Five Months

A lot can happen in five months. A lot HAS.

I'm not going to detail it--that would take way too much time--so I'm going to put it into a list because I have two blog posts of bitching I want to detail out and post. Let's get started, shall we?

1. In July...my husband's unemployment, our only source of income, was cut off after they decided to do an audit of his account. We survived on donations and weekly church food baskets. We never knew what we were going to get, but someone who donated liked Trader Joe's, and although many of the items were due to expire either the day we received them or within a few days, if we froze them, we could eat them. Other, non-freezable items were eaten first or would abruptly go bad.

The State finally figured it out and got us all caught up at the end of July, in time to pay August rent. Whew.

2. The first week of August, my husband got a job. Finally. At last. No one else wanted it, evidently. It's in a shit town, in a shit location, but at a school that mostly has its act together (he's a teacher), so we had to move. Somewhere we'd never been nor wanted to be, Central California. It's not as bad as I expected, but it's nowhere near what we're accustomed to. We cope.

3. We rented a really nice 3 BR, 2 BA with family room home with a huge yard. It's more than we should be paying on his salary, but we're stuck with a lease so I intend to enjoy our time here.

4. Our former landlord in the redneck, motorcycle headquarters, pot growing,, meth cooking town in the mountains we lived at for 3 months, refused to give us back our deposit saying that the next tenants complained of "cat smell." Hmm. There was no "cat smell" at our condo in Nevada where we lived over 3 years. Huh. We were going to sue then decided to hell with it. Life goes on. $500- flushed.

5. I was SO exhausted by mid-October that I could barely walk. R dragged me to the ER who diagnosed me with anemia. I was put on ferrous sulfate--iron--tables, and within a week I was feeling well enough to actually do stuff, like laundry, showers, and cooking. I continue to feel better and do more every day. I bed I was anemic for a long, long time.

6. My husband makes enough for us to cover our monthly bills, buy groceries and gas for his commute (we didn't want to be anywhere near the shit town he actually works in), but at the end of the month there's not a lot left over. In fact, usually nothing. We have no savings, still.

7. What we do have is AWESOME health insurance. It cannot be overstated how fucking great that is. We are both taking advantage of that and getting stuff taken care of that we let go for too long.

8. Work for me has slowed down, so I've not had much income. I finally got paid for that big job from last summer and we used all of it to move--deposit on house, trip south to look at houses, rental truck, etc. I think I got a pedicure and a purse and the rest was zip, bang, gone for other stuff.

9. I'm no further on any of my writings as I work on getting better, getting our stuff in order, and daily chores of cooking and cleaning. Now I know why we lived in such a mess in Reno; I didn't do any cleaning. My husband wouldn't pick up...well, this is going to be devoted a full post of its own.

10. I am generally at peace with my life. There is more I'd like to have and do--friends, a book group, travel, etc., but in general, I am very comfortable. And I feel safe.

That's it for now. Thanks for hanging in while I went through this time of huge changes.

Peace.