its the end of the world as we know it

its 2:24 am on August 11th.
Officially the world hasn't ended. Officially its still opened for business, but my body is in crisis mode. I recognize it by now, the symptoms are familiar: lack of appetite followed by voracious hunger, emotions ranging from despair to strange euphoria, an eerie calm which so doesn't match what's going on inside, and of course, insomnia. Hence, the 2:00 revival of a blog that's been dead for over a year and feels like it was written by another person.

The symptoms are like when Mom first was diagnosed with the brain tumor, or when she was at her sickest, and when she died. Or when each kid was born, or 9-11 and that ridiculous aftermath. A sense that you are the same person walking around in a new and wholly unfamiliar world.

So what happened?

Saturday:
A trip to the coast with Erica and the kids. Insufficient funds to cover your bread and cherries from whole foods. Why'd you have to go to whole foods anyway? The bank is closed. We can't get online, Jeff never set up our online account when WaMu got bought by Chase. A day of sandy anxiety. Pizza--really the best pizza in the world. Erica offers to pay, I tell her not to be silly. Ice cream afterwards. Turns out that this will be our last meal out in a long time. Glad it was so good.
Being on the coast all day with Erica and the kids is not a bad way to spend the first day of destitution. Really, if I had to pick something to do. We get home at 11:00 and prepare the kids for their joint sleepover.
Jeff and I hash it out until 1:00 am or so. I can't deal with him, I try to push any feelings of anger away. I sleep for 2 or 3 hours. Mostly I get up to pee.
Sunday:
At 6:15 I get out of bed and drive over to the bank. I need to see for myself that its real. Why are we so damn stupid? What kind of grown ups let their money disappear without paying attention? Who are we anyway? In some ways it negates all of the real adult stuff that we do. If we can't manage our money, and really were we even trying, than do we even deserve to be raising these kids? Who are they being raised by anyway?
Our branch is closed (of course) but what I didn't know was that since the ATM is in the lobby, and the lobby is locked I can't get in to check our balance on the ATM. The universe is telling me to go home. I ignore the universe and drive over to the chase ATM and Fred Meyer.
I'm in my pajamas and the parking lot is full even though Freddie's won't open for the next 30 minutes or so. If i'd have known there'd be so many people here I might have gotten dressed. There's someone smoking next to the ATM. I consider bumming a smoke from him. For the next two days, anytime I see someone smoking I'll consider bumming a smoke.
The machine tells me that we have -892 dollars.
Shit.
We get through Sunday in a haze.
Mira and Madeline are at our house, Henry and Eli at Erica's. Jeff tells me that he hasn't had much work in the past few months. Clearly. He hasn't. Nice of him to tell me now. We come up with a tentative plan. There is still money of course, not much left really, but enough to get us by. But this can never happen again. If it does we will lose everything. All of our things will be lost. I can't look at him. Its not his fault that I'm in this situation. Nobody over the age of 18 has any right to expect someone else to take care of them. But still, its more his fault than mine. We both know this. I imagine that this is what it feels like when you find out that your husband is having an affair.
The girls spend the day at our house. Jeff takes the boys to OMSI (we still have a membership). We talk a little but mostly we tiptoe around each other. I eat cold pasta with a can of tomato sauce, straight from the can for dinner with Eli while Jeff drives the girls to their party. Mira will sleep at Madeline's tonight. They are having some kind of strange romance. I know when I look back on this time Erica and her kids will be a big part of what i remember.
Erica is the only person who has the slightest inkling of what is going on with us. I haven't talked to anyone about it which is strange for me. I'm dying to talk to Levia, or Libby, or Beth, but I don't.
I go to bed at 9:30 and I sleep well. Jeff asks if he can kiss me goodnight and I let him. I'm pretty sure but not as positive as I'd like to be that we can survive this together.

Monday
I go for a run. It really feels good. Its the nicest day of the summer so far in this fucking ridiculous summer. Jeff tells me before I go that he's finally manged to get online. I don't care anymore, I mean I do, but right now the only thing that matters to me is lacing up my sneakers and running out the door. I tell him he can show me when I get back but I end up running for an hour. By the time I get home its time to get Eli ready to spend an hour at Erica's while we go to the bank.
We wait a long time to see someone at Chase. Finally a tall bald guy in his early 50's takes us back. He is exceedingly kind and calm, the exact kind of person you want in this situation. He is the wise doctor, the good cop. He gives us a new kind of checking account to match our, ahem, current situation, tells us that he'll try to rush the funds Jeff deposited on Saturday morning into our account. Takes off a few fines we had for going under the minimum for our premier checking account.
We pick up the kids. Mira and Madeline look like lovers preparing to separate. Its time to take Mira home, I need them both at home now.
My two exhausted little ones collapse on the couch in front of Tom and Jerry and I spend the next hour online, bit by bit, meal by meal, trip by trip, camp by camp, examining our financial demise. Our records over the last six months look like something out of a greek tragedy. I can remember spending every single one of those dollars without a care in the world.
Particularly painful to read about is last weekend. Last weekend when the kids spent the night at the Friedmans, and we went to a movie, and drinks, and dinner, and breakfast the next day. Not one dime of what we spent that weekend was real, every bit of it overdrawn. That whole weekend feels like it happened about a million years ago. Or to someone else. Or like I'm looking at it through a cloudy shower door.
I'm going to try to sleep now. More tomorrow.
This is your life Amy Katz or it used to be.
After my depressing plunge into the person I used to be, I finally hear back from Brian in Kansas City. Mom's stockbroker and the person who will rescue us from this mess. Just hearing that Kansas City twang makes me want to cry and hide my head and run. I tell him I need money, he tells me that I'll have it by the end of the week. I can hear the disappointment in his voice. He knows that I'm a fuck up. Here's what he doesn't say: "It's almost gone, Amy."
Bless him for not saying that.

