Poor, Spoiled Princess

I am not referring to any of my girls. I am referring to myself.

Today is the day I have to let my cleaning lady go.

I know, I know, cry you a river, right? Because how spoiled is it to be a stay home mom with a cleaning lady?

I first got one when StinkyMan was small. I watched my best friend's kids while she worked part time and since that was my mad money, I called in a cleaning lady.

Then we moved and got a house literally twice the size of where we had been and I was twice the size I normally was because I was hugely pregnant with Peanut. Knowing I couldn't do it all, I called in another cleaning lady.

And so I have been spoiled ever since. Twice a month she comes and does all the dirty work. I swipe at the counters in between her visits, run the Roomba and clean an occasional toilet, but that's about it.

But, we have the previously mentioned bills. And Husband took a pay cut a while back and that's not helping. And I can't very well ask everyone to make cuts and sacrifices if I won't give up the cleaning lady, now can I?

So today is the day. My final cleaning and I will tell her I can't have her back. I feel worse for her than I feel for me. I know in this economy she's undoubtedly feeling the pinch as well. And I'm about to pinch her too.

So, I will become reacquainted with my mop and bucket. *sigh* But I promise you this: like all great heroines, I will prevail....and when I do, I'll get my cleaning lady back ASAP. Because I really am a spoiled princess. Hey, at least I recognize it.

The blame game

Yesterday, Peanut and I were sitting on the couch together and Husband was laying on the floor playing with BabyGirl. Suddenly, Peanut let out an enormously loud belch followed quickly by some very somberly spoken words:

"Daddy did that. Say 'scuse me, Daddy."

Mom

I am 35 years old. I'm married. I have 4 kids. I have a mortgage. I have obligations and responsibilities that rival any other grown woman.

But I still need my mommy.

My mom is the best. She takes my kids to school for me. She babysits all the time. She picks up milk at the store for me and doesn't make me pay her back every time. She listens to me whine, but rarely tells me to stop complaining. She commiserates with me when I am bummed and celebrates with me when I am happy. She gladly jumps in the car to accompany me on whatever bargain I decide to run after. She reads my blog. She is the best Grammy I could ever want for my kids. She even rides to the rescue when I get sick.

I am 35 years old. I'm married. I have 4 kids. I have a mortgage and other grown up obligations.

And I have the best mom in the world.

Thanks Mom. Happy Mother's Day.

Homemade Sugar Scrub

Today was the last day of Teacher Appreciation and we were to send in "free choice" items. It is almost the end of the school year and I'm a little bit over buying gifts for every holiday and occasion, both real and made up (I'm talking to YOU, Hallmark.) Originally I was going to buy a gift card. But that seemed lame and kind of boxed me into spending a certain amount of money so I wouldn't look cheap.

But then I read my friend Claudine's blog http://www.simplyclaudine.blogspot.com/ about homemade sugar scrub and that seemed like a mighty fine idea. And Claud, I love you, but I'm the kind of girl who needs EXACT measurements, so I went hunting for a more precise recipe than what she had.

The first batch was not so good. I went with half white sugar and half brown sugar and a chocolate smell. It just wasn't a pretty color to give to some one. "I appreciate you, Mrs. Teacher. Here's your jar of oily fat drippings" really wasn't the look I was going for. So we started over.

The second time came out much better. I did mess with the recipe some. This is what we did:

1/2 cup white sugar
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp of clear vanilla extract (remember I wanted a pretty color, so I went with clear. You can use essential oils, but they were upstairs and leaving a wiggly four year old and a bossy 6 year old sitting on the counter with a Costco sized vat of olive oil to go get the oils seemed like a recipe for disaster, hence the vanilla.)

I put it all together and liked the consistency and the smell of it so I doubled the batch and put it in an unlabeled baby food jar. I covered the top of the lid with a circle of cardstock that said "Relax" and a label on the jar that said "Pamper yourself with this homemade sugar scrub by Curly Girly." We tied a ribbon around the lid so the baby food origins couldn't be seen. Husband went to the store and picked up a candle and a loofah to match the scrub and we packaged it all in a cute basket along with some re-gifted body butter (shh!)

Voila! Sugar scrub and accessories are a great, cheap, er, uh, inexpensive gift. The scrub alone will run you a quick $14+ at the mall and it's all stuff from your kitchen! You can also use Baby Oil or almond oil and mint extract. I don't recommend using organic sugar as I read several places that that doesn't work well.

By the way, I am too cheap to throw the ugly sugar scrub away. It's next to my kitchen sink. It's very ugly, but it works great and smells divine. So divine, in fact, that Husband wondered if someone had baked a chocolate cake. The only problem is that I keep wanting to lick my super soft hands.

Salsa

It's Teacher Appreciation week this week and each day the kids have an assigned item to bring for the teachers. Monday was a note. Tuesday was flowers from the garden. Wednesday was supposed to be a baked good.

Now, I had to wonder, if Mrs. Teacher has 26 students, just how many dozens of cookies is she going to get? And how many treats can one woman eat?

So Good Mommy showed up last night. Regular Mommy put the other kids in bed (because Good Mommy is fun and doesn't put kids in bed, you know) and then Good Mommy let Curly stay up and make homemade salsa for Mrs. Teacher.

Now don't get too excited. It wasn't totally homemade. I bought canned tomatoes. I just didn't feel like trying to get it right totally from scratch. But this is what we did and it was pretty yummy:

1 can of tomatoes with green chilies
1 can of tomatoes with onion and garlic
6 green onions diced
1 handful of cilantro chopped (more if you like cilantro, less if you don't)
1 small lime
1 teaspoon of garlic salt
1 teaspoon of cumin

Instructions:
Depending on how chunky you want your salsa, you might want to chop your tomatoes up a little more. We did.
Add cans of tomatoes to to chopped onions and cilantro.
Add seasoning of garlic salt and cumin.
Squeeze the juice of one lime into the salsa.
Refrigerate for at least an hour.

It came out quite tasty and Curly was excited to have something she made to hand over. I thought Mrs. Teacher looked quite pleased when Curly handed her the jar this morning.

Good Mommy strikes again.

hee-hee

Just overheard Curly singing 'O Sole Mio:

"I sold the Mio"

I don't know what a Mio is, but she doesn't have one anymore!

It is so easy...

...to forget we are a team. I'm talking about Husband and me.

See, we were slammed by some pretty heavy medical bills after Baby Girl was born. We have good insurance but the bills were still quite high. And every time I think we've gotten them all paid, up pops one I missed or one I haven't seen before. Or there is something new, like Peanut's head gluing, or our part of the big V.

The point is that we have exhausted our savings and we are still making payments (interest free, thankfully) for a few things. And so our funds are quite low and with the cuts Husband's job has made there will be no increase in income in the foreseeable future. One broken down car or broken fridge and we'd be borrowing money from somewhere.

My wheels had begun to spin. I can babysit and likely will. But I also wanted to cut down our retirement contributions. And I knew he would hate that.

So I agonized. And agonized. And agonized. I know it won't be forever...just until we have a nice savings for the next thing that takes us by surprise. But I also hate the idea of taking from our future and I just knew he'd hate it too. I expected him to say "No way" or "Let's just try to spend less."

But he didn't. He just said "OK. I bumped it up a little a while back. We can bump it down."

And that was it. No questions, no eye rolling, nothing. He took one for the team.

I love that man. It's so easy to underestimate our significant others. So easy to expect the worst reaction, to anticipate a "me versus you" type argument. It's so easy to forget we are a team.

I'm so glad he's on my team. I couldn't ask for anyone better.