I am home from vacation, & my ex-husband is buying a gun.

Rob put a Glock 23 (think he said) on layaway. Once I finished snickering at the idea of putting a handgun on layaway, he explained that once he has his security credentials, he'll get a $200 discount. He was going to buy the one right below it, but there's a waiting list, the gun shop was out, and apparently Glock is more than a thousand handguns behind when it comes to filling orders.

He's already mentioned, offhandedly, going to court to get child support adjusted. I hope he doesn't, because we're getting along fairly well right now, and I don't want to have to ruin that by telling the judge it's my opinion that he took a lower-paying job just to get out of paying so much child support. See, he was the only person in his office at Roto-Rooter not making any money, and after getting fired he refused to apply for any higher-paying jobs than this idiotic rentacop position. Seriously, Via was all set to hire him before Roto-Rooter did, and they'd certainly hire him now, and they start at $12.65/hr. SAPD is aggressively recruiting right now, and during training they pay $2,300/month. He's going to be making just over $1500/month before taxes. He did not reapply with either the bus company or the PD, but he's going to cry poverty because he's paying just over $600/mo in child support? Shit.

We had a good time on our mini-vacation, even though we didn't do much of anything. I was going to hit the Whitehead Museum yesterday before we left, but between the nasty weather & the fact that the kids had decided to act like a bunch of rabid little monkeys, I just did not feel like dealing with it.

We went down 277 to Eagle Pass, then caught 57 north to about 35 miles south of San Antonio, where we hopped on I-35. There are only two English-language radio stations in Eagle Pass--one bad pop station & a Christian station. That was FM. I found nothing in my native language on AM.

West Texas is lovely, but empty. Which I kinda knew, intellectually, but hadn't had the chance to experience it before. I now want to write a short story set in Del Rio. I think I learned just enough about it to have my main character pay a visit, but I'd never dream of having a character actually live there. That's one thing that annoys me about most novels set in Texas--it's clear they're written by people who've maybe visited but never lived here.

I even found a trailer park in Del Rio. Right behind the McDonald's. The kids would love that. I bet that MickeyD's gets real crowded during the summer. Dollar menu + indoor play place = lots of air conditioned fun for the po' folks. Ask me how I know.

I was driving along yesterday, looking at all the nothing and thinking, on the one hand I'm enough of a city girl that I'd hate living out there, but on the other I can see how the settlers looked around themselves and said Shit, I gotta have this place! Because it is lovely, acres upon acres of scrub brush. I saw a sign yesterday: "Ranchitos for sale: 20 acres." And I had to laugh, because around here they consider 3 to 5 acres to be a big plot of land.