Happily Never After......

Ever noticed how most fairy tale romances in Disney always end abruptly after the romantic wedded bliss moment, or that fairy tale kiss? That's because if you are actually married, you'll know that it's probably best not to let the kids know the rest of it.

Being married is the most wonderful and most challenging kind of relationship that any of us will ever manage. Commitment to our children is unconditional love at its best, the kind of love that we get sold in Disney movies that is supposed to naturally happen with our spouses instantly after we say those magic words, "I do!".

We all think that we can do the "till death do us part" but few of us realize is that there are moments in a marriage when we do it with clenched teeth and a bitten tongue. We just celebrated our 14th anniversary and a good wise friend sent us a message that said," Love can bring souls together but I am a believer that choosing to be loving is what keeps them together." A good marriage requires a daily affirmation of that commitment especially when there are so many things that can easily get in the way.

"Couples who reported disagreeing about finances once a week were over 30% more likely to divorce over time than couples who reported disagreeing a few times per month". Financial difficulties are one of the top reasons why couples seek marital counselling and are also one of the top reasons for divorce. Consumer debt, spending habits, choosing how to spend mutual money, decisions about savings and retirement, and losing an income due to job loss or a decision for one parent to stay home to raise a family all have a tremendous impact on a marriage.

In our financial hell of 2011, we lost our nest egg, got hung by by roofing debt, had our home flooded, our family/business vehicle died and I essentially lost my job as a caterer/ business owner all in three days time. Days after this stunning realization, we also had more bad news from our insurance company...it would barely cover the cost of our home recovery. Check your policy for backwater, I guarantee you won't have enough to cover flood damage. Anyone in Calgary knows this painful reality. We simply don't have coverage in Canada for flood insurance but we ALL think we are covered.

My ugliest moment as a wife came shortly afterward. I have no excuses for my behavior. One thing I do know is that after working in kitchens with people under severe stress, every single one of us has some of the deeply ugly within us. I've seen the best and the worst of every co-worker I have ever worked with in a kitchen....I've seen it all. I've seen it in other places too. Someone once said, "That if you ever start to feel enlightened, go home and spend a week with your extended family."

It all came to head for me and my husband a few weeks after the triumvirate of hell had occurred. We were nowhere closer to getting some help with the flood damage, on hold with our insurance company and adjusters, living surrounded by piles of furniture on one level, two of our kids left bedroomless sleeping in a tiny guestroom together with nowhere for any of them to play indoors, trucking through our basement pit of despair in rubber boots to get to the one working shower in our home downstairs, and my new day job had become tearing out our basement with a crowbar and hammer.

I lost it on the one person in the world who knew exactly how bad it truly felt to be us in that moment. Why? Simply because he had the nerve and dignity to happily wish me a good day as he went off to work just like it was any other day, like nothing had ever happened with the confidence in knowing that it would all be well in time. (Just a note to other husbands.....if your wife is in the middle of a mid life crisis and holding a crowbar and hammer, even if it seems well meaning at the time....its okay to be gently nice, but its probably not a great idea to be overly chipper. Read "The Secret" on your own time till your wife calms down and gets into a better state of mind, ok? Just my advice from someone who's been there....")

Knowing that my deep ugly was rearing its horribleness in a torrent of rage at the loss I was feeling and since I went and directed it all at the one person who was willing to love me despite it, I knew that it was time for Mommy to be put in a time-out. Luckily, I had the sense to send myself to a Buddist cabin in the woods for a week with no electricity and an outhouse to chill out by myself. (Some of my girlfriends afterwards let me know that this was for sure the sign that I had gone completely off the deep end.)

It was affordable for someone in the toilet financially, and with little material comforts around to help remind that it's all REALLY not that important. There's nothing like relying on a wood stove for heat, candles to read at night, flash-lighting the entire toilet area for spiders, and missing hugs and kisses from your kids to put things in perspective.

I was blessed with a few magazines from the Shambala Sun and found a mentor in Pema Chodron within those magazines who offered me guidance then and now. I came to the realization that a financial crisis will wig most of us out in a real hurry, but it didn't mean that I had to lose the love in my life that truly meant the most to me because of it. Not sweating the small stuff is good advice and learning how to meditate is helpful even if you do it poorly like me. http://www.shambhalasun.com/   http://pemachodronfoundation.org/

Experts on financial well-being say that the key to money and relationships is communication. Apparently we don't have to agree on everything....we just need to talk about it. Things like Andrew spending money on eating fast food (a real annoyance for a Chef ) and me spending money on jackets, costume jewelry or extra pillows for our bed seems silly to Andrew. (The word on the street is that all men hate those extras pillows ladies.....so here's my Save a few bucks on household expenses tip of the day: Ditch the pillows, and save!) All couples have their thing that bugs them about the other when it comes to how best to make purchases for the family. The key is watching resentment levels when it comes to the decisions that do get made....that's where it can cause a divide in a marriage or relationship.

Andrew & I may not have had the same financial goals along the way, but I think our commitment to the marriage has gotten us through the roughest times we have had to face as a couple. We are both stubborn and often joke that the only thing keeping this marriage together is our mutual unwillingness to quit the relationship. Neither of us wants to be the quitter.....that means the other one wins. It kinda like the War of the Roses only we're working on a much happier ending.

Since we know that we are not alone, at least we hope we aren't the only couple that struggles from time to time. I thought it would be great to assemble some helpful tips for couples in honour of our anniversary. We celebrate every year with a toast to my Grandma who stood up at our wedding and declared, "It won't last a year!". Happy times.....so many good memories of our special day.

1) Learn to talk money with your honey. Who knew?! But opposites attract...even when it comes to finances. Put a saver and a spender together, and after the courtship is over and the oxytoxin levels die down you have a challenging road ahead if you can't find some middle ground.

"A really basic way to start to get on the same page financially is to commit to sitting down at least once a year to review your income, your expense and the difference (savings), your assets, your liabilities and the difference (net worth), and your credit scores and credit reports so that all your debt is transparent. Consider it your annual financial physical. I'm not suggesting that these conversations will be easy. Couples who pay attention to their financial well-being the same way they would their physical, spiritual or intellectual well-being put themselves on a path for much lower levels of financial stress, says Maniska Thakor, financial expert."

2) Build a joint financial dream list. "Particularly since few have much money, financial disputes drive many divorces. Too many couples today begin their lives together holding seemingly overwhelming student loans, car loans, credit-card debt and more. So when the honeymoon's over, the money quarrels start: "Why did you spend so much on clothes? We're supposed to be saving for a house down payment, so why are you buying such an expensive computer? Just because I'm the homemaker, why don't I deserve some spending money of my own?"

So my advice is to spend a weekend building your "financial dream" list together. That will give you much to look forward to, after the passions cool and before the money squabbles have time to set in. Prior to walking down the aisle, my partner and I took a couple of days to draft our financial dream plan together. How many kids did we want? How often and where would we vacation? How would we handle the fact that one of us had enough for a small down payment on our first house, and the other had no savings at all?

That was probably the most important discussion of our lives together, since we hashed out priorities and pre-settled arguments that we wouldn't have to have later. We also decided to go the joint and separate account route: The joint account pays for most everything, including the house, cars, kids, the college fund and taxes. The joint account also contributes to our retirement accounts. Then we each get a small monthly allowance transferred into our separate accounts, which we use as we wish. Separate and joint credit cards are attached to each account.

All this seems like a lot of work, but it has helped us avoid arguing about money (for the most part!). And we're still living out the financial dream we drafted together, 31 years ago" says, Olivia S. Mitchell, a professor of business economics and public policy at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where she focuses on pensions, household finance and risk management.

Its never to late to have this conversation. Andrew and I were married 13 years before we actually sat down and prioritized our financial goals. Some couples never do it....but I can tell you from experience that it has made a huge difference in our conversations about money since we came to an agreement that we could both live with. You can see it on our previous blog....Casa Cayendo is the new Beau Chateau.

3) Save for a Rainy Day."You can't enjoy money when you are dead so why not enjoy it now!", so says Homer Simpson.While I am writing this blog, the kids turned on the Simpsons, and hilariously it is all about Marg having a flip out over the fact that they have no savings and since Homer is so accidient prone, she starts having panic attacks thinking about what will happen to them when, as Bart puts it,"the Big Tuna bites it." She starts saving for a "really rainy day".

Homer is resentful since he earns the money and all she does is hang around at home doing cooking, cleaning, laundry and caring for the kids. He blows her meager savings from buying budget food and Columbia Shame coffee on a down payment for a motor home so he can escape Marg's "loveless slab of bossiness".

