Well, the inevitable has come to pass. The manufacturing plant my husband works at announced officially today that they'll be closing the plant on February 3 of next year. We knew this was coming, and we've talked about and planned for it quite a bit... but it still gives me a little bit of a sick feeling to know that for the next two years, until he's out of school, we'll essentially be down to one income. It scares me because, when things happen to us, they happen in a big way. It's never a $50 or $75 car repair, it's always a $500 or more car repair. Or replacing the furnace because a piece came loose and almost set the duct work in the house on fire. Or whatever. I feel like I haven't had a decent night's sleep since my son was born almost 2 years ago, and this certainly isn't helping.

And then comes the never-ending mantra from my husband of 'Everything's going to be okay. We'll get through this.' For God's sake, just hit the 'play' button on the tape recorder and save yourself the energy of having to repeat this again. This is the best you've got for me? You can't come up with anything new to say?

When I was just out of college and working my first real job, tax return time would roll around and I'd dream about just cashing that big ($500 to a 22 year old is big, anyways) check, getting in my car and just driving away. Now it would be clearing out the checking account and taking a big cash advance on the credit card, but the dream is essentially the same. Why? Because I'm tired of okay. I'm tired of getting through. All we've done since we got married is get through. We've had almost 8 years of the 'worse'. I am MORE than ready for some of the 'better'. And I know all of this isn't his fault... but it's very easy to lay the blame on him because all of these things started happening after we met. Things were, or at least seemed, fine before that. Maybe not great, maybe not spectacular, but things certainly didn't seem crappy like they do now.

And here I thought a few days ago that I was content with all of this... silly me.