Plenty

So this post has got me thinking about money...or the lack of it. I feel incredibly blessed because I usually have a dollar or two left at the end of the pay period. But savings are nonexistent and that bothers me. There is nothing for a rainy day and, really, what are the chances it's not going to rain? I feel that I suffer from lowered expectations in that my financial situation today, while still pitiful, is so much better than it was a few years ago.

When Ryan left he also quit his job so,for a while, there was absolutely no money coming in to my household at all. Lots of people encouraged me to sell the house and move in with my mom and dad. I just couldn't do it. I felt like a bomb had gone off in my life and, for whatever reason, I clung to that house like it was a life raft. I was desperately and unsuccessfully trying to find a job so many of my family members tried to give me financial help. All that "help" went to cover the mortgage which still left me with that pesky problem of feeding my children which ultimately led to the most humiliating experience of my entire life. I applied for Food Stamps. Now as an admitted bleeding-heart liberal, I have always thought that financial assistance from the government was a necessary and effective program...for other people. And so I sat in a plastic chair in that shabby government office filled with the most hopeless people a society can produce and I shamefully counted myself among them.
The food stamps lasted for six months and ended at almost the exact time that I got hired full-time at my current job. I never received any other assistance and I had my Scarlett O'Hara moment wherein I proclaimed that "As God as my witness..." I would never allow my family to be in that situation again.

That degrading memory haunts me but it also serves as a necessary touchstone. I'm not able to give my kids every material thing they desire. They attend school with kids who live in homes that make ours look like the servant's quarters. But the bills are paid, usually on time. The cupboard is full of food. The mortgage is current. Everybody got new backpacks, lunch boxes and school clothes. And when it starts raining, we'll just have to borrow a friggin umbrella :)