They start fighting and Bart & Lisa decide to return the motor home after Bart ruminates, "How could a motor home ruin a marriage that crappy?" As usual, things go completely wrong, and the motor home gets trashed. Through a twisted turn of events the Simpson family ends up on a Turkish freighter where Marg declares," Ahhhh, heck,  it's only money.....". One of the Turkish sailors leans over to Homer and whispers in her ear, "She's a little intense, so we put some hashish in her meal."

Having a rainy day fund is important and will alleviate potential stress in a marriage but few of us have one. With our austerity measures budget, we are putting aside 5% of our income for savings but most financial experts recommend 10%. If we ever get to the bottom of debt repayment, we plan on upping how much we sock away. It will be probably be a much better choice than Andrew resorting to street drugs to mellow me out if things go sideways again.

4) Make a vow of frugality. "You know the thought you're having now? About all the things you could have done with the money you spent on that wedding? About how much they charged for those centerpieces? Remember that feeling when the time comes to buy a car. Skip the baby Audi, buy a six-year-old Corolla and take a great vacation/fund your retirement/save for a house instead." so says financial expert, Matt Hougan. 

We spent a ton on our fairy tale wedding. We were young, naive, skipped all the courses in high school that talked about money management (oh, wait, there never was even one), and wanted a perfect day for all our family and friends. We had an open bar, an elaborate meal, a dessert buffet and the perfect venue but it cost us and our families a great first down payment on a what could have been a home to start our life together. And it was all blown in one day. And we are far, far from alone with money management wedding guilt. At least we are still together.....

5)"When you forgive, you in no way change the past-but you sure do change the future." Charles Rotblut (horrible last name...seriously, he should change it) recommends that we should," approach finances with a large amount of forgiveness. There is a reasonable chance one or both of you will make a big financial mistake (and probably many mistakes). You are both human and it happens. No matter how mad you get, stop and ask yourself whether the mistake is really big enough to warrant ending your marriage over."

Lisa & Bart on the Simpsons leave their parents a note letting them know that they are taking the motor home back because they don't want them to split up. We have an obligation to our kids and to our marriage to make sure that we have financial health. That doesn't mean that we can afford fancy vacations, a big screen TV or expensive vehicles and hobbies. It means we have a will, a financial plan for the future, limited debt, money put aside for educations for our kids, a retirement plan for ourselves and a savings account.

I'm fortunate to have a husband who has a big heart of forgiveness for the awful things I said. Somehow he has the amazing ability to shrug it off as nothing more than the day his wife turned into the little bird who left the coo-coo clock. He supported my retreat, probably was more than happy to let me leave, and welcomed me with open arms when I came home. 

We celebrated this year with friends over dinner at my Wine & Dine Mexican Cooking Class that I was teaching (multi-tasking is one of my super strengths) and Andrew surprised me at work with a bouquet of flowers. We have come a long way from 2011, and I am so grateful that we pushed past a pretty lousy time. The situation didn't define our marriage or where it was headed and we have found a way to turn this ship around. I also got another chance to show Andrew the best of me instead of the worst.

We are your average Canadian family and we are working towards our happily ever after......................

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.....

So for those of you who actually follow this blog, you may be wondering...is she still alive or what?! (Realistically, that may be only two people, but hey, a girl can hope that someone gives a crap, right?). I have been on vacation. Yes, I know, yet another vacation for someone who is supposed to be sticking to her Austerity Measures budget, but there you have it...life gets in the way of being frugal sometimes.

My grandparents aren't getting any younger, but that being said, I'm convinced that my mother's parents are going to be around for another 10 years or more at least and they are 94 and 92. Unlike most, up till February of this year, I had all of my grandparents still living. My Grandma Perrin died this year of what I am convinced is stubbornness...she should have lived a much longer life but at 90, she still lived with my Grandfather in their home of 68 years and continued to cook, clean and bathe herself despite being blind from macular degeneration. Third degree burns from getting into a bathtub from the chest down and not being able to quickly extradite herself resulted in a trip to the hospital after spending two days on the couch in and out of consciousness in her nightdress, convinced that a doctor was unnecessary. I come from some tough people....it gives me strength and also sometimes is to my detriment. We have more guts than you can hang on a fence in our family and wear it proudly.

We went home to spend some time, something I haven't done in 5 years because its always a challenge and not just financially. You see, because I not only descend from strong relatives, but also from some crazy ones too and despite my best intentions, I always seem to draw the short straw. As my Aunt put it, for some reason, I always end up in a Lose/Lose position, no matter how desperate I am to please everyone, I end up pleasing no one. I really should just learn to say," Fuck it!" and do what's best for me, but I genuinely love people, love making them happy and see no reason to segregate that love, one family or person at a time. However there are some that think otherwise.

I did my best to stick to the budget, but vacations will do you in much faster than being kicked to death by grasshoppers. If it wasn't for the wine or the gas or the hotel rooms or the pleasure of buying things for family or friends it would be so damn easy, but after 10 months of living off of a $500 grocery budget and entertaining ourselves with board games, it's REALLY hard in the presence of others simply enjoying their lives to not say,"TO HELL WITH IT!".

I also went home because my Grandpa Perrin, who will be 90 in October, decided that it was time to let his car go. This is a big deal. My Grandparents may have lived in a war time home, but there was always a shiny new vehicle in their driveway after retirement. My Grandpa's cars were his pride and joy...washed and waxed weekly and replaced by the latest model every couple of years. He paid cash, didn't dicker on the sticker price and ALWAYS bought Chryslers.

Our plan was to try and ride out our Crappy Chevy Cavalier for another 3 years until the car payments were up on my Hyundai. Completely unrealistic plan since the damn Chevy crapped out on us on the day I was to fly out to Ontario to start my vacation but we are still dealing with our lack of insightful financial planning and will be for years to come. You see, smart, financially responsible people sock away money for that eventuality but most of us just wing it and then freak out when, "Holy Shit!", our 25 year old dishwasher dies on us. I mean, really, why don't they make things like they used to? I remember when dishwasher's used to last like 50 years. Man, we weren't planning to start saving to replace that appliance for, like another ten years at the least. Crap!!

When my Grandpa heard from my father, who unlike us, recognized that our car was a piece of crap on its last legs, mentioned that we might need a vehicle, Grandpa was quick to offer the car to us as a gift. For us, it was an amazing offer, one that helped us immensely but was also so difficult to accept. Every time I thought about taking Grandpa's car, I would cry and trust me when I say that I can count on two hands, the amount of times I've cried in my lifetime. It's an annoying investment of snotty nose, runny red eyes and kleenex. Hate doing it and wish there was a simple, cheap way to stop it.

I'm not joking!!! I asked my optician if there was a way of surgically fixing it this week after another horrible jag of it to find a medical way to reverse it. She let me know that they still don't know why we emotionally cry. Science still hasn't figured it out!! Why aren't we putting some good quality research dollars into this? She gave me some drops to sort out my condition and let me know that the reason why our eyes feel like crap after bawling is that the saline in our tears strips our eyes of their natural oils and essentially dries them out. It takes a day to allow the eye to build up those oils again, so you can use some artificial drops to lube up those those eyes in the meantime, that is, if you accidentally stumble into a theatre showing the last few minutes of Lassie.

We have a lot to celebrate so I will start with the good...

1) Our Chevy Cavalier has been replaced by a Chrysler 300 that's barely been driven in the last five years. It had 34,000 kms on it until I drove it home and is a 2005. It needs a bit of work since its been sitting to the tune of $500 plus, but my trusty mechanic assures me that it is in excellent condition and once the work is completed will be a great vehicle for years to come.

2) We had help with our vacation on flights and gas. Our grandparents and my Dad generously assisted with the cost of getting us there and home which we had saved for, but abruptly lost those savings when our furnace needed to be replaced to the tune of $10,000. This is WHY you should plan for equipment in your house that is getting aged, socking money away for the eventuality that things, just like people don't last forever.

3) Our bosom buddies and sister wife family put us up for 10 days of extended family gatherings donating vacation time and expenses despite being mistreated by a couple of the selected above crazy people in my family. We are eternally grateful that they still want anything to do with us at all since having spent most of their lives with relatively normal, slightly quirky folks, they got a first hand 3D experience with what it's like to be in my world. They also now know why my preference is for them to see me in the Maritimes and not the other way round.

4) We celebrated our first Austerity Measures Budget Goal prior to leaving for vacation. Say goodbye to $24,000 worth of roofing debt with the last payment made in June!!! Between the scheduled payments we stuck to and our tax return, we were able to beat our initial deadline by 6 months. We officially have one borrowing account paid off and one credit card at 0% interest for only six months paid off. It can be done and I will be doing an end of year budget review to show you how in September.

Here is the bad...

