Changes

So, now we have entered a new phase, the Period of Unemployment.

This has all been like a very very slow motion crisis, sort of like, you've seen this train coming down the tracks toward you for the past two months and you're flinching in slow motion, because you know it's going to hit you in about another month. Which is very peculiar, when you think about it. We heard about the layoff two months ago and did our best to prepare. Now, he no longer works, but our money flow is roughly the same because of the severance check. In a month, severance stops and unemployment kicks in, so his income drops to sixty percent. In six months, unemployment stops. And then the tides of darkness sweep in.

Right now, I think, well, this isn't so bad, really. And yet I know, realistically, if he doesn't find a job, I can only look forward to things getting much, much worse. The anxiety would be so much easier to bear if I just knew the end of the story.

But right here, right now, it is unexpectedly pleasant, which given my underlying fear, seems so odd. Rob is home on the weekends. Do you have any IDEA what a luxury that seems like to me? Rob is there to make pancakes on Saturday morning, which was one of our most cherished family rituals, and I fiercely resented CompUSA for robbing our family of that precious, simple thing for so many years. Rob is there to help Fiona with math homework after school. Rob is available to take girls to karate. Oh. My. God. I am not doing each and every karate run. What a concept. It makes me fully realize what a burden it had been for me for so long, doing all the chaffeuring, and I didn't even entirely recognize it until now. He can take the girls to karate, and then I'll have a hot cooked dinner waiting for them when he brings them home again (which my picky eaters probably won't eat, but at least it's waiting for them. But I digress).

So I'm enjoying it. But I'm trying to brace myself. It's going to get harder as the money runs out. How much worse will it get? How long will we have to wait before he finds a job and so I don't have to fear the roof caving in financially anymore?

I have no idea. And although I am cautiously enjoying this (short) idyllic phase, I don't handle insecurity very well.

This is pleasant, and very hard at the same time. How strange.

(One definite drawback, however: the house seems even messier since he's home all the time. Argh.)

Sidekicks, whoa

Fiona had her double-black stripe class tonight, and it was a toughie. I got exhausted just from watching what pazlazuli put them through. Fiona spent half of dinner with her face literally buried facedown in the tablecloth, she was so whipped. "I'm convinced it's all an evil and nefarious plot," she mumbled seriously. "They save side kicks for the end of class because they're the hardest ones to do when you're tired."

pazlazuli, she's onto you.