Little Person, Big Inspiration

Every post I write seems to lead to another. I am wasting space in the intertubes! Oh well: Dawn likes it. Hi, Dawn!

Tom bought a truck. He is now a sub-contractor for Schneider International. Schneider is the company he started with and quit but apparently the pay is substantially better if you own your own truck. I may come across as being incredibly calm about this, considering that we live check-to-check and we are now one breakdown away from homelessness, but that is because I am channeling a dwarf.

I am channeling Amy Roloff. If you've ever seen Little People, Big World, you know who I'm talking about. If you haven't, picture Linda Hamilton a foot and a half shorter and try to follow along. Amy Roloff is my inspiration as a wife, because her husband does everything on a whim and she, at the very least, doesn't scream at him on-camera. He decided to start a business selling footstools to hotels rather than get a more conventional job with which to support his family of six. He chose to undertake turning the family farm into a tourist attraction with pirate ship, castle, and giant pumpkin-launcher. And when she leaves town, he buys cars. And through all of this she just smiles and rolls her eyes as if to say, "That's just Matt."

So, when Tom changed his nightly rant from "I hate this company. They never give me enough miles and they make me wait too long between loads," to "I hate this company and I'm pricing trucks," I naturally asked what he was planning. It turns out that his ex-girlfriend Barb (his version of Marv, I suppose) is married to a fellow truck driver who drives for Schneider and they had financed his truck, contingent on him driving for them. "So I'm thinking about buying a truck and driving for Schneider again." I went off. The rising price of fuel, truck insurance, what if you don't get enough miles one month, what if the truck breaks down, we're supposed to be getting pregnant and you want to kill our medical coverage, why would you want to do something so risky when we're going to take on an expense like a new baby, all of it. And then I decided to channel Amy Roloff.

So, although it goes against every instinct I have, and although this is the man who needs his junk mail and telephone calls screened (telemarketers have an easy job with Tom), I am going to support my husband. I don't want him to be thinking some day that he never got to realize his dream because I killed it. And also, he's supporting me with my novel and it seems like the thing to do. Supporting my husband is harder than I'd have thought. It involves shutting up, something I've never been good at anyway, and having faith that Tom won't let us starve. Silence and faith are not easy for me. Wish me luck.