kilstar archer EVC

Plus, I have a degree from a private university that sucks my wages every month for loans that won’t be paid off for years to come. I have a decent job and we still juggle. We have to skimp on birthday gifts because some months, the money just isn’t there. I have no 401K and I know that’s going to bite us later. But we do what we can to get by. We all do. I am looking forward to 2010 when some other debt will go away and maybe we’ll be able to loosen the financial belt a little. It sucks to have a good paying job only to have our previous decisions suck that away from us because it feels like it’s free when you pay with plastic. Visa should tell you in the fine print (that we never read when we opened the cards) that they want your second born child (true, because we had to put that off until we were in a better spot) as well as your grocery money for the rest of your natural life if you ever actually bother to use their card.

The owner of the company where I work has a classic car collection to rival a museum. I have a friend in the payables department who tells me how much is spent when a new car is acquired. It makes me sick that someone with that level of income couldn’t trickle a little more down to the employees who help keep him in the manner to which he’s accustomed. Most days, I don’t mind my job. Some days, I want to go postal and take a Bentley as a getaway car.

I came from a childhood so poor we lived in one room with towels and such stuffed under the cracks of the door because we had no heat. Our shampoo froze in winter and our electricity was shut off regularly. As a young adult, I flipped back and forth each month between paying the rent late and paying the electric late (and sometimes paying both late). My car was a gift from my sister, otherwise I would probably still have been driving “the blue cave,” a 1977 4-door LTD that wouldn’t die – probably because it was hardly ever driven as I couldn’t afford to keep gas in it. I know what poverty is, at least in this country. And though my husband just did the whole mock heart attack bit when he paid for veggies from our local organic co-op, I am not poor now – at least not yet.

My husband and I have also decided to give up the corporate way (at least I did, he hasn’t been into it much for quite some time) to work for ourselves so we can spend more time with our children. We call ourselves “eccentrics” (a few others call us that as well), in a prideful sort of way, and tell ourselves that if this doesn’t work our best earning years are still in front of us (which certainly isn’t hard to imagine considering what we earned last year).

In the years we’ve been married, we’ve done a lot of the things we wanted to do (except go abroad with backpacks). We had our children late in life. We’re a bit old for sleeping on the ground in tents – not to mention the poorhouse. And yet, we’ve slept in 4 star beds, and frankly, we don’t feel like we’re missing anything, most of the time anyway. We have the lovely advantage of having had nearly everything we wanted (not that our wants were large though) and knowing there really wasn’t much in it.

I didn’t have much of a childhood, it was mostly rather grim to put it mildly, and my husband had his own set of early troubles. I don’t think our children will be able to say the same, and I believe it likely that I’ll remember theirs far more fondly than my own. Every time I look at them, I know what is important – and what kind of work is important. I’m doing all in my power not to bungle the job.

Making art is more important than making dinner around here. So where does that leave us? Tired. Struggling to break even every month.

But it also leaves us surrounded by pretty things that we have made… and kind of nicely isolated from the overly consumerist American suburbia thing. We can’t afford movies and malls and cable TV. We don’t know what’s in or out or hot or not. We’ve become our own little culture here. It’s nice.

Some years we make more stable, grown up kinds of dollars and other years we make almost nothing. This year my illustration work did better… and now I’m up at 3 in the morning digging through receipts because we’re filling out tax forms online and oh my god we are so screwed because of the extra income.

It just doesn’t seem to matter, we spend too much somehow no matter how little we spend. That’s why I’m starting a part time marketing job next month… hopefully we will find the right balance between parenting and being a couple and making money but also making art and giving our creative work the time that it demands every day. If not I will quit and go back to doing only freelance/fine art/whatever pops into my head as a really great idea. And we will go back to feeling guilty every time we eat bacon.

I reassure myself with the thought that at least we live in a first-world country. There is theoretically a limit to how bad we can screw up our lives. And doing so is a lot more fun than it would be in some war-torn little country where the water gives you mind-altering diahrrea and drug lords randomly burn your 50-square foot house down and have sex with your only milk-producing goat or whatever. You know?

Shit. Now I want bacon.

My partner and I finally bought a house last summer after living like nomads for almost three years (family of four in one room of his mothers house – does the feeling that inspires need an explanation?) and it is tiny, but I love all 934 square feet of it, even the chimney that is about to collapse and the little gaps between the bricks and the 75 year old wiring which I just hope will last another 5. All you can do is put one foot in front of the other and hope for the best, and know that you’re in it together, as a family, and that you’re not the only ones.

Apparently Trader Joe’s has bacon and other such that’s all made by Applegate Farms, but much cheaper. It might be private label. Not 100% sure, since I’ve never actually been to a Trader Joes (the nearest one is…I don’t know. Way too far from here).

But! Hey! Anyone in New England, whether your budgets have lots of zeros in a good way or in a bad way, should check out New England Serves. Groceries at 40%+ discount, including fresh fruits and veggies, and meats. You just need to do at least 2 hours per month of volunteer work, and they’re flexible about what that means. 350+ “co-op” (i.e. pick up) spots throughout New England, including one in North Adams. No income requirements whatsoever – orthopedic surgeon or liberal arts flunkie, doesn’t matter.

http://www.servenewengland.org/