Can You Pay My Bills........

I'm a little stressed out right now.
Okay.....I'm a LOT stressed out right now.
Some things have gone down recently that didn't necessarily turn my life upside down, but it did knock it off center a little bit and made it just a little bit harder for a couple of weeks. Long story short, I didn't pay a bill that I should have and I've lost something extremely important as a result and  I can't afford to get it back.
It was my fault and I accept that. I'm not going to play the blame game and try to put this on anyone else. No...that's part of being a grown up.
Plus, as my husband said, it could be a lot worse. We have a roof over our heads, food in our cabinets, lights, water, all of our basic needs met. We have love, we have each other, he has a job (and I'm looking for one). What happened happened and, while it sucks, it's not the worse thing in the world. It's a storm we will weather and do so together.

Yesterday, I was depressed about it and I cried to anyone who would listen that I was close to and knew I could vent to. I panicked, I freaked out, I screamed, cried, got mad, got depressed, and got pissed beyond belief. Then I calmed down, put my head back on straight and did what needed to be done to find a solution. Once it was found, I relaxed a little bit. Once my husband got home from work and we talked, I relaxed a lot, because he wasn't taking it nearly as bad as I was or thought he would. He remained my rock through it and I'm grateful for that...more than words can say.
Being a grown up sucks sometimes. You (or your spouse) goes to work every day and work really hard for the money earned, only to have to turn around and give the majority of it to other people....like your landlord or mortgage company, the power company, the utility company...you get my drift. You long for the days when you can be carefree with your money, or, if you are anything like me and didn't have a lot of money growing up, you want to spend, spend, spend. Not that I'm materialistic, but it would be nice to be able to go on a shopping spree at Goodwill!

More often than not, when payday comes, I do a cheer, then I'm on the verge of shooting my computer because, usually, within an hour or two of waking up and seeing the money in the bank, most of it's gone again. Then your kids ask for something and you immediately hear your voice saying a phrase you heard your own parents say more than once while you were growing up..."Do I look like I'm made of money?"
Somehow, my kids have learned about credit cards and they think that, because we mostly only use debit cards, we can charge everything. And they are still at that page where they don't understand the value of a dollar and the concept that things cost money in life. It's just how it is.
I HAVE learned a lot from this, though. I need to be more careful with our money, I need to get us on a budget and stick to it and I need to find me a part time job. Otherwise, we will struggle and we will stress (not that we won't anyway) and I won't be able to make this blog into something awesome, like I want to.

I also learned that it's an amazing feeling to have a husband that understands, that knows me well enough to know that how HE reacts to something is going to determine how I react. He tries to eliminate as much stress in my life as he can. He knows I'm the worry-wart in this marriage, so he tries to make things easier on me in that aspect. Sometimes I envy his easy-going ways...sometimes I want to shake him and scream "WHY ARE YOU NOT STRESSING OUT?!" But this is a storm we are weathering together and come out on the other side stronger than before. For that, I'm grateful and lucky!

~Sarah