Being Poor Sure Can Give You a Rich Imagination

Everyone who knows me knows that I'm no Stephen Hawking at math. I'm not much better at logistical thinking. So when I decided to be a Stay-At-Home-Mom my brain didn't process the fact that David and I would be going to a double-income family of two to a one-income family of three.

The closest I came to thinking about our new income tax bracket was one night out at dinner with friends when I was about 6 months preggo with Critter. I was discussing my career move with the guy next to me while he lovingly nursed his scotch and I swirled the ice in my tea. "Boy," he murmured. "This sure will cut into your fluid assets." Since he was clearly beginning to enjoy his buzz, I assumed he was refering to my ability to drink half a bottle of wine a night. "Yeah," I responded, more on point than I knew at the time "it sure will suck for a while."

Fast forward a year and find me sitting on the sofa researching vacation places for this summer. "Look" I squealed one night to Husband, waving the laptop in his face, "we could leave Critter with a sitter and go on this cruise! It leaves right from here, so we wouldn't even have to buy plane tickets!" I'm nothing if not a cutter-of-costs. (Yeah, right.)

Husband looked at me like I'd suddenly started speaking ancient Greek. His fingers paused over their furious punching of the calculator, and a couple on envelopes slipped from his other hand. "WHAT?! Are you kidding me?!"

I was confused by his incredulous tone. "A cruise." I pronounced each word carefully. "It leaves from the port here. We should go."

He pinched his nose and rolled his eyes. Picking up his dropped paperwork he informed me that we don't have any money. "Oh, but it's only 499.99 per person" I told him. "Really cheap as cruises go."

He looked me full in the face. "Uh, huh. But we don't have 499.99 a person." He explained. He turned the calculator around so that I could see it. "We don't have 4.99 a person. See these pieces of paper? They are bills. We must pay them if we wish to continue living here." He had taken on my patronizing tone, and I must say, I didn't care for it.

"Fine." I grouched, disappointed as my dreams of relaxing on a deck watching the ocean swoosh by swirled into one of me sweating buckets on the neighborhood pool chairs while swatting at mosquitoes. I picked up an interior design magazine I'd been flipping through earlier in the day.

"If we can't go on a relaxing vacation, I'll just re-do the bedroom like this one in this picture." I told him. "If we can't relax in a 5 star resort, at least we can have a beautiful bedroom." I was immediately lost in visions of 3000 thread count sheets and cedar closet hangers.

David's deep breathing broke me from my reprieve. I turned to look at him just in time to see him getting shorter. "Anne." The patronizing I'm-speaking-to-a-kindergardener tone was back. "Redecorating costs money. We. don't. have. any."

I nodded at him, finally comprehending that we, like so many others, are strapped for cash right now. "Ok." I agreed, smiling at him encouragingly. "For my birthday then."

"Holy SH%$!" He yelled, jumping up, and stomping into the kitchen, where he poured himself a big glass of his own favorite liquid asset. He downed half the glass and returned to the couch. "Darling. Sweetheart. Love of my Life." He picked up my hands and held them while looking deep into my eyes. "We are poor. You don't have an income, Critter costs more than a Kennedy, and Nudger will be here in a few months. If you're lucky, I'll get you a pack of gum for your birthday. Do you understand? We can't go on a cruise, redecorate the bedroom, or get you that diamond upgrade for a long, long time. K? Maybe we'll go somewhere next year, but not this one."

"Oh, alright." I sighed, resigned. I returned to surfing the web while he calculated those bill thingys. "You know" I said to him after a few minutes of silence, "my toes really need a pedicure."

When I received no response I looked over at him. Unfortunately I'll never know what he thought about the state of my toenails, as his head had exploded. On the plus side, now that he has no head, he also doesn't have any eyes to see me sneaking in the Gap Baby shopping bags...

Our Bunny Should've Brought Pepto:

How Rotten Eggs Spoiled the "Hoppiest" Day of Spring

In a fit of holiday delusions I decided to make this Easter an Easter To Remember. Nevermind the fact that Critter is 7 months old and can't remember morning by afternoon. A couple of days prior to the holiday I went out and bought all the ingredients needed for pastel sugar cookies, sprinkle dipped rice krispy treats, and at least five pounds of Hershey eggs and various colored Peeps. On the way to the checkout, my path crossed with a display of egg decorating kits. I spied with my little eye an Egg Painting Kit with Glitter Glue. Cool! The picture on the box was of beautifully hand painted and then glitter sprinkled egg masterpieces. I tossed the kit in the cart and skipped my way to gestational diabetes.

The day before Easter I decided to cook my treats and paint my eggs. The sugar cookies came out just the way I like them: golden on the outside, still kinda squishy on the inside. I rolled out the rice krispy treats and painstakenly used egg and tulip shaped cookie cutters to make take them from regular squares to festive Easter goodies. Then I waddled to the fridge (those cookies and treats needed tasting for goodness, ya know) to pull out the eggs. It was then I realized that in my excitement over the painting kit, I had bypassed the dairy section, and therefore had forgotten to buy eggs. Whoops. I shoved various foodstuffs aside and in the darkest corner of the bottom shelf I found an egg carton containing 10 eggs, stamped with the expiration date April 2. "That's fine," I thought. I'm gonna paint 'em, not eat 'em. And they turned out just like you would expect painted eggs to turn out. That is, nothing like the picture on the box.

But, I had made them for my precious Critter, so I lovingly placed them into his basket. I arranged his other Easter presents around them, grabbed David's basket, and loaded them into the car to take to my mom's house, where we would be celebrating Easter the next day. At my mom's I hid both baskets in the back of the linen closet and then returned home.

The next afternoon, filled with ham, potatoes, and salad, we exchanged baskets. I took a billion pictures of Critter in the yard surrounded by the painted eggs, and then put eggs and basket on the table and promptly forgot about them.

Later that evening, David began complaining of stomach pains, and soon after began spending a lot of time in the bathroom. He made several potty visits through the course of the night, but as he had a big project at work, he had to leave for the office the next morning.

When he left, I went out to the car to bring in the baskets that we'd left there. As I put away Critter's new things, I realized that the basket seemed emptier than it had the previous day. I realized it was because there were only 7 eggs, not 10. I called him. "How are you feeling, honey?" I asked in my sweetest I'm-not-trying-to-kill-you-via-salmonella voice. "Bad," he groaned back at me. "Um, Sweets, I'm missing a couple of those painted eggs from Critter's basket..." I hinted.

"Oh, I ate a couple. That's ok, right? You weren't saving them, were you?"

"No, no, I wasn't saving them, seeing as how they were expired and then spent the night in a linen closet before Easter," I told him pointedly.

"Cool. After I ate them I realized I should've asked you first, so I'm glad you're not mad." He sounded so relived and grateful that I wasn't mad, I didn't have the heart to point out to him that had he asked, maybe he'd still have his insides.