all of our summer plans are canceled. I'm not driving to the juggling festival in July, I'm not going to New Hampshire in August, etc. Unfortunately that also means that Dominic can't go to NH or to summer camp, because my mom's business trips are in the middle of the time he'd be there and he obviously can't be there by himself. Once I find someone to buy my laptop that will help as well. I am going to try to find some way to make money off of some of my artwork over the summer (yeah right, that's likely to happen).

Pretty much what this means is that my life is shutting down as of now, and I'm not going to see the light of day until at least December. Joy. Fuck. Gosh, normally "joy" and "fuck" go together in a much better way.

So pretty much...uh...depressed as hell and shit right now. Hey, at least I've got my health. Except for my teeth. And my mental illness. But other than that, my health.





* even though I will have lived in Ohio for over 12 months, the fact that I took classes (online) from and got financial aid from a Georgia college last fall disqualifies me for Ohio residency.

So this is my last week of classes. Next week is finals, then I'm done for the semester. Yesterday I had my final review in painting. The teacher pretty much had negative things to say about all of my work. His biggest criticism was that all of my work was "took dark" and "dull" but whatever. My sense of aesthetics tends toward overall dark images with concentrated, small areas of brighter light. That's what I like. That's not what he likes. We're going to have to agree to disagree. It would be one thing if his criticism served as a guide to help me become a better painter of the style I want to paint, but everything he says is either so vague as to be worthless, or is an attempt to change my style to something he likes. Not helpful. I'm new to painting. I have a lot to learn. I'd love to have a mentor who could truly help me become better. But what I have, essentially, is someone who says "I don't lilke your painting of a starscape, because there isn't enough sunlight in it" or "I don't like your landscape painting because it needs more sofas" or "I don't like your portrait because you haven't painted in a refrigerator"... it's pointless.

Anyway, this weekend Dan came home from his month-long internship in Arizona. He drove for four days, with the last day being Sunday. Dominic and I left Sunday morning to drive 3+ hours to Dayton, where we met Dan coming the other way. We arrived within minutes of each other. Can we plan or what? Anyway we did that so that we could see the musical Spamalot (the Monty Python thing). It was hilarious. There were one or two numbers that I didn't care for (the 'not dead yet' part dragged on a bit long, for example) but overall it was really well done and very funny. We had a great time, then drove home caravan style. We stopped at a very strange Thai restaurant in Columbus for dinner. The tofu looked like little slices of bread. It had the weirdest texture I've ever seen. It tasted good, though.

I put in my petition for residency last week but I'm extremely nervous. There is a thing that says that some types of financial aid awarded in one state will make you ineligible to be a resident in another state for that time period. I was living in Cleveland last summer and fall, but my classes last fall were online from a school in Georgia, and so my financial aid was from Georgia. That may mean that I can't be considered a resident until next spring. Which will essentially mean that I can't go to school again until next spring. The tuition alone comes to about a thousand dollars more than my Pell grant, subsidized loans, and unsubsidized loans combined. Which means that I'd still have to come up with money for tuition, plus have no money at all for things like...oh...rent, food, gas, bills, etc. My mom's not in a position to help much with school right now because the roof came off of the cottage in NH during a wind storm and she's having to spend a crapload of money on fixing that, and things were tight with her to begin with.

So that's fairly scary. It also means that if I can't go to school in the fall, I forfeit the art merit scholarship that I won, because you have to take 12 credits in the fall and 12 in the spring to qualify for it.

I have two bits of art-related news. First, I got my letter today from the Merit Scholarship Committee. This was a scholarship I applied for a few months ago that is offered by the art department. You submit 6 pictures of your art, and they award the scholarships based solely on merit. They award several scholarships, and they award them at different levels each year depending on how many people apply and how good their work is. I was awarded $3865, half of which I will get for the fall semester and half for the spring semester. Yay! This week I also put in my petition for residency so hopefully I will get in-state tuition rates for the fall. If so, that scholarship money would put a much bigger dent in my tuition.

The other bit of news isn't necessarily news yet, it's just something that might happen. I might have a solo gallery show for the month of June. This hinges upon a few things, one of which is whether I can get enough pieces together by that time, and the other of which is whether the space has been rented by someone else before then. I'm considering putting up my huge painting that I'm working on right now,

along with these:



In addition, I want to put together a group of Giclee prints of these... I have only colorized these three so far, but I have over a dozen of them total that could be done, and I think they'd make good prints (and would be the kind of thing I could see someone actually buying to hang in their home or business)...



It's a small gallery, so those paintings plus, say, six of the bottle prints would pretty much fill it, I think. Even if I would be renting the gallery myself, the ability to say I've had a solo show is huge, resume-wise. Also, it would get me some exposure in the local art scene, give me a shot at maybe even selling something, and create the potential for even getting a review written. It would be a great opportunity for me.

