35 going on 50

November 29, 2008 by annadulcekelly.

Well, here I am, 35 years old and as confused as ever.  I’m busier than I want to be, with not much money to show for it.  I have a lot of plans for the future that require money that I don’t have…yet.  It just feels like there’s so much on my plate right now.

I greeted my birthday with big ugly bruises on my knees.  If you know me then you know that we don’t have the newspaper business anymore and that it went quickly down the drain after we left.  DH was still delivering weekend papers till this morning…I don’t know if we can say he quit or he got fired.  I’m just surprised that he lasted that long considering how lousy his relationship is with the one who took over.  I was hoping he’d do like I did.  I found myself 2 jobs before we gave up the depot.  I just didn’t want to NOT have money coming in to at least pay my own bills.  I’m not getting much but I’m pretty much all caught up and able to put a little bit aside now and then.  And I am going to need that money for sure in the coming year.

Anyway, back to my bruises…funny story.  About 3 weeks ago I dreamt that I was in the electronics stockroom at Target (one of the places I am working at), on a ladder, bringing down a box of something.  Then I missed the last step, landed hard on my knees, said “whoops”…someone in another aisle asked if I was okay and I said yes, I just dropped a box.  I woke up wondering what I would be doing on a ladder in the electronics stockroom.  The answer came last Monday, when I was setting up a couple of endcaps in preparation for the after-Thanksgiving sale.  I was pulling stock, 7″ portable DVD players to be precise, 4 to a box.  That’s what was on the higher shelves, boxes and boxes of those DVD players.  Right after it happened, right after I lied about just dropping a box, then it came to me…that I’d seen this scene play before.  It’s funny that the dreams I don’t pay attention to are the ones that happen.

So anyway, Target…not much money per hour, but if you work enough hours you might fool yourself into thinking it’s worth it.  That is, at least until they don’t give you as many hours a week as you want (temporarily apparently).  Right now it doesn’t matter much to me.  I am thinking at some point in the next month I will either give Target up altogether or work fewer hours on a permanent basis.  In January I will be going back to school (online) to get a certificate as a child care specialist.  This is a 3-quarter, 9-month course which will bring me halfway to my original goal of getting an associate’s degree in early childhood development.  So after the grants and scholarships, I still am responsible for paying $5000+ of my tuition.  On the brighter side, it originally was $12000.  I don’t have to pay any of that right now because of subsidized and unsubsidized student loans.  Some of my classes require “externship” in daycare centers.  I already work in one but only for around 14 hours a week.  One of my classes in the first quarter requires at least 21 hours a week, and classes in the next 2 quarters will require around 30.  So I’ve emailed the instructor who deals with externships asking if she could find me something nearby…and I’m willing to give up Target for it.  I did say I’d rather try to keep my current daycare job, though.

So there’s $5000+ in loans…and I just plunked down close to $700 to apply for citizenship.  This country better be headed towards better times.  I expect to get a schedule for the test sometime April or May…which should give me enough time to get a passport and book my flight early for the holidays next year.  And since I will be travelling with a US passport, I can’t stay longer than 3 weeks back home.  Counting a few days before for preparation and a few days after to get rid of jet lag (not that I ever really had it), I’m guessing that’s a month without any income.  And then there’s the plane fare and whatever pocket money I think I might need.  If anyone’s reading this, you might actually start feeling the weight of my worries.  Sure, I can push the travel plans back some more…but I don’t want to.  I could have waited to go to school till 2010 but I want to get better hours or a better job in child care sometime soon.  I am the least experienced one where I work…and possibly the only one without any educational background to warrant my presence…and therefore the most likely to be booted if money is really tight.

What a time to start having student loans and going back to school and start having multiple jobs.  I sure feel old.  Of course a lot of people around me say I’m just a kid…I sure don’t feel that way.  I am so unbelievably tired and yet I can’t rest.  I haven’t gotten much sleep this past few days because I worry too much.  DH not having a job at present doesn’t help a bit.  He said, well, now if we want to go somewhere for the weekend we can…and I said, yeah, except there’s no money for that.  If he’d just get a normal job, and not work weekends, then maybe we can think about taking off on the weekends.

I do have some good news.  The relationship with the middle stepkid previously labeled as the princess has vastly improved.  There is the realization on her part that I’m not that bad, really.  And well, she has changed a bit.  I guess moving out does that…still waiting for that to happen with one more although things were never so bad with him.  It’s nice…I’m open to closing the gap for as long as she keeps on growing up.

