Oh my god, I stumbled across this blog (which is my blog) today, and my last entry was an unpublished draft on April 29, 2016, Two thousand sixteen, 2016, this is two thousand, fucking, sixteen people, and really not one thing has changed. Aside from the great pandemic of 2020, going on 2021, I am in the same predicament. Ok, there was a little wrinkle, that I realized why I stopped writing, because we had to move abruptly from our million dollar shack. The old lady owner wanted to sell is, but in reality it was falling apart (see previous post), so she cheaply fixed and updated it, rented it out for about 4 years, and now it's on the market for $2 million dollars. It's 1,420 square feet, so you do the math. Even if you are not well versed in common core, if you live outside the Bay Area, you will know that is an insane amount per square foot.
Obviously a lot has happened in the last 4 years, significant, wonderful, heartbreaking, good and bad things. The wins are that my parents are now in the mid 80's, still live independently (although with extraordinary, angelic help from my sister), and most importantly survived 'that which shall not be named, aka the Corona virus) and are currently on track to get their second vaccine. This alone should send me shouting to the rooftops, screaming with joy, and trust me, it is on one level. On an entirely different level, I am on the floor, shaking, crying, screaming, kept up at night, basically comatose during the day, wanting to self-prescribe a second dose of my anxiety meds (but I wont) level of desperation, and that is because I am in the same predicament that I was in this time four years ago, I shit you not. The wonderful rental we moved our family and dog into is being sold in July. Our landlord graciously gave us three months notice, to which I basically begged my life for another two months, so now we have 5 months to move on to the next step. Financially, things have drastically improved, my hardest working husband ever (he would get the award if there was one) started a company which was acquired and gave him an impressive salary, benefits, and ownership, and all the fruits of his labor are finally paying off, the division he started is going somewhere good. But the timing sucks. 'Going somewhere good' in startup land can take over a year to see any big financial reward. So here we are needing to move, and stuck between a rock and a hard place, if you will. These are just the facts. The deeper, more troubling aspect, the 'entirely different level' aspect, if you will, is that now my son is 16 and a sophomore, and my daughter is 12 and just started middle school. Now if you have not been fortunate enough to be living under a rock since roughly March 15, 2020, you well know a little thing called Covid-19 literally swept the world, and brought us all to a screeching halt. So my kids (as with most kids who've lost over a year of their wee lives), my kids are in dire emotional straights. My daughter has spiraled to places that quite frankly scare the life out of me, knock me down cold and sweaty, and we have to sleep with her because we are frightened of the dark places she goes in her mind. My son is the polar opposite, but if you've ever heard of the expression 'tears of a clown', you will know that just because someone is smiling and happy-go-lucky on the outside, it does not mean they are coasting through life on the inside. So moving now is basically a recipe for teenage disaster. I don't care who your spin doctor is and how much you pay them, this is a situation that cannot be spun. And as if time doesn't swing you back to where you started, still living in the 5% means that you unfortunately cannot afford to by the house you live in, or rent in, in this particular case. We are cash rich, and house poor, which I could live with, except for everyplace we live in, the big man (landlord) (sorry, I'm sure those terms are canceled in writing these days, the all gender 'man' and 'lord' but I need to use them for emphasis here), so the big man wants to make a bang for their buck, and the little guy (us) gets screwed in the end. As they say, the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer...
Right now, I am barely keeping my head above water in all of this mess, and I wont mention that I need to have surgery and a biopsy at the end of month for suspiciously large polyps on my uterine lining (I know, tmi, I'll leave it at that, you're welcome). I want a glass of wine like someone stuck in the dessert five days without water, but I am using my better judgment to abstain from drinking right now. One, I think if I start I will not stop, and that is not an over exaggeration, and two, well there is no two, I just wont stop if I start so I think that is reason enough. Hey, I am going to count that as a win, I have chosen not to drink myself into oblivion, yay me. And one last thing before I make You depressed, I turned 50 in January. For all those who are younger than me, please, for the love of god, abandon all hope that your life will magically change for the better when you hit fifty. Let's just say my birthday was one day after January 6, and if you need a not so gentle reminder, Google images of January 6. Damn, I should have seen this train wreck coming. This blog may be many things, but it wont be political, but if that's not a precursor for disaster, I don't know what is.
Honestly, although I have severe anxiety and most often see the glass as half empty (well, bone dry if I am being truly honest here), I do have hope. However small, however dim, there is always a little faith in me that everything will be ok. It is rarely what I envision it to be, but somehow it is something that works out. So bear with me for the journey, I hope is turns out in 5 months (since it's March 5, 5 months, minus 5 days)...
