Places, part VIII

2006: I move out of my parents' house

This may or may not be the last post in this series; I haven't decided yet. My life story doesn't just stop thirteen years ago, of course. I'm still alive now, I'm here, I am introspective. But there are many things currently happening in the present that I need to be writing about, and these "life story" posts take up a lot of time. Perhaps I'll do an intermission after this post to update everyone on what's currently going on before I continue, but I'm not sure.

Anyway, onward.

In early 2006, Alley was already making plans for a visit. Not for me to come out there, mind you (she knew I didn't have the money for that), but for her to come see me in West Virginia. Her spring break would be coming up in March, and she wanted to spend it with me.

I was both thrilled and terrified of this concept; though we'd solidified our relationship and had committed to one another, I couldn't help but feel that I was corrupting the kid. And she was sort of a kid to me, still, even at 19. I was 23, she was 19; I felt guilty and like I was a bad influence. And it just so happened that her spring break fell over our "anniversary," which we still kept as that date even though we'd broken up for some time in the interim.

So she came out to WV for a week. And it was good.

I'm not going into any further detail than that.

By the end of March, with Alley safely back in Missouri, I had a mission -- make money, move out of the parents' house, and actually move to Kansas City. My goals by this point were clear -- to keep Alley in my life (and I wanted her in my life), I would have to make this move. It was something we'd talked a lot about during our week together.

With nobody else who wanted me in a job in which I could actually use my degree, I began applying at various retail establishments (something that previously was "beneath me," but there isn't anything beneath you when you're broke and on a mission). The grocery store up the street from my parents' house actually called me back and asked me to come in.

Look, aside from delivering newspapers and working in the lab, I had no idea what a real job was, even at 23 -- I'd been a full-time student, and when I was outside of school and wasn't working, in the summers I mainly kept to myself. I didn't go anywhere, I didn't do much of anything, and if I left the house it was to mow the back yard or go on a Saturday grocery run with my mother. I was still fairly sheltered. I didn't have an active social life anymore -- what social life I previously had died when I graduated from college. So, being the socially awkward idiot that I was, I slicked my hair back and tied it up into a ponytail (I had long enough hair at the time to do so), put on a shirt, tie, dress shoes and slacks, and went into the grocery store for my interview looking like a Russian mob boss.

"You didn't have to get all dressed up for this," the assistant manager told me, stifling a laugh when we sat down in the back office. "You're already hired."

"Really?!" I asked, surprised.

"Yeah, you're smart, you have a degree, and you live right down the road so I doubt you'd ever have any problems getting here."

"All of this is true," I said.

"Plus, you come with the recommendation of Michael," he said. "And Michael, we trust."

My best friend Michael, who I was very close with during my high school and college years and have written about previously in these posts, just so happened to be one of the store's shift managers and had worked there for some time.

And so, a few days later, I donned my blue work polo and slacks and began working in the store.

I will preface all of this by saying that, at the time, the small grocery store was the only real grocery store in a 20-mile radius. There were gas stations and convenience stores littered around the area, and a little general store/hardware store in the next town over (which my friend James runs and has managed for close to ten years now) but not a grocery store. Walmart wouldn't come to the county for another four or five years, so if you wanted food, this is where you went if you lived in that 20-mile or so radius -- it was either go there or drive all the way into Morgantown or Kingwood. As such, there were a lot of colorful characters who were regular customers, as well as a number of colorful characters who worked there -- either for the long haul or for a short time. In a town of roughly 1,500 people (probably less, actually), you got to know everyone really quickly.

To this day the store still exists, and Daisy and I visited it in 2017 on our trip back home. It is still managed by the three wonderful ladies who were managers there way back in 2006 when I worked there -- all of them got to meet Daisy, who they'd heard so much about over the years not only from seeing posts on Facebook, but from my mother -- who still frequents the store and has kept in touch with all of the personnel there for over twenty years now.

The store started me at $5.40 an hour -- above minimum wage at the time, but not by much. After three months or so, I believe I was bumped up to $5.65 or $5.80. Paychecks were weekly and were issued on paper, and they were something like $150 or so each as I tended to work about 36-38 hours per week. I offered to work pretty much anytime, any day, all day, all evening, etc, but they wouldn't let me get the full 40 hours per week because of insurance/benefits stuff. That wasn't the fault of the store's management, but rather the ownership company. It was what it was. I'd experience the same thing a few years later in a few other jobs. It also wasn't a 24-hour grocery store (I'd work in a few of those later) so I didn't have the overnight option.

