May I Suggest

If your house is on the market you might want to...

NOT do your step aerobics in your living room, right in front of your big picture window, with ladies dress socks on.
This will be the moment someone stops to take a flier from your sign.

Also you might want to...

NOT walk out of the bathroom with your pants undone (what?!!?) while you casually meander into the kitchen before you finish zipping. The entire walk of shame (not to mention your underpants) viewed by a stopped car checking out your yard.

Now That Was Interesting

On top of everything else... birthday... family staying over... Halloween...

last night I agreed to babysit the little baby so his mother could go out.

He came over at 9 PM and was supposed to stay until 12 AM. I know a lot of you would not do that... but... what the heck I knew I'd be up anyway. Well, she called at 12 and asked if he could stay the night and if she could get him in the morning. I agreed to that too. If you are calling to ask that... I figure that is what is best for the baby. I don't want her driving, driving with him, or even taking care of him if she's wasted.

Well... long story short I got NO sleep. I slept on the couch with him in and out of his carseat trying to rock it with one hand like a cradle and wishing there was a way I could sleep while doing so.

There wasn't.

I'm freaking exhausted.

She better pay me extra.

Near Miss

The other day I had to run into my Mecca for a quick return and a few purchases. I commended myself on successfully avoiding the snack bar (or whatever you call it) and then did something really (especially in retrospect) STUPID.

Now I think Baby's personality has been well established as has her fearless love of danger.

Well... when we got to Target and I only needed a few things I decided that we could try not taking a cart (she just throws stuff from it anyway) and try walking through the store with a little basket.

Yes (again in retrospect) it was kind of like the night (4 AM) that I decided to try walking Canine (4 months old) without a leash (in NYC). That didn't end well (me lunging out into traffic to tackle him to the ground).

Either did this...

So we're walking through Target. It was midday and so pretty empty. I needed to pick out some girls shirts... Baby REALLY enjoyed reorganizing the stacks of clothes in the girl department (don't worry Target employees I did my best to put everything back). Then we needed to get a few more things in the baby section.

Baby REALLY liked to reorganize the clothes in the baby section. And after awhile I had what I needed and we needed to move along. But Baby wouldn't. So I thought about what to do and I decided to bust out the Old School "I'm leaving" and slowly walk away. I did this pretty loudly and a couple other moms saw me and heard me and may have snickered... this comes into play with the embarrassment factor I was about to endure.

As I left the section Baby kept in a parallel line with me. She wasn't coming out of the section but she was keeping up with me and could see me. I thought that was a good sign. When I made it to the end of the section I decided to step around the corner and wait a second.

Of course she would come running.

Right?

I mean that is what happens... right?!

Two seconds later (literally) I pop back over to her side of the section.

Baby is gone.

GONE.

I am running and frantically looking under all the clothes.

How far could she possibly get?

How did I end up in a horrific Lifetime Original Movie about child abduction?!!!

I AM SUCH AN IDIOT!!!!!!

I'm starting to panic and hate myself and wondering how to get the store LOCKED DOWN.

She's two for crying out loud and would happily run out the door and into TRAFFIC!!

She's faster than the speed of light!!!

Then I saw a glimpse of something small, moving quickly, through the shelves of boxes of strollers and car seats.

It was Baby.

She saw me and then put some serious gas on it.

She tumbled through the display to the other side of the divider and took off down the other aisle.

I had to run all around the entire section to get around the divider and catch her taking off to the back of the store.

I did catch her.

She was not scared.

She was thrilled.

This Week The Plan

Oh Good Fucking Grief... the insurance nightmare continues. This morning we got pressured into (read we are total spineless wimps) a whacky (read fraudulent) policy. I have since spent the day putting stops on our checks and debating whether or not I need to shut our account down since they have our social security numbers and a check with our routing & account numbers AND our freaking signatures. The *independent* agent was... um... lying and was actually a representative of Mega Life. An insurance policy that pays you a cash stipend every time you go to the hospital... sounded a little fishy... so I looked into it after he left. A simple google search will net you tons of horrifying info. Awesome.

So my insurance woes are not over... they have only gotten all the more dramatic and exhausting.


Onto this week... let's hope it goes better than last week...

Menu:

Sunday - Quesadillas w/ avocado & salsa

Monday - Chinese Food (frozen)

Tuesday - Honey Orange Glazed Salmon w/ Green Beans & Sesame Rice

Wednesday - Salmon Noodle Casserole

Thursday - Ginger & Scallion Shrimp w/ Noodles

Friday - Pizza & Salad

Saturday - Tomato & Meatball Soup

Sunday - Chicken & Dumpling Soup


Diet & Exercise:
Well last week derailed my 7 days a week game plan. I'm back on it. Also my calorie range hasn't resulted in any weight loss so I'm thinking about lowering it a bit. But seeing as I'm probably not out of the woods, stress eating wise, I'm just going to give it another week where I'm at.


