I’m throwing this wonder out there for all of us, whether we are just barely meeting our basic needs or whether we were doing great and now we’re just doing ok. Whether we had $100,000 in our 401k that turned into $50,000 overnight, or we had $10,000 that is now $5,000, or we had no retirement plan and now feel even that much farther away from starting one. Whether we own our home and have seen it lose value, or whether we had to postpone our homeownership plans by precious years while we wait for the market to stabilize. Whether our jobs are secure or have the potential to disappear…

Oh man. How long do you have? The list of stupid crap I did in college that I am now forced to remember for all time is a long, long, long list. Surprisingly little of it involves alcohol, since I was a pure young lass in those days (corruption came late for me, not until my upperclass years.) But one can still be sober and stupid, and I was, frequently. I fell completely in love with a guy, a big geek in retrospect, who was also big into religion and could not condone females wearing anything that revealed their ankles. That would’ve been super cool to live with the rest…

. . . Autumn. Springtime is so lovely. This past spring was particularly fecund for me, as it was the season when I welcomed my first baby. The tulips were nodding, the azaleas in bloom, and the trees budding green when I carried my son up the front porch stairs for the first time. Following spring is, of course, the summer, a season I embrace with more enthusiasm than ever now that I have a child to share it with. We bought a handful of pool passes, even though he was a mite young to enjoy the community pool. I took him hiking, the dog trotting purposefully beside us. We…

I’m tryin’, ya’ll. I’m trying to be perky and cutesy and happy and normal. I’m trying to write I Wonders and my own blog and emails and long overdue thank you cards for my birthday presents, trying to call friends and interact with my husband and snuggle my baby and walk my dog. I’m trying to live my daily life, but everything is done in the shadow of a great fear. No, it’s not the poorness, though that makes my heart beat faster daily as I watch our credit card balance rise like a phoenix from the ashes of the bonfire I lit less than a year ago, the bonfire…

OK. The realist in me says Wal Mart – because then I could buy my groceries AND my gas AND a few things for the house and also perhaps a lifetime supply of kitty litter and some more sleepers for my exponentially growing child . . . on and on . . . and I know that’s just the poor talking. And it’s no fun. So I’m going to pretend all our basic needs are within our budget, and taken care of, and that this is just for fun. So I would, OBV, want to win a spree in REI. Dude. I *almost* was a dork and said Barnes and…