On Second Thought...

I'm a huge number cruncher. The better part of a decade as a single mom has basically left me as a paranoid mess when payday rolls around. From the moment those hard earned dollars hit my account, me and my calculator end up conjoined twins for the next 48 hours. I pull up all the bills (I love e-bill) and start punching away at the numbers. I figure out what's due, what gets paid, and what can wait. If I'm being honest, I typically start this process the night before and then start it all over again once I've confirmed the actual deposit amount.

Last night after tucking Lena in, I started on my usual pre-payday rant. Normally, James just sits there quietly and plays his games, because he knows that in the end, I've already planned it all out and there's not much input he needs to make. When he first moved in last year, it was certainly a surprise quirk of mine that took a little getting used to. But once the bills are paid, I don't say a word about how he spends the remaining money, so it's not really that big of deal for him.

Last night however, as I ran through the rather long list, his whole face sorta just fell. He could see his pay check sailing away before it was ever in the bank. On top of the regulars, Lena needs a hair cut, we need to get Paige a birthday present, and we have to pick up our contribution to family birthday dinner for next weekend. That alone is no small order with the entire small country of family members that I come with. 

Today, on lunch, as I sat typing out the penny for penny play by play via text, I stopped myself. I erased the whole thing that had taken me a good 10 minutes to punch in and just typed, we'll figure it out when we get home instead. I recalled the sad and forlorn look on his face last night and prevented myself from letting my financial OCD ruin a day that's been going good for him so far. I still feel the twinge to hammer out the details, but for now I'll do him a favor and control my bad habit.

Irritating Surprise

Ugh. It's been a rough 24 hours over here. We got a bit of a rude surprise last night when we discovered $500 suddenly missing from James' account. The company he works for was recently bought out by Ecolab and it turns out that they completely screwed up his child support. Evidently they "forgot" to take it out of one of his checks so instead it was simply auto-deducted from his account without warning. It has been coming out of his check without a problem for the last 6 years, so we never even thought to make sure they were taking it. Certainly not what we were expecting when we were double checking the balance last night to head out to the store. A few weeks back they had messed up his overtime and failed to put it on the check it was supposed to be. By the time they added it on to the next check taxes took it all and then some. It was if he had never worked it at all. You would think that a multi-million dollar corporation could handle payroll, wouldn't you?

As a result, we will not be attending the wedding for my co-worker that we were supposed to this weekend. We simply cannot swing the gift after that. I'm not too broken up about not going really. I didn't particularly want to go in the first place. I'm not exactly a fan of weddings or this particular co-worker. But it is completely embarrassing to be the only person not going from my office. I had to make up a lame excuse of not having a baby sitter for Lena and Anne. I told her my sister can't watch them because she has to work now.  

This co-worker is already not exactly the nicest person in the world to deal with on a good day. So my telling her this morning that I was not going to make it to her wedding has resulted in a very chilly day. Lots of eye rolling, lots of dirty looks, and she's really not speaking to me either at the moment. I wonder just how long this will last exactly?