So every week I'd get paid, I'd take the check to the bank and deposit it, and I'd save as much of the money as possible while slowly beginning to provide more and more for myself. I'd spend about $5-7 a day on myself, for food and drink or a pack of smokes, and the rest went into the bank. Soon I was purchasing most of my own food for myself, as well as laundry detergent and soap/shampoo. I bought myself good razors and good deodorant and tried to keep myself as well-groomed as possible. I didn't have any bills, so this was my own form of self-reliance while living at home. Pretty soon, there became very little I needed my parents to provide other than the roof over my head.

Throughout this time of working and saving money, the plan was for me to be in Kansas City by Christmas, for good. I knew the amount of money I'd need to do that was somewhere in the $3,000-4,000 range, bare minimum. By June or so, I had about $2,500 already saved, maybe a little less. I wasn't concerned as much about the logistics of the move itself; those we could figure out once I had the capital for it.

In the early summer, I received a call from the local newspaper, after I'd submitted an application on the recommendation of a colleague from WVU. They were interested in knowing whether I'd want to be a freelancer for a few feature stories. I told them sure. And, after a brief evening interview (in which I wore the same shirt, tie, and hair gel I wore to the grocery store interview) I filled out some paperwork and was an employee of the newspaper. My first story was on a Mini Cooper Motoring Club (and I'm sure it could be found online somewhere in the newspapers' archives somewhere), and I got paid $25 for it. It was the first actual cash-in-hand money I'd ever made for my writing.

For my second story, I wanted to do something more personal; one of my friends from WVU had recently put out a dark comic storybook that I'd purchased and really enjoyed; I wanted to interview him as well as a few other indie comic creators and artists around the area. So, I reached out to Clark, who put me in contact with Robert Tinnell, who had written the critically acclaimed Feast of the Seven Fishes (and who would also later direct the movie version, out now), to meet up with and interview him.

Tinnell also produced the Troma classic Surf Nazis Must Die! as well, so the dude already had my respect.

What followed was a full-page feature article in the newspaper that October, highlighting both of those dudes and their works, with full color photographs and a ton of copy. I bought multiple copies of the paper and made sure all of my friends and family knew that hey, I was actually a writer. The work I'd done on the article was no small feat, and I'm not sure I ever actually got paid for it. Truthfully I can't remember. However, being able to promote my friend's work and getting to work with Tinnell was more than enough payment, really.

I'm connected with Tinnell on LinkedIn, and have been for years, though he and I haven't spoken since the article was published. He liked it and thanked me heartily, and we'd planned to do lunch together with Clark (who I also hadn't seen in a few years at that point) but those plans fell through. If they hadn't, maybe I would've been on a much different career path today.

While juggling time spent on the newspaper stuff as well as work at the grocery store and trying to spend some time with Alley -- who, ultimately, all of this was for at that point -- I also received a call from my former boss in the lab. He wanted me to come back a few days a week and help run the lab again, and it would be easier/quieter this time around because it was only he and one of the post-docs left.

I'm going to pause here for a moment so all of you can appreciate the huge swing of the pendulum between, say, July 2005 and July 2006. In July 2005, I was sinking into a deep depression, was almost completely broke, my relationship with Alley was on the rocks, and I couldn't find a job to save my life. By July 2006, I had two jobs (three if you count the fashion design business) and was being offered yet another. I was a published writer with a few thousand in the bank and a plan to get out of West Virginia. I was starting to feel the other end of the burnout spectrum for the first time -- the feeling of being overworked and suffering from sleep deprivation.

I told my former boss in the lab that sure, I'd come back, I was happy to.

As I was no longer a student, they couldn't pay me the student slave wages (read: work-study pay) anymore, and had to officially classify the position under a pay grade. I can't remember what the pay grade was, but I was making about $9 an hour -- ungodly good money for what I did and especially good money for West Virginia at the time. Same schedule-ish as before, about 25 hours a week, but they'd be stricter on those hours since the lab wouldn't be as hectic as it had been in the past.

