Velveteen Mind

Less Than Zero

We ran out of money yesterday.

Just plumb ran out.

I know my husband won't like me writing about this, but I also know how much comfort I find in reading about the non-June Cleaver-esque lives of so many other moms online.  I know that shining light on the reality of today's family is a healthy thing, albeit painful.

So, yeah, we ran out of money.  Ever happen to you?

We usually keep enough cash in our checking account to cover two months' bills, then another three months' worth holed up in an online savings account that is none too easy to access.  In addition to that, I have our checking account backed up with an overdraft plan that bleeds over to a credit card, just in case.

We'll see just how effectively that overdraft plan works now, won't we?  Man, I want to be sick.

How did this happen?  It's actually quite simple. 

We had a handful of unusual expenses this month, including paying to have the interior of our house painted.  Usually, I do that kind of thing myself, but I've never tried it with two toddlers hanging off of the ladder beneath me, so I only made it as far as the bedrooms and one bathroom before I had to hire professional help.  That professional help asked to be paid before the job was finished (I know, I know) and when he went to cash the check yesterday, the bank wouldn't honor it.

Because there was no money in the account.  Less than no money.

What the? 

I checked our account online and was surprised to see that two automatic deposits that should have posted had failed to post.  What would have cushioned our account with a reasonable amount of money had failed to appear, leaving us caught having cut it far too close this month.

And that is the point.  Not that two deposits didn't show up, but that I let us get into a situation where two deposits not showing up could leave us in the red.  Literally.  There is red color glaring at me from my account balance page.

Good grief.

So I now find myself spending my weekend readjusting our budget and reassessing our financial lives.  Hunting down all of our latte factors and fighting every tendency to reconsider our choice for me to be a stay-at-home mom, although sometimes I think I do qualify as a work-at-home mom.

Sacrifices are to be made.  The altar is being readied.  I am just doing my best to keep myself from donning the virginal white dress and being the sacrifice.

The irony is that this pinch actually feels good.

With cash in our wallets for everyday expenses having been replaced by a debit card, I think we lose sight of how much money we are spending day in and day out.  For a while now, I have been considering creating "cash envelopes" designated for specific weekly expenses, like my husband's work lunches or my all-too-frequent stops at Sonic for a Diet Coke with cranberry juice.  Or, even more effective, an envelope of a very specific amount of cash to take to the grocery store.

I can't even imagine going to the grocery store with a strict budget in mind.  Perhaps arriving at the checkout and not being able to pay for that extra box of cereal bars would open my eyes.

Therefore, I sort of welcome wake-up calls such as this.  Yes, it is painful.  It is absolutely embarrassing.  But we have made it through much worse than this and we will learn from it.  I insist on that.

But, in the meantime, this so sucks.  I am dreading opening up all of my budget files and analyzing where our money has been going.  I am fearful of the almost-certain realization that we are spending too much.  I hate admitting when I've made a mistake.  Yeah, I'm that girl.

And I've made a mistake.

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Related Posts:

I Am a Have but I Happen to Have Not

Hierarchy of Suffering.  Who wins?

 

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Blooming Marvelous Easter 2008

Ooh, where ever did you come up with such a cute idea for Easter cupcakes, Megan?
*** Why, from my Blooming Marvelous ditto sister, Annie!

I have a feeling they don't look anything like what Annie had described, but my family utterly adored them.  A new Easter staple, I am quite confident. 

Thank you to everyone who sent in Easter cupcake recipes, however, I probably should have mentioned that anything requiring more than, say, three ingredients and four steps is too much for this Domestic Dumb Bunny.  This is why Annie's recipe was spectacular:  3 ingredients and 4 steps!  She is a genius and she knows me very well.

Now, on with the rest of our quick illustrated guide to my family's Easter...

Goose says, "What?  You got a problem with my egg dipping by hand?"
Megan thinking, "Wowza!  My kid is the next Jackson Pollock!"
*** Pants doesn't do normal poses.  Crazy only, thank you.
And notice not a drop of egg dye on those 3 year old fingers.
I live the perfect illustration of the Birth Order Theory.
*** Holy Hidden Eggs, Batman!
Pants takes Easter egg hunting seriously.
*** Hey!  There ain't no candy in this egg!  What am I supposed to do with this?
Goose takes Easter egg hunting for the crock it really is.
***

Finally, a glimpse into our family on Easter night, on the jagged edge of the sugar high comedown:

Listen closely and you can hear my dad say, "You wanna see mine--  I'm gonna crazy myself into the bar and watch some Westerns."  Classic.  And, yes, my folks have a full bar in their house.  Welcome to a Mississippi Easter.

