When I was a little kid, I used to hear the phrase "you're gonna send me to the poorhouse" a lot, mostly from older family members and family friends. I didn't know what it meant. I still don't exactly know what it means.
Oh. Okay, that clears it up. Nevermind then.
Anyway.
The way the term was used when I was a kid was, I guess, somewhat similar, though I always imagined it was a place people went to live when they ran out of money and couldn't live at home anymore. I pictured it as a falling-apart wooden shack with a tin roof, or something, I suppose.
I'm not living in the poorhouse, though I do now understand what my (decidedly non-affluent) family members meant when they used the term. I paid my bills and rent on Sunday afternoon, and now only have a bit more in my account than I did before I had my paycheck deposited by my parents earlier this week. It is clear that this semester is going to totally be a "living paycheck-to-paycheck" semester, and I'm absolutely going to have many more grocery-shopping trips in the future which will be financed by my high-limit Discover card.
I paid $100 on that card, actually, and paid another $100 on my Citi Card. The $100 on the Discover card is a mere drop in the bucket; the $100 on the Citi Card eliminates about 1/3 of the debt on it, give or take a little here or there. I should be able to pay off my other cards in a matter of two or three months, but I'm guessing the Discover card will almost always have a balance, if not a substantial one, for a while. I hate having to live on that card for most of my necessities, but for the moment it can't be helped. Sorry, I've gotta eat.
Aside from that, it's been a pretty quiet, uneventful weekend. I didn't get up until the afternoon on Sunday (which, of course, was my plan anyway) and I made lunch and played a little more Pokemon X before taking out the garbage, running the dishwasher, and cleaning the cat box/cat room. I have to fold and put away my clean laundry sometime, but as for any other work? It's all done. My students' papers are graded and my lesson planning for this week is done, the kitchen and rest of the house is (relatively) clean, the shopping is done, the bills are paid, Daisy worked all night for the past two nights (and is still there right now while I type this), and the car has enough gas in it to where I won't need any more before Wednesday night or maybe even Thursday morning. I am, for the moment -- even though I have my long day of teaching today -- relatively stress-free.
This...this feels good, actually. It feels good to have at least some money in my account, it feels good to have no more monthly bills or rent hanging over my head for the moment, and it feels good to have food in the fridge/pantry that I can cook/make any time I want, however I want it. It feels good that if I want to, I could sit on the couch and play my 2DS all night (when I get home) without feeling guilty that I'm wasting time that could be put to use doing student stuff, or otherwise being productive. I'm even showered and clean, and my hair/beard looks fabulous.
You could always sit down and do your taxes, you might be thinking. And yes, I could. But I've already set aside time next weekend to do those. My next sets of student work, from any/all of my classes, won't come in until March 4 at the earliest, when I collect my 011 students' journals and my 102 students' first papers. I collect my 210 students' next assignments on the 5th. This means that next weekend, the 27th through the 3rd, is completely wide open for me to do whatever I want or need to do, and at least one day of that time will be devoted to me doing my taxes. They'll be a bit more complicated this year because I made more money the second half of the year as an adjunct. Still, they shouldn't be that difficult. I always dread doing my taxes because I'm terrible at math and accounting, and I'm even more terrible at making sure everything's calculated correctly and I'm getting the benefits/tax credits I'm allowed. It's not remarkably hard to do my taxes, or anything like that -- I stress myself out about it too much and end up raising my blood pressure for a few hours while I do it, but when I finish, I'm like "Oh, well, that wasn't that bad." Regardless, next weekend I'll have the time and patience to take care of it.
I wrote before, in my last two posts, that I've had a low-grade headache for the past several days. It comes and goes, and I think it has to do with the weather and my allergies, but it's a pain in the ass. It's also probably sinus-related as well, since it tends to affect me in my sinuses and the places where my sinuses meld with the rest of my head (for lack of a better description). Yesterday it was bothering me in the back of my skull, where the neck meets my head, and my ears have been popping a lot. The weather keeps changing, almost on a daily basis, and it's seriously messing with me. It's supposed to be in the low 50s today, but yesterday it was in the 30s all day and over the past few days, highs have been ranging from the 30s to the 60s. By next weekend, we're supposed to get snow again (though how much, and if it's going to be anything significant, is still too far out to be predicted). Sinus/pain pills help the headache, but I'm guessing that as long as the weather keeps changing almost every day, this headache and the allergy issues that come along with it will remain until, again, Kansas picks a season and sticks with it. My spring allergies tend to be awful until the weather settles down and rights itself. When I showered last night, I blew a big glob of neon-yellow snot out of my nose, which tells me -- to some extent, at least -- that I'm having a low-grade sinus infection again right now.
In other news, Daisy received her new car side mirror over the weekend, and put it on herself on Sunday. I'm proud of her; she ordered a standard mirror that would fit her car (though it doesn't match her car, but that doesn't matter), removed the broken-off pieces, wired it together and snapped it on all by herself, securing it and making sure that it was bolted down and fixed. You know, a lot of people can change a flat tire or even change their own oil, but replacing a side mirror is body work. It's a little more difficult and intricate, especially for someone who's never done it before. I was highly impressed. I love that I'm marrying an intelligent woman who's handy and can do these things. I told her that she was my hero.
Anyway.
