Try to relax, honey.  Just relax.  Concentrate on me rubbing your head.  Just try and go to sleep.  There’s nothing you can do tonight.  We’ll still be just as broke in the morning.

This is what my poor husband chants every night, trying to appease me into just letting go.  If even for a little while.  Just letting go.  Just enough to sleep, to recharge, to try and start again tomorrow.

He tries.  Very hard.  It doesn’t work.

I get so irate every time I see that monkey-faced buffoon of a president tell us, calmly and authoritatively and all decider-y, that there is no recession.  Our economy is fine, he says.  Don’t worry.

And on that, my friends, I call BULLSHIT.

Gas in my neighborhood, if you can find any, is $4.05 a gallon.  I pay almost $200 a week to daycare.  My baby’s formula is $27 a can.  He goes through 2 a week.  And we got the phone call that his AFO (ankle-foot orthotic) is now ready for pick-up.  And it’s not covered by insurance because it’s a custom-made brace.

I remember, when the whole mortgage crisis really started snowballing, sitting back and thinking, “People are so irresponsible, to let their bills get so out of hand.”  Oh, poor little naive Sarah.  We are not extravagant people.  We don’t travel, we don’t shop, and we rarely spend money.  And yet?  Mere penny pinching is not helping.  We are barely afloat.  If I were to be perfectly truthful, I would tell you that I cannot see a light at the end of our tunnel right now, a time when we will remain comfortably in the black and not live on overdraft fees.

Our one expense is eating out.  We love food too much to not eat out, but we’ve given that up as well.  We only have home-cooked meals, unless we’re treated by others, and we take the left-overs for lunch.  But even that route?  Not fucking cheap.  My grocery bills, even with just the essentials to get us through two weeks, easily tops $200.

We’ve been carpooling as we can, but our work schedules are vastly different.  Most of my mornings begin by 7:30.  His begin at 8:30.  He works late enough that it’s a race to pick up the child from the overpriced daycare on the other end of town.

So tell me, Bush, what I’m doing wrong.  Tell me how I’ve fucked up my household budget so mightily that the recession is only a personal one, one I’ve inflicted on myself.  Tell me how I’ve not done my part to fix the problem that you say doesn’t exist.  Explain to me how healthcare is affordable, gas is not unreasonable, and the mortgage crisis is nonexistent.  Tell me how this is the fucking American dream.

If this is the dream, it definitely explains my hesitation to fall asleep.