Since someone asked, a little note all about wonderful, fascinating me, my family, and our State of Affairs.

People joke about how early I go to bed. Usually around six in the evening. I am the ‘early to bed, early to rise’ archetype; still waiting on the wise part to kick in.

I leave the house around 5 am. It’s still dark most of the year. I bundle up in the winter because my Dodge Dakota doesn’t have heat. It does, however, have nearly 200K miles, and it shows. The ‘good’ car, a ’97 Lumina, went to my wife since I’d rather be cold/hot than my kids.

Some days at work I drive a truck. Those are the good days. Other days I work a shovel. Those are most days, at least lately. I work for The County, I am here to help.

Depending on the boss and location, most times we don’t start working till 6:30, and if the weather is real bad we try and wait it out. Sometimes we work in the pouring rain or blistering heat, though, because things simply need to get done.

The roads will not build themselves. The Gods will not save us.

I drink water throughout the day and most times eat a lunch my wife fixed the night before. A few sandwiches, some pasta salad. I get a half hour for lunch. Each day is ten hours long, Mon-Thur, except when we’re lucky and get to work overtime.

I make a hair under 30K a year. I used to drive a truck and make a little more money, but in this economy truck drivers are hurting. In the 90′s I was in computer sales, and did pretty good for a while. Those salad days dried up though.

I get off work at 4:30 and drive home. I live only 6 miles from work, but the drive back takes nearly half an hour. I have an MP3 player I picked up for 30 bucks a while back, but I rarely listen to it. Usually I just try to unwind on my way home. Doing hard physical labor in a variety of challenging environments can become… psychologically taxing. Tensions get raised, fights break out.

Shit happens. I use the drive home to forget about it.

Coming home is the best part of my day because I get to see my three kids and wife. I have a daughter, six. A son, four. My youngest, also a boy, just turned a year old.

My middle child has autism. We receive a check from the government to help with therapy, but it doesn’t cover it all. Not even close, actually. God has been good to us though, and we have him in therapy with some amazing, special teachers. We hope that one day he will have a normal life.

My oldest and youngest have been real sick as of late. Willow has pneumonia. River has RVS and an ear infection. Luckily my job has great benefits if not great pay. I pay $200/month for full family and dental, with a $30 co-pay at most places. I think our deductible is $500, which gets run through pretty quick.

I play with my kids when I come home, eat dinner, play on my 3 year old laptop. The internet, cable, and my cigarettes and the wife’s Starbucks are about the only luxuries we have. My TV is twelve or so years old. I have two pairs of jeans, but only one without holes. We get most of our clothes and furniture from Goodwill or consignment shops or flea markets.

My wife is a financial genius. She uses coupons and discounts like a madman. Just now she got $16 worth of stuff at Target for…no kidding…$1.00. She feeds our entire family of five for less than a Benjamin a week (including toiletries, soaps, and four animals). We may not eat steak very often (it has to be on sale), but we eat nutritious meals and are never hungry. In lieu of candy we usually buy fruit for the kids (local farmer’s markets can be a great source of cheap, fresh food).

We don’t have an X-box or Blue Ray player. Once a paycheck the wife and I may pick a film to download to our TiVo (another luxury, although really I count it as a necessity. If you own one, you know what I mean.) from Amazon. I may buy a book but not usually. We do use Amazon for a lot of things though. Enough so that the 75$ for ‘Prime’ free shipping more than pays for itself each year. We do a lot of Christmas shopping from Amazon as well. FREE SHIPPING. Hard to beat, and if you know me well enough to where I’m getting you a gift you’re most likely a reader.

We like to take the kids to free things like the park or just walk around a shopping mall. We get them books from the library (another great place for cheap DVDs btw). We just got another DVD player for Christmas after being without one for a year, so I can see NetFlix in our future maybe. But probably not. We don’t have a lot of time. We have to choose what shows and movies to watch with care. Really, it weeds out a lot of the crap. And the TiVo pays for itself since it’s our primary source of entertainment.

Rarely do we go out to eat. The oldest boy’s autism was a major factor in the past. Now the youngest one is a seriously cranky, bull headed child, and is as prone to tantrums as his older brother ever was. So…not a lot of fine dining for the McLarty family. We tried it a month or so ago at a Chinese buffet with mixed results. Probably won’t be repeating the experiment for a while.

Last movie the wife and I saw at the theaters was ’1408′, with Samuel L. Jackson and John Cusack. It was OK.

Really, money is as big a factor as time. We simply can’t afford a sitter and big fancy restaurant. I wanted to take her to see ‘Avatar’ this Sunday for her birthday, and the grand parents were gonna baby sit, but then the kids all get sick and…that’s that.

If it sounds like I’m not grateful for the life I have, then I have written (another FREE activity) poorly. We are happy. We dream of one day owning a house instead of renting, of having two decent cars, of my wife going to college or trade school once the littlest one can go to pre school. Till then there is no point in her working. Like me, she has no education and whatever she could earn would be eaten up by daycare costs.

I am not a rich man monetarily. I have mainly myself to ‘blame’ for that. I made many poor choices growing up. Like many others, external forces also played their part. But I mainly believe that my circumstances, and those of my family, are of my making. I am accountable, for better or worse.

So there you have it. It was none of your fucking business, but now it’s all laid out. I’m a hard working, never quitting, blue collar, Saint’s loving, Obama rooting, socialist, fighting motherfucker. If you got a problem with that then feel free to kiss my fat ass (size 46).