(no subject)

So....Grant pretty much lost the winery. His main consulting gig. Half our income is another good way to translate it.

This comes at the end of a period of badly increased spending due to things like Halloween, Thanksgiving, 3 birthdays, all the registration fees for the beginning of the school year activities, and 2 rounds of out of town guests. Just as we move my brother in and right before Christmas.

HCN, his main/full time job, radically increased his hours worked while changing him to salary, a couple of months ago. This has basically made it impossible for him to do all the side work he normally does during "off" days that no longer exist. It was a matter of time before the winery stopped putting up with his lack of availability and inability to meet deadlines.

We can't maintain our lifestyle (i.e., bills + groceries) at all on the income just from HCN as it is now. But our health and life insurance are through that, it's steady income, etc. They aren't giving him any breathing room, really, for side jobs, which is a situation we haven't been in before. He will eventually get promoted and get raises, again, there. Hopefully I will eventually actually be selling writing, rather than just getting paid in copies for small articles. In the meantime we are in a kind of scary limbo.

Options are shitty but we sort of have some. Like selling the Prius and being a one car family again. That would give us about $12,000 in buffer that would tide us over for awhile, in addition to canceling out an insurance payment, and we'll get a few extra grand again in February from our tax return, too - after all that is gone "eventually" would need to start rapidly approaching.

Grant REALLY doesn't want to sell the Prius,or even think about it. Because the kids and I'd be stuck here all the time and because it saves on gas with his mega commute and all kinds of reasons.

This economy is wack. Historically it's fairly simple for Grant to hop online and find himself at least a few promising leads for full time jobs. That's not really the case anymore.

It is nice that in the pubishing industry, things are actually better than they've been in awhile. Partially because of the bad economy forcing people into cheaper forms of entertainment, and feel good "how to be happy" books, and partially because of Twilight-mania. And especially for nonfiction.

I'm not Freaking Out, I'm just thinking about all this a lot and wondering what, exactly, the answer is going to be.

---

Money problems make going to Lakeland for Christmas kind of prohibitive. Completely prohibitive. We would possiby be stupid and go anyway, but the bigger issue is that my sister's second baby is due January 5, and she's counting on me to be with Brian during her labor and birth. So I can't just leave town for a couple of days 10 days before her due date. I am conflicted about this, I know my mother is desperate for us to get up there and I REALLY,REALLY don't want to...abandon my Nana and Pa the first year my Nana is disabled and they can't do a lot of shopping. I don't want it to seem like that, to them. The truth is I've always BEGGED them to buy my kids way,way less because it's just ridiculous, the extent they take it to normally, and I can completely look past the hospital bed and all of it...

But Laura has been there whenever I've had a baby, or went to the hospital. I've always been able to count on her, even when that means she's nursing mine right along with hers.

Then there are "small" issues with it, like how Grant's job doesn't want to give him Christmas Eve off and how my brother doesn't fit in the van with us but can't just be left here alone. And how I've never been apart from my sister on Christmas, and she can't travel at that stage of pregnancy.

So yeah. It's looking like this will be my first year having Christmas NOT with N & P, like, in my whole life. After all the weeping and gnashing of teeth about how we had to find a way to make it work, even if Nana was still in-patient.

---

I feel really blah today. Can you tell? Grant has money issues weighing on him more heavily than I feel them, and he cheated with sugar on Thanksgiving so he's going through withdrawals again, and he's been pretty down. He's back at work today and I do not feel AT ALL like forcing my brother out of bed and dragging him to job interviews, OR having A Talk with him about being more independent when he stumbles out at 4.

Everything is heavy on my head because I have been totally dodging God. I didn't go to church Sunday. I stopped reading this Saints book that was helping me. I haven't been praying because I don't want to think about how I'm sinning. So I have this complete LACK of clarity, now.

And I'm sick. Just sore throat and head cold sick, but ugh. I feel like I could just seep for days and days.

Instead, I will probably print out, sign and mail a copyright agreement; call Dance Empire about how they'd really rather barter my kids' dance classes for web development than cash, I know they would; strip and febreeze my entire bedroom until it DOES NOT smell like cat pee anymore; take my kids on a walk to feed a horse; battle Elise's epic bed head; talk to my damn brother and then pick up produce and take Aaron to Elite hip hop.