My car has been out of commission for the last week, putting the crimp you might imagine in my life. Perhaps laudably, perhaps in the manner one would hope for from a spouse, Martha has been about as understanding as one could expect. And don't get me wrong, the situation overall still sucks. But there's been very little I've been able to do about it, being drowned in every other financial and life concern I face. Trust me, the next person who comes to me with their problems is not gonna get a kind response; I've got way too much else to think about, as you might well imagine. I saw a poster once, that said "when you're ass-deep in alligators, it's difficult to remember that your original objective was to drain the swamp." Boy, if that don't say it all, I don't know what does. The other part of it is, I don't intend to be at this particular point in my life forever, but it's gonna be a fight to get any further. Hell, isn't it always a fight?! If it ain't one damned thing, it's another. Maybe it is just being sans my meds for the last week; I've just been so tied up in everything else, squeezing a therapist appointment in has turned out to be a challenge. Among all else I face.....hell, I don't know. I'd just give anything (almost,) to have my life seem a little more like it was mine.

And I also know what some people are thinking, whether they choose to say it or not. Something along the lines of, "okay, Mr. Genius Mechanic, why didn't you try to fix it yourself?" Because I'm honest, and I realized that I pretty much sucked as a mechanic. Oh, sure, I have my share of cars that managed to get fixed, but I had just as many that were comebacks, or somehow or other just went nightmarishly. I ain't even making the attempt anymore. I feel like I realize where my successes have been, and I'll willingly stick to them. Because it makes me feel good, too. Additionally, in a world that's only going to get smaller, not being tied to one employer is something I would count as an advantage. At least at the moment. We rose up out of the 70s and early 80s, and all the nightmarish things that happened then, I have confidence not only in the idea that Barack Obama has good ideas, but that the rest of the world likes him so much more than Bush that they won't see fit to penalize America as a country anymore. See the gas prices dropping? I don't think that was an accident, any more than the fact that they skyrocketed in the summer was; it amounted to OPEC penalizing Bush for unduly messing around in their internal conflicts. We'll see.