Dear LBYM:
How come you didn’t write anything in April?
Sincerely,
A Faithful Reader
Dear Faithful Reader:
Do you think T. S. Eliot lived in Wisconsin? Gotta love a month where you pretty much need every piece of footwear you own at the ready. Snow boot! Flip flop! Rain boot! Soccer cleat! Easter Sunday Mary Janes!
As if losing my foyer—and my joie de vivre—to the season (seasons?) wasn’t enough, I then made the grievous error of signing on to a “small” work project. Don’t get me wrong. For someone who likes flexibility in her schedule and doesn’t particularly like reporting to anyone, discrete, time-bound projects are great. Who amongst us doesn’t occasionally need to raise some quick cash (i.e. pay summer camp fees)? And we only have so much plasma to sell.
I wish I were exaggerating. Remember when we had that stretch of snow days and all my kids were home all the time? Imagine twelve weeks of that … but with mosquitoes. WHOSE IDEA WAS THIS? (spoiler: turns out it wasn’t the farmers’)
I’m kinda glad I recently looked up Stanford’s tuition … since summer camp fees don’t look that bad in comparison. Did you know you can pay more than $1,000 a week? Per kid? AND they still come home for dinner. WHY ARE WE NOT MARCHING IN THE STREETS? Oh, right. We’re all working. To pay for camp.
Summer hates parents. For realz. I have flexibility! I have means! I’ll fudge the age of my youngest to get them all in the same place! And I still don’t have June through August figured out.
Haha! I was kidding about fudging Thomas’ age. We all know he’s … seven.
I’d be more on board if these summer camps were teaching practical skills like, oh I don’t know, Differentiating Between Needs and Wants. Instead, it seems every single one of them is playing on upper middle class anxieties about preparing their kids for the knowledge economy … and charging accordingly.
Child enrichment … meh.
Mommy freedom, on the other hand …
Well, for two and a half hours in the afternoons at least. That’s priceless.
So.
Summer, I’ll make you an offer. I’ll run Mommy Math Camp in the morning, you teach ’em to swim, I’ll make microwave them lunch, then you take all the money and run ’em through Art / Computer / Soccer / Animal / Drama / Science Camp in the afternoon.
Do we have a deal?
For the record, I am trying to write. But yeah, between the depressing-as-heck weather, planning summer, working to pay for aforementioned summer, recovering from said work, and … you know, your run-of-the-mill existential crises from gazing at the first ever images of a black hole in outer space, I basically took April off from blogging.
Live Beneath Your Means is about living within our capacity, right? And, when you’re bumping up against that ceiling, the first thing to go is, alas, the non-remunerative work. Instead, I made about a bajillion of these. OK, fine—more like 40. All I can say is, I have a lot of respect for all you actor people out there. That grind is exhausting.
Don’t worry, though. There’s lots to write about. America was still doing its typical America things in the month—profits over people! Short-term thinking! Racism! Sexism!
I took notes.
If you have a burning financial question, send us an email at info@livebeneathyourmeans.com. Answers may appear in a future post.
this is great! And your word of the day is PRICELESS. Or… penniless?
Heh heh! I can more or less choose the words I want to talk about … let’s just say a lot of them revolve around money.