pengworm

We filed for Chapter 7 in 2009 and did not reaffirm our mortgage. We have always paid every month and on time. My husband and I have separated and I have surgery coming up that I have to pay a percentage of my conisnsurance beforehand. I will also be out of work for three weeks due to surgery.

I just called wells fargo and basically got no information. They told me that I couldn't and wouldn't get any penalties or late fees but after the account was 45 days past due I might get a letter stating that it must be paid in full by a certain time to keep it from going further as in towards foreclosure. The agent on the phone said I might not even get this letter. What kind of answer is this?

I realize I am responsible for my mortgage. I am in a situation where I'm trying to do the best I can. I am terrified that if I skip the one payment that they will demand a double payment that I won't be able to make. I can start making payments normally but not a double payment.

Does anyone have any experience or insight into this type of situation?

My daughter is having friends over for her birthday this saturday. Before we go out for a scavenger hunt we will be having cake and pizza. Without going into too much detail we've had some big issues coming up that have us in a very tight bind financially.

I was planning on getting the Papa Murphy's $5 large pizzas for the party but now our local store has changed to only having that price monday through wednesday. I'm wondering if the unbaked pizzas would be okay in the fridge from wednesday night till saturday night? I checked their website and they say that you should eat them within 24 hours of purchase. They also don't guarantee the quality if you freeze them.

I have had take and bake pizzas from other stores and they have dates on them. The pizzas were always fine in my refrigerator (or the stores) for a few days until the expiration date so I don't see why this is any different?

I will probably just end up doing something else because I don't want to take a chance on the pizza tasting bad. I don't believe that anything on them would go bad in the fridge for that amount of time but maybe they wouldn't taste as good.

By the way please no rude remarks. Like I said we have just had some financial emergencies so we are making do the best we can till things are back to normal around here.

I need an atomic paw shirt for my son to wear for part of his Halloween costume as Carl from The Walking Dead. I've found them online but it's going to cost around thirty bucks with shipping and I don't want to spend that on something he's only going to wear one night. It wouldn't bother me as much if it was a kids size that would fit him right so he could wear it again but they only come in adult sizes which won't fit right anyway.

I know that I can buy special fabric markes but again I'm trying to save money here. Do you think I could do this with regular sharpies or would it most likely look like total crap? I don't need it to last so that isn't really any concern to me.

My computer as always just had Microsoft Word Starter 2010. However for online classes I'm taking I had to subscribe to the current Microsoft Office. The problem I'm having is that some documents that I open for my computer class keep opening in the Word Starter 2010 when I need and want them to open in the new Word that's in Office. Is there any way around this besides uninstalling word starter because I don't want to do that. Thanks for any help you can offer obviously I don't know what I'm doing.

I went to ER last week after waking up out of dead sleep with my heart racing like I had just run up flights of stairs. I was terrified but tried to wait it out. It only seemed to get worse so I went to the ER. They did EKG and blood tests that they sad were normal except for my blood sugar slightly high. They told me I must have had a night terror but to follow up with my doc about the blood sugar.

I felt okay the next day but started feeling bad a day later. Went to my doc about blood sugar and she said it was fine. She did say however that the ER tests showed I was very anemic and low on things like Vitamin D and such. I left her office that day with a plan to take iron and vitamin d and hope the heart thing didn't come back.

Well it did come back later all the sudden while I was sitting there doing nothing. I was terrified and called my dr and she told me to come in the next day. So now I'm waiting for an event monitor that's being mailed to me.

Here's the problem. In the meantime I've felt worse and worse every single day to the point I'm afraid I'm losing my mind. I feel faint and dizzy and cannot think straight or concentrate. I'm afraid to drive or be alone at this point. For awhile I wondered if it was panic attacks but I know it's not because it lasts near continually. My husband took my pulse the other night when I was having a bad episode and it was 190. He's a cop/volunteer fireman so he knows what he's doing and he was freaked out.

