moe left for her annual trip to florida this morning, and left me “in charge” of taking care of 4 dogs, 3 cats and a snake while she gets a 4-day “vacation” and then a week of “continuing education”, which is all paid for by her employer. i got up and took her to the airport, and then drove into seattle for an art car cruise that apparently never happened. i waited around at the swedish cultural center for 45 minutes and mine was the only art car in the parking lot, so i left again. no breakfast, which was supposed to be part of the art car cruise, and i only have a $90 gift card for fred meyer’s to last me until moe gets home again, which is supposed to be the 19th. i’m also almost out of The Holy Vegetable, and likely won’t have the money to buy more for several weeks.
now i’m home. the roof is leaking again, in spite of the tarp that covers most of it. there’s no telling where the water is actually getting in, and even if there were, there’s no way we can afford to get the roof replaced. meanwhile, moe’s employer, the person for whom moe works 6 days a week, 12 hours a day because he “can’t afford” to pay another technician, is living in an extremely rich neighbourhood, in a house that’s two or three times as big as ours, and has invested in a new veterinary clinic in renton at which he has no intention of working, simply because “they needed someone with more money”.
it’s not fair. moe is just as valuable a person as her employer – i am just as valuable a person as moe’s employer – but the only time anyone has ever paid for me to go on vacation was right after i “quit” my computer industry job and had to use up my “paid vacation” time – right before i had my injury, and that’s not even mentioning the fact that i live in a house with a leaking roof.
i met moe online as well. she had me wrapped around her finger before i found out that she is 17 years younger than me… which means that she’s not rich.
yeah, but you’ve got to have enough money to start saving. when you live from hand to mouth, anything that takes money actually puts you into the negative, and it’s not very easy to put money you don’t have into a savings account.
i know… i am an old fart…
for moe’s sake, i’ll pretend you didn’t say that. moe is a dog trainer and a registered veterinary technician. she loves her dogs. i, on the other hand, am somewhat indifferent. if it weren’t for moe, i probably wouldn’t have pets at all.
yes… i do…
Well, Hell…
Look, I have been where you are now, and I am probably above moe’s employer in income level. I did it the honest way: I found it online and married it, heh. As you know, it takes money to make money. I was dirt broke except for some savings. This I refused to touch until I could use it for a growth potential. Back in the day, that could have been a great price on an
LOL.
Anyway, the point is, when you have leaks, grab buckets. The rain always stops. Saving money is spooky. It takes discipline and it grows like a cancer.
Compound Interest > Dark Side of Force
And fortune changes. One day soon, out of nowhere, you will get your break. The TRICK, is to remain open to potential because some events start out as interesting, yet not what you ever imagined, or rather yucky, etc. Life is a merry-go-round. You grab your ring, or you keep riding in circles (cycles)until you get another grab.
What you are going through now is what we old farts call ‘hard knocks.’. It is the sucko side of life. It happens, and for a damn good reason. That which does not kill you, yadda…
Constantly rethink your life. Grab a fucking umbrella. Keep one dog and foster out the rest. Endure.
You know all this stuff. Its raining. its winter, therefore depressing. I still don’t have the heart to put away the motorcycles for the winter.
Keep your chin up.
i know, i have the soul while moe’s employer has the money, but that doesn’t help me much when it’s raining and i have no money.
i know how to fix roofs already, having done many such jobs over a long period of time, and i have all the requisite tools – but i also know that putting a “band aid” on this roof will only be adding to the problem later. it’s a shingle roof on a modified, “prefabricated” house that probably hasn’t had any real roof work done since the addition was put on. besides which, i’m broke, which means even if the weather were nice, i wouldn’t be able to do anything about it.
The rich are rich and stay rich on the backs of the working class. What they do normally seems to show a lack of apathy for other humans and although they may skirt through their lives thinking they were very comfortable, in many cases their lives are soulless. Many might one day find their wives married them for their money and not companionship (ease and rise in divorces and the inevitable retirement when they have the time of day to realise their ‘loved one’ is a waste of space!)
I may be sounding a bit freaky, close to having a chip on my shoulder, but it is more learned realism.
All you can do right now is learn to repair roofs, borrow a ladder and get some tiles bought (mind you, don’t know what sort of property you live in, we tend to have tiled roofs over here, with solid brick walls too. If it is a flat roof, then that is specialised)
There comes a point when families have to think about guiding their sons and daughters in their work paths. A plumber, a joiner, an electrician, a mechanic, etc, etc. To the point where you can help each other out by doing jobs within the extended family (within reason of course!) Skilled people used to cost so little in the past and now the average plumber here is booking six months ahead and charging £80-120 an hour, with a lot of the work carried out safe enough for people to do themselves with basic tools and know how. I remember an £80 job at work that was simply removing a U bend from under a sink, cleaning the hair and crap out of it and refitting. I told them I could do something that simple, but they got a professional plumber in!
It is time to share the wealth,(and by that I mean knowledge) to resurrect the extended family network out of the corrupted nuclear family and stick it to those middle class who treat us so insensitively. Charge them £80-120 an hour for things they should know how to do!!!