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~ the musings of a left wing left hander with two left feet

If By Yes

Tag Archives: money

My uterus now has a no-vacancy sign.

06 Friday May 2011

Posted by IfByYes in My Blag is on the Interwebs

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

birth control, Blogging, IUD, money

I got my IUD yesterday. A good friend picked me up, took me in, and held Babby in the waiting room while I laid on my back with no bottoms on under a paper sheet and suffered flashbacks of eight months ago.

It’s funny, you’d think giving birth and such would make me be all like “Pah, nothing down there can ever bother me again” BUT NO. I feel like the birth happened to someone else, and I’m still me, still uncomfortable with people sticking things up my hoo-ha.

The actual insertion was fine. Uncomfortable, very, and a surprising amount of blood was spilled in the process, but uneventful. Dr. Gooch told me to come back in two months, and suggested I use an alternate form of birth control “just in case” for the first month. Why?? I thought I would be rewarded for suffering through this by never thinking about such things ever again!

I had cramping the rest of yesterday and into this morning, and I was uncomfortable but it still wasn’t as bad as, say, labour. So I ate the chocolate PH brought me and curled up on the couch and suffered through it.

Anyway, the other thing I wanted to say was:

As much as I love blogging for NO MONEY, and as committed as I am to not becoming a corporate schill (I guarantee you that I will never take money to put up ads on this site, and that if I ever review something, it’s because I wanted to, not just because I was offered free stuff or money. I will also make it very, very clear if I ever am given compensations for any kind of marketing, not that I think I am likely to do that.) I have no money. I would really, really like to change this.

I have dreams of someday someone paying me tons to sit at home and write, and not having to put Babby in care. Right now, I’m thrilled to get paid any amount of money for anything I write. The BlogHer syndication post was a dream come true for that reason.

But this Good Blogs site pays bloggers whose posts get voted onto their front page!

I made a post. If y’all wanted to visit it, and click the “it’s good!” button, that would be cool, y’all. It basically revisits and then updates on the whole IUD situation.

Please click through and vote. Babby needs new socks.

FEET. I has dem.

No, seriously, he does. Think of those poor sockless baby feet and visit my off-blog post!

Thank you. I Love you. If any of you join, I’ll vote on your posts too, promise.

You Get What You Pay For

05 Tuesday Apr 2011

Posted by IfByYes in How is Babby Formed?, I'm Sure This Happens To Everyone..., Oh The Inanity, Perfect Husband

≈ 27 Comments

Tags

bargains, money, photography, photos, studio portraits, talent agency, walmart

I’ve found a Vancouver talent agency that’s interested in Babby, although they warn me that business for babies is a little slow year-round. I’m not looking to turn him into a star or anything, but a substantial amount of my college fund was paid for by appearing in tv commercials and such, so I know it can be helpful. Even if we got Babby into one commercial, that would still likely be $2000 his RESP didn’t have in it before.

The agency wants a professional portrait for their files. I guess they have had too many experiences with parents going “Oh, actually, I dabble in photography myself, so here’s a photo that I took” while handing them a photo with dirty diapers in the background and a booger in the foreground.

The problem is, we have no money.

Zip. Dead broke.

Not only did we recently buy plane tickets home for the late spring/early summer, but our car has suddenly decided that it needs a new air compressor, new shocks, and a new battery, and it took $350 bucks just to find that out. We haven’t dared ask for an estimate for the actual repairs yet, but we need to do it soon.

The upshot of all this was that PH and I did something that we never, ever, in a million years, dreamed we would do.

We went to Walmart.

It is a testament to PH’s love for me and willingness to support me in my whims that he even set foot there. You see, we are intellectual snobs and Walmart stands for pretty much everything that we hate. Yes, there are a lot of other companies out there that are just as big and corporate and evil, but there’s just something about Walmart that feels especially trashtacular.

Walmart is attracts people who are willing to line up like cattle for the slaughter all for the sake of saving a dollar here, fifty cents there. In general, this does not tend to be your highest class of person, and now we had joined their ranks.

The (soul-destroying) reason that we went there anyway is that we got 30 prints, including an “enhanced” 10X13, for nine bucks.

All we had to do was:

  • Show up on time for our appointment.
  • Wait with an increasingly bored and tired baby for over an hour, while being repeatedly told “it’ll just be five more minutes… why don’t you have a stroll around the store?”
  • Listen to people who showed up for an appointment booked later than ours, who then argued to the girl at the desk that they should get to go before us, because they booked an appointment for now, and their baby was younger.
  • Listen to exchanges like “what are you snacking for? Now you’ve got shit all in your teeth,” between a mother and her young daughter.
  • Accept that the picture was going to be unflattering and possibly even scary to look at.

