Thanksgiving week has all the wind knocked out of me. Could just be my reaction to going down, down, down the rabbit hole. The Holidays are here.

Only thing I know is the only thing I want to do is curl up under my big old comforter and sleep. It’s the lack of time that has me feeling so defeated. My kids don’t have school all week and we don’t have childcare, don’t have the money for the extra child care, I should say, so what happens? I don’t have time to work.

We are caught right smack in the center exactly what I feared getting back into this. I have no time to work because we can’t afford to cover the business hours I need so jobs are left unfinished leaving me feeling further defeated and my pay further behind, which adds up to less childcare that we can afford and fewer things completed. It goes on like this until I’m right where I am now.

One big miserable puddle of blah. And I blame it on the marriage, when actually I should blame it on me.

My reasoning, skewed as it may be, is that when we were apart a couple things were absolute: I had several days every week to work because the kids were with Sam and I had to make it work because the alternatives were homelessness and starvatation.

This week, I’m giving thanks for my two beautiful, healthy girls, and the ability I have to back up, reconsider, and try it again. But I'm also questioning how much of my current situation is a self-fulfilling prophecy and why I can't have the structure to make room for work in the same way I did when I was separated.

Last week we looked at a house we loved in a great neighborhood with a great school, a few blocks from Lila's best friend.

And the landlord loved us. Told us we were her first choice, she just needed to do a quick credit check and get back to us. Then she fell right of the edge of the Earth. Stopped returning Sam's calls.

I knew she got the scores and decided to hold out for a situation where both the applicants AND there Equifax report were equally loveable. Five days later when I emailed to check-in, I got this response:

I'm so sorry Elaina but your credit reports came back with scores that were quite low and our financial guy recommended we not go in that direction. Simultaneously, another interested party decided that they also wanted the house. We ran their credit the next day and it was acceptable. We are wraping (sic) up the deal with them. As you know these things can fall apart at the last minute. If it does fall through, I will talk to my business partner about the idea of working together to see if we can figure out a way to make it work. Perhaps some way that you would pay a higher deposit or something.

Good luck to you and I must say that I also really enjoyed our interactions.

Regards, ....

I must say I wish she'd enjoyed our interactions enough to figure out a way make it work before wrapping up the deal with the applicants who came after us. Or at least enough to call back and say it wasn't working.

I get that rental houses are financial investments and have little to do with humanitarianism. The frustrating thing is we have excellent rental histories, both together and separately, And, irony of ironies, my credit sucks because paying rent on time is always top priority.

We've been looking for a place to rent for almost two months, but we're still in the same broke boat, with the same crappy credit we had two years ago when I left.

And just like when I left, and all the long years leading up to it, the weight of financial pressure creates this ongoing competition for resources that exacerbates all of our other problems.

Sam says I'm more stressed about it than he is.

He says it to me and he says it to our therapist, then we walk out of the appointment and he accuses me of wanting more than I actually want, of wanting to keep up with the Joneses, when actually I could not care less about anyone else's lifestyle.

I don't want a McMansion. I just want to get by without struggling.

It's the same old fight.

Not being able to support our family makes him feel inadequate, and I know it's true because when I left because he owned up to it. Admitted the nasty things he said were about being angry with himself, not me.

So I call him on it, and he apologizes. It's an improvement I'm willing to work with.

Our therapist once told me finances are cited as a key factor in 80 percent of divorces. Money is the number-one point of contention in marriages. I'll buy that. There's so much stuff bound up in dollars.

Like they say, money is power. So, of course, there's contention about who spends it and how. That's assuming there's money to be spent.

Those arguments feel luxurious to me. We don't get to fight about whose spending irresponsibly. More likely, I ask Sam to ask his family for a loan; he refuses. Or what we are going to do about child care this fall because we owe Lila's pre-school more than it cost me for a year of college back in the day, and until we pay it down, we can't use their before and after care program.

Sam and I both work hard at jobs we love, but we don't make much money doing it.

I'm thanking the gods I work from home and there are few places my two feet and my bike can't take me. Because every buck I put into my gas tank is food I don't buy at the grocery store.