I am thinking about bringing home a new kitten but have a few questions I want to ask to make sure it would work out okay. We have a grouchy adult cat at home that isn't fond of other animals or too many people for that matter. We adopted the female cat as an adult and she is fixed and declawed (was that way when we got her so no hate please).

The kitten we plan on getting is a female but I've never had a kitten before so I'm unsure about some things. For instance our cat's litter box is in our basement. We cut a little doorway out of the basement door so the cat can come and go. Would the kitten be able to figure this out if we put her litter box down there as well or is she just too young? If so would we then have to have on one the main floor too? I'm weary of this because I just don't know where in the world I would put it.

Then I'm wondering about the kittens claws.Do kittens normally tend to scratch furniture or things like that up and if so how do you get them to not do that? I know to have a scratching post but how do you convince them to use that and not the couch?

Lastly how do I get my adult cat to come around to the kitten? Everything I've read said to keep the kitten alone in a room for a few days to let it get used to it's surroundings. After that do I just let it go and hope for the best? I would assume that my adult cat would eventually warm up the kitty or just learn to ignore it. Thanks for your help!

I'm a married mom with kids who is almost 35 and stuck in a dead end retail job. I would really like to go to college part time.Due to circumstances which I don't have enough space to go into here I did not graduate from high school but did obtain my GED. I have always wanted to go to school but I ended up raising a family and never had the time. Now I cannot take being stuck in this situation anymore and really need to do something to better myself and my family.

Years ago I filled out the FAFSA and was told I was eligible for Pell Grant money. I was never sure what to do after I got this info.I tried schedule my online classes and had to correspond with an advisor before they would allow me to do so. I made it clear that this was all new to me and that I wasn't sure exactly what steps I needed to take to get going.I let him know all I wanted was to take some gen ed classes online but after corresponding with this particularly nasty advisor I was left to feel just plain stupid. He sent me lengthy messages berating me and telling me he wouldn't babysit me nor would he choose my college schedule. Trust me that I never even came close to putting that type of vibe out there and I was just astonished at the way this man went off on me out of nowhere.

Needless to say this left a bitter taste in mouth with this school and I stupidly never went. Sadly it's the only choice around and I'm back to square one again. What do I need to do so I don't find myself in this position again?

Today we had trouble logging into our Sony Entertainment Network account to watch a movie. It kept saying our log in info weren't correct. Then I checked my email and had two messages saying that my email and password had been changed which we didn't do.

So I just got off the phone with Sony who said that it looked like our account had indeed been compromised and they had me change the email and sent me a message to also change to a new password. I've done all that but wondering what else I need to do. I'm pretty ignorant when it comes to this stuff and just want to make sure I've covered my butt as much as I can. We use Amazon and Netflix through our PS3 does that mean we should change that info too? Also is it likely that this info was actually stolen from the playstation network itself or could it have been say off of my laptop that has emails with the info? Sorry for sounding so stupid I really know nothing about this. It all just makes me a bit nervous. Thanks in advance for any help you might offer!

For a couple of days now when I try to get into my Yahoo email I get this...

We're experiencing some technical difficulties...

We’re sorry, but Yahoo Mail can't load due to a temporary error. You can try back again shortly, or visit our help pages for ways to troubleshoot the issue.

Temporary error: 3

I can't seem to figure out what is going on. I thought it would be a temporary thing but after a couple of days I'm getting nervous and really need to get my email. Anyone have any idea what is going on or what I can do to fix it?

My son is in second grade and seven years old. He is a good student and has never been in trouble. His teacher this year is notorious for being very, very strict. Many of my son's friend's parents have problems with her but I haven't up until now. I'm really not sure what to say though because my son is to blame in the incident too and I don't want to make the teacher defensive, I just want something done. So here's the story...

Last week about two hours into school I get a call saying my son wet his pants and that I needed to bring new clothes. This has NEVER happened to him before so I was shocked to say the least. My husband took the clothes up and asked him about what happened. He said he had to go really bad but didn't want to ask his teacher. My husband asked him if they were busy working on an important test or something because he couldn't understand why my son wouldn't just ask. They weren't doing a test they were playing games on computers at the time. Our son replied that the teacher tells them they have to go to the bathroom during their lunch or recesses and that she always says no any other time. Later when he got home we asked him why he didn't tell her it was an emergency and he said because he knew she'd say no anyway.