1) Our furnace blew and so as much as we would love to celebrate $24,000 less, we had to take on $10,000 worth of new debt to get it replaced. The potentially good news is that with a more efficient system, we may save a lot on both our electricity bills and our oil bills come fall. We will keep you posted on this one, since some of you may be considering how much it would save you to replace an old oil furnace. This will hit our bottom line in our monthly budget and may mean that we can sock more away towards the debt giving us less time in debt repayment mode or we could choose to have more disposable income and bust a move buying some twinkies at the grocery store to live life in the fast lane.

2) The other good news is that we had $10,000 worth of line of credit space to be able to deal with this debt at a low interest rate and not on our credit card which would be a nightmare. Had this furnace bust occurred when we were living in spending denial...we would have been screwed and in major financial trouble. If you are getting close to not having ANY readily available credit beyond your credit cards and if you are living with a balance on those credit cards...you, my friend are living in credit card denial. It's time to wake up and get them paid off. No joke....its completely stupid to be paying 28.8% interest.

3) You know its bad when you book an appointment at your car mechanics and he says,"Are you sure you want to come in on Monday? Andrew usually books his appointments on Saturdays." I had to explain that yes, Andrew's days off are Saturdays....but mine are Mondays. This has got to be your first clue that you are spending way too much time and money fixing cars.

3 b) Grandpa's car is going in on Monday for a minimum repair of $500 plus and now the Crappy Cavalier that we just had towed and fixed to the tune of $600 just had the engine light pop on when I was driving it to work this morning. Really?!!! From now on, I am driving a bejesus bicycle...... wind, rain, snow or shine! To hell with these mechanized horses ready for pasture! Put that Chevy to rest my head tells me.....anybody interested in a fabuloso deal on a wonderful car? Reliable and I will even throw in some snake oil that will give you the biggest something, something you've ever seen to please your lady friend....if you know what I mean.

4) I set a budget for my vacation weeks of $400 per week for the two weeks I was in Ontario. I blew it. This means I will need to extend our timeline for debt repayment for another month. Sucks...yes, but life is short. I could get hit by a bus tomorrow and my family and friends are worth it. Not the death by bus, but you know what I mean.

The ugly...

1) A close family member has blocked me from facebook after our wonderful family reunion. Good thing I blew the budget on them! Does this mean that she doesn't love me anymore or does it mean I'm dealing with someone who has the mental age of 10? Only time will tell....I'm placing my bets on the second. Luckily, this has little effect on our financial well being. However I may be getting anthrax in the mail this Christmas....

2) We have a hell of a long way to go. Based on our proposed timeline of debt repayment as per our previous blog...even when we do pay off the flood ($8000 left) and the furnace ($10,000 to go), we still have a lot of Casa Cayendo to deal with and three kids to send to schooling so they don't need to be dummies like us.

2 b) Most importantly, we need to stick to the damn budget, which is friggin' hard. Prostitution sometimes seems tempting, easier and quicker to earn a few dollars than the way we are going about it. I'm sure I could put Andrew out for stud if I hadn't already sent him to the SPCA to get fixed. Hell, I've still got all my teeth....must be worth something! Clipping coupons, staying in, engaging the kids in home-made puppet shows and canning our own ketchup seems like oodles of fun, but trust me, it can be hard unless your neighbors are Mennonites.

3) It could be so much worse....my kids are at an age when they could finally appreciate the stories that my grandparents, their great- grandparents have to share. Grandma and Grandpa told us of what it was like to live through German Nazi occupation of Holland. She told me of the weeks worth of bombing that killed her brother as he was working in another neighborhood. She shared with me the moment when her sister was screaming at her, "Why are you still sewing that dress when they are bombing the hell out of us?!!!". My grandmothers reply was,"Well, I can keep sewing this dress or I can sit there worrying the hell out of myself and do nothing. I'd rather make a damn dress!!!". Like I said before, I have guts for garters, thanks to the women before me.

Albert Einstein said," There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."

I had a tough week this week. Not as tough as anything my Grandma's have EVER had to deal with. However, dealing with family matters that have gutted me, a cat that disappeared for 3 days, a budget blown and a genuine gesture of friendship that turned awkward...at the end of the day, it was no big deal.

Everyday is a new day and you can fix it. Trust me, I know first hand and have had the best of intentions blown up in my face more often than not. Put your big girl panties or big boy boxers on and get to work!! Stick to your guts and spread them out on the fence...only good things will come. This I know for sure.


We are your average Canadian family and we have a second chance at happiness in so many ways..............

Casa Cayendo is the new Beau Chateau .....

House naming started hundreds of years ago with rich people naming their houses.The rich named their Halls, Houses, Manors, Castles and Lodges according to ancestry, location and family titles. Gradually over the years, people extended the fad of naming to their houses too until street names and house numbers came into place in the 19th century. Still to this day, many homes are named, not so much in Canada but abroad, some because it adds a little pretentiousness to the old homestead, some believe it will hasten sales when trying to push,"The Old Rectory", and some simply to extend a age long tradition that, apparently, never gets old.

It seems only fitting that our home sweet home, too, have a great name since it tends to come up in conversation A LOT and is usually referred to in derogatory terms like," Why did we buy this piece of shit?! or "If I stub my toe one more time entering the kitchen, I am going to burn down this MF house!!". We started out with calling it the broken dream home a much gentler term when referring to our home...but after reading "The Secret", and getting lectured by many about manifestation (voodoo for wishful thinking), it seemed like we needed to come with a better name...one with a little prestige.

After a bottle of wine and some goofy GOOGLEing, we finally had it! From here on forward we shall christen our pile of sticks and mortar as Casa Cayendo! Anything in another language sounds good, often better than the real meaning intends and Casa Cayendo is no exception. I figure this way I can be truthful and manifest something positive by giving the homestead a leg up over the other non-named houses in the neighborhood to create a little house envy and perhaps spur our homestead to pull up its socks so to speak. 

It also helps in keeping the language clean in front of the kids. Brady told us this week that another kid in his class used the F-U-C-K word at school and being that he can barely spell C-A-T, I'm thinking that its probably already a little to late to wash my mouth out with soap. It was a nice attempt to shift blame on his part to another kid, but I'm fairly sure the real blame lies with his Mother of the Year. Casa Cayendo, by the way, translated to English essentially means,"House Falling Down", a perfect description for the place where we hang our hats as a family.

I have been thinking a lot about all the things that have been going right for us since we started the Austerity Measures budget back in September. We have managed to pay down $9000 in debt and put a buffer of savings into each of our accounts for a rainy day. Our family time has become centered around our gym membership and great outdoor recreation activities that can be essentially done for free. We haven't reached the point of becoming extreme couponers (those people are fucking nuts!), but we have managed to get smarter at using our Air Miles, coupon clipping when it makes sense, shopping the sales, selling stuff we don't use and discussing financial priorities as a couple.

Speaking of which, last night Andrew & I sat down and drew up a list of everything the house needs to become "Casa Cayendo Hasta" or "House Falling Up". We have an unbelievable long way to go. It was always our hope that we could fix the house to enjoy it as a family.....really, I couldn't care less about the home after the kids are grown and gone. Andrew & I haven't even discussed what our retirement years will look like, but I can't imagine that we will need this house or the yard work it possesses with just the two of us. We could always turn it into a Hedonistic Retirement Retreat Home down the road...I figure the Baby Boomers will lead the way for this niche market, for sure. Sell some sexy muu-muus and bring on the George Jones!!!

We each took the list of stuff that needs to be done and numbered the items in terms of what we thought should be done first...without letting each other see the rankings until the lists were completed. Its always good to see as a couple if you are on the same page and like always.......we weren't.

I'm sure it's the same with other couples as well (actually, I hope), but with Andrew & I, we can almost always count on being on opposite sides of the spectrum when it comes to just about anything. We are simply not meant to be together....but somehow we managed to spend the last 18 years enjoying each others awesomeness and annoyingness despite what every single astrological, chinese horoscope, fortune telling, family foreboding and voodoo witchcraft there is simply saying that WE SHOULD NOT BE TOGETHER.

I will share with you a quick glimpse into the warnings:

"Aries is ruled by the Planet Mars (Passion) and Aquarius is ruled by the Planets Saturn (Karma) and Uranus (Rebellion). " Translation in our relationship...this means that Aries (Andrew) has strong and barely controllable emotions, otherwise known as stubbornness to the extreme and Aquarius is destined to be violently resistant to authority, control or conventions. 

"The Rabbit can be oversensitive while the Rat is over controlling. Both have high expectations of each other and this may cause more problems. This match may not seem to bring out the best in both personalities, but once joined, it will be difficult to separate this pair. Rats and Rabbits will only frustrate each other."  Basically, in a nut shell, Andrew is stubborn and I am rebellious...we should be apart, but neither one will give in.