This began a long run of stretches where I would work ten, twelve days in a row before a day off, on about five or six hours of sleep each night, max. I loved working in the grocery store; it was simple, and the management/coworkers were awesome -- but it was me on my feet eight hours or more per day, sometimes starting a little after 7AM. Sometimes I'd walk home when I was done for the day, other times I'd get a ride, still others I'd hang out in the back and smoke until the parents swung by to pick me up, if the weather was nice. On my days off from the store, weekdays anyway, I'd go to campus and work in the lab for eight or nine hours. Saturdays and Sundays were the only days I could get any real sleep, as I worked the evening shift those days -- 3-9 or 2-8. On the rare day I had off from both the lab and the store, I spent it sleeping and trying to take inventory of what I had and needed and what I didn't need in preparation for when the big move would be.

I was beginning to run myself ragged by the time the summer was starting to turn to fall, but I had close to $7,000 in my bank account.

My parents were, at the time, rather ambivalent and/or outwardly opposed to the move when I'd told them my plans. My dad was supportive of my choices, mostly, but had lots of questions about where I'd be living and what I'd be doing -- questions I did not exactly have answers to. My mother was very strongly opposed at first, and sort of lightened up and became more middle-of-the-road about it was the months leading up to it went on. I think it was because she realized that whether she liked it or not, it was going to happen, so she might as well go with the flow. But it was a long road to get her there, and I'm sure there's a large part of her even today that still resents me for it.

In September and October, I began calling apartment complexes in the St. Joseph, MO area -- this is where Alley went to school and where we figured we would be living, primarily, at least throughout the duration of her schooling. St. Joe was about an hour north of Kansas City and was the gateway to the west -- it is, as they say there, where the Pony Express started and where Jesse James ended. Most of those calls to apartment complexes were dead-ends -- the building managers would have something to give me that day (which obviously, I couldn't do, as I was a few months away from moving) or they had no openings until after the new year, or their rents were false-advertised on the websites I'd found them on -- $300 a month listings turned to "$680 for a one-bedroom, you pay all utilities" because the $300 a month listings were "for efficiencies and we haven't had any of those open for years" etc, etc.

I thought I had a lead on a really nice place, $500ish a month, integrated gym and pool and in-apartment laundry facilities -- with multiple units available and able to be reserved -- and I called, and they were a retirement community.

"So, uh, how old do you have to be to qualify?" I asked, laughing. "Because at this point I'm not necessarily opposed to this."

They didn't find it as funny as I did.

We'd set the moving day as two days before Thanksgiving -- slightly ironic as I'd moved into the house on top of the mountain during Thanksgiving week eight years prior. Logistically, it was sound -- it was a time when everyone was off work and school, and the drive could be made with minimal interruptions to everyone's lives. The plan was for Alley and her mother to come out to West Virginia in her father's truck, load all my stuff I could fit into the bed (it had a cap on it) and drive back to Kansas City. One day for them to drive out, load up everything, and then the three of us get a hotel room for the night and drive back in one shot, leaving early the next morning and going until we got there. For the time being I'd be staying in the house in Kansas City with Alley and her parents; the week after Thanksgiving that year was finals week, so I didn't know exactly where I'd be during that time, but we'd figure it out.

It was an emotional time for me, really, and those last few weeks leading up to the move were hectic. I set my last day at the grocery store as November 10 -- it was a Friday, a "truck day" (meaning, new stocking to do) and I intended to work it normally, as per the usual -- but the managers there who loved me wouldn't allow it. They custom-made me a going-away cake, bought me lunch, let me do some light duty (running registers and cleaning stuff) but for the most part they didn't want me to work, they wanted me to be able to relax and enjoy myself. I'd go back to work at that store again, even today, in a heartbeat. The people there were fantastic and I genuinely loved the job. I know that if the going ever gets really rough and the wife and I ever have to move back to West Virginia, I at least have a guaranteed job there.

I'd go back to the store a few times to load up on supplies while I prepped for the move -- I had a massive box filled with soap, shampoos, body washes, toilet paper, deodorant, household cleaning supplies, medications, laundry detergents/fabric softeners, razors/shaving cream, etc -- my plan was to not have to purchase any sort (or, if anything, the bare minimum necessary) of household items for a year or more after the move. Most of it wasn't cheap stuff, either -- it was name brand stuff, the sort of things I used on a regular basis. The box was the size of a kitchen chair, width-and-height, and it was full. 

I also went to the Dollar General store across the street from the grocery store and picked up a leather jacket for Alley -- she'd always wanted one, and it would match the leather trenchcoat I myself had at the time. It was part of her Christmas present that year, the first Christmas we'd be spending together.

