July was an unmitigated pain the arse and August is shaping up to be one too. The name of the game is recombobulation. I'm thoroughly discombobulated. Hell, I can honestly say that most of 2013 has been a discombobulatory experience, so far.

So, for most all of 2012 and 2013 up to July, I was living in a large house with a whole battery of other folks. 8, sometimes 9 of us in total. Two of us were paying large shares, two paying medium shares and the rest paying shares that were barely more than token. On top of that, with a house that in total useful area was over 5000 ft^2, all this was bloody expensive, and a much-larger-than-even chunk of that fell on me. This was working alright, because it was still costing me about the same as what it would to live solo without paring down to an uncomfortable level of austerity. Working alright, that is, until one of the folks paying a medium share decided to up and leave. Now just before this, the other medium-share-payer had gotten a new, better job and so I'd hiked his share up, so this wasn't a catastrophic problem. At first.

But, then, as is wont to happen, the universe had to pee. The fellow whose share I'd just hiked up? Yeah, he went and did something stupid and got canned. Foom. Now, other than the token-paying folks, who really aren't even pulling their own weight, all the financial load is on me and one other - which, combined with my own living expenses, the debts I'm still paying off, and the vagaries and fluctuations of life, was just too much. Suddenly we couldn't afford to live there anymore. So, I rounded up the token-paying folks (and the recently fired fellow) and put down an ultimatum - find some way to pull an additional $800 per month out of your collective heinies, on top of what you're paying already, or all of us have to leave. As in, no, I'm not kicking you out, I'm saying we'll all leave voluntarily in a month, or we'll be evicted in two, because there's just plain not enough money. They hemmed and hawed and pfumfered for a while, then realized that there was no way in hell that was going to happen without taking second jobs, and that they weren't gonna do that (assuming the jobs could even be found in that time, which is no guarantee), so we all resolved to leave.

To make a long story short, four of them up and left and are making it work somehow. Good - it's a long story but it's high time they stood on their own feet and stopped relying on me as a set of training wheels. My brother up and left, finding his own lightning. Good. He was temporarily crashing on my couch anyway after a legendarily awkward breakup with a live-in girlfriend. Ecch. As for me, and the remaining two, we not only moved house but moved cities, to be closer to work. Newport News, Virginia kinda has a reputation as a wretched hive of scum and villainy, but the western parts of town are actually fairly decent, and that's where I've ended up.

So, now most of my life is in boxes, and is even more thoroughly discombobulated. Combine that with the fact that moving is expensive, and moving because it's too expensive to stay just compounds that. So my finances are a wreck, too. But, my costs are way the hell down now and stand to drop even further, which is going to allow me to recombobulate pretty quickly. Also, my old 75 mile commute is down to 7.5 miles, and so taking a second job for a while is actually a reasonable option. Maybe, just maybe, I'll finally be able to get things stabilized. Gah, I've been saying that for years. But I've also been dragging around people who, to be frank, were cash vampires for most of that time.

All in all, furrfu. Minor, but what a painiac in the buttissimo.