Bank issues adverted for the moment, as is the car. Neither of which was an easy fix. I spent most of last night after my husband got home from practice under the car’s hood. LOL, I sent my husband to buy a new battery from Checkers down the street on his way home, thinking that while he was there he would put the new battery in. After so many years with him you would think that I would know better than to assume he would think to do that, because he came home with the old battery still in and the brand new one sitting right there on the passenger seat. So there I sat 9:30 at night with my sleeves literally rolled up working on the car while my husband stands there holding the light for me. It’s pretty funny when I think back to it, I mean how often do you see the wife working on the car late at night while the husband stands there holding the light. I even mentioned something to him about it while I was working and his response to it was “I’m spending quality time with my wife, who knows that I know little to nothing about most this stuff.” Although it wasn’t exactly what I wanted to hear after an already long day, I have to give him points for that answer.
And at least he is being honest because he truly doesn’t, but I think he likes to keep it that way! His father was a mechanic and even when he was younger and spent time with his father in the shop he didn’t care to learn then either. I on the other hand was raised on the premise that if I was going to drive then I was going to have to learn how to take care of my car and take care of myself while I was in it. My Dad would always tell me that if something happened while I was on the road then I only had myself to rely on to get it fixed. So he taught me to change a tire, battery, oil, breaks, fuse and the list goes on. Although I didn’t really appreciate it then I certainly appreciate it now. Because of him I am not scared to take something apart to get it fixed and put it right back together.
Now I’m sure back when I was young he probably didn’t find it a amusing that when he would pull a fuse out of my car, thinking that would prevent me from being able to use it while he wasn’t home (yes when I got in trouble I’d get my car taken away) that I would figure out just what he did and take a little walk up to checkers and buy myself and new fuse and take my car anyways. I sure hope he is proud to know that I’ve been able to hold my own when it comes down to it. Because of him teaching me lose skills I’ve learned I can do quite a bit on my own and don’t have to call for help all the time if something goes wrong.
Over the summer our house AC unit stopped working and being we live in Tucson, AZ… losing our AC is a BAD BAD BAD thing. There is almost nothing worse than to be in a house that is 95+ degrees inside and 110 or more outside! So knowing full and well that I know NOTHING about the AC unit, I did know that they have fuses. So at 8pm on a Sunday night I’m running into Lowes as it closing and was able to talk the nice young lady into letting me come in just to get new fuses. I got home and put them in (yes as my husband watched) and try to start the AC up, and I got NOTHING!
Crap, right? Well it wasn’t so bad because we also have a swap cooler on the roof of the house. For those of you who are reading this and thinking WTF is a swamp cooler, you probably live somewhere where you have 40% or more humidity more than just a month or so here like we do, but basically it a box that has water that soaks through pads that are kept on the outer inside edges of this big metal box and on the inside is a motor that blows a fan that pushes cool moist air through the vents into the house. Anyway, it’s late and its dark by now and so there I am pulling out the ladder and climbing up on the roof, pulling apart getting it ready to start up.
An hour later, I’ve got everything put back together and water valve turned on for the roof and everything ready to start it up. I yell down to my husband to start it up and I head on down to finally eat dinner and cool off. Sure enough about 20 minutes later it quits working too. Such is my life… I climb back up and check everything out and tell my husband to try again and a couple minutes later, what does it do? It turns off again! At this point I’m hot, I’m tired and frankly I’m in a pretty foul mood also. I head down pissed off and make a bed on the floor for the kids in our room, put every fan we own (and yes, we only own 1 fan) in the room and tell everyone it’s bed time!
1st thing in the morning the very 1st call I made was to the repair company, and of course, they tell me they can’t make it out until the next morning. So I’m a resourceful person, I head off to Lowes again and I buy a couple of those window AC units. The same nice young lady that let me come in late the night before is at the cash register, she looks at what I have and then looks at me and asks me if I had a long night. Sheesh, did it really show? I check out, probably a little more pissed off then when I stared, get home and realize that the windows in our house (all but the bedroom windows) open to the side and not up. And to top it off my office window is NOT one of those windows that opens up. So needless to say my kids camped out in the bedrooms where I was able to install the AC units and I sat in a very hot office and worked for the remainder of my work shift. By time the day was done, so was I and packed up the kids and went to a hotel!
