Posts tagged as:

money

Fuck it

by Myg on December 30, 2009

That’s not to say there’s any kind of real problem here, just that my head is confused and this cold virus isn’t helping me at all.

Have you ever sat on a cusp, like a major teetering point in what could be construed as the very essence of the meaning of your existence?

That’s what I’m doing right about now.

There’s just so much to think about, and all I *really* want to do is crawl into bed with a trashy novel (I’m waiting, Ms. StY, for my copy of Twilight. I may just have Mr. Wisermom go out and buy it for me.) Since I don’t have a trashy novel, or rather THE trashy novel I want, I’ll just go off a bit.

See, I had this dream when I was young and then I killed it dead. And then years passed and I became a Mom and all was well excepting the fact that I had to keep working in a career I no longer felt committed to, but I could do that because my kids needed diapers and a roof over their heads.

And then I got asked to go back in time, and I did, and I didn’t have that dream again, not the same way, but, then, well, I wasn’t sure I wanted to come back to this present, just the way it is. I didn’t want to stop doing the thing that had always kept me who I was. Because without doing that thing, I was somehow a more hollow version of who I am. I thought maybe that was just age, and I don’t know – maybe it is. But I’m not having it, either way.

So now I’ve got all this other shit to figure out, like, what on earth does it mean? How can I keep a roof over our heads, be present with my kids when I’m not out trying to earn money, and then have anything left over to create something out of nothing, and what will I do with it then?

And on and so on, there are more paths for the future that are beginning to look viable, and I am utterly unsure which one to push forward on.

Fuck it.

I’m going to bed.

{ 2 comments }

And then, and then…

by Myg on November 30, 2009

IMG_5467

And then the next thing you know, WOOSH. They’re graduating from college and you’re out your retirement fund.

I should really be calling this post a placeholder. It’s holding the place for a lot of things I need to tell you about. Like, the fact that the boys turned 9 months old. And then, about 15 minutes after we ordered their 9 month old commemorative plates and matching cup set, they turned 10 months old. And then they had their first Thanksgiving and their first bath in the big bath tub together. And then I cried because they are too adorable and too sweet to believe and I’m still not home with them every day like I should be and I know, and you know, kindergarten is right around the corner and what then? What THEN?

I know there are women out there who are okay with being working mothers. I salute them. I’m just not one of them. Meaning, I am a working mother. In fact, I am the sole provider working mother right now. But I’m not okay with it, other than the fact that it is what is and I have to be okay, in the most general of terms.

I also have to tell you about the band. Oh lord, the band. That’d be my band, whose name shall not be mentioned here because I’m having interweb crossover identity issues. I went back into private practice a few months ago (I’m an LCSW therapist type for kids, yo) and I just do not want people I work with finding this blog. We’re playing in 26 days (crap pants here) and this is the first time we’ve played in 8 years, almost to the day.

Before I became a mom, and before I became a therapist, I was a musician. I was very serious about it. I never had the kind of financial or  commercial success I’d hoped for, but I did make all kinds of music with all sorts of fantastic people and it made my life better. And now I’m doing it again and it feels so strange and familiar and like I’m traveling back in time but yet not. Like straddling two decades when your straddler is a little out of alignment.

And that’s just the good stuff, but that’s what I’m trying to fill my head with these days. And yours too.

{ 3 comments }

Eff You Economy.

by Myg on November 12, 2009

This blog. Ah.

My boys are 9 months and 3 weeks old today. They are in a magic phase where every mundane little thing sparkles, boo boos can be healed in seconds with a kiss and a hug, and little arms start to reach for me when I come into the room in that heart exploding “I want Mommy” way. I know every developmental phase has its perks, but this one I think is really special and will stay with me in a way that the newborn phase or the six month old phase probably won’t.

And all that is to tell you, I just don’t want to work. I want to be home with them so badly it just hurts. That’s what we planned on, it’s what I said I was going to do months ago and it’s what I always intended, but it is not what is.

