Childless by Choice.

So this is a subject that is always on my mind but I can never quite seem to get all my thoughts out. So, I am going to try again.

I come from a rather nice sized family. Four kids and two parents.  There was always someone to entertain me. And there was always someone bothering me. But four kids seemed like the perfect number.  There were always enough playmates to go around.

However, I honestly have no desire to have children of my own. Now, everyone says that I will change my mind, or they think I had a bad experience with my siblings. Neither of those opinions are correct. I am simple selfish. I really enjoy living my life without having to consider anyone else. Of course I consider Clint, but he is a grown man and is not as needy as a small child. I can leave Clint for three hours to go on a long run. But if I have a two year old, I either need a babysitter or I will be taking a much shorter run.

I feel like I am mature enough to know that I am not ready for that. I am completely aware that accidents happen. Leisel, my youngest sister is a prime example of a “mistake.” How my parents managed to muster up the energy to deal with her after the three of us got done with them, I will never know. Although my parents’ exhaustion with child raising is probably part of the reason Leisel is allowed free reign and therefore frequently just does whatever she feels like without worry of the consequence. I tell you what, I would have loved for some room to breathe when I was her age, much less the freedom to come and go as I please. All I ever heard was “It’s my house, so you follow my rules.”  I usually followed that comment with a very dramatic eye roll which would earn me a week or two grounding from my only tie to the civilized world – the phone.

So just because I don’t want to spend all my energy and resources raising a zoo, does not mean I don’t like children. I do. I find them very refreshing. They aren’t catty and conniving. They don’t go out of their way to play hurtful games. And they are genuinely funny. Kids really do say the darndest things.  I interact with kids on some level almost every single day. But that doesn’t mean I want any of my own.

I enjoy going home and vegging out on reality TV. When I watch my god kids, even though their bedtime is at 8 o’clock, I usually don’t get to sit through a full episode of mindless entertainment until after 9. I also enjoy being able to eat my meals without having to prep the food for others as I go. I don’t have to cut up anyone’s food, pick out the veggies or get up for countless drink refills. I now know why my mother was so thin.  You never get to overindulge at a meal because you are lucky that you even get to take five bites. However I can totally understand why you never hear a parent say, “I don’t drink” or “No thanks, I won’t have a beer/glass of wine/whole bottle of vodka.” I do believe that after a particularly trying day of parenting, life looks better through beer goggles.

But as far as Clint and I go, we are childless for time being. And will remain that way for the foreseeable future. We both enjoy babysitting, and hanging out with other people’s kids. But at the end of the day, we enjoy our very independent routine. We can lay in bed together on a Sunday afternoon and nap and read the news. We can go away for the weekend and not have to worry about disrupting anyone’s schedule. We can work late, go in early and do just about whatever we need or want to and it doesn’t affect anyone but us.  I can hear people calling us selfish. But honestly, aren’t we the exact opposite of selfish? We know that right now we would not make the best parents in the world, so we are not actively trying to have children who didn’t ask to be born. I think the people who are selfish are the ones who want a baby so badly that they overlook the fact that their lifestyle might not be conducive to raising a child.  We have some acquaintances who travel so frequently for both of their jobs that they only see their seven year old daughter one week out of the month. And during that week they see so many of their adult friends that their daughter gets squeezed in when she can.  And let me tell you it shows. Their little girl is whiney and clingy and very anti-social. She would rather sit in her room by herself then engage in a play date.  She is very non-verbal and hard to engage. But the most telling of all was when I read her a good night story about a little girl whose  dad takes her to the playground. She said : “My parents never play with me. They are too busy.” Out of the mouths of babes.

So even though one day Clint and I might change our minds, we enjoy our work hard play hard life. And we know that in order to have healthy, happy, well adjusted kids, something would have to change.  So our immediate plan is  to continue bonding as a couple, participate in the occasional “what if we had a baby” fantasy. And give ourselves plenty of time as a couple before becoming mom and dad.

 

 

Why can't I ever just take a sick day?

I really am not good at being sick. I have no patience and that makes me a pretty annoying patient.  I just want to get better. Like right now. I want be able to do my normal routine. I am not good at lying around on the couch watching Dr. Phil reruns. Don’t get me wrong, I love Dr. Phil, but after about four or five hours I find myself examining every aspect of my life and asking myself “What would Dr. Phil do?” Obviously this can create some dangerous situations because I am really fond of some aspects of my life but I am pretty sure that Dr. Phil would say they have to go. I don’t think he would indulge in my eating half a cartoon of ice cream a night while watching the real housewives. This is of course followed by a healthy fourth meal of cinnamon toast crunch and pistachios. I also have a morning routine that involves prodding Clinton with sharp objects until he finally gets out of bed. I could definitely hear Dr. Phil having a very strong opinion about this ritual.

