February « 2009 « American Family

Two years

Two years ago today, we met a very scared little girl for the first time.

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(Doesn’t she look like she is screaming “Who the hell is this woman? I want to go home!”)

L was once the girl who cried the most in the entire orphanage and the girl who could not bear to be more than 5 feet away from me without her whole world shattering into a billion pieces.

A short two years later, she is a girl who marches out into the world confident and fearless and never seems to doubt that we will be loving and watching over her. She is a girl who grabs life with both hands and an infectious laugh.

I can’t imagine this family without her.

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Money Mantra

We are wrapping up our two-month shopping hiatus.

Unlike the first one or the second one, this time not shopping hasn’t been painful at all. Off hand, I can only think of two purchases that could be considered cheating: a new purse ($28 canvas to replace the H&M manbag I stole from Mr. A back in Aug 2004 which was holey, and the third Twilight book because it was my birthday and I wanted to read it, dammit. I did not not want to wait until the library reached my request 465 people from now). I think we did go out to one sushi dinner which was a bit over our $50 weekly restaurant budget too.

I have totally gotten out of the groove of shopping. When I read this article in the NY times, I started to worry that my thriftyness was singlehandedly going to lead the US down the road to economic misery. I have to wonder though, if more people had only bought what they could afford, maybe we wouldn’t be in this mess right now.

Thoughts of money are never really far away for me. Last week, ThatPatti and I were talking about our finances. Without sharing too much of her personal information, we live in the same neighborhood, stay home with our kids, are in similar financial circumstances and share a lot of the same financial goals. We spent an entire playdate talking about Dave Ramsey and Suze Orman.

Patti and I talked about trying to live within our means. While we both like where we live, we don’t have big fancy houses. We don’t have lots of new furniture, new cars or closets full of designer clothes. We don’t have that stuff and for the most part, I am happy with the things I do have. I will be just has happy driving a used minivan that will cost $8,500 as I would be driving a new one that cost $30,ooo. (If we ever manage to buy a minivan that is. Still no progress on that front.)

It just becomes frustrating when I compare our stuff to stuff other people seem to have. I am working on learning to ignore other people’s stuff, but it isn’t easy. Maybe they have tons of credit card debt and car loans. Maybe they don’t have $78,000 of student loans (only 1/2 of what we originally owed!) and a stupid HELOC (from the dumb, dumb, dumb 80/10/10 mortgage) like we do. Maybe it is none of my business and I should just keep my eyes on my own plate.

Right now, I need to put my eyes on keeping our own financial house in order.

Our short term goal is to pay off the HELOC in one year. We are designating all our tax return* and all the money we save by sticking to our monthly budget to it. When we pay it off, we are going to reward ourselves by taking the next two month’s payments and visiting our friends in San Francisco. Then we will roll all that monthly payment money over and start doubling down on the school loans. I am hopeful we can be debt-free (except for a mortgage) in 5 years**.

I know I keep coming back to the topic of money, but writing it down is like a meditation on staying the course. I am shouting my goals to the universe:

We will be debt free.
We will live within our means.
We will have financial security.
We do not need more stuff.
We have what we need.
What we have is enough.***

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*Except for $500 for an overnight weekend away from the kids because we haven’t been anywhere alone in over 2 years. While I hate to spend the money, it is an investment in our relationship.

**Please don’t send me email about not paying off our school loans early. I know the interest rates are low, but living with debt makes me crazy. It isn’t worth a couple thousand dollars in accrued interest to live like that for the next 20 years. Mr. A and I have studied it and agree on getting rid of the debt asap.

***And while we are at it, let’s all humor me the next time I start fantasizing about a new house for the 10,000th time. A girl is allowed to have a fantasy, right? Yeah, I know. I still have work to do to really live those goals.

Your 6 year old: Crafty but still Cute

Today, M mentioned in passing that she didn’t have reading. (She goes to another classroom for language arts.) This happens pretty frequently, whenever the other class has standardized testing or special projects etc.

But this time, M let it slip that she didn’t go directly back to her kindergarten class when she found out there was no reading group. She said, “I didn’t want to go back to Mrs. H’s class because I thought she would be mad that Mrs. M didn’t teach me reading today, so I walked around the hall until I thought reading time was supposed to be over.”

Under further interrogation, it appears that M entertained herself in the school hallways for an undetermined length of time by reading the bulletin boards, walking back and forth, etc.

Discovering this level of cutting class and hooliganism in kindergarten, I could see her future spread out before me: cutting class to neck in the auditorium in Jr. High and skipping school to make out under the bleachers in high school. (Oh wait, both of those were me!) Intent on foiling her deviant schemes, this evening I emailed both teachers to let them know what M was up to.

