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Yep – I’m a Joiner!
The New Reality: Sick or Busy
It’s funny how fast someone can get used to a whole new reality.
Yesterday, for the first time, I wondered offhand if I’d always felt this crappy and maybe I should do something about it.
To which my husband replied, “You exercise every day, you work every day, and you’re sick every day because you’re pregnant. How, exactly, can you be any better than you’re being right now…seriously?!” (He’s so sweet.)
Oh – see, I forgot I was sick because I’m pregnant. I just figured I was always like this. Maybe the ability to adjust to new realities like there was never anything else makes me more adaptable. Perhaps that is why I don’t spend every day crying while taking multiple work breaks to be sick. The crying doesn’t come because I never think to wallow in my misery. My brain just adapts to the misery and we work around it. (We being my body and my mind. They do this whole “teamwork” thing sometimes…it’s kinda cool.)
But the increase in work and the increase in sickness require something has to give. In this case? Much of my social life. When the least hint of stress has me gagging and doing freakish lamaze-type breathing, trying to schedule an outing can be just as difficult.
Of course both my children being sick isn’t helping right now either.
But I only have to do three articles today and three articles tomorow and I meet my Monday deadline with ease. Then ten mini-articles on Monday to meet my Tuesday deadline and then back to the three articles a day until I meet my last deadline of twenty articles. With all but my ten mini-articles Randy is also doing three a day so we are getting more done than it sounds like.
My midwife (who is coming here Thursday for a meet & greet – I’m so nervous!) told me to take my B-vitamin in addition to my pre-natal vitamin to reduce morning sickness and nausea symptoms. But it doesn’t help the sickness, it makes it worse. So, I’m not sure if it’s worse because I’m not drinking enough water with it or if it’s just not going to help at all.
I’ve gotten so much better about not procrastinating. I don’t do work at the last minute anymore and I schedule things in as far in advance as possible so I can work on it a little at a time. It’s a relief to know that there isn’t a huge mound of work in front of me waiting for me to tackle it with an unbearably close deadline.
It’s also great to know that mastering this tactic has given my editors enough faith in me that I’m getting double the work this month as I did last month. The client loves my work and they have a year-long contract with my editors, so I have some serious job security right now. Thank goodness!
Which means that, if the budget doesn’t lie to me (and I don’t think it is this time because we are taking out cash to live on and that means no surprise bank withdrawls that put us into the negative) we will be able to pay off an old family debt at the end of March and pay off the midwife in April. All before the taxes even get filed – which will mean the tax return can go straight into the savings account.
Let the hoarding begin!
A Frugal, Green Childbirth Option
So after all was said and done I didn’t qualify for insurance and was beginning to freak out. My OB costs like six-grand for all the prenatal stuff and that price didn’t include hospital services or antyhing, which can easily run another $10,000. Then she wanted me to get ultrasounds every month and that’s another $350/ea. (I hate ultrasounds.)
I was, quite honestly, starting to freak out. Hardcore.
Part of my freaking-out was complaining incessantly to my husband. “Why am I going to pay for something when they can’t do anything right anyway? It was their fault the cord was in the wrong place. They are the ones that don’t believe me and insist I’m having ten-pound babies and I have to be induced a week beforehand. The nurses treat me like a lab rat with my no drugs and get away from me I’m having a baby here attitude. They made me cross my legs and hold the baby in because the doctor wasn’t at the hospital even though they induced me! Why am I going to pay for the part of childbirth that I hate?!”
And Randy said, “Then don’t have the baby in the hospital.”
And I said, “I should just have it in the living room. Right here. Squat and drop.”
Just like that, it was (somewhat) decided. Now all I had to do was, you know, find someone to come into my living room to spot me while I did my baby-having workout.
There are two routes to go here in Illinois. (Well there are variations on the midwife/doula/whatever so there are more than two but I like to make things easy for myself.)
- Homefirst. A company that has Illinois licensed doctors that come to your home and give you a hand having your baby in your living room. Very anti-immunization and they will support you with extended breastfeeding. When I called the billing person to get a price, she went on kind of a twenty-minute aside about why you should never use a midwife because they’re unlicensed and that’s not good. Then when she was talking about the main doctor she mentioned he wasn’t only a doctor, he was a lawyer as well. (Neither of those last two topics sat well with me. You don’t talk smack about your competition, you know? Plus…wow, he can deliver my baby and defend himself in court if he screws it up. Scary!)
- Midwives. Much more difficult to find than Homefirst, midwives (so Homefirst tells me) are unlicensed women that will help you deliver your baby. The one I talked to seemed nice, is giving up stuff for lent, and would be just fine not giving me another ultrasound unless it became medically necessary. Since I really and truly don’t care what the baby is, a surprise it will be. We talked about childbirth long enough that I could tell she was really comfortable talking about different medical terms and corrected me when I said something wrong. I like when people correct me!