So my son who has never done anything like this wet his pants in front of his entire class. He was very upset and as you can imagine I am too. I understand that kids can abuse going to the bathroom too often but I know my son would not be one of them. If the kid is too afraid to ask to the point that he has an accident something is wrong.

However as I said before my son is to blame as well. He should've gone up to her and told her it was an emergency. He also has the recesses and lunch to go but I believe at this point there hadn't been a recess yet and if there was it was a short 15 minute one. Yes he needs to learn to go during those times. He's seven years old though and if you have to go to the bathroom you have to go. I've had many jobs and while there have been times I've had to wait, they cannot deny you bathroom usage at work and I've looked it up to make sure.

I guess my biggest issue is the fact that my child would've rather gotten to the point of having an accident in front of his entire class rather than even asking his teacher. This REALLY bothers me. Still I don't want to come at her with an attitude and want to assume she's doing the best she can. From what I know though she is very inflexible in the classroom. The thing is my son didn't ask this to go this particular time so I can't just say I'm upset because she didn't let him.

So how do I go about letting her know that I'm angry and upset that things got to this point? I would feel much more comfortable just talking to the principal but I feel it wouldn't be fair to the teacher to go above her head. Any suggestions would be much appreciated. And please I don't need people to jump all over me. Like I said my son is at fault too. I'm not trying to be one of those parents that thinks their child does no wrong. I just don't think a second grader should be reduced to peeing his pants because he believes his teacher will just say no again.

I'm buying my 12 year old daughter her first Ipod touch for Christmas this year and I'm not sure which generation I should buy. I was leaning toward the 4th gen because of it having both cameras and a lower price. However I'm seeing some pretty good deals on the 5th gen now and since it has a newer operation system I'm wondering if that would be the better way to go?

I worry that if I get the 4th gen it will end up obsolete soon. Is that a legit concern? Also I wonder if I go with the 5th gen is the one camera as bad as everyone seems to make it out to be?

My last worry is simply money. I don't mind spending more but I know my daughter and I both would feel horrible if it got lost or broken or something. I don't foresee that happening because my child is very cautious with her stuff but you just never know. So for that reason I'm leaning towards the 4th gen.

With black friday coming up though the deals on the 5th almost make it seem silly to go with the 4th. Decisions decisions! Can somebody help me with the pros and cons of both as we've never owned an apple product other than my daugther's school macbook. I keep reading people saying to get the 5th just because it's newer but to me that's just not reason enough. Thanks so much in advance for your help!

I recently took in a stray cat that we thought to be a young male but boy were we wrong. The cat ended up being a very old female cat. She looked very, very thin and just not good. We took her to the vet to be spayed and have shots and tests for FIP and other things. Surprisingly the vet found out she had already been spayed. We had been keeping her in our garage waiting for the results of her blood tests to make sure it was safe to bring her inside with our other indoor cat.

Well they called friday and said she tested positive for FIP. I asked the receptionist what that meant and what we were supposed to do. She pretty much just said that some cats can live for awhile with it and said "she's lived this long." She said we could call and speak to the vet the following morning. Well we ended up playing phone tag with the vet and never got to speak to him yet to see what he had to say.

So I've been reading as much as I can online and the more I read the more confusing it gets. I understand the difference between the two types of FIP, the wet and the dry. What I'm not so sure I understand is if it's safe or not to let this cat inside with our other cat? At first I thought the answer was 100% no. Then the more I read it sounds like there is a very small risk of other cats catching this.

I also don't understand how this cat has lived this long if it has this unless it somehow recently got it? Then there's the fact that the blood test this vet did cannot actually tell you if the cat has FIP. I've read this several times that it's just sort of one piece of the puzzle.

