Reflecting on 2009 -- It was a pain-FULL year for us!

So, I haven't written a blog post in many days -- a couple of weeks actually. Why? If you read my last blog post, you know that I had a bit of a weird accident with my car. At first, my hubby said that "I smashed my hand in the trunk." Well, that really is incorrect as "the trunk slammed ON my hand and forearm." It's been over 4 weeks since that happened. Today, I am contemplating a follow-up with an orthopedic surgeon because of residual pain I have in my hand, wrist and forearm.

That is just one of the pain-full moments of 2009. As Squidoo lensmasters, we have been encouraged and prodded to write about our New Year's resolutions. I personally have gone with a concept, to "be the best that you can be." That is not something new for me as I've always aspired to improve myself and be the best that I can be hopefully at all times. With that in mind, I have further prodded myself this year to "reach for the stars." Perhaps you have caught that "inspiring and positive theme" on my twitter profile?

2009 was probably our most difficult year. You have heard and read a lot about the homeless? Well, we rather directly were responsible for 2 separate families not being homeless for the past year. They are our tenants in our two rental properties. It's been a cost to us of some $20,000 plus out of our pockets for non-paying tenants. This has been a really tough "issue" for us as we have not wanted to evict these families, yet we have bills to pay ourselves. It would be too much information to talk any more about these rental matters ... just suffice to say that we are quite charitable people.

Just this morning, I was talking with my hubby about challenges with a recent loan I secured. The bank officer set up the automatic payment directly from my checking account with that bank. However, I just got a reminder call yesterday that my December payment hadn't been made and was I planning on making that payment? "Say what?" I asked the caller. "It's on automatic pay." Yada yada -- a word of caution -- check any newly set up automatic payments to be sure they are making those automatic payments!

Oh, automatic payments? I come to find out that my hubby had a reverse issue ... and I want to raise a caution over that! It seems that he had two automatic payments set up to a company for insurance. One was for his son; his was the other. Over a year ago, he went into the bank to STOP the one payment for his adult son's insurance premium. It got stopped for the one month; HOWEVER, the accounting department attempted to collect the payment the following month. The first "debit" attempt didn't work; but the second one did! Long story short, a so-called "closed" insurance account collected monthly payments for the next year or so. Hubby didn't catch it either. When he finally did "catch" the wrong payments, he had paid over $1,000 for a closed account. I have bravely stepped up to go to bat for my hubby to recoup this wrongly COLLECTED money. Hubby is pretty upset about that, among other matters, and doesn't feel he can deal with this right now.

So, happy Saturday eh? Looking to 2010 to be a brighter year. We have had issues as shared in this blog post, AND issues that I have not shared here. 2009 was an incredibly pain-FULL year for us! We are turning the other cheek(s) and looking to learn from what some might call our mistakes and incredible challenges of 2009. You know, it is indeed interesting that our local newspaper had a headline about 2009 being a pain-full year for others. I'm thinking 2010 HAS to be better!