Gas at the cheapie station is holding at $4.17 this week. Everywhere else in town it's closing in on $4.30.

At that price, one gallon of gas costs more than 70 percent of the federal hourly minimum wage, $5.85. It’s still two-thirds of the new federal minimum wage that takes effect on July 24, and it's more than half the highest state minimum, $8.07, in the State of Washington.

Consider that the lowest paid workers pump almost a whole day's pay into the tank every time they fill it up. Even people making a decent wage, say $20 an hour, are spending an entire morning’s work just to pay for gas.

It's the same all over. In our must-have culture, where most families have to have two incomes in order to survive, people from the top to the middle and on down, everything is being eliminated but the basics.

No one is immune. For single moms, it's getting ugly.

Christina McLaughlin, "KristieMac" wrote about the impact of rising gas prices on her blog for the Houston Chronicle's Chron.com. She posted personal experiences, giving thanks for the good fortune of flexible work and having enough to cover bills, while lamenting economic pressure and the nixed vacation she dreamed of taking with her daughter.

Canceled vacation plans, fewer outside-the-home activities, less eating out, and just plan less. One by one every extra is slashed to make way for gas and groceries.

But, what happens when there are no more extras to cut, no more plans to cancel? Me, I'm what happens.

Gas is up to $3.69 at the cheap station on the corner and the media has spouted three different in-depth accounts of why I dropped $78 on two bags of groceries this week.

Story number one, the obvious: with gas prices over $4 a gallon in some places, cost of transporting food is driving prices through the roof. Well, of course.

Story number two: a CNN account of how commodity traders are responsible by betting on futures. Get past the basic supply and demand model and economics flies right over my head. I don't totally understand why, but it made sense when I was watching.

Story number three: federal mandates requiring farmers to grow corn for bio-ethanol fuels has cut into our food supply. Not only does less corn make it to market, other grain crops shrink to make way for more corn we can't eat. The point: we need to find an alternate energy source or we'll likely starve ourselves fueling our excessive lives.

Oh yeah, and one more story I heard last week, related to the ridiculous price of surviving: it's been 30 years since the U.S. government has increased food stamp funding. And, the ever-wise W is poised to veto two bills calling for an increase.

I'm low on grocery money this week.

From day one of separation, I've said money wouldn't be a deciding factor. I would not have a poverty-inspired reunion.

I'm not sure now. The higher those prices climb, the deeper my debt. I've been so busy surviving these last few months, I haven't paid any bills. Well, I did pay gas, but only because it was turned off. WiFi, too.

The harder it gets, the more appealing my marriage looks. I keep asking myself, if money weren't an issue would I still be married?

I mean, in these 18 months of separation, I couldn't afford to file even when I was positive I wanted to.

Now, I'm just broke and uncertain. 


What scares me:

I'm afraid of moving on.

I'm afraid of not moving on.

I'm afraid of not seeing my kids every day.

I'm afraid of seeing my kids every day.

I want Sam to move on and find the woman who can love him fully for who he is, sensitive and loving and beautiful. A woman who makes him feel these things about himself.

I'm afraid Sam will move on and find another woman and she will raise my kids with him.

I'm afraid that leaving him, again, will ruin my kids. Take from them any sense of trust and security.

I'm afraid that staying will doom them to a lifetime of staying in unfulfilling relationships because they will constantly recreate mine.

I'm afraid of how hard the logistics of raising them together separately will be.

I'm afraid of how hard living in one place will be.

I'm afraid of poverty, together or alone.

I'm afraid that I can't make it on my own.

I'm afraid that we can't make it together.

I'm afraid of going crazy.

I'm afraid of being sane.

I'm afraid of what my friends and family will think about my putting this marriage almost all the way back together, just to leave it again.

I'm afraid if I do not go I will never know how much of me I have given up by staying.

Hard week, this week.

I'm feeling trapped here in my life again. In this little apartment thinking, This is not how I want my kids to remember childhood: Their mom sleeping on the couch.

Roxie's starting first grade in the fall and all I want is for her to begin school living in a little house, in a neighborhood full of kids.

I don't know how to get from here to there.

The only way is another giant leap of faith. I'd have to move into a house knowing I can't afford it, and believe I will find a way.

