Welcome to the new Great Depression, folks! I've been hearing my Granpa talk a lot about how when times are tough, you better learn to like beans, just like he had when he was a boy in the Depression. An inveterate saver, he told his kids when he dies, "Don't just throw things out" because all grandma's old Maeve Binchys and his old workclothes probably have dollar bills stuck in them, Depression-style. He talks a lot about responsibility and saving and knowing the difference between a want and a need anyway, but age and paranoia are making him say this even more (although he did just get an enormous flat screen TV, so he can watch Fox News with 65 percent more visible spittle, I assume). So in the style of that earful, I present to you, "The upcoming Depression and advice." Alternate title: "How Space Cadet lost her damn mind. (Did she mention her bank failed?)"

LW#1:

I'm very sorry for you. Clearly you are a football widow, and so is Prudie, and she just wants the suffering she bears to spread, otherwise she'd say go ahead and put your foot down.

Now, when I read your problem, what comes to mind is that your husband -- of 10 long years -- and you believe that if you put your foot down for a long weekend together that 1) you are being the "bad guy" which will allow him 2) to hold it against you which means you 3) will do the "free butterfly" thing and 4) knowing that he's not coming back to you will be frustrated and sad and feel ignored.

This does not sound happy to me. And neither does P's suggestion that you do the butterfly thing with a happy heart and adjust to his schedule. Eff that noise.

The fact is, every weekend for the next pack of months will be football time. And he apparently will choose the TV and the pigskin over you each and every time. And your anniversary comes in football season, so it's not like this is a one-time thing. If you give him all these weekends, I really don't think it's unfair for him to spend his anniversary with you without regrets, with all the joy he feels for your relationship blossoming in his heart.

You sound like a woman who has a relationship that is bordering on wife/mother to manchild. You need to reconnect as equals and adults, and badly. Your husband may want the football, but he needs his marriage. Maybe it's the impending new Great Depression that's getting me, but his football is a desire and the relationship you have between you is far, far more important, as you will need to cling to each other in the oncoming tough times.

In this sense, he can give up the bloody football for a weekend to make you feel connected and special. And maybe you should get therapy so you don't act like motherwife and manchild while you can still afford it. In the upcoming Depression, he will have to step up, and it might be easier to learn to do that when it's just a matter of giving up a football weekend for you instead of for fruit trampin'.

LW#2:

There are other people in that neighborhood, you know. Become *their* friends. Look, the Depression is coming and you will need to know how to grow and can your own vegetables, and maybe raise some chickens. Neighbors with differently-shaded yards can share different veggies. You need neighbors. My Pa says everyone pulled together in his tiny community to survive, and although it wasn't easy, the farming helped tremendously. Non-family members watching kids is bad? Eff that noise. Letting kids run wild during the school year and making them work each summer (all with non-family members) worked fine for my Pa and every other Depression-era person I've ever met.

If you are working your own land and canning your own food (can you put in some fruit trees? Apples are great) your elderly neighbors can hardly fault you for wasting your time or being methheads. Also, if you are killing chickens with a gun, they probably won't bug you anymore anyway.

LW#3:

How has he not seen your driver's license yet? This is weird. You know, since the Depression is coming, you will have to probably tell each other lots of little lies: "I thought it would be cute to have short hair," you say, while holding back tears and the $17 selling that hair got you. He'll probably pretend he's still employed as a monkey trainer, but really he's turned to copper wire theft. You'll both pose as the owners of that bank-repossessed house, and steal water from the neighbors' garden hoses in the dead of night because you have no utilities. You'll tell him you got that block of government cheese at the grocery store, but you know you went to the food bank.

In the spirit of the oncoming Depression, let him know how old you are and that this is the last lie you'll ever tell him about -- you now know that the hard times to come mean your fantasy of erasing wasted time, of being a hard-partying good-time flapper are at an end, and the new fantasy you will build is that times are not as hard as they are. That your lies will now make you a stronger couple in your fantasy and real life.

LW#4:

You "overdosed" on painkillers? Please, you didn't end up in the ER, you just wanted to go home at 2:30 a.m. Drama will not play in the upcoming Depression.

If you think partying in some place with plenty of booze, music and hot people is a trial, the upcoming Depression will not be for you. My Pa would gladly have passed the time listening to jazz and drinking moonshine with his buddies, particularly after a dental operation (which, in his time, meant pliers and no painkillers at all). I hope you enjoyed what could be your last vacation of booze and pills, considering the skyrocketing price of fuel, air travel and plummeting employment index.

It sounds like you are growing apart from your roommate, which is normal for a young person. I, too, settled down substantially the minute I turned 25. But you need to have plenty of people around you to get through hard times as per my previous letter. Find those people. Perhaps instead of boozing your way through the night, you will connect through stealing apples from LW#2's fruit trees (you would not believe how many Depression Era people I know have stolen fruit as a kid and laugh about it now, even as they want to lock up juveniles for, say, walking across their yard).

Well, this has been the Depression Edition of FMO. I hope you appreciated it, but that's not completely necessary. Because when the Depression hits, I am told you will automatically become inordinately grateful for anything and everything. Even if you are a teenager.