Originally Posted by no1mad

Apparently, I missed a few posts while composing (and watching 'Kitchen Nightmares' on Hulu in another tab).


Cooking? I'm the chief cook. Have been for years. Dishes, laundry, trash, yard work, basically all the other household chores as well. Again, for years. So it's not like I'm a lazy bastige.


Without going into all the financials, let's just say I've been the primary wage earner until now. She had a decent paying job as an Admin Assistant for a car tire and repair business. Her boss felt threatened and made my wife's life miserable, so she decided to change careers. She spent roughly 2 years selling medical supplement insurance for a couple of firms- or trying to. Towards the end, she was spending more than she was making- driving all over the State, turnpike fees, fuel, food, daycare for the kids... we decided it would be cheaper for her not to work. Then I took a demotion and $2/hr pay cut. So she manages to find a job in the field she did in the Navy and has an A.S. degree in- Electronics. She was there about a year, then the business closed. She was out of work for over a year. She finally got another job, we were starting to make headway on some of the past due debt... and I lose my job.


So she is feeling the pressure. She's got to work to keep us off the streets. She's got child support to pay to her ex* and been ordered by the court to pay for medical insurance for said kids. She's got to pay for her Jeep and all of the fuel she's using, the insurance. I know the pressure, because I've had to do it when she wasn't working.


One is now 19, lived with us the last 2 years of High School, went to an in-state college for a year, has dropped out and living on her own. Another spent a year and half with us before her dad decided that she would be better off with him than us- and he's the one who had his parents drive from NC to OK to drop her off in the first place. He's been receiving child support for all three of their kids this entire time. That's has been and is a strain.