Andrew was born in the year of the Water Rat which makes him," charming and hardworking. Those born in the Year Of The Rat are very ambitious and can be ruthless when pursuing a goal. They can be aggressive and obsessive, but if they learn to be more tolerant of others they can accomplish great things in almost any field they enter."

I, however, am a Wood Rabbit which makes me,"lucky  and good at solving problems. Those born in the Year Of The Rabbit dislike fighting and aggression, preferring instead to find solutions through compromise and negotiation. They tend to avoid surprises and risky situations, which may lead to lost opportunities."

Can it be any more obvious that our relationship is a bit of a challenge when it comes to personalities? 

We know all this, and yet we still manage to keep it together. I asked Andrew what he thought was the glue holding the impossible, our own version of a homogenized dressing, the key piece of the puzzle that makes it all work despite all the odds against us for our marriage and he said it was my booty. Thank God its good for something cause it sure the hell can't fit into skinny jeans or even a regular pair of pants for craps sake! Man insights are so deep.....

So after reviewing our giant list of shit that needs to be repaired and going back and forth on what we should do first and basing it on our disposable income after our existing debt is paid off from the roof ($24,000), the flood ($8,000) and the furnace we are about to pay for ($10,000). This is what we came up with and keep in mind that in order to have the disposable income to pay for it all, we will need to stick to the Austerity Measures Budget for the next 11 years and 5 months instead of the 28 months we originally planned for. Insert bad swear words here...

Casa Cayendo Fix Up

1) Kitchen $25,000= 2 years & 1 month 
2) Bathrooms $15,000= 1 year & 3 months 
3) Windows & Doors $25,000=2 years & 1 month  
4) Decks $10,000=10 months
5) Flooring & Railing $10,000=10 months
6) Fireplace $10,000=10 months 
7) Landscaping $5000=5 months 
8) New Furniture $5000=5 months 

Casa Cayendo Total Repairs= $100,000 = 8 years of Austerity Measures

Goals:

1) Family Trip to Mexico $8000=8 months
2) Family Trip to Paris, France $10,000=10 months 
4) Strippers or Holiday to Newfoundland for Andrew's 50th Birthday=$2000=2 months (I suggested Newfie strippers and he said no.)
5) Kayak For Miranda's 45th x 2=$2000

Goals = $41,000 = 3 years + 5 months of Austerity Measures 

Current Debt Goal:

Paid off by Jan 2015
1) Jan 2015 Kitchen $25,000 Paid off by Feb 2017
2) Family Trip to Mexico $8000 Paid off by Oct 2017
3) New Furniture $5000 Paid off by March 2018
4) Bathrooms $15,000 Paid off by June 2019
5) Paris $10,000 Paid off by April 2020
6) Decks $10,000 Paid off by February 2021
7) Kayak for Miranda Paid off by $2000 April 2021
8) Windows & Doors Paid off by $25,000 May 2023
9) Trip to Newfoundland Paid off by $2000 July 2023
10) Floors/Railings Paid off by $10,000 May 2024
11) Fireplace $10,000 Paid off by March 2025
12) Landscaping $5000 Paid off by August 2025

In 2025, I will be 50, Andrew is 53, Savy is 25, Lucy is 22, Brady is 19. By the time we get the house fixed and paid off Andrew and I will be halfway to becoming centenarians, and the kids may have long ago moved out! Not only that but we will have potentially three university/college educations to pay for and while we may be putting some money monthly towards RRSP's, it will hardly cover 4 years of education for three kids. 

After pondering this doom and gloom of dreams not quite realized the way I would like them, since my hope was always that we would raise our family in a renovated broken dream home, I decided that getting 'there' is an illusion. Life is what you make it, right here, right now. Everything I need to create the life of my dreams is within me.

Everything, including the strippers, well maybe not the strippers, is important in its own way but it is not critical to my families state of well-being. I doubt very much that my kids will care so much that we had new flooring in the kitchen and fancy plants in the yard (that I may or may not be able to keep alive). I'm very sure that Andrew will be able to turn 50 without strippers....when he has my 50 year old booty to thrill him. (Some things get better with age, right?)

To make me feel a little better because whether we can rationalize dreams away or not, they still to each of us, are at the end of the day important, I thought I would instead focus on budgeting for the things in my life that are a priority beyond Casa Cayendo. These are things that I can manage as priorities with no financial burden at all.....

1) Family: To have time with my immediate family, and to stay connected with loved ones across the country. 

2) Health: To be physically, mentally and spiritually fit.

3) Location: To be able to live where I want to live and raise my family in a community that feels safe, has opportunities for my children and is connected to easily accessible nature and recreation. 

4) Security: To have a steady income that fully meets my family's basic needs and to be in a loving relationship that provides a stable home and example for my children.

5) Friendship: To have connection to my spouse, the people I love in my inner circle, the people I work with, my community and people I respect, and to be respected by them through my offer of friendship and love.

6) Independence: To have freedom of thought and action. To be able to act in terms of my own time, schedules and priorities. To be able to seek out the things, activities and opportunities that jazz me. 

7) Personal Accomplishment: To achieve significant goals. To be involved in undertakings I believe personally are significant - whether or not they bring me recognition from others.

8) Personal Development: To learn and to do challenging work that will help me grow, that will allow me to utilize my best talents and mature as a human being.

9) Enjoyment: To enjoy my life, and my work. To find ways to have fun doing just about anything everyday.To laugh a lot....cause there isn't a better way to handle things when shit goes wrong and life just doesn't turn out the way you expected. As Robert Fulghum puts it,"“I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge - myth is more potent than history - dreams are more powerful than facts - hope always triumphs over experience - laughter is the cure for grief - love is stronger than death”

10) Live in the Present Moment: To focus on the tasks I take as we work towards our goals as a family, and be mindful of each moment. Learn to absorb everything from my time with the kids, to my interactions at work, to meeting our financial goals to the trips and adventures as a family we take because each moment in time will eventually be gone forever and we won't even remember or give a crap that we had a great new couch in 2018.

We are your Average Canadian Family and we have everything a family could wish for.......even if we never see eye to eye. 

Ready to Run.....10 Great Ways to Not Keep Up With The Joneses

I've just about had enough of the Austerity Measures.....all this counting and watching our pennies is starting to piss me off. I'm about to go on a week long friggin' bender. Unlike the ones I used to enjoy in my twenties, this one will be a lot less like Trainspotting and more like Real Housewives of Vancouver. I just want to blow the budget on guilty pleasures like an un-self-inflicted spa day, an evening out for dinner without once looking at the prices, a spending spree on a few bottles of wine and maybe an extra bottle of Appleton's, then I will be off to blow the wad on a month long pass for hot yoga followed by the ultimate mind blowing purchase of the kayak I have been coveting since we moved here five years ago. Far cry from a heroin soaked junkie fest, but there you have it! Midlife crisis.....here I am!!!

I've been spending my free time lately fantasizing about living differently. Maybe its because we didn't win the Home Sweeter Home Contest and my dreams for fixing the broken dream home in this lifetime seem further away. Or perhaps its because the last seven months of living on the Austerity Measures budget have resulted in $7000 worth of debt repayment wiggle room which now needs to cover the $10,000 for the new furnace which leaves us $3000 over in debt from where we started.

Yes, I am happy that our good financial practices resulted in my not having to resort to prostitution to pay for the furnace....really had we not paid down some of the debt...we would have had to max out our line of credit and maybe more. Kudos to us! Yippee-kay-yay....but now we are back to square one again....10 more months left to daydream about when the day comes that our shackle of debt will let us free.

Well...free to incur more debt. Shit, who am I kidding?! We still have the kitchen to fix, the windows & doors to replace, the bathroom to gut and three kids to put through school. Plus, we want to go on a vacation before we're dead. Lofty dreams I know, especially for two slackers like us working full-time jobs and living large.

One of my super skills has always been the ability to get myself out of tight situations creatively, so rather than feel desperate and depressed, I decided to put it to good use. Since this keeping up with Joneses is starting to get on my last nerve and it could be getting on yours, I thought I would share with you some great ways to live off the grid, so to speak, and do things a little differently. I am seriously entertaining some of these as possibilities, some just because its a damn good distraction and others because I feel a shift coming otherwise knows as Midlife crisis.

Top 10 Ways to Live off the Grid or Mooch off Someone Else for a change...