I’ve been thinking a whole lot about my career in the past few months. I’ve been beating myself senseless over my lack of direction, focus and commitment. I’ve hit a professional ceiling, not because I’m at the limit of my skills or abilities. I’m stuck because I’m doing something I just don’t want to do right now. But I have to.

It’s a strange problem, you know? Pick a career path you think you’ll love. End up not loving it. Have babies in the middle of an economic melt down.  s/s Be grateful you can go back to it so you can keep the family afloat. Resent it. :| | (D.S. al coda to the be grateful part through the resent it part. Repeat daily forever and ever.)

I don’t feel well. I have a cold. And I am upset right now about all of this.

I want to be home with my kids. My husband wants me to be home with my kids. But I just can’t be right now.

And that really sucks. EFF you,  economy.

{ 2 comments }

This and that.

by Myg on June 1, 2009

Among the items that were significant enough in my consciousness to warrant a blog mention today are:

1. Is Doot beginning to teethe? Oh, please God please God no – not yet, not like this. Why am I concerned he may be? Intermittent screechiness accompanied by voracious gnawing on fingers and copious amounts of drool for about two days. Wait, let me answer before you ask. No, he’s not just hungry. No, he’s not running a fever. And no, I can’t feel any little tooth buds nor are his gums red or swollen or perceptibly sore to the touch. He’s got no symptoms of an ear infection, cold, or any other physical malady that I can tell. I guess that leaves infant schizophreniform as the only logical possibility aside from mo’fo TEETHING.

2. Wednesday morning we’re leaving to go visit my mom and my beloved-but-not-seen-enough-family-from-out-west! And some family from close by who I never see too, still beloved, but just on the same side of lazy as we are. Said reunion is taking place at my mom’s farm in Virginia. I’m truly edge of my seat excited to have everyone meet the brothers. But man, if that teething thing is really starting, it could turn the baby drama up to a whole new level. Imagine 15 members of an Italian-American family and their dogs all under one roof for six days. If you can’t imagine it, imagine the Sopranos in the country without semi-automatics or peach everything interior design. I’m bracing myself for lots of unsolicited parenting tips. My plan? I’m going to smile politely and pretend I’m interested. My problem? Things never go the way I plan them. (And if you’re related to me and reading this now, of course, of course I don’t mean you. I mean those other relatives who always give unsolicited advice. You know the ones.)

3. This list isn’t in order of any kind of importantness (which, for the record, isn’t really a word. I know that.)

4. [REDACTED]

5. My job, the one I was leaving? It got funded for another year when nobody was looking. In a state where the economic downturn has struck so hard that full time state employees are forced to take unpaid furloughs in lieu of layoffs, how does one accidentally get a state funded grant for $50k?

6. Sometimes I think Flash™ wants to make me its bitch.

7. I will never, ever lose the additional 30 lbs I want need to lose as long as Obama allows peanut butter cookies to roam free. And that goes for ice cream and snack chips too. All kinds of snack chips. Snack chips FTW™!

8. Four days as a new mom with very short hair and my internal Stacy and Clinton™ say, “FAIL.” They don’t like how it looks. Of course, they also convinced me to buy that hot pink sweater with the short poofy sleeves that makes me look like a middle aged cheerleader on a date with the gout. So, I’m not saying in the abstract my hair actually looks bad. But I am saying that somehow that lack of hair really points out the excess of flesh in my midsection. Okay, in my ass, arms and thighs too. Don’t know how. Haircuts are magic I guess.

9. [REDACTED]

10. And the cutest thing in the world is this:

IMG_1204

and various variations of this:

IMG_1211

{ 3 comments }

The fine line between bravery and stupidity

by Myg on May 13, 2009

So, I am thinking that I will tell my boss tomorrow that as of the end of the summer, I quit.

It’s something that Alex and I have long discussed. It’s something I really, really want to do. Only problem is, my job is our only reliable income right now, and our means to health insurance.

See the problem?

