Despair and... Exhilaration?

The problem with having a thrifty lifestyle ingrained into you is that when the time comes and you hit rock bottom financially, there's nearly nothing that you can cut!! I've been thinking of doing little things like unplugging every single thing from the outlets (except for dishwasher, stove and wall oven and our radio clock) whenever they are not in use to save electricity. I already don't use the clothes dryer (I hang all clothes in the basement to dry now in winter) and it's not even installed because with the small swing door space that we have it can only fit when on top of the new washer -- which is a different model and hence not stackable). Our thermostat is usually on 59 and 62 downstairs in the afternoon. I love long showers, so I take them every other day to save oil. Same things most days with boys and baths.

I do have this weird ("Mid-western-like" according to American Family) habit of stocking up on non-perishable food (rice, beans, lentils, pasta, dry cereals and powdered milk from Brazil, corn flour [Brazilian] and other things like canned things). My mom is like that too, I guess it may be a genetic thing. Anyway, I am avoiding buying more food and we'll try to consume most of what we have before we buy more. One of the reasons why I always like to have everything in hand is that I never plan too much ahead and I like to have the ingredients for whatever strikes my fancy to cook. Probably not the best idea, I guess.

Anyway... all this to say that I'm despairing right now. Wondering how we'll survive two months from now when K's salary will cover the mortgage, my pitiful pay from the school will cover Kelvin's tuition and my health insurance and... we won't have money to pay any of the bills and the credit card payments. In sum. I need a job. NOW. I'm applying for one at one of the local YMCAs, but I don't know what to do with the boys! How can I even think of doing that? Getting a full time, split schedule (it's for before and after school care director) job? Anyway, I will apply for others too... including part time/night retail. Yes.

And I have to start working on the house to make it presentable and stage-able. Although the two non-renovated bathrooms are a bit problem. If we don't sell the house (a very real probability) one of our only options will be opening a home-based daycare. That will enable us to keep the house (if there are children, but I guess there's always a need for day care, right?). What a tough job, though. I'm not looking forward to that.

Well, and what about the exhilaration part of the post's title? It comes from the excitement of the rush of new ideas that come sweeping over us when necessity strikes. Isn't necessity the mother of invention? Hopefully we'll be able to come up with some ideas and get out of this. One thing we're doing right away is buying the domain names for my informative website on Brazilian literature. I know at least one of you didn't like my suggestion of having ads in my website, but I think it's just fair. I need to feed my family and if I can do so while providing a service to my country and its literature and the academic community too (and a big BOOOOO to the academic community now, please!) , I think it's great! Of course it won't be a really popular site, but hopefully it can be an outlet for my academic training and a good way to put to good use all the work and the time I put into my dissertation research. And... if it can have some moderate traffic and generate some income, even better!

So... yeah, that's where we stand. I'm in a relatively good mood, but I am despairing most of the time. Sigh. We'll see what will happen. What a week we've had!