I have a bazillion ("No," my son Austen, who is very proper about his numbers, would insist, "there's no such thing as a bazillion!"  Fine then, a gajillion?) things I want to get out of my head and onto this virtual paper, but I spent my writing time today sleeping. (Now you may ask how I'm writing this, and the answer is, "Do you really want to know?  Ok, my husband is feeding the kids while I pretend to be using the bathroom.  When you are a mom sometimes you have to type leaning over a laptop perched on the bathroom sink.")

So, lesson number one, five days into the Year of Health, is that I don't get enough sleep.  I knew that.  But what I didn't realize until yesterday was that nothing else (eating right, exercising, flossing my teeth, showering daily) is going to get done unless I get enough (or closer to enough) rest.  So after (once again) staying up too late last night, I took a nap today with the promise that I will. not. stay. up. tonight. writing!  You know, the way I usually do.  Napping is my sleep version of using one credit card to pay off another, while still remaining in debt overall.  (Not that I know anything about that kind of behavior with credit cards.  Nope.  Not at all.)

So, to kick start the Year of Health, I will be giving the Week of Sleep a try.  I'm just hoping I can do it without too much harm to my writing time.  I'm planning to let the dishes suffer instead!

It was true love, the moment I saw it.  I was bathed in light and heard angels singing (no, really, that wasn't just the glow for the screen and the background music for the ad).  There it was: The Beatles Rock Band, a video game that lets you be John, Paul, George and Ringo as you sing and play instrument shaped controllers in time with the music.  Breathtaking.  Magic.

I saw that game and I thought about the stash of money that I keep, just in case.  It's like the few bucks I always try to keep in the back of my purse, just in case I get mugged, only it's in my underwear drawer, in case my world gets mugged.  I thought about what an exceptionally bad time it would be to splurge with the economy still weak and my husband's job (our major source of income) on shaky ground. I thought about the huge plastic controllers that will probably end up in a landfill someday and about how I was going to make four families that much richer when so many people have so little.  And I then thought, "Whatever.  It's the Beatles!  In a totally fun video game!  They're bigger than Jesus!  And all those homeless people and the environment needs is love anyway.  Plus, digitally animated Paul McCartney is still so dreamy. How can I not do it?"

So, I did.  I took my stash and spent it, and I stroked my plastic replica of Paul's bass and Ringo's drums lovingly as I removed them from the packaging and set them up with hands trembling with excitement.  I popped the disk into our Wii and heard it whir to life, and sat entranced, with goosebumps prickling on my arms as I watched the intro animation. And oh, it was every bit as good as I thought it would be.

I try to get the kids to let me play at every opportunity.  "Come on, kids!  Let's play a video game.  Please please please please please!"  My daughter Janie doesn't actually like to play -- the instruments are a little too big for her six year old body and the rhythms of the game require a little more dexterity and coordination than she has yet -- but she likes to watch and sing along.  A few days ago, I got her brother on the bus and said, "How about if I play some Beatles Rock Band while you finish your breakfast."  We had about five minutes before I had to get her out the door for school too, but I figured this was enough for one song.

So, I sang one of her favorites: "Yellow Submarine."  When that was over, she said, "Yay!  Do 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,' Mama!"  Well, who am I to resist an encore?  So I did "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds."  Then Mark came downstairs and said, "Oo, Beatles Rock Band!  Do 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds!'"  "Well," I said, "I did just do that one, buuut...  if you insist!"  So I did "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" again.  Eventually, I paused and when I did, I looked at the clock.  Uh oh.  Janie's school started three minutes ago, and because I (inconveniently) lack the ability to travel at the speed of light or reverse time, we were so going to be late.

I thought about telling the truth to the staff at the school, "I got caught up in playing Beatles Rock Band."  Maybe they'd understand.  It's the Beatles!  I couldn't help it!  So I gauged the secretary as I walked Janie to the office.  She refused to look at me for several minutes: a bad sign.  Eventually, she heaved a huge sigh, got up from her desk and walked over to me, glaring.  "Reason for lateness?" she snapped.  "Um, I..." I chickened out. "I lost track of time."  She checked the box for "unexcused" and wrote "mother" on the line for reason.

With Janie safely in school, I headed home giggling at the lesson I'd instilled: "Your education and moral development are important, young lady, but what's more important is rock music and video games."  I told this story to a friend who said, "No, don't you see?  You taught her that special time with her mama is most important."  Ok, that's another way to look at it.  But it's not as funny.