The next morning I left the kids at the hotel with their dad and headed home to wait for the repair man and to work. I don’t think I have ever been so happy to shells out $300 in my life, but I’m sure my husband and kids were happy to come home to a cool house and a much more pleasant wife and mother.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
When it rains it pours!
If we just fast forward into current time, I’ve been successfully working from home for the past 14 months, and each time I go to start working and I hear kids fighting or crying… I sit there and wonder WHAT IN THE HECK WAS I THINKING?!?! Now don’t get me wrong, I love being home with my kids, but staying home all day with them, working all day with them home and trying to cook and clean for everyone all the time. Who do they think I am, Super Woman? I think even Super Woman herself would struggle with raising a young family and still have the weight of the world on her shoulders. That’s certainly how I feel.
I’d like to think I live my life in controlled ciaos but that is just simply not true. It’s time to be honest with myself, my life is just ciaos. Between getting my oldest up, dressed, fed and ready for school, I also have my husband that requires the same from me. Then you throw in a grumpy 2 year old that thinks she runs the world and is in the process of potty training, then my poor little boy who gets stuck right in the middle of it all… and all the while through this, I’m supposed to be working…. Brings me back again to the question, what the heck was I thinking?
I hear other mothers telling their stories about how perfect their kids are, or how their husband does the dishes, cooks or cleans… and I have to wonder to myself, can they really have it that easy? Honestly, I find it hard to believe that any family with young children doesn’t go through the same hardships as I myself do.
Now, I do understand that having a husband that works, coaches 3 soccer teams and plays on a coed team himself that he is going to be gone a lot. And I wouldn’t take his soccer away from him, it’s something that he loves and it makes him happy and frankly he is very good at it. Throw in my son who is also playing now, needless to say my husband is gone from 7:30am-9pm Monday – Saturday.
Over the year I’ve learned how to do a lot of repair work on the house and cars myself and thank god for that! When it rains it pours… Last Wednesday my truck was stolen, I love my truck. 8 seats meant that none of the 3 kids had to sit next to each other. Not sitting next to each other meant far less fighting in the car.
Bummer right? It became much more of a bummer when I realized that I had passed on the rental coverage on my insurance to save a whopping $15 a month. At the time I was thinking, Oh I won’t get into an accident that is my fault. If anything, someone will hit me and their insurance will cover a rental for us. It NEVER crossed my mind that one of our cars would get stolen.
So here I sit with a husband that NEEDS to use the car, but is gone from 7:30 in the morning, until its past bed time in the house, and I am left stuck in the house with no way to leave. It can’t get any worse, right? Famous last words! I go to use the other can on Sunday (the 1 day that it is available for my use) and the darn thing won’t start, the battery is dead. No big deal right, I know how to jump start a car! I open the trunk to get my jumper cables… and they are gone! I call my husband to ask where they are and why they are not in the car, (and get this!) he tells me he took them out because he hasn’t needed them and had to make room for his soccer equipment. What does he mean he hasn’t needed them? I thought that just like a spare tire, you hope you never have to use them but you keep them in the car just in case you ever do!
So now I am stuck in the parking lot of the grocery store with a trunk full of food that will go bad, with no jumper cables to jump my car that has a dead battery. I start making calls to have someone come up to me and no one is answering, so I ask a couple of people leaving if they can jump me. And what do they ask me? They ask if I have any cables because they don’t have any! Like I said when it rains it pours.
I did eventually get a hold of one of my neighbors and he came and got me. Jumped the car and on the way home the gas light comes on. I opt to not take the risk of stopping for gas and to just head over to my in-laws house because I know he has a battery charger. I stopped at a Circle K on the way and left the car running while I ran in to get a few bags of ice, I have to save my food somehow! Long story short, I get there, fully charge my battery and go home. I leave the car running while I take the food inside and then go back out and disconnect the battery while the car is still running. Car stays running so I can check a bad alternator off the list of what wrong. I turn the car off and leave the battery disconnected. No problem is, it’s Sunday afternoon and all the auto parts stores are closed already. I have to figure out how at 7:30 in the morning, I’m going to find a neighbor that can jump start the car for my husband, I don’t know if the battery is going to hold a charge and still be good in the morning.
