So far this morning, things have not gone that great.

We woke up late, so J. missed his bus and I had to drive him to school. But the moment I get in the car the battery goes bang! Its been so friggin cold here the last two mornings, that I suspect it just gave out. Naturally we keep our $25,000 cars parked in the driveway instead of using the garage, because the garage is where we keep the litter box and the indoor cats can come and go as they please. If we open the garage door they'll escape.

Someone will have to explain the logic of that to me at some point.

I used R's car to take J. to school. Then went to Wal-mart, bought a new battery and socket set and put it in with surprisingly little difficulty.

Just checked my bank account and I am now a little over $100 in the red. Probably be $150 by the time the bank has had their way with me too.

I got a statement from the SSA the other day, telling me how much money I'll get when I retire. They also told me how much I've made the last couple of years. In 2001 I made $125K. In 2002, when I started working as a permy here, that dropped by nearly $30K. Now I'm not expecting sympathy from anyone. But imagine how your lifestyle would be impacted if you too a 25% cut in your wages. Regardless of how much you make, that's a big deal.

On the plus side, I had my financial review yesterday, and my 401K money and Transamerica stuff has gone up on average 22% this past year. We're taking a third of it a and going more agressive. Since I can't save until I get a better job, I have to take some risks with the savings to see if I can compensate for that.

Then we have the whole story of J. that I haven't told you about. I did mention a couple of days ago that whilst he was staying at his dad's place, $60 went missing. He took it. He 'fessed up last night after two nights of good cop bad cop from me and R. And he explained what he did with it and what he bought, and his story checks out. So now we have some hard decisions to make. His dad wants him to go to Thunderbird Academy, which is part of the Oklahoma National Guard and is basically military school. R. doesn't want him to go. I am on the fence. I've told her we need to work out a set of criteria. A 'line in the sand' in effect, that is meaningful and answers the question 'at one point is his behavior not only no longer acceptable, but not repairable by us?'. If and when we reach that point, then Thunderbirds Are Go. For those of you that are not familiar with that expression, Thunderbirds was a Sci-Fi puppet show from the 70s, which still has kind of a cult following on uk TV. Personally I preferred Captain Scarlet, but that's just me :>

Enjoy your humpday. I hope mine gets better....