things getting worse before they get better was an understatement in my last entry. we have next to no food in the house, even with a small advance on next week's child support. we're so far overdrawn right now that i doubt we'll be able to buy the washer we really need even though it's only going to be about $100. we've already got to put $200 on the gas bill so it doesn't get shut off. i just paid $200 on the electric bill to prevent it from being shut off. i paid the rent and told the landlord to cash the check immediately so it could get cashed. and it was supposed to get better with this upcoming check. instead we'll be trying to stem the hemorrhaging again and just barely getting by and hoping to god yet another disconnect notice doesn't come in. and i just know we're on the edge with the water company because i haven't been able to scrape up any money for the bills. at all.
really, all this crap has me wanting to get back in the regular workforce, even though i know i can't. the timing and transportation issues just have no way to be worked around. and i could never earn enough money to pay for child care for 2 older children, one who is special needs. if i was paying to go to work before, i'd really be paying out the nose with child care in play. but i also worry about the stress saxy is under to provide for us. his job should be picking up, it IS picking up slowly, but we'll be so far under and spending so much time trying to catch up that it just may not matter. our housing is too expensive, but we can't afford to move; our utilities are too high, but we can't get the landlord to insulate. we've tried to keep utility use down--the house is colder (not that this has helped much with the recent 30 and lower weather and snow), lights are kept off as much as possible. and now they're saying grocery costs are going up by 50%? we can barely get the food we need as it is!
so, yea, it's a rougher week than expected, all around. hopefully saxy will continue to get larger checks and we'll unbury. we should try to save for these down months, but how can we? we're barely making it. when you have no margin for error, you have no room to tuck anything aside for the bad months. okay, so, if we decide to go to dragon*con again this year, that money might be better saved than spent. but, in the long run, $150 isn't drop in the bucket for what we need in a month. and, as i said before (in lord knows which entry), i'm not going to force us into a life where all the extras are taken away. a person just can't live like that for long without getting depressed, and i'm halfway there most of the time these days.
there are some good things going on--little things really, but good none the less. lilley press has an estimated first release date coming in late may, early june with 2 or 3 books in the first group. and my paychecks from there, once they finally start coming in, should be decent. well, small because they have to build up, but i have my hands in at almost every level of the process, so my royalties are going to be calculated at different levels for each book. really, i have no idea how he's going to figure all that out, but it'll be more per book than we originally thought because i'm senior editor so get a bit for every book that i assign to someone else, do editing myself and get a bit for that, and am now covering for acquisitions so any book we pick up while i'm doing that will get that tacked on as well.
trust me, i don't mind even though it keeps me really busy!
i finally seem to be figuring out how to balance my editing job with my own personal writing. some of that balance is a little too reliant on motivation rather than habit right now, but i expect that to change as i follow the schedule (for lack of a better word). the hardest part is the evenings, which is when i need to be revising. there's still too many days when i just don't want to and can't find the energy to even try. but when i do manage it, i get spectacular weeks like last week: 12k in words processed and 2 chapters revised twice each, plus progress made on my other writing projects. and everyone is finally 100% healthy--or at least as healthy as they were before the sick started to settle in about a month ago.
and i know we'll make it through this. we seem to always manage to get through the rough weeks somehow, even when they're back to back to back to...well, you get the picture. i still dream of us getting out of this mess entirely one day, which is also an accomplishment, i think. it's so easy for a situation like this to suck everything out of you until you have nothing left. me? i'm just hanging on and hoping one day we'll find a way out--that we'll be able to do things like save for retirement, get rid of all the damn creditors, have house we own, not have to worry if we have enough in the bank to buy another gallon of milk, and so on. my only big "new" worry is the recession. knowing so many other people are about to hit the place i'm in or worse, that people are going to be out of work and possibly not only taking my husband's job but also making it so his boss has a harder time finding contracts, all that just scares the crap out of me. we're one of those families where one lost paycheck could land us on the streets. and that's a scary place to be. so, right now, i'm trying not to think about that too much.
just got to take it one rough week at a time, you know?
~*~
word of the moment: ergomania
excessive devotion to work especially as a symptom of mental disorder; a passion for working, esp. excessive; also called workaholism
