Guess what i found? I found my book outline!!!! Yeeeeeah! I’ve been searching for that sucker since my separation seven years ago.

Okay, I mean, we’re talking about an eight year old book outline written by a miserable & melodramatic 24 year old for a book with a completely different plot from the one I want to write now. BUUUUUUT, I’m excited to read it because I remember having some pretty clever things that tied a bunch of plots together. And I had been working up details for about six intersecting plotlines – something which I am finding mentally impossible right now.

So, yeah. Excited to see what I’ve got here. Excited to see if any of it is worth reviving. Will keep y’all posted.

Also, I found some pads of paper that I used to pre-write blog posts back in 2004ish. That was when I was newly separated and so broke that I had my internet disconnected for a year while I got back on my feet. So I had to write it on paper and then type it up in my spare time on my lunch hour at work in order to keep blogging. Back when I was so broke that my fridge held a list of things I was saving for. Ridiculous luxury items like, “fix my oven so I can actually bake things again,” “fix my kitchen light so it will stop doing that freaky sparking thing that fries light-switches so they are fused open and can never shut the light off again,” and “fix my timing belt before it breaks and wrecks all my valves and costs me twice as much.”

Well. I did do all those things eventually.

But shit. That all seems so ridiculously far away now.

I found a page in there where I was trying to work out my budget and I showed Ian how bleak it was. My take-home pay was ~$1500/month. And I got a child tax credit of about $200. My mortgage payment was $800. My daycare costs were $800. Then I had about $400 worth of bills.

Never mind affording gas, clothes and emergencies (which I seemed to have every month).

Ridiculous.