Sometimes you can't sweat the small stuff, like your daughter wanting cake (I'll tell you about this later) for breakfast. Because cake for breakfast is pretty minor compared to having no clue where you will be living in about a month (for several months or more) and whether or not income will be coming in.
If you haven't heard, the company that daddy works for is laying off 10% of non-production workers (6.5% of production workers). He's a non-production worker. They aren't actually going to decide who is laid off until the end of June/ beginning of July after voluntary retirement requests are due in.
So, here we are, with a house in MN waiting to be sold so we can move here. Now what happens if our house sells? We certainly are not going to buy anything until after the layoffs have been completed. But then all our stuff could be in storage. It just all seems like a big mess. And then there is the possibility that he could get laid off (which we do want to stay here) and granted we do have a house to go back to, but we'd never be able to sell it if it hasn't sold because we could not afford to sell it at the price we lowered it to. Why, you ask? Well, the company pays the realtor commissions as part of the relo package, so we lowered it as far as we possibly could to try & get it sold finally. But if we move back & daddy has to find a new job in the Cities, well, we couldn't take the loss of the relator commissions and daddy is back to commuting a long distance.
And there is nothing we can do now to figure anything out. We can't even have a Plan B or C. We had come up with some ideas, prior to yesterday, regarding where we would live on June 1. I have some friends here who have graciously opened up their homes to us while they are on vacation in June or July and we may have to take them up on it because I am not sure that we can afford to use our savings to stay in a hotel for 2 months. Any bit of time we can stay other places is probably what we have to do.
I thought th stress before was as much as I can handle. Now with this new turn of events, I just don't know. I thought there was nothing I can do before.....well, now there is really nothing I can do because all we can do is sit & wait.
My poor sister is in a similar situation with the income thing for one of them & uncertainty, but they have a permanent house, but are EXPECTING! I just don't think I could handle having to find a job right now & daycare for Isabel. I don't want that for our family. It is working well for all of us with me as a SAHM.
So, now I am turning in our 30-day notice to the Y for cancelling membership on the chance we might not get to use it during June or July. I can still renew it at anytime before 60 days without having to pay a new joiner's fee. It sucks. And I think our playgroup attendance is going to just be at parks & homes until July when we know what is going on. Well, we did buy a zoo pass, so we can still go there (& will to make sure we get our money out of it). It just feels like we have to save every little dime now. I hate this.
I wonder if the reason our house has not been sold is because God knew we had to go back.
Ok - enough dwelling on something I can do nothing about but sit & wait.
Anyways - the cake was a little experiment. I made a half a box of white cake mix (per directions), then mixed in a half package of raspberry kool-aid and a half cup of frozen raspberries and baked as directed. I wasn't sure how it would turn out, but it is great! The cake is very moist and tasty. After it cooled I just put vanilla frosting on it, although I don't think you really need the frosting.
In other news -- I have a sinus infection I am trying to get rid of. I don't like drugs, so I am trying some natural ways. It might actually be working because this morning I don't have the throbbing sinus headace anymore.
I took these first two with my camera phone. Now whenever we go in the garage Isabel has to go see the motorcycle and sit on it. Daddy has already got her hooked on a motorcycle. I am sure that makes him smile.
Some people have a sand box, well, we have a dirt box. This is the box of dirt I had setting out from when we planted at our Earth Week Celebration, but there is a lot of dirt left and Isabel loves digging in it. She does get quite messy afterwards.
Here is a picture to analyze. The three of us did some painting this evening. Isabel painted two of them and I painted one and daddy painted the other. Mine started out as a rain cloud & tree, but then with a little help from Isabel it changed into a tornado. Daddy made the volcano. Here are my thoughts on what Isabel made....(bottom left) looks like a pitbull wearing a halo riding a horse that is talking to a cardinal....and (top right) it's a landscape picture that has a bridge, a red poppy, a mountain, a tree & a field, but hidden in there is a face smiling.....I guess our daughter has a more friendly view of our world.....daddy & I seem be feeling like we have been hit by natural disasters.....what do you think?
