My Boys

These are from this summer, obviously.  Look at the trees outside that window!  Whatever house we end up buying in Boise, old-growth trees are a must.  They are so beautiful, and the sound of wind blowing through them is so soothing, and the shade so protective.  It's like living in a treehouse, being in our master bedroom.  

Milo loves to get in E.'s face until E. rubs Milo's face.  His nose is so cold and his lips so drool-y and you feel like you're being accosted by a giant, stinking camel.  But he's so gentle and sweet, so you have to obey.

It's the worst at mealtimes, because both dogs get in your face because they have to be fed RIGHT NOW.  Peanut's breath has the stink of a thousand outhouses and Milo just slobbers on you and it's a totally unwinnable situation.

And totally perfect.

This is the kind of messed up stuff my husband is doing in his overly copious amounts of spare time.

Necessity and Mothers and Invention and All That

So, I did have a wee breakdown yesterday.  I don't know if it's hormones or just that I've been working a lot or it's the underlying stress of having a major shift in our lives, but I did cry loudly and snottily for about an hour and then felt tons better.

Now I'm back to having a good attitude about the whole thing, but you wouldn't have wanted to see the swirl of dark thoughts that were going round and round in my head for a while there.  Thankfully, none of them were real.

Anyway, one of the very cool byproducts of being on a much stricter budget is that it encourages us to be creative when we need stuff rather than just going out and buying something new (which I was always pretty quick to do, since I was pretty sure I loved shopping).  What's funny is that I like making stuff a lot more.  

Remember when I used to make stuff?  And how much I liked it?  I had kind of gotten out of the habit, and had forgotten how much I liked it.

Anyway, it's getting cold again now and we needed a little sweater for Sargeant P., but of course didn't want to go buy one.  So...TADA!

Awww, yeah, I made him a HOODIE, yo!  Eric gave me a pair of crappy old pair of sweat pants and I chopped them up and after some seriously hilarious attempts at fitting him I think I got it right.  He looks like Chihuahua Rocky.  It's a little off kilter in this photo.  It covers him up a litle more in real life.  

We also needed a humidifier in our room because there's always this point in Colorado autumns where every last bit of moisture is sucked out of the air faster than a keg gets drained at a fraternity party and it pretty much stays like that until June rolls around again.  Which means you basically wake up with a sore throat every morning and feel a sudden and strange desire to roll around in a vat of Crisco just to ease the taut spread of your skin across the bones.

Anyway, humidifiers can be forty bucks, and that's for the crappy ones, and we had that fountain outside that was just going to get snowed on, so I cleaned it out, pulled it inside, and smacked a Buddha in the middle, and voila!  

No more sore throat in the morning.  It's not putting out mist but just having the bowl in the room seems to help.  Plus, it's pretty, and the gurgle blocks out the sound of E.'s egregious snoring.  Bonus.

Finally, sometimes you just find great shit by the side of the road.  Like this solid wood Crate and Barrel vanity that somehow had stuck out in the trash.  It was covered in drywall dust, but I could see the love in it, so I singlehandedly dragged that heavy fucker into the back of the minivan (thank you, Crossfit), brought it home, cleaned it up, and check it out:

Nice, right?  The top's a little messed up, but everything else looks great.  And then we could move the old chest that was there before up to our room so that E. could have a larger bedside table, which he had been wanting.

Of course, there are things that can't be found or made so easily.  Nolie accidentally broke E's classic guitar last night.  No money can fix that, unfortunately.  I had to turn down some friends' invitations to go out this week, and that smarted a little.  There are some fun winter things we like to do, like skiing, or going to holiday plays, that we probably can't do this year.  That stinks.

Still, that's just stuff, and figuring out creative things to do and make instead feels exciting and interesting.

My Kid is Weird.

Notes

Giftiness

I promise soon to post something about how shitty it is to go from having two incomes to one, and how I'm freaked out and want to punch someone in the throat.  Perhaps, someone I'm married to.  But that is not this post.  This post is about gratitude, instead.

One of the interesting byproducts of E. losing his job has been that it has heightened my noticing of everything we have that is free.  Everything that is a gift.  Everything, every experience, every feeling that we just get by virtue of where we have been and where we are now and just dumb luck. 

