But Very Squishy in the Middle
Well, the movers will be here in a couple of hours – 2 or 3, I guess. I don’t know whether they’re planning on 8 or 9. I hope 9:00 but I really have no clue. The cable guy will be here between 1:00 and 3:00 and it’s bye bye internet until Friday morning. But, if my master plan executes correctly, I’ll be on my way to the racetrack on Friday so you may languish for a week with no blog entry. Hopefully you’ll hang in there.
I’ll drop by and update if I can. Peace out.
Had I written this blog two days ago, the eventual tone of the note would have been quite different. Things were dark and looking for the silver lining in all the clouds was more than I was able to manage. Two days ago I was in Wisconsin (having delivered the dogs and kids to my mom’s house) looking at the place that will be our next home. I had had a couple of nice interviews on Tuesday and went to La Crosse to purchase a washer and dryer at Home Depot because the only way I could buy the damn things was to put it on a credit card. Financially, we’re exhausted. In fact, after getting a $1300 repair bill for the truck in the queue, exhausted is an understatement. We’ve repaired our roof – $3650, fronted Ogre the cash for his rent and to re-pay the loan his roommate made to him for his security deposit – $650 plus $250 to fix HIS car and the truck repair was the icing on a big old slice of shit cake. Were it not for the ability to draw advance pay because we’re PCS’ing, we’d be completely done for. Completely.
I’ve spent the last two weeks – ironically since Mother’s Day – trying to impress upon Ogre the importance of working and how much it sucks to be broke. He needs a job. He knows he needs a job, but he hates job hunting and doesn’t have the all-encompassing fire I remember having in my 20′s to make as much money as he can. I remember always looking for a bigger paycheck, you know? We fought tooth and nail about everything for two weeks; two, long, solid weeks. It was hell. I’ve decided that I need to just let go. I have given him the rope and he will either use it to make a ladder and pull himself up or he will hang himself by being so financially over his head he can’t possibly get out. He’s accepted a job offer and has some idea of how hard he has to work to cover his other costs. I am hoping for the best. It’s all I can do. I think he’s starting to get it and I hope he gets an offer from UPS as well. He’s said he’d do both jobs and I think that is necessary.
In a nutshell, he is my son. I love him so much it hurts. Sometimes he disturbingly shows many of his idiot-father’s undesirable traits and that drives me even more crazy. I had to tell Shrek that the bank is closed. He will now need to sink or swim. It’s his lease and his lease is his problem – not mine.
If you asked me what I like least about being a parent – that situation would be it.
In other news (or as if that wasn’t enough), we had a complete houseful of guests. I’ve got nothing against chaos, mind you, but WHEW! When you normally have two little boys, one very quiet teenager and their cantankerous parents, a graduation party really ups the activity level. And, of course, plumbing problems resulting in an emergency visit from Roto-rooter (my disposal doesn’t like chicken! Who knew?) at the same time the damage assessment is still being provided on the damn truck makes it hard to appear calm, cool and collected, know what I mean?
Me: “Yeah, the plumber’s here. It’ll be about $180.”
Sarge: “Well, the truck needs a new Universal Joint and a new rear-end (axle?). It’ll be about a thousand.” (The estimate increased a couple days later because of some spring?)
Me: “Fuck. Goddamnmotherfuckingsonofabitch. I mean, no worries honey. We’ll be fine.”
I wish the week had been better. The visitors would have been a lot of fun if I hadn’t been broke. Now that they’re gone I can confess that I didn’t go to Meijer Garden with them to save the cost of my ticket and Anatoly’s. Yes. It is that bad. I tried very hard to enjoy the visit but was, truthfully, wracked with guilt and money stress the entire damn time. But, if you visited, thank you for coming and I hope you can come again ( even the one from Canadialand 
).
The worst best part of the whole graduation thing was, as always, the ex- and ex-in-laws. That kicked the stress level up to “Phazers on Kill” if you know what I mean. It’s always just kind of weird. I’m kind of proud of myself and especially Sarge for doing it, but man it brings up unpleasant memories.
Graduation went fine – I had no control over it so it couldn’t get fucked up. Know what I mean? The Queen is our family’s first honor graduate and I am very proud of her. She was a bit let down because she was within .5 points on her GPA of the Cum Laude designation and the pretty silver stole, but the white was hard earned and she’s amazing. Now she’s in Houston participating in all sorts of debauchery. She’s earned it and I’m not even there so I don’t have to look the other way when Tim and Mikey corrupt her despite Sarah’s best efforts. Tal (you know Tal? She’s a reader ), I’m sure is too busy laughing to intervene on my behalf but she will tell me the stories later or else I’m sure.
Spinning… spinning….
The worst part is the feeling that time went so very, very fast and so many things just went wrong! I feel like I went on a cross-country trip in a Top Fuel Dragster with no brakes. For the drag racing haters uninitiated, Top Fuel Dragsters hit a speed of 350 MPH in about 330 feet.