Morning comes and I head out early to connect the battery up and see if the car will start. I cross all my finger and toes and try to start it up. You can hear it try to turn over and then it sounds as if someone has pulled a plug and everything starts to slowly shut off. Crap now it’s 6 in the morn and I have to sit out here and wait for a neighbor to come out and hope they can jump it. Luckily just before 7 rolls around one of them comes out and even asked if I needed help, as I sit there cleaning the battery connectors to make sure it’s not an issue with them. Thank God is all I could think. She gives me a jump and I have to let the car sit there running while I wait for my husband to get out the door for work, knowing full and well that it is almost out of gas. Send my husband off with a gas can so he can fill it up on the way to work and hope that he doesn’t run out of gas on the way.
A couple hours after I get him off to work and my oldest daughter off to school, I get a call from our bank… someone was trying to buy a $6,000 TV system from best buy with my debit card! Bank puts a hold on the account and deactivates the cards… how are we supposed to go get a new battery for the car if I have no way of getting to the bank to pull out money, my husband can’t make it to the bank during business hours and we have working debit cards at the moment. Will this madness of a week never end?
I’d like to think I live my life in controlled ciaos but that is just simply not true. It’s time to be honest with myself, my life is just ciaos. Between getting my oldest up, dressed, fed and ready for school, I also have my husband that requires the same from me. Then you throw in a grumpy 2 year old that thinks she runs the world and is in the process of potty training, then my poor little boy who gets stuck right in the middle of it all… and all the while through this, I’m supposed to be working…. Brings me back again to the question, what the heck was I thinking?
I hear other mothers telling their stories about how perfect their kids are, or how their husband does the dishes, cooks or cleans… and I have to wonder to myself, can they really have it that easy? Honestly, I find it hard to believe that any family with young children doesn’t go through the same hardships as I myself do.
Now, I do understand that having a husband that works, coaches 3 soccer teams and plays on a coed team himself that he is going to be gone a lot. And I wouldn’t take his soccer away from him, it’s something that he loves and it makes him happy and frankly he is very good at it. Throw in my son who is also playing now, needless to say my husband is gone from 7:30am-9pm Monday – Saturday.
Over the year I’ve learned how to do a lot of repair work on the house and cars myself and thank god for that! When it rains it pours… Last Wednesday my truck was stolen, I love my truck. 8 seats meant that none of the 3 kids had to sit next to each other. Not sitting next to each other meant far less fighting in the car.
Bummer right? It became much more of a bummer when I realized that I had passed on the rental coverage on my insurance to save a whopping $15 a month. At the time I was thinking, Oh I won’t get into an accident that is my fault. If anything, someone will hit me and their insurance will cover a rental for us. It NEVER crossed my mind that one of our cars would get stolen.
So here I sit with a husband that NEEDS to use the car, but is gone from 7:30 in the morning, until its past bed time in the house, and I am left stuck in the house with no way to leave. It can’t get any worse, right? Famous last words! I go to use the other can on Sunday (the 1 day that it is available for my use) and the darn thing won’t start, the battery is dead. No big deal right, I know how to jump start a car! I open the trunk to get my jumper cables… and they are gone! I call my husband to ask where they are and why they are not in the car, (and get this!) he tells me he took them out because he hasn’t needed them and had to make room for his soccer equipment. What does he mean he hasn’t needed them? I thought that just like a spare tire, you hope you never have to use them but you keep them in the car just in case you ever do!
So now I am stuck in the parking lot of the grocery store with a trunk full of food that will go bad, with no jumper cables to jump my car that has a dead battery. I start making calls to have someone come up to me and no one is answering, so I ask a couple of people leaving if they can jump me. And what do they ask me? They ask if I have any cables because they don’t have any! Like I said when it rains it pours.
I did eventually get a hold of one of my neighbors and he came and got me. Jumped the car and on the way home the gas light comes on. I opt to not take the risk of stopping for gas and to just head over to my in-laws house because I know he has a battery charger. I stopped at a Circle K on the way and left the car running while I ran in to get a few bags of ice, I have to save my food somehow! Long story short, I get there, fully charge my battery and go home. I leave the car running while I take the food inside and then go back out and disconnect the battery while the car is still running. Car stays running so I can check a bad alternator off the list of what wrong. I turn the car off and leave the battery disconnected. No problem is, it’s Sunday afternoon and all the auto parts stores are closed already. I have to figure out how at 7:30 in the morning, I’m going to find a neighbor that can jump start the car for my husband, I don’t know if the battery is going to hold a charge and still be good in the morning.
