*@%! gas prices

In order for me to post an entry to my blog I have to come to campus. Usually, I walk here with Charles in the morning, spend a couple of hours online, check email, post a blog and then walk home. It is over a mile and a half (round-trip) which is good exercise and, boy, do I need it. Anyway, there is a gas station I pass which allows me to see what the latest gas prices. As of this morning it is $2.92 for regular unleaded. It will be about four to six cents more when I pass it on my way home around lunchtime. This frightens me in a most visceral way.

Las Cruces is in southern New Mexico. One mile away from our apartment is the intersection of I-10 and I-25. It is wide open and beautiful desert with El Paso, TX being the closest Big City (about an hour away). The only food products grown here are chiles and pistachios, neither of which would, on their own, or eaten together, make a healthy balanced diet. Everything else is trucked in, thereby making all grocery experiences rather alarming and sometimes painful due to the prices.

Cost of living on one income now has a concrete meaning. Charles and I have been rethinking a lot of our expenses. (Especially me, after my last post.) We are humbly grateful for his job, for being able to live close enough that he can walk to work and that we only have to fill up our car's tank of gas once a month, if that. I have grown a new appreciation for my own two feet and for my bicycle. But there are other considerations that make a cold spot form in the pit of my stomach and those are: how do we keep on if we are ever able to have a baby? Can we ever own a home? Will NMSU offer yearly cost of living increases? What if all we could afford for a home was out on the fringe of town where all the other young first-time home-owners live, the commute from which would cost us huge amounts in gas money?

Some people would say, "Problem easily solved, chick. Go back to work." No. To do so would fly in the face of all the blessings we've received since making the decision for me to not pursue employment upon moving here. Every morning we thank God for Charles' job. Every morning. No vain repetition, that. It is gratitude from the gut. We've been blessed immensely, so far. It is our hope that we can be worthy enough of them that they continue. Faith and fear cannot occupy one mind or heart at the same time, but that doesn't mean that they aren't interchangable.