I still don’t have my driver’s license.  I’m thinking I’ll fail the parallel parking test.  I probably will do better now that I have small convex mirrors on my side mirrors and they’re aimed towards the ground so I know how far I am from the curb.  I’ll take the test soon, I promise.  Everything else should go smoothly.  I do hate frosty mornings and driving after it has snowed.  We haven’t really seen much snow though, so I guess I should be thankful.

I am looking forward to working fewer hours at Target or quitting altogether.  It’s hard work for so little money.  I don’t mind the work itself, I do have a bit of an objection to how little it pays.  But that’s how it is.  There is a temp job opening at one of the colleges but before I even consider that, I should wait to hear from my instructor first.  More hours in a daycare setting is the priority.  Hopefully it will pay as well as my current daycare job.  If not…well, it most probably will still be better than what I’m getting at Target.

The plan is, go to school for 3 quarters, go home…that’s next year.  After the student loans are all paid off, go back to school for the CDA and pay off the student loans from that…that’s 2010.  Hopefully by 2011 or 2012 I will have enough money to pay for a new car in cash and still have some left over.  And if I feel like it, I can get an associate’s degree in business management specializing in child care administration, since I already would have the child care classes done and would only need 2 or 3 more quarters to take the business classes.  And if I still feel like it, after that, I can actually get a BS in Business Management.  But…with my attention span, I’m just doing baby steps…no specific plans, just get through the 3 quarters next year…that’s the focus.

Mom actually asked me if I was planning on having a daycare center set up at home at some point.  I said the house is not child-safe and there are pets.  The dog I’m not worried about but the cat is another story.  But sure, why not, maybe I can aim to get a license too while I’m at it.  She was actually volunteering to clean the house for me if I do that.  And I was just thinking…she doesn’t know how old she’d be by then, if it actually happens…I’m not sure she should still be cleaning then.

I figure…if I’m not having any children of my own (which is what it looks like at the moment) I might as well surround myself at least part of the time with other people’s children.  At the end of the day, I would have taken care of kids and still have a nice quiet evening…not to mention I’d have a little bit more money and I don’t have to watch them grow up and become headaches.  Even DH told me that he was glad I was working at the daycare…I’m not as crabby and depressed about my biological clock ticking away as I was before.  It’s still on my mind though.  I still want to try and give birth to a brain that just happens to be attached to a human baby…not a human baby with a brain.

I told him before I’m not taking care of another dog after Rosie.  I don’t think we’ll ever find a dog as sweet as her.  But after some thought, I realized it would feel a bit empty…so I said, I would be open to the idea of more dogs after Rosie goes…but only old dogs from shelters.  I want those dogs that few people want to adopt because they don’t have many years left in them…or because the family wants a puppy that will grow at the same time as their kids.  My thing is, older dogs are less frisky and more likely to be toilet-trained.

Working in retail the day after Thanksgiving…when the first customers came into the store and started running down the aisles, I felt a bit panicky.  It was a funny feeling…I didn’t know whether to be alarmed or amused.  I didn’t really understand why I should be alarmed, but it amused me that people were actually running in the aisles…I guess I could understand that, after we ran out of various items…but still…it was a bit scary.  I’m just glad I wasn’t the one who opened the doors.

Well, maybe finally I will be able to sleep.  I tried to bore myself to sleep but it didn’t work.  I cleaned up a bit and that didn’t get me tired enough to sleep either.  I folded up my sewing table and put away my sewing machine for now.  I just bought myself a kiln I can put in the microwave to fuse glass to make pendants and what not…and some glass items to use in the kiln.  I need to find out if the interior of our microwave oven is aluminum or plastic, because the kiln can’t be used with microwaves with plastic interiors.  And if we have aluminum interiors, then I’ll have to clean it before and after I fire my glass pieces, just so I’m sure I’m not contaminating whatever food goes in there.  I still hope to make my own clothes but I pretty much have given up on some patterns.  I should have done some research…then I would have found out that with some of the older patterns, the clothes come out bigger than then should be according to the sizes stated.  I am about tempted to wing it…or bring my fabrics to the seamstress with instructions on what I want done with them.  So many hobbies, so little time.

I would like to promise I’ll write more often…but I probably won’t.  For starters, I was thinking I’ll try to write daily starting on my birthday.  It didn’t happen, did it?  I knew it.  Oh, well.

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