Counting My Blessings

Posted by Lizzie on May-28-2008

I have issues with budgeting and planning. I don’t like to do either. However, with the way gas prices are today, I think it’s a good time to start. My husband and I aren’t going to retire any day soon and we’d like to keep our home, so this is something I really need to get a grip on. Right?

Lately I’ve seen a lot of people asking “What are you doing to cope?” That’s a good question. The economy is tanking and people are feeling the pinch. It’s come down to “Do I keep all 5 cell phones? Cut down to basic cable? Eat day old bread?” While I’ve been trying to learn to cut down on our expenses and find extra dollars here and there, I’ve been thinking of what my grandparents had to endure. And somehow managed to survive.

My great-grandmother was born before the Great Depression. They managed to live on $2-5 a week- if that. They didn’t have a car (much less two) and couldn’t afford to buy their children a different pair of shoes for each different outfit. As a matter of fact, my grandmother once told me that they had their “Sunday best”- which was only worn on Sunday - and their everyday clothes. Two outfits. That’s it. How did they do it? And meat was only eaten once a week- or twice if there was a holiday. They convened at the neighbor’s house when there was an interesting radio program playing, otherwise they did without (no TV mind you).

I look around my house and realize that we’ve got it good. I’m typing this on a PC and posting it via the Internet and if we were really that bad off, I would have neither of these luxuries. I wouldn’t have a special shampoo or be able to choose whole grain bread over white bread. I wouldn’t be able to say “Hey! I need new sandals because these are just ugly!” Nope. I would be canning and hoarding and scraping to make sure my kids had a roof over their heads, not worrying about going to basic cable instead of America’s Top 150 on Dish. My children have closets full of clothes and have milk and meat everyday. I’m scrimping and saving to keep these things. So they don’t go without them. Not so they’ll survive. Because I have no worries that our money woes are going to cause our kids to get sick, go homeless or die. We are LUCKY. I don’t think enough people realize just how lucky they are.

I’m still coming up with a budget, though. I like our little luxuries and don’t want to have to give them up. I like having cable and the internet and being able to buy my kids little cheap toys every so often. I like being able to choose between good food and processed. I like that I can take my girls to a decent doctor and not have to worry about them dying from an ear infection (my great-uncle died from an ear infection when he was 1 year old). We have one car (and it runs!), two tvs (we married our households so one of them is 15 years old), and one PC. Our bills are paid on time every month and our refrigerator is always stocked. We’ve got it good. I’m not complaining. I’m counting my blessings.

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Parenting Teen Parents

Posted by Lizzie in Featured, family, irritations

I was looking around for some forums for parent’s parenting teen parents (say that 5 times fast) and ended up with… zilch. There are a few places for parents of teens, parents of tweens and teens and parents wanting to pull their hair out because of teen issues (ZITS????). Where is the support for parents parenting teen parents? It’s a little frustrating for me because my issues is a tad bit different from what else I’ve seen online and I really feel the need to scream about it¹.

So, I was searching. Silly me decided to open every link on the search page in a different tab. Of course, that sucked up the ram and my browser shut down. When I reopened said browser I was asked if I wanted to restore the last session or start a new one. Without thinking I chose to restore. Boom! Same thing happed again. I had to give up. Which meant that I had to give up on my search.

I did find an interesting site called The Mom Bloggers Club. I signed up and maybe I’ll run into someone there with my same issue re: Pee Wee. We’ll see. I can’t be the only one struggling with this particular issue. Can I?

As it is, we’re coming into the home stretch with Pee Wee’s baby. He’ll be here soon. But I know she’s not mentally or emotionally ready for this. I know that she’s just not “getting” it. That scares me to death. I’ve already had a couple of nightmares about it. We have one year to shape her up and help her learn how to parent. One year. And then she’s on her own. What then? Good grief, I’m up to my eyeballs with worry. I’d like to think that she’s learning something from me by watching me with Mags. But she’s been arguing about my parenting technique a lot this past week or so. I should be doing this and not doing this and why aren’t I teaching her this…ARGH! She’s got a lot of opinions now- and she’s not afraid to shove them down my throat. Yeah, it’s a struggle. I remind her that I’ve got years of parenting experience on her and just because she’s growing a baby now doesn’t give her leave to preach to me. It’s a little bit of a fight. Just a tad. Enough, though, that I’ve been heard to say (a little loudly) “Calgon, take me away!”.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed that she stops with the parenting advice soon. If she doesn’t, well, I can’t make promises…:)

I love my child so much. But sometimes the struggles of helping her get ready to be a parent (I wasn’t ready for that, you know) get to be a little too much. Sometimes I just need to scream/holler/cry/curse and have someone not point at me and say something like “Well, her mom was young- what did you expect?” or “Why would you allow her to make that kind of decision? You should put that baby up for adoption” Those aren’t helpful and really make we want to lash out. That’s why I’d love to be around other moms who are going through this same thing with their child- even though they thought they raised their child to understand the dangers/pitfalls/disappointments of teenage parenthood.

If you know of any forums for this, please send me a link. I’d be terribly grateful.

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