Having skipped back several years in time like a small and perfectly shaped rock on a greasy pond, I glow with a shocked sense of achievement.

I am living with my mother, her husband, my husband, 2 dogs, and roughly 84,000 goddamn cats. All of our worldly possessions are strewn across 3 floors and stacked in gigantic piles.

YAY! WE DID IT!

...I guess. We're still waiting to move into the empty house in Gainesville. Apparently the contractor (whom, not coincidentally, my father met in ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS) has buggered off and is not returning phone calls.

So, a few problems.

There is no grout between any of the new tiles in the kitchen--tiles which are also hung at odd angles and thus appear to be menacing each other. This looks odd. None of the appliances have been installed. That's okay, we can do that ourselves, just as soon as we get our hands on some appliances. The sink in the master bathroom has been torn out and not put back together. But we could use the bathroom in the hallway, what proper Marxist couple can really justify more than one bathroom? The heating element in the house needs to be replaced...and honestly, I'd be willing to just sleep in front of the fireplace. The pug needs to toughen up, anyway.

But my dad says "no, you cannot move into my constructions site with a tent." So we're stuck living with my mom. Which, hey, cheap food and no utility bills. But lamentably, no sense of adult independence, either. I keep trying to remind myself that when we first moved to Portland we lived with W's mother for at least a month before we found a place, but somehow that isn't helping.

W's mother didn't make wild accusations about our pigheadedly suicidal attempts to leave the house.

...How we were certainly falling for a serial killer's evil plan to lure unsuspecting fitness nerds to his lair with craigslist ads for weight equipment, for example. This when we tried to drive down to Atlanta to look at some (evil!) home gyms. Seriously. That's just one example, there are more. W's mom was not, for lack of a better term, fuckin' nuts. I love my mother, but OH MY GOD, that chick is paranoid.

She's never paranoid about the things that it's SENSIBLE to be paranoid about, however. Like the sounds of shotgun blasts echoing through her back yard late at night, and frequent sightings of a redneck idiot of uncertain origin stalking through the neighborhood in camouflage. This dude has apparently decided that since there are a few deer that graze by the side of the road in Monroe at night (a road that is these days lined with 300k McMansion neighborhoods...ah, the GA theory of urban planning) it would be perfectly acceptable to hunt here. It's only a matter of time before he shoots somebody's dog. Probably my mother's dog, since Virgil's a big idiot.

We are applying for jobs in GA--I'm hideously lazy and haven't yet sent away for my CNA license to transfer, so it'll probably be a while before I really get settled. I had an interview yesterday which was...well, just don't consider tax preparer positions with InstantTax if you aren't heavily invested in keeping the peasants down. And hitting them with sticks.

I mean, if you're into that, then sure. Go for it. Steal them blind charging exorbitant fees for taxes that they could easily prepare themselves for free (but don't because they are frightened of the system and uneducated about it's workings) and encourage them to take "rapid refund" loans at 400%+ APR. Because they're poor and have no other options! And they're stupid! It's beautiful!

So, maybe I'm a little judgemental. And despite my best efforts, that may have come across. The good old boy franchise owner me kept telling me that I was a "sharp lady." I think he meant, shut up chick, I know all about APR and 400% is PERFECTLY NORMAL if you're poor and stupid. I believe his phrase was "to you and me, 400% sounds awful, but to them it's okay."

And he's a MORTAGE BROKER too, isn't that perfect? I wanted to smack him around. It's like, no, no, you're done. Thanks for the recession. You've been voted out of the economy. Pack your banners and go.

I can get a little cranky. My stepfather keeps cornering me and trying to talk to me about The State of Things. He mainly sticks to the "but will you and W do be willing to do anything to find jobs?" angle. I can only assume that he's trying to reassure himself that I will indeed turn to prostitution before I spend another month cooped up in this house with my cats and my gym-obsessed man and my crumbling dignity.

To which I say, HELL YES.

Actually, we'd probably have more financial security if I turned W out instead. What say you, readers? He's a people person. Sorta.