When her reading teacher emailed me back, I learned for the first time that M has had homework in that class since Xmas break. She was supposed to bring her reading books home for us to read together and discuss. M brought the books home and read them herself (I think), but never told us we were supposed to be working on them together. She never had homework in her kindergarten class, so it didn’t occur to me she had reading homework. Apparently, she told her reading teacher I was too busy to read them with her. (WTFity F??)

The 6 year old is a little to big for her britches, I think. She thinks she is getting away with something. Little does she know, I am on to her now. I am scheduling a conference with both her teachers and we will be nipping these shenanigans in the bud.

The other side of the six year old coin is that M can be utterly adorable. For her birthday, she got a Top Secret Personal Beeswax Junie B. Jones Journal. Technically, I am not supposed to read it, but I couldn’t help myself.

In a section on changing names (Did you ever wish you had a different name? What if you could change EVERYONE’s name?), she renamed me Chloee and her imaginary fish Mr. Cool. She listed Fisher as her best friend. Under Fisher’s brand new name, she wrote: “thats prfekt alreddey.”

In the “If I Were the Boss at My House”, she wrote:

-I would play outside when I feel like it.

-I would stay up really late ’cause Mommy and Daddy never let me stay up late.

-I’d control the world.

She has big dreams, that girl. She is crafty, but still cute.

simmering under the surface

Mr. A and I have been together for a long time. Long enough to know that there will be times in this relationship where we are out of sync. Even though most things in our lives are going very well, recently things have been kind of yucky between us. There haven’t been many big fights, but we have been rubbing each other the wrong and bickering more than usual.

Last night, a minor disagreement and a flip comment by Mr. A led to a much more important discussion of what has been simmering under the surface. Back during the great job discussion of 2008, Mr. A made a statement in passing that really hurt my feelings. I know he didn’t really mean for it to hurt me, but it did. I also didn’t realize that it has been bothering me for a couple months until we cleared the air last night.

We hashed it out, I cried a little and Mr. A admitted he was a jerk. I feel a lot better. Maybe things aren’t 100% back to where we were before, but I am hopeful that we are moving in the right direction.

I was thinking about our marriage and how important the commitment to our family is for both of us. Sometimes we get a little off kilter, but we wait it out and work on it until we find ourselves in a more comfortable rhythm again. It isn’t always easy. Sometimes we get hurt or our relationship gets kicked around and bruised, but so far we have always been able to find each other again.

We are lucky that way.

Car Shopping w/ Mr. A.

My day car (minvan) shopping with Mr. A:

1.) Locate available minivan that meets my critera (power locks, power seat, gold or silver to hide dirt). Round up kids and Mr. A to go see it at the dealership.

2.) Two miles from home. Have an argument with Mr. A over turning around to get the checkbook. Mr. A claims we can pay the deposit with credit card until we transfer the money to the checking account tomorrow. I find this claim to be somewhat suspect. Eventually, we turn around after each of us say “Fine, let’s just stay home then. I don’t care if we buy a car today!”

3.) Back on the road again, Mr. A claims my insistence on the checkbook indicates I am going to be over-eager at the dealership. He thinks I am going to fall in love and demand we buy it, thus ruining his negotiating plan. I roll my eyes. I don’t care about cars, I just want to make sure this model is bearable and I can see over the dashboard (I am quite short).

4.) We get to the dealer and see the car. I think it looks ok. Mr. A starts swooning over collapsible hidden seats and storage space. (!!?!) He is practically jumping up and down clapping his hands. “Oooh, look at this! Look at that! Isn’t this cool!?!” I am a little concerned about a tiny spot of rust and demonstrate no excitement.

5.) While I test drive, Mr. A sucks up to the salesman and apparently tells him our entire life story. Including the fact that we currently only have one car and really need another very soon. M declares her love for the new car and demands to ride in it and take it home. While Mr. A test drives, I ask where we can find lunch in the little town. I have no questions about the car.

6.) Mr. A tells him we need to think about it. We go get lunch.

7.) As we are driving back home, the salesman calls and offers free DVD player installation and also to fix the rust, if we take it for the asking price (which was a pretty good deal).

8.) We knew the asking price was a good deal and figure they might knock a couple hundred more off, so I tell Mr. A to pull into the dealer (we were right in front when he called) and buy it. Mr. A wants to “think about it and make them think we aren’t interested.”

9.) Finally, after a work obligation, Mr. A calls them at 7:00 pm. The car is already sold. I guess they thought we weren’t interested. Mr. A’s plan worked a little too well.

Two years

Money Mantra

Your 6 year old: Crafty but still Cute

simmering under the surface

Car Shopping w/ Mr. A.

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