Two More Weeks

This is going to be a very lean couple of weeks, according to my budget calculations. Last month of paying the rent on the old apartment, combined with the new mortgage, and the new associated bills.

Good times =\ I have not a spare dinar to my name and will set aside paying for my bills immediately (as I usually do), waiting instead for the due dates that coincide nicely with my next payday.

Two weeks. Surely, I can make it two weeks. I will need to fill the tank with gas, but I have enough food in the house to not need to purchase anything more. Filling up Jane Grey will be about $25 or so.

I haven't lived this close to the wire since the first year after my first divorce. That December, I had thirty-two cents in my wallet the week before Christmas. I had already bought the boys their gifts in the months leading up to the holidays, and so we had lasagne for Christmas supper and I anxiously awaited my next paycheck.

I'm a year ahead of myself in terms of home-buying. I hadn't meant to buy a place this year, but decided that the $8,000 tax credit was too good to resist. And so, I've made my bed (still on the floor), and will lie in it, knowing that there would be a painful period of material privation for a bit.

Hence, only stolen wifi. Hence, shuffling from room to sunlit room, until the sun is low enough that I must turn on a light. I spoke with the oil company people about setting up an account, and they estimate that it cost over $1,000 last winter to heat this house. I can pay in monthly installments of $99, starting now, if I like.

Good thing I have several wool coats and enough yarn to knit thick scarves and mittens all winter long. No, I do not want a bill for $99 a month for an entire year...not this month, anyway.

The bureau is upstairs, although I had it put together before noticing two of the supports are in backwards. They are significantly lighter in color than the rest of the thing, but I don't feel like taking it apart again for cosmetic reasons. Will be heading upstairs to put away clothes, now that I have a place to put them. It's amazingly open again in the living room, now that the bureau isn't taking up space and absorbing light beside the stairs.

I've been re-reading His Dark Materials, to fill the time between opening boxes and stowing things away. This morning, I curled up in Jeannie's Ikea chair with The Amber Spyglass and a cup of coffee. A little card fluttered from the pages of the book: "Sunshine, heart you and miss you already, love always, e."

He'd marked a book of mine with a note from his ex. I put the note into the recycle bin, but I don't think I'll be able to forget it. For a little while, anyway.