Back to the grind

Tomorrow I head back to work. I could have waited until Thursday, but I looked at our finances and I need as much of a paycheck as I can get. I shouldn't have taken off as much time as I did, but we were expecting DH to be able to work for half of the time that I was home. He got a temp job for two days and that's it. There were no positions open for him. That has really hurt our financial standing - not that it was so great to start out with.

When the economy crashed our house lost more than half of it's value. I'm not sure it will ever get back up to where it was before. Our original plan was to move in 2011 either to a bigger house around here (we have two bedrooms and now there are four of us) or to move back to TX. Now I'm not sure we will ever be able to move. Ever. The bank isn't going to eat a loss of more than 100k and we certainly don't have that in the bank to pay it off. And just to add a little salt, Ray's education is taking longer than we ever planned for, so our well will soon run dry. It is literally making me sick to think that I am stuck here forever. It makes me sick that tax dollars went to save banks and yet they will do NOTHING to help people in my situation.

I need to accept today for all the wonderful things it brings instead of focusing on the negatives. I try, but in the end I continue to focus on financial issues and weight issues and every little negative thing. I look to the future or to the past for the illusive perfect conditions. Prior to joining the Peace Corps, i would always focus on the future and what I needed to do to get there - where ever there was. As a result I paid little attention to the present time. While in the Peace Corps, I soaked in every moment. I loved it. I was happier than I had ever been. Even when I was crying in my living room eating raw noodles for lack of fire to cook with, I was truly living in the moment. And now? Now I either look back to my days in Ghana or I look forward to the days where we will be financially sound and I won't have to work. I can't change jobs because then I couldn't pay bills and we can't move somewhere where the bills would be less because we can't sell this house. Caught between a rock and a hard place as they would say. All the while my parents aren't getting any younger and I would really like to be able to move closer to them. I want my children to get to know their grandparents.

I want to live somewhere that feels like home. I don't know geographically where home is. It may be TX or it may be Ghana. It may even be the same town I'm in now, but in a different neighborhood. What I do know, is that this house that I live in now is not home. It was a stepping stone that ended up being a trap.

So back to the grind I go. I go to work while DH stays home with our children. I desperately want to stay home with the boys. DH desperately wants to get a job to support our family. We are both learning to live with what life has thrown at us. What matters is that we are together and we have two happy, healthy sons.