Sunday, January 09, 2011

And Then That Happened

Lex came home from work tonight - after having worked 24 hours in the last 2 days - and announced that he was being forced to go to part time effective February 1.

Another victim to the crap we call the Economy has fallen.

Boy, I hope all of you asshats who A) financed sub-prime mortgages and B) who bought into sub-prime mortgages are Happy Fucking Campers tonight. Thanks.

*sigh*

So...we tighten our belts. We say goodbye to the Church o' Brunches and the supper parties and the Grotto Open Bar. We'd already been discussing a re-alignment of priorities. Those priorities have just shifted again.  It means Black Box wine (shutup) and store brand whole bean coffee instead of Daz Bog. It means shopping sales and manager's specials and no more specialty deli cheeses. It means I'd better start learning how to make a mean stir fry to make up for the inaccessibility of Lex's favorite Chinese take out.

It means we evaluate our vices...is this the time to quit smoking? Gah! I don't want to think about that right now. Although...so many of my friends are doing it now. We can all be mean, horrible bitches together...right?

We don't have gym memberships and cable or netflix subscriptions to dump.

We do have mad skills we could capitalize on in the form of freelance for pay.

Do we *gasp* get married to get him "affordable" health insurance? That. Freaks. Me. (and him) Out. But I'd do it. For him. WhatthehellamIsaying?!

I don't know.

We don't have all the answers to our questions yet. We don't know by how much his salary will go down but we do know all the benefits - internet reimbursement, mileage reimbursement, etc - will go away. He's got some savings. I can adjust my budget. I'm employed full time, gratefully, still.

And...as much as I hate to say it, this may be a blessing in disguise. He wanted...no NEEDED...a break. When he came and announced a few weeks ago that he was seriously considering joining the Franciscans so that he could join a monastery...because, you know, he's A) totally Agnostic and B) you don't even want to know...I knew it was bad.

And an alignment of priorities, from time to time. is never a bad thing. To step back, stop buying in - even when it's minimal already - and figure out how to make life in America without the hype work for us is a good thing.

I just wish it'd happened after we were both completely debt free.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Does Lex want to change jobs? Is his chosen industry uniformly bad in "who's hiring" and all that? Is he willing to change industries to re-secure full-time work? In the past, when i was under-worked, I took the opportunity (still having *some* money coming in allows some leisure in the job hunt) to apply for anything I thought I would like instead of just slam-dunk things I was fairly certain I could get. Good luck with it regardless...

Just Jane said...

Right now, I'm not sure he knows what he wants beyond the fact that he does not, under any circumstances, want to become a corporate drone. I believe his exact words were, "I'd rather eat a bullet".

We're OK for now and this certainly isn't catastrophic. Him working part time just means we strip the "little luxuries" away. That's not a bad thing. It just means we flex our creative muscles to come up with ways to luxuriate in different ways.

MsSparrow said...

just goes to show you never know what curve ball life will throw you next. I wish you both the best of luck! *hugs to you both*
PS if you decide to quit you are more than welcome to be a hateful bitch with me.

bete-noire said...

get domestic partnered!

from what we gathered, it's mostly a shared-finances arrangement; anyone can be domestic partners. really the only reason we did it was to put me on $him's insurance.