1) Become a yoga instructor....hell, fake it till you make it...there is lots of Yoga crap you can watch on the internet to certify yourself. I have struggled to watch the guy on Eastlink TV to get my Yoga on and some days I swear I have to be high in order to appreciate it, he certainly is, so I think any of us could do it. Then find a great location to get your Buddha on. I think it would be good for me to calm the heck down.
http://www.yogatraveljobs.com/

2) It's time to put all my kids to good use. A few hours of honest help per day in exchange for food and accommodation and an opportunity to learn about the local lifestyle and community, with friendly hosts in varying situations and surroundings.Workaway.info helps families, individuals or organizations in an extensive range of different countries connect with those who are looking for volunteer help in a huge range of different fields. From painting to planting, building to babysitting and shopping to shearing, we could learn something new and potentially spend more time together as a family in a foreign country. That is until we end up in some sweat shop in New Delhi or even worse as Slumdog Millionaires. Hell, its worth a shot!  http://www.workaway.info/

3) WWOOF is a world wide network of organisations.They link volunteers with organic farmers, and help people share more sustainable ways of living. WWOOF is an exchange - In return for volunteer help, WWOOF hosts offer food, accommodation and opportunities to learn about organic lifestyles. I can't even keep my house plants alive...I would probably be the worst organic farmer ever. http://www.wwoof.org/

4) HelpX is provided primarily as a cultural exchange for working holiday makers who would like the opportunity during their travels abroad, to stay with local people and gain practical experience. In the typical arrangement, the helper works an average of 4 hours per day and receives free accommodation and meals for their efforts. I currently work 9 hours a day...in my previous life as a Chef, 12 hours was the norm, so 4 hours seems like a pretty great deal so long as I get to spend the rest of my day with my kids. http://www.helpx.net/

5) Housesitters.com is a website that has me drooling. Get this....you watch other people's houses in places all over the world, do a few odd jobs and get free accommodation and sometimes more. It is a damn sweet deal and in some cases, is very family friendly. I found a house sitting job that was in Tuscany, home owners are trying to restore the villa to its previous glory and with 22 rooms, has plenty of space to spare in exchange for some help and inspiration in the villa project. http://www.housecarers.com/advanced-search-results-housesit.cfm

6) If the regular house sitting isn't for you....how about Luxury house sitting? Why settle for less when you can shack up in some rich guys fifth or sixth property which sits empty a good portion of the year. Its a tough life when looters, squatters or vandals frig up your exotic villa that you only visit a couple of times a year. This a great way to help those poor rich folks out. http://www.luxuryhousesitting.com/

7) Here is a story for the record books. In my frenzy of f*ck it and chuck it for the Austerity Measures, I started browsing Kijiji for RV's with the vision of cashing everything in and becoming the New Canadian Gypsies, soon to be a television show for CBC. I found the perfect trailer home on kijiji, right in Fall River, that a sweet couple were selling. Thinking I was posting a message to my husband, I sent something like this.," F...paying taxes, and insurance and our mortgage. Screw the whole thing! Lets buy this RV and hit the road...we can sell hot dogs when we need a little play money!!" Unfortunately in my excitement, I sent the message to the couple who was selling the trailer. Imagine my sharp intake of breath, pinhole corneas, and burst blood vessels when I realized seconds later that I had sent the message to the sweet couple and not my husband. A quick retraction followed with a heavy apology for my skanky language and luckily I had stumbled upon a couple with good sense of humour who got a good laugh out of my message. Found out later that we wouldn't even need to sell hot dogs, but could instead get work as work campers. http://www.workamper.com/

8) We are one of the few families that I know of that truly enjoy unexpected house guests. Every summer our broken dream home becomes a cottage filled with house guests that begin arriving July the 1st and turns our home into a B & B until the Labour Day long weekend. Frankly, we should enjoy our home as a cottage year round, since we tend to feel less badly about the shit that isn't working around here when it is a cottage instead of a home. Two months of who gives a crap goes a long way the other ten months of the year. This one is less of an option for us as a family since most can easily accommodate one unexpected house guest..how about five? On a couch?  https://www.couchsurfing.org/

9) Nomadic Living on a Boat seems like a crazy good and horribly bad idea. Check out this article about couples living downtown Toronto for only $550 a month. Don't ask me why they would choose to dock themselves in Toronto given that they have a boat and could go somewhere warm, less smelly, a little more friendly and substantially more interesting. It's a thought...I checked out some places in Amsterdam that seemed pretty cool as well. Who wouldn't want to live in the Venice of the North?! http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/01/19/waterfront-living-eccentric-live-aboards-choose-to-live-on-their-boats-year-round/

10) Forget Mom & Dad retiring and moving in with me.....I am gonna retire right now and move in with them. This will give them an opportunity to reconnect with me on a daily basis as a mature adult and not as a difficult teenager. Since I left home at sixteen, I figure I still have 2-3 years owing me. Hell, my brother hung around for ages...I could easily negotiate 4-5. My parents and Andrew's parents have a few extra homes as well, so they wouldn't even have to spend the whole time with us. We could easily travel from vacation home to vacation home and not see them at all. Frankly, we could get a part-time gig as their home sitters if we could convince them it was a damn good idea. Somehow, I think that is highly unlikely.

I'm doing my best to keep a positive attitude about our debt, how we are approaching everything as a family and staying focused on being responsible but sometimes I have moments like anyone where I just feel like saying to hell with it. A little fantasy now and then doesn't hurt....maybe I should spend less time doing it and investing more time in learning how to make moonshine.

We are your average Canadian family and we may become Real Canadian Gypsies if shit keeps breaking at our house......

No Pot To Piss In...

History is ripe with stories of families that didn't approve of prospective betrothals. My grandparents on my mothers side have a pretty great track record of hating everyone that was introduced to the family and even chased a few of them off, some permanently.....like back to their homeland....in Italy, never to be seen or heard from again. 

I knew when it was my time to announce my engagement to my now husband, that more than likely, it wouldn't be all hearts and flowers. I prepared him for the worst, but folks who haven't grown up in a family like ours, you know the kind of family that introduced the concept,"Tough Love" and never got credit for it, have a hard time believing that some grandma's would rather kick you in the gut with words in the name of love than make you cookies sometimes.

We both went to visit my grandparents K. to deliver the good news...my soon to be husband was all giddy with excitement, poor lamb, and me, I'd sooner chew glass but I knew if word got back to them about the pending nuptuals from some other family member before I got to them....I would be ordering my own death sentence.

I did my best to ease Grandma K. in...she was never big on weddings, hard to believe she had one of her own, since in her view they were a waste of money and pointless too when the world has been heading to hell in a hand basket since.....well, since time began...but its getting even worse....every damn day. With Andrew sitting next to me, eagerly holding my hand to assure me that I was worried for no reason, I filled her in, letting her know that he had asked and I had accepted.

Her first words were, "Why would you marry him? He doesn't have a pot to piss in!!". Frankly, I was relieved....this was going well, Andrew was somewhat aghast. At least my grandparents were open to the possibility of my marrying someone....hell, they even wanted me to marry someone with a few bucks in the bank. 

She was right, he didn't have a pot to piss in, but he loved me and really, when you are young and in love, you very rarely think about retirement funds and stock options. They used to use urine to tan animal skins, so families used to all pee in a pot & then once a day it was taken & sold to the tannery.....if you had to do this to survive you were "Piss Poor". But worse than that there were the really poor folk who couldn't even afford to buy a pot.....they "didn't have a pot to piss in" & were the lowest of the low. 

Which brings me to some neat information that I came across while surfing the facebook status' of my friends. We recently entered our home in the Home Sweeter Home contest from Ramar and having read many of the stories from other participants, its hard not to be grateful that the only thing we are struggling with is our broken dream home and not sick kids, injuries that affect our ability to work or life threatening illnesses. 

How bad it is, is really a matter of perspective and sometimes its good to find ways to remind yourself of that, when quotes start rolling in for your furnace to the tune of $10,000 and you have just lived 7 months on Austerity Measures to squeeze out $7000 worth of breathing room on your line of credit. Yippee, along comes another 10 months of creative meals with tinned beans, self inflicted spa days, free movies that skip from the library and cheap rough toilet paper to add on to our 2.5 years of budget living!! So to prevent my early retirement of jumping of a bridge, I thought I would remind myself of why it isn't THAT BAD. 

Here are some interesting facts about what it was like to live in the 1500s:-

"Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May, and they still smelled pretty good by June. However, since they were starting to smell . ..... . brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odour. Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting Married.

Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the children. Last of all the babies. By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it.. Hence the saying, "Don't throw the baby out with the Bath water!"

Houses had thatched roofs-thick straw-piled high, with no wood underneath. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the cats and other small animals (mice, bugs) lived in the roof. When it rained it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof... Hence the saying "It's raining cats and dogs."

There was nothing to stop things from falling into the house. This posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings could mess up your nice clean bed. Hence, a bed with big posts and a sheet hung over the top afforded some protection. That's how canopy beds came into existence.

The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt. Hence the saying, "Dirt poor."

