Bah Hum Bug

I do not have holiday cheer this year.

Perhaps it's due to money being tight. Maybe it's the result of the House going Republican. Could be that I'm too old to get excited about the Holidays. It's probably a little of all of these. But, no matter, time marches on and it will soon be the start of 2011. I can hardly wait (said with a heavy dose of sarcasm).

Not that my life is so horrible. It's not. Sure, I'm working less and so is my income. But that's temporary. I'll soon be working more and making as much as I was when I was working full time. So that's good.

My son is doing well. He's getting good grades and he's starting to show more curiousity about things. He just got a part time job at Petco, so he's getting out more. He's asking questions about me. All good stuff. But I still worry about what's going to happen to him after high school. Young adults with autism have a really tough time keeping jobs, going to college, and living on their own. He'll be done with high school in a couple years, so this is concern is very real and not too far away.

So all in all, things are good. But I don't want to buy a tree. I have no energy to put lights on the house. I'm not making toffee and carmel corn to give away as gifts. Pretty much, I want the holidays to pass. It's mid-way through December, so I get that wish in just a couple weeks.

No, I think it's age. I'm 51 and I'm not at the point in my life where I'm looking towards retirement. It's just the opposite. I'm not looking towards the end of a career. I'm trying to figure out what can do to support my family. It certainly wasn't this way for my mother or my son's Grandmother. Neither had to work after they had kids. I was raised in the typical family of the 1960s when Dad was the primary breadwinner and supporting a family on one income was the norm. College was affordable. Health care costs weren't eating away a huge chunk of the monthly income. This certainly hasn't been a reality for my generation. I've been working since I was 16, pretty much non-stop for the last 35 years. I was lucky that I was able to run a business from home when my son was born, and that lasted about five years. Thank goodness, I'm not doing the 40 hour per week, 9 to 6 routine. Last time I did , I lasted about a year before I was miserable. So I'm lucky that I'm not just working just for the paycheck. If there's one thing I've learned by being in the work force for so many years is that job has to be meaningful or I end up resenting it. Life really sucks when you absolutely do not want to go to work but you have to because you need the money.

So, here I am. I haven't done any Christmas shopping. I haven't made gifts. I'm just here. Waiting for the holidays to pass.

Tomorrow is Election Day

It seems like it took years for November 2 to arrive. So many months of negative political ads and dire predictions of a Republican takeover of the House. I've marked my sample ballot and I'm ready to cast my vote.

There has been so much talk about how this election is a referendum on President Obama's job performance, how the electorate is tired of nothing getting done or how they hate everything that's been accomplished. I for one am really, really tired of it all.

Let's look at Obama's peformance. Unemployment over 9%. The economy growing at a slow pace. Housing foreclosures continuing to rise. None of this is good stuff, but this is a result of eight years of a Republican president and his administration's agenda. Expecting all to be right in two years after it took eight years to get here is unrealistic.

As far as nothing getting done and what's been accomplished, here's a short list:
1) Health Insurance Reform so more people can get basic health care. This is something that has been attempted for the last 60 years. Obama did it within 2 years of being elected.

2) Financial Reform so consumers can be protected from getting ripped off by the financial industry. Republicans want to repeal this as soon as possible.

3) Saving our economy from tanking and taking down the rest of world in the process. No one wanted to bail out the banks, but this situation was inherited from, you guessed it, the Bush Administration.

These are just the ones I can quickly remember, but all of these are significant.

So, we await to see what happens tomorrow. And maybe, just maybe, we'll be pleasantly surprised that the enough people will have realized that voting Republican is the wrong thing to do.

Life in Lovely Los Angeles

It's another beauiful day in Los Angeles. Clear and sunny skies, temps in the mid 70s. It's really nice to live so close to the beach where the air is clean, a blessing to have such gorgeous weather all year round. But, the land of Los Angeles has been a struggle for a while, and sometimes I think about leaving. Why would I, living only 4 blocks from her work and just 5 miles from the ocean, ever what to move? Because it costs a bloody fortune, that's why.

Don't get me wrong. I do not have an extravagent lifestyle. I live in a modest 3 bedroom house with a yard and a garage converted to a cozy studio. It's not a palace, but it's nice & I've done my best to make it look good. Big enough for all my stuff but small enough to use one plug to vacuum the entire house. A bigger place means more to clean. This is just enough for me.

Yes, I like it alright, but still costs a bunch to keep it up. Combined I make enough money with my live-in partner to cover our expenses, so we get by. We cover the rent and the utilities. We gas up our cars. We splurge on cable.  I love that the third bedroom is also my office. I really like where I live and I don't want to move.

But, to cover the cost of my share of everything, I have to work. My last several employment gigs haven't worked out as planned, so now only I'm working part time. I've had to cut all of my expenses to the bone, but that's not a big deal.  I can give up Starbucks, no prob. Shouldn't buy their over priced coffee anyway. I can skip going to the movies, even the $5 matinee theatre down the street. We have an amazing TV and all of the movies will eventually be on cable, the one extravagance that we do indulge at least until our contract expires next March. Plus the theatre's projection quality is pretty crappy - our TV and the surround sound stereo actually looks and sounds better. I'm not shopping, even at discount stores like Target or Big Lots. I'm not even browsing Craig's List or Ebay or Amazon. I have enough stuff so I don't need to buy anything, but I miss shopping for bargains. It's fun and sort of a hobby.

But the big question regarding moving would be where would I go and what would I do when I got there. I have no answers. And, taking out the financial hardship aside, I kind of like LA. As mentioned, the weather is nice, there's lots to do (though entertainment and cultural dollars don't exit in my budget at the moment), and I have friends that I'd miss if I left. So really, I actually don't want to quit LA. I want to quit work and stay in LA. But how?

That is the question I am pondering. And hopefully I'll figure it out soon.