Where Are My Cookies?

Each month lately -- and by "lately" I mean the last 18 months or so -- Herr Doctor Delagar and I run out of money just a little bit sooner.

The last few months we've started running out of money on about the 8th or 9th of month.

By "running out of money" I mean the money is nearly gone. I have paid the bills, I have paid the rent, I have paid off the credit cards, and now I am looking at what is left in the bank and counting down the days to the end of the month. So it's 21 days until the end of the month and we have two hundred and sixty dollars left and we have to buy food and gas and pay for all the emergencies that might arise over those 21 days as well and I'm thinking, well, if we eat a lot of split pea soup and nothing horrible happens, maybe....

Then gasoline rises to $3.45/gallon, and WTF.

Oh, yes, and I still haven't filled my prescriptions, which I couldn't fill last month, because we didn't have the $211 dollars last month either, and now I'm down to about eleven doses of each, despite the fact that I've been skipping doses every sixth or seventh night. So I really have to refill fill the presciptions. Or, well, I could just die I guess.

And when I drop by the store for milk and eggs, food prices are skyrocketing again. Which goes with the skyrocketing gas prices, I know, but you know what is not skyrocketing? My salary. My salary, if we factor everything into account, despite a couple of tiny, tiny COL raises, has actually gone down over the past four years (because I've lost summer teaching gigs, because this administration has stopped paying us for extra work, because we're paying more now for health insurance).

So less money to take home. And everything I need to buy with that money costs, I'd guess, about three times as much. And the solution from our state and federal government is to give the top one percent more tax breaks.

And why am I angry again?