This will probably make more sense if you read this post first, and maybe follow the links in it to some of my earlier posts.

I guess things are moving forward, but not very damned fast. The contractor/developer who'd expressed an interest in buying part of our place finally called back, offering about half as much as we'd originally been talking about. My sister told him he could either come up with a reasonable offer or go to Hell. My brother, whose 5-day work week runs Saturday-Wednesday, on the other hand, says he's going to get his lawyer started on the paperwork today to buy the part of the property we'd been talking to the other guy about for a more reasonable price. I guess we should just be happy about that and not worry about the long term situation, but I'm having trouble doing that. He doesn't have any immediate plans for the land other than building equity in it with money he had been putting in a savings account every month, but he's made it plain he doesn't intend to just hold on to it forever either. Depending on what happens in that field behind us the value of the land we sell my brother may or may not increase substantially over the next three or four years. If my lawyer's right about me getting a big retroactive benefits check from Social Security eventually, and if it happens soon enough, I may or may not be able to work something out to end up owning the land we're selling now, but there's no guarantee of that happening; Bob isn't going to sell it to me for any less than he thinks he could sell it to someone else for. I guess for now the only option we have is to sell it to him and hope for the best. 

I guess this wouldn't be so hard on me emotionally if I didn't know we wouldn't be in this situation if not for some major mistakes I made over the years. I don't know of a thing I could have done to avoid developing major health problems when I did, although I do wonder if things would have worked out differently if I'd had decent health insurance instead of being dependent on the VA for medical care. On the other hand, how pretty would I be sitting today if I hadn't been 18 and stupid and deliberately washed myself out of the Air Force Academy not quiet 39 years ago? (Did I mention how much I envy my ROTC-grad nephew who starts Primary Flight Training later this month?) Or if I hadn't gone to work at Motorola in a bad mood about problems at home once too often and lost my job there in '82? (My best friend while I was working there, who hired on 3 months before I did, accepted a buyout and retired at the 25 year mark six years ago.) Or if I hadn't let my second wife's Nurse Jekyll and Ms. Hyde personality screw my head up so bad I lost a $50k/year Technical Staff job at Rockwell in '90? (They had a major "peace dividend" layoff; I might have made the cut or I might not have, but my performance was such that I was one of the first to go.) I've been paying for past mistakes, and barely surviving, for almost 17 years now; the job I lost in 2003 paid less than I was making 23 years earlier. I'd probably still be sick without the mistakes but I wouldn't be nearly this broke, and we wouldn't be selling off part of the place Dad and Mom bought 50 years ago for money to try to survive on till my Social Security comes through. If I was the only one suffering for my stupidity I could accept that but I know having to sell part of this place, even to my brother, is tearing Mom up and there's not a thing I can do about it.

Apparently I spoke too soon when I said we weren't going to need any more outside help to get by till we sold the land; I was way to optimistic about how soon that was going to happen. If we can hold on from now to the 31st surely we'll have the money for the land, or at least part of it, before things get really bad again, but holding on till then is starting to look real iffy. I'll repeat the same offer I made before, then decided prematurely that I didn't need to make any more: If there's anyone reading this who can spare a few dollars from now till I get my pension on the 31st I'll pay you back with interest that day. There's a PayPal button on the sidebar.