The wealthy had slate floors that would get slippery in the winter when wet, so they spread thresh (straw) on floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on, they added more thresh until, when you opened the door, it would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed in the entrance-way. Hence: a thresh hold.

In those old days, they cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that always hung over the fire... Every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot. They ate mostly vegetables and did not get much meat. They would eat the stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes stew had food in it that had been there for quite a while. Hence the rhyme: Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old.

Sometimes they could obtain pork, which made them feel quite special. When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show off. It was a sign of wealth that a man could, "bring home the bacon." They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and "chew the fat".

Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with high acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing lead poisoning death. This happened most often with tomatoes, so for the next 400 years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous.

Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, or the upper crust."

These could be old wives tales but its hard to believe that they don't have some ring of truth to them. I recently went home to Ontario for my Grandmother P's (on my fathers side) funeral and visiting her home, the same home that my Grandparents P. moved into in their 20's and where she lived until her 90's brings into sharp focus a whole lot of whining on my part to the point that I should feel deeply embarrassed for complaining at all. 

My Grandmother P.'s first and only home is less than 800 square feet, part of a community of "war-time" homes that were made by the government for veterans that were returning from war. They were meant to be torn down and viewed as temporary housing. In my fathers family home, Grandma P. raised four children and provided a home for her unmarried brother, a cat and a dog named Rags. 

At Christmas time and for many family gatherings, we could pack in as many as 25 people and counting. In order to accommodate all of us, the kitchen table was dragged into the living room and spanned from wall to wall, using every fixture imaginable that could be use as some form of seat to get us all round the dinner table. I remember crawling underneath the table as a child just to get to the only bathroom since with that many relatives packed in and furniture filling up every space, there was really no other way, short of peeing in Grandma's gardenias in the back garden.

My father, the third boy of the bunch, never had his own bed or even his own bedroom until after he married and then moved out with my mother at the age of 19. Imagine what my Grandmother K. thought of what he had to offer my mother....let's just say that she wasn't too thrilled with my Dad from the beginning. My Dad actually still gets a kick out of story he shared with me many times about how they once got into an argument and Grandma K. told him that she hated him before she ever met him. 

My Grandparents only home resides in a place called Eagle Place in Ontario. If you want to know what kind of neighborhood my family grew up and still resides in...read some of these lovely articles below like....

Officers prowl around and find grow-op http://www.brantfordexpositor.ca/2007/10/13/officers-prowl-brantford-at-night-scouring-fields-outside-city-yields-outdoor-grow-op or

Eagle Place Residents stand up for themselves against crime http://www.brantfordexpositor.ca/2009/11/26/eagle-place-residents-stand-up-for-themselves  or

Shots Fired in Eagle Place http://www.brantfordexpositor.ca/2008/09/03/shots-fired-in-eagle-place.

My Grandfather has had to replace the front fence twice from drunk guys driving through it into his front lawn. Once is unusual.....twice, well you would think that my family would want to move at some point.

Raising my kids in Waverley, Nova Scotia the local crime report consists of kids breaking into cars that are left open......and then going joy riding because car owners in our neck of the woods also like to leave their keys in their open cars. More than 3/4's of our neighborhood still leaves their front doors unlocked. I'm even guilty of leaving my keys in my front door....till the following morning, more than once.

My Dad is paranoid about locking stuff...he freaks out when we leave the kids bikes in the driveway to go into the house for a drink of water. I know why too....growing up in Eagle Place, kids in their neighborhood couldn't even afford to buy a Pepsi. Anything that they wanted and couldn't afford was stolen. My Dad's surrogate family down the street was the Gambles. They had the biggest wartime house, the only one with a coveted second floor. Not that they had much more room at their house since they also had ten children. 

After the funeral, we took a little tour around the hood and Dad shared with me stories of how much stuff is buried on the bottom of the Grand River...mostly cases of Pepsi. With the Pepsi factory being uptown on the river, Dad and the Gamble boys used to steal a boat and sneak their way up to the factory to steal cases of Pepsi that were being loaded on trucks for delivery. Using the river for a quick getaway, they would row back to Eagle Place and stash the goods...many times they had to dump the cases overboard as the cops chased them down river. 

Mrs. Gamble always covered for them, telling the cops the kids had been in the backyard all afternoon. Since she couldn't afford to buy the Pepsi for her family, she supported her children's resourcefulness. 

Somehow in my moaning I've forgotten where my family came from. I may not have grown up like my father...but his life is just a stone's throw from my own. Our home is three times the size of my Grandmother P's home and we have significantly more stuff in it. Every child has their own bedroom. We have a dining room table that seats eight and it's in a dining room. No one has driven onto our lawn in a drunken stupor yet. My kids have no idea what it is like to have to steal and they certainly couldn't even imagine what it would be like for us not to afford a Pepsi. We may be on a tight budget, but we still have money in the Peanut Butter jar, if we need it. 

It's good to be reminded of the things that really matter. Many friends and family have asked me if we think we could win the Ramar contest and more than likely, we won't. There are so many families out there struggling more than us. Somehow the universe likes to give me a kick in the butt as a reminder of that, which most days I appreciate. Some family is going to get a break through the Ramar contest and more than likely, it will be the one that really needs it. That's a wonderful thing even if it isn't our family.  

We are your average Canadian family and we have more than what we need including a pot that we could piss in, if we really wanted to....

Sanity has just left the building....

These are words that no one wants to hear when one is sticking to a budget and digging out change from the peanut butter jar to spring for milk at the end a long month......"Mom! Somethings leaking from the furnace....".

The first word out of my mouth started with mother and ended with something that sounds like trucker. We never get a friggin' break when it comes to this house!! It's been endless home owner pain from buying a fixer upper from a previous owner that jury rigged everything from the counters to the electrical to the roofing to the plumbing. Its been a nightmare from the word go.

In our first month that we lived here, the dishwasher and the central vac broke...complete replacement. The cost of  replacing the carpeting that we negotiated into the deal went over budget when it was discovered that there were three layers of carpeting, with the last layer glued to the concrete foundation to keep it in place, I guess. We also discovered that the oil tank needed replacing after our first delivery of oil....there is an expiry on these things and ours was spoiled.

Too bad the home inspector missed this stuff, along with the glass windowed death trap of a door that we have between our garage and our home (think Carbon Monoxide poisoning that could kill us all), and the improper sheathing on our roof (anyone standing on our roof would have noticed), and the electrical additions made by someone clearly not qualified. Our panel is messed up and we frequently have plugs blow out on us. The wiring to our closet is backwards and we can only get the outside house lights to go on, if the closet light in our master bedroom is on too.

He also missed two leaking showers, one so filled with black mold that once the plastic fix up job was removed, its a wonder we haven't all come down with pleurisy since. Both of the showers leak since the previous owner forgot to solder the pipes when he installed one into a corner of the washroom and the other when he converted a bathroom closet into a shower. We have been able to fix one, but the other just remains shut off until we can afford to fix it. Having one shower for a family of five, with tween girls sucks. Not to mention that none of our 2.5 bathrooms had any electrical outlets in them, so for the first two years, we had to blow dry hair in the dining room.

We had stolen cable, and phone lines that were split throughout the house to make way for cable and phone lines in every room....including one phone jack right next to the toilet.....just in case you need to make a call while taking a crap and a cable line into my lazy susan, just in case the macaroni doesn't want to miss an episode of Ellen.

Last fall, our home forever changed my career path from one of business owner to employee. It also brought my marriage as close to a breaking point that I think any marriage can bear. Luckily we survived to see another year but I don't think we are alone in having a house drive a wedge between a couple.

We put off dealing with the roof for as long as we could. That is until our insurance company insisted that it be replaced by the end of 2011 or we could forgo our insurance coverage. We did all the right things, got quotes from recommended roofers and eavestroughers, made the big decision with what company to go with and set the date. What we didn't know is that a perfect storm of hell was awaiting us and there wasn't a damn thing we could do about it.

Since the previous roofing had been done by the previous homeowner, who from here on in I will refer to as Jackass, we never had troughing that actually worked. When it rained, all of the water flowed somewhat evenly around the house, never actually entering the roofing system or being directed into the underground leaders.

When the new roofing was completed, just in time for a record breaking amount of rainfall the East Coast has ever seen, the eavestroughing worked for the first time, redirecting all of the copious amounts of water into the existing underground leaders that were never checked by the company to see if they were overgrown with tree roots, or plugged with leaves or damaged in any way. What this resulted in, was a naturally occurring Niagara Falls pointed directly at our basement, which in turn flooded and damaged our main living areas, our daughters bedrooms, my office (business requirement) and the only bathroom with working shower we have.

