Living Large In Our Little House

Financially, this year feels like it did when we had the water well dug. For what seemed like for­ever, there were no crys­tal clear waters; just mud bub­bling every­where. The harder they tried to find water and the fur­ther they dug, the browner the guck that spewed. For days, the bright­est color flow­ing was the green leav­ing our hands.

In these times, espe­cially, I just thank good­ness I have the quiet, peace­ful repose of the Little House to set­tle into at night. Our story for the past year is really no dif­fer­ent from mil­lions of Americans, and a lot bet­ter than many.Although we did the math before mak­ing our move, some things just can­not be pre­dicted: An unprece­dented cost of liv­ing increase; a lay­off from a fairly good pay­ing job in one of the hard­est hit indus­tries; loss of health insur­ance; and yes, water wells much deeper than expected.

Although my hus­band did find two jobs, he still isn’t mak­ing what he was at one job just a year ago. In my busi­ness, the pub­lish­ing world, some think they’ve been given a license to not pay, can­cel con­tracts, or pay slow just because there’s fewer assign­ments with a glut of hun­gry writ­ers less likely to speak their minds when we’re not treated fairly or paid on time.
At times, it’s been about enough to drive us…well, me…mad.
I admit, I’ve had my moments of fits; and times when I won­dered the point of it all.
While my moments are just that…moments, Dale’s not even suf­fered those. The guy who, over a decade ago, freaked out when I told him I was leav­ing the cushy, sta­ble cor­po­rate world to join the ranks of the self-employed, is now as easy going as they come.
“It’ll work out, it always does,” he told me dur­ing my most recent moment of hit­ting mud.
A lot of it is owed to good, lov­ing friends who talk me down, barter with us when we need some­thing, or who might just send a card, or have us over for din­ner and some board games when we need some fun.
But we also can­not dis­count the fact that our Little House and sur­round­ings are peace­ful, and I’m appre­cia­tive that for the large part, we’ve been able to inter­nal­ize that.
At the end of a long day that stretches into night, the first thing Dale sees at the bot­tom of our wind­ing dri­ve­way is the lit­tle lamp light­ing his way into the Little House. I soon fol­low, walk­ing from The Belle Writer’s Studio, our two big dogs, Emma and Sade, at my side.
When we finally set­tle into our cozy, quiet Little House, we fall asleep to the song of the cicadas, the whoop­ing of the whip­poor­will that sits on our roof and the yip­ping of the coy­otes. If we’re really lucky, our res­i­dent owl is hoot­ing to his mate, who also engages in the con­ver­sa­tion.
Nights in the Little House sucks the chaos of the real world away, allow­ing me the hope that like with the well, clear waters will start flow­ing just before it drains us dry; and once well waters start to run clear, they usu­ally do so for a lifetime.

That’s enough to give hope to all of us.

Today’s Poll: What helps you get through today’s eco­nomic cli­mate? Click on com­ments and tell us!