And the really sad thing is that during a regular work week I often fantasize about being home alone with the remote and my sheep blanket, but in reality I would only enjoy about five minutes of that. I need to be active and I need companionship. On rainy winter days when I don’t have any motivation to run errands because it involves getting my hair wet and undoing the hour and a half I spent straightening the frizzball, I am known to compulsively clean my house. I will clean the rafters, the floorboards, the windows – anything that catches my attention.  So when I am feeling under the weather and I reduced to lying on the couch watching TV, my mind comes up with lists of things that need to be done and then I feel guilty for not doing them.

Now Clint on the other hand can lie on the couch and watch TV all afternoon and not feel guilty about not getting a darn thing done. All I can say is it must be a gender thing. He never feels obligated to rush around just to squeeze in another load of laundry or to swing by the grocery store.

I think that might be why he is more relaxed and easy going then me.  He has figured out what is really important at the end of the day and what isn’t – especially if using this line of thinking will get him out of another round of chores.

Reality TV.

Some days I get worried that I like reality TV just a little too much. I have so many different reality shows on so many different networks that in order to keep track of them all I would need a graphic organizer worthy of an AP English Class. The fact of the matter is, I really don’t like sitcoms. I think the situations are forced and fake. None of those events would happen in real life and no one really lives like that or would react in that manner. Hence why I would much rather watch reality TV.

Now I know what you are thinking. Reality TV is not really reality. No one really lives in mansions with 10 car garages and three swimming pools and we certainly don’t have three nannies for one child. I mean if walk outside my house you are lucky If the neighbor isn’t working on one of his ten disabled cars in nothing but his genuine Levi blue jean shorts and a bear in one hand and a wrench in the other. And if we are really lucky we can watch his wife chase the kid around the yard trying to get the remote. Now the fact that a 3 year old can outsmart and outrun a 30 year old is pretty impressive. Kid might have a career as a track star but that is another story. Back to the reality TV.

I know people don’t really live like that, and I know that most of the storylines are created by directors to get more views. But that doesn’t mean these shows aren’t highly entertaining.  These shows manage to suck me in .You would think that I could be persuaded to watch something with a little bit more substance but hell no. Give me a show where women gossip about each other and compete to see who can spend more of their husband’s money.  I do not actually wish to ever live like these people, but I am fascinated watching people who can and do exploit others to their benefit and have no shame in living extravagant lives.

The truth of it is, these shows remind me to be grateful for my life. Even though I might never live in a 10,000 square foot house, drive a Bentley, have a nanny, chef, butler or maid, I do live with someone who actually cares about me and that is worth living a middle class lifestyle. I don’t have to worry about when he will grow tired of me, or which one of my friends is really a frenemy.   My life is chaotic in terms of endless laundry, grocery shopping, meal prep, doctor visits, dog walking etc. but I do not have the chaos that comes with having to find ways to entertain filthy rich acquaintances who are bored with their lives.                                                     

I am Sallie Mae's ho.

You know what woman I really hate? Sallie Mae. The bitch is one conniving ho. When I was a young and dumb freshman, my only thoughts were what I had to do to make it through the year and then make it three more years til graduation.  I couldn’t even envision making it through the week, much less through graduation.

So spring semester of my freshmen year, my financial aid comes crashing down. I need a savior and fast. So Sallie Mae comes riding in on her white horse and suddenly I can breathe again. I spent a tense two days envisioning myself as a college dropout  working at McDonalds ad having to resort to hooking up with the greasy manager to bring home enough money to keep my cable so that I could at least  find solace in the high living real housewives ladies on Bravo. But then the magical people at Sallie Mae called me with the joyous news that I was approved.

“Congratulations, you will now become Sallie Mae’s ho.” So with that wonderful phone call, I now had to beef up my repertoire of tricks to keep my pimp satisfied. For 3.5 years Sallie Mae lavished me with her money and graciously allowed me to pursue and finish my degree. However on graduation day she abruptly changed her attitude. It was no longer warm and fuzzy. I now belonged to her and each day the amount at the bottom of the page got bigger with interest added on from the day before.

Six months after graduation I officially became Sallie Mae’s ho. It really didn’t matter if I had a job, or was even able to use my degree, all that mattered is that I had signed my soul away and had a long wait to get it back.  I was going to be turning tricks for Sallie Mae for a long time.

Sallie Mae appeared when I needed her the most and she saved the day. Little did I know the steep price I would have to pay. So four years later, it leaves me with the question : “Is my college degree worth being Sallie Mae’s ho? And the answer is, I really don’t think so.”