I cannot afford to take the cat to have any more testing done. I just felt terrible for this poor thing and wanted to give it a better life. I'm wondering if she just seems so thin because she's so old? Also her fur is kinda ratty looking but I think maybe that's just from being outside?

For the time being we have her outside and we have a box with blankets for her on our porch. Tomorrow we are going to build her a nice little insulated house because out winters are brutally cold. It breaks my heart to think I have to leave this sweet kitty outside at all, much less in our horrible winter.

Am I stupid to think maybe she's fine and just really old? Is there any other way of knowing if she has this besides taking her in for more testing? Thanks for your help.

My kids and I were at a neighboring town today visiting their park. Out of nowhere came the most pitiful cat I have ever seen. The cat was o bviously starving, you could see it's ribs. Although I'm not a huge cat person there is simply no way I could leave this animal out there to starve. It didn't have a color and I can't believe it would've belonged to anyone because it clearly hadn't been getting fed.

So now we've brought the cat home and have it outside. We fed the poor thing and I swear I didn't think it would ever stop eating. The thing is I don't know what to do next. We have one declawed, female, indoor cat already. The stray is a male cat so I'm not sure how that would work out.

I know I would have to get him neutered and something done for his fleas as well as making sure he didn't have any other illnesses before we brought him in. I just don't have any experience with cats outside of our indoor cat that truly does nothing but lay around and eat. This kitty seems much more playful and vibrant. I don't know what to expect as far as the male cat and spraying? Also what about it's claws? When we adopted our cat it was already declawed and I would hate to do that to this kitty. However I've seen plenty of furniture and stuff ruined by cats and I don't want that.

Also will this cat be likely to attack our cat? Our cat freaks out and hisses when it even sees another cat at the door so I can't imagine how it would do with another one in the house! I suppose they would eventually get used to each other but it worries me that the stray might hurt our cat in the meantime since it has claws and ours doesn't. Mind you the stray doesn't seem mean at all bu I worry.

I would just get the cat taken care of at the vet and keep it outside but we live in north Iowa and our winters are bitterly cold and I wouldn't want the poor thing to suffer. So can anyone with more experience give me some tips of what I should do next? Also how much I might expect to pay to have the cat fixed and get all it's shots and different tests done?

Thanks in advance. I just wanna get this little guy healthy and give him a good home while doing what's best for both cats.

I have been diagnosed with clinical depression about fifteen years ago. Ever since then I've been on antidepressants and done okay other than a couple of severe bouts of postpartum. Things haven't been great but they have been better than they were.

I've been working part time retail for almost four years now. My job is very flexible with my scheduling because they know my husband's job has very weird hours and that I have our kids to take care of. I'm very well liked at work and my bosses generally will go out of their way to do anything for me.

So for the last couple of weeks seemingly out of nowhere my depression (or whatever it is) has gotten bad. I find myself barely able to get out of bed and just feeling horrible. Of course there's the whole crying and feeling guilty and hopeless all the time. I'm constantly anxious and just having a very, very hard time getting along.

As of right now I'm only working two nights a week so I figured I'd be okay and would just get through work somehow. Well tonight I was supposed to work and I felt horrible. Everything got to me and I called in. This happened a week and a half ago too. I'm not normally one to miss much work so I'm feeling especially guilty about missing.

Right now I'm at a loss as to what to do about my job. I need it and don't want to lose it. I had planed to go into work on Monday and be totally 100% honest with my HR manager and let her know what was going on. I was going to ask to find someone to fill my scheduled shifts and ask for a leave of absence of about a month. My job does allow employees to take leaves for just about any reason. I figured about a month would hopefully give me enough time to figure out what is going on and maybe get a diagnosis or new medication or something?

Now I'm wondering if maybe I should really be so honest with my employer. Even though I am pretty close to these people I know full well the place is one big old rumor mill. No matter what the bosses blab and stuff gets out that shouldn't. I don't want to be treated differently. Some people at work know I take antidepressants but I've never been in the state I am now since I started working there. I'm not sure what they might think.

