There was a sale on windshields fitting my particular truck at a local place this month. Since I’ve had a crack in my windshield since about three weeks after I bought the truck, I figured that I might as well just bite the bullet and get a new one before I get a ticket. It was much cheaper to do it now than to wait for a ticket, and I wasn’t even going to think about using my insurance to cover it, not with my high deductible.

So I had the guy out this morning, and he took a few hours and put a shiny new windshield in. I was all set to hop in the truck and go to lunch when he looked at me in horror. Apparently the office didn’t tell me that I’d have to wait for four hours for the glue to set, or else I’d be looking at leaks and all sorts of badness.

Well, hell. Slim Fast at work it is. Sure, that’s all that I was going to have at home, but I like to go decompress for half an hour, and untangle the dog from his chain, and get the mail. And now I’m stuck in the office for the rest of the day. I’m sure my contractors are heartbroken.

I’m just the smallest bit sad about losing the old windshield though, because stuck on it were my two family team roping membership stickers. I guess I’m not part of that family any more anyway, but I hated to see them go. Silly, I know.

My neighbor came over again yesterday looking for the newspaper, but the big bust wasn’t in it. Well, not yesterday, at least. It was today, but I’m not going to link to it since it gives out my street name.

Turns out there were three adults busted on various felony charges—the one guy that they were after, some parole-violating chick hiding in the closet, and the wife pulled up to the house under some influence or another while the bust was going on. There was a meth lab in the garage, and a few guns and whatnot, along with all of the finished drugs and components they found in the house. Those people are going away for a long time.

And there were kids there! I’ve never seen kids there, but Maria says they belong to him and not her, but are younger than their marriage is. And she’s seen the nine-year old outside smoking cigarettes. Yeah, that’s some quality parenting there.

So I’m wondering why I want to buy my house, across the street from this crap. Yes, that one’s cleaned out, and I think the house is going to be seized, but who knows what’s going to move in next? There’s another suspicious place down at the corner. The thing is, I can’t afford anything nicer, and that just depresses me. Here I am, making a damn good professional salary, and I can’t afford to buy a house even in a crack-infested neighborhood.

Not by myself anyway, and I have no reason to think that I will ever be anything other than alone.

I did get my shore excursions for the cruise sorted out this week. I skipped the horseback riding trips because hell, I’m on a horse often enough as it is; I don’t need to pay to ride someone else’s nag. And that trip wasn’t actually riding up to the glaciers like I thought it would be. I’m sticking more to things I can’t do anywhere else, like a helicopter tour over several glaciers and some wildlife-watching trips. There is only time for one excursion at each stop, so I decided to make the most of it. I’ll only be in Alaska once, might as well do all I can.

I was hoping that these would go on my credit card, so I picked things that were about at the limit of what I could afford. But then Grampa emailed me to make sure I knew he was picking up the trips too, which was awesome. He said to save my money for shopping, and I’ll do some serious damage there!

I feel like I’m starting to look like a doormat where Cowboy is concerned. I’m getting better about it on the surface, but sooner or later, I’m going to have to draw the line completely. I’ve given myself an internal deadline—not to be over him, but to call it off in my head if he hasn’t yet. I think that I should consider myself free on the day I sail to Alaska, if not before then.

Until then, small steps. I was really good last week, and only called him twice. I’ve decided this week to not call him at all until he calls me. Marci may be getting a few phone calls, but she’s my witness to make me stick to it.

But then I realized in the shower this morning that this weekend is a holiday. I don’t celebrate it, and I don’t remember if his family does either. It’s going to be very weird if they do and I’m not there. I don’t know if they know what’s going on yet or not, but surely they will have noticed a two-month absence? I miss my family too, and I can’t even tell them I do.

Just keep swimming…

My neighbor came knocking at my door last night. I thought she just wanted to borrow some eggs or sugar or something, but no. She wanted to gossip.

It seems that I had driven right by a major drug bust two doors down from her across the street and hadn’t even noticed.

Cool!

I never noticed because there are always strange cars parked at that house. It’s been a kind of an open secret that those people were into drugs, but I never talked to them. They were pretty weird in general, and had some really nasty dogs that they’d let out in the fenced front yard to bark at passersby. I never let the kids cross the street when those dogs were out. Maria’s home all the time, and she’s seen some really weird people going up to that house and leaving quickly. She’s also found drugs in the street in front of the house.

But these strange cars were all shiny new. The neighbor said they’d been there since early afternoon. We peeked out through my curtains, since she can’t see their house from hers, and sometimes ventured out front to look around the bushes.

All the real excitement must have been over before I got home. We think they took him away, but we don’t know about her. Since they did come and take the dogs, I’m thinking that they took her too.

There were cops there all night, or at least until I went to bed. They towed some of the cars, and somehow moved the woman’s car over in front of my house. The police brought in a big blue utility truck. I thought it was just a tool truck, but later on, they fired up a generator, and had the back door of it open and were bringing loads of who knows what in and out of it. I think it must be an undercover drug-testing mobile lab.

So, boo that I live in a neighborhood with that sort of thing going on, but yay that it’s gone now. I wonder why they didn’t nail the druggies on the corner? Maybe they’re just trashy people who aren’t into drugs. Yeah, and maybe I’m the Pope.

I talked to my landlord this morning, asking him not to worry about pushing the house-selling idea to his wife right now, and explained what was going on.

His first question was, “What makes you think we’re going to sell the house for that much?”

Well, huh. I explained to him that she’d run the mortgage on the minimum that we think it would appraise for, and he was a little dumbfounded. He suggested seeing what the payments would be like for a selling price of $170 - 200K. I think he just can’t believe what those houses are going for, because I can’t foresee his wife selling it for less than the value.

