I’m bleeding green.

If you cut me, I’d bleed green. 

I have been hemorrhaging money this week.  Gushing.  Suction!  Clamp!  I can’t see what I’m doing here! 

Last Saturday, I bought the headstone (with what was left of Life Insurance and memorial money).  I also bought a new bedroom set for myself (headboard, chesser and nightstand) and a bunk bed set for the littles.  This is my half-ass attempt to get Amelia to sleep in her own bed.  (She’s asleep in my bed at the moment.  We’ll see if I get brave enough to move her.)  Ella digs being on the top bunk.  She says it’s cozy.  I say it’s clausterphobic and reminiscent of my freshman year of college when I gave myself a concussion after I hit my head on the ceiling when the phone rang really early on a Sunday morning after an all night “Doom” and Mountain Dew bender.  Or maybe it was beer.  Actually it was probably Zima.  But I digress…

So this week I take notice that my van is noisy and pulls a bit when I drive it.  Odd.  I took the opportunity to take it into the shop today stating that I think I need new brakes.  The brakes are perfect.  Uh, oh.  The front passenger wheel bearing was ground down to shit and the tie rod was moments from snapping, sending my front tire careening into the ditch and my van into a sparking, not moving mess.  At any moment.  That’s a little dramatic but the likely scenario is that I would be driving my kid to school and making a right turn only to have the wheel fall under the van in the intersection.  Police would be called.  Kids crying, missing school.  Total humiliation at the entire population (34,000) seeing my ghetto-moblie. 

That will be $875 please.  Asshats.  Seriously?

It’s the Dave Ramsey/murphy’s law thing.  I spent my cushion last weekend so I had to dip into my “emergency” fund to pay for the van thing.  Uncle George’s rebate money?  Will go right back into the bank so I don’t have a heart attack thinking about the *next* thing to go wrong that I may or may not be able to pay for at the spur of the moment.  It’s better that using Visa.  A-holes.  We?  Are really not friends.

And then there was the pre-family visit to the grocery.  And a gas tank fillup.  And full size sheets and mattress pad for the bottom bunk (because, knowing my luck, somebody would pee or puke on it before I could get it properly covered). 

Beans and rice for the next 2 weeks, little girls.  No more fruit snax (which are neither fruit nor a proper snack…candy in the food aisle I tell you…).  No more pre-made chocolate milk.  No Doritos.  No Nutty Bars…saddest thing ever.

But I had a good laugh tonight.  We took Ella to the neighborhood elementary school carnival tonight.  Mayhem.  But fun.  But nuts.  I got a good look at what will be her school *if* we still live here.  It’s nice.  It’s clean and bright and the rooms look active.  So we had some extra game tickets when it was time to go so we “bought” Ella some cotton candy.  She has never had cotton candy in her almost 4 years on this planet.  I know.  Criminal.

(A little backstory:  Ella’s nervous habit is that she picks and chews fuzz, debris, paper, little bits.  When she’s concentrating or spacing off…she picks.  It makes me nuts.  “Is that fuzz??” is said at least 5 times a day.)

So she is walking behind Bill and I and she comes running up to me with blue teeth and lips and fingertips and is visibly sticky.  “Mama!  Mama!  This is FUZZ you can EAT!!”  She was so excited.  And we laughed and laughed.  Because it’s her quirk.  That’s one for the baby book.

Bill and I had a good talk today.  He and I are so on the same page.  He is so like his son.  Or vice versa.  I feel a little bit like, well, normal when he’s around.  The girls do too.  That’s obvious.  Amelia loves men.  She loves all her Grandpas and Robyn’s oldest son and her husband.  I still think she’s looking for her dad in all the men she meets.  I hope that doesn’t continue until the teenage years or I might have to homeschool her and keep her in a box.  Just kidding.  Hmm…maybe not.  But, yeah, kidding.

So cut me and I’ll bleed green.  Make me drink, and I’ll pee green.  I’d even cry green at this point.  But the money hemorrhage has got to stop.