So what in the world should I do? What should I say or not say? I'm just not sure how much a person is suppose to reveal in situations like this? Would I be okay just saying I'm having a health issue and it's personal and hard to talk about? I really feel like I wasn't properly diagnosed years ago and I'm looking forward to going to Mayo Clinic to find out what's really going on with me. The thing is having this work thing hanging over my head is making me feel so much worse.

Thanks to anyone who read this entire novel and has anything to offer.

I recently applied for a hardship withdrawl from my small 401K to pay towards about three thousand dollars worth of medical bills. While getting all the paperwork together required for this 401K withdrawl I noticed some huge discrepancies between my Insurance company's explanation of benefits documents and the actual bills I've received from the providers.

Out of about seven bills only two of the amounts I owe match up like they should. Others vary greatly and frankly make no sense. I've poured over these papers and it just makes no sense. There are a couple of ER visits and my explanation of benefits says the amount charged was something like 216.00 and my actual bill says it's nearly 700.00

In the finer print where it breaks down amounts paid by my insurer and copays and such none of those amounts match up either. All but two bills have me owing hundreds and hundreds of dollars more than my insurance company's paperwork.

To be honest up until now I've never looked too closely at this kind of stuff and now I am not only confused but shocked at what I'm seeing. I will of course contact my insurance company Monday morning to get to the bottom of this but in the meantime I'm wondering if anyone has any experience with this type of thing?

Is it most likely the the doctors overcharging or more likely a mistake from my insurance? I really dread having to go through a mess with this but if I'm being overcharged by hundreds and hundreds of dollars than I definitely will. Does anyone have any knowledge in this or advice? It's driving me nuts not to be able to talk to anyone about it till Monday!

My eleven year old daughter and I are planning a Halloween party for this year but we have no idea what to do. I've had many types of kid's parties before but with the kids at an in between age this year I'm really having trouble. They are going into fifth grade and feel like they are way too cool for everything yet there's a lot that they are way too young for yet.

We had planned one game that I found online that they called operation. Basically for the game you make two giant outlined bodies with spaces for the missing parts. Then you have different buckets filled with stuff like cooked spaghetti. In those buckets you put the fake rubber missing body parts along with other icky stuff that feels like those parts. There are two teams and the teams race to dig out the proper body parts and put them where they belong on the bodies. We figured this game wouldn't be too babyish.

Then we thought about having some sort of scavenger hunt. The only problems with that is I'm not sure what to do if the weather doesn't cooperate and we can't go outside. Also I'm a bit nervous about having all these kids outside. There is small park across the street from the place we will be having the party and I thought maybe we could just do the hunt there. It would basically just be items hidden throughout the park with clues to find them. We figured we would have between two and four teams depending on how many kids show up.

My sister in law thought that sounded too babyish and that the kids should be taken all over town to do a scavenger hunt but I REALLY do not want to go there. Any other scavenger hunt ideas?

Other than those two ideas we don't really have much. We will be eating and I'm sure they can entertain themselves for some of the time. However I don't feel comfortable just hoping they will entertain themselves because I don't want to end up with a bunch of whiny kids or a bunch of out of control kids either because there isn't anything to do.

So I would so appreciate any ideas you guys might have. Thanks in advance for your help, we really need it!!!!!

My daughter is getting a little older now and needs a new MP3 player. We started her out with a cheap sansa which she loved but it's finally quit working. I'd really like to get her an Ipod but we do all of our MP3's and videos through Amazon because we have a Kindle Fire too. I'm just wondering if an Ipod is a bad choice if we aren't planning on using Itunes?

If that is the case can anyone suggest a good alternative to the Ipod?

I need to make about 25 angry birds cupcakes for my sons classroom party that is in two days. I have to work tomorrow night and have things to do tomorrow during the day so I'm wondering if it would be okay to make and decorate them today? I would be able to take my time and do them right that way but I really don't want them taste gross.

