Dumb

Update - So, I post this in the morning. I get home in the afternoon and there's a bill in my mailbox from my old cable company in Minnesota. I was a little miffed, since I know I paid them the final amount due. I open the envelope - there's a 3 page bill, and a return envelope, and a message on the bill that says "Your account is currently past due, please remit payment as soon as possible to avoid further action." And what's the amount due? -.53 THAT'S NEGATIVE 53 CENTS!!! They owe ME money, and yet they spent the money for 3 pages of bills, a return envelope and postage. THAT'S REDICULOUS!!! And then it really chaps my hide when I think of the letter I got from the President of the cable company last fall that said they were sorry but because of rising costs, they were going to have to raise the rates. WELL IF YOU DIDN'T DO STUFF LIKE THIS MAYBE YOU WOULDN'T HAVE TO!!!!!!!!!!!!!**********************************************************************************I get to watch Fox News all day at work (Unless there's a playoff in a certain golf tournament and then I get to watch a golf)... so I hear about the economy and businesses having short falls and bad quarters. Well you know what, I've been around enough of corporate America these days to tell you that at least some of their trouble seems to come from plain, old fashioned stupid money and expense management. Examples I have seen:A SINGLE peice of paper sent from a corproate office to a branch office. In a large envelope. The postage cost .88... for ONE piece of paper. This company has thousands of branches, so start doing some math... for just this one instance. HmmmmChecks sent for .22, .19, .12. And not just a few... LOTS of checks. With .42 cent postage on them. Printed on check stock. Yeah... there's NO WAY that makes sense.Paying for utilities for years at a location that is no longer occupied by the company. One company I worked for I found places where we had been out of the location for close to 5 years, and had never had the utilities taken out of our name. In one case the total amount we had paid was well over $24,000. That's CRAZY.When you just catch a glance of this kind of stuff, you think "eh, it's not that much money" but when to start to look deeply and start to do the math, these can be serious issues. And signs of stupidity that drive me NUTS

Ahem?

I sent two e-mails last night - one to McCain and one to Obama - same e-mail, just to see what kind of response I would get. Basically it was a "what are you going to do for those of us living paycheck to paycheck who aren't even sure how we're going to pay for gas to get to work in the morning." Wanna know the replies I got?McCain's camp sent nothing, Obama's sent a letter asking for donations.I think I'll be voting for myself.

Stuff

The girls are at their dad's for 11 days. I'm looking foward to doing some cleaning and organizing and reading and watching what I want on tv and working out in the evening and maybe even hitting the parkway at night... Those are good things. The quiet is kind of a good thing... Not having to wake up Cranky & Grumpy is a VERY good thing. Not getting a kiss goodbye in the morning - NOT a good thing. Kjersten will be home for less then 12 hours between when she gets back from her dad's and when she leaves for California. I'm so glad she gets to go, but I'm going to miss her tremendously.Now - for the reason behind the title - I called over there this morning to say good morning to the girls (Katie was still asleep). Kjersten was.... DOING THE DISHES FOR GRANNY!!! Did you feel the earth move?? I just about fell over. WOW!! Good work Kjersten!!!!Kjersten got her report card yesterday. North Carolina uses letter grades in elementary school, whereas Minnesota uses S, NS, E... and some other stuff I was never very fond of. Well, Kjersten got 3 C's and 2 B's. The C's were in reading, writing and rithmatic basically :) The b's were in Social Studies and Science. Honestly, I'm VERY proud of her. She switched states, schools, homes etc towards the end of the school year and landed in a school that was MUCH more advanced than the one she came from. She's worked her BUTT off to catch up AND try to fit in. I'm INCREDIBLY proud of her. (Are you getting the idea that I'm proud of her)Katie... Katie Katie Katie Katie... last night we were looking for something she wanted to take to her dads. I was looking and I said "I KNOW it's around here somewhere! It's gotta be right under my nose and I'm just not seeing it." Katie turns to me and says "Well mommy - you do have yellow hair." Yes, ladies and gentlemen, that's right, I was the victim of a 5-year-olds blonde joke... Heaven help me.

Stuff

Because of my impending divorce and a house that won't sell and an unemployed ex-husband, I'm struggling financially... badly... REALLY badly. Badly enough that I had to suck it up and take my girls and I down to Social Services and sign up for food stamps. I hated EVERY SINGLE MINUTE of it. I was embarrassed and ashamed and just... I hated it. But I need to feed my girls... so it had to be done.So the other day I was on a blog (I don't think it was anyone in this circle of bloggers) and the woman was ranting about someone in the grocery store line checking out with her items and one of the items was a pack of gum, and she had the NERVE to pay for that with her food stamps. She went on and on and her commenters went on and on about how horrible that was, and that that was what the whole problem with the welfare system is and on and on.And quite honestly, a few years ago I might have joined in - perhaps not quite so vehemently, but I would have at least been nodding my head.But let me tell you a possibility. MAYBE the lady was just like me. Maybe she had two daughters that she LOVED SO MUCH, and maybe she was SO TIRED of having to say "no, we can't afford that" to everything her daughters asked for. And I bet they weren't greedy girls, just normal kids who would like a new toy now and then. But she just didn't have the money to do it. And maybe her girls think gum is a pretty freaking cool treat. And maybe she saw that gum, and thought "Oh WOW! I can finally get them one thing... I can say yes to something. They are going to be SO EXCITED." And so she bought the $1.19 pack of gum, with her foodstamps.Maybe.. just maybe... we have NO right to judge ANYONE because we NEVER know the whole story, do we?