But we were talking about it a little more, and I said that I wished we’d set it up as a lease when I moved in. And I asked if he would consider setting it up that way now, and he said that did sound like a good idea, and he would talk to his wife about it.

It’s not done much nowadays, but back in the day when it wasn’t all about cutthroat moneymaking, I guess it was a little more common. Cowboy bought his place that way, and is just now refinancing to buy it outright. The landlord and I are both going to look into how it’s done. I don’t even know where to start.

But he said that if I don’t want to buy right now, that’s fine. I can keep renting for as long as I want. That’s good; I was afraid bringing the subject up might have made his wife want to sell right now, and the last thing I want to deal with is moving.

Oh, and I may have learned a lesson about buying tamales from the back of someone’s car. I teetered on the edge of losing the tamale lottery last night, but I have an iron stomach (if you discount the ulcer) and retained my pride. No mas!

I finally finished my taxes, that is. They’ve been hanging over my head like Poe’s pendulum, swinging closer, ever closer.

I’d originally intended to have an accountant do it, since this is my first year at running a business. But in early February, I was feeling broke and optimistic, so I bought the small-business version of my usual tax software. I figured that if I ran into problems, I could always either run to Dad, who’s doing taxes for old people at the senior center, or break down and go to the accountant.

I didn’t figure on being hit by a train the next weekend. It’s taken this long just to get my confidence back up enough to tackle inputting numbers into a computer. But I sat down and did it this weekend, and it wasn’t as bad as I’d expected. The program seems to have fixed some glitches that gave me fits in the previous two years. They finally recognized that not all parents with partial custody have it split evenly and neatly, and that some kids live with parents who don’t get to claim them as dependents. Oh, and we started just paying after-school care for just one kid instead of splitting both just to make it easier.

Of course, sitting on it so long screwed all of my rebates up, but to hell with it. I’m sending them in anyway. A 30-day limit is just crazy when I bought the stuff two months before taxes were due.

And the reason I’m sitting around doing my taxes this weekend instead of having all the fun that I’d planned with the kids is that one is home early because of bad weather at Boy Scout Camp, and the other one was horribly bad at school and is grounded all week. I’d planned to take them to the movies, and play with a candy-making kit that Seamus got from his grandmother, but not now.

Seamus is kicking around absolutely bored out of his gourd. Every time he complains about it, I chortle at him, “Well, it’s your own fault, isn’t it? You’ll behave at school next time, won’t you?” Yeah, evil Mom. He’s grounded from the TV and the video games and the computer and his candy toy and really, anything remotely fun. But if he was bad enough to get his non-calling teacher to call me because he’d not only been as disruptive as he’s ever been, but also forged his Dad’s signature on the note home, then I only wish I had more things to pull away from him. Little monster.

I’d planned to try to be extra good about giving Cowboy his space this week, and I was OK for the most part. I called him on Wednesday night and left a voice mail, and then I called him again yesterday and caught him.

We had a nice conversation too. I really miss my friend, and it’s pretty clear that he does too. I apologized for dumping on him last weekend, and indirectly for sending that letter (didn’t come right out and bring that up though.) He said there’s nothing to be sorry for, so maybe he’s not mad at me. Maybe he understands how hard this is for me. Well, hell with “maybe,” I know he is, and I know he’s kicking himself for doing it to me. But if he got that letter, he knows I still love him.

Still with the waiting, but he still hasn’t called it off completely yet. Maybe he’s just assuming that space equates to breaking up, but it’s got to be clear that I don’t think that, and as honest as he is, he would correct me if he thought I was off track.

Chief asked if I would be willing to invest a few months of hardship to cement a good relationship, and I am. I just have to remember to think of it in those terms, at least until it’s been made clear to me that that’s not his goal. For now, I’m still giving it time.

I had one of those good news-bad news phone calls yesterday.

No, not from Cowboy. At this point any communication from him can only be classified as good news.

It was from my finance gal. She did some of my paperwork and said I had a fabulous credit score, and there wouldn’t be any problem getting me approved for a mortgage. She said there were several options I could go with, and we started talking about which ones were right for me.

All very well and good until she casually threw out an estimate of my monthly payment. For as little as three times what I pay in rent, I can own this very same crappy little house that I’m living in now! What a bargain! I’ll have to sell my only remaining toy, curtail all of my spending, and still be responsible for repairs and upgrades on my own! Fabulous! I can live like a hermit!

Seems that what the bank thinks I can afford to spend monthly and what I think I can afford differ just slightly. I knew it would be more than rent, and I was prepared to deal with an amount of say, almost twice what I’m paying now. But if I have to scrape up that much every month, I just won’t have much of a life left.

I asked her to give me a month or so to think about it. I’ve pretty much decided to put the decision off, after thinking about it for a couple of hours spiked my ulcer back up. I just can’t deal with both of these loads at once, and since one was self-inflicted, that’s the one that has to go.

What if I do buy a house? What would my quality of life be like without any money at all? I’dll have to sell the trailer, but that won’t matter because I wouldn’t be able to afford to use it anyway. I wouldn’t be able to afford to start commuting back to Cowboy’s (if it comes to that) and it would kill me to have that particular piece fall back into place and not be able to use it. And if I do decide absolutely to buy and my landlady won’t sell this house to me, then I have to face uprooting and losing one more piece of stability at a time when I really need all I can scrape together.

Yes, I’m putting my relationship on a higher priority than my financial stability right now. It is more important to me, after all, I can always keep renting. Love is much more rare and important than a house. Even love that may be gone?