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At Christmas, we used to circle things we wanted in the Sears catalog.

In Red Sharpie, there was a KitchenAid mixture circled in our catalog.

My wife had circled it.

And I looked at the mixer, and I felt so depressed, namely, because I was 24 years old, newly married, and Christmas was not shaping up to be a good one.

I had just been fired.

I'd been working on a construction crew hanging drywall. It was a crappy job with even crappier pay. Lots of dust,

lots of mud. Someone on the crew had been stealing expensive power tools, and rather than locate

the culprit, our boss just fired everyone. Every worker, young and old, and in a matter of

minutes we were jobless. Game over. So there I was. No money, no prospects. I wasn't even a high

school graduate. And worse, we were out of beer. Moreover, my wife had already erected our little

plastic Christmas tree in our one-bedroom apartment.

There were already gifts beneath the tree with my name written on the labels.

She had been taking extra jobs, babysitting, moonlighting with a temp service.

She had been working overtime.

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