Quick Entry

Gah, Alex has been up MOST of today.  I think she might have just fallen asleep on the couch, finally.  It certainly took long enough.  She is like Sammi, needs quiet and dark to really get to sleep.  I hear nothing from her, so I assume that she’s sleeping.  Which will mean I will need to pump, because I don’t want to wake her, I just want to put her in the cradle and let her sleep…she needs it.

It’s nearly 1:30 a.m. and I was hoping to be asleep by now, and perhaps had I simply laid down and tried to go to sleep, I might have.  I’m feeling a little out of sorts, tired, aimless, bored.  I’ve been eating too much tonight, as I watched tv.  I could have been doing something productive, and I just didn’t.  Today was sort of like that.

Tomorrow though, I need to do laundry.  Sydni and Shabree cleaned their rooms today.  I have been after them for weeks to give me their laundry so I could wash their clothes, and not have to do it all at once.  Well… now I have a HUGE pile of laundry to do, because they gave it to me all at once.  Sigh… but oh well I guess.  I will have to do about 8 loads I think, to catch up on it all… maybe more.

We’re thinking about buying a DVD/VCR combo.  I had put out a Wanted on Freecycle… and I got two people who said they’d give me a VCR (I don’t need the DVD, but our VCR doesn’t work at all), the first one I emailed back and she never responded, the second one… sigh, I was supposed to call him back, and I didn’t.  By the time I did, he’d given it away.  And the reason I didn’t call him back?  FEAR!  I was afraid to talk to the guy on the phone!  I don’t like calling people.  It’s getting in the way of friendships, of things like getting a VCR so we can watch the numerous videos that we have collected for years… I’m just freaked out by using the phone anymore.  I can call people like Linda, my mom, my dad… but it’s like everyone else I have this huge fear of calling.  I don’t mind people calling me at all, in fact, I wish they would, because then I wouldn’t have to call them!  Sigh… this is unhealthy, and I don’t know what to do about it exactly.  So Jerry is thinking we might just buy the DVD/VCR combo.  It’s 60 dollars at Wally world.  The next one up is like 150 though!  Woah.  I might check the thrift shops though…however, I have money on the wal mart gift cards.

Which reminds me.  Jerry didn’t want to take Becca to the thrift store (Goodwill) to look for her sweats, and thought we should go to Wal mart instead, so I ended up paying 7 dollars for pants (thank goodness the mens ones fit her, because the ones from ladieswear were twice as much at 14 dollars!), a zippered sweat shirt for 10 (and could she go for the 7 dollar non zippered top?  Of course not!  It had to match the ones they sell at school!  Grrr.) and 3 sports bras for 10 dollars… which was a good price, but we did learn something.  She thought she was a C cup… she’s a D cup.  38D actually, and the bras were B/C cups, so we bought a 40… now, I kept looking at this kid, and I’m thinking, "There is NO WAY she’s a C cup.  NO WAY."  But she insisted.  I was right.  The woman at wal mart measured her for me, and I was right.  I kept asking Becca, "Are you SURE you’re a C cup?"  And she would say yes.  I mean… the poor girl has a set on her.  She’s about as big as I am, and I’m pretty large chested.  Of course, when you’re 13, that’s NOT a good thing.  She’s had other (jealous!) girls tell her she stuffs her bra.  Yea, right, they only WISH she did.  She’s some pretty serious competition for the boy’s attention, you know?  And this girl, she doesn’t even really REALIZE, and as a result, she wears the tightest clothes.  She’s not dressing appropriately, but then, a year and a half ago, she didn’t have this "problem" you know?  I really get mad at her, I tell her "You cannot WEAR those clothes.  They’re TOO TIGHT."  And she doesn’t see it.  Well, she’s getting there… this problem was worse a few months ago.  Her teachers saying it to her as well probably helped her see it.   She simply wasn’t seeing it before.

Anyway… I spent 27 dollars, plus tax on all these clothes.  Jerry thinks Goodwill is too expensive because they want 3.35 for an item of clothing, and he thought we’d use 4 dollars in gas to get down there (2 gallons of gas?  I gotta think we get a LITTLE better gas mileage than that!)  I think…we could have at least TRIED Goodwill first.  Even if 3.35 is expensive for a thrift store, it’s a lot less than 17 dollars.  Anyway, we were going to buy her 20 dollars worth of stuff at the thrift store, and I told her she’s used her quota up.  I’ll bet Jerry disagrees with me and buys her clothes anyway, but dang… and she didn’t really mention the top til we were on our way, and I actually question the absolute necessity of the top, and why did it have to be zippered… and I had 10 dollars a month (though I can’t find my budget so can’t say exactly how much it was for sure) budgeted towards clothes for them, so Becca was claiming that.  I was kinda mad at that.  First off, it was for ALL of them.  Secondly, it was for the thrift store, NOT Wal mart.  And thirdly, Becca has this sense of entitlement, but forget working for anything.  We’ve suggested she babysit, try mowing lawns, offer to clean houses in the neighborhood, even sell something at the park the way Syd does, but Becca just says no, or if she doesn’t SAY no, she simply does nothing.  Of course, this is the same kid that I have to ask 4, 5, 6 times to do anything before she’ll do it.  I’m kind of beyond yelling with her.  That doesn’t work any better than any other method of motivating her.  The girl is L*A*Z*Y and even she will tell you she is. 