By the time we got in to the studio, Babby was sleepy, red eyed and nose-rubbing, and it took a long time to get a good smile from him. When we did, the red and watery eyes were noticeable in the portrait, and there was a black hair stuck to a booger under his nose, which may or may not show up in the enlargements. I’m not sure the picture will really show him off to his best advantage, but the agency wanted a studio portrait, and by gum, they’ll get one.

Except we have to wait two weeks for the portraits to be developed. Even though there is an 24 hour photo processing centre in the exact same room.

But hey, it cost less than ten bucks.

Out, damn spot!

12 Saturday Sep 2009

Posted by IfByYes in The House Saga, Well, That's Just Stupid

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

carpets, damage deposit, idiocy, landlords, money, Perfect Husband

Early in our tenancy of our last apartment, we accidentally spilled canola oil all over the carpet, smack in the middle of the living room. Thus began the War Of The Stain. For the next year, we battled that oil stain.

We soaked up as much oil as paper towels would hold. This went on quite literally for weeks. In between paper towel changes, we attacked that stain with every method known to man.

We scrubbed it with dish soap and water, and flooded it with white vinegar.

We threw powders down to soak up the stain and then vacuumed up the powder.

We tried professional solutions from Rona.

We even rented a steam cleaner and attacked the spot, which disappeared beautifully for a little while and then, like a ghostly blood stain in a horror novel, it reappeared, dark and incriminating.

It was unsightly. It was embarrassing. After several months of scrubbing and moaning and worrying and trying new suggestions from the Internet, we covered it over with a large white rug from Ikea, and tried to forget about it. Every time we lifted it up to vacuum, I would try again, fruitlessly, to lighten the stain with more vinegar. More soapy water. More Nature’s Miracle. But nothing worked.

For 12 months, that spot’s existence laid heavy on my soul. It felt like the physical example of the things wrong in my life – my frustrations with my work, my struggle with my weight, my depression. It was all the fault of that damn spot!

Before we moved out, I insisted on hiring a professional cleaning service to clean that carpet. Perfect Husband warned me that it probably wouldn’t work and that we should just kiss our damage deposit goodbye, but I wanted to try. So we hired a carpet cleaning company… and hallelujah, the stain came out. Unfortunately, our landlord’s wife had to let the cleaners in, so she saw the stain before they could remove it.

” I was really relieved that stain came out” she said to us when we came to do the apartment inspection that night.

“So am I!” I said, “I was really worried.”

“Because that carpet was pretty new.”

“I know, it was an accident. I’m glad it came out.”

“I was really worried, you know. Because that carpet was pretty new.”

“Yeah… I know.”

Our relief lasted three days, until we started getting calls from our landlord (whom we unaffectionately nicknamed Semen Breath for no particular reason).  The stain had returned, and further attempts by the cleaners (free of charge) had not been successful.  I was always apologetic, but they wanted to speak to my husband about it. The SB family has always persisted in dealing with my husband, since my husband is clearly The Man Of The House and thus in charge of all financial decisions. However, Perfect Husband, being a banker, can’t just pick up his cell phone in the middle of the work day the way I, as a dog trainer, can. We have told them this many times. But would they deal with me? No.

Whenever Perfect Husband called back they were out, so he left messages indicating that they could take the damage deposit if they needed to. Mrs. SB called again today. Twice. Wanting to talk to my husband. I left her a message saying (again) that they could take it from our damage deposit. When she caught him home, my husband’s side of the conversation went like this:

“I’m not sure what else there is to say… I’ve already said in my messages that you can keep our damage deposit if you need to…

“…I’m sorry to hear that. Well, obviously you have to do what you have to do…

“…Yes, well, you have our damage deposit. If you need to take more of it, then you need to take more of it. We understand that we are financially obligated to let you keep that money to repair…

“…Well… if that’s the case, I’m sorry to hear that, but we are only financially responsible for the amount of our damage deposit…

“…No, it was not pet related, so you can’t actually take it out of our pet deposit. That is a separate deposit and you cannot legally take it for damages not related to the pets…

“…If that ends up being the case, I’m sorry to hear that. But you can only charge us for the damage deposit. We are only financially responsible for up to that amount…

“…As I’ve said, if you need to keep our damage deposit, we understand and you have the legal right to do so…

“…No, we can’t give you more money than that. We gave a damage deposit…”

and so on.

They still insisted on meeting with him in person. He tried to get them to stop into my work on Monday, where I could easily put a dumbbell down for five seconds to sign a release of our damage deposit, but of course my signature isn’t worth anything, because I’m just a woman. So he has to go in to them tomorrow, and fight with them further about the extra money. I’ve added it up, and they have called us like fifteen times over the last week, and we keep telling them the same thing. At what point does this become harassment?

Owning property has its pains, but I am very glad I will never have to deal with landlords again.

Or that damn spot.

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