Not Ready to Face the World of Finance. Not Yet.

I've oft used the scene of Luke Skywalker facing Darth Vader in that crazy heavy-machinery room in Cloud City as a fine example of my attempts to stay afloat financially.

Well, Sharon & I are just toying around with the idea of her staying home and us making a go of it for the next 13 months until Rose is old enough to go to Lucy's school. Only catch is, Lucy would still be going there, so it's essentially the worst of two worlds. The expense of child care without the second income. It was almost seeming like we were coming out ahead for a month and a half, till I went in to do Quicken last night. In Sharon's current maternity leave, we've been writing those Capital One checks to replace her missing income. I forgot to do it for her normal pay period this last Friday and, WHAM! The world of finance was very unforgiving. Thank God our credit union is set up to take money out of savings in the event of an overdraft; because it did this time. Like Bullet the Blue Sky, it peeled out them hundred dollar increments: $100...$200...$300. Savings now depleted down to $91, I desperately deposited the safety net (which, of course, goes right onto the credit card).

Yeah, and we think we're going to somehow find a way to trim Sharon's entire net income (minus daycare cost) out of our budget for a whole year.

And maybe monkeys will fly out of my butt.

So, after that humbling, humiliating, scarring experience (I always come out of checkbook balancing almost like I would imagine stumbling out of a room where I had just been sexually molested), I proceeded to act out the entire Cloud City battle scene, from the first piece of random computer console smacking into my shoulder, to the last weary attempt at deflecting the onslaught, and onto the window exploding open. The amazing spectacle was capped by me hanging onto the leg of Rose's swing by one hand and flailing my legs about and eventually being "sucked out" onto the ledge. At that point, the metaphor really loses its applicability; but for artistic sake, I played the scene out to its conclusion, asking Sharon to ask me to "join" her, so I could scrunch my face up melodramatically and scream "Never!!!!!'

Lucy was having some trouble figuring out exactly what was going on, but she's been around long enough to not be too freaked out by displays such as this.