Me, Myself and Mommy

Valentine’s Day, hand down, is my least favorite holiday of the year. I loathe the holiday. I didn’t always have such a poor opinion of the day, it grew over time. No, I didn’t have a boy crush my Valentine’s Day dreams. My hatred for the holiday developed because I waited tables for several years on Valentine’s Day. No, it had nothing to do with the fact that I was missing out on hot dates because I was working. I just want to be clear that my distaste, OK disdain, for the holiday has nothing to do with boys. It’s purely professional.

I can usually look back at a month and say “overall it was a good month” or “overall it was a challenging month.” For January, I can’t do that. The first month of 2010, a new decade, was all over the place. One day it was great, and we were spending time with family and friends, and we were dreaming big dreams for our future. The next day, we were aching for the people of Haiti and trying to make it through our ever growing to-do list without having an emotional breakdown. If January was a preview of what 2010 will bring, then boy, what a doozy.

To bring things full circle. Because Steve is in MIA, I am MIA to the Internet world. He pulls a lot of weight around the house, and when he’s not here, I have to cover for him. I don’t mind picking up the slack while he’s out of town because I know he’s working hard for our family, but man, it royally bites some days.

My friend, this took me longer than I’d care to admit to organize and figure out (ahem more than four hours). I have been tracking our money all month long, so I knew where we stood. However, just because I was tracking the money doesn’t mean it was organized. Tonight, I spent forever, FOR-EV-ER, sorting out all of the expenses into categories (gas, groceries, living expenses, etc.). I’m telling you, I was a teenager when I started categorizing all of our expenses, and now I’m 42.

While it took forever, FOR-EV-ER, to do this, it was a vital step in taking control of our spending. Now that we know how much we spend on entertainment, food and things like this, we can work to cut back and then put more money towards paying down debt. I did a gosh darn good job on the grocery bill this month, if I do say so myself.

Drum roll please….

So yes, I fully believe that fish tanks were invented to teach children about death, but we were not prepared for such an opportunity. Plus our fish tank kit didn’t come with a pamphlet called, “Your New Fish Tank: A Guide to Teaching Your Children About the Circle of Life.”