The Weeks Without Money

My wife and I never can make it to the end of the month with money in our pockets. I'm sure this is a situation with which all too many of you folks are familiar. It's relatively new for us, within the past several years. We pay as many of the bills as we can at the beginning of the month and try to lay in food supplies that will last. We know that by the 20th or the 23rd there just won't be anything left.

This month it was the 15th. Today is the 27th. The pharmacy loans us prescription pills and gets paid on the 3rd. But there aren't any credit supermarkets, or credit gas stations, or credit anything else. And we don't have any credit ourselves. There's less than a quarter of a tank of gas in the car and my wife has medical appointments today and tomorrow. I have a medical appointment on Thursday and then T on Friday. If there's enough gas to get there.

Money arrives next Monday. Wonder how long it will last. Until then, no milk, no eggs, stuff like that. Am I complaining? In a sense yes but in a sense no. I was raised and lived all my life in reasonable comfort. This is all a first for me and my wife. It kind of puts us in touch with probably the majority of the human race, which to me isn't a bad thing at all. It's good knowing how most people live, instead of living in the little, sealed-off prosperity bubble so many Americans have enjoyed until now. I'd give quite a bit to have had to put up with circumstances like this when I was a kid. I would have lived my life in a very different way.

I'm still in there trying to find a job. We really don't need all that much more to pay all the bills and have some left over. We've never lived high, just comfortable. But the job search seems neverending, like the job searches of millions of Americans and billions of people worldwide.

Not to worry. We'll always have enough calories, though they'll be from pasta and rice (after we get the bugs out). And we always manage to pay the power company so we'll always have hot water. It's quite strange not being able to just jump up and go out for a pizza. Or to the supermarket to buy something for dinner. Or take a drive somewhere. Is this the Real World?