One of these days  I am actually going to look at the amount I owe and how little I have paid on it, but I am going to save that day for when I need to get sick in order to fit into a two sizes to small dress

 

Practical ways we stretch our dollars so that I can go shoe shopping.

Since the economy has been so iffy the past couple of years, and everywhere I go, I hear people talking about how worried they are about their job, or their bills or something related to money. I have decided to write about what we do in that department.

Clint and I are pretty average as far as the American household income goes. He has been out of college and working for eight years, but I have only been out of college and working for six months. But the point is we are both working and we both are college graduates. This means that we both have college debt but we feel like at the time it was the best decision for us.

Clint has a career as a financial advisor that he loves. He works long hours and is always available to help his clients out. He doesn’t have time to work a second job, but he doesn’t need to. He has spent enough time working that he has figured out how to be successful and keep us living comfortably. I work as an insurance agent at State Farm. I work a normal 9-5, but then I also work on the side to make extra money. I tutor after work because I love it, and it helps pay off those student loans. I figure that if I wasn’t spending that time tutoring, I would probably be spending it shopping or finding some other way to spend money as opposed to saving it.

We don’t have any extreme money saving tips. We don’t drive only one car or live in some tiny square footage apartment.  We don’t eat only pasta for dinner. We use practical money saving tips.

But before we have any discretionary money, we have to pay our bills. And we have a lot of those. First of all is the house. And insurance for it. We live in a modest house because we decided that we would rather live in a normal sized house then a mcmansion and have more money to spend on fun things like vacations and going out with friends.  Now my car is paid for. The repairs can be expensive because it has 100,000 miles on it, but as long as the repairs are less expensive then a new car payment, we are keeping this car. Clint’s car is a bit more expensive but he can deduct it as a business expensive. That is how he sells it to me. Now, I know his car payment might be a little bit extravagant but it is really our only unnecessary expense. And it makes him happy, so you know what as long as we can make the payment without struggling then the car can stay.

Our student loan payments are also a pretty big expense but we try to impact that by negotiating for the lowest possible interest rate and have our payments drafted out of our bank accounts monthly. Most student loan and credit card companies will work with you to lower you interest rate, and will cut you a break if you draft your payment out of your checking account.

Food is another huge expense for us. We love to eat. We love to eat good food. We buy a lot of fruits and vegetables and sadly that gets expensive. It would be cheaper for us to eat pre-packaged food since you can buy it in bulk, but it well worth paying a little bit more to get fresh fruits and vegetables. I do only buy the fruits and veggies that are in season, and whenever possible I buy them in bulk at places like Costco of Sam’s club. Oranges, onions, potatoes and apples all keep well if stored properly so it easy to buy them in bulk.

I buy all my meat fresh and only buy the amount I am actually going to use. I also try to buy whatever is on sale at the meat counter that day. If boneless. Skinless chicken breasts are on sale, then that is what I am buying. I will buy more then what I need if what is on sale is a staple meat item because I can freeze the leftovers.

Now for dairy, canned fruit, packaged foods, frozen vegetables and other grocery items, I try to exclusively buy the store brand. Buying the generic brand is almost always cheaper, and it has the same ingredients as a private label. I buy generic:

Ice cream

Frozen vegetables

Canned fruit

Apple sauce

Macaroni and cheese

Rice

Beans

Bread

Cheese

Milk

Eggs

Chips, crackers etc.

Candy

Condiments

Baking ingredients

Now, don’t get me wrong. If the private brand is on sale that week, then I will buy whatever is cheaper. But usually the store  brand is the cheapest.  By buying mainly store brands I save between .50 cents and $2.00 on each item. That adds up when you are buying 15 to 30 items at a time.

Another way we “save” money is by selling things on eBay. I am an eBay fanatic. I buy and sell things regularly on eBay.  I will buy anything from clothes to shoes to books to electronics. I rely heavily on feedback from other buyers and I always communicate with the seller to make sure that are attentive to the buyer’s needs. I like buy it now items because it allows me buy an item at a set price instead of allowing me to get involved in a bidding war. But if I decide on my highest maximum bid and stick to it, then bidding it just fine to.

Now items to sell on eBay:

Clothes

Shoes

Purses

Jewelry

Accessories

DVDS

CDS

Cell phones and mp3 players

Gift cards

Stuffed toys like webkinz or beanie babies.

The best tip for selling you item is to type it in the search box and see what others are selling it for. You don’t want to be the most expensive seller, but you do want to make a profit.  I always offer free shipping and make my item a couple of dollars more expensive. Even if my item is not 15 dollars as opposed to ten, more people are drawn to it because of the free shipping. 

