<sup>"Hope for the best and plan for the worst! I hate to say things like that because they’re overly cliché, but what can you do? I’m sure that she’ll call you or just come home soon! I’ll let you get back to your plumbing problem now." 

Janine hung up the phone without waiting on a response. Sometimes I had to remind myself that she was still just a kid, even though she was really mature for her age, and she acted older in a lot of ways, there was still a someone just past being a teenager trying to grow up and be a full fledged adult in there. I wanted to tell her, frequently, to stop rushing it, but I knew that she would figure it out just like I had, and probably when it was too late. 

We filled in the role of big brother and sister to her, I guess, and that was fine with me. We really enjoyed Janine's company, and they'd get into (and out of) plenty of trouble together while I would wander around the city trying halfheartedly to shop out both of my novels and the one five song demo I recorded a few years back when I was going through my “delusions of being a rock star” phase. I knew that it didn’t really matter if I got signed to a label or found a publisher, my settlement checks from the divorce were the one good thing that came out of my past, and in periods when I worked, I even managed to save a pretty significant amount of money up in various bond accounts and investment packages. I got lucky a couple of times with some pretty big stock trades, even luckier on a few sports bets (just before I pulled out all my funds for more secure investments), and the money I'd invested into IRAs was drawing a satisfactory interest rate that compiled monthly. I worked because I was bored, or because I was hiding from the memories, or because I liked to punish myself with pointless low paying and degrading jobs with glass ceilings that no one was apparently aware of but me. I learned to hate cubicles before that, even, but that was a long time ago when I was living somewhere else, when I was a totally different person.</sup>

^{:lack of foresight}