Woo! Er, well, but still, Woo.

[dragonlady7]

Checking my bank balance online, at this precise moment, I have more in my bank account than charged to my credit card. I could just make one payment and pay off the whole balance and have change left over!

Except that, well, tomorrow I have not one but two epayments of over $300 each scheduled. But, for a moment, it was cool, so I wanted to remember the moment.

Worryingly, I haven't received a gas or electric bill this month, so I don't know how I'm doing with them. :/

No! I didn't come here to worry about bills, so I'm not going to.

A small note: Dave graduates on Friday. I've had that date fixed in my mind as something to work towards, or at least to survive until, for quite some time. That's this Friday, the 20th, on which day I'm going to have to call in sick to work. (Note to self: don't forget.)
I'm just wondering what that means. This date has been my goal for so long and I've shut myself up repeatedly by counting down the weeks to it during dark times. What do I do once it gets here?
Well, party.
But then I'm going to have to actually start doing all the things I said I would. I told myself I'd be more focused then, and better able to handle the rigors of serious writing. I also vaguely kept putting off financial goals and the like until then. What will I do if nothing changes financially?

Well? I guess the first order of business will be to enjoy having Dave around the house more. And then we'll see what happens. These things take time. Maybe I'll have to set another date for my goals, now that this one's so close.

I'd feel better if he'd so much as updated his resume, or spoken hopefully of starting to look for something.

Comments

[jennnlee.livejournal.com]

So Dave has no plans after graduation? Um, okay. It might be nice for him to contribute to the household. I'll stop now before I burst into a chorus of "Why Are You Putting Up With That?"

[(Anonymous)]

Who's got no plans after graduation? I've got plans after graduation. I've got jury duty next week and they pay forty whole dollars a day!

- Z

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

Sweet. If you get to work for them for twelve and a half days, and no taxes are withheld, and you don't spend any of it on anything else, you'll almost be able to make the car and insurance payments next month. That'd be pretty damn sweet.

[jennnlee.livejournal.com]

If he gets picked for a jury. And the money comes 3-4 weeks after service. So maybe the month after that...

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

He let me live with him while I was unemployed, but I was never unemployed and flat broke, which is the part that's getting old.

[jennnlee.livejournal.com]

You just seem like a very honest, hardworking kind of person, and I hate to see you being taken advantage of. But of course, I don't know the whole situation, and only know you online. So I know I should probably just keep my mouth shut. Good luck...

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

I'm in a gloomy mood so it's nice to know that someone cares, even without knowing the whole story. :) So thanks for being indignant on my behalf, even if it's not entirely warranted. I will here bore you with the whole story, since you've held still long enough. ^.^

No, I'm not really being taken advantage of-- we've lived together a long time, and over the course of our relationship I've been unemployed a far higher proportion of the time than he has. But what's really bugging me at the moment is just that he didn't really plan enough ahead when he quit his job to go back to school, and so I was pretty unexpectedly saddled with a lot more financial responsibility than I was really ready for. I thought his savings would last, and that I wouldn't have to be responsible for the extremely-expensive car. I assumed he'd some sort of plan in place. ... But he didn't, and so in December, just after my unemployment benefits ran out, he sort of sprang on me that his tens of thousands of dollars in savings were entirely gone to pay for tuition and he now owed two months on the car and if he didn't find somebody to pay it he'd lose the car. Which was a rude shock. (And at that point over half my savings abruptly disappeared because of an accounting mistake on my part and someone depositing a check I'd forgotten about less than a month before it would have expired from old age. I still haven't recovered from the trauma.)
I lived in his apartment rent-free for a number of months when we were first together (I was unemployed, straight out of college, and nearly broke, but I cooked for him, and cleaned, and bought the groceries, out of my meager income from what amounted to spamming), and when we got a two-bedroom (when I got A Real Job that I hated), I paid less than half the rent and bills, as he made a little under twice what I did. Then I was unemployed for nearly a year (though I was on unemployment benefits and so wasn't totally broke and could still pay a reasonable proportion of our shared expenses); I lived rent-free in his mom's house for a while when we moved to Buffalo so he could go back to school; but, I always paid for at least the groceries, even when I had no income. I always had some sort of plan or safety cushion. And Dave hasn't had a plan, and so it's been my income or nothing, unless he can get a handout from his mom (she's paying for his gas so he can commute to school, but we still give her $300 a month to rent this house from her), for over six months now.
And I make almost, but not quite, enough, that I can deal with that. And almost, but not quite, enough is extremely, extremely whininess-inducing, I am discovering. Especially when I am insanely jealous of Dave being in school because I love school and yet am done with my degree and have nothing more to study. He's all convinced he's being tortured, with all this schoolwork and crap, but I'm pining with jealousy and wish somebody'd ask me to write a paper on something and then actually read it and tell me how it was.
Worse was when he had to take a quarter off because he hadn't handed in the financial paperwork on time, and so he sat at home and I was EVEN MORE JEALOUS because truth be told I loved being unemployed and I got a hell of a lot of writing done. But he didn't seem to enjoy it that much.
So this is a much-delayed graduation, and I am looking forward to things changing afterward, but if they don't, I shall be most put out. But I am not nearly so wronged as I make myself out to be. Also, probably, not nearly so hard-working. :)

[jennnlee.livejournal.com]

Well, Morgan and I have been living together for eleven years now, almost nine of those as a married couple. And over the years we've taken turns being unemployed, and I went back to school for 2 years. But when one's been working and the other's been home, the unemployed one does everything possible to help out the person working. Grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning. We went through a period where we had one car. So I got up at 4:30 in the morning to drive him to work, and when he got off work he walked the mile and a half to my job to get the car, and then picked me up that night. We've been through a lot of shit.

But you sound like you feel that you owe him, which isn't true. A relationship is a give and take, and a relationship takes work and communication. It's a partnership. And from reading your posts in the past six months or so, you seem to be doing most of the work. And I just hate to see that.

But if you're happy in the arrangement, then there's not a lot else for me to say. Good luck...

[kkatowll.livejournal.com]

Why not suggest to Dave that he take a job doing any old thing while waiting to hear from places he's applied to. (Yes, I know he hasn't actually applied. But this way you don't have to say, "And you should have applied to places.")

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

Meh, I was picky about where I worked.
I was also making either $300 or $400 a week in unemployment. (I don't remember now.)
But I was picky. I held out for bartending.

It does take a lot of time to job-hunt. It can be very hard to get yourself together to apply for a more serious job while working in a shitty one.

But if he's as abso-fucking-lutely useless as he was last time he was home and unemployed (he didn't even do the goddamn dishes except once very 3 weeks when I flipped out), then I'm running away with the circus and he can make his own damn car payments.