Plans gone awry

Well, I was planning on spending the weekend home with Caly. Zaven is on a weekend trip with Upward Bound and Scott was going to take the little ones with him to Somerset to visit his mom. I thought Caly and I could stay home and try to get the house cleaned up again, but also to spend some time together visiting. I figured we'd go to a movie or rent one at least, and just spend some time alone. The cleaning goes so much faster when there aren't little people underfoot messing it back up.

But the plans have been scrapped. Zaven is still out of town, but today Scott's mom came over to look at a house that's being auctioned near here. And then her car broke down. So she's staying here while it's being worked on. I don't mind, in that I love her very much. But I'm a bit bummed about not getting to make progress. I know what it's like trying to clean around Quinn. He's a mess maker. And I'm also disappointed to not get time alone with Caly. The only really hard part about having four kids is that you don't get chances to spend time with them one on one as much as you'd like. But I figure we'll work it out somehow.

I may just leave Scott and Grandma watching the babies and take her to a movie anyway. Plus it's supposed to be really, really warm and sunny. So maybe they'll spend the day outside. Someone still needs to be out there with them. Even though the road is a long hike away, Quinn really likes to get into stuff he's not supposed to and his latest quest is to open the car doors and play in the cars. Not at all safe on a hot sunny day. But Grandma might like to sit on the porch swing and sip iced tea and keep an eye on them while Caly and I get some things done. We'll see. We'll work something out. We always do.

And speaking of working things out, I went back over our finances to see where we'd stand if Scott doesn't find a job in the fall. While it's not good, it's not as bad as I was afraid. Unemployment doesn't pay what his job does, but then again, nobody will be taking things like retirement and insurance out of his unemployment checks. In reality, we'll end up making nearly as much take home pay from unemployment and food stamps. It doesn't feel good to need to have those, but it's better than starving. If we spend our money very, very carefully (which I try to do anyway) and there aren't any major unplanned expenses like a car breaking down or the house needing repairs or what-have-you, then we should be able to just manage to stay afloat without going into debt. The real problem is that we won't have insurance. I really, really liked having health insurance. But it is what it is. We'll keep trying and keep hoping and we'll work something out. As I said, we always do. But I hate that we have to.