Errands & Chores:

Last week I started a 15 minute clean up before I made dinner with a 15 minute reading reward for Kid afterward. This made a huge difference so I'm sticking with that. My goal is to get my desk back in a place where I can maintain it everyday in 5 minutes. It'll take a fair amount of work to get it to that condition.

Sunday - grocery shopping

Monday - laundry, 30 min desk

Tuesday - put away laundry, 30 min desk

Wednesday - bathrooms, 30 min desk

Thursday - vacuum, 30 min desk

Saturday - finish desk & organize medical bills & tax papers

See?... This Is EXACTLY Why I Do This...

Ever since I started using my handy dandy built-in camera to take my picture for my fashion posts I've learned a VERY valuable lesson...

I like it:


I like it:


RuhRoh!


People you can't see your own back no matter how hard you try... but the camera don't lie. Even when I'm not posting my picture I've taken to trying on my outfits in front of the computer's camera instead of a mirror. Seriously... it has totally changed how I look at my clothes. To my eye, in the mirror, the back of this dress was smooth and not puckered. Mostly because in order to see your back you tend (or I do) to stand in an unnatural posture. With the camera I can stand perfectly upright and see how things really fit... for better or worse.

Money Talk Tuesday

Who Have You Hired To Manage Your Money?

When Mr F and I got married I didn't really have any idea how much money he made. I was under the impression that it was enough. When we bought our house a few months before our wedding we bought a house that Mr F said he would be able to pay the mortgage and utilities of with his income, knowing that I would not be working once we had kids. When we moved to Ann Arbor Mr F put all the utilities in his name and paid all the household bills. I stopped working but still paid my own credit card bills and medical bills from some savings I had. I always paid my bills in full. I just assumed Mr F did too. We didn't talk about it. Mr F was running his own business from home and he had all those bills to deal with so it just seemed to make sense that he would just throw the home bills in with that too.

Mr F is 8 years older than I am. He had been running a *successful* business for years. He had been living on his own for years. I had only been out of grad school for a couple of years. He made a significant amount more than I did as a social worker. It just seemed natural to let Mr F take over all the bills. He was older, more successful, independent, and he was the man. He was the natural choice... right? It never occurred to me to ask how he paid his bills... you know... on time?... in full?

It took me a few years to realize that maybe Mr F wasn't the best choice. Nothing was said but I was starting to pick up on a *stressed* vibe from Mr F. Still I didn't take over the finances. At this point I felt overwhelmed and like I wouldn't be able to figure it out. To be honest I just didn't want to pay the bills... does anyone? By this point Mr F was now hiding things and becoming defensive and more more reluctant to turn over the finances. Red flag anyone?

A couple years later and Mr F (with the help and encouragement of his fantastic therapist) was finally ready to reveal the truth. Mr F had made some pretty big financial mistakes that resulted in something close to 35K in avoidable debt. Why do I say avoidable? Well because it could have been prevented. Of course had I known what we could and couldn't afford I might have made different choices... but more importantly because most of the debt with incurred simply because Mr F was just bad at paying bills. He didn't pay attention and paid them late. He racked up finance fees and bounced checks. We filed our taxes but he didn't send the payment. Why did he do all these things? I'll never really know. He felt overwhelmed with the burden of running a business and the house for one. And he has ADD. And he kept thinking he'd get it all under control next month... which just kept getting pushed to the next month, year, years... you get the picture.

I was shocked by Mr F's admission. I was dumbfounded that he just hadn't told me after the first year managing our household expenses. I was sick to my stomach and furious both with him and with myself. Why hadn't I stepped in? Why didn't I ask more questions? Why was I so comfortable taking a back seat? Within days we had acquired a loan so we could pay off all the miscellaneous outstanding debts. I took away all of Mr F's credit cards. And I took over paying all the bills. All of them. In the last few years I have never once bounced a check, or racked up any finance fees. It took us a couple of years but we were able to payoff the loan in full (while paying less each month than Mr F had been trying to manage the debt).

The lesson we learned from this is that the person who manages your family's money is performing a major job and you need to hire the right partner to do that job. When I think about Mr F's skills and his deficits it is almost laughable that we hired him for this position. I blame myself as much as I blame him for the debt he acquired. So my question to you is who pays your bills and why? Did you consciously *hire* one of you over the other or was it a more passive decision?

I've put a poll up in my sidebar today. Please, please, take a few seconds to answer it.
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Pop on over to Smoochiefrog's Money Monday post. This is her third post in her debt series documenting her journey back from bankruptcy.