Educating the Wheelers

I was going to go to Walmart or Target today, but I think I’m going to push that off. Those two were my biggest budget-busters last month. (Well, second biggest. The 550 dollar dental bill was the killing blow, really.) Sometimes it feels impossible to leave one of those stores with less than 100 dollars (or worse) worth of stuff, even if the only items on my list were “Generic Infant Tylenol” and “diapers.”

Willpower is not my specialty, to paraphrase Wallace.

That’s my current strategy with the grocery store, as well. Hold it off as long as humanly possible. It does help that it’s winter and most of the fruit is pretty hardy and will last a long time. It’s also giving me an excuse to rotate my freezer stock. Audrey is a particular fan of frozen long green beans — she always asks for “Bamboo Salad” (her name for it!):

1 bag frozen Aldi’s green beans or equivalent
A small little bit of balsamic dressing, store bought or homemade
4oz or less crumbled feta
a handful of walnuts

Empty bag of green beans in a colander and run under cool water for a little while to defrost a little. They’re very skinny, so it won’t take long. Put in a bowl with other ingredients. Serve to delighted child.

Heck, she doesn’t even eat the feta and walnuts — that’s just in for mom. I got some of those “spray” bottles of dressing really cheap a while ago, so I just use about 6-7 sprays of that and it seems to be plenty. With that and a restrained amount of cheese and walnuts, the salad manages to be decently healthy.

Our Texas house sold in about 24 hours for over our asking price. That’s the good news. [And it is, admittedly, a longer, weirder story than that. Always is, isn't it? But that's the major gist of it.]

So here we are in Minnesota, crashing at my parents’ place with our kids and our cat [our dogs are staying with my Aunt, since my folks don't have a fenced yard].

Buying a house has been much more of a hassle than selling one. I thought that wasn’t supposed to be the case these days. Heh.

Just today we cut off negotiations with the first seller that we’ve been dealing with. They appeared to have not gotten the memo that the Twin Cities housing market is in the tank right now. Eight buyers for every seller, sales volume down by almost 20% over last year, and all that jazz.

So, until we have a place, our down payment sits in Emigrant Direct making 5.15%…

I just wiped out a months and months of “save a dollar here, save a dollar there”s.

We didn’t have a whole lot of notice between deciding to look for a job in MN, and Andrew actually accepting a job up there. Once we knew we were going to start looking up North, we started eating primarily out of the freezer and doing our best to clear it out.

But eventually we had to start packing up the kitchen, and now it’s time to unplug the garage freezer. In addition to the bazillion ounces of frozen stockpiled breastmilk that I ended up having to donate, there was what turned out to be 8 full bags of roasts, steaks, chicken breasts, bullets of ground turkey, turkey sausage, hamburger, frozen fruits and veggies, pounds of butter … yeah. Everything that I had bought on big time sale and now wasn’t going to be able to use up.

I ended up giving it to my neighbor, who has extra freezer space and who held and rocked our baby — and entertained Audrey — for almost 5 hours tonight so Andrew and I could be free to work on packing. She’s going to share it with our other, retired neighbor who we’re quite fond of.

At least it’s going to a good home!

[If you're squeamish, avert your eyes right now! And, of course, since we homebirthed both of our kids, there were two wrapped up placentas in there, too. Yeah, yeah, I know there are things you are supposed to do with them -- bury it, plant a tree over it, etc -- I suspect that a large number of people end up doing precisely what we did: stick it in the freezer and then completely forget about it.]

One of the hazards of real-name blogging is that there are something things that you just can’t blog about.

For us, it was Andrew’s job search that has consumed our time and psychic energy for a few months. But now it’s over and the die has been cast and we’re moving forward and we can finally talk about it. [Everything financial that I've thought about in the last few months has related to the move, so it sort of cramped my blogging style.]

The job is in Minnesota, near where my parents live. I get on a plane next Wednesday with the two kids, and the house goes on the market two days later. Andrew will likely follow about a month later.

Yes, I am in full on panic mode.

But isn’t Owen ridiculously cute?

Though I’m able to keep a detached bemusement about it all, I had forgotten how grim post-partum depression can be, particularly for a fairly isolated stay-at-home mom. It is not helped by the fact that our children are, bless ‘em, “high need.” Owen howls if he is not constantly held. I know there are different schools of thought on how to handle those types of kids, and I don’t have a dog in that ideological fight, but in our household, his disposition means that my hands are never free. [The PP depression is not helped at all by his fussiness. Both of my children have been soothed when other people hold them and fuss when I do. The books tell you that it's common to think "the baby hates me!" when you have pp depression, but I tell ya, my babies hate me. Heh.***]

Thankfully, this is a problem that you can help — though not completely alleviate — by throwing money at it.