I keep trying to figure out why the Homefirst company was down on midwives. I don’t think many women choose the baby-in-the-living-room because they are the type of woman who believes doctors can do no wrong. Right? Maybe the home birth niche of women in my area is small enough they really have to do their best to make a solid impression and drive out the competition. But the midwife never, ever got competitive. She just talked to me and…you know…listened.
It’s been a nice change so far and we’re just one phone call in.
I’m much more relaxed now, especially because I know we can afford the $3700 price tag ($500 discount if you pay by your 32nd week – love it!) and if something does go wrong, I’m literally two miles from a hospital. I figure lets not end up with insane medical bills unless it’s, you know, medically necessary.
Disclaimer: Of course, homebirth is not for high-risk pregnancies or any other kind of pregnancy except mine. This is SO not medical advice. Just Sayin’
Why I Hate School Fundraisers
My husband and I were arguing about this earlier today, because my preschool-aged daughters both came home with identical fundraising brochures. I don’t like, nor do I believe in school fundraisers, while he thinks it’s builds character and teaches work ethic and giving back to the community.
I think everyone has been brainwashed.
- It raises money for the school. If parents were really rocking out with the common sense they would take the money they would have spent. The other problem is the money for the products. Where is that going? Wouldn’t it be better to partner with a local business to sell that businesses’ discounted services? The kids get a cut and so does the local community.
- It teaches kids responsibility/work ethic/networking/sales. Little kids aren’t going door to door, the parents are taking these booklets to work. No lesson there other than have mommy or daddy help you out when you need something. Older kids….maaaaybe it teaches some of those things, but it would be better.
I guess I should be happy they don’t have the kids in front of a supermarket selling overpriced M&Ms, but really, fundraising is not the way to communicate a sense of building community.
I don’t have a better solution for schools overall, because people (in general, not smarties like you) won’t give money without getting something in return. Doing something good for the school isn’t enough incentive, but caramel filled chocolate bunnies are.
But unless my kids have a desire to participate in something like this, I’d rather just give a donation of $50 per child, know it’s going directly to schoolbooks and not some vague corporation that provides caramel bunnies, and try and explain to my children that giving isn’t only about religious donations, but improving the whole town.
Randy is going to ask the school if we can make a donation and, if we can, if it is tax-deductible. (Being tax-deductible is not a dealbreaker, but it’s always good to check!)
Instead of spending $11 on something I could get at a dollar store I would rather buy it at a dollar store in my area to help local economy thrive while donating money to the preschool for new equipment. To me, that’s a win-win. Leave the fundraisers to the people that don’t understand schools need money but are willing to get gramma to throw down cash on a bauble that’s not worth a tenth of what she’s paying…you know…for the good of the school.
Paying For Childbirth
I know I talked about this in my last post. I won’t harp on it too much longer.
I just did the March budget and it looks great.
If you look one more month out to the April budget – I’ll be able to save as much as our monthly expenses. (What I mean is our expenses in April should be half the monthly income so the other half can go into savings.)
While we were not able to catch up on everything in February that we wanted to (we’re still half a mortgage payment behind) the expenses are going down slowly, while the income increases slowly.
At some point there will have to be measurable momentum, right?
I mean you could measure the momentum we have now, but you’d doze off if you did, the way you’d kind of be bored and dozy trying to measure how fast a snail moved in an hour.
It also all depends on if anything unexpected comes up. Which it shouldn’t. But who knows.
Plus, I fear all this saving is just going to go to giving birth in September. I still have no word from the state to let me know if I’m covered for the childbirth through them and my next appointment is March 11th. They’re not going to wait for that paperwork forever.
The other option is to find a midwife and have the baby in my living room. I have a couple messages out there and I’m waiting for callbacks. It’s looking like it will cost between $4,000 and $6,000 to have the baby at home. The pre-natal services cost the same at my current OB’s office, but that doesn’t include hospital charges, which I hear can run up to $10,000 more. (I’m thinking of all the sprays, saline, IV kits, tissues, and other things I didn’t want when I gave birth last time and am now thinking about how much each one of those costs if you get it at the hospital.)
So…I’m thinking about forgoing the hospital, having the baby in my living room, and just popping the newborn on the AllKids program the girls are on now and taking the newborn to the pediatrician right after she’s born. That way she has coverage. Or he. Whatever. Then we can do the follow-up and everything at the doctor’s office and it’s covered instead of having to pay for all of that in cash.
Either way it’s looking like we’re going to have to come up with some cold, hard cash to have this baby.
The Bill Collector Came Back!
I know I’ve been on a budget kick – I’m sure it’s better than blogging about how much I throw up every day, because people get tired of hearing about that. It’s gross.
