Facepunch Time and Nick Hornby

Maybe it's just the time of year, but I think I might start posting something real again instead of hiding out behind various things like family and work...
Life has really been kind of crazy. I mean, it sounds kind of funny (and you should see people's faces when I say this) but I can't think of any other way to describe it except that it's been punching me in the face. Yes. Life has been punching me in the face.
By that I mean mostly that it has dealt me a few blows in succession and caused me to be stressed - and sometimes it actually affects my face, by way of expression. But that is all superfluous information. Allow me to illustrate instead:

As with most people in the world, money is continually a problem for me. Not because I'm a spendthrift or anything like that - but simply because I seem to be constantly unable to make enough of it to ease the financial burden that comes from having a car, a place to live, and having gone to school for most of last year. Especially the last one, and not counting maintenance costs like food, clothes, and personal hygiene. Unfortunately, this has also got me into a situation where I couldn't buy my parents anything for christmas. And still haven't. And probably can't for a while. It's important to me - to gift at christmas, so that really bites. But that's a small issue when I compare it to the fact that my school loan is just this side of being sent to collections, both of my credit cards are maxed because of bills, and I am on my way home from court because we had to make the choice between feeding the kids and keeping insurance on my truck. Which unfortunately has only resulted in yet another bill. Usual suspects in most tough financial situations, right? Couple that with getting laid off from the restaurant the same week that my hours get cut at starbucks and things start getting ugly.
Then, there's the custody battle. My bio-mom and lonely middle sister get everyone all tied up in that drama and there are court dates on which I have to babysit - but then the judge issues some kind of gag order so they go out for the day and can't tell me anything about it. So we all just have to suck it up and pretend they were at a spa all day or something.
The girls argue with eachother and everyone else because of the stress, which stresses everyone else out, they throw away their homework, we're out of milk again, the baby needs potty training, the dog figures out how to let himself out of the kitchen, you start breaking out in stress hives, the school calls again to invite you back when you absolutely know that it's completely impossible, your best friend gets engaged to a guy twice her age that you can't judge because you haven't met- and wants you to be in the wedding... And little things pile on from there until you get to a point where you sort of start to understand a little bit (like, less than an inkling) of what Job felt in the bible when he wished that he could just die instead.

And you just pay your tithes and keep on plodding through the craziness. At this point it's so crazy that you've got to making it a competition with yourself to see not only how long you can stand it before you become an alchie or take up smoking for good, but also just how crazy it will get before it breaks.
It's kind of like keeping an eye on a good old fashioned fever.

But it was when I reached this point that I started to say "screw it" when I worried about silly things and started doing what I actually felt like doing. Which is probably how I found myself intentionally sitting with an attractive stranger on a break at work (you should have seen his face when I replied honestly to his polite inquiry about life punching me in the face), and reading a very interesting book. By a man named Nick Hornby.