Reflections

Every once in a while I like to take a step back from the craziness of my daily routines to really consider what I have going on in my life. I did that the other day and came to the conclusion that my life is pretty good. My DH is great, sure he isn’t perfect, but who is. He puts up with my craziness which says a lot, I know I wouldn’t like being married to me. My kids are great too. The Boy is so loving and caring; he has a fun little zest for life that I wish I could bottle. The Girl is amazingly strong willed; she and I will end up butting heads one day I can bet on it, but for now she looks up to me like I am the world. She wants to be next to me and near me no matter what her other options are, and I know this won’t last forever. We haven’t decided for certain whether there will be a baby #3, but to even have that option makes us very lucky. I know several people who have struggled with infertility, and aside from my early miscarriage before The Boy we have had little trouble in that department.

There are many other good things in my life, we have wonderful families who love us, and care about us. We have a nice home, we aren’t in debt, and we have good jobs. We have a good chunk of money already set aside for retirement, and are able to add to it each and every month. I know many people who really do live paycheck to paycheck and struggle to make ends meet. Again, we are lucky we don’t have that added stress. It almost makes me feel a little guilty when a friend complains about not being able to buy any extras, or worse can’t even meet their current expenses.

I believe that luck, a good dose of common sense, and a good upbringing helped us to get to this position, oh and cheapness. DH and I have lived together since I was a junior in college; we lived in a roach-infested $430 a month shit hole apartment for the first few years. He worked, I worked, and we scraped by. We had an apartment filled with free furniture. We splurged on a VCR after we had lived together for a few months, and that was a well calculated expenditure (we did have cable TV though, because that is a necessity). I graduated from college with minimal student loans outstanding. We moved to a nicer apartment, but kept our free furniture, and began to invest. Eventually we bought our first house, and lived there for a good 6 months before we had any furniture in our main floor living room. Every big purchase was still heavily weighed before buying, despite the fact that we could now afford to buy nice things. We are now in our second house, and still have no bedroom set. I use the dresser that was my Dad’s at one point in time; the legs have broken off in one of the many moves, so it sits right on the floor in all of its ugliness. DH’s parents bought new bedroom furniture at some point so The Girl got DH’s old dresser (his from childhood) and he switched to his Dad’s cast off. The Boy somehow managed an IKEA dresser, and a Target bookcase, but he uses my old bed and mattress from childhood. Do you sense a theme here?

We were watching HGTV the other day (well every day, but the conversation the other day is what I am thinking about) and were relaying the conversation that would happen when the designers entered our bedroom.

THEM: you make how much money and you seriously are using this bedroom furniture?
US: Um, yeah, someday we will buy new bedroom furniture, but this stuff works so we aren’t in a big hurry.
THEM: Have you looked at your bedroom?
US: Yes, but it is just our bedroom so what difference does it make?
THEM: Lots of eye rolling, Did you guys paint this leaf stencil pattern on the walls?
US: No, it was here when we moved in, we will repaint it someday
THEM: How long have you lived here?
US: almost 2 years
THEM: Leaving in disgust

The conversation could repeat about almost any room in our house. This is why we have decided to hire a decorator to help us with our big house remodel project. We are afraid it will finish, we will move our current LR set over a bit and just move on. I guess this is what happens when two very practical engineer types get married and have kids.

Yes, we are lucky and we are uninspired, but if our lack of motivation to spend loads of money on furniture and decorating is our only problem I guess we aren’t so bad off. Life is pretty good here, even if our style looks like something that was found for free after the college kids moved out of their dorms in the spring. Scratch that, the college kids today probably all have new looking IKEA furniture, which while cheap, is probably an improvement over our stuff! You know your furniture is bad when underemployed relatives refuse your cast offs. Oh well, at least we are happy, and we don’t worry so much about the kids ruining our things.