Budgets

Wow, I hate budgets. I hate not getting what I want. I hate living like a lower middle class person instead of an upper middle class person. I hate having to think about money.

Grocery shopping is like fucking pulling teeth. I have to say no all the time, me, who's been getting by in life by saying "yes" to all the adventures and the risk taking and the traveling and the wacky relationships.

"No," now to what I want and desire but do not need is a fucking kick in the ass.

I hate growing up.

Steph and I were at the grocery store talking to the checkout clerk who said, "Oh, you're roommates? We've been having a lot of girls coming in today who are roommates! Oh, well, I guess you're not girls. You're ladies!"

Sweet gawd.

Ladies.

And I used to wish somebody would start calling me "ma'am" and showing me some respect when I was 15.

Thing is, I wouldn't go back to being 15 for just about anything, unless I knew everything then that I know now. I've worked really fucking hard to get where I am. Growing into it, now, making everything else work... well, that does imply that I'm more lady than girl, for fucking sure.

Being a girl was fun. Being a girl got me here.

But letting go of that break-neck freedom, that not-knowing, that not-caring, yeah, that's the part that sucks.

Being a tech writer, paying my own way, owning my own place? Well, you don't get something for nothing. You have to make a trade. I'm trading credit-card poverty and junk accumulation for an IRA and a yard of my own.

Looking at it that way, it's not a bad trade.

But fucking hard to get there.