It's the end of the world, as we know it.
It's the end of the world, as we know it.
It's the end of the world, as we know it.
And I feel fine.

There isn't a lot to say. And even if there were there isn't a lot of time to say it in.

We saved the schoolhouse, and we saved the zoo -- but only by the skin of our teeth. And I'm not using we in the Royal sense. That's part of the New World Order: from now on there are two of us working this mad cavalcade.

Times have been lean. The world can turn to shit on a dime when times are lean. One expected job failed to materialize, and then two. And when you're living this close to the wire that's about all it takes to poop the whole bed.

A reasonable thought crosses the minds of reasonable people: maybe you can't support a family by idly fucking around with computers. Maybe the naysayers are right and somebody should be getting a fucking job around here.

I mean, it's only reasonable. A hundred thousand sheep can't all be wrong, right?

So Littlestar started pounding the pavement. She tailored up her resume six ways from Sunday and gave it to everyone. She followed up. She waited in line. She called, she faxed, she interviewed. She said, "I'll be a barmaid, if that's what it takes."

You've got to admire her gumption.

But still, it made me want to die. I mean, I wouldn't tolerate having a job, so it breaks my heart to see someone I'm responsible for having to face the prospect themselves. Jobs suck. Especially the kinds of jobs they're willing to hand over to mothers who have been out of the workforce while they reproduce. "Would you like a slice of shit with your humble pie, ma'am?"

She was going up against teenagers and menopausers, and not being chosen. "Overqualified," they whispered.

It made no sense! With the amount of money we'd need to feed to a day-care centre, the job Littlestar got would have to be semi-decent. But at every semi-decent place they said the same thing, "You've got a hole in your experience. What did you do -- take two years off from the working world to have a baby or something?"

Right. And she's trying to get me to look after the kid while she goes to suffer these humiliating interviews, and I'm getting pissy because I'm trying to drum up new business and at the same time aware of how badly I am slipping behind -- in my independent work, in my software training, in a million other things.

Meanwhile her own affairs fall by the wayside, too. To add insult to injury on the tender subject of the album Littlestar is producing, just as she made the final payment to begin mass production of the CD the CD duplication house went backrupt. All our money, printed covers, jewelcases, albums -- gone.

Poof!

And, I guess because it felt left out of all the misery, the old schoolhouse chimed in by gushing water through the floor of our laundry room and into the computer room downstairs. Ha...ha.

Only a keyboard and mouse were damaged beyond repair, but the overall effect was quite depressing. We covered the floor in buckets, and until we find a real solution our clothes will have to stink.

And then the pipes froze...again. So leaking water was no longer an issue, from a certain point of view.

And the days of January wore on, without work or respite. We bickered over trivia, we went to bed grouchy. Littlestar felt hopeless to impact the situation she shared, and felt that her university education had been a waste of time. I felt that my ability to positively impact our situation was being seriously impeded by having to babysit...and I was selfishly concerned with what a hard time I was having anyway, struggling against the indulgence of depressive paralysis.

Finally, after her worst day of discouragement Littlestar came home and cried, and I paid her trials less mind than usual because I was obsessed with getting my demo tape down to a production house in the city who was sending it to Los Angeles the next day to pitch creating the motion graphic elements for a new top secret TV show. "There, there," I said for a while, patting her head. And then: "Gotta go."

I hate it when my wife is inconsolable. It makes me mad. Isn't that a great reaction? Nothing communicates empathy and sensitivity like frustration, impatience and snapping. "The tape has to be there before five -- we gotta fucking go now!"

About thirty seconds after we dropped off the tape downtown she told me I hadn't been very nice to her when she was feeling blue, and I threw a tantrum. I threw my arms around in the car and gibbered like a gibbon. I flailed and swore. I said nothing in particular. Like a character in a videogame stuck between two obstacles, I simply vibrated violently in place.

"Fucking PRIORITIES, woman, blah-blah!" I shouted, or something like that. "Fuckity fuck fuck fuck -- I mean, FOCK!" I probably added, for emphasis.

Sure, and I accidentally knocked the rearview mirror off of the windshield, and then when Littlestar picked it up to calmly investigate I dashed it out of her hands and it shattered. "Good work," she commented.

"Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!"

I grabbed her telephone and started out of the car before she'd parked at the bar, at Ein-Stein. We had a brief shouting match in the alley, and then I slogged off through the snow swearing while she promised to leave me stranded in the city...

It was three o'clock the next morning before we were reunited and sane. I won't bore you with the details. Suffice it to say we kissed a lot and talked a lot of things over. The main thing? We'd been working at cross-purposes. "I don't want you to keep looking for a job," I said. "I want you to work with me. I want you to be a partner in this business."

Really -- was that so very hard?

No, but I'm a fool.

You have to understand, my father (aforementioned as Mashed Potato Pop) and my step-mother (aforementioned as Noodles) are a couple that works together. And, while there is much that is laudable about their relationship, there are also facets of the way their life works that makes me ill. Being emotionally clumsy, I had not until the other night been ready to admit to myself how much I was unreasonably confabulating the ideas of being more like them professionally with being like them personally.

I love my dad, but I don't want to be him. And the idea my lifestyle resembling his lifestyle more on the surface had been giving me a case of the willies...not to mention the fact that Littlestar wouldn't really appreciate being compared to my step-mom for a host of reasons too involved to outline here.

Lastly, I had been reluctant to put Littlestar into a position that would subordinate pursuing her own interests in favour of collectively pursuing mine. Do you know what I mean?

But she is more sensible than me about things like this. Littlestar said, "The things you're talking about are things that I've been trying to push toward for a long time...but you've always been resistant, for one reason or another."

I was blind to that, but I believe her.

Littlestar doesn't suffer from the delusion that we'll become too much like the negative aspects of Mashed Potato Noodles, Inc. She knows that it's my cheap tricks that are paying the bills today, so she has no problem with pooling our efforts into that. She knows I love and respect her music. We'll be collectively building the company into a platform for all our varied creative endeavours, and she's willing to wait.

She's hired.

I had a fever, and I had a dream. I saw deep layers of geometrically arranged clusters of curling ivy, an ocean of undulating planes a thousand far. I somersaulted and careened. A great chapter of fiction came self-created to me complete, and I strained to memorize it while my dreaming mind would briefly obey my will. Beyond and into a mistier space, I remembered who I was and what I do. I knew when the morning came the sun would shine brighter, and we would prevail.

So now a few days have passed. I have a brand new client and I'm triple-booked. The next weeks will be hard, while I breathe and eat work. We're going to make the mortgage. We're going to be okay. And, with Littlestar on board, we should eventually become better than okay. We should be farting through cavier and eating silk. The air will shimmer with myhhr.

I can't save the zoo alone, but I can do it with help. The help is sharp, and it has sweet breasts. Things could be a million times worse and they'd still be what some would consider better. Perspective, perspective, perspective.

Whatever doesn't kill you makes you older.