At the end of last year, I decided I was done with New Year's resolutions. Instead, I picked an intention word for the year: someplace for me to set my focus. My word for 2008 was Happy. And I have to say, that worked out fabulously for me.

2008 was indeed happy. Although I have to admit that when I picked the word "happy," I was trying to boss the universe a little. What I really wanted was not to have anything major or catastrophic happen in my life, since in the previous six or seven I'd been hit with one body blow after another: from learning of my husband's sex addiction to having my son face a number of health issues to losing my father-in-law to cancer. I wanted one quiet, peaceful, happy year in which nothing went seriously wrong.

This was actually not that year. Several major health and financial challenges did arise (although I haven't blogged about them for anonymity reasons), but the difference was that I kept my happy wits about me this time and rode it all out. They stayed little blips on the overall happy radar.

So, it's time to pick a new intention word, and this year the word is (drum roll, please)...

GOD

Yep. This year I would like to focus on my spirituality, dedicate more time to meditation, recognize the sacred around me and within me and in those around me. And I figure that with my sights set on my God, I have a good chance of keeping the Happy going this year as well.

If you pick a word for the year, or stick with the old school resolution format, I'd love to hear what your focus will be 2009. And I wish you all a safe, peaceful and happy New Year!

A year ago, when I was trying to get through to my husband that we were spending faster than we were earning and that our credit cushion was wearing dangerously thin, he had a brilliant idea, "Let's get another credit card." Yep. We're running out of credit, we'll get more credit, problem solved, ta da! (Our own family version of an Arctic National Wildlife Refuge drilling project.)

That was clearly not a good solution and not the one we took, but it was the most obvious solution, especially with credit card companies sending offers in the mail every day. In fact, the offers kept rolling in even as collection agencies called and lawsuits threatened.  And I have to admit, mad as I was that we'd gotten ourselves mired in debt, I was equally angry that credit card companies found it so very profitable for us to do so that they let us have access to more in credit than I've ever made in a year. Our credit is trashed at this point, yet we still get credit card offers every day, and all I can think each time I get the mail is: These companies are just like drug pushers!

I was listening to a piece on NPR a while back about a rise in underage prostitution in certain areas. A guest on the program noted that as a result of stricter enforcement of drug laws in these locales, many former drug dealers were turning to pimping, as a safer, more profitable business. And as secondary crimes and violence related to drug trade were decreasing, police were now dealing with more secondary crimes and violence related to prostitution. As I listened, I thought, "Either way the problems with violence in these cities are related to addiction." Because while some of the clients of drug dealers or prostitutes will be folks who rarely use, the most profitable clients, the regular clients, are primarily going to be addicts. Drug addicts drive drug trafficking. Sex addicts drive sex trafficking.

Those addicts are the regular clients that dealers and pimps want, the same way that the folks at the local bakery depend on me. They know me and make sure I get the good stuff: because I keep coming back again and again, and I tell my friends and bring them back too. I'm a sweet shop's big old cash cow. Businesses know they need to keep their regular customers both satisfied and yearning for more. So, credit card companies want people who will carry a balance and cigarette companies want smokers to suck down a pack or more a day and alcohol manufacturers (regardless of their ads giving lip service to responsible drinking) aren't really catering to people like me who drink a single glass of wine with dinner once a month. What they want, what they cater to in their business practices and their advertising, are addicts.

I'm not saying that business owners frame it that way I don't think most of them do (although some certainly may) but I do think we live in a culture of addiction where the way to make money is to indulge and reinforce the fantasies of your best clients: addicts. Billboards and TV and movies and music and Internet banner ads whisper the messages to us, the messages that may disgust and anger some, but that addicts want to buy: Alcohol makes you sexy. Drugs are cool. Credit makes you powerful. And everyone's a porn star.

And I believe we, as a society, are aching for recovery.

When my husband started recovery around sex addiction and I started working on my own codependency, we didn't share our struggles with our extended family, but we did share with quite a few close and trusted friends. And I shared with people in an online group I was part of, and with people at meetings. And I started my (pseudonymous) blog and shared there. Yeah, let's talk about sex addiction, baby!