Time for me to do my taxes. Oh goodie. I'm trying to figure out how to file state taxes, since I lived in both Georgia and Ohio. I doubt highly that I will owe any taxes since I'm a po' college student with a very, very small income, but I still need to file.

Rob is the sweetest person. In our divorce agreement we said we'd take turns every other year claiming Dominic as a deduction. I claimed him last year. I called Rob to see if he was claiming him this year and he said that I should go ahead and claim him again, because I'd get earned income credit while he'd just get a small deduction. I love that guy. Not just because of that--I really do love him. One nice thing about being divorced is I can just be happy loving the person without feeling guilty for not being in love with him.

I'm sick. I got sick on Saturday, December 29 while in Atlanta, and then it got a little better, but now it's worse again. In between that, Dan got sick. I think we may be playing Germ Tennis and passing this back and forth. We've decided that one of us should sleep in the guest room until neither of us is sick anymore.

I have a sinus headache that ibuprofen isn't touching at all. No fair!

Also, to make things more fun, I got my financial aid award letter from Cleveland State. The total including both kinds of loan doesn't even cover my tuition let alone any living expenses. There aren't any scholarships left to apply for for this semester. My mom said she isn't in a position to help me financially right now. I may have to drop out of college for a semester, which would suck so bad I can't even explain. For one thing, it would mean going and finding some sort of job for six months, which is a crappy thing to do to a business, in my opinion. Also, the last time I needed to find a job it took 4 months just to find one! Then, since I wouldn't be in school, I'd have to start paying my previous loans, so my expenses would go up. Then there's the matter of it pushing my graduation date another semester into the future (currently I should be finishing at about the same time as Dan does), which means that if Dan's residency is somewhere other than Cleveland, I won't be able to move with him. I'd have to stay behind for at least one more semester--and be paying the rent and utilities on this place by myself. There is just a whole mountain of suck in the situation. I have one week until classes start.

I haven't started to panic yet, but that's only because I'm sick and don't have the energy to panic.

Countrywide gets five stars from me for customer service. They're the company we had our old mortgage through for the house in Virginia, and they hold the first mortgage of my 80/20 ARM on my house in Georgia. HSBC holds the 2nd (the 20 part), but only because Countrywide sold it to them. HSBC gets whatever the opposite of 5 stars is. Five black holes? I hate them. I hate them with the fiery passion of a thousand suns. Except that suns are too much like stars and I wouldn't want them to get confused and think I gave them 1,000 stars. So... I hate them with the fiery passion of a thousand very passionate, very fiery, but decidedly un-star-like things. Their customer service people are rude and they call every single morning right after 8am. I don't answer calls from their number anymore.

[For those keeping score at home: my house in Georgia is vacant and for sale*. The realtor is working with a woman who works for investors and she is currently in negotiations with my mortgage companies to work out a short sale. Rather than putting (in addition to my rent) another $1000 into my interest-only mortgage payments on a house that (cross your fingers) is about to be sold and which I will get $0 from the sale of, and putting normal life expenses on credit cards, I decided not to make the mortgage payments this month. Countrywide just called me tonight for the first time. HSBC called me the morning after my due date. And every day since. Keep in mind that for the entire time I've had the house I've never been late on a single payment before. I don't get more financial aid money for school until January. Being a student is financially...um...exciting?]


*want to buy a house? It's just off of I-75, only 20 minutes from downtown Atlanta, 3 minutes from KSU... I'll sell it to ya cheap, just make me a reasonable offer. **

**though meant as a joke, that's actually true. The whole "short sale" concept means that the mortgage company takes a reasonable offer even if it is less than what is due on the loan. I'm not making any money regardless, so all I care about is if the mortgage company accepts the offer. Their criteria is that it must be "reasonable."

I have listed a few things on Craigslist this evening. The aquarium/stand/accessories got several replies within the first hour and a guy is supposed to come pick it up tomorrow morning. The other three things I've listed so far:

25" Zenith TV needs to go soon - $30 SOLD!
Is it the ugliest lamp ever? Vintage lamp/conversation piece - $30
Vintage funky tribal lamp - $30

So I had a minor heart attack today when I went to check my monthly credit card statement online. I wasn't 100% sure what my exact balance was, but I knew that it wasn't that! I looked at the charges and there were a total of three transactions from "liquidation.com" (who I've never heard of) that totalled just under $5,600. What the hell?? There was also a note in red saying that there had been questionable activity on my card and I should call them. So I did. The good news is that they said that all three of those transactions had already been refunded. The bad news is I still have no idea how they got there in the first place. I called the 800 number associated with the charges, but when I was transferred to the correct "department" I just got some lady's voicemail. I left a message with my number, but I'll call back tomorrow anyway.

So upside: I'm not actually out nearly six thousand dollars.
Downside: I still don't know how or why that stuff ended up on my account in the first place.

Makes me feel a little insecure, though. :/