The other day, I told Sarge that I felt like I had hit rock bottom emotionally and financially about three months ago and now it was feeling like some asshole was underneath the floor sawing a hole to drop me even further in. The house we’ll be living in in Tomah didn’t meet my expectations. I am hoping that because the cleaning crew hadn’t been in it yet when I toured it looks better now, but not optimistic. The master bedroom is very small – not likely to hold our furniture. The kitchen is very, very small – but this is typical of those houses. Worst – the woodwork is nasty. I hope the cleaning crew was able to fix it up but if not, I’ll have to try some tricks myself. So I have to get rid of my china hutch and my patio furniture because it won’t fit. I have to buy drapes – checking at JCPenney indicated that would be a $300 outlay that I didn’t have. And I still had no job.
We also still have no offer on our house. We may or may not be getting one – eventually. We’ve got buyers that have now seen the house 3 times, love it, etc., but they also have a house in GRPS to sell that isn’t even listed yet. I sent an e-mail trying to light a fire under my realtor that took me twice as long to write because I feel profanity, while desired in this case, is not exactly appropriate. She still hasn’t responded.
The movers are here Monday and Tuesday.
Not exactly a 180 but close…
Like I said, had I wrote this post two days ago it would have been pretty depressing. Nothing was looking good at all. In fact, things appeared to be headed from bad to worse.
Then a small sliver of light: I found these and these on eBay. I won both auctions scoring the drapes I needed (and yes, it’s a need because the sun shines right into the patio door so the place would be crazy hot without them and the privacy would be nil). These match the living room furniture and cost me less for both than one or the other would have cost me in the store. One small step for the house, one giant step for Lisa’s perspective.
And, finally, I’ve been offered and accepted a job. It’s a marketing position with one of the two major health care systems in the area. It’s something a bit new for me an
d yet a bit familiar too so I’m trying to focus on how much I expect to like it rather than the massive cut in pay I took vs. my last full time job. It’s a different market. Wages will be different. And the people I’ll be working with seem awesome. I’m very, very excited. I’ve got the nanny lined up for the summer and we should be able to cover the stupid mortgage for a little while at least. I don’t know how daycare will go up after the nanny goes back to school in the fall but I think we’ll be okay. We have breathing room. I’m even kind of excited about the washer and dryer now. I did get a good deal on it (nowhere near the MSRP) and they’re big! Big = fewer loads of laundry. I hate laundry.
I feel like someone is reinforcing the floor and pointing me toward the exit now. Thank god.
Sorry for not blogging for so long. Thanks for sticking around.
Holy Motherfucking hell!
Our house – the house we’re trying to SELL – needs a new roof. It probably won’t pass a home inspection the way it is now so in order to sell it, we’ll need to drop another several thousand on a new fucking roof. I guess it’s a good thing we took the advance pay, eh?
Here’s the bullet points:
1. We’ve dropped our price by over 20 grand since we listed it.
2. We had to replace our fucking water heater.
3. We’ve put in a warranty AND an allowance to replace the fucking carpet (God I hate those fucking cats!).
4. We have had one serious looker but they have a house to sell first. Good luck with that. It’s Grand Fucking Rapids and no one is selling houses.
5. We’re averaging one showing per week and open house attendance is trending downward.
6. We’re out in three weeks and the fucking house needs to sell. NOW.
7. We need a new fucking roof.
Ho-fucking-ray.
Oh how I love this whole home selling thing! I do (not). Yesterday we had a great day weather-wise and managed to accomplish a lot around the house including taking a couple of large boxes of clothes to GW Imports. Items that did not make the box however included three pairs of black dress pants and four pairs of khaki dress pants for my husband. Yes, my husband – the Sarge – the same guy that dresses up maybe once a year for events that do not have a directed manner of dress, if you know what I mean. And, yes, he’s got two sets of those AND two sets of the nearly obsolete dress green uniform. This guy kept seven pairs of civilian dress pants – like he was a banker and would actually wear them instead of this every day:
His excuse for keeping all the khakis? “But they’re all different colors!”
Judge for yourself:
It’s been a weird week. Lots of things rattling around in my brain (mostly because there’s nothing else there). I’m just going to kind of let them fall out.
I’m disturbed by the declining quality in public education. The increasing focus on teaching to the test makes me crazy. This week I read that teachers are pushing for more civics education in the classroom. We’ve cut art and music and phy ed and now we’re cutting social studies because our kids can’t master the three “R’s”? Maybe it is time to take a long step backward and look at how the rest of the world does it? We’re not getting it right. Over the course of raising this army of children I have, I’ve watched the slow decline of educational quality – handwriting, music, art, etc. and feel generally helpless. I wonder what my loyal readers recommend? After seven hours at school, the last thing the Senator wants is for me to enrich his learning experience, but I fear that if I don’t, he won’t be adequately prepared for real life. Sometimes I think about homeschooling the boys but how can I do that and bring in the paycheck my family so desperately needs? I want them well-rounded and that means music and art education AND civics, science and social studies. I want them to be able to THINK and be CURIOUS. You know with the focus on Reading, Writing and Math, these things all fall away and our children continue to lose ground with the rest of the world.