While I had set up the last day at the store to be November 10, I set up the last day working in the lab to be the day before I left town -- and a half-day, at that. I did this on purpose to maximize the amount of pay I'd get right up until the last, and because I needed to take care of some monetary business around Morgantown before I left it for the foreseeable future. This involved moving everything from my savings account -- including the profits my mother had made by selling the 1993 Probe, which was going to be my car but turned out to be a "yard car" more than anything else -- and closing out that savings account. I also set up with the bank that I'd be living in Missouri permanently, so I needed my debit card to work out there and the like. I had an ungodly amount of money at my disposal prior to that move, all earned and saved and in preparation for the move itself. I was proud of myself -- I'd set an adult goal and I'd achieved it. I'd have money to live on for many months, more than enough to get an apartment and survive on until I had a job and could make my own way.

And, even though I'd graduated by this time, I helped to set up the Fall 2006 Geekfest for the WVU Anime Guild to coincide with my last week in town, so that I could see all my friends still around and on campus one last time before I ventured off into the great unknown of the midwest. When I left town, it was going to mean something, or so I thought.

That night, I saw my friend Michael for the last time -- he told me to call him, day or night, to let him know I'd made it to Missouri safely so that he didn't worry, and I agreed to that.

As for my ancillary friends and family, some of them knew I was leaving, but not all of them. I didn't make a huge deal of it on Facebook, which was in its infancy at the time, nor did I really spread it around. One of the last to know was my grandmother, who I didn't tell until the day before I moved. That was a very difficult phone call to make.

Looking back on it now, it was all incredibly surreal. I wasn't scared or nervous, nor was I incredibly excited -- it was, really, what it was. I was moving on up in life, I guess, and it had been an inevitability that I'd eventually move out of my parents' house and be on my own. I didn't expect that a woman would be the driving force behind it, but I mean, whatever works, right? I had a zen-like sense of calm about the whole ordeal, and for once I was very emotionally, spiritually, and mentally stable. I was ready for this. I had clear goals in mind and the means to attain those goals. I was, for the first time in a long time, incredibly optimistic about my future. Moreso, I think, than I have ever been since -- but you have to put it all into context, really. I was rushing headlong into the void. I had no idea where I'd be or what I'd be doing. I knew that at least for a bit, I'd be living in Kansas City. Past that? Psh, who knew? I'd deal with it when it came to that. This was the big leap into adventure and excitement.

Or so I thought.

Moving day came. Alley and her mother arrived on schedule, we packed up the truck, I kissed my mother goodbye, and we were on the road. The night at the hotel was (mostly) uneventful, and the next morning, after our continental breakfast, we were really on the road west to KC.

The trip was long and strange. I slept through a lot of it, especially during the daytime. If I wasn't asleep, I was holding Alley in the back seat while she dozed and while I read a book or played my Game Boy or did anything to kill time, really. In the night I was the most active and awake; while Alley slept next to me I got to know her mother's life story, and she got to know mine.

I've mentioned it here briefly before, but I really felt a kinship with Alley's mother -- not just on that drive, but throughout my entire relationship with Alley. She was always kind and sweet to me, and she and I never had an argument about anything. She never belittled me or put me down, she always did what she could to make my (and by extension, our) lives easier, and she treated me like her own son. It is because of Alley's mother that I have two of my three cats (I'll get to that later) and my Missouri adventure would have been much, much more difficult without her in my life. I owe her a great debt of gratitude as one of but a handful of people who have gone out of their way to make my life better over the years -- that list of people is probably less than fifteen people long, by the way.

It was around 1 in the morning when we hit Terre Haute, Indiana. Terre Haute was roughly the halfway point of the journey, as the first half had taken all day -- people travel a lot during Thanksgiving week, as you may know, so a lot of it was slow going. We stopped at a Wal-Mart there to stock up on supplies and the like for the road. Alley's mother was really into Barq's root beer, which (apparently) was very hard to find west of the Mississippi at the time, so every time we stopped, we would look for cases of it. I remember wandering the aisles of that Wal-Mart in the middle of the night simply to stretch my legs, feeling disheveled and like I'd just rolled out of bed, wearing my black leather trenchcoat and slipper shoes. I purchased a four-pack of Coke Blak, which I never saw in another store before or after that, and a few packs of gum.