But our problems with debt? Oh, now that's shameful stuff.  The same close friends we shared with and cried to about our marriage problems haven't heard much at all about money. I've made passing mention of money problems in my writing on my own blog, but for the most part, I've focused on our work around Mark's sex addiction. Our abuse of credit has been a sick secret between the two of us, something that sat as a sickening lump in our stomachs.

A little over a year ago, I hit my codependency bottom around debting. Mark and I were in massive (tens of thousands of dollars of) credit card debt. Each month we were spending far more than we took in, and we were running out of credit fast. I have a friend who says that in America, "having no money" really means "having no credit," and it's true. For years we had been able to float on credit; I felt uncomfortable about it, but I couldn't see what to do. I cut back as much as I could, I took on what jobs I could, but I couldn't do enough, and especially not alone. I saw a time looming ahead when the credit would run out, and that pending wave just rushed nearer and grew larger, no matter how much controlling or denying or ignoring I did. I couldn't see how we were going to stem the bleeding, let alone pay back the debt. Over and over I said to Mark, "We're really in financial trouble," but he didn't seem to hear me, and he certainly didn't do what I wanted: CHANGE! NOW! And help me do it too. (I'm not codependent. Shut up!)

So, one day I stopped. I handed him the bills and the checkbook and the Internet passwords to our accounts, and said, "I can't do this anymore. You figure it out. Nothing is going to get paid not the mortgage, not the phone bill, not the water, not the electricity, not the credit cards nothing is going to happen anymore until you make it happen." And it was when he tried to pay the bills when he saw for himself how much more was going out than coming in, how much we were paying in interest alone every month, how close we were to really having no more money left that he started attending Debtor's Anonymous meetings, and cutting back on spending, and talking to creditors and lawyers, and looking for solutions.

We are in a much better place now than we used to be. We haven't yet lost the house and I haven't yet had to go back to work full time, but the stress and shame around the debt and the fear of losing our home have been at times more intense than the stress and shame of sex addiction and the fear of losing our marriage. Money is this thing that smart people like us should know how to manage responsibly. Sex can get out of hand, but spending? So, here I am, pouring the intimate details of my marriage out to the Internet, but my bank account. Shh! Don't ask about that. It's shameful.

According the site's creators, who are also parents of an autistic child, the purpose is to help parents offset the financial costs of raising an autistic child. And let me tell you it does cost: whether you are on the vaccine train or not, whether you subscribe to a gluten and casein free diet or not, whether your mission is fighting to get the school district to treat your child with respect and provide mandated(!) services, or fighting your insurance to cover occupational therapy, or just providing your child with the one brand of soap he'll tolerate or the few types of food he'll eat.

Here's what the site's creators envision:

• A community based, password protected website for families with children on the spectrum.
• A free-market (a la "Freecycle" for autism), where families can give those things they are done with and get needed items and services from each other for free.
• Discounts from companies that have products which are needed by the community.
• A knowledge portal that can be easily navigated.
• Social networking tools, such as, video posts, podcasts, blogs and chats.
• Sweepstakes, profit sharing and fund-raising to benefit the member families directly.

Looks like things are just starting up, but I thought some of you might want to go take a peek.

Form 1040 asks
what is your occupation?
Can I say "breathing?"

The sun, a bright gem
set in a blue crystal sky.
Can I write it off?

Bird at my window
whirls furiously against
its own reflection.

TurboTax whirring
on our deepest mystery:
What is our balance?

Good thing I'm not that absent minded.

I walked up to the teller. She did not ask me if I'd forgotten anything and she did not tell me that it was usually customary to bring the money for the deposit with me. (You were scared I was going to lose that hefty deposit, weren't you?) I smiled, got that reassuring receipt and headed off to Target with my daughter. When we got to the front of the line with our purchases, and I reached into my purse to get that $25 cash I had set aside, I found that my wallet was... empty.

Oops! Apparently, I wasn't absent minded enough to lose all the money, just some of it. The cash must have been left sitting on the table where I filled out the deposit ticket while watching my daughter play peekaboo. Like Uncle Billy, I retraced my steps and like him I came up empty handed. Fortunately, this is not going to precipitate the kind of meltdown the Bailey family experienced, but I still don't think I should be trusted with cash anymore. I only hope someone out there is enjoying my $25 and it didn't end up in the hands of someone like old man Potter.

There have been times I've experienced computer problems when I would spend hours and hours cleaning up this and patching that. And at some point I'd find it was just easier to wipe the hard drive clean and reinstall everything from scratch: crazy bits of old useless extensions and drivers gone, evil spyware gone, internet cookies gone, everything gone in one swift, all encompassing gesture.