Morning comes and I head out early to connect the battery up and see if the car will start. I cross all my finger and toes and try to start it up. You can hear it try to turn over and then it sounds as if someone has pulled a plug and everything starts to slowly shut off. Crap now it’s 6 in the morn and I have to sit out here and wait for a neighbor to come out and hope they can jump it. Luckily just before 7 rolls around one of them comes out and even asked if I needed help, as I sit there cleaning the battery connectors to make sure it’s not an issue with them. Thank God is all I could think. She gives me a jump and I have to let the car sit there running while I wait for my husband to get out the door for work, knowing full and well that it is almost out of gas. Send my husband off with a gas can so he can fill it up on the way to work and hope that he doesn’t run out of gas on the way.
A couple hours after I get him off to work and my oldest daughter off to school, I get a call from our bank… someone was trying to buy a $6,000 TV system from best buy with my debit card! Bank puts a hold on the account and deactivates the cards… how are we supposed to go get a new battery for the car if I have no way of getting to the bank to pull out money, my husband can’t make it to the bank during business hours and we have working debit cards at the moment. Will this madness of a week never end?
Saturday, October 24, 2009
My Journey, my beginning for I am a Wife, Mother, Daughter & Sister!
As a mother of 3 very young children ages 7, 4 and 2, I decided to leave the mainstream workforce a little over a year ago to try and find a way to stay home all day with my 2 younger children who aren’t yet at school age and to work from home. During the time while I was working away from the house, my mother-in-law was kind enough to agree to watch them while I was at work. She had been watching my middle child since right after he was born and I had to return back to work because my maternity leave was over. So after the birth of my youngest she had agreed to watch the both of them while their father and I were at work. Well this was until the youngest who was only 6 months at the time, started crawling and was no longer the cute little cuddly baby anymore.
For those of you who have children know that once they start moving around on their own there is nothing, and I mean NOTHING, that isn’t fair game as far as they are concerned. Every drawer, cabinet, or item that was within their little arms reach becomes part of their disaster zone. If you have a drawer full of cloths you can bet that within seconds of putting them down that drawer was empty with every item of nicely folded cloths were now unfolded in a heap on the floor. Same goes with every pot, pan or utensil in the kitchen cabinets.
So, after just a few short weeks of my youngest doing this while with my mother-in-law and me at work, I got that dreaded phone call! You could hear it in her voice. You know how you get when you finally reach that breaking point and you don’t even have enough left in you to sound mad. All you have left is pure exhaustion and frustration. The first words out of her mouth were, “Where are you and when will you be here to pick up the kids?” After explaining that I was already on my way, what came next was enough to knock the wind right out of me. She says, “Good, I can’t do this anymore. I am too old for this and I QUIT!” followed quickly by the sound of the phone disconnecting.
Needless to say, when I arrived at her home to pick up the kids there was an awkward tension that filled the house. I swear you could almost cut it with a knife. Not much else was said between us in the process of packing up the kids belonging and toting them to my car, I had worked up the nerve to ask if she could at least watch them for the rest of the week. I needed time to make other arrangements. Obviously not partially pleased with having to face another day like the day she just had, she agreed.
After a pretty sleepless night worrying about the day care of my kids, I got everyone ready for the new day and we all headed off to where we belonged. I dropped my oldest off at kindergarten and proceeded to take the 2 youngest to my mother-in-law’s. She seemed to be in better spirits this morning, so I left them and headed off to work. As I pulled into the parking lot for my office building there was a rather usually large group of employees crowded around the front. As I approached I could hear some of them sobbing. I began to walk a little quicker, with 50 million things running threw my head. Did someone get hurt or worse die? What was going on? As soon as I got within a few yards of the group a co-worker of mine and close friend yelled to me, that we’ve all be laid off! The company went bankrupt and we all are out of a job.
Now talk about a bad 24 hours, my mother-in-law baby sitter quits and I lose my job… I quickly got my belonging from my desk and sat in my car and began to sob myself. What was I going to do? I have to get a new job, but I don’t have day care for my kids. I can’t afford a daycare facility, especially without a job. I pulled myself together and went back to my mother-in-law and picked back up the kids. She was surprised to say the least for me to back less than 2 hours after having dropped off the kids. It was my turn, I had nothing left, physically and emotionally exhausted from the past 24 hours, all I could say to her was that I got laid off and didn’t want to talk about it.
