Today hasn’t been going so well—not so well at all.

My day started, as all of them do, with my opening my eyes, looking at my alarm clock, and thinking “Shit, I have to get up.” I keep hearing about people who love their lives so much that they bound out of bed, cheering “Hooray! Another day!” I want to meet those people and kill them, one at a time.

I think about money, constantly. It’s the last thing I think about when I go to sleep, and the first thing I think about when I wake up. Money. How am I going to get through another day without screwing it up completely, financially?

Money has always been a problem, but as Wendy goes, so goes the nation, or vice versa, so money is a particularly troublesome topic for obsession lately. I am the head of a household consisting of me, two boys in college, and two dogs, at least one of whom threatens to require thousands of dollars of veterinarian bills at a moment’s notice. I once had to pay over $4 thousand dollars to have literally hundreds of stones removed from his bladder. Now every housebreaking mishap signals the possibility of another trip to the vet. As I clean up the puddle, I issue dire warnings about what humans do to doggies who can’t hold their water. He is embarrassed, but there’s nothing he can do about it, apparently.

But he’s not the real problem. The problem is life—life and all the things that seem to break down in the course of living it.  I used to be able to manage, albeit just barely, with a part time job transcribing sound files. It provided enough cash to cover the new tires for the car, or the tooth that needed capping. But the part time job has gone the way of the economy—right down the crapper—and with it, that little cushion that meant so much. So when the heat pump repair guy told me that it was going to cost me $750 to replace the blower valve, I knew I was officially fucked. I didn’t have it, as simple as that. Repairing the heat pump was going to mean missing a mortgage payment.

Missing a mortgage payment—I think that’s one of the signs of the Apocalypse. I’ve been in deep shit for some time now, having had to declare bankruptcy about a year and a half ago. But despite that, I’ve been able to make the payments on the condo, which is a good thing, because living two miles away from my sons’ college is really the only way they can go to school, given that I don’t have the money for room and board.  (I have worked at the college they attend for 15 years now. The salary sucks, but free tuition is no small bennie in these times, so I have to keep the job, as poorly paid as I am, until the youngest graduates in two years.)  So I’ve tried as hard as I could to hold on to the condo, but now it seems to be slipping away. I make jokes about now qualifying for Obama money. God, I hope that’s true! But not making a mortgage payment can never be a good sign.

So that was on my mind when I woke up this morning, that and the fact that I had precisely $1.24 in my checking account and no milk in the house or gas in the car.  Luckily, my eldest son is a little saving maniac. He has to be, because when he graduates in January, he’s outta here, and he better have that first, last and security for the trip into the great beyond. So he says he’ll loan me some money for groceries and gas. I should drop him off at the gym (he takes full advantage of his ten-dollar-a-month membership), he’ll give me his cash card to get gas and go shopping, and I’ll pick him up afterward.  Good.

It costs $20 to fill the empty tank. I keep thinking it’ll cost $15, despite the fact that gas hasn’t been any where near a buck-fifty a gallon in a good long time. Still, 20 dollars is not so bad.  But then comes the grocery shopping.

I maneuver quickly through the supermarket so as to avoid any tempting impulse buys. Just the stuff on the list, just the stuff on the list. Oh well, I do pick up some multigrain Tostitos that are on sale for $2.50 and salsa for $1.50, but I justify that by saying they will be supper tomorrow night. That’s right, I said it: salsa and chips for dinner. Well, the chips ARE multigrain, and salsa is a vegetable, right? Two food groups right there. Cereal, milk, enough dog food to get us through until Thursday, when the child support check is deposited in my account—stuff like that. I roll up to the cash register, quite confident that I’ve spent no more than $30, $35. Imagine, then, my surprise when the cashier announces, “That will be $83.45.”

I slip my son’s card through the machine, quite sure that I will look at the receipt and find some horrendous mistake, like she included the previous shopper’s total with mine. I pull my cart off to the side and rummage through my pocketbook, searching desperately for my reading glasses. (That’s one of my three major activities in life: cleaning up dog pee, emptying the dishwasher, and looking for my reading glasses.) I scan the receipt: no mistakes. Everything listed on the slip of paper has a corresponding item in my shopping cart.

How can this be? How can this possibly be? I’ve bought NOTHING—nothing, I tell you!  Cereal, milk, dog food, a head of lettuce—that’s it! The lettuce! Lettuce and broccoli! Damn those green vegetables! I never should have gotten them. And the Tostitos! Multigrain or no, they’ve put me over the edge.

I am filled with tremendous guilt and anxiety. I never should have bought those Tostitos, never ever ever ever ever! What’s wrong with me? What if I’ve drained my son’s checking account? The thought of having to tell him the total is humiliating. I was going to pick up “a few things.”  I never meant to spend so much money, and yet, there you have it.

I start to cry.  I sit in the parking lot of Roche Brothers’ supermarket, and I cry and cry and cry. I can’t stop. I can’t manage a trip to the grocery store without risking financial annihilation. I am borrowing money from my son, and he doesn’t even have a real job! The heat pump is fixed, yes, but the car door developed a god-awful rattle after my other son hit a pothole the other night, and I’m sure the brakes are going to go any day. And brakes are the kind of thing where if you catch them in time, they’re only going to cost you about a hundred bucks, max, but if you don’t—hoo boy. It’s going to be a hoo boy moment, obviously. And then there’s the broken tooth and the cavity to be filled. Every three months I see my dentist for my insurance-covered cleaning. He tells me I need that work done. I say I know, but I don’t have the money. He says it’s important not to let them go because with my gums, my entire mouth could cave in at any moment. I say I know, but I don’t have the money.

I don’t have the money. I don’t have the money. I don’t have the money. I don’t have the money.

I cry and cry and cry. I try to stop when I pick up my son at the gym, but I think he knows that something’s up from the red splotches all over my cheeks and the gob of snot running out my nose. As soon as I get home, I start crying again. I contemplate filling out job applications for part-time work at the local drug store. Because of various health problems, too tedious to go into, I’m not at all sure that I can stand on my feet for four or eight hours—or ten minutes, for that matter. But what else is there to do, except cry a lot.

I turn on the television and watch saved episodes of Stephen Colbert. Thank God for Stephen Colbert. He makes me laugh long enough for the crying jag to subside. I will call the mortgage company tomorrow, tell them my tale of woe, see what they can do for me. I doubt that they’ll throw me out on the street for missing one payment.  They won’t, right?

I walk the dogs. As I do, I thank the grumbly old pug for not peeing on the carpet.  That’s something, anyway.