As I dig myself out of the wrapping paper and pine needles, as I clean up what looks like an explosion of Christmas dinner from the kitchen stove and counters, as my husband meets with counselors to deal with our debt and I worry that we spent both too much and too little on gifts, I find myself wishing I could obliterate everything and start over, wipe the hard drive of my life and reinstall everything.

I want the debt gone.

I want the house cleaned from top to bottom and every broken thing returned to its original state.

I want everyone healthy.

I want old resentments and hurts gone.

I want every horrible, stupid, insensitive or just plain ignorant thing I've ever done, said or thought forgiven.

I want to forgive everyone for everything.

I want my whole world clean and white and untouched as new fallen snow.

And then I remember George Bailey, at the end of It's a Wonderful Life, kissing the end of the stair post that comes off in his hand. Life is life. It's as it should be. And it's wonderful.

Mark and I started our life together in debt and hounded by collection agencies, but these were not of our own making. Both of our fathers did that addicty thing, taking out loans and credit cards in our names. They couldn't take out their own loans or get their own credit cards, their credit ratings were shot. Instead, they ran up debt we didn't know about or told us not to worry, they'd pay us back. And we spent those first years out of college struggling, not only to pay our own student loans, but the debts of our fathers. My first year out of college, I was contacted by a collection agency. They informed me that, unknown to me, I had defaulted on a debt that was the equivalent to nearly half of what I made a year. And let's just say that, 15 years later, Mark still can't get an American Express Card as a result of a scheme of his late father's.

When we first moved in together, I took care of the finances for both of us. Eating pasta for every meal, balancing the checkbook before each grocery store trip and paying interest plus more than the required principal on every debt. We were engaged for several years to give us enough time to save a few thousand dollars to pay for our wedding. It took years, but before our son was born, we were debt free and saving each month.

Then our son was born, and I quit my job. I fell into post-partum depression and couldn't handle the task of keeping track of the finances anymore. Money matters were so stress inducing to contemplate, they'd send me reeling, when I felt I was struggling to survive amid the panic attacks, and the migraines, and the sleep deprivation, and the baby boy who cried day and night, and the dishes, and laundry, and cooking, and home repairs. I tried, good codependent that I am, to control everything, but something had to give: the money, eating, breathing, something...

So, control of the money slipped away from me, and my husband, who was lost in the height of his sex addiction, more concerned about hiding the money he was spending on Internet porn and other women than balancing the checkbook, couldn't step in to help. But we had that savings we built up before my son was born and did ok, even with no one monitoring things. Then I got pregnant (unexpectedly) with my daughter, my son was diagnosed with autism, my husband quit his job and came clean about his addiction and in the space of a few months, my whole world spiraled away from me, finances included. And more than four years later, I'm still reeling from that loss.

We burned through the savings when my husband was out of work and then it seemed like everything required money. There were therapists upon therapists for my husband and my son and sometimes me, and there babysitters so we could see the therapists and each other. I knew the money was slipping away but I couldn't keep on top of it. And whenever I said, "We can't afford it." My husband's response was "we can't afford not to." It seemed we had to spend money or our marriage would fall apart, our son would never eat, our lives would fall apart. And I was just too overwhelmed to fight it.

I tried to hand off the job of paying bills to my husband, but when things didn't get paid, I took over again, but didn't do much better than he did. About a year ago, I told him I couldn't handle what few shreds of the finances I was still clinging to. I just couldn't get on top of things, and I couldn't control his part of the spending. He needed to see for himself where we were. So, I stopped paying the bills, really stopped this time. I told him all of the bills that usually paid automatically from our checking account were not going to be paid unless he went back and activated them himself. And, then, forced to look closely, he finally saw clearly what was happening. As many times as I had said the words, I hadn't been able to make him understand, but he was able to see: tens of thousands of dollars in debt and more money going out than coming in every month. We were living on credit and running out of credit fast.

So, he's going to DA meetings these days and continuing to refine a spending plan and learn how to manage the money. Is our debt a compulsive thing? I personally don't think so. Still, 12 Step is a comforting structure for Mark, and he is learning from people who have been through what we have been through before. And that's the beauty of any 12 Step program: not feeling alone and ashamed anymore, but working with people who understand to improve your life, one day at a time.