Speaking of global competitiveness, I read today that Circuit City is cutting 3,500 hourly store employees simply because they are overpaid. These workers can re-apply to do their same jobs at a lower wage rate if they desire to do so. Seems weird. The only way that the business and political community think that we can try to compete is on price. This is sad. We should know by now that we cannot and should not try to compete on price. We need to work smarter, not harder and not cheaper. This mentality erodes our government and our economy and must stop. We need to conquer the weaknesses in our educational system and compete on innovation in science and technology. We compete on innovation by raising children who are curious, capable of reason and critical thinking and by cultivating those qualities in ourselves. If we model them, our children will follow. Children who can develop their thoughts both linguistically and scientifically. We will continue to stagnate and bleed jobs as long as we continue teaching to standardized tests.
We compete also by rediscovering our own inquisitiveness. I am a believer in Lean methodology, for example. It disturbs me that even within our own government Lean is all to often misinterpreted to mean “Less”. Yes, if I am personally leaner it means there is less of me. But being professionally “Lean” means that I work smarter and not harder. To make a process “Lean” does not mean eliminating people or machinery unless it is determined that they are truly excess. However, to me, the greatest benefits from Lean processes come when you can do more with what you have. Lean doesn’t mean cut jobs, it means more throughput with the same resources. It is thinking, questioning, finding new ways to do more with what you have – or the same with less. It has never been, as far as I know, doing MORE with LESS.
I also think it would be fascinating to apply Lean methods to a variety of sectors – including education. Maybe I am beating a dead horse on our schools today, but I think that too much responsibility has been shifted away from students and parents because too many of them would avoid the responsibility and subsequently the standardized test scores suffer, our children fail, their schools fail and their funding gets cut. It’s a vicious circle. Maybe downward spiral is a better description. But you know what? I think failure is okay. As a parent, you set the example by prioritizing education. Children need to see that they will get out of school exactly what they put into it rather than growing up expecting to be spoon-fed throughout life the way they were in school. It needs to stop! And rather than going through math problems on a page one at a time, send it home as homework. You’ll have more time to teach civics, art, music and science! Hooray!
My home sale process is causing me stress. First, no one seems interested in our house. It’s a great house in a good location. Literally, you are five minutes from so many things – schools, shopping (TARGET!!!), a multiplex, restaurants – and have a nice peaceful backyard anyway. This situation makes me want to puke. Literally. If the house hasn’t sold by the time we PCS, our housing allowance drops anyway. If I don’t have a job (and that’s another source of stress to come later), there’s almost no way we can swing that mortgage payment. Especially if we’re in housing with NO BAH.
I looked at homes to buy last weekend, nothing spectacular. One I’d wanted to show Sarge now has an offer on it and that is perfectly okay. He’s telling me now that it should be three years max back at McCoy so I wonder whether buying a house is worth the trouble. I think we’d be better off living in housing and getting rid of two cats. Want one? But again, there’s the BAH and the Michigan mortgage issue to contend with.
On the job front, I think I’ve sent twenty resumes over the past two or three weeks. Not one call-back so far. At least send me a rejection so I no longer hold out hope, you know? I did get an inquiry, as the result of my monster resume most likely, for a marketing position. It seems interesting enough but is a 25% pay cut vs. my last full time position. Of course, the recruiter promises growth opportunities. I don’t know if that’s wise or if I can afford to do it, but I’m meeting with them next week for an interview. I’d like to see some other opportunities manifest so I feel like I’m not just jumping at the first thing that comes along, you know? I’m open to suggestions so feel free to offer some. I have also given very serious thought to becoming a financial planner. But it takes three years to build my book of business and we’re only planning on three years in the upcoming location. I don’t think it is smart to attempt to be a financial advisor and move that often and I don’t think I’m interested in staying in one spot while Sarge finishes his career. I’d spend the better part of the next ten years in a long-distance relationship and so would the children. It seems neither viable nor wise. Please, loyal readers, please share your thoughts on the matter. I mean, I always say it isn’t about the money and I mean it but I did post my things I’d like to do in the next five years and they’re not cheap! In all seriousness, I need to consider the cost factor of commuting and day care and all the fun things that go with it plus find a good cultural fit. That’s crucial, you know?
Had coffee with my old boss (from the bad place) on Tuesday. It was nice seeing her. Nothing that went down there was really her fault so I am hoping we can rebuild the friendship. That’d be nice. Having lunch in a couple of weeks.
Make it a great week! Watch this. If it doesn’t make you laugh you are way too stressed out!
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