Welcome to the Maternal Moose
...Wherein our hero, Moose, and his beautiful wife
Gina chase their toddler Ryan while daddy adjusts
to the harsh reality that he’s in his 40’s now.
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Desperate for diapers
Posted on June 25th, 2009 3 commentsThis current pay period was the first one where we had to pay for daycare, and the Moose finances were as tight as me in a 30-inch belt. We managed to swing new (reasonable) cellphones and a haircut for Gina, but everything else went to paying bills and filling our tanks and tummies. I stretched our last fourteen dollars in cash to buy enough groceries to last until payday, and was pretty proud of my budgeting skills. Until Gina said, “we need diapers.”
I counted the stash in our diaper bag. There were ten to last two days. Let’s see, I thought, Ryan’s in daycare on Friday, so we’d only need two or three, but Thursday he’ll go through seven or so, and tonight . . .
The math didn’t look good.
“We can use some of Daddy’s T-shirts,” Gina said. She was only mostly kidding. I wondered if we had some way to get cash without dipping into our savings. Gina was still amusing herself with her genius idea when my eyes fell on a corner bookshelf, the land of misfit discs. There were over a dozen videogames and dvd’s to sell, and I was confident their street value would score us a crate of Pampers.
So this morning on the “Daddy shift” I took Ryan out in the heat, and headed for Disc Replay hoping to clear at least 25 bucks. Alas, I pulled up at 9:40 to see the store opened at 10:00, so I regrouped, headed to Target, and put the diapers on our debit. Our stash of discs wound up netting us a cool $37.50, so I put $30 in the bank to cover the Pampers and came home and balanced the checkbook. I was originally going to make our lunch when Gina came home from work, but hey, we had 13 dollars left! I reached for my new cellphone.
Baby, I said, we’re living large. Can you pick up McDonald’s?
3 responses to “Desperate for diapers”
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Cindy June 26th, 2009 at 13:53
I’d forgotten how much I missed your quiet humor! I don’t know that I ever got to congratulate you on your little bundle of joy. I stumbled upon your blog through April’s and I love it. Always nice to hear things from a dad’s point of view. You are an absolute natural and Ryan is a lucky little boy
You reminded me of my daughter’s baptism. Her father locked her inside a running minivan while I went inside to pick up a bagel tray to take to the church with us. For some reason he decided it would be a good idea to get out of the car with my son and forgot about the safety lock feature (that he had installed) wherein the doors automatically lock once the engine is started. By the time I got to the church I was sweating from head to toe after trying to break into my van with a broom handle in 90 degree heat while he stayed far away lest I beat it with him. But that is overshadowed by the memory I have of our pastor holding up Maggie in front of the congregation and saying “See what love the Father has for us that we should be called children of God”. And in the end, that’s all that mattered.
Many blessings to you and Gina (and of course li’l star
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moose June 27th, 2009 at 18:20
Hi Cindy,
Nice to hear from you. I’d say the snags in your baby’s baptism certainly trumped our nauseous godmother and rebellious camera. At least like you said everything tends to work itself out in the end.
Hope you and your family are doing well.
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