So I would be making and decorating them on a Tuesday night and taking them to school on Thursday. I will be using store bought cake mix and frosting because I just don't have the time to do homemade right now. I know the bakery at the store I work keeps their cakes and cupcakes for a couple days so I'm assuming it would be alright?

Thanks in advance for any help you could offer. Here is the link to the type of thing I'm probably going to do. http://thecraftingchicks.com/2011/03/angry-birds-c...

My daughter is in fourth grade and I am so curious to see if anybody else has kids learning math the way she is. First of all since the first grade they have sort of bounced back and forth through things never quite learning them all the way. I asked the teacher about it in second grade because I thought maybe I was missing something. She told me that they sort of touch on something a bit and then move on and go back to it later to learn it more in depth.

So imagine my shock earlier this year when my daughter who is in gifted classes could not properly add three digit numbers! I noticed she kept getting answers wrong and also that she would never show her work. So one night we were working with her and asked her to show us how they were taught to add. To be perfectly honest I cannot even explain what she was doing but I can say she wasn't getting the correct answer even half of the time with this method she was taught. This is mostly I'm sure because it was a confusing mess and I can't even imagine why they would teach it this way in the first place. She also informed us that they did not have to show their work on their math assignments either.

Thankfully conferences were days later and we discussed this with her teacher. He laughed us off and showed us that there are two different ways they teach them to add (neither of which made any sense to my husband and I who are in our 30's). He also regurgitated the same answer back to us that her past teacher did about them touching on subjects and then moving on.

So basically I have a ten year old daughter who cannot consistently get correct answers to addition,subtraction,multiplication,or division problems. We are talking the basics here and she can't really do them. Yet she has math homework all the time that uses all of these. For instance tonight it was measuring and figuring out perimeters which she needed to use each of those types of math yet she really can't do it properly. As you can imagine any help we offer confuses her even more because we do things so differently from the way she's being "taught".

I am very worried because my daughter is a very bright girl and although she seems to be getting along okay in math it is becoming a bigger problem as time goes along. I get that I probably sound just like the oldsters did when I was young griping about the "new math" and I don't want to be like that. However I do find it to be a problem when she is routinely supposed to do things that are supposed to be your basic sort of foundations of math and she can't do them.

Also understand that I'm not saying my daughter is perfect either. What I am saying is if a child that is as bright as she is is getting this confused I can't imagine how it might be for the kids who have a tougher time.

Does anyone have any insight into this? I'm hoping maybe there might be some teachers who could chime in and give me some sort of tips so I can help my child out or maybe explain to me why math is taught this way now. I'd also love to hear from any parents who might be going through similar issues. I really want whats best for not only my daughter but the rest of the kids in her school and I'm just worried that they aren't getting it. Thanks in advance for your time!

We have recently been remodeling our outdated kitchen which included painting our hutch black. I had looked up several tutorials and followed one very closely. Basically it consisted of sanding, priming, painting, light sanding, painting again and then distressing. This person suggested satin or semi gloss latex paint and I went with satin thinking maybe semi gloss would look too shiny and not old looking.

Well the last step on the tutorial after putting stain over the sanded distressed spots was to use a wood wax type stuff. I had wondered if I'd be better off using a water based clear polyurethane but wasn't sure. Well before I ever got to the waxing step the darn hutch ended up looking like crap. After three or four coats of paint and light sanding between coats it was still coming off in spots and every little thing that touched it showed...big time.

So I went out and bought the polyurethane and I just now put another coat of paint on it hoping to cover the spots and fingerprints and scratches it showed. What I'm wondering is would it make a difference and maybe help if once this dried I went over it with a coat of semi gloss black paint instead?

I'm thinking if I had gone with the semi gloss in the first place maybe this wouldn't have happened? I have three young kids and although they don't deliberately mess stuff up this thing is in our kitchen and will get touched and have stuff sat on it although it will mostly be decor type stuff.

So do you think I should just leave it with the satin paint and do the polyurethane or should I go over it with a black semi gloss first? I would be so grateful for any help any of you guys could offer because a lot of time and money has gone in to this project and I hate for it to be ruined!