Candy isn't sweet in suppository form.

Since we last met here, a great deal has changed. No longer stuck and desperately clawing at the status quo (fearfully clinging, viscerally rejecting), we have instead launched into the wild blue yonder of deleveraging and reinvention. And like the first astronauts rigorously trained for the unknown with best guesses and perched atop a combustible tower of low bids, we sail off into the future with verve, grit, and a keen knowledge only of what conditions are *in*compatible with life.

We were wilier than many of our peers; we bought well within budget and so kept the casa through two rough periods of unemployment (hers and then his). Some of our friends never could establish themselves in Michigan. We were luckier than many of our peers; we weren't taken out by an illness, injury, family misfortune, vicious work politics in a state where employees are dirt cheap, or the wild wooly roulette you occasionally have to spin as a fertile het couple in a world of imperfect contraception.

Thing is, luck changes like the weather. Thing is, you can influence the odds on good health, but not if you're working your ass off treading water in a stew of cortisol and flop sweat. Bottom line is, we're breaking up with the casa and its attendant lifestyle.

So two months ago I worked full time, had 12 hours of classes about to begin, my grandma was alive (if only in body), and I lived with my partner, kid and ancient cat in a brick bungalow in the burbs.

Today I am free of cubeville, have 9 hours of school, have said goodbye to my grandma and spoken at her memorial, have sorted and culled a houseful of stuff, sent my parter and cat off to the east coast the day before our 13th anniversary, and am bunking in my parents' cramped attic with the kid while we finish out the term.

It's exactly like being halfway to the moon on a rocket, my path littered with exhaust and jettisoned parts, feeling the cold and eyeing my dwindling fuel.

41 more days until my last final exam, and we get the band back together in a strange apartment in another state.