Updates and Such 

I haven't posted for a week - sorry about that - but it's not like anything exciting's happening. I'm still working on whittling down our food budget, but the high power bill's aren't helping our bottom line. I am so sick of being broke. However, there's good financial news on the horizon. Thanks to KidFest '07, we're getting a very substantial tax refund. We haven't decided what to do with it once it arrives, other than get a new microwave - ours is sporadically dependable, and sometimes defrost doesn't work at all - and see how much it'll cost to get the pickup fixed. We've been a one car family since last summer, Bill thinks the truck's computer brain got fried. It's an '89 Silverado, and it's pretty rusty, so I guess we'll see what our mechanic estimates repairs at. If it's more than a few hundred dollars we'll probably just sell or junk it.

Other than those two things... We're not sure yet. We'll probably pay off a card or two and that'll help alleviate some of the lingering financial crush from KidFest '07. But the kid's going off to college this fall, and there's stuff she'll need. Then there's landscaping and some home repair/maintenance that needs to be done, especially if we end up selling the house this year.

Anyway, it's nice to wonder about.

Since I've already mentioned the kids, we saw them yesterday for a while. My mom gets them most weekends for an afternoon or so and, yesterday, they came over to our house. All three were grimy, stinky, and sickly looking. They looked like homeless ragamuffins again and I could smell them when they came in the kitchen door. There is no reason I can comprehend where three little girls, aged 4, 8, and 9, should smell like moldy socks when close up let alone from clear across the house.

It makes me wonder if mom and dufus are back on the dope. Bill was pretty angry to see them that way, but I just felt like someone punched me in the gut. All of the time, work, aggravation and struggle was for nothing. It's so hard to see.

Okay. Enough of that.

Bill is getting over a upper respiratory tract infection and he's on an inhaler but it seems to be helping. He's definitely feeling a lot better. The Kid turns eighteen this weekend and she's planning on hanging out with her girlfriends most of the weekend since her best friend - Theresa - turns eighteen the day before. It's apparently going to be quite the party. I've been drafted into making cookies and supplying pop. Before everyone asks, the drinking age here is 21, not eighteen.

I'm finding it difficult though, realizing that she's all grown up. It seems like we just brought her home from the hospital a couple of weeks ago. She's a lovely, beautiful young woman and we're both very proud of her. But it's still weird to realize she's an adult now. I think we've done a good job at raising her.

I've now officially written about 40k words since January 13th. They're not fiction, but I'm pretty pleased with them. It's really, really nice to feel like I'm working even though the project is not for publication. It's a personal thing, essentially a purge of the anger, guilt, and shame I've carried around with me my whole life. I've steadily felt better as the words come, and I'm averaging 3k a night on the nights I work on it. Some nights I've written 6k. Like I said, it's nice to feel like I'm working again, but it's even nicer to, well, smile. I've even started singing along with the radio and CD's. It's wonderful to not feel so broken.

But I still have a long way to go. I'm hopeful that I'll get there.