Judecorp.

I am getting a new computer for the first time in many many years. It will be shipping soon. So exciting! I got an iPod Touch for Christmas and haven't been able to put any music on it because my old iBook can't run a new enough version of iTunes to sync up. Whoops. So it was time.

Financially, it was more prudent to leave the world of Mac for a while, although I am super sad to do it. I feel like I am cheating, ha. But this way I can get a bunch of software from Jen and can have Photoshop again, hooray!

I got one of those Dell Inspiron thingies that you can get in different colors, because I got in my head that I needed a smurfy blue computer. Of course. Of course.

My tax return - which was pretty significant thanks to Senor Cupcakey - is completely and totally gone now. Man, that was quick. Paid off both credit cards, got our heating system in the house fixed (it didn't have cold air returns, stupid prior owners), and now a new computer. Ch-ching!

Jen's should be coming soon, and is earmarked for getting the crack in the living room ceiling fixed, putting some away for the summer when I'm not working, a couple of flight vouchers to go to SC in the summer, and potentially paying off the rest of my car loan to get a jump start on replacing Jen's car. I was rallying for a Mazda5 but Jen thinks if we're going to "go minivan," we should go big or go home. So we might be getting a regular minivan and be a minivan family. EEEEEEEK.

Tell me your minivan stories and advice, please.

Being a grown-up is way less glamorous than I thought it would be. Whodathunk that spending all of that money could be so PRACTICAL and BORING?

p.s. Name my new computer

I feel like all of my best laid plans are a total waste these days. I suppose it is enhanced by today's work experience.

I put our queen-size guest bed up on freecycle last week in an effort to get it out of our house. It was thatpatti's bed way back (thanks, Patti!) and it has served us well... we just need to ditch the guest room. So anyway, I had a taker that swore they were coming to pick up the bed yesterday at 1:00. And of course, they didn't come. At all. All day. Didn't call, e-mail, anything. Nada. So I sat around for nothing. And the bed's not gone. And I can't do the big furniture move until it's gone. Bleh.

Today was my first day of the "doing intakes in the office" thing at work. I had four offered intake times and all four were filled. Score! First my 9:00 cancelled, then my 10:00. At 11:10, I called my 11:00 and she had forgotten and was at the grocery store. Then my 1:00 cancelled. Are you effing kidding me? I left work around 11:20 and drove home to eat lunch. Today's paycheck - $0. Today's potential paycheck - $175. OUCH.

It just feels like I'm sitting here spinning my wheels in the mud. I have this intense urge to nest and plan, but can't get rid of the bed, can't move the guest room furniture to the basement (we need someone to help and I don't have anyone), so can't move the baby furniture out of Punk's room, so can't assemble Punk's furniture, can't get the baby clothes out of boxes and put them in drawers, can't steam clean the rug, etc. etc. Get up and get ready to go to work, prepare for work, pack lunch for work, and then... do no work. It's such a waste.

I am so freaking frustrated. And broke.

I don't think the Montessori school is going to let us out of our contract for the school year. I am to write a formal letter asking to be released and then the Head of School will decide if she will "take it to committee" for a vote. Who knows how long that will take? It is already August 11th. I need to contact the other school to let them know if she is coming, but how can I do that when I don't know if they will let me out of the contract?

The Montessori school already has almost $6k of our money. We can't afford to just let them keep it. We can't afford to hire someone to watch Punk for those extra days. We can't afford the after-care program there. We just can't.

And they don't care. Because they don't have all of their slots filled.

I just made a meatloaf. Me! A meatloaf. My girls are at the store fetching cat litter and god knows what else (they have been gone a while) which has given me enough time to craft a meatloaf. Not sure if it will be done in time for Punk to eat dinner but I gave it the old college try.

This weekend has been positively gorgeous and I hope the beautiful weather continues. It is a true taste of spring and I know that in typical New England fashion, winter will return with a vengeance before we are done with it, but for now I will enjoy it. This morning we didn't go to church since Jen was sick in bed, so Punk and I went to an elementary school that has a really nice playground and we had a great time for about an hour. That playground gets a lot of sun so it was snow-free (unlike my backyard) and since it is covered in wood chips, it was pretty dry. Ideal conditions, really. Towards the end, Punk befriended a 3.5 year old named Zoe and the two happily made "cakes" together out of mulch and sand. I really really love watching Punk play with other kids. It was adorable when I told her to go ask the girl if she could play with her and she said, "Can I come and make some cakes with you?" I almost died.

I need to do about 347984379843 loads of laundry tonight and at some point I really need to get off my arse and do the taxes so we can get some money back. At least I got some time to pay the bills online this afternoon because Punk actually took an hour nap. I had to practically hold her down while she screamed at me, but by golly, the kid napped!

(I should have napped, too.)

I paid off my student loan tonight.

Wahoo!

(It just seemed silly not to, it was so low.)

I'm sure it's a surprise to NO ONE that I am ridiculously anal about the checkbook. Basically, I mean that the checkbook balance has to agree with the statement balance, and if it does not, I will not rest until I find out the discrepancy. It's a sickness, I am more than willing to admit, but at the same time, since we don't have a lot of extra money to spare, it has certainly kept us within our budget most of the time. So I tell myself that my sickness has benefits! HA!

Anyway, I recently was looking at our account online (which I don't do frequently, to be honest, because I keep my flawless paper records) and I saw that our balance was a lot lower than I thought it would be. And by "a lot" I really mean about $300. We're not in a situation (thank God) where $300 is make-or-break but we're certainly in a situation where it is very noticeable. Anyway, it's been bothering me, so I have spent Punk's nap time paying a bunch of bills online and balancing the ol' checkbook.