Keep in mind that this whole train wreck of events was instigated by our insurance company...certainly they would have our back. The first words out of the representatives mouth as I panic stricken relayed our rising floodwater situation to her were, "Maam....you best get your belongings out of the basement as quickly as possible since this here policy only covers up to $10,000 of damage and the tear out alone is often between 5,000 and 7,000, not including any replacement of belongings or rebuild."

Think mother....think trucker. The following day, the roofing company relayed its bad news too. In a little field trip up to my roof, I was shown that if I did a little tap dance across the main part of my roof, I could take a little trip down through into my attic. The previous sheathing has been put up by Jackass, all of the plywood was different, some of it with major gaps in between, some with little pieces fit together like something you would see on Tetris.

I was informed that the plywood would cost us an additional $7000 on top of a roofing job already priced at $18,000. I contacted Home Depot and asked them what the required amount of plywood would cost me....$500. After some lengthy discussions with my roofer and some threats that he would walk off the job, he squeezed $1000 off the bill. Apparently, he felt bad about the flooding situation and decided to do us a favour. Never mind that we were between a rock and a hard place, with another big rainstorm on the way and no friggin' roof on the house AT ALL!!

Day three of the triumvirate week from Hell finished off with our family van and my business vehicle dying...cracked block, all gaskets gone, not worth replacing. We did not know it at the time, but we were about to be $35,000 in debt, adding $300 a month in car payments, and living in our upstairs surrounded by all of our furniture piled on top of one another crammed into two bedrooms for the next 2.5 months and me with no job since I needed the house and the van to run my catering business.

A big part of the reason why the Austerity Measures budget began in our house was to begin dealing with our debt. The budget we set was to aggressively pay it all off in 2.5 years since we knew that there would be other things....like the kitchen with the state of the art cardboard cabinetry that has a plastic finish that continues to chip off and cut us when reaching for the breakfast cereal.

It's not just that either.......the whole kitchen needs to be gutted, the floor slopes a good two feet at one side and we have 2 x 4 's to level the fridge. There is a section of linoleum cut out in one corner that has never been replaced and acts a sucking vortex of all manner of dust bunnies and disgusting food remnants that get caught up in it. We have two plugs that have been replaced by an electrician twice that keep blowing on us...think Jackass.

We have painted 1970's tile as decor and the lighting consists of a white rattan ceiling fan....which I recommend if you want to collect and then spray dust over top of your food as garnish whenever you turn it on. We clean it, but a ceiling fan is a really stupid lighting choice for a kitchen. I'm lucky I don't cut off my own fingers with the amount of light it puts off since it is also positioned as far away from the counter as possible. Or maybe it could be that the counters aren't level at all...its hard to tell.

We also have our "spa bathroom", the one with the closet shower that doesn't work. Did I mention that it also includes a truck sized jacuzzi tub that was installed by Jackass and juts out into the hallway and the guest room. There isn't a week that goes by that I don't bruise my shins wandering into the bathroom in the am when I am not quite awake.

We have two different hardwoods in our living room/dining room space....it wouldn't be so bad if Jackass had laid them in the same friggin' direction....but no, he must have been drinking that day because the maple one ends right in the foyer for everyone to see and then heads off in a different direction in oak. To top it all of we have cherry laminate that connects to it in two of our bedrooms and prison coloured grey tile in the third bedroom. Good thing Jackass installed the tile too, with 2 inch grout lines that give it that "homey" feel.

We have two decks, one you can stand on for now and one that you can't unless you are feeling a little dangerous. Both were installed with no footers, are not actually attached to the house and have three 2 x 4 's nailed together as supports. On top of it, they were painted and despite our attempts to keep it looking freshly painted and nice, it requires bucket loads of paint every summer to keep up with it. Who paints decks?!!! Jackass, that's who.

We need all new windows and doors, especially doors. Our patio door is so hard to open that you could get a hernia while trying to bbq some hamburgers on our deck. We are also missing the patio door screen and even though we could get a breeze in the summer to cool down the house, we can't open the door without getting a houseful of bugs to go with it. Our daughters bedroom windows are so warped, they barely close properly and if we still lived in Toronto, it would be a safety issue for sure.

Which brings me back to the furnace. The repairman just left....I would cry but it would just cost me kleenex and since I now work in a grocery store, I know it doesn't go on sale until next week. I've mentioned in my blogs before that my husband is a bit of a heat Nazi....he hates spending money on it, friends bring sweaters and slippers....I never take offense since he turns the furnace off from April to September. I have more magic bags in my bed than some people have lovers. I am sitting here with a work order that states," Customer should consider replacing system with cast iron cold start boiler and indirect tank since existing system is 20 years old and damaged by water leaks most likely caused from turning boiler off in summer months."

Guess who's feeling like a Jackass now?

We've just spent the last five months on a $500 grocery budget so that we could pay $5000 off of our debt load and now we are going to be faced with a new debt load of around, let's say, $5000. Our 2% raises that we received last year have now been eliminated by an increase in both CPP and EI. Since January 1st, our power rate, water rate, mortgage rate and weekly gas costs have increased. Don't forget interest rate increases on the lines of credit we have our debt sitting on. This leaves our miscellaneous budget for gifts, field trips, postage, a bottle of wine, a cup of coffee, a noose....basically anything that isn't an absolute necessity at nothing. While these things are not essentials, they are the expenses that make you feel as though you are not just working to live, if you know what I mean.

I've had enough. Enough of the stupid budget, the tracking of every single expense and the staring at the spreadsheet on my computer screen waiting for the debt to disappear. Enough of trying to squeeze another week out of a bag of carrots. I'm tired of wearing long johns while watching tv at night and worrying about the extra lights the kids left on in the family room. I'm weary of waiting another ten years to get to a kitchen and bathroom renovation that we desperately need now. Most of all, I am tired of us working so hard, trading time with our kids so we can spend  money on things that bring us little joy like furnaces, electrical plugs and eavetroughs.

Something has got to give....I really don't want it to be us. We have given enough to this house of hell, that should be our home of happiness. If there was ever a fairy god mother, we certainly could use her help now.

This is why I am submitting this entire blog post to the Ramar, home sweeter home contest. They want to know how a $100,000 renovation would change our families life. http://homesweeterhome.ca/

Winning a renovation of that magnitude would erase the next eight to fifteen years of stress and struggle trying to juggle the costs of fixing our broken dream home and caring for our family. It would mean that we could enjoy our home now instead of later when our children are already gone to University or leading their own lives somewhere else. It would mean that we could spend our money on things that really matter, like our kids education, that honeymoon we never got around to or a trip to Dairy Queen for an impromptu ice cream.

We honestly thought that we could manage better financially when we purchased our house but like many other families in the same struggle, we had too many problems that were unexpected and too many things went all at once leaving us with little chance to catch up. I think back to what we envisioned our family life would look like in the excitement of buying our "broken" but fixable dream home. None of it has gone according to plan and many of those dreams have instead become nightmarish experiences and painful memories with what seems like no ray of hope that things will get better any time soon.

We still believe in our broken dream home, that she has the potential to become a great home. We certainly have given her a lot of love already, but we are running out of options financially when it comes to giving her the TLC she needs. Living in Nova Scotia where the incomes are lower and the taxes are higher sure isn't making it any easier. Somehow we will find a way....maybe this contest could be a little miracle for us, since I've not a clue what else to do.

We are your average Canadian family and home ownership is making us crazy!!!

Crowbars Are A Girls Best Friend.....

There is something about January that drives people round the bend....seriously, think about it. Maybe its the pressure of overly ambitious New Years Resolutions, the guaranteed horrible Canadian Winter setting in, the constant darkness, the twinkle lights coming down or the big December hangover when the credit card bills roll in that make us crazy but it all adds up.

For most people....January is a month that starts on a high and ends with a crash and burn. We are on week three now, and for most people that means that you've already blown the diet, the exercise regime, the abstaining from smoking, drinking and other bad habits. Don't worry you are not alone.....

We did our best to stick to a budget in December and achieved a far better end result than any Decembers in our history together, but running over the bills at the end of it all, we still blew the grocery budget and the miscellaneous budget mostly due to eating and drinking indulgences for ourselves and a few friendly visits from loved ones.

Renewing our vows to stick to the Austerity Measures budget, we toasted in the New Year with a cheap bottle of Nasty Asti to celebrate our commitment to pay down the debt in 2013. It was a great feeling to know that out of the four months since we started sticking to one we met the budget for three of those.....

Flash forward to two weeks later and as I am sitting at my desk inputting the latest expenditures into our spreadsheet, I feel a sudden case of the Frowny Downy's coming on. Staring at the computer screen, I feel a sense of frustration at the numbers, as if I could just will away the money we have left owing on our roofing job and flood disaster.