I’ve managed to scrounge up a neighborhood girl who can come by once or twice a week for 3 hours and for 5 dollars an hour, she’ll play with my 2 and a half year old while I tend to the newborn, or if by the grace of God he is sleeping, I can take a shower or do laundry or something, anything.

There are no other babysitters in our neighborhood that haven’t already turned me down for being too busy, so I also occasionally hire a post-partum doula 1-2x a week for 4 hour shifts on weeks that the babysitter can’t help, and she’ll handle one or both kids, or do housework for me. That’s 15 dollars an hour.

I usually end up having some sort of help twice a week. So it’s not cheap, that’s for sure. But I keep reminding myself that there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. And I just have to keep myself sane until we get there.

*** At least I can look to Audrey’s example to know that he’ll grow out of it. He’s already starting to, thank God.

Wedding presents just don’t make much sense to me anymore. It used to be that people married when they were coming out of high school and leaving their parents’ house for the first time. They had little money and needed to outfit their new homes, and getting some pots and pans or a toaster would have been a real blessing.

The vast majority of people I know have gotten/are getting married in their late twenties/early to mid-thirties these days. So we’ve got two people who have been living on their own in their own places for about 10 years and already have bought everything they need to live comfortably. In fact, since it’s generally the melding of two independent 10-year-old households, there’s an overabundance of stuff to start with and there are several large donations to Goodwill. Most of the bridal registries I’ve seen look like an opportunity to upgrade to shinier and spiffier stuff rather than to help them get started with the necessities of life.

On the flipside, you now have late teenage and early twenties folks out on their own having to buy all this stuff for themselves right about the time when they have the least amount of disposable income until they start having their kids.

I’m not saying the answer is for everyone to go back to marrying their high school sweetheart right after graduation. [Lord knows I'm glad I'm not married to anyone I dated in high school! Or college, for that matter.] And I’m not just trying to wiggle out of buying wedding gifts because I’m cheap. [No, really!] But it seems like the tradition doesn’t much match the reality anymore.

My not-going-to-worry-about-frugality-post-partum bills have started to arrive and they’re giving me a good idea of how much we had been saving. Our water bill went from 13 to 32 dollars, and our electricity bill rose from 137 to 212 dollars.

I hate having to make the decision whether to go to the ER. [Or to the doctor at all, for that matter.] It’s expensive, it’s almost always unpleasant, a long wait sitting around people who may very well make you [or, worse, your child] even sicker.

Sometimes I’ll sit and dither for a day or two, and by the time I call and wait for the day the appointment comes, by the time I get there, the thing has passed on its own. And then I feel like they’re making a little “Hypochondriac!” note in my chart.

But last night, it didn’t take a lot of wondering before we brought Audrey in. She started with a bit of an itchy rash for awhile, and by the time I took her in, she was one big head to toe red rashy welt. Poor girl. A lot of benadryl, a shot of adrenalin, and some oral steroids and she’s doing better now.

But why do these things never happen M-F during office hours? I can’t wait to see the bill. [And why do the bills always seem to come several months later?]

Andrew’s birthday is today, and he said a few weeks ago that he wanted a Nintendo.  I looked around on Ebay, but realized quickly that, hey, I may be a nerd, but I’m not a gaming nerd, and he really needs to pick it out himself.

*Time passes*

He’s changed his mind.  He decided that he’d rather have a new dishwasher!  One that is quieter, and has a temperature booster.  So he’s been cruising Consumer Reports and elsewhere on the web for a good model at a good price.  Anyone have one that they like?

[Are we getting old?]

As I get more and more ridiculously pregnant, I’m wanting to make meals from scratch less and less.  So, last night we decided to *gasp* go out for dinner.

It’s been awhile since we’ve gone out for dinner, but we have a couple of favorite places.  They tend to have at least a few of the following criteria: cheap, family-friendly, not too busy.  Emphasis on the not too busy.  See, but therein lies the rub.  We like to go to places that don’t have a lot of people in them because then it’s not as stressful if Audrey happens to act up.  On the other hand, places that don’t get a lot of business tend to, well, go out of business.

Did we drive well out of our way to go to our favorite tamale house only to find that it was no longer?  Of course.  "But I loved going there, the food was good, cheap, and it was always empty!"  Uh huh.  [Is this the first time this has happened to us?  Of course not.]

So, we went to Luby’s  — less than 20 bucks for all three of us — we ate big and took home leftovers [and it was filled with familes and small kids so the pressure was off].