I can be an asshole of the grandest kind…
A few weeks ago Rick and I did our annual trek to H&R Block and we sat stunned upon realizing how much we didn’t earn last year versus the year before.  Thank you recessionary ass raping…we hate you.  Yet…our lifestyle is one that largely lends itself to straight poor-dom.  What is poor-dom.  It’s the island that I largely have always lived on because of no-choice.  Now I think we live there collectively because we’ve done it well for so long.  Ok ok let me explain.

Poor-dom is that island that allows you to live happily without the latest Coach purse.  I own precisely one Coach purse and while I love it for some reasons I don’t think it’s the end all be all purse.  The knock off I bought at a flea market for $40 gets more compliments than my real Coach.  The knock off is a Dolce & Cabanna.  I openly admit to every woman who compliments me that it’s a knock-off and they are amazed.  Suffice it to say designer purses don’t really matter in my world at all.  I need a purse to carry my important book, wallet, Ipod…but nothing else.

Speaking of expensive electronics. I’ve had my cheap $499 Compaq laptop for a few years now.  I did buy an Ipod…but it’s not a touch.  I use it every single day and love it.  We do not have a flat screen TV, oh wait technically it’s a flat screen but the TV is far from flat and is not hanging on our wall.  We each drive a car that is paid for, neither are even from this decade.  I look at new cars, but there’s never been enough about them for me to think of incurring more debt because to me more debt equals more stress.

That trip to H&R Block was a bit scary only because we had so not noticed a substantial decrease in our collective income.  To offset this decrease and to perhaps shut off my stress talking, Rick picked up a part time job working in the evenings making pizza. This is a job his brother has done for over a dozen years exclusively.  Oddly enough Rick is working at a high end Italian restaurant that is a small family owned “chain” now that they’ve opened location #2 (right around the corner from our house).  His twin brother works at the first location.  Their pizza is their main menu item because it’s so damn good you want to swim in it. I would venture to even say it’s a bit of a gourmet pizza.  At $32 for an 8 slice pizza, it certainly is. As a side note Rick and I served their pizza at our wedding and still to this day people talk about our wedding food.  I digress but we’ll get back to that later…

So now Rick is working two jobs.  Standing in a hot restaurant kitchen doesn’t phase him.  Flour painted jeans and tennis shoes…also doesn’t phase him.  I suppose when your main job is moving people’s heavy furniture, throwing around pizza dough is a cake walk.  Pizza cake? Ha…so anyways….

I have finally come to the conclusion that I got exactly the husband I always thought I needed most.  A husband that steps up to the plate to take on more when necessary.  How many people do you know who would walk into a restaurant kitchen and start swimming in flour for hours on end to make their wives recession stress go away?

Ok lets back up.  ALL of our bills have gotten paid all along.  That missing or phantom missing money on our W-2’s has not affected us.  We never even noticed until the W2’s showed up and we sat mouths ajar in shock.  Perhaps it’s because we were paying roughly $200 more a month before we bought a house and then in the year following our taxes went down thereby making our mortgage go down.  We now pay $138 less than we did when we leased a house.  YES, we bought a house and our monthly bill for housing is $138 less.  I also paid off my car right after we bought the house in 2008. 

Ok I’m doing a bit of rambling but I’ve learned something over the past 7 years with Rick.  You can’t always control your income but you can control your outgo.  I think I spend far too much money on books, music and coffee.  These are my 3 vices in life. They are the 3 things I get the most consumer joy from.  If I purchase an album from iTunes for 9.99 I guarantee that I listen to that dang thing for hours upon hours of joy.  If I purchase a book for $10.50 ($14.99 – 30% coupon) (or about that price at Target give or take a buck), I am enthralled for roughly 4 to 5 hours.  

We have cable (something that to me is a perk not a necessity), internet service (necessary for my Master’s degree), we each have a cell phone.  We live rather frugally.  I buy most of our household items at Target and I do buy the Target brands. I think every 50 cents counts.  I am not cheap or as frugal as I would like, but we live rather lean most of the time.  We went out to dinner the other night, one of the first times in months.  We really see the value of making our own meals at home and I love a nice grilled meal at home on the back patio far more than most restaurants in the area.

I have rather lost my way on this post, but I was surprised we didn’t miss that amount of money last year. I was shocked that for us life was per normal.  I have learned this from Rick.  Rick is a saver.  Rick is a hard worker.  Rick is stable, like a rock. Unfaltering. His biggest vice…smoking.  Yet, even with this…he keeps up his end of the bargain.  I love that about him.  We don’t fight about money, we really don’t.  We bicker (ie: not real) about lots of things daily…but we mean little of it.  That’s just how we engage in conversation with each other.  I don’t harbor resentful feelings; I get them out and move on.  I think he does the same.  It’s been a good thing for us.

So….all of this to say…Rick’s gone today, throwing pizza dough.  I wrote a paper today for school.  I did some laundry.  I drank a lot of coffee.  I missed him last night and I miss him today.  It’s possible I was wrong and that what matters in life is not what that stupid W2 says in terms of stress related concerns, but instead that I don’t have to miss him.  

Missing him however makes me want to make dinner, hunker down with him when he’s around me.  It makes me appreciate the small things, the things that made me happy all year.  Music to sway the mind away from missing.  A book to serve as something tactile for the mind and hands to do.  Even dirty laundry serves it’s role to keep my mind and body busy busy busy….no energy for missing.  Alas…it is not working.

What do people who are driven by dollar signs miss out on?  Just imagine.  My island of poor-dom ways of thinking and making do….and yes we are far from poor. We’re both gainfully employed.  No one’s been laid off.  I think Rick has had crazy hours all year but often we haven’t paid attention to how those hours add up.  He also gets tips that we fortunately don’t have to pay taxes on.  We also don’t do anything to track those funds.  So who can know for sure what we tallied up last year.  

I just know for sure that this afternoon as I tally things in my own mind I have much to be grateful for…..a husband who slings pepperoni and green peppers for 5 to 6 hours at a clip after slinging couches to and fro’ just to calm his wife down.  How can you quantify that type of love?  Most often while living our simple little life…I stress, I worry because I have lost far less and that pain felt overwhelming. I know the despair of homelessness and I often stare at the ceiling letting false monsters scare me to death.

BUT….to lose this life…would truly break me forever.  This life I live is so damned good, it scares me. Sometimes I get off on a tangent yet it’s mostly because I find it impossible to explain what was…how sometimes I forget what is and how powerful it is when it hits me again, this realization that all that matters are all the things that I already have.  All the things I didn’t always have…and just how lucky I am and how I feel like I won the happiness lottery.

I love you honey and I’m always happier each day that you’re still here.