Rest in Peace, Miep Gies. I will miss you forever.

This is my friend Miep Gies. She was 100 years old, and just died yesterday. I am horribly sad right now, because I loved her like she was a part of my family, a grandmother. She spent 15 years writing letters with me back and forth, and I will cherish them always.

Here are the many letters that Miep wrote to me. I keep them in a special box all together, dated. The last one I received was in August, telling me that she could no longer write letters to anyone. I cried all day and night because of that. What I didn't know was that she was being put into a nursing home and then had a fall and I believe that fall is what caused her decline and now subsequent death. It breaks my heart.

Needless to say, this year has not started out very well, and I'm starting to really not like 2010 very much at all.

I broke my stupid toe the other day, while vacuuming the rug in the living room. I kicked a pebble back into the fireplace and hit the damned hearth with the toe, super hard. I saw stars and knew that I had done some major damage. Here's a picture of the bruise today, it's all black on my toe and all underneath it. I'm limping a bit, but there's no point in going to a doctor or anything, they won't do much for it except tell me to take it easy and elevate it.

Oh, and then I called a mortgage company regarding financing this dream house and I was told what I was most afraid of hearing: neither Pete nor I can qualify for a home loan or mortgage right now. He has 2.5 years left of his bankruptcy to deal with, and THEN they make you wait another FOUR YEARS afterwards, before allowing anyone who had a bankruptcy to buy a house. I find that to be rather unfair. So, for the next 7 years, he can't buy anything. Oh, and of course I am also worthless, because I haven't been working, and they require 2 years of employment before allowing even a first time home buyer like me to apply for a mortgage.

So basically it comes down to this....either we have Pete's MOM buy the house and put us on the title, leave it to us in her will and then we take over the mortgage payments after that, OR, we can't buy anything, and probably won't even be able to buy the house we are currently living in, so we are doomed to friggin' RENT forever, and that my friends makes me feel completely and totally like a huge failure at life. I just want the security that owning a home provides. But that will not be possible. Goodbye to this wonderful dream home, and to the one we are in right now too. Sure, we can stay here for another year but after that, then what??

So to recap the year 2010 so far...

1. Asshole and racist evil killer Von Brunn died in prison before being convicted of killing Stephen T. Johns at my Museum in DC. Hate groups everywhere will say he got away with it.

2. Miep Gies has died, and I am heart broken. She's the one person who had the most influence on my entire life, and was a part of ME, of who I am....or....who I once was. I don't even know who the hell I am anymore. My life ended on 9/11. I feel like I am just an empty shell of myself.

3. I broke my stupid toe.

4. We can't buy a house for 8 years, or unless Pete's mom buys it for us. That's not going to happen of course, we would never ask such a thing of her. So somebody else will be living in MY DREAM HOUSE, and we will have to leave this current house behind when the lease ends. From here, I have no idea where we will go, but we'll have to rent forever and that really upsets me a lot. Pete doesn't seem phased by it at all. "I'd live in a shoe box, as long as you're with me." That's comforting. I was planning to live in a cardboard box on the street of DC as a single woman, and now I get to have Pete by my side here in Pittsburgh in a cardboard box on the street. Yep, I'm movin' on up in the world, ain't I.

I'm going to go back to bed now.

Love, Becky