1:13 pm - Tuesday, Oct. 14, 2003
Money money money
We share a little back yard with a white pickett fence around it. The dogs broke the gate, with a little help from some kind of wood rot. Simon has been building a new one using a chisel and a cheap back-saw. It looks really nice, proving yet again that he is bombastic.

Saturday we did a lot of shopping. Sunday I killed our computer,

ASIDE:

Floppy disks are evil- a pestilence that carry viruses from one ailing computer to another- a plastic pool of filth- and should never again be used. I'm e-mailing everything everywhere from now on.

TAKE HEED, LEST YE BE SMOTE DOWN IN YOUR ARROGANCE:

so we spent all day working on that and the gate. Yesterday I realized that the house is a total mess and I'm just going to P-O-P POP if I don't do something about it, but I had to go to work this morning, and although I am being very productive, I keep wanting to go home and get that done. I went through Boy's Toys and was going to put them up in the closet when I discovered that the place where they go was strangely wet, which means that I have to discover the source of the wetness and clean everything up before I can put the other ones away. Also, the winter clothes came out, so I need to put away the summer ones and sort out the give-aways. There are some books to be packed up too. In the mean time they are all sitting out, and that's just Boy's room. Everytime I go in there I want to scream.

Hey! Guess what! I took myself down to the Housing Commision yestiddy and got myself offin the Section 8 list. I am no longer on any kind of governmental assitance whatsoever. YAY! It was needed for a long time, but now that I'm working we can quit it. Better yet, when Simon gets a job we'll be able to Save money. I have rarely been in a position to save money, and when I am it has always been less than $1000. You can't save money when paying the rent and buying the food takes up all your cash. I've always wanted to be one of those middle-class people who have a retirement account, a college fund and 2 years worth of income saved up. That would feel very good.

My Dad went bankrupt this month. He's been paying off the credit cards that he and my Mom racked up since the divorce; somehow I feel guilty about this, like I was the one who racked up the bills and stuck him with the payments and made him go bankrupt. I frequently feel like I should fix the messes my Mom leaves behind. I would have totally been helping my Dad pay those off if I had had the money.

Oh well. He's much happier now- his income can cover their current expenses easily. I've always worried about him and money; I didn't like the choices that he made about what was neccesary. My Mom really isn't any better at finances than my Dad, but she did teach me the difference between neccesary and wanted.

Of course, who am I to talk? What if I end up going bankrupt someday? My folks aren't stupid and they ended up that way- what's to keep me from going there?

PS : IF you are reading this and you know me in the real world, your mailing address was stored on that computer that I killed, so it sure would be handy if you could e-mail me your snail-mail address...Refinding everything that we had on there is going to be a pain. There's all the driver updates, and favorite websites,... I have backups of most documents, but not of all of them. I never thought to back up my Favorites list. You should go do this for yourself now.