With a click of the mouse I could make it all disappear and believe me, I want it to. For example, we have 28 months left of living off of a budget that only allows for $500 in groceries for a family of 5 per month, and $200 for extras like Tim Horton's, trips to the Spa to remove my mustache, fun family outings with our kids and other money things that suck that we need to pay that we haven't budgeted for.

It's like starting a diet and all of a sudden all you can think about is chocolate cake. It is exactly what happened to me last weekend, when I woke up and went off the deep end. We have what I refer to as my broken dream home....it is an amazing house that we bought as an investment of love that keeps us way busier than ever anticipated. If you have never seen the Money Pit with Shelley Long and Tom Hanks, and you have a broken dream home of your own, you need to watch it. It will keep you from jumping out the basement window on the days when you just can't take it anymore.

I woke up and wandered into the same horrible looking bathroom that I have wandered into for the last four years and maybe it was the January miseries that pushed me over the edge, but I just couldn't take one more day of the ugly puke beige colour and the 1980's sailboat border.

Nor could I stare at the mirror that the previous owner put on the wall probably found at the local dump, with the trim that he used and nailed directly to the wall around it in a lame attempt to pretend like it was an actual framed mirror.

No more could I tolerate the rusted knobs on the home crafters DIY bathroom cabinetry that require me to get a tetnus shot  in order to retrieve my lip gloss. Added to my moment of inner furor is the realization that we have zero budget for any repairs for the next three years!!!! That means 36 more months of sailboat salutations that make me want to scream!!!

Like an out of body experience, out to the garage I went in a frenzy to find anything and everything I could use to do something before 2016. Dragging paint cans left over from previous reno's off the shelf, I determined I might have enough paint to do the job including the trim. Found extra paint rollers, clean brushes, wall paper remover, and window trim since the 1970's trim full of screw holes was NOT going back up. Grabbed my crowbar and hammer, screwdrivers and paint cans and stormed back into the house to confront my ugly bathroom with an attitude of Momma's gonna knock you out!

The first thing on my agenda was the ceramic wall mounted toilet paper holder and towel bar, long since painted over several times and the wooden bar in our towel holder replaced years ago by a stick probably found in our back woods, again by Mr. Cheap, the previous owner of our home and the reason why our home is in such a sorry state. Whoever came up with these ceramic wall mounted wonders, most likely a man, should be kicked in the nuts. (I can just picture the guy too, putting them in, saying..."Look honey, we will never need to replace the toilet paper holder and towel bar ever again. Its in there good and tight.")

As I smack away at the crowbar with my trusty hammer, in the background I hear my kids yelling at my husband as they run towards the bathroom in excitement, " Hurry Dad!!! Mom's smashing stuff......". Yes, indeed, Mom's smashing stuff, which means Dad definitely doesn't want to know what's going on....too many years with me and he knows its best to leave me in my madness.

My youngest two spot the tools and want to get in on the action. "Can we smash something Mom?" Boy, this could get really nuts with the three of us on board so I relegate them to using the screw drivers to remove the doors off the crappy cabinet and to pull out all the extra nails we seem to have in the walls for no apparent reason. Tens minutes into demolition, Lucy lets me know that this is the best day ever! I agree it is as we remove the last sailboat and take out the plastic vertical blinds caked with dust and yellowed with age...it is indeed a better day.

 I get Lucy to work on painting the cabinets a fresh white trim colour....this being the easiest reno job ever since there was no agonizing over whether we should use maple syrup from Benjamin Moore paint or maple spice....we chose colours based on how much was left in the cans in our garage. I get her to paint the trim too and somehow she manages to get more on herself than the trim but she does it with a smile so who really cares?

In a day we manage to get the new chocolate sundae paint on the walls, redo the cabinet in white, paint a bookcase that was hanging around to use as storage for our toiletries and cut the trim for the window. The following day, I head out to Home Depot to pick up new knobs for the cabinet, a mirror found in the 70% off pile that needed a little touch up, patches for holes left by my demolition and some new holders of paper products. Total cost of renovation....$100, out of our miscellaneous budget for the month. Cost of returning my mindset to sane again.....priceless.

It can seem at moments that living on a tight budget is tough. There is no doubt that it has forced us to be a lot more creative with money than we have ever been. Waking up into a new bathroom the following morning....I realized that being on a tight budget is not as bad as it seems with the right attitude. Its okay to fall off the wagon every once in a while too, so long as we apply the 80/20 rule that says we get it right more often than we get it wrong.

I am currently reading, "Mindfullness and Money: The Buddhist Path to Abundance", in which the author describes five precepts to the path of abundance. The third precept deals with Cultivating Contentment which teaches us how to deal with our passions, our desire for stimulation, intensity and excitement. You may think I am talking about 40 shades instead of my impromptu bathroom renovation but it is much of the same thing and it manifests in our lives daily.

"Our desires go to the very heart of who we are. They shape and define us. What we take, what we push out, under the sway of craving and aversion make us who we are now. There are two kinds of desire: skillful and unskillful; reactive or creative."

The book goes on to describe how we can train ourselves to check in with our desires to convert our unskillful, reactive desires in order to make space for more skillful, creative desires to flourish.

"The root of all reactive desires is the deep, but often barely conscious sense we have that somewhere, somehow, we are currently incomplete. There is a hole deep in the center of each one of us, that we try to fill with sensory experience. Whether it is a chocolate bar, a cigarette, a new car, more money, the perfect vacation or a complete bathroom renovation, there's always something out there that we think will make us complete."

Certainly I woke up with an powerful itch that needed to be scratched last weekend, and while the relief was instant from the moment of the first crack of the hammer, I am so glad that I chose to work with what I had on hand instead of allowing the real urge of wanting to take the entire room out from the faux marble retro sink to the seniors geriatric toilet to the converted shower in a closet.

According to the author, Dominic Houlder,"No other modern people have consumed as much as we do today, and none have been so discontented. There are many apparent causes for our discontent such as social fragmentation, the pace of change, and the constant subjection to brand advertising." (I blame the Property Brothers for my bathroom reno...they made me do it!)

"The real issue is that deep down, at a part of our being we're barely conscious of, lies a sense of our own incompleteness." Perhaps this is true, I know that I felt a sense of being torn from the New Millennium with the horrible state of my bathroom since it is the first room that I start my day off in everyday....

Is the point of the third precept that we all have to give up our candy bars, our massages from the local spa, our fuzzy slippers, mochachino lattes and household comforts? Not really....it is all about having some conscious awareness when it comes to consumption and bringing the balance of material acquisition back into proportion, while learning to maintain our humanity and creativity in the context of a consumerist society.

Dominic offers five antidotes to compulsive spending urges Buddha-style. They are:

1) Cultivate the Opposite: Instead of focusing on the dream bathroom renovation with the rain shower fit for two and being bothered by our toilet that is so close to the sink that I can wash my hands while still pooping.....I could focus on applying my mental energy to enjoying what we already have or by experiencing beauty without craving by visiting an art gallery, walking in the park with my kids or catching up with a girlfriend on the phone.

2) Play out the Consequences: Thinking about where we would be financially next month if I had of allowed my desires to go unchecked would affect the things that really matter to me. The stress and worry of financial burdens quickly crowds out the good stuff in our daily lives. Most stuff is simply not worth it.

3) Cultivate a sky-like mind: My mind is far from sky like, unless you are referring to Atlantic skies which can change at a moments notice, but understanding that I don't need to act on everything that floats through my brain is important. Allowing thoughts to pass through like clouds, allows us to simply attend to the feeling, see where it is coming from, and reflect on it as opposed to acting on it.

4) Suppression: Not to be confused with repression, sometimes you just gotta say no. We don't deserve everything....that's just crazy talk. Yes, you have been a good girl or boy, that doesn't mean we get whatever we want. Tell yourself no.....even if it means saying no to something you really want like a double sink to share with your husband.

5) Make a Commitment: "We don't work to overcome our reactive desires because they are bad in themselves. Rather, we do so because we want to make room for our more creative desires to flourish, and our creative desires are often tied, not to material possessions, but to somewhat more intangible matters- to our relationships with friends or family, to our personal development and to causes we really believe in."

This is the old concept that when you say no to one thing, you are really saying yes to something else and vise versa....there is always a yin/yang experience when you make decisions. Figuring out what opens up when you say yes or no makes the difference in our ability to maintain commitment.

We have much hidden wealth and it truly is the key to our capacity for happiness. They key to my completeness in my bathroom renovation was not so much the renovation itself or the satisfaction of walking in the following morning, but the joy I got from seeing my son totally engaged in using screwdrivers removing hardware from cupboard doors and from Lucy's exclamation of, "This is the best day ever!" as she slapped paint on cabinetry.

We are your average Canadian Family and we smash stuff at a bargain price.....