The Nuclear Option

I am going to be vulgar and discuss money.

Right now, I have a very handy $1,700 in my checking account. I am also $18,000 in debt on my home equity line of credit with not much further to go than that with my HELOC. Virtually nothing in savings.

My mortgage payment is $1,200 / month.

I have Unemployment Insurance of $17,000 available to me in weekly chunks of $650, but that won't start until May 3.

I have nothing of value to sell. At the moment, I am not going to go back into pet sitting or having a roommate. If I got a part time job, that could extend the money available to me. I'm thinking retail although I know I don't have the physical stamina to do it.

So the nuclear option, the drop the big one now option, is getting rid of most of my crap, packing up the remnants and putting it into storage, and moving in with Cousin Kay in Richmond. I haven't mentioned it to her yet. I think I'm waiting for clearer signals. After all, it's only been a week. I've had three phone calls of interest (one offered me $17/hour less than what I had been making and I can't live on that, roommate or no roommate). I need to get back to them because I think the people who had been interested went with another candidate and I want to know officially if that's the case.

I have considered suicide but I won't do it unless I know the cats are squared away. And must talk with Dr. A and with a priest.

I've also done all kinds of practical things. I can go to the local food pantry tomorrow. My phone bill has been immediately sliced in half. The garbage pickup company has reduced my rate somewhat. Comcast gave me bupkis. I am considering getting rid of that but that's my only job hunting resource. Yes, I can go to the library and Panera. It's still an option.

Although it's chilly in the house this morning at 64 degrees, I have turned off the heat and told myself to like it or lump it.

I could retire in June but the money available to me wouldn't be enough to cover my expenses here. I would still have to move.

I have a good support system. My pal from the old, old workplace, Emma, the Queen Bee and especially the Prince Consort who is giving me all kinds of great pointers about interviewing techniques.

Oddly, I don't feel sorry for myself. I feel like I'm looking at things objectively. I could live like this for maybe another three months, then drastic action must be taken.

Oh, must finish my will first. Who gets how much of this piece of pathetic pie? I feel like all I would leave behind are debts.

Maybe I will drop the big one. But not just yet.

Yet Again With the Heath Ledger Thing...

In yesterday's post (rant), it never occurred to me that Heath Ledger's death could have been other than a fatal miscalculation on how much of whatever he needed to get high. I think at the back of my mind, what was pinging away at me was the thought that it might not have been accidental. That the moron might have killed himself. And I was furious about that.

I don't know where my usually kind and compassionate self (cough, cough) has hied herself off to, but this really pisses me off.

If his shadow were to appear before me now, I would try to grab him by his ethereal shirt collar and say, "Are you crazy? Are you nuts? Just think about what you have. More than stuff! You have a family." (As much as you may think you loathe your family, when they're all gone, you do kind of miss them.) "You have a child who needs her father."

But I think way, way, way at the back of my mind is this:

I didn't kill myself in The Lost Years. And yet this idiot might have done that.

There were some desperate hours at Ma Maisonette between 2002 and 2007. I started working at Unnamed Co in 2006, but it took me until this year to feel just the slightest bit of security about it.

There was terror, there was utter aloneness, there was pain, fear, the darkest doubt I have ever known, and no belief that it would or could get any better.

And yet, I'm here. I'm alive and lately, I'm actually here feeling pretty darn good, knock wood. There is joy in my life again, and fun. There is hard work, for which I am well-paid. I'm here, I made it, I survived what I hope are the darkest days of my life.

And he didn't?

How bizarre, how weird to think that I, a middle-aged, overweight, middle-class, not particularly attractive bat, could be made of sterner, stronger stuff than a 28 year old millionaire with an apartment in NY and the respect of his peers, with an absolutely golden future?

How bizarre. How very odd. But there it is.

You, Me, and My Platelets

Back to the blood bank today for a platelet donation.

I went equipped with earplugs and a book.

But they have these wonderful little personal DVD players now attached to the recliners and a good selection of DVDs. Is this cool, or what?

I plucked "You, Me, and Dupree" from the box and watched that while my life's essence was pumped in and out of me.

Owen Wilson made me laugh. And then I remembered he was recently hospitalized because he tried to kill himself. Oh, Owen. Not yet. Don't be so impatient. It's going to happen. You just have to wait.

And in the words of Tom Petty, "the waiting is the hardest part."

Actually, I think it was more like "the way-ay-ay-ting is the haaarrrddeeeeest paahhhhhrt." Still true, no matter how you say it.