//WINDS OF CHANGE//
I’M PISSED!!! I’m gonna rip off heads and puke down necks! I will run headlong into brick walls and then bleed all over everybody! I will soil myself and not shower for ... years! Yeah! If you cross my wrath, you will suffer! Out of my way, stinky minions!
OK, that lame-o rant was for those who wanted to experience the joys of T-Bone Anger. I won’t really do any of those things because it’s not who I am. I’m even-keeled, laid-back, bordering on happy-go-lucky and occasionally afflicted with a fatal politeness. And I smell terrific. I get mad, but I get even in more subtle ways. Whatever!
Funkified as of late, things are getting better. Here’s why:
1. Stinko de Mayo. We found out May 5 that my wife’s part-time, work-from-home job is over. Finito. Close curtain. Basically, she was performing the duties of her former full-time job on a part-time, reduced-salary basis. Her boss, however, needed someone to wipe his butt for him during the day, so he was determined to let the arrangement fail. Just as we were getting used to living on my salary plus a third of her former take-home, that third is vanishing as well. We figured it was only a matter of time, but it was still a blow. But keep reading!
2. Everything will be OK. We've had setbacks before. The very same week nearly a year ago that we committed ourselves to the wife’s staying home with the Cutlet rather than working an outside job, the plumbing in our house revolted. The sewer line leading from our house to the city sewer was tilted toward the house, which means “it” never really left. Running the washer meant poop and whatnot would spew from our shower drain. Then it was discovered that we had a “slab leak,” which means a pipe was broken under our foundation. So we charged the nearly $3,000 to a credit card that was (sigh) almost paid off. We covered the new hole in our kitchen floor with a rug. And we stuck with our decision. Childcare would have negated her salary anyway. Plus, while still in her hospital room after Cutlet’s birth, she whispered to me how she couldn’t imagine leaving him with someone else for eight hours a day. We are still sure it’s the best situation for us. We are simply living in a dinero desert. The vultures are circling, but we’re giving them the finger and soldiering on.
3. I may finally be able to trade my overblown, expensive steel pony for a more suitable mode of transportation. As fun as it is to drive, our 2001 Mustang GT sucks money from us while it’s parked in the garage. The monthly payment, insurance and gas are all rather high. We tried to sell it months ago with online ads, newspaper ads and putting the thing on consignment for 6 months at a reputable car dealership. No dice! The deal we’re working on would ease the black hole in our bank account and award us the paid-offness of a junker. Won’t miss racing the riceboys because I can beat half of them on my bicycle. And because the junker has already been wrecked AND hailed on, I can laugh at building thunderstorms and shout “Bring it on, clouds of pain! Can’t touch this! Just don’t break any windows, please.”
4. We’ve got ideas. Money-making ideas. Some of them are far-fetched, but we know a viable market exists for at least a few of them. With the extra money we’ll save from not making car payments, we are going to reduce our debt. Then, “extra” dough will go for seed money to start one of our ventures. These are not get-rich-quick schemes. More like get-poor-slower schemes. And they’d give the Petite Filet (aka W.O.T.) a deserved diversion from diapers and drool during the day.
5. I might have to get a second job. That doesn’t make me special, just another guy whose day job can’t quite support the fam. I see it as an opportunity to spread T-Bone Love to the corners of another workplace. Will be applying to every part-time gig in a 10-mile radius so that my drive-time will be short. Need to do it quick before the pimply, clog-wearing, cell-phone wielding, trust-fund teens get out of school. Must beat them to the punch! My cause is more noble ... food on the table, diapers and mortgage payments! I don’t care about having the latest looks from Abercrummy & Filch or getting new gold rims for the cherry-red Mitsubishi Eclipse my daddy bought me for my Sweet 16. Watch out, teeny boppers! I have pairs of socks older than you! And I’m not too proud to mop the floor!
Plus, I just heard about an exciting full-time job opening for which I am quite suitably qualified. Would take me out of retail advertising into a new forray of the journalism world. And I wouldn’t need to take a second job at Bonanza Burger. I’ll let you know what it is if this promising prospect proves to pan out.
In the meantime, would you like fries with that?
YOUR A TOSSER