News travels fast and it wasn’t long before I got a call from my husband asking me what had happened. Knowing that an “I don’t want to talk about” response wouldn’t suffice, I recounted back to him the events of the day. To my surprise he tells me to not worry, we’ll make it, we always do. Oh my, how the tables had turned! Up until this point it had always been myself giving comforting words to him and here I was worried and scared, listening to him do the same for me. He was calm as a clam. He tells me, “Look it wasn’t working for us the way it’s always been in the past. Maybe it’s time to try something else, maybe you should just stay home with the kids.”
After a couple days of feeling like my world had fallen in on me, I began to realize how much I really enjoyed being home with my kids and didn’t miss work at all. I began looking for work that I could do while at home…. Thus began my journey into being both a full time mother and still being a provider to household.
For those of you who have children know that once they start moving around on their own there is nothing, and I mean NOTHING, that isn’t fair game as far as they are concerned. Every drawer, cabinet, or item that was within their little arms reach becomes part of their disaster zone. If you have a drawer full of cloths you can bet that within seconds of putting them down that drawer was empty with every item of nicely folded cloths were now unfolded in a heap on the floor. Same goes with every pot, pan or utensil in the kitchen cabinets.
So, after just a few short weeks of my youngest doing this while with my mother-in-law and me at work, I got that dreaded phone call! You could hear it in her voice. You know how you get when you finally reach that breaking point and you don’t even have enough left in you to sound mad. All you have left is pure exhaustion and frustration. The first words out of her mouth were, “Where are you and when will you be here to pick up the kids?” After explaining that I was already on my way, what came next was enough to knock the wind right out of me. She says, “Good, I can’t do this anymore. I am too old for this and I QUIT!” followed quickly by the sound of the phone disconnecting.
Needless to say, when I arrived at her home to pick up the kids there was an awkward tension that filled the house. I swear you could almost cut it with a knife. Not much else was said between us in the process of packing up the kids belonging and toting them to my car, I had worked up the nerve to ask if she could at least watch them for the rest of the week. I needed time to make other arrangements. Obviously not partially pleased with having to face another day like the day she just had, she agreed.
After a pretty sleepless night worrying about the day care of my kids, I got everyone ready for the new day and we all headed off to where we belonged. I dropped my oldest off at kindergarten and proceeded to take the 2 youngest to my mother-in-law’s. She seemed to be in better spirits this morning, so I left them and headed off to work. As I pulled into the parking lot for my office building there was a rather usually large group of employees crowded around the front. As I approached I could hear some of them sobbing. I began to walk a little quicker, with 50 million things running threw my head. Did someone get hurt or worse die? What was going on? As soon as I got within a few yards of the group a co-worker of mine and close friend yelled to me, that we’ve all be laid off! The company went bankrupt and we all are out of a job.
Now talk about a bad 24 hours, my mother-in-law baby sitter quits and I lose my job… I quickly got my belonging from my desk and sat in my car and began to sob myself. What was I going to do? I have to get a new job, but I don’t have day care for my kids. I can’t afford a daycare facility, especially without a job. I pulled myself together and went back to my mother-in-law and picked back up the kids. She was surprised to say the least for me to back less than 2 hours after having dropped off the kids. It was my turn, I had nothing left, physically and emotionally exhausted from the past 24 hours, all I could say to her was that I got laid off and didn’t want to talk about it.
News travels fast and it wasn’t long before I got a call from my husband asking me what had happened. Knowing that an “I don’t want to talk about” response wouldn’t suffice, I recounted back to him the events of the day. To my surprise he tells me to not worry, we’ll make it, we always do. Oh my, how the tables had turned! Up until this point it had always been myself giving comforting words to him and here I was worried and scared, listening to him do the same for me. He was calm as a clam. He tells me, “Look it wasn’t working for us the way it’s always been in the past. Maybe it’s time to try something else, maybe you should just stay home with the kids.”
After a couple days of feeling like my world had fallen in on me, I began to realize how much I really enjoyed being home with my kids and didn’t miss work at all. I began looking for work that I could do while at home…. Thus began my journey into being both a full time mother and still being a provider to household.
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