How I Roll

These are the kind of clothes I wear lately. Not that it was a nice shirt to begin with, but now as you can clearly see, it's pretty much trash. Or it would be to most self-respecting people. I however, wear it very regularly.

There are a few reasons for this, primarily because I have no money to buy new clothes. Secondary to that, but only just barely, is the fact that I am not in a physical condition to buy new clothes. I still have about 50 pounds to lose and have been quite complacent about that for far too long. I have a closet full of clothes that don't fit, and even if I had the money to go shopping (which I don't), I wouldn't want or know how to comfortably dress this current body of mine. It's not that I'm unfamiliar with being overweight, but I am never comfortable with it. Especially when it involves confronting a three-way mirror in a public place that is not conducive to fits of despair and audible tears of grief and shame.

But I digress- back to having no money. (It's a common theme in my life.) Not only do we have no money, but we have too much debt. It's a revolving door we have been going through all of our marriage- Not making enough money to get by and then relying on credit cards (or student loans in those days) to cover the neccesities. Usually it is for some actual emergency such as car repairs which are nonnegotiable, or for some of the frivolities I have come to expect like food and shelter for my children. The thing is, this credit card debt is not helping matters. This has come as a shock to me, as I'm sure it will to many of you as well. I will repeat: Credit card debt is not your friend. It's a hard truth to swallow.

We only have one vehicle, and that vehicle already has 200,000 miles on it. Even though we regularly maintenance it and it is in good working condition, I'm sure you can see where I am going with this. With Tim working two jobs, I almost never have access to the car. He works nights and weekends. I have the car available to me only a couple of nights a week, and Sunday, which is irrellevant. We need to have a plan for another car, or the scenario which is more fitting for my life: When we are finally able to afford a second car, our first will finally die, leaving us with- one car, again. Either way, we need a plan. Not that we haven't formulated plans in the past, it's just those frivolous luxeries we continue to indulge in, that is, food and shelter. The thing is, we already have a pretty tight budget. Not a lot of wiggle room, not a lot of extras. (Hence the holey, embarrasing clothing.) But we are making some serious strides and sacrifices to pay off those credit cards by this time next year so that we are in a position to get a used car. I'm not sure if it is possible, especially since our tax return this year is less than half what it has been in the past. The lowest one we have ever received; it will definitely not have quite the impact on this debt that I envisioned.

What you should take from this, the point I am trying to make is: you might get crap for gifts this year.

If at all.

And I will look super trashy.

 So, you know- status quo.