My feet feel grounded in cement.

I don't how many of you are fans of The Secret, but I'm a believer. Actually, I've known The Secret for as long as I can remember. Way before there was a book or movie professing its magic. Essentially it says the universe is governed by the law of attraction, or simply put, ask and you shall receive.

It's undiscriminating, too. The universe is a big a ball of energy that doesn't separate positive from negative. It hears our wants and it delivers. When I watched the movie I thought, well, of course it works like this.

Of course, we can manifest into being the lives we want. I always have, the good and the bad, including my current financial struggles and poverty. Somewhere a long the way I got this stupid idea to be a writer I needed to struggle. Every time my life got harder I said, that's all you have? Come on. Bring it!

Last week I hit the wall with my little apartment. All week I posted about needing to get out of here, needing space and my own bedroom. Abracadabra! The universe shows up with a two bedroom house for me. I'm already stretched then, I say, I can't afford increased rent and the cost of moving.

No problem, says the universe, you can have it for $45 bucks more than you're paying, no first, last and deposit. Just pay the rent and it's yours. Three blocks from a park, five blocks from great coffee, corner lot in a fun, funky part of town.

I could move in on my own and if I salvage the marriage, it's big enough for all of us. If not, I have a cute little house, albeit outdated and quirky, where me and my girls can spread out.

My two friends, it would seem, have my life all worked out. They've provided the blueprints for the next few months. Here's to good friends.

I sit down with the two of them at the intersection of the two sides of my life, the world Before Leaving and Everything After. Really it was just a pine rectangle of kitchen table where I sat, but it felt like a crossroads, all points converging.

He's a friend from Before Leaving, from way back to my first Portland days, 13 plus years ago. She is a woman I met at a writing workshop 10 days into Everything After. The three of us are very close. His wife was in the delivery room with me during both my girls' births. She — my friend from the writing workshop — has been nannying my kids a few days a week for the past year.

He's a realtor helping her buy her first house. They have hours in the car to figure out my life going street to street through Northwest Portland.

"Did she tell you what we figured out? I was telling Sam he needs to be proactive and ask me to help him look for a place," he says. "But he said you guys can't afford to move."

The TV is on a couple feet away and the girls are looking glass-eyed at Peppa Pig.

"She and I we're talking about it in the car," he goes on, nodding at my other friend, "and we decided that you should move back in with Sam. Give it three months. The deal would be that Sam would still cover rent at his place and you save the money you would have spent on rent. At the end of three months you have $2,400 and if you are unhappy you can leave. No harm, no foul."

She looks at him and me and back to Roxie behind her. Roxie is sitting facing the TV, but her eyes are sideways on us.

"I understand the logic," I tell them. "A year there and we could make a down payment. Buy a house. But if I move back in with Sam, I need a space that's mine alone. It's non-negotiable."

My parents were in town for Hanukkah last week. No one is more confused by my choice to remain separated from Sam, shuffle the kids back and forth between two homes, take on the expense of single parenting, and not file for divorce.

Sam's spending the entire four-day-visit with us, did not eliminate one bit of their confusion.

We were in the car, just my mom and me, headed for the End of The Oregon Trail Interpretive Center. My dad's a history buff. He and Sam and both girls were a car behind us.

"You're paying two rents and two sets of utilities," she said. "Wouldn't it be a lot cheaper to live in one place?" She knows we both struggle, pay what we can, and let the rest slide into next month.

It was clear cold blue out the window, snow covered tip of Mount Hood pointed to the sky in front of us.

"Well, yeah," I said. But that's not the point. "I'm not getting back together with him for financial convenience."

It took years of dating to get married, years of unhappy marriage to get separated, why rush this? Besides, we weren't doing any better with the bills as a team. Sam lost four jobs in three years. He told me once "if you want health insurance, go out and get it yourself."

I was nursing our then three-month-old, Roxie, at the time.

I thought about this. Both hands on the wheels, eyes on the mountain. I told her what I tell collectors who call. My credit is already trashed, a couple more late payments mean nothing.

When I do decide to either file for divorce or reconcile with Sam, it won't have a thing to do with financial stability.