After I talk to Brian I feed the kids lunch. Stale peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Three of them, whole wheat for me and Eli, white for Mira. I'm starving all of a sudden. How long until we can't afford two different kinds of bread? Eli and I are still eating that fatal bread I bought wth my credit card when the debit card was declined. It tases like guilt, but its all that we have.

Which brings me to my next topic.
THE FAMILY TRIP TO WINCO

We are seriously out of food. No milk. No vegetables. We finished the bread for lunch. No cheese. No pasta, even. We are going to have to shop, but today, and only today we decide that we'll have to buy our groceries with a credit card. At Winco. Levia shops there and so does Mel. They sing its praises all of the time. But I'm a snob and I like New Seasons, or at least Trader Joe's. Now I like Winco. Any type of food you can imagine, in bulk, cheap. Really cheap. It looks like a store that I'd hate: big and warehousy. But you know what? I loved it. I felt like I walked into one giant hug. Its okay Amy, the universe seemed to be saying, you can still eat, you can still feed your family. Good wholesome (if not exactly local or organic but I suddenly stopped caring about any of that) food, and you can afford it too. You can even buy Doritos and fake Oreos for the kids. They love it, its a new adventure. Can you believe I used to hate going to grocery stores where you had to bag your own groceries? Who the fuck cares if you have to bag your own groceries when they are so cheap?

Except, well, when its time to pay, we've unloaded everything and I'm sedulously bagging away, we find out that, naturally, WINCO DOESN'T TAKE CREDIT CARDS! Of course they don't. Jeff looks at me. For the first time since this all started we laugh. We are ourselves. We may not get to eat but we still have that. Jeff tries the ATM and it works. So maybe the damn checks from Saturday have cleared? Who knows, the Katzes have food! And we payed probably (remember how I'm not good at paying attention to these things?) half of what we normally do. Go us! And we may be back. Except of course for the car ride home.
Amy: "Are we going to be charged a fee, do you think, for paying for these groceries. Are we still officially overdrawn?"
Jeff: "That would suck! It would negate all of that savings, wouldn't it?"
We are such fuck ups!
When we get home I call Eric from the bank. I tell him that I went to Winco, which is after all, a discount grocery store because my kids have to eat and now I'm worried that I'll be charged a penalty on my groceries. He very kindly tells me that if such a charge pops up he'll remove it. I thank him. I think that I love him.

Jeff is going to use the rest of our cash to buy a pound of coffee at Peets. We agree on this. We need our coffee. Its medical really, or at least it feels this way.

I want to call Levia or Beth but I don't. I'm not sure how long I can go without talking about this.

After the kids go to bed Jeff and I sit outside and eat white bean soup and try to talk about other stuff. We are having a hard time making eye contact. Is it my imagination or does the soup taste funny? Its my imagination, I tell myself firmly, you are lucky to have food.

Later on as we are watching TV and trying to forget I start to get mad again. I haven't really felt anger, but I do now, full blown rancor. I go upstairs, and I don't kiss back when Jeff comes up to say goodnight. Its so hot in our room but we don't dare flick on the air conditioner. I really hope it doesn't get unbearably hot again.

I wake up at 1:00 am in white hot panic.

Tuesday:
There's suddenly so much to do! I must take out student loans and cancel the paper and check on our accounts and see if we can find cheaper health insurance and a million other things. I still have to study too. Today we are supposed to go to meetings at the synagogue, and I promised I'd take the kids to free swim. Mira, whose heard a lot, probably too much of the ongoing conversation in the house offers to "lend" me the money to pay for free swim. I take her up on it since I gave my last $5 to Mel. We were meeting at her house and she had a mattress delivered. The delivery people brought the mattress upstairs and then Mel asked me and Sarah if we had any cash ten bucks or so to tip the guy. I'm an idiot! Can you believe I looked in my wallet, found, literally the last $5 to my name, and, get this, gave it to her. I really suck at this. I'm not sure why I just didn't tell her that I had no cash when she asked. Now, I'm stuck borrowing money from Mira to pay for us to go swimming.
The good new is that on Tuesday Grant pool offers a 2 for 1 discount. Instead of nine dollars for the three of us I pay six fifty. Whoo hoo! I feel a little better about giving Mel the money.
I diligently put my receipts for the pool and scrawl on a yellow note pad $5 Mel and put it in our brand new envelope marked "receipts." The plan is that we'll go through them every Sunday, and do this every week until we are back on our feet. I notice Jeff's receipt from Peets. It includes 1.60 for an iced coffee along with our pound. I try not to be furious. I mean, really, he's been through hell and back too. He feels like death. I can't even imagine how he feels. He deserves his iced coffee. But still, it prickles.