I hate the end of the month.  Some months its worse than others and this month is one of those.  Kile, being a state employee, gets paid but once a month.  And with me not working outside the home and making any sort of salary, we see money once a month around here.  Since Lilac Pixels has petered out (my decision, mostly), there’s been less “extra” money floating around.  And no less expense.

Take Liam’s newfound milk allergy, for example.  We had a whole pile of those little formula samples laying around.  Couldn’t use them.  But since it was less than a month ago that I stopped pumping, and we fully expected my enormous freezer stash of frozen milk to last the month (if not several months), formula just didn’t make it onto the budget this month.  And by the time we knew we needed to get some, the money just wasn’t there.  Had he not been allergic to milk, we would have used up the sample cans and then maybe purchased one larger can (around the same time we purchased the can of soy formula).  If we would have run out (which we most assuredly would have) I most likely would have given him whole milk that would have been pennies on the gallon at the local grocery store.

I suppose I could have purchased soy milk, but I’m still not sure how this whole soy thing works.  We’ve been hoping to talk to his pediatrician about it more at his 12 month appointment in July, to discuss when to take him off formula and all that.  I’m just not interested in gambling with my son’s nutrition right about now, you know?  Anyhow, the end result is we have VERY LITTLE formula left in the house right now.  Thank goodness Kile’s paycheck gets direct deposited tonight and I can go to the store tomorrow.  If it were even a day more, I don’t think we’d make it.  I HATE that feeling.

We’re scraping the bottom in other respects as well.  There’s not a lot of food options around the house.  Doesn’t stop Harry from asking for dessert every night, though.   The answer never changes, but he keeps trying anyhow.   Doesn’t help that he’s going through some sort of growth spurt or something and is hungry every five minutes.  He’s been eating constantly all day today.  Coffee cake for breakfast, more coffee cake mid-morning, hamburger and fries for lunch (that Kile brought home from the university for us, bless his heart), coffee cake after lunch, popcorn for snack…  I can’t wait for this kid to go back to school in a month, if only to cut back on the amount of food he goes through in a given day.

NewFriend had her baby yesterday.  I wanted to go visit her in the hospital yesterday evening and see her and the baby.  But?  My van is out of gas.  I mean, I can make it to the gas station, but it requires a fill up (and we live out in the boonies so no way I could get to town and back on what’s in there) and that’ll have to wait until payday.  So I had to sit at home.  Probably best that way, as she was probably still trying to get settled and that’s prime family time anyhow.  I’d hate to butt in where I’m not wanted, you know?  Which is why I haven’t called so far today to see if she’s gotten home yet.  Best just to give her her space, I guess.

Next month probably won’t be any better.  I need to buy my plane tickets for BlogHer and I still don’t know what I’m doing about hotel accommodations. I don’t even know what goes into reserving those, though I suspect it requires a credit card.  Debit card, yes.  Credit card, no.   I’m trying not to worry too much about that.  But yeah, that’s going to be a huge strain on this budget of ours.

I try not to think too much about the fact that we were supposed to be trying to get our mortgage refinanced this spring and with that refinance was supposed to come a good chunk of money.  We were going to (finally) landscape the backyard, maybe do some other home improvements and pay for BlogHer with that.  I don’t entirely know why Kile has put off the refinance.  There’s not much I can do about it, as my name isn’t on the loan.  And he gets cranky whenever I bring up the subject so about all I can do is sit here and try not to think about it too much.  But dang, it sure would make things a little easier right now.

Anyhow.  Being poor sucks.