Hope you had a happy Easter, ya'll!

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Good Friday. Pure. Home.

You know how we didn't have a computer for four months, more or less?

That also meant no internet and no television.  We were in a self-imposed technological dark age.

That's how I missed this:

I don't care how hard-hearted you are, that is a beautiful thing.

And I don't care how many times you've seen it, watch it again.  For me.

Because it's a Good Friday.

~~~

I'm not a YouTube kind of girl, but I am loving watching the nominees for the YouTube Video Awards this morning.  Watch all of the nominees and then check out the winners. 

~~~

Speaking of Good Friday, I got into this YouTube-watching-timesuck because I was looking for recipes for Easter cupcakes and deviled eggs.  I have a new cake plate and carnival glass deviled egg dish I want to use, so the eats has got to be pretty.

Aah.  That dish is my grandmother.

I want to make something like this:

 

But I have a feeling that the best I'll be able to pull off will be something like this:

 

 

Any suggestions for Easter cupcakes?
What about your mama's deviled egg recipe?

Our first Easter in our new home, so it's time to warm this place up with some new family traditions.

What are your family Easter traditions?
Help me make this house a home...

 

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Death Defying Acts

Three months of silence.  More like four.  No explanations.  Just *poof* and this site went silent. 

Breaking the cardinal rule of blogging:  Thou shalt not cease to blog less your hands fall off and your toes lose their dexterity.

Tempt the gods and thou shalt lose all subscribers and BlogHer Ads will begin to ask, "Why do we advertise on a stale site that is getting less than 100 hits a day, again?"

Yet, I shook my fist at the blogging heavens and dared shout, "I need to live an inarticulate life for a minute!  Feedburner be damned!"

A death defying act for a blogger.

Yet I needed to breathe some life back into my life there.

And I needed to catch my breath because it had been knocked right out of me.

~~~

November.

After almost exactly two years of living in my parents' guest house, rebuilding our lives from the post-Katrina foundation up, we stumbled across a little house with our name on it.   By the grace of God's long finger that was Katrina insurance claims, we happened to have a savings account big enough with our name on it, as well, and decided to buy that house.

Welcome to the whirlwind.  My life is defined by the winds.

We found the house on a Saturday night, on the way home from a family pizza night in Ocean Springs, Mississippi.  A fluke, we took one street home differently, mere blocks from my parents' home.  A "For Sale" sign that couldn't have been there more than a couple of days made us stop.  With nothing more than moonlight to illuminate the house, I stepped into the backyard. 

I exhaled. 

I did not realize I had been holding my breath.

For how long had I been holding my breath?

Years.

Death defying.  Hope.

We made an offer on the house less than 24 hours later.  Two offers later and we have the house within hours of first seeing it. 

The wind howls under the eaves of our new bedroom window. 
Had I known that, I could not have negotiated so fearlessly.

Death defying.  Courage.

We need a mortgage.

Time to reopen my eBay store.  Welcome to online holiday sales hell.  Where's the coffee in this joint?

~~~

December.

Work.  Work.  Work.

The United States Post Office is my best friend and my worst enemy.

The eBay logo is beginning to make me nauseous.  However, for some reason, the eBay logo makes our mortgage company happy and we get the loan.

Time to celebrate.  My birthday is December 16.  I'm 31.  Is that right?  When did that happen?

The morning of the 16th and the boys go out to buy me a present because, hey, who knew it was my birthday?  Anxiously anticipating the glorious choices Pants and Goose are sure to make at Big Lots (holla!), I wait on the couch with a cup of coffee.  My eBay store will be closed in a couple of days so as to ensure timely holiday package delivery and I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

The light at the end of another tunnel has been extinguished.  As I wait for my gifts, my mother walks into the guest house to tell me that our friend has killed himself only hours before.

Death defying.  No, not after all.

A friend.  A brother.  A son.  A father to a son only months older than Pants.

