What's next?

Put up xmas lights today on the front of the house. I was wearing shorts and a tank top. Got a bit hot and sun beaten. Didn't feel like xmas. I was doing okay but the highest point of my roof is pretty high, even for a bean pole like myself. My ladder is 12 feet high but I wasn't about to go climbing to the top of it on my concrete driveway. So I had to get inventive. Not usually a problem for me. So I opened the garage and started looking for something with a hook that I could use as an arm extension. What luck! I found Chad's harpoon gun that his friend Dan gave him years ago. When he got it I remember asking "what the hell do you need a harpoon for?" and he said "I don't know, but isn't it cool?" and sure enough I found a reason for it today. It worked too. I got my lights up and they actually look nice. I got a bit dizzy on that ladder in the sun and so I rewarded myself with a Chipotle. When I got home, in my mailbox was a returned check from the hostess of my slumber party from last week. She bounced a $223.00 check that I have already used up. No telling why my bank posted it to my account the instant they opened last Saturday but by Monday I had already paid my car registration with it and tonight it came back to me. Of course I can't get her on the phone. What's worse is I have a party booked with her crazy ass mean sister in 2 weeks. I am tempted not to do it but I don't want to punish the sister for her mistake. I am trying to tell myself that it was just a mistake and that she wouldn't purposely invite me in to her home and then write me a bad check but you just never know these days.
Then the old lady tells me that she is not coming this year. This would be the first time she hasn't come since, I think, 1990. This isn't the first time she said she wasn't coming but this is the first time that I believe her. Her health is deteriorating and I know that she is simply waiting to die, it's just a matter of when. She has "do not resuscitate"orders. She just can't wait to go. So now I know I have to go to her. I can't afford to fly out and I don't want to go for xmas cause Chad actually got a boss who understands that it's important that his employees be home for major holidays and gave him xmas eve and day off. I've been waiting for this for like, I don't know, our whole relationship. Ain't no way I'm missing xmas with him. It would cost me $470.00 to fly to Detroit in December. I don't have $470.00 and now I'm $223.00 in the hole until I get this nonsense resolved and I gotta fork over who knows how much to get my termite problem taken care of before it turns in to be a big circus tent situation. But if I don't fly out I am afraid she will pass and then I will feel even worse. I'm feeling pretty lousy tonight. I will get by. I always do. But I swear if it's not one thing it most certainly is going to be another. I try to put these things in perspective. At least I'm not in Iraq or a ton of other worse things that I dare not even type for fear of jinxing it. (knock on wood)