august 15, 2001. I'm kind of depressed right now. I just went into town to look at our bank balances, and I've discovered that, short of a miracle, I need $1500 to even begin the new school year. Whee. The depressing part is that I've worked all summer, the Boy has worked all this time, and the money is gone. I guess that inside our inner perceptions, we're just a couple of carefree undergrads living off mommy & daddy, who can afford to go out for dinner every week and spend hundreds of dollars on books and comics in a year. At the beginning of the summer, I calculated my projected take for tax purposes. It came to $5100; not bad for a summer of sitting on my butt & designing webpages. Today I realized that I've saved about $800 of that. This information just about gave me a heart attack. Where the fuck did it all go??? And then I think about restaurant dinners, comic books, fresh meat, computer disasters, rent, student loan payments, Halifax, birthdays, anniversaries, postage, long-distance phone calls... God, we've been living like...well, like undergraduates. We used my job as an excuse to shut off the sensible part of our brains that take care of finances because that part is no damn fun, and then we coasted along on the fumes of responsibility. The Boy's job has never been enough to get us through the day; we've always had to dip into our savings to make ends meet. Despite his full-time position, this year has seen the utter decimation of the wedding money we were so generously given last year. It's completely gone, except for $4000 that my parents are hanging onto on our behalf (it's a long story; trust me, this isn't about my father's inability to cut the cord). And that $4000, much like the assets of the Bailey Building & Loan, does not exist in liquid form for our use; my parents used it to pay off the reception hall the day after the wedding. I have no idea if they can give us a loan this month. I suspect they're a bit tapped from buying Nic a house 2 weeks ago. I just don't know. Sigh. I suspect that come September, I will begin to explore the exciting world of dancing for nickels. this time last year: eat me, drink me, smoke me