This is how I get motivated to find a job, once we move to the house on the pond and I give up my welfare checks. Moving itself is kind of a let down, I am feeling lost actually, as much as I love Karl I miss Susie and even the rest of them, miss all the companionship and drama and carefree living, all the funny dynamics of a complicated household.

So I lose myself in books, believe it or not historical romances, trashy bodice rippers which have always been a weakness of mine, I am a little ashamed of liking them but not enough to stop. Karl goes out to work, scrubbing down hospital walls and floors, works 8 or 9 hours cooped up in the echoing tile corridors, mopping his heart out, then comes home to find me oblivious reading in a rocking chair, me and Caitlin unprepared for his reentry into our world.

And he gets mad. Maybe I have been trying to ignore this side of Karl’s personality, just concentrate on his nice parts, but it is hard sometimes not to acknowledge his faults too. At the red house he once got so furious that he punched a glass door and slashed his hand up all bloody, not to mention that he destroyed the door. This time he took out his anger on my rocking chair, grabbed an ax and chopped it up into splintery bits as Caitlin and I watched in stunned silence.

I got the hint, next day I went to town looking for work, motivated as all get-out.