Payin the Cost to be the Boss

Things would be financially better if I got a second job. I've thought about it more than once, especially with Christmas coming and I fucking love Christmas. I love the traditions we have. I love the magic that you can create for kids and the joy I receive from their joy.  I'm a big Santa Claus liar.

People have said that it's wrong to lie to your children. Honestly, if the worst thing I've ever done to my children is instill a belief that some little old white guy in a red suit uses a magic key to get in our house and leave presents, then I'm not going to stress myself. I didn't get Santa as a kid. I received presents, but there was no Santa. So having grown up in a non-Santa world, I want a Santa one.

Tuba Girl is 15 years old and has never directly said she doesn't believe in Santa. I think we're both pretty clear on the matter, but as she grew older and realized the truth, she didn't go off in a tangent and ruin it for the younger two.  We had this little quiet conversation about how everyone is really Santa in their own way, so Santa technically does exist.

Tuba Girl still plays along because she remembers the fun in it and doesn't want to spoil it for someone else. Not like that asshole little Kyle Wilson who tried to tell her there was no such thing as Santa in the second grade. I bet Kyle's parents would have been pretty pissed if I'd ran off and told Kyle there was no such person as Jesus and it was silly for him to sit in church every Sunday morning listening about places he cannot technically say he's ever been to on vacation.

I'm not saying there isn't a Jesus or a heaven or hell or a great big boogey man Satan throwing stumbling blocks across your narrow and rocky path. All I'm saying is that's one person's belief and I'm not going to tell someone they're wrong to believe it's so. I believe in Santa Claus so it's pretty shitty for people to go around trying to convince my kids that he's not real.


I digress. Sorry. The point is, I could get a second job. And I could let someone else help my children with homework, feed them dinner, make sure they're bathed, take them to band and boy scout's, attend their PTO and watch their plays in a gym with bad acoustics, tend to their questions and concerns, read some Roald Dahl to the younger two, talk about sex with the older one, put them all to bed and by then I may as well  give them to someone else because I'm not a parent anymore. I'm a woman paying for some kids I don't have time to raise.

Much like my money and time management skills, my parenting ideal takes on a free range approach. I believe in giving them space to grow and make their own mistakes, but I think I should be there at some point.

I actually have a lot of guilt issues about the years I spent chasing down the degree that has yet to serve me a viable purpose. Between trying to keep the house sort of clean, explaining to my employer that I could not personally rearrange the entire banking system to suit his needs, and writing papers about how that damned bull represented Jesus Christ in Greenleaf, a lot of things I wanted to do with my kids were pushed around to last minute, harried deals.

Christmas wasn't as fun for me. (Bite me. I'm selfish.) A lot of traditions were missed or squished into a tiny time frame. Birthdays were some horrendous affair that always fell around finals. I don't know how in the hell I managed to concieve children to be born either the week of or the weekend following finals, but I managed to do so quite nicely.

There's a trade off with a lot of things I have do as a parent. I could find another job and work extra hours and lose time trying to parent these heathens in the process. Or I could keep the one job I have now, hope something better eventually crawls out of this godforsaken economy and work with the money we have.

Or, as it has been noted by people, I could move somewhere with a more promising job market. I don't want to do that either. As a single parent, my support network is important to me. It is important to my children and I can't see ripping them away from the people who care about them if I can make it happen here.Tuba Girl would shoot me and probably refuse to leave. She is a member of an award-winning band and that means a lot to her.

I want my children to grow up and move away from here - to go see the world and everything it has to offer. But I also want them to know what family means. The strongest trees have the deepest roots. (That was really corny. Sorry.)

Anyway, it would be wrong to say that I don't have any options other than the one I'm currently utilizing. I do have options. Everyone has options. These other options, however, are not the options that I feel would be best for my family. Every family is different. Every child is different and you can't fit them all into one mold.

/blahg out