July 25: Good...or Bad, Summer Finances, Tired

"Is it good," she said, "or bad?"--to help him.

"Bad," he answered.

"We are quite ruined?"

I've written about this little known scene in Stave Four of A Christmas Carol before.  It's between a husband and wife who are worrying over the debt they owe Scrooge.  At the end of the passage, the couple celebrates the fact that Scrooge has died, giving them more time to collect the funds to pay off their obligation.

I understand this couple's predicament.  When my wife and I refinanced our mortgage earlier this summer and learned we wouldn't have to make our first payment on the new mortgage until September, we celebrated, as well.  That little stroke of luck saved us this summer so far.  We wouldn't have been able to pay the rest of our bills otherwise.

Last night, my wife and I sat down to examine the current state of our summer finances.  It was not a very gratifying experience.  In fact, I would describe it as being just short of a morning in a Siberian gulag.  Times are not simply tight for us right now.  They are suffocating.  After an hour or so, I started having a little anxiety.  It made for a bad night of sleep, and I'm pretty tired this morning.  I have a feeling it's going to be a really long day at work.

There is going to be no Ebenezer Scrooge dying to save my finances.  The thing that I have my sights set on is the fact that my checks from the university should resume in a couple of weeks as the fall semester approaches.  That is, if the employment contract with the college is settled.  If it isn't, and there's a work stoppage (strike), life will pretty much suck.  The Cratchit Christmas dinner will look like a friggin' feast, and I don't even like goose or figgy pudding.  Yes, I'm praying for a contract extension or settlement.  Soon.

We are not quite ruined.  Not yet.

Marty, patron saint of worriers and underpaid college adjunct instructors, gives thanks for that.

What the hell is figgy pudding anyway?