The $300 is accounted for and everything is now sorted out to the penny, and I feel lighter. I'm sure I could take some pills for this, but really, what's the fun in that when I can do MATH instead? Mmmmm.

I guess I will soon have a lot of time on my hands to get my house in order. Spring cleaning and all of that. I suppose that's good, except for the paycheck part. I wonder if they are going to buy out the rest of my time. That would be nice. A girl can dream.

I am going to send Punk to day care for the most part and just try to get things in order. I want to finally hang the blinds in the spare bedroom and the dining room. (We have them, they are just not up.) I want to really scrub the floors and vacuum the carpets. I want to clean up the yard. We were going to use our tax refund to get a bunch of stuff done in the yard (sod, seed, whatever it takes, and clean up the landscaping) but who knows if that is going to be able to happen. I suppose it depends how quickly I get a job. I know I /will/ get a job, even though the pessimistic, fatalistic part of myself says that I will never get a job again. I am not going to let this job ruin me.

I am saddest about not being able to transition out my clients. Most of them know I am leaving, because I started telling them when I gave notice. But there are a couple I haven't seen in person (and therefore haven't told). Who knows what they are going to think? Who knows what they are going to be told? Sigh sigh sigh.

I need to take a little inventory about what foods we have in the house because I'm guessing it would not be a bad idea to stretch out the groceries a bit. Maybe we'll be eating some creative meals. We'll have to chill on the eating out. Thankfully I already have a good amount of a spring wardrobe for Punk (and some summer).

We refinanced our house yesterday. Not much different, but a little lower. Every little bit helps, you know? Thank goodness we closed on the refi yesterday, because it meant that the mortgage company did my employment verification on Thursday. Thank goodness. And I had to close our home equity line with the old mortgage company, and they had a $200 Visa gift card buyout. Thank goodness for that, too. And extra thanks to my mortgage guy who not only did some yard clean up with us yesterday (ILY, Jeff!) but also gave us a BRU gift card as a thank you. That will buy us some day care diapers, which is good.

Time to tighten the purse strings and hope for a decent job with a decent salary soon.

I hate money.

I am sitting her going over and over how to afford to take all of us to keelamonster's wedding. I found great flights. But then thinking about how to afford a hotel and food on top of that is making my head hurt.

Maybe tomorrow the flights will be sold out and it will all be a non-issue. Feh.

Ugh, I wish I was independently wealthy and could just stay home with my kid.

I spoke to a woman today about her add on CL. She is a homeschooling mom who is looking to do child care. She has two children (9 and 4) and takes them to various homeschooling groups and activities (museum, theatre class, etc.). She is super crunchy and eats healthy food and does not watch TV for the most part. She sounds very invested in her kids.

She also would want $100/week more than we're currently paying. It's a lot of money, but it also mostly one-on-one care. No other kids. No schedules. Lots of crunch.

I am meeting with her in person on Friday. I can't believe I am considering a nanny situation. I can't believe we could possibly be spending that kind of money. Ugh.

This past week has been a blur. Punk hasn't been sleeping well and we're not sure of the cause. It's one of those things where you have to wait until it's over to tell - is she going to pop a tooth (she has several just waiting to burst)? is she going to get sick (I bring home germs all the time)? is it some hot development action (she's really starting to think about walking)? I guess we'll know when A, B, or C happens. Either way, she went from going down easily at 7 and not making a peep until 4am at a minimum to going down easily at 7 and crying somewhere around 10pm and absolutely refusing to sleep alone, being totally restless in the bed (lots of flipping and flopping and kicking and waking up), and waking up hellishly early. Going to work has been HARD.

And then yesterday I had the day from hell which involved waiting for the Ver.izon people to install the phone and DSL and the Direc.TV people to install the TV (switched bundles from the cable to the phone company to save money), finding out the TV people would be late which means I missed my appointment for blood work, finding out when the TV People finally came that we can't get dish TV because our trees are too high, making a million calls to figure out how to still save money since the phone/internet got switched but the TV didn't, going to the most useless doctor appointment ever, getting a call from my boss with really annoying news, getting a call from the lawyer about the adoption that now, after all of this time, they realized that they need a copy of my divorce decree from 2002, and on and on and on. It was just a major comedy of errors, but without the comedy.

As for the doctor appointment, I went in to the doc three weeks ago for a physical and they were running so far behind that after waiting for over an hour, I stayed with the doc for five minutes and told her I had to go to work. So she said I could come back in really soon to finish up, only "really soon" meant three weeks (and I had to fight for that, originally they gave me an appointment 5 weeks out). We were supposed to talk about getting back on metformin and I told her I wanted to talk about depression stuff, and that was why she said I would get an appointment right away. Well I showed up yesterday and not only did I not get a prescription for metformin (because she wants me to do a freaking fasting GTT first - WTF?), she forgot that I came in for depression. I even asked her, "So, is there anything else to talk about?" because frankly I didn't have the energy to bring it up again after the bad day and HELLO - something to document, you know? And she said, "No, I don't think so, that's all I had except for you to get a pelvic ultrasound which you declined." (She seems hellbent on my "proving" my PCOS diagnosis.) So I left with nothing but a lab slip that I could have picked up without waiting three weeks for an appointment. I'm trying to decide if I want to send the practice a letter saying, "Hey, I came into my physical wanting to talk about depression and PPD and stuff and I was left to wait in an exam room for so long that I had to leave for work, and nothing was documented even though I filled out one of those "current health" survey things and even mentioned it at the appointment, and I was told I could get in right away so we could talk about the depression but in actuality I had to wait 3 weeks to get back in and by the time I got there, she had forgotten about my depression and just wanted me to get a fasting GTT which I will need to find child care for." Or maybe I just won't even bother. I mean, that's the nature of depression, right?

Argh.