The problem with having kids for twenty years straight is that after a while, it all kind of blends together. Christmas presents again? Didn't we just do this?
Every year, after Christmas, I drag our artificial tree out to the car and take it over to church and leave it in the Children's Sunday School room. The plan is that by the next Christmas, we'll have our budget and our lives in order and we'll be able to afford a new Christmas tree. See, the old one is one of those self-lighting trees, but the self-lighting aspect broke after the first year we had it. It doesn't look too bad, and I figure the kids at church can set it up in the Sunday School room and decorate it. And we can get a new one.
Every year, come November, I drive over to church, sneak our tree out of the Sunday School room, and bring it home because we can't afford a new tree. At least this system gives me somewhere to store the tree all year.
I think the real problem this year is that I went back to work, and I haven't been caught up since--thus the conspicuous lack of blog entries of late. I'm tired, like, all the time. The money I make, while helpful in preventing anyone from actually ripping the house or car out from under us, is not enough to drop us into a life of ease, or even a life where you buy a new Christmas tree without worrying about how much it costs.
I know, it's all my fault. Normal people have two kids. And a dog. Maybe a cat. Sometimes they throw caution to the winds and let one of the kids get a hamster. And that's it. No wonder they have what looks to me like incredibly easy lives.
We have six kittens at our house right now. Six. I went back to work, which, in theory, would reduce the stress of having a lot of pets, because the vet I work for does vet care on his employees' pets for free, plus gives twenty percent off on pet food and medication, plus we get free samples of Frontline and Heartgard.
But as soon as I went back to work, I started acquiring MORE pets than we had before. Well, THAT'S not going to reduce the stress any, now is it?
One of the groomers brought in two Siamese kittens, five weeks old, that she rescued from a bad situation. She was looking for a Siamese, and a neighbor of an old lady with an unspayed Siamese cat with kittens begged this girl to take both kittens, because one kitten from the litter had already died and the neighbors didn't think the two left would make it to eight weeks of age. The old lady's cat has kittens, the neighbors try and rescue them. Repeatedly. The little guys were crawling with fleas. They also had roundworms.
The groomer took one and gave me one. He's doing great now. Then I saw a craigslist post. Some college guys near our house had taken in a stray kitten that hung around their porch for two days. It needed a home.
I thought, huh--this would give the Siamese someone to play with. Two kittens is better than one, actually, because then they have playmates. So I took in the black kitten from the college guys, who seemed to be perpetually drunk. Wherever this kitten came from originally must have been bad, if the porch of these guys looked like an improvement. She hides most of the time, but who can blame her. (I'm being too critical. They did take her in and try to find her a home, and they even bought cat food for a cat they didn't want in the first place. It was nice of them.)
A week ago, a friend of my daughter's called and said that someone had left four kittens in a box at her church. Long story short, we have them now. They are darling, luckily--long-haired, and three have extra toes (polydactal kittens). Three of the four have good homes lined up already and are going to be picked up from our house on Christmas Day. The fourth, of course, I have decided to keep. These little guys are being treated for ear mites. They also had fleas and tapeworms when we got them, all of which have been treated.
Even though the vet does work on my own pets for free, now I'm out sixty bucks for the Revolution and Tresaderm for the stray kittens. I'm happy we took them. They have good lives lined up which they didn't have before. The sixty bucks was a good investment, better than a new Christmas tree.
But I just don't seem to be managing this job thing quite right, somehow.
