Up?

Things may be getting a little better.

Lee’s finally been offered a full-time job at Best Buy, supposedly with raise. And I’m finally done paying off the maternity leave (they decided that I hadn’t been working there long enough to get the full, full-time benefits, so they…took it back). So we may be able to slowly creep out of the pit of the underemployed. The barely-hanging-on. Maybe.

Look, I didn’t grow up with money, and I’ve never really made any. Didn’t bother me. If I had enough cash for basic living expenses and used books, I was good to go. With Ray, everything is different. I care about things like insurance now, and having some kind of financial security. I want to get out of places where you can’t let your kids run around for fear that they’ll pick up shatters of glass off the sidewalk from last night’s upstairs drunken orgy.

Lots of people I know have been burnt worse by the enconomy lately. A couple of single mothers who started the day with nothing and ended up with less are at the top of the list, but it seems like the greater percentage of actual tech people I know have been laid off in the last year. Granted, a couple of them got tech jobs again right away, but some of them didn’t. And it seems like Lee can’t even get a nibble from anybody but Best Buy, even after almost a year of applying.

So…even the possiblity that this might not go on forever comes as a particular relief.

Wish us luck.