It's All Relative

I remember. Back in the early 90's, during the last recession. What I was doing.

I can remember.

I was in college. But I'd recently quit my job, to go travel up to Canada for the summer, with a "sort of" boyfriend and his girlfriend. I was hitching a ride up there and then planning on hitchhiking and taking a bus or something up towards Alaska to check it out.

I ended up just hanging out with my "sort of" boyfriend and his girlfriend and instead, taking a sailboat up to an island and fishing and smoking pot and writing for a month or so.

And then I came back to SF and school and couldn't get a job. Because California had an unemployment rate of 9.1%.

So I cashed out my 401k and lived off that for a while. And soon ran out of money and eventually found a job at Macy's in downtown San Francisco. At Christmas time. In the children's department. Which didn't have a department manager. Because he'd been recently fired for sexual harassment.

And one morning after dropping my new "semi-boyfriend" off at work at Nordstrom, where he worked in men's suits, I was driving past city hall towards my job at Macy's in the children's department - a truck ran a red light and crashed into the car I was driving and totaled it.

Which just so happened to be my "new" boyfriend's, ex girlfriend's car.

Luckily, she'd been the one to break up with him because he'd found her making out with my best friend's roommate a few weeks earlier, in front of our flat at a party we'd had. So she wasn't mad at all when she found out it was totaled and that I'd been driving it. And besides, I took care of getting her the cash from the settlement. A cop had seen the whole accident and so the insurance company cleared me of any wrong doing.

I had it towed to my new, "semi-boyfriend's" house. So he could have it as a symbol of their lost love.

And then I think I got evicted from the apartment I was living in at the time, for not being able to pay rent. And then my roommate lost her job so she decided to move to Seattle. So I moved in with my new "semi-boyfriend" in Oakland. Which is how I ended up in Oakland.

I remember back then, eating a lot of top ramen with 2 slices of american cheese and frozen corn kernels mixed in. And burritos. We were in a recession after all.

One night, I came home from my "new" cafe job, and found my "new" boyfriend doing you know what with some other girl, you know where. So I left and stayed with a friend and then moved out of the not so new now, "ex" boyfriend's place the next weekend, while he was working in men's suits at Nordtroms at the "half yearly sale" - without leaving a trace.

Now. In another recession. An unemployment rate in California at 10.1%.

And I have a job. And it pays. And I like it. And Morgan has a job, but it's sporadically stops paying, when it runs out of money. And it does this without notice. On the day, the paycheck is supposed to be directly deposited, it's not there.

Poof.

Mostly, we figure it out. What to do. How to keep it going for a while. While we wait. While we believe. And we ride bikes and make jokes. And go to soccer practice and eat bacon and drive less and do homework. And drink wine.

But sometimes when I think about it too much, like what happens if it stretches on longer this time and if it actually collapses and there is no severance, and how I should have cashed in the 401k months ago because we would have had more money even with the penalties and tax because the market is so much lower now and how I don't even like top ramen anymore, well, I feel like my head will explode.

Even on the bike ride home, the one that helps me sort through my day and think through it all, I just can't clear my head. And not even the hannah montana, jonas brothers concert that's playing when I arrive home, can help cheer me up.

So I go sit in the corner chair and tell everyone that dinner is a free for all and that they all must make their own items to eat. Each person must make their own is the only rule for the evening. And they have tamale pie and mac and cheese and apples and pears and broccoli and kimchee.

And I eat brie cheese smeared on tortilla chips shards. And frozen peas. And green tea.