When I was pregnant with Pants, we used to visit from New Orleans and our friend used to bring his baby boy over so that I could just hold a baby, damn it!  The patience of a pregnant first time mother is thin when it comes to touching the soft reward of baby skin.

Now that baby boy has lost his father.  His mother has been absent for years, more or less.  The family asks if I will keep that baby boy while they try to make sense of this sudden void.

He is three.  He does not know nor understand.

So we play.  What else can we do?

Death defying.  Faith.

I fear every day that he will ask about his dad.  Every time Pants or Goose talk about their own dad, my stomach drops and I look at this baby boy whose father let me hold him, horde him, while I waited for my own baby boy.  While I felt my own growing boy kick this loving young father's son as he squashed my straining belly under his delicious baby weight.

Death defying.  Love.

The weeks pass.  The computer falls away, literally and figuratively. 

~~~

January.

We are home. 

That baby boy, that father's son, is gone now.  His mother has whisked him away.  Justice must be blind, after all.

I inhale my own life.  And the days pass.

Death defying.  Fortitude.

~~~

February.

No television.  No internet.

Words that have not crossed my mind in months:

Stats.
Feed count.
Technorati.
Social networking.
Rank.
Meme.
Google.
Links.
Incoming.

Death defying.  Silence.

~~~

March.

Life is green. 

The soles of my sons' feet are dirty.  Their faces are smeared.   Their smiles are clear.

There are birds in our yard.  We welcome them, feed them, beg them to fear not.  We will provide.

I turn the computer back on.  But only for a moment.  My priorities are different.  My needs are different.   My goals are different.

Yet I can't help but notice that there are birds of a different feather in my computer.  Looking.  Pecking at the piles of debris.  Wondering if anyone lives here now, after all this time.  If anyone will provide.

I am home again.  I will provide. 

But life is green.  And I have lavender, rosemary, ivy, and a Bottlebrush tree to plant today.   

Death defying.  Life.

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A Charmed Life

For the last two years or so, I have allowed myself to openly want very few things.  I haven't dared hope for much more than what is vital.

I hoped for Goose to be a healthy birth.

I wanted Maguire to pass the BAR.

That, my friends, is pretty much it.

More than two years of devastating disappointments made me create a fairly thick skin, warted with skepticism and cautiousness.

Tonight I have a red, raw spot on my calloused hide:  I want us to get this house.  I am hoping that we will get this mortgage.

I am praying for this home.

It's time.

As I sit here tonight, I have dotted all of my i's and crossed all of my t's.  There is nothing left to do but wait.  It is officially out of my hands.  And it is killing me.

So...  I have been shopping.

All of this stress is making it difficult for me to concentrate on anything.  At all.  I can't seem to focus on the present, let alone even a day or two in our future, so my mind has been wandering to the past.  Specifically, to the 1980's of my childhood.

My distraction of choice:  1980's Charm Clips plastic charm necklaces!  Oh, how I adored these when I was little.  I would give anything to just hold one of these necklaces again.

As it turns out, I would give approximately $40.

Look what I won on eBay!

I have spent hours this weekend browsing these little plastic clip charms on eBay.  It isn't helpful that the venue in which I make my money is also my favorite place to spend it.  Distractions, distractions everywhere!  Every hour or so, I find myself thinking, "Ooh, maybe more charms have been listed by slacker kids of the 80's trying to earn money for Christmas by selling out their childhood treasures!"

How many of you had these charm necklaces when you were little?  They were an obsession!  Along with stickers and designer pencils, I was just a little collection freak.   My eyes were always peeled for a new puffy or sparkly sticker (ooh, a sparkly puffy sticker!) or a new pencil with some fantastical eraser or charm hanging off the end.

But, oh, these charms.  You couldn't have enough.

My favorites?  The frying pan with the egg in it and the abacus.  Why, I have no idea, because I neither cook nor do math.

I don't even want to try to remember what these things used to cost , because they are currently running me approximately $1 each.  And, as with all of my little obsessions, I'll end up buying way more than I could ever use and then turn around and have to sell it on eBay myself. 

Of course, I'll make it look utterly hip in my own listings and possibly spin out a profit in the end, in which case...

Long live the nostalgic obsessions of the hopelessly distracted hopeful homeless!  Mamma needs a brand new refrigerator!

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