Pisses me off.

I’ve always liked Becca, and she’s always been, and will always be, my daugther, and that’s a good thing, because otherwise, I woudn’t want anything to do with her.  She makes me THAT mad.

Of course, the whole wal mart vs the thrift store WAS mostly Jerry’s doing.  I wanted him to take Becca to the thrift store, because HE needs to spend what’s comfortable for him, and then whatever money is spent is HIS decision.  But he left this morning before anyone got up, and was gone all day long.  No explanation.  We did call him on his phone, and so we knew what he was doing (working, and trying to find a new cable for his computer, which has failed.)  So it was HIS decision in the end that she should buy the needed clothes (for PE in case I didn’t mention it… not sure what the top is for though… I THINK PE, but it might just be some stupid Spirit thing.) at Walmart, and since that was his decision and I wanted to get out of the house, I went.  And the bras were my idea, because I think she needs to protect her girls during PE (LOL) and her old sports bra was bought from the girl’s section, and there’s NO WAY it’s going to fit or protect properly.  So yea… I couldn’t exactly BLAME Becca for any of it.  Still.  All 

I can say is, she did buy the cheapest pants, and though I WISH she’d bought the 7 dollar top without the zipper, I wasn’t going to begrudge her the zipper when it was only 3 dollars more.  So now she has her sweats for school… and the only other thing is what exactly DO they expect low income families to do about buying that stuff when there’s no money to buy it?  Things are better for us, so I’m not exactly complaining, but I do wonder about it.  That 27 dollars was an eighth of my "income" last month.  If not for my dad’s help…

Yea, enough of that.

Hell.  It’s 2 a.m.  I’ve certainly complained enough about Becca today.  I FEEL bitchy, and I shouldn’t, and there were times when I just had to hold my tongue with her, so I wouldn’t say something I would regret tonight.  Which I am proud to say, I did… and I handled it fairly gracefully.  We have 150 dollars to last us til the end of the month, and I don’t know how much on wal mart cards, and the bils are paid (sans the mortgage…but when I say the bills are paid, it’ll never include the mortgage…) so the rest can be spent on wants, I suppose, as opposed to needs.  Which is the first time in probably a year that’s happened, so it’s a nice feeling.  I’ve stuck to my scrapbooking budget.  I assume Jerry’s stuck to his coffee budget.  I’m not sure about the eating out budget, because I’ve taken the girls to Burger King and McDonald’s about once a week for the last three weeks.  I have to say, it’s actually cheaper to eat at McDonald’s, though I definitely like the food at BK better…however, the girls all agree that the play structure at MCDs is better than the one at BK.  The one at BK is "boring."  If we continue to do that so Jerry can work uninterrupted on Saturdays, then I’m going to need to expand the eating out budget… prefer not to, but I’d rather go to MCDs than have Jerry go to the library, don’t ask me why.  Honestly, all his working bugs me anyway.  It’s ALL he ever does.  If not for the fact that he mostly does it from home, I’d really be pissed, because we’d never see him.  It’s getting tiring!

I need to wind down and go to bed…I’m TIRED.  I ended up co-sleeping Alex last night, and it worked, much to my suprise.  Jerry didn’t get to bed until after 3:30, and I guess he got up at 8 and left, and didn’t come home til nearly 6, but then he worked some more.  And what bugged me about that (I guess I’m just chock full of complaints tonight) is that we talked around 5:20 on the phone, and he said he’d be home soon so we could figure out dinner, then he came home and when I asked him about dinner, he tells me "You guys have been home all day, why didn’t you figure it out?"  So I reminded him the conversation we’d had, but I was MAD, so he said "yea, but I don’t like the tone you’re using."  So we both had our parts in that.  I’m just moody as hell, can you tell?  I suppose my period could be coming, though I sure as heck haven’t seen any signs that it should.  I’m irritable.  Of course, it would have helped if he hadn’t kept on working when he got home…and of course as soon as we went to Walmart, his phone stopped ringing.  One thing that was good though was that he offered to take Alex so he could play with her, and that’s what he did, though when I got home, she was in bed… and the girls were making SO MUCH noise upstairs that when I went up there, Alex was crying.  She didn’t get hardly enough sleep today…every time I put her down for a nap, there was just too much noise to get any sleep.  Poor thing, she just got snatches of rest when she nursed.

I’ve GOT to go to bed.  I guess I’ll say goodnight.