But yesterday an interesting thing happened…
That bill collector (the one from the Why Bill Collectors are Idiots post) actually called. Well the normal representative didn’t call, some woman did, probably going through a list of hundreds of people, and when she called my husband he talked to her so she transferred him to the guy he had been dealing with previously.
The guy that lied to him about what they could do, the one who said they would report we were making on time payments if we just set up a plan, who said they would make us a settlement offer when we paid them for six months. Now, he set this all up without my knowledge (my husband isn’t good on the phone – he’s the guy who pays whoever is on the phone and before we had a budget and paid off debt it was a huge problem) and came home to let me know about the great setup he’d managed.
After the six months we tried to call them to find out next steps and no one called us back. Yeah, I know, we couldn’t get the bill collector to call us. So weird.
So Randy is on the phone with him, says, “Hold on” and asks me if we can make a payment over the phone to, “stave them off.” I reply, “No, we can’t. Tell them to send us a settlement offer in writing.”
He does and the guy laughs at him and says, “Are you kidding? You must be kidding.”
So Randy gets mad and hangs up.
This is turning into quite the what not to do when you’re dealing with a bill collector parable, right?
Guy calls back, Randy tells him the cell dropped the signal, and the guy insists again that we make a payment right then over the phone or he will be forced to turn the matter over to the judgement department and they will begin the proceedings to get a judgement.
Uh. What?
First off this is already a judgment. Second, we don’t care about our credit scores. We paid off a bunch of debt in ‘08 and that refreshed it all on the credit report and Suze Orman would weep if she saw our credit reports and scores. They are ugly – and we don’t care.
I don’t know if they can get a judgment on a judgment but why wouldn’t they send us a settlement offer in writing? I just don’t get it. He insisted on a verbal agreement over the phone – and we all know that wasn’t a great plan the first time.
Unfortunately most of the fighting tactics that the smart people at CreditNet Credit Talk forums and other boards use to put the bill collectors in their place won’t work for us because we did make six payments already, thereby making the letters pretty much pointless because we already admitted we owed the debt. Hell, we DO owe the debt, and want to pay it, but not over the phone with some scumbag that isn’t going to send us something in writing.
We need that settlement offer so we can staple a copy of the check to it and prove forevermore that we paid off the debt in case these not-so-genius people come back later and try and do this again.
I just don’t trust them.
So now we wait for someone to call us back, or sue us, or something…I guess…
Is That a Bird in My Hand or am I Jinxing my Budget?
It happens every month. At the end of the month the total receipts go through, the bills are paid, the new budget for the next month is created, and hope sets in.
Because (with the exception of January – the month after the husband was laid off) every month looks better than the last.
There are two ways to look at things:
- I should be doing more. More writing, more work, more clients. Preparing for a month that is not good. Striving to be better.
- Even the month that saw emergency rotor repair on the car and emergency oral surgery for the husband (a little over $800 for those two events) didn’t put us in a horrible position or empty our savings account.
I thought we were going to pay off the car last October. It actually got paid off in January. Every month I said, “This is the month we’re paying off the car!” Like clockwork, it turned out that was not the month we were paying off the car. I started to think I was jinxing the payoff by mentioning it.
So now, when I think we are so close to really having everything caught up, to having every bill be no more than the current month, to being at the place where I can start replenishing our now kind of pathetic savings account…I’m scared to talk about it.
I’m petrified that by invoking hope out loud I’m somehow offending fate and asking for unexpected things to happen that will keep my goal from coming to fruition.
Bottom line: I miss Randy having a steady paycheck.
But he can’t go out and get another steady paycheck, because then who would take care of the grammas? Sure, we could hire someone, but then we’re looking at paying someone (or an overpriced $50/hr. service) to take care of them and even if Randy got a job making $60/hr. we’d be paying out $50/hr. and he’d be making $10/hr. and that’s not going to make a lick of difference in the budget if you consider clothing, gas, and other excess necessities that make working out of the house more expensive.
So we are at a crossroads where no path is a good one. So we stay here.
I fear that my nausea, when it subsides, will be replaced with my other normal pregnancy symptoms. Lack of patience is the main one because it is the one that causes my business to stop taking on new clients. If I don’t have the patience to deal with people, to deal with conflict, to resolve things in a timely manner that is helpful to all involved – I can’t be expected to coddle a new client and work my way through how they do things.
None of this would be an issue, but Randy will only get unemployment so long. He’s an honest guy and has been actively searching for real work in order to not get in trouble with the state, but he hasn’t found anything yet. Nor am I sure I want him to. But unemployment will run out sometime this year – we’re not sure if it will be after 13 weeks or 33 – it depends on the state and how they process his paperwork to determine if he is worthy of the extension.