Let me be clear:  we are nowhere near poverty.  I have amazing benefits at work, and a decent salary and savings that will see us through for a good while before things get really sad (like, losing our house sad).  But all of the frills have been cut, or will have to be cut--eating out, shopping, all of those little monthly expenses that were just "in the noise" before.  Pretty much all mindless spending of any sort, from Starbucks to the grocery store, is going to have to be eliminated or pretty seriously curtailed if we're going to buy E. enough time to explore and figure out what's next for him.

But I feel like it's important to acknowledge the extraordinary safety net we have in place, since so many people don't have a net like ours, and so I'm really just talking about how we're still going to be middle class, just maybe more on the lower end of the middle class spectrum. I say this not to gloat, but to acknowledge how many would truly struggle with basics like food and shelter were they to lose one income.  That is not us, but I feel solidarity with those folks just the same, despite our crazy amounts of privilege.

Anyway, all the FREE and amazing joyful things!  Sure, I am still overcome occasionally with wee bouts of sadness and panic when I realize how conscious I have to be now about money.  It can be a pain.  But mostly, I'm like Maria twirling in the Alps, hands outstretched in amazement at the surrounding beauty. Like walking the dogs off leash at the junior high nearby: Milo's big, dopey, loping gait and Peanut's low quick pounces.  Sometimes he gets going so fast his hind legs can't slow down and he does an endo!  I mean, how amazing is that?  You can't see it and feel sad, I guarantee it.  The grass is so green from all the rain, it's starting to feel cool out, and I'm pretty sure there is nothing more beautiful than sunsets in the Rocky Mountains.  The girls chatter and do cartwheels in the grass, and I have such a feeling of well-being.  It helps to knock the fear on its ass.

There is the feeling of overwhelming gratitude when we leave the local library with a huge canvas bag stuffed positively full of books.  We get home and I brew a coffee and we snuggle up on the couches or in our rooms and we just read for hours.  It's got to be one of the best things in the world.

There's the top deck.  Granted, the kids and dogs can't really be out there because there is no railing.  I probably shouldn't be out there with my extreme klutziness.  But we have a little table and umbrella, and a burbling fountain, and the huge branches of the cherry tree form a canopy over the rest.  It's extraordinary out there, really.

And then, jeez, there's just the spillover goods.  All the books we own but haven't read, all the tv shows we can stream for free, all the crafts we have supplies for, all the athletic equipment we own and could use more of.  We're good cooks and can make delicious food for pretty cheap.  I'm cleaning my own house again for the first time in over a year, and I'm even enjoying that, seeing my "objects" again, and rearranging them, and seeing what we really want to keep and what we don't.

Above all:  each other, and you.  Potlucks at each others' houses, phone calls, hugs, laughs, bottles of cheap wine.  You help me to overcome my sadness and fear and longing.  You're supporting E. with ideas and love, too.  We're so grateful.

News

The good news is that E. had been miserable in that job for years, and now he gets a chance to figure out what he'd rather do or be instead, and that's a chance that everyone should have.

The good news is that we're in good shape in a lot of ways...it's not 2008, at the beginning of a nasty recession.  We have great health insurance.  I have a good job, that I love, in a lot of ways.  Above all, we're all healthy and love each other hugely, our house isn't flooded, and mostly our day to day lives won't change too much.  Not for a while.

The good news is that our day to day full court press will ease a bit.  We have a lot of negotiating to do in the days ahead about who will do what and how and when, but the treadmill has definitely slowed.  I admit to more than a little feeling of relief.

I'm not sure what the bad news is.  Money, maybe.  But not for a while.  The fact that there's no railing on that stupid effing deck and won't be for a good long time, most likely.  We're less robust, less resilient, financially, certainly.  Lord, don't let other shoes drop.

And small stuff:  That I won't get to eat out with you all as much?  That we'll have to clean our own house?  No more Boden dresses for a bit?  Hard to complain about all that.

Oh, I get swept up in anxiety now and then--waves of the jitters come and go.  I have a little blues here and there.  I'm curious and watchful and feel a little like I'm moving in slow motion.  I'm trying to make some meaning out of things but we're just not there yet.  N. reminds me to stay away from the catastrophies in my head and to just focus on the moment.

So I'm doing that.  I walk to work and notice:  the air is cool, I am breathing in and out, the sun is shining.