Nov

13

Pain, Cleaning and Money - Or - The Many Joys of My Life (Not)

November 13, 2006 |

The fog of pain lifted last night around 5pm. Just in time for my husband to call and say that weather had cut their hunting trip short and they were coming home Monday (today!). Fade out on the look of horror on my face when considering the state of cleanliness (or lack thereof) that the house was in and the fact that I had to work all day Monday.

Fade back in and it’s midnight and I’m just finishing up the cleaning and laundry I didn’t do all weekend because I felt so lousy. So I get 5 hours of sleep and today I feel tired and sore. But the house is presentable. Not clean, but good enough.

Then on my limited sleep I find that my husband apparently raided my daughters juice box stash and took all of them to camp. All of them. It’s 6am, she leaves for school in an hour and there’s nothing to pack in her lunch for a drink. *sigh* So I add a milk on to her school lunch envelope and then have to explain it to her and cringe over the response. You see my daughter is a creature of habit, a slave to her routines, organized and orderly, and other peoples inability to respect this freaks her out completely.

So today I have to go out on my lunch hour and buy new juice boxes. I hate having to make the little extra trips throughout the week. They always end up costing more than just the one or two items because of all the other things you think of that you need. And we are dead broke this week.

I’ve been trying to catch up bills and it seems like we keep getting farther and farther behind no matter what I do. I’ve tried budgeting but I seem to be the only person committed to the program. My husband doesn’t spend a lot of money often but when he wants money, he demands as much as he needs under the premise of its justified because it doesn’t happen often. It doesn’t matter what bills or food etc. I need money for that week, if he wants to go to camp then he will take as much as he feels he needs to bankroll his trip without a care in the world.

I’m so tired of living poor. I don’t want luxury and extravagance. I just want to be able to pay the bills every month and have some money left over to put into savings to protect against those money draining emergencies that seem to happen to us with freakish regularity. I want to go to a cash system so my husband gets the concept of taking extra money for himself one week takes it away from somewhere else. It’s like he thinks that the supply is unlimited. And we keep getting in a little deeper and a little deeper. The problem with a cash system is that if he were to cash his paycheck each week, I wouldn’t see all of it even if I explained to him that we would be getting money back out of it. I just need the total of the 2 and then to disburse to all of our bill categories. But he refuses to believe that it’s anything other than punishment. So I end up being the one punished - with bad credit, headaches, worry and lack of sleep. Ah the joys of being a member of the quickly disappearing middle class.


Comments

2 Comments so far

  1. mrs. diamond on November 13, 2006 5:40 pm

    awww….i feel your headaches.

  2. Amy on November 14, 2006 12:18 pm

    yep financially you and me both, we have huge debts and bills to pay and even though I loathe having to work full time it seems to be the only way we can manage. I sympathise with you Jules..

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