In talking to Daisy last night about what our life will be like after marriage, I brought up the fact that I'll definitely need a new car sooner or later -- probably sooner than later. While I love and adore my Monte Carlo, as I've written here many times before, I know that car isn't going to last longer than another year or two at the most -- not with as much as I drive it. Something big will, inevitably, break or blow out on it, and when that happens, I just hope I'm in a good place financially and in our living situation to where it won't completely fuck me. She's been running well; really well over the past few weeks, actually, but for the past year or so I've totally been pushing my luck with that car. I need to get an oil change and coolant flush, I need new air/fuel/oil filters, and it probably needs a transmission flush as well. However, the spark plugs and wires are holding up much better than I was told they would by the auto techs when I got them replaced (for the moment, anyway), and even with almost 232,000 miles, the car is running strong and dependably every day in all weather, good and bad. Still, again, that can't and won't last forever, and I'm really just waiting for the day where I blow the head gasket or when the differential, transmission, water pump, alternator, or anything else goes out, and I'd just be better off getting another vehicle than trying to repair the one I have.
"I don't want a car payment," I told Daisy. "At all. I'd be happy to get a car that was made in the past ten years and has less than 100,000 miles on it. At least I wouldn't have to worry as much about that. I'd even bump that up to fifteen years if said car were a Honda or Subaru, since you can drive those things into the ground and have them still run great."
This is true -- I don't want a new car. Well, I do, but I'll never be able to afford one. I just want to buy a car outright and be done with it, and not have to worry about making payments every month. My bills are enough as it is without adding a car payment to them. But, eventually, I'll have to get something newer and/or more reliable than the Monte Carlo, if only because Daisy and I will eventually have kids and I want said kids to be safe. I also told Daisy that I want a car we can make road trips with -- if we want to take a week or two in the summer to drive back east to visit my family or even her family, I want to be able to do that without worrying the engine is going to blow up on us. If the Monte Carlo were more reliable and/or newer, I would've already done this once or twice during my winter and summer breaks, and I could drive to Omaha basically anytime I wanted to visit Daisy without worrying that it would kill my car.
Daisy's car, of course, is only five years old and is in fantastic shape. The most driving she does with it is when we go back and forth on our visits; otherwise, all she does is drive it to work and back, and around her part of Omaha. Occasionally, she'll make a trip to visit her older sister, a drive of about two hours one-way, but that's it. The drawback with this is that she has car payments, and they're not exactly low monthly car payments either.
I really can't be choosy if I end up having to suddenly get another car; I'll have to get what I can afford, and I'll have to get it quickly -- especially if the Monte Carlo blows up during any given semester that I'm teaching. I remember the days of scouring for cars on Craigslist and finding total clunkers and beaters with tons of problems...and I really don't look forward to needing to do that again. For now, I have to keep my proverbial fingers crossed and hope my luck holds out until Daisy and I are married and are more financially stable, but that really is luck more than anything else.
Which reminds me that I need to pick up more oil and antifreeze the next time I go to Walmart and actually have a bit of money to spare. I don't need either one right this second, but I will within the next month or so, and I'm currently out of both.
I've made a large "shopping list for when I can afford shit again." It contains the things that are too expensive for me to get when I'm on a limited income and/or while I still have to tightly budget my expenses, things like water filters, furnace filters, car stuff (wiper blades, fuel system cleaner, Marvel Mystery Oil), expensive cleaning supplies, cat stuff (like scratch pads and the like), peppermint oil to keep the spiders away, etc. It's all stuff that I normally can't afford when I'm going there on a budget and getting necessities only, as I have been doing for the past two or three months. I'm not sure I'll ever have enough spare cash to get all of it, not even over multiple trips. People don't understand what being poor is truly like until they're in that situation themselves. A lot of the time it means making do, and a lot of the time it means going without. As mentioned above, the only reason I've been able to survive at all over the past few months is because I have credit cards. Without them I'd have no food in the house (at least not food that I personally purchased) or gas in my car.
Today is my long day, of course -- where I'll leave the house in about 90 minutes and will be on both campuses all day long until probably about 9PM or so tonight. In the interim between starting this post yesterday and now, the weather forecast has changed drastically -- it's now supposed to snow here this afternoon and tonight again, at least up here in Newton (north of the city). They're not predicting accumulations or anything, but it's quite possible it could suck just as much as it did driving home in it on Thursday morning, especially since I'll be tired and burnt-out by the time I get home from classes tonight. Again, after Tuesday is over, my week is half-over -- I just teach my Wednesday night 210 class and then my morning 102 class on Thursday, and I'm done. But I totally dread Tuesdays. I always do, because I have to be awake and working all day long, driving between campuses, traveling, walking, teaching twice, grading, etc. It's a long, long day. Thankfully, I have coffee, and even more thankfully, I slept for eleven hours last night -- falling asleep around 6:30 and not getting up until around 5:30 this morning.
My classes today aren't doing a whole lot, really -- I have a short lesson on paraphrasing/summarizing in my 102 class this morning, and I collect their workshop copies (which I'll be going through this afternoon once I get to main campus). In my 011 class tonight, I'll go over about two chapters or so in their big grammar textbook before letting them go. There's a basketball game tonight, but thankfully it's an away game and I don't have to worry about "game traffic" when I get out of there. I just dread the length of the day in general on Tuesdays. There's a lot of downtime where I'm not doing anything, but I just have to be there and awake when I'd much rather be at home sleeping or taking care of stuff around the house.
So that's my day for you. In a few moments I shall get dressed (in layers again, of course, since it's apparently going to be cold enough to snow again) and in a while I shall leave the house to actually do the job I dread so much on Tuesdays.
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