Clint and I also are big fans of craigslist. If I need to purchase something big like furniture or a bike, I will look on craigslist. We have bought a desk and bookcase off of craigslist for a fraction of what it would have cost at pottery barn and we got free delivery. We also use craigslist to look for things like lawn care services or automotive services. Even if we don’t find an individual or a company that we like, at least we know what the going rate is.

Whenever I walk into an apparel store, I always start with the sales racks and work my way up from there. I have strict guidelines about how much I am willing to pay for an item. For example I am will not spend more than 20 dollars on top unless it is absolutely  fantastic. Keeping this kind of a budget helps me from making extravagant purchases I later regret.

 

5 years with my best friend.

The best part about living together is always having someone to bother – ahem – I mean entertain. There is always someone to zip up your dress, put up the dishes on the top shelf, clean the bathrooms, check for monsters and comment on trashy reality TV stars.

Clint and I have been living together for four years. That is four years of turning off lights, picking up clothes, sharing the bathroom, arguing over TV shows, eating the last cookie, hitting the snooze, pillow fights, tickling and laughing at bad jokes.  We pretty much have everything down to a science, but some things still slip past us.

For the most part we mesh well together, but there are some things we never agree on. For example, you wouldn’t think that it really matters how you load the dishwasher, but it matters to Clint. Heaven forbid you don’t load it his way. The world might end.  And this wouldn’t be an issue if Clint was always going to be the one to load the dishwasher. But let’s face it, since he is not the one who cooks, he is not the one who gets most of the dishes dirty. So in his mind, I should just leave the dishes stacked up by the sink until he is ready to load them into the dishwasher. Um no. That is disgusting. I might have twenty dirty dishes. I am not going to just stack them there and wait until you feel like loading the dishwasher. I am going to load them my way, and if you do not like it, you can take the dishes out and put them in your way.  This really is one of our biggest arguments. It probably should make us take a step back and re-evaluate what we spend time fighting over.

There are so much more entertaining battles.  But nope, we fight over the right way to load a dishwasher.

But see, there is one thing I have learned after living with Clint for four years. Whatever you pick to fight about, isn’t what you are really fighting about. For example, in the dishwasher loading fight. We are really arguing about our two separate and different ways of doing things. And how each of us think that our way is the best and only way to do something. But instead of rationally voicing our opinions about our different cleaning styles, we fight over a dishwasher. Most people would just be grateful that someone else wants to load the dishes.

But there are also endearing things about living with someone you love:

There is someone to warm up the bed in the wintertime.

There is someone to jump up from the table and grab what you forgot.

There is someone to rub your shoulders.

There is someone to laugh at hilarious story lines with you.

There is someone to bring you your towel when you forgot it.

There is someone to share a bowl of ice cream with.

There is someone to sing off key with.

There is someone to snuggle with.

There is someone to blame for using up all of the hot water.

There is someone to turn off all the lights when you are too lazy to get out of bed.

There is someone to come behind you and refold the laundry you just shoved in the drawer because you were feeling lazy.

The problem I have with flying.

So if you have ever flown. You know the first thirty minutes or so can be enjoyable. You get to know your seatmate, you take off and you get to look at all the scenery below you. Well, after about thirty minutes the scenery all looks the same, your seatmate it no longer witty and now it just annoying in a middle-school way, and you can’t go to sleep because some kid two rows behind you is narrating his entire life story at top volume.

This is when flying really gets enjoyable.  I usually shrink into my seat, plug my iPod into my ears and attempt to page through a magazine. I try to make a game out of how long I can go without looking at the clock. The longest I have ever gone is five minutes.  I generally breathe a little easier when I see the flight attendants come around to pick up our trash because then I know we more than halfway done with our flight.

However the hardest thing about flying is not the flight. It is stuffing everything you need into one suitcase. Do you know how hard it is to pack clothes, shoes, a straightner, a blow dryer, make up etc into one suitcase that fits into the size limits for a carry on. Let me tell you, I could win some awards. It is called creative packing. I fold everything into the little package I can, and then I just start cramming.  Nothing looks to pretty when you take it out, but at least I got it all in.

I wouldn’t have to cram things in my suitcase in the first place if I didn’t have such a propensity to over pack. I bring everything just in case.  It doesn’t matter if the forecast calls for 90 degrees and sun every day, I am going to bring my jeans and a sweater just in case. I also need extras of everything just in case. I have no actual idea what just in case actually is, but I like to be prepared. I always carry a razor and toothbrush in my purse just in case I end up spending the night away from home. I want to be able to have fresh breath and smooth legs.