Mothering Many

Ang. mentioned the other day that she is thinking about getting a retail job. Actually, I think it was more that the idea flitted briefly across her mind and was quickly quashed by a dose of realism. Even though she has only have the number of children I do, her financial reality is similar: retail sales jobs just won’t pay enough to fund the amount of childcare she would need, and without recent work experience, that’s all we’re “qualified” for.

It just struck me when discussing this with her to remind you all to do the math if you are thinking about going back to work. All the math. Don’t forget incidentals like the lunch money if you don’t have time to pack lunches anymore, extra gas, new clothes, ad nauseum.

Man, we are really struggling with this lately. Ok, I am struggling with it. Dh just says “no” and moves on or he says “yes” with no rhyme or reason. Especially this week, with money going out for football and cheer-leading (oh, yeah, the girls will be doing that), I’m in the no-zone. See, instead of giving the kids an allowance, DH and I cover their expenses, and while I am not yet ready to get into a prepaid teen card, I am wondering about starting an allowance system of some sort.

In addition to having to eat a chunk of change in registrations and uniforms and equipment (it’s 5 kids, you do the math. STOP! Sit down first, because your knees will buckle) we’re having a real problem around here with stuff getting broken and just not taken care of in general. It’s frustrating, and I am really thinking that if they had to fork over some of the replacement costs, they might take better care of things. Would they leave the clothes they paid for on the floor? Maybe they would, maybe they wouldn’t. But I bet that seeing what they had purchased being walked on wouldn’t bother me nearly as much as seeing what I bought abused.

Now you are in trouble! So who ya gonna call? Even as I type that, I am humming the Ghostbusters tune, LOL!

If you are in New York and upset with your doctor, you might use Google to find an attorney to help you feel better (ha-ha, very punny, but maybe only to me, but I am not going to stop to explain it now, because I need to write this post up so I can write another one and so, here we go!). Here’s one for you: medical malpractice attorney New York.

Everyday when I bring in the mail, I am greeted by a litany of ‘anything for me?”s. Now, my kids get maybe one piece of mail per month, but they have to ask daily. We do get plenty of junk mail though, 2 or 3 pieces a day, and it all goes in the garbage. What a waste of trees, and money! We get the phone calls, too. You know the ones. Always at dinner, always for products I would never buy, and vacations for “you and a friend”. Uh, no. Give me a va-kay for 10, and we’ll talk, ykwim?

I can tell that the people who mail and call me are not using lists from Martin Worldwide. See, Martin has developed a list of people who are proven responders to direct mail and phone solicitations. Yeah, they make mailing and telemarketing lists of proven spenders. And while I usually like to be on lists, I’ll gladly pass on this one. I spend plenty on stuff I actually think of, without someone calling me up with suggestions, ykwim?

Face it, moms buy stuff. Moms buy a LOT of stuff, and the more kids you have, the more stuff you buy, and it can get to be a great big disaster if you are not careful. You know I advocate budgeting and being wise in your finances, and it’s mostly because I’ve been burned for making poor choices. I’ve never had to get a bad credit debt consolidation, but I have looked at my options and seriously considered it a time or two. Now, the site I linked to here also has helpful articles on avoiding the kind of situation where you find yourself in a financial jam, and I think we all know it’s much easier to stay out of a mess than to get out of a mess, right? Finances are really not an area where you want to hear yourself say “if I’d just known then what I know now.”

Ha! I looked earlier at some home theater seating. I laughed when I found out my family alone could more than qualify for a bulk discount. ROFL!! I sometimes say about grocery shopping that “family size packages mean we only have to by 2 or 3, instead of 4 or 5.” I’ve come to expect that we’ll buy food in bulk, but chairs??? That threw me just a bit.

Batman did another crazy thing today. For some reason, he thought he wanted pegs for his bike. Now, the boy is five years old, so I’m not sure who he thought would trust him enough to climb up on there to get a ride, but he bought some off a neighborhood boy. I went over to the other boy’s house to return them and get the money back. He didn’t take out a payday loan for this misadventure. Instead he, used money he’d lifted from his sibs. Sigh. We really have to work on that.

You know that there is no way on earth a woman can have as many children as I do and not be fascinated with baby products. I love the little clothes, the little shoes, the soft blankets, the cool diaper bags. I love all that stuff that comes with babies. Even when I don’t have a tiny one, I am inexplicably compelled to look at the STUFF. I just can’t walk by the baby section of a store without at least peeking in, and usually walking through it. And I confess: I do the same thing on-line. When I saw WithCharacterKids come up for review, I had to head on over and check them out. The site is pleasing to the eye, and easy to navigate, and the array of products is great.

Today, I was looking at diaper bags, and this Eddie Bauer Backpack Diaper Bag caught my eye. I like the fact that it’s not overly cutesy, because that means anyone in the house will be willing to carry it, not just ME. And since it’s a backpack, it can be carried hands-free, which means I can hold on to both my little ones even if I’m the one left holding the bag (haha, pun intended). I also like the fact that while it has the changing pad and bottle pockets that I need for babies, it’s a bag I can carry well after I don’t need a diaper bag per se. Because, yeah, even moms of eight sometimes want to look cool, ykwim?

In addition to the diaper bags, they also carry room decor and bedding with characters you and your kids both will love. They are about way more than the babies, though. they have stuff for toddlers, kids, tweens and teens, too!

Remember the other day I said “when our children need help, we help them“? That’s true when they are little and the problems are small–tie my shoes, help me up, help me down. And it should be true when they are bigger, too. Of course, when they get bigger, the problems are usually bigger, as well. Sometimes the problems are so big that we don’t want to admit they could happen to our kid. Sometimes the problems are indeed so large that we would give anything not to have to deal with them. And sometimes, once we admit that that kind of problem has happened to our child, and that we do have to deal with it, we also have to admit that we can’t handle that alone.

That’s where a site like 4rehabilitation can come in handy. If your child needs drug rehab, you need help, too. You need to find the resources for your child, but you are also likely to have a lot of questions, and these folks have the answers. The call is free, and the referral service is free. The number is 1-877-84-SOBER.

Now, you might think from that last post that my entire house is broken. That’s not quite true. We’ve already replaced the washer, the hot water heater and the dishwasher, see. All in the past month. Our house had it’s 10th birthday last year, and right on schedule…..well, if you are a home owner you know the drill, LOL!

The last to go was the A/C, as I have alluded to. I dont think I’ve come right out and said so, but we are having to replace the unit. Now this is going to be fun, because we are going to have to pay for it without a loan. I don’t think they give secured loans for new air conditioners, see. Since our mortgage is the only debt we have, aside from my mom, we’re not even eligible for a loans to consolidate debt. And that lack of debt load means that the loan offers we get are considered a bad credit loan with the accompanying sky-high interest rate. Umm, no thanks.

I’m blessed to have a good relationship with my A/C guy. Yeah, relationship. He’s been patching this system for me for two or three years now, but yesterday, he told me it was time to bite the bullet. It’s reached the point where each new part is going to cause one of the old parts to go down. So, we’re getting the new unit today. I’m giving him a good chuck of change via paypal, and he’s floating me an unsecured loan for the rest. Yippee!! We’re in debt again. But we’ll be able to breathe, so I guess I’ll just have to stand it, won’t I?

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