Vacation?

Wednesday we will get on a plane and go home, together, for the first time since My Husband got out of Basic Training. I was able to go home a little over a year ago, but he has not been back for two years.

This trip is mostly to visit my dying Mammaw, but it turns out my Aunt is having surgery just before we arrive. She fought with breast cancer a few years ago (she even wrote a book. Find out more here.) and thought she was doing well, but it looks like it is back in full force. It has spread, and they are going to try and remove as much of it as possible... There is a small chance that she will not make it through the surgery.

This means that we will be adding some hospital visits to our agenda, leaving even less time to try and cater to My Husband's family.

During this time we will have to adjust to a different time zone and switch from being night people to having a daytime schedule. Immediately upon return, My Husband starts working overnight. I will have one day to re-adjust to normal life before plunging back into my 11 hour workdays. We are going to have a lot of fun, and we are going to wish that we could stay forever... but this is going to be really hard on us.

Meanwhile, no news from the doctor yet. They are checking my hormone levels to see if they can figure out what's going on.

I've started knitting an afghan for the living room. It is going to be huge and just might function as our new home if we are not able to get our finances together in time. I mean, financially we are doing just fine, but we need to come up with a large (for us) amount of cash in a really short amount of time. This is the part that's killing us.

We have worked really hard to achieve a certain comfort zone and, as it turns out, we do not want to stick to a strict budget (even short term) that requires us giving up the things we have become accustomed to.

Now, I'm not talking about lobster dinners every night, or even spending a lot of money on entertainment... I just want to be able to buy some shoes or a handbag without worrying when payday is.

During our first year of marriage, I became an expert at "Poor People Math". If you are not familiar with the term, PPM usually involves calculating exactly when a purchase will hit your bank account, how close it is to payday, and the likelihood of that purchase putting your account in the negative. Often you are trying to figure out how many meals you will have to skip if you rent a movie, or how many pennies you think you can find between now and the end of bank hours.

We considered ourselves very lucky if we had 17 cents in our bank account at the end of the week, and every indulgence required a corresponding sacrifice. I ate once each day, usually around 2 am, and it was carefully chosen from the dollar menu or the "Manager's Special" space at the grocery store where I worked. I remember one week I was going to buy a head of lettuce and my debit card was declined. How embarrassing is that? I had to have one of my cashiers ring me up, and then my debit card was declined... Fortunately, I found 54 cents on the floor so we were able to have a ranch salad topped with Parmesan cheese packets.

Admittedly, that was one of the low points.

This year we have, financially, been better off than I ever could have imagined. I usually don't have to worry about the bank account unless I overspend while grocery/clothes/entertainment shopping or if we make a major purchase.

We really enjoy having less stress, and we are finally getting out of debt. I'm really not sure whether I want to give all of that up for a house... especially for one so small... and expensive...

Decisions, decisions...