Early Morning Worries

I can't believe it's been two weeks since I've blogged. I've been sick as a dawg these two weeks, with bad reactions to some new meds. I mean, some really crappy and icky stuff. I won't oppress you with the details. It all culminated with a five-hour sojourn in the ER yesterday. All they could do for me was repeat the tests my PCP had already done and inform me it's a bad reaction to my meds.

Well, fuck you too.

And now I'm actually feeling physically better but was lying awake since 2 a.m. worrying about money, so I came downstairs to make a list of ways I can spend less this week and forever.

First thing I noticed was that some person in my immediate or extended family had set the thermostat to HOLD at 73 degrees Fahrenheit. !!!!! So who knows how long we've been keeping the downstairs toasty all night. I bet the paper whites have been loving it. On the other hand they've totally wilted over onto the lamp beside them, so maybe not.

The fish would have loved it but they all died.

So anyway, I made a few lists. The first one had money saving tips on it like:

• Postpone Saskia's oral surgery (before you call DSS on me, this is not URGENT oral surgery. Yet. And Grandpa, who is a dentist, has a colleague who will do it for free if we go to NY. Good enough for me).
• Apply for grant to pay for the 1K self-pay part of Benjy's upcoming neuropsychological evaluation. These are done every four years or so on kids like Ben and at the price of five thousand or your first born. If you are lucky enough to be insured, as we are, you get away with paying only a thousand out of pocket.
• Eat only food we have in the house this week, even if gross. (Lars can eat the gross stuff, he doesn't care.) Stuff with freezer burn can surely be resuscitated. Google on how to do this.
• When (edible) food we have in house runs out, purchase pasta, mac and cheese, and other toxic but cheap food items at Aldi or Market Basket, our two local cheapie stores (by "local" I mean 15 miles away. Nearby us you get to choose between pricey, pricier, and upper-crusty. I'm talking about you, Whole Foods).
• Tell Bestie that I was in the throes of MADNESS when I agreed to put down a $300 deposit on a vacation house in VT to share with her and her son this for a week this summer. Make her inform the rental agent who is holding that week for us that we have changed our minds (because I am too embarrassed to do it).
• Hold off on non-essential bills.
• Keep heat at 67 during day. Wear sweaters. Scold whoever did that "hold" thing on the thermostat. (Who knew you could even do that?)
• GET A JOB.******

***** Here is why I can't. Benjy is going down again. Eight weeks in the hospital this fall and winter, countless med changes, and he is slipping into deep depression again. Restless and seeking. Bankrupting us with his need for more and more video games. I say no, hold firm as long as I can. But when I am sick and exhausted as I was last night, and he is depressed and anxious and lonely and pacing around the house and lying pale and despondent in his darkened room there is nothing else I can do. If only I weren't sick, didn't have to attend, sometimes, to things other than Benjy (the tutoring, for example, that brings a little extra money into our house, my other child, who needs me too, even if she does not like to admit it) I could simply devote myself to keeping him busy and happy, keeping the emptiness at bay. But how the hell do you manage THAT with no spare money? There must be a way. I know some moms have figured it out. But my kid does not like the outdoors (except fishing, but in spite of what he told me yesterday evening when he begged me to take him, you cannot easily do that when it's ten degrees out). He does not want to read or watch DVDs. Tennis he likes but again, not so much when it's 10 degrees out.

So how can I POSSIBLY work when every year his seriously dysregulated periods grow longer and closer-set?

All I can do is hope for a tax refund this year, that my O essay comes out soon (payment upon publication), and that I sell a couple more, pronto. And just keep swimming.