Alex has taken the teaching certificate exam and has applied to about every school district in the county for a position. He’s working to get his thesis finished so he’ll have his MFA in the fall. But he’s got no actual job leads as of yet and hiring season for schools ends somewhere around the end of June. That’s just a few weeks away.

Right about now, you may be wondering why I don’t just keep my job until he finds one, and then quit.

The reason is that I work on grant-funded projects. That means when there’s funding for the grant, there’s a job. These grants happen to come from the State of NJ, and the State of NJ is in deep trouble with its budget this year. My grants run out at the end of August. To get my funding renewed in September would take no small amount of maneuvering by my boss and my state contact.

I really, really love my boss. She’s a great person aside from a great boss, and she’s already stressing out over finding me enough work to keep me on staff so I keep my salary and benefits. And so far, I’ve just been all, “Uh huh, yeah, I plan to keep working. I need the money. I need the health insurance.”

But deep down I feel guilty, because I’ve known all along that if Alex gets a job, I’m going to quit. And if I quit, finding someone to do what I do will not be easy, because it’s a super tight niche kind of job, and not a ton of people want to work part-time, like I do. So telling my boss I plan to stick around and then ditching after she’s gotten a grant would be bad form.

So then, why don’t I just work and if Alex finds a job, stick the kids in daycare for three days a week (the days I work)?

Do you know what it costs to put 8 month old twins in daycare for 3 days a week? About $450 a week. That’s about $1800 a month. That’s a mortgage payment. I’d be working 70% of my hours for health insurance and daycare alone. That would just piss me off.

So then maybe Alex should forget teaching and be a SAHD? The thought has crossed my mind.

But.

Alex is trying to launch a new career right now, and he did not go through graduate school to stay home and change diapers, not that he minds doing that at all. In fact, he’s doing it right now as I type this (from work, my bad) and he’s doing a phenomenal job of it. But, my god we went into a ton of debt so he could do this graduate program. And he put all of that time and hard work in so he could be out there doing something he loves to do, largely so I could be home raising our kids. Because that’s what we both wanted.

I have a career, but I don’t give much of a rat’s ass about it anymore. It is a perfectly nice career, don’t get me wrong. With it I’ve been the primary breadwinner and at times the sole income provider. I’m proud that I’ve kept us well enough provided for. I can keep going. I can keep working. I can keep this job going, or go back into private practice, and/or ramp up my training/consultation business. I can make money, yes, I can, even in trying economic times.

But.

My boys are babies now. They need me now. They’re growing up so fast, and when this time in their lives is gone, it’s gone forever.

So here’s my dilemma.

We are in TRYING ECONOMIC TIMES, right? (See previous mentions of “clusterfuck of life timing” here and here.)

If one were so very lucky enough to have a great part time job with full benefits, vested pension, make-your-own hours that was 15 minutes from one’s home, that could possibly continue with some maneuvering, and if one loved one’s boss on top of it, why oh why would one even consider leaving?

Especially when

a. one lived during TRYING ECONOMIC TIMES

b. one had an unemployed spouse

c. one had new twin infants and was in dire need of health coverage?

God, when I lay it out like that it seems INSANE to quit.

But. It bears repeating.

My boys are babies now. They need me now. They’re growing up so fast, and when this time in their lives is gone, it’s gone forever.

Forever.

And it’s that forever part that makes me think, yeah.

I’m going to quit my job tomorrow.

morning

{ 2 comments }

Waiting for you. Weeks 18 & 19.

by Ms. Myg on October 7, 2008

As I write this, one of my favorite bloggers, Amy over at Amalah, is now sporting her Week 38 belly. I wonder if I shouldn’t read ahead so much. She’s 20 weeks into my future, sort of.  This week she’s talking about false labor and, crap, does that sound like a drag. The kind of thing I suppose I should be aware of but really, I don’t want to be. Not yet. If it happens to me I’ll eat that sentence.

Once again I’m writing about Week 18 in the middle at the end of Week 19. I know I say the same thing every week but damn if it ain’t true. This pregnancy thing is just flying by. I know, I know. When I’m past the 34 week mark it won’t go fast enough.

