Well, I just received THE phone call I've been waiting for for 4 years. Honestly, the one I've been waiting for since I married my wife almost 8 years ago. I got THE job.

It's exactly what I've been doing for the past 5 years, designing cell phone sites (those big antenna towers you see everywhere). I work from my cozy home here in Houston for companies all over the USA. The problem with that is that during the "down time", when work is slow coming in at the change of each quarter, my wife and I slowly deplete our savings account. Plus, there's no insurance, little to show a bank other than a list of client references... and when you've got three kids, you see the doctor and the banker more often than you care to.

My biggest client, that I've been working with for several years, decided to hire me. They had mentioned it last month, but I didn't honestly expect too much from it. I live by the motto "Keep your goals high, your expectations low." But they did call tonight with an offer, and it exceeded my goals by a longshot!

As of Jan.1st, we'll have full insurance. Complete insurance, paid for by the company. I'll be making a little more than what I have been making on my own and I'll get bonuses every 6 months (they have always been generous with their bonuses, which theyve sent me over the years even though Ive only been a sub-contractor). Oh, to sweeten the deal, they're starting me off with another bonus, just "because were glad to have (me) you".

So Christmas came early for us this year by a few weeks.

And here's the lesson in all of this: things always get better. They really do. Especially if you value your wife. Don't believe me? Then take a walk down memory lane with me and I'll touch on how my wife and I got here.

When I met my wife, I lived in a closet and she was married to someone else. It's not that I was a complete loser, I had just given up all hope. I had left college at an early age to start my own business. It was successful for a year or so, until I sold it off (at a profit) and opened another business in a sweet spot in downtown Houston. Finding property at the corner of Westheimer & Montrose was a sweet deal, and the business ran successfully for another year... until I caught the interest of Aryan Brotherhood. Think they're made up for prison movies? They aren't. I have no idea how I came to their attention, but after several threats on my life, my car mysteriously being stolen and torn down twice (with cute little messages on it letting me know who was responsible), I eventually sold the business to them. There was a gun on the table when I signed the contract, and it wasnt mine. Sounds far fetched? I swear to God its true.

My parents didnt know about this. They had no idea what I was dealing with. I had nowhere to turn, and having pretty much lost everything (you dont make much money selling business's to organized crime groups), I gave up. What was the point? The more a person made of themselves, it seemed the more people would tear you down. To this day, I'm not overly talkative to people I dont know, and I think I still hold some anger inside because of this. But thats for another time.

Then I met my wife. She'd been kicked out of her house because her husband didn't want a baby, but she refused to have an abortion. I honestly was attracted to her, but wanted nothing to do with a pregnant married woman having emotional problems. But fate would take us in another direction, and somehow we ended up married years later, I adopted her unwanted, fatherless son (who has only known me as a father), and we struggled. Alot.

Quitting college hurt me. It was almost impossible to get a job making the kind of money we needed for a family without a degree. She waited tables pregnant, I looked for work. It didn't help that my interest lay with computers, but all I could find was manual labor.

Time passed, things got better. My wife didn't explode when she had the twins (she looked like she might). But I think it took her a year to stop crying from the news she was having twins. 5 people in a family? How would we ever cope? Eventually I did a favor for a friend, got a job in the telecomm industry, and found out I was really good at bossing engineers around. Smart guys. Little common sense. An engineer will always overlook the easiest method of doing a thing, making it overly and often times unecessarily complex.

After 09/11, the bottom dropped out from under the telecomm industry. Projects stopped cold. Sometimes for years. So I came home. Keeping my connections, picking up work wherever I could find it and mailing it out, I eventually became a certified sub-contractor. Heather worked long hours as a manager for Wal*Mart (a real manager, not one of those kids with a badge and no teeth. She ran entire stores for them. My wifes smart like that.) After 16 hour days, she'd come home from running around all day and I'd ask her why she wouldnt quit, why shouldnt I find a job working in an office again, and she'd look at me and say "Because I believe in you, you can make this work." And because of her belief, it did. That belief made me work longer, harder and to give my clients everything they could possibly desire.

So here we are. Remind me to tell you the story about when the car was stolen and we had no way to get to the store. Or the time our brand new car blew up 160 miles outside of Houston. Or the time one of my employeers decided not to pay anyone in the company because he was being audited for tax evasion. So many times we couldnt see the light at the end of the tunnel. But we had faith in each other, we had goals, and we looked everywhere we could for the good things in life. Here's to another 8 years. I can't wait for them!

And maybe this time around, we wont have to eat Ramon noodles...