Getting Older

My husband is a year older today. I wish him to be a year wiser as well, if he can manage it. Boys seem to mature slower than girls do. I mean, I reckon my husband is somewhere between 12 or 13 last year and I really hope he'd shoot up to post adolescent 'age' this year...18-ish would be great!

I got him an Ericsson Z200 mobile phone, putting my finances into another turn for the worse (more like, the hopeless!) but he's happy with his new toy and that's all that matters. At least until we can no longer afford to eat and he'll have to sell his new cell fone to a fence who'll buy it a 30 percent the original price allowing us a few grains of rice with free sand thrown in for good digestion.

He has a laptop but he's not a businessman, not even a student. He uses the laptop to store his music, which he's got original CDs of; plays computer games, his current favorite being "Diablo" a Valentine's Day gift from me; and totes - read that: hauls - it from Abu Dhabi to Al Ain so he looks like a computer savvy guy! Does he use Word or perhaps create Excel spreadsheets? NO! Does he even try to better his typing speed of 25 wpm? NO! His laptop is not anything but a toy...a Dirhams six thousand worth of pure entertainment.

I'm glad that he's over his components, audio and speakers phase because that set us back by the thousands money-wise. He bought speakers upon speakers that our small home looked like an audio shop. He bought amplifiers, CD players, tape deck and power amps and the cables...oh my God the cables...I couldn't believe they'd cost a fortune! He'd drill holes on walls to mount his speakers or double-sided tape them to a stand that you are not allowed to touch much less get near to! You can trip or accidentally hang your neck (can you really do that?!) from all the cables that snaked the floor. I was just pure nightmare!

We are transients here, not really citizens and would never live here forever. But the amount of stuff we've accumulated over the years could easily fill some serious shipping space...what with speakers and amps and players...sensitive stuff that I don't know where to put in Manila as we still do not have our own home.

So today, on his birthday, I really wih my husband would seriously start thinking about our future. How we'll ever get out of this place and save up enough for our golden years as well as for our growing daughter.

The road ahead is looking rather bleak. Although despair is far from my mind, as I look at the positive side of things...one cannot help but fear the bad times.