The High Price of Normal

Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it.
- Ellen Goodman

This quote so accurately describes my feelings about my life right now. Granted - I think I have taken care of some of it.

The clothes that I wear to work either come as gifts from friends, hand-me-downs, holiday gift cards, or the thrift store. People are sincerely amazed at the items I can find in the second hand stores.

Driving through traffic is something that I do every day now. This is a relatively new development, but a necessary one to deal with the last item. My commute is fifty miles one way and it takes me about an hour. That is two hours of my day that could really be spent doing something more productive. I have tried to put the time to good use and frequently take care of pleasantries - calls to friends and family that would otherwise not be made given the high frequency of chaos on either end of the commute. The gas money, though - ugh. Even if prices were to recede to a meager $3 per gallon - commuting alone at 25 mpg I would spend $60 per week on gas. This does not include trips to the grocery store or to pick up the kids or go to games at the highschool. And gas is not $3 per gallon. And my only operational vehicle at the moment gets 15 mpg. Which is why I am currently relying on the benevolence of my best friend and driving her car to and from the city every day.

I own two vehicles - A 1995 Jeep Wrangler with an I6 (15 mpg) and 1995 Eagle Talon TSI Turbo (28 mpg). They are both paid for. Sort of. My parents loaned me the money for the Jeep last year. When I moved to the ranch this summer I bought the Talon with a loan from my company profit sharing account ($60/paycheck to pay it back). Knowing the issues with the timing belt on a vehicle with an interference head (if the belt breaks it wrecks your valves = new engine) I immediately took the vehicle after paying $3500 for it and spent another $1200 having the timing belt replaced ($850) and some other work to get it into good shape. I knew this was imperative considering the 100+ miles per day I would be putting it through.

The shop that did the work also replaced the crank shaft seal and some other things as it was leaking some oil. When I drove it away it was running rough - which it wasn't when I took it in. So I took it back. They said that the idle error control motor was bad and needed to be replaced. I asked if it would hurt to put this off - they said no.

Soon after the car wouldn't remain running and I started driving the Jeep with considerable difference in fuel mileage. When I had the money for the part my roommate put it in. 24 hours later the car stopped in a major way. On examination sll of the belts were turning - except of course for the timing belt. Returning it to the shop has so far been fruitless. They say that the crank shaft was bent and it wrecked the timing belt and blew the engine. AND that even though they worked on both the crank shaft and the timing belt this couldn't POSSIBLY be a product of their work. *heavy sigh*

I have been trying to contact the owner of the shop since last week. He has not called me back. So the cars - I do own them outright. I have the titles. I don't have to pay for full coverage insurance - for all the good it's doing me.

The house - unfortunately I do still own it. And it is sitting vacant all the the time. My last roommate moved out at the beginning of September. I still have a few things that I have to move out of there. The lender has it on the list for foreclosure. So - you have to ask yourself at these times...

Was it ever worth it?

To work this hard. To have the house. To have the cars. To try and make it. To kiss ass and bend over and sell out on a daily basis to... do what? Keep the economy going?

I have a lot of anger about all of this. I've decided that I really need to take a serious look at my life - in spreadsheet format - and calculate the overhead required to live this way. How much money am I actually making? I don't know. I really don't. And that's disturbing. Sure - I know what my paycheck says. I know what my annual gross income is. But what I don't know for sure is the price of doing business. What is the cost to me and mine?

I'll focus on figuring that out this week. I think it may give me some answers. It might not be pretty, but I'll bet it will be real.

Normal is not something I ever wanted to be. It is certainly not anything that I want to pay for.

Blossoming

There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud
was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
- Anais Nin

I've been struggling to begin posting again. As it turns out finding the door is the easy part. Walking through the darned thing is painfully difficult.

Summing up 2008 - well that could be difficult as well. I have decided however to adopt a new motto in writing.

JUST DO IT.

It doesn't have to be good. It just has to get done.

So, here I am. I've walked through one hell of a door. I'm standing on the other side of it and my head is still spinning.

In June my husband and I made the decision to part ways. As it turns out no amount of therapy will ever change the fundamental essence of a human being. Trying to make someone into the person you want to be with is a worthless endeavor. I don't regret what I learned in the eleven year relationship, but I am saddened at the amount of misery and hurt that we were able to visit upon each other in that time.

The biggest binding factor in staying for so long was my fear of losing my step-kids. It turns out that when I decided to take the leap everything fell into place. I keep wondering what I did right to have things turn out in my favor against such odds and in such an unconventional situation. I approached my step-kids, my husband, and the biological mother with the same proposition - let me keep the kids.

I had made arrangements to move the three of us to my best friend's ranch. Over the last year the two families already living on the ranch have become the family that I've always wanted. I have found the peace and love in their presence that I had nearly ceased believing existed. The kids have spent many weekends with me there - and they had found the same comfort and sense of belonging that I had. So with the two of them in agreement, and the blessing of their parents, the three of us have made our move 40 miles north of the area we have called home for the last decade.

Please, don't think for a moment that I am giving up the reigning title as "wicked stepmother". They still laugh when I say it, but I haven't made things any easier on them. Without the constant household struggles that we have all endured I am able to focus alot of attention on them, their homework, grades, chores, and behavior that I didn't previously have the energy to devote to those areas. And they have four other adult figures that really don't give them much room to shirk the higher level of expectations. And yet still - they endeavor - and maintain that this is where they want to be.

They both just started their freshman year in high school. I am not a fool - and I understand that they may decide in the near future that this is too hard. They could very well decide to take the easy road - and as I have no legal claim to them there is little I could do to stop them. I'm not letting that scare me though. I'm not going to back off and make it easy to keep them from wanting to leave. They are 14 and 15 years old - and their decisions now are their own in a much broader sense than most of their peers.

They aren't angels either. The lengths that I have already had to go to in the first two months of their HS careers trying to get and keep them on task have been exhausting. I just have to maintain my faith that in the end this will for the best. Any success that they achieve now will help forge the path to a happier future for them. And if I were to do any less to help them I would have regrets that I'm not willing to carry through the rest of my life.

So now I find myself a different woman than I was in the spring of 2008. Autumn frost is settling over the landscape and I am having to take an accounting of my harvest through the past season. I believe that I have come out ahead - possibly for the first time in my life. As I look down the road towards winter I believe that I have laid in the emotional provisions that I need to make it to the next season, the next planting, the next door.

I owe many updates to the information that I've posted previously - and I will get to them soon. For now this song is running through my head:

A bear climbed over the mountain
A bear climbed over the mountain
A bear climbed over the mountain
To see what he could see.

He saw another mountain
He saw another mountain
He saw another mountain
And what do you think he did?

He climbed another mountain
He climbed another mountain
He climbed another mountain
And what do you think he saw?

He saw another mountain
He saw another mountain
He saw another mountain

And what do you think he did?

I don't think I'll ever stop finding doors. At least I hope not.