The Kitchen Sink

Shannon and I don’t want for a lot. We don’t have the most, but we have what we need. Neither of us goes hungry (unless we just forget to eat), and we have a roof over our heads. Albeit a more expensive roof than I would like, but it’s the cheapest we could find to get the hell out of what was rapidly turning into crack-land.

And it’s a good neighborhood. It’s a “posh” zip code: 78757. We are among the poorest in it, but I don’t mind. Old folks driving Mercedes, Caddies and Lincolns don’t normally also buy crack off the street. They’re the neighbors we got when we moved here.

They all drive a little too slow, but at least they aren’t bankrolling drug dealers.

Unless you count the major pharmaceuticals.

But that’s a different topic.

Back on point, I see stories about one food bank after another in trouble. Empty shelves and more people asking for food than I can remember.

We’d like to do more, but we can’t.

It’s not like we live an extravagant life, because we don’t. Our biggest extravagance is living in a neighborhood that is not infested with crack dealers.

They’re like cockroaches, you know. Let them get a beachhead, they’ll take over the world.

I’m not sure that self-defense should be classified as extravagance.

All I know is that I have an obligation to make sure that Shannon has a safe place to live.

Like I said, we’re paying more to live here than I would like, but the options aren’t good. We could move farther out into the suburbs, but then I wouldn’t be able to walk to work. We’d pay more in gas, and Shannon wouldn’t be able to have the car available during normal business hours. I’d be filling up once a week at least instead of the normal once every three weeks, and he’d be stuck in suburban hell with no way to get any where.

And our car would be just be sitting on a parking lot all day instead of being useful.

That’s the long way of getting to something that makes me feel like a kid on Christmas morning: we got a new kitchen sink.

It might not sound like much, but it is. We’ve been living with an old porcelain one that had a chip the size of a silver dollar in it and that was so permanently stained that it only stayed clean for a few hours after bleaching it with everything I had in my arsenal.

Now we have a nice, new stainless steel one, very deep, with a nice, tall spigot.

It’s like Christmas just when it’s starting to get hot.

I thank God for small favors. Like being able to live outside crack-land. Like having a job that allows us to afford it and have a car so that Shannon isn’t stuck home all day. Like a new, shiny sink.

Doesn’t sound like much, but sometimes little things mean a lot.