So he takes care of my grandmothers for 30 hours a week, helps me with my work and writing part-time, takes the kids to school and dance class, and I work on a seemingly never-ending list of projects while trying to keep my last meal down and trying to keep my brain unfogged by the hormonal bog that is trying to drown it.
At some point our income will drop by the amount of unemployment he is receiving. At that point? I have no idea where we will be financially – I have no idea what our savings account will look like. I said this to a friend of mine and she said, “It’s because you freelance.” I replied, “You don’t know if you’re going to get laid off next week. This is just life.”
My friends love me when I’m a total, utter know-it-all.
While I think it’s a good place we’ll be at, part of me is worried, because even by saying it out loud I’m worried that I’m making the bird in the hand fly away and that I am jinxing myself to ruin. (Yes, melodramatic was my minor in college – how did you guess? LOL)
Image Source: sveres
I Cheated On My Budget With A Mouse
Kinky, right?
But not just any mouse…oh no….THE mouse…
I spent twenty-four dollars a ticket (plus numerous and off-putting fees) so I can have the privilege of taking my four year old to her first stage show.
It’s not Phantom of the Opera or Les Miz, but hey, it’s a start…right?
In the ether I hear at least one of you asking, “What about your other kid?”
- She can’t sit still for any length of time.
- Seats are first row balcony and the young’un is a jumper when she gets excited.
- Sixty-six bucks and change was my limit for ticket buying – another kid would have pushed that past $100 for tickets. I have my limits as to how much budget-breaking I’m willing to do.
- If #3 sounds awful read it as, “This way I get some alone time with my eldest and daddy is going to make a special night of it with the youngest – ensuring every daughter feels special.”
We will also be adding to the expense by staying in a hotel overnight. The venue where this is happening is attached to a hotel so…it makes sense. I’m actually sharing a room with a friend of mine and her daughter so I’m only paying for half of the hotel room…and the room comes with free room service breakfast! (I know the room service isn’t a selling point.)
So why did I break my budget?
Because the girls haven’t been out of the house to something fun (not including school or dance lessons) since we went to the Chicago Children’s Museum in September. It’s been a little over five months and I’m itching to have a chance to take one kid out and do something really fun with her. Get to know her a little.
Randy and I talked about it before we had the rugrats. Rotating alone time with them so they never just felt lost in the shuffle. It doesn’t have to happen often, but they are going to cherish those memories. I want to start making those memories for them.
I want to take some time to just have fun with my kids. This is another step down that road.
Besides, either I don’t get the check (from this earlier post) for $1600 by the end of the month or I don’t. Either way $200 on tickets, a hotel room, and mouse ears or whatever other garbage I buy for her aren’t going to make a bit of difference. We’re either going to have money to put into savings this month or we are going to roll over some bills to next month.
Either way – Disney isn’t going to make or break us.
Of course, knowing that the money I’m spending to have a good time with my kid is the same price as an early-bird ticket to BlogHer does make me catch my breath a little. But I’m sure the look on her face will be worth it.
No Amount of Planning Can Change Someone Else
Even though I work from home, I work very hard and sometimes under amazingly short deadlines.
I am expected (nay, required) to produce just the right magic the client wants in whatever time period necessary.
No problem. I’m used to the pressure and even thrive on it just a bit. It’s how I work and I’m successful and blah blah blah. Ok, enough about me…
I received my monthly check from my biggest client and it was short.
It was short by over $1600.
So, being a totally professional writer, I called my editor in the middle of the initial panic attack and asked her what happened and where the accountant was and what we were going to do and didn’t breathe once during the entire freaked-out tirade.
She, being one of my biggest fans, started to freak out too and said she’d get to the bottom of it. The verdict turned out to be – clerical error.
Seems the amazing accountant on staff had left the company and they were back to the previous accountant. The one that had me tracking every word I wrote with an excel spreadsheet…just in case.
Well, I didn’t have a full accounting of what was owed so I had to jump off the phone and start going crazy with a calculator, my inbox, my invoicing system, a legal pad and a pen. I figured out exactly how short the check was and called her back. She had me send another invoice and I got her to promise they’d send that second check out this month.
My budget doesn’t take human error into consideration. It assumes that everyone on the other end of those accounts is doing their job correctly. I don’t think this is a bad assumption – I do my job correctly – why shouldn’t everyone else?
But it doesn’t matter, because when someone else makes a mistake, I’m the one that pays. Or doesn’t pay (har har) until I get the check.
It’s frustrating, but just another interesting bump down the road of freelancing.
I even found a bright side! Last month I subcontracted almost a thousand dollars’ worth of work (remember hubby’s toothache and my earache?), and the check I did get was only a dollar shy of the amount I needed to pay everyone. My number one rule of business is:
You always pay your subcontractors first. (If you ever want help in the future!)
…so at least they are taken care of while I wait and try not to bite my nails.
