Taco has a flashback

Back when I first graduated from college and got my first grown up job, I got incredibly fucking depressed.

In my case, it had a lot to do with the fact that I am not, by nature, a goal-oriented person. Up to that point in my life, I got handed a set of goals every school year. Pass these classes, get these grades, avoid getting picked on by those fuckers over there.

Two of of three ain't bad.

Those kind of built-in mile markers are awesome. You don't have to think about them, and it's easy to see them passing by. Once I graduated, I switched gears from all that to "go to work, do whatever, go home." Not so easy to see it going by. Spun my wheels a while, sank into a deep and miserable funk I didn't really know how to get out of.

I finally got sick of it all and hit the shrink. I wasn't sure my benefits covered it (the company was tiny and not doing so hot), and wasn't sure if the boss would find out if I filed claims and fire my ass (I was young, naive, and depressed... so irrational besides). So I paid the bills out of my pocket.

Best money I ever spent.

The turnaround for me was pretty much immediate, since I didn't have a general problem with depression, but more of a temporary situation I wasn't familiar with and didn't have coping strategies for. Hell, just taking an active role and doing something about it rather than being passive (and let's face it, I'm great at passive... nearly as good as I am at passive-aggressive) made a huge difference.

Doc sorted me out, and we came up with a few hobbies and such to provide me with the missing goalposts whizzing by. And now I'm the beautifully adjusted fucker you see before you today.

I'm just sayin' is all.

There are zombies headed straight for my house

O NOES!

Wait, the zombies are bringing strippers.

YAY!

I wondered aloud yesterday whether they'd ship my Zombies Zombies Zombies DVD on the Sept. 9th release date, or ahead of time so I'd have it in my hot little hands on the street date. I woke up this morning to my answer. They shipped my order last night.

Hooray!

This is so much better than how I imagined the first time zombies came to my house would be.

He's insulting people at an eighth grade level.

KIDZOOKIE: Dad?

TACO: Hmm?

KIDZOOKIE: What's a douchebag?

Zen and the Art of the Burn

WIFEZILLA: Why are you always so down on yourself?

TACO: Low self esteem.

WIFEZILLA: Come on.

TACO: [trying somewhat artlessly to dodge the question] I don't make enough money, I'm terrible in bed...

WIFEZILLA: Ohhhhh... you make plenty of money.

[10 second pause]

TACO: Nice one.

WIFEZILLA: Thanks!

It's gonna be one of those lives.

So, my car is dead. That's basically... carry the one... zero surprise to anyone who's ever seen my car.

I wound up with this gorgeous piece of machinery through a series of missteps that began with my layoff in 2001, while my wife was 7 months pregnant with our first child. That was a fun experience that left me with a bunch of credit card debt related to medical exams and procedures that were rather necessary and subsequent baby food and such that were rather unavoidable.

My wife and I had never actually had any debt before, so we got pretty upset about carrying any. We entered a cycle of paying all our bills each month, then spending every penny on our debt. Turns out that's a losing strategy. A good friend of ours is a debt counsellor, and helped educate us a bit. (He offers this service for free, by the way -- their money comes from other services they offer if they're able to help you, which they're quite open about -- and he's fucking awesome. If you find yourself in a similar sad situation to mine, let me know, and I'll gladly give you his info.)

So we got our finances sorted out. Yay! We started the process of buying a house. Yay! We started thinking about what to replace my aging car with. Yay!

A deer does a half-gainer into my wife's car. Shit.

Totals her car. We didn't want to replace her car while our home loan stuff was in process. I gave her my car, and carpooled with a friend. We purchased our home. We purchased a new car for her. Wife and kids have a car that's safe. Yay!

My car dies. Shit.

My dad, who is fucking awesome, gives me a beater that he was going to donate to charity. Yay!

I drive this until it dies. My finances are still not such that I can really afford another car payment, even a modest one.

My dad, who is fucking awesome, gives me another beater that had been rusting in his driveway. Yay!

I drive the wheels off this one, too. It doesn't take long. My wife drives me to work for a few months.

My father-in-law donates his old beater to us. I'm really starting to feel like a fucking loser mooch. God damn it.

The car's on its last leg, but our finances are in pretty good shape now. We've paid off my wife's car, our credit cards are in a good place, we're saving some money... life is looking up. We start doing our research to figure out what kind of car we want to replace my bucket with.

The IRS sends me a letter. I fucked up my taxes a few years ago. We redo our taxes with help from our lawyer: it's not as bad as the IRS thinks, but it's more than we can put our hands on at the moment. We set up a payment plan. I start crossing my fingers that my car will hold together... not for the duration of our payment plan (I'm under no illusions there), but every month helps.

This car has run on sheer fucking bloodymindedness for a long time now, but today it gave up the ghost.

Two steps forward, eight steps back. I realize that kicking me in the spiritual nuts is pretty funny, but I'm pretty sure Bob Saget gave you the $10,000 prize a long time ago, God. Please stop. I'm sore.

Diabetic cat is diabetic.

Wheee.

So now we have to feed him prescription cat food. After a month on the (quite expensive) food, they'll test him again, and if it's doing the trick, we're set. If not, we have to go to supplementing the food with shots.

Wheee.

The vet told me on the phone that, on the bright side, "You can tell people you put your pet on the Catkins Diet." I responded automatically with an, "I hate you, Larry." This left the vet confused. :)

It takes three moneys.

DAUGHTER: [hands me fifty cents] Here. Use this to buy my lunch.

TACO: Do you think this will be enough?

DAUGHTER: No, that's only two moneys. My lunch costs three moneys.