A Year Without - Day 15

I realized today that we totally forgot to factor in the cost of postage during a deployment. $12.50 a box is *I GUESS* not really that much, but if we mail 2-3 packages a month, it will definitely add up.

Our home alarm randomly started working again. I had thought it wasn't working because there were magnets missing from the hole in the door jam. Turns out there maybe should not have been any. The ones from the door disappeared (kids again, I'm sure) and the alarm suddenly worked. I'm glad. I've been putting off calling around to find a new alarm service. Because ADT wanted me to pay nearly $300 between the trip charge and the parts I thought I needed.

Music class today went much better than last week. For starters, I made Sammy wear pullups. Because I was determined not to have a repeat of last week. Benny and I were able to go to the post office and mail some letters/bills from the paperwork that I worked on yesterday. The kids were reasonably well-behaved, and we were able to run some of our errands afterward instead of having to go straight home.

We had lunch at Costco's hot dog shop, then shopped in the store. Got about halfway through before Katie HAD to go potty. Ugh. This is the OTHER thing, besides getting ready to get out the door, that I find extremely frustrating about having kids. When there's no other grownup to help, and someone has to go potty, whatever anyone is doing has to be completely aborted so everyone can go to the potty. After Costco we FINALLY got Sammy's bloodwork done. He cried the whole time the needle was in his arm. Then the nice man gave him a sucker and he was perfectly fine. He later admitted (when I asked him) that he was crying more because he was scared than because it hurt that badly.

After that, I was done. The kids were happy to be home to play, anyway.

About the time my hubby left, I sent out an email to 25 people asking for help (with the kids, around the house, as I get bigger and less bendy from pregnancy, etc.) I have to say, I am VERY disappointed in the lack of responses. Less than 10 people have even replied. Several of those said they'd get back to me later, and haven't. I am already starting to feel very stressed and overwhelmed, and already at the point where I don't want to ask anyone for help. Which I knew I would get to, although I didn't expect it this soon, but that's WHY I asked for the help when I wasn't stressed, because I knew once I got too stressed I wouldn't be thinking clearly enough to ask or even want to ask for help. I am afraid I am going to burn out the one or two people I do feel comfortable enough to ask for help even when I am stressed.

We didn't get to talk to the Daddy this morning, because we were in music class during his free time before bed. I've been thinking about buying Skype credits so he can call me via Skype and it will on my phone, for times when I'm not at the computer. Or maybe I'll go ahead and get myself the new phone so I can do MMS. (But probably not. I have that emergency fund goal I want to meet first.)