I ended up saving some of the gum inadvertently -- some sort of chocolate mint gum -- until long after my relationship with Alley had ended and I found myself getting ready to move to Omaha to marry Daisy. I found it in one of the drawers of my file cabinet while cleaning, and tossed it out at that point, of course.

I would later lament that I didn't purchase as many bags of Utz, Synder's of Berlin, or Herr's potato chips as I could fit into the back of the truck, as none of those brands are ever regularly found out here anywhere past, say, Illinois or so.

We stopped at a rest stop in the middle of Iowa next; by this point it was easily 3AM or so, and Alley's mother needed to rest. Alley took over some of the driving duties, but I can't remember which one of them was driving when we pulled into the driveway at the house in Kansas City shortly before dawn. I remember that we unloaded some essentials -- I'm sure that we didn't unpack the entire truck that night, or at least I personally didn't -- before I said hi to Alley's father again (we'd met back in March), called my parents while half asleep to let them know I'd made it safely, and went upstairs to Alley's room to pass out.

When I woke up, it was 4PM on Thanksgiving Day -- and I was completely disoriented. Over the previous two days I'd slept in at least four different states and had traveled over 1,000 miles with nearly everything I owned thrown into the back of a truck, and was now waking up in a completely new place with a completely new family and, needless to say, it was a bit odd for me. More than that, it was completely real for me.

Over the course of the next week, Alley showed me around the area and the little town she lived in, a town of maybe twenty houses and 200-ish people about 15 miles east of Kansas City proper. I was stunned at how flat it was, and how there was completely open country and farmland in all directions. I called the town, colloquially, Smallville, because it looked as if it came right out of a Superman comic. Alley's parents' house was also right on the train tracks -- freight and commuter trains would go by every hour, on the hour, and were loud. The front porch, where I often smoked, looked out directly upon the train tracks and there was a single-lane road between the front of the house and the train tracks -- and I mean, directly between them. The tracks were maybe 30 feet from the front door of the house. You could see the ghostly triple lights of the trains coming down the track from several miles away, but you wouldn't hear them until they blasted their whistles a mile or so from the house -- you'd just feel the rumbling.

I spent enough time in that house over the course of the next few years to where I just no longer heard or noticed the trains after a while -- it was like living next to the proverbial waterfall.

Of course, this was late November -- it was cold, and I found out very quickly that snow and ice storms hit the midwest with astonishing frequency. I also had no indoor area to smoke anymore, so I would freeze my fingers off standing on either the front deck or the upper level's back deck (across the house and on the other side of where Alley's room was) when I wanted to smoke -- day or night.

In a few days, however, Alley needed to go back to school. She would only have to be there for four days, and (for some reason) we thought it was a good idea for me to just hole up in her dorm room with her. Her dorm was a suite, her roommate was almost never around, and the girls on the other side of the suite had their boyfriends there constantly. Nobody checked on anyone for anything unless there was a legit need to do so (health and wellness checks, etc) and we figured that for a few days, it wouldn't matter -- I would already be there when the semester ended and could help her pack up the car for the Christmas break, etc etc, and use the break to find me a job as well as to see if we could secure an apartment for us. This was the end of Alley's third semester of college; she knew how the place worked and what could and couldn't be done on campus, and what we could and couldn't get away with.

This ended up being a bad idea.

Two days into my "dorm adventure," and after meeting several of Alley's friends and colleagues, we found out why Alley's roommate hadn't been around that much -- she had tried to kill herself. She had not succeeded, but when the university authorities came to help the roommate's parents clean out her belongings and move her back home, I was (of course) discovered and forced to leave. This all happened during one of Alley's finals, so I couldn't reach her to let her know what was going on.

What followed was a very hectic night and a tumultuous next few days, in which I was forced to find a place quickly and to hole up there, to buy my first cell phone, prepaid, just to be able to remain in touch with people, and getting a room in a cheap hotel -- the Budget Inn in St. Joseph (it was still there the last time I rolled through town).

I'd gone from living in my parents' house to living in Alley's house to living in a cheap hotel room within the span of about ten days.