Since I’m always now running behind on these things, I decided to cheat and put weeks 18 & 19 together. To be honest, I haven’t felt a ton of difference in between the two weeks, other than that gross armpit lump thing was really painful last week, but not so much this week. As an aside, I had a check-up with my OB/GYN today, and they haven’t gotten the report back from the radiologist on that. That’s annoying. I told her what they told me, and she checked the lump herself, which is a lot less swollen today. Her belief is that the tissue is indeed breast tissue because it reacts in a cyclical way and to hormones, but she is sending me on to a breast specialist just to be doubly sure. As she put it,

“With anything that has to do with the breast, I just prefer to go all the way with making sure it’s fine. I know they’ll send you back here wondering why I wasted their time, but let’s get it checked out anyway.”

I like this doctor and that attitude is exactly why.

I’m writing this today with wonder dog Mason laying on top of my feet. I wonder if he has any idea what’s coming. Somehow I think he must. Okay, now that I’m talking about him, I must include another gratuitous cute puppeh pic:

That’s him as a 13 week old pup, but I swear to you, even at 18 months he is still this cute. And he’s kind of laying like this right now, on top of my feet. I love the feel of puppy face on my toes.

And about those other little pups, the ones growing in my belly, conventional wisdom tells me that over the past two weeks:

  • They’ve got skins. Not just that, but these skins are covered in some sort of waxy goo called vernix caseosa. That makes them all greased pig like, which will come in handy as they slip through the tunnel of motherly love.
  • They’re about 6 inches, 7 oz. a piece by now. Seems like only yesterday they were one sip shy of a latte.
  • They look like – wait for it – babies! They supposedly have lost their alien resemblances, other than their family ones I mean. Now they just have to grow, grow grow. And I along with them.

As for moi, the last two weeks I have been:

  • Tired. On the days I don’t have to be anywhere, I will still take a 2 hour nap. The weird thing is I actually feel a little worse when I wake up, too. But I can’t seem to stop myself from taking them.
  • Speaking of sleep, I am now waking up every couple of hours just to roll over, because my body is awkward enough now that I can’t do it while asleep. Thus, I’m not getting enough uninterrupted sleep at night. See bullet above for relevant consequence. Did I mention that I really love to sleep? I can, no lie, under normal circumstances sleep 9 hours straight in a night. Now it’s more like 2. I think that’s taking a toll. Maybe it’s good practice for what’s ahead.
  • Ambivalent. Can I say this? Overall, in a grand scheme big picture way, I am ecstatic to be a mom and to have these little two space monkeys here in a few months. But at age 39 it is so god darned difficult to fathom what kind of life change I’m really in for here. I look at my friends’ families, which are all swell, but I have a hard time picturing myself in them. What is this going to be like? I want to get psyched up, but I find myself teetering between psyched up and psyched out a lot.
  • Worried about post-partum depression. I’m a licensed mental health professional, so I have a license to worry about my own mental health.
  • Worried and frustrated about money. My job situation is precarious right now because of budget cuts. My hours have been cut and we’re losing a lot of our income and will need to pay for our health insurance come January on top of a shrinking income. Thank the lord for progesterone, the stress killing hormone, because without it I think I’d be quite hard to live with right about now.

I also had an AFP test, which came back normal, which is good. What’s that? From About.com:

The AFP test, sometimes called the MSAFP or maternal serum AFP, is where a blood sample is drawn from the mother to check the levels of AFP. AFP is a protein secreted by the fetal liver and excreted in the mother’s blood. It is generally used for detecting neural tube defects, but it can also indicate: abdominal wall defects esophageal and duodenal atresia, some renal and urinary tract anomalies turner syndrome, some low birth weight fetuses, and placental complications. A low level of AFP could also indicate Down Syndrome.

I knew Down’s wasn’t an issue, but it’s good to know all that other stuff appears to be normal too. As I am now exhausted from writing this, I’ll sign off for now.

{ 0 comments }