Status: Got a few rolls of packaging tape--from the $25 my inlaws gave my wife for her birthday. It's good enough to get things going again--for just a little while.
But we have so much to do between now and the first of September. (Which is now 9 days away. Then it's 4 weeks to zero hour.)
I also wrote a few pages on The Vampiress Hunter. But don't expect me to applaud myself. I'm still not in full 'writing mode' yet.
There's still too much going on for me to remain completely focused on my book projects.
Watching: Oddly enough, the TV functions normally--after plugging it in for a test, Thursday. I think the convertor gave it a coronary and it "flipped out".
Five months off and it works now.
It's just too bad we may not be around much longer to enjoy it.
Listening to: Taped music. "A Daisy Chain For Satan."--By My Life With The Thrill Kill Cult.
Reading: Kushiel's Scion. Page 555.
TOPIC: HARD TIMES A'COMIN'.
My wife got $25 for her birthday today. And since we were (still are) in desperate need of some packaging tape and cat food, we decided to get both--since the cats were running low and we had zero tape.
When we shopped at Wal-Mart, we were...to put it bluntly stunned by what we saw.
One roll of packing tape--the clear stuff: $4.44 each.
2 rolls together? $4.44 each.
The 4-paks? $8.49.
One bag of catfood? Up a dollar from last month to $10.98.
It took us 20 minutes to decide what we needed. Forget me transplanting more from my garden this month with new potting soil to mix with the old--I made the ultimate sacrifice and spent what little money I had left on making sure we had enough packaging tape to last us for at last 5 more days--enough to pack more stuff into the boxes I got a few days ago.
So we got 2 rolls of the packaging tape for $4.44, the bag of catfood, and I went and got 2 smaller packing rolls for $4.26.
But I couldn't believe this! I could understand buying stuff in bulk or two-for-onsies and all that sorts of thing...but when they start charging the same price for a single as they do a double--that's where I start to look at myself, look at the world I live in and think: We are so fucked.
Pardon my language, but this kind of price-gouging just hurts people like myself.
I sat at the Subway express counter and thought to myself: "This has got to end. We're just getting priced out of everything--not just my comics, or my occasional book, or a candy bar--but everything."
Rent, utilities, public transportation, basic essentials...
I don't honestly know how much longer I'm going to be able to continue absorbing everything. I'm barely hanging on as it is.
And next year, they are forecasting food prices are going up another 5% to 6% in 2009.
How the hell am I supposed to keep up with kind of inflation? All it's doing is hurting me.
I try to do what I can to make every dollar I have count. But it doesn't seem to go as far as I would've liked. Have a little extra lying around. A tiny reserve cushion.
But it's not there.
All I can think of is how my mom did it with raising the three of us by herself so many years ago, and I just can't see how I can apply the same principle to a world that's 24 years out of place and 53 times more expensive; with so little money.
What do I do? What do I spend it on? What's more important?
Despite my best efforts, I'm rapidly losing this fight. I just don't know where to turn to next for help.
I...I just don't know anymore. The government just doesn't seem to give a shit about people in my situation...the middle-class is pretty much history--and everybody I know here in cyberspace and the real world is hurting.
My father-in-law lost his job yesterday and it's thrown my inlaws into a state of near-panic--since his income was paying most of the bills all these years--since I got married to April.
And now...even she's contemplating divorce because she doesn't want to live in a tent or out on the streets.
When I got home today, I put my foot down. I said: "We've been through a lot together these last 6.5 years and the last thing I need is you to tell me we should get divorced because we are in a serious fix right now. We aren't separating and that's that. We'll get through this somehow. We always do." I went into the bedroom and wanted to see if Jaws III recorded while we were gone. (A bad recording--but okay to watch.)
I'm just tired of that. Ever since I can remember, I've always been shut out of everything. The moment a crisis pops up with my family, my well-being and wefare is sacrificed automatically for their personal comfort.
I'm left flailing out of control.
My mother takes in my two brothers and I get left to fend for myself. This happened many times over the past 13 years--before they all left me for Vermont. But this kind of abuse scarred me deeply.
Sure, I was an adult back then, but I was not in a stable living situation either.
A few of my friends were sympathetic to my brothers' problems and causes; offering to help, but when it came to me?
"Tough luck. You can do without."
I told April when we were going to Wal-Mart today: "What did I do to deserve this kind of treatment? Did I piss off everyone the day I was born disabled and seen as a burden for the rest of this country in general? Why is that people have to treat me like this?"
I went on saying, "Julie (a crazed friend of my wife's) wants you to live with her--but not in a tent--but sees no problem with me living out on the streets or by myself--with no one to be with."
I said: "I can't have that. Not when my health is going down hill mighty fast and I might up dead by accident or something equally worse. And how would you know what happened to me if you weren't there? That's why I don't like Julie. She's too obsessed, uncaring, and selfish. She wants what we have, or don't want--and would rather have you all to herself than have me around either her, you, or Joseph. (Her boyfriend.)"
I finished by saying: "We are soulmates. Husband and wife. Bound by a mutual contract that pretty much illustrates what we are going through now: 'For better or for worse'. There is no bailing out when the going gets tough. No chickening out when faced with a cold reality. We have to do this together. Not apart."
I'll be damned if I'm going to let this happen to me. We went through hell together before getting married--both of us nearly dead for real.
I'm not to let something as being homeless be a cause to separate the two of us by proxy--because she's scared and I'm having issues of my own. Y'know?
This is the way the world is: No one cares, no one gives a shit. It's everybody for themselves when it comes to crunch time.
But I've sacrificed way too much to simply lose out on what little I have to me and the woman that I loved and married.
I'm not going to accept that!
Sky