The hotel room wasn't pleasant -- it was old, hadn't been renovated since the 60s, had a wood-paneled tube TV on a cart and a vibrating bed that did not work, but I could smoke inside the room and it allowed a bit of solitude. Alley had a hot plate that she brought over to it so I could boil water to make ramen (the room did not have any kitchen facilities of any sort, nor did it have a coffee pot -- I had to use my own) and I got chastised by the hotel staff for trying to actually make something to eat with the hot plate, under threats to throw me out of there because of it. Alley and I bickered and argued a lot during this time, as I recall, as my presence in her room also got her in trouble and possibly jeopardized her ability to keep said dorm room in the spring. I didn't have internet or a laptop yet, my phone was not a smartphone and was for emergency use only, and this was back before Netflix and streaming was a thing anyway, so I was very restless and bored during the daytime when I was stuck in the hotel while she was wrapping up her finals. Once she was done, I was quite happy to pack up my shit and get out of the hotel to return to Kansas City, even if our relationship had become a bit strained by the experience.

Once we returned to, ahem, Smallville, things got better. Alley's mother worked long hours at the local hospital, doing medical records work, so she was gone very early in the morning and didn't return until late in the evenings, sometimes well after 8PM. Her father was a general contractor with his own construction company who almost always had a full docket of jobs to work, even in the winter, so we generally only saw him in the evenings as well.

I was still very much a night owl when I could be; Alley had an old, beat-up computer (the very one she talked to me on while we were getting to know each other) with, yes, dial-up internet at the house -- a house with four other people in it, so use of said internet was painfully slow and generally relegated to the overnight hours only so people wouldn't miss calls. My own computer was still boxed up, long with most of the rest of my other stuff, in the upstairs great room of the house. But, I had internet again, and it was what it was. I watched Alley sleep during the nights sometimes, as I sat across the room from her on the computer, a tiny lamp casting just enough light across the desk to see her on the far side of the room, and thought about all of the choices that had brought me to where I was.

During the days of Christmas break, there was always something else to be done -- whether it was errands we were running for Alley's parents or whether we were helping her father on a job (we did some painting with him on one job, as well as some light construction work on another). Alley had an old, forest green 1995 Taurus that was pretty reliable and we used to get around basically anywhere we wanted to go. Over those weeks we went Christmas shopping, she showed me the towns around the area, we cashed in coins at the bank, we went to pawn shops, we discovered the joy of Hastings (oh, how I wish those stores still existed). I got closer to her parents, I spent time with her brother -- who also lived at home and had just recently graduated from high school -- and life began to slowly normalize. However, our search for apartments and jobs for me kept being fairly fruitless.

When Christmas came, Alley's father announced that we'd be going to St. Louis for the weekend to spend it with his extended family out there (parents, brothers, etc). It was around this time where I started getting just a little bit nervous, as I was apparently going to be one of the star attractions at that year's family dinner -- little Alley's first boyfriend, coming to spend Christmas with the family. Before we left, I gifted Alley with the leather jacket as well as a few other small things I'd gotten for her, including a promise ring -- I had a matching one as well, and we both began wearing them.

The trip to St. Louis was a very long drive. Driving across Missouri, if you've never had the pleasure of doing so, takes goddamn forever. I was in good spirits, I guess; nervous, but somewhat excited to meet the extended family and make a good impression. I'm not sure I did, really, as I passed out and then woke up on their couch in the midst of their family gathering, after having eaten a large lunch at White Castle (there was one in the parking lot of our hotel!) on Christmas Eve. After a bit, I settled into the groove somewhat and got to know some of the family, but I didn't feel like I fit in at all. Alley and i had also been bickering off and on about a lot of little things since we'd left on the trip, and while I put on a brave face for it and for the social interactions involved, I felt a lot like an outsider, an interloper, who shouldn't be there.

Truthfully, at the time -- even though I'd gotten everything I'd wanted out of my move -- my life felt like it was in a downward spiral. I was questioning myself, questioning whether any of this was a good idea, questioning whether I was holding Alley back in her life by her being tied down to a live-in boyfriend at age 19, and I was (of course) not as emotionally mature then as I am now, so it did indeed lead to a lot of fighting between Alley and myself over any number of things. This did not help my anxiety levels, of course, and only made me question some of my actions and preceding events even more. Also, just in day-to-day living, I was burning through my savings money quickly. I didn't have much of a choice; I had to support myself now. Not only that, but I was helping to support Alley -- buying us food and clothing and gas was eating up money fast. I learned very quickly that simple survival was expensive. But, I mean, I was out on my own now. Mostly.

At the end of the year, we all celebrated New Year's Eve together; Alley and I watched Brokeback Mountain and then watched the ball drop with the family before going to bed. When we would next awaken, it would be 2007 -- and 2007 would bring with it many, many new challenges of its own.