Our daycare lady is dying. 
I found out today that she has cancer, and that it's gotten to a point where she's probably got a couple weeks. She wanted to be home, so she's out of the hospital. Please wish Grandma Jo a peaceful and love-filled rest of her life. She has lots of very supportive family, which I'm so glad of. We didn't get to know her very well yet and now we never will, but it's very very sad.
But I've got to suck it up and think about our options. Her daughter is keeping the daycare going for a while at least, but she's not licensed and I don't think I can get my flex money to reimburse unlicensed daycare. Plus, it doesn't seem like a very stable situation; how long is the daughter really going to keep it up? So I emailed a nearby center and we're going to look at the list of in-home providers we started just a few months ago. Our barber knows someone close by as well, so we're going to ask him for more information.
On to May goals. I've fallen down on nearly everything in the past week. I didn't weigh in last night, for one thing. We had a party on Saturday and paid for it with grocery money, so our budget's a bit out of whack, though still salvageable if we're careful over the next few weeks. I've looked at job listings but haven't applied for anything since I got the news about the one place I'd interviewed with. My "extreme couponing" for charity has fallen off, though I've got a bag full of past coupon circulars.
I did make money with a "side hustle"; namely, putting my stuff into and helping out with a friend's garage sale. After paying my share for ads and the food that we ordered, I made $40. But the main goal was to get rid of stuff and to hang out with my garage-sale gang, so it was a success. I'm putting the $40 toward the hotel room we got for my sister and her kids for their upcoming visit.
And our regular biweekly savings deposit added $25 to the EF plus 45 cents interest, bringing our 2011 progress to $1967.16 and our total EF to $10,479.11.
It's been a weekend of bad news in my state. Tornadoes hit Minneapolis and really wrecked a somewhat poor, struggling neighborhood north of us. The state House voted to send a constitutional amendment to the ballot in 2012 to outlaw same-sex marriage (which, by the way, is already not legal in MN; they just want to make it extra hard to ever make it legal by putting it in the state constitution). And former Gov. Pawlenty announced his candidacy for president. He took our progressive state with its solid infrastructure and left us much weakened in the name of tax cuts for the wealthy. He earned the nickname "Governor No" for his refusal to compromise or work with other elected officials in any way. Public programs have been slashed and property taxes have skyrocketed. Nothing has improved that I can see. I sure hope he doesn't get a chance to wreak similar havoc on the entire country.
Very sad news; small goals progress but not much
May 23rd, 2011 at 05:49 pm
May 23rd, 2011 at 06:52 pm 1306176768
My S-I-L has been telling me that you're having the same conservative wave hit you guys as hit here. It's been awful here--and hard to keep your spirits up for us, I think.
May 24th, 2011 at 01:27 am 1306200469
May 24th, 2011 at 01:42 am 1306201351
Wow - that is pretty intense about daycare lady. So sorry to hear- I do hope her remaining days are positive as can be.
May 24th, 2011 at 02:01 am 1306202505
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May 24th, 2011 at 08:59 pm 1306270794