the story of meltdown 4, embryonic accountant
I am attempting to balance four bank accounts (savings and checking for two banks), one credit card, and all my payouts. (rent, tuition, supplies, food, fun money, etc.)
That sound you hear? Is my brain grinding. This isn't a hard process, per se. The math is very, very simple. It's simply painstaking, because of all the entries. For those of you who are ninja accountants or awesome actuaries, it's a simplified version of the double-entry account system, which was what I could remember how to do without digging my accounting text out of a closet at my parents' house, 140 miles away.
I remember from class that this will be awesome and easy... after I get it set up properly. Heaven help me when I update them again to include student loan debt, gas, and insurance, which my parents are currently paying because they are good people who want me to eat.
As part of the parent-child karmic balance, however, I get to do the same thing to my parents' accounts sometime in July- their income and outputs, which are a lot more complicated than mine. It won't be too terribly awful, because my mother keeps everything. She just doesn't update it more than once a month or every other month, which means that with two children in college right now and a husband who pays the bills out of order, there have been some overdraft issues. The money is THERE, it is simply in the wrong places, so I get to spend a day or two helping my mother set up an accounting system more coherent than a four-slot brass mail file.
The sound you will hear then will be a slow, steady whine. Belts in my brain will probably have to be replaced.
I'm also kind of tired and soft-feeling right now, because everyone had a meltdown at work today, including me. In case you've forgotten, I work with small children. It's the in-class daycare for the moms taking Jazzercise.
There is no long story to this. It's a very simple scenario that either you will instantly understand, or you won't. I was tired, had nine children to watch, and three of these children had meltdowns at once. I have two arms. This is not good math.
I got about four hours of sleep, because I am a goober who gets caught up in reading for pleasure. Since class started I average about seven to eight hours of sleep out of twenty four, counting naps, and I am used to nine or ten, continuous. It's a challenging adjustment, and I'm only about halfway through it. I get easily emotional when I'm tired- caught up in highs and lows of the moment. I also get sluggish, sad, or downright weepy when I have low blood sugar. Finally, from two decades of experience in escapism and suppression, I can handle nearly anything and not fall apart until it's all over and the dust is settling. Remember these, they will come up later.
The second part: This morning, for the 9am class, I had nine children to watch. By myself. While this is a boatload of children (average load is 4 or 5), it isn't the most I have ever handled. The most I have ever handled at one time was eleven kids, ranging in age from 3 to 11, with most of them in the 6-8 range.
This morning, I had nine children. One of them had just turned one, two were under a year old. Three of them were in the 2-4 bracket, the other three were 5 or 6. Remember that with eleven kids, the youngest three were about three, and this morning the youngest three were one and under.
This, I discovered, as three children had complete and total meltdowns at the same time, makes a big difference. Three meltdowns: 1)toddling about crying and hitting other children, 2)screaming mad at the top of her lungs and wiggling her way out of her carrier onto the floor, and 3)screaming mad at the top of her lungs, with an overflowing poopy diaper oozing up her clothes and onto the changing blanket, furiously kicking and wailing louder when I kept her from kicking excrement everywhere.
Shortly before this went off, I had two fussy babies; one fussy one-year-old looking for something her mommy didn't bring and trying to wander around and hit children who got in her way (and it's a small room, so they were ALL in her way); two five-year old boys playing legos; and four little girls wanting stories. While the play kitchen and food was out. For about half an hour, I held two or three children at once, tried to keep the one-year-old from assaulting the others, commented on how delicious the play food one three-year-old was cooking was, and read to four girls, including the three-year-old chef. Seven girls if you include the infants and one-year-old.
Having to change the diaper meant I had to pick up one meltdown-baby, put the other infant down (cue meltdown 2), and stop policing the one-year-old, who had reached her "it's naptime" wall (meltdown 3). This is when it all slid slowly, inexorably, into Hell.
Five minutes go by, and the mother of meltdown 2 walks in to see her daughter red-face, screaming at the top of her lungs, wiggled halfway out of her carrier onto the floor, with my back to her, and a boy who was not her son petting her while HER son was dumping legos everywhere, while four little girls in the wreckage of storybooks and plastic food either ignored her or gave her O_O face. All while I was, technically, watching none of them.
She is very upset. VERY UPSET. She does not say much beyond "how long has she been this way?!" She takes meltdown 2 and her son (who is a nice boy who is slightly bossy and VERY active) and leaves as quickly as possible, which is pretty damn fast. Three other mothers collect a combined total of five children, see me struggling to dress meltdown 1, who is now clean and fighting me every step of the three-month-old way, and herd meltdown 3 (meltdown 1's sister) back into the room. She had been making a bid for the dubious freedom of the bathroom after the mother of meltdown 2 left the door open. They very kindly shovel most of the toys back into the buckets, and get the heck out of Dodge.
Meltdown 1 & 3's mother and aunt arrive, and they are cool with all of this. They collect a fussy child and a royally-pissed-off and screaming one, realize instantly that she's not hurt, just pissed off, thank me very nicely, and the aunt takes meltdown 1 to walk it off while the mother collects the diaper bag, purse, carrier, and other paraphrenalia.
I go to the front desk to go ask Myrna, who's running the check-ins, what I should do when infants need changing or I otherwise have to get their moms, because that is, actually, what I am supposed to do. Changing diapers is not my job, nor is sitting with screaming babies, especially not when their mothers are right in the next room. What I am asking Myrna is what I should do when I cannot leave the room to go get their mothers, because I am not physically capable of carrying two infants and one toddler, all of whom are screaming and one of whom is oozing, and leaving a two-year-old and a three-year-old in a room where the oldest person is now six, regardless of how responsible that six-year-old is. Myrna is helping two women sign up for Jazzercise, so I wait patiently.
I am a little frazzled, and unsure if I smell like baby-poo-explosion or if I'm just imagining it, but still calm and handling things. If you have forgotten how or why, scroll up about ten paragraphs.
I talk to Myrna, Myrna doesn't know, and says to ask Louise. Louise is all of our boss. I go to close the daycare's door so it isn't in someone's way when she leaves the restroom. Louise is there, talking to a grad student who's looking for volunteers for his thesis, so I wait patiently. While I wait, I try to find an answer to my question myself. I think, but I still do not know how to fetch mothers mid-meltdown with that many kids. I do, however, figure out what I should have done differently to prevent the scene meltdown 2's mother walked in on- gone to get meltdown 1's mom the minute I realized her diaper needed to be changed.
Now that I think about it, meltdown 2 would still have started crying, meltdown 3 would have still hit the wall, but I could have taken the time to seatbelt meltdown 2 into her carrier so meltdown 3 wouldn't step on her (she stepped on her sister meltdown 1 twice), and meltdown 1 & 3's mom could've dealt with noxious baby ooze while I handled meltdown 2 and seven other children.
...maybe. Because now that I think about it, that still wouldn't have made it all that much better. But, at ten-something in the morning, on little sleep, no food, and my ears still ringing, it made a clarion kind of sense.
And I feel myself start to get upset.
It is right at that moment that Louise has time to talk to me, gets "I don't know how to get their moms when I have so many kids and three of them go off at once" from me, and Myrna remembers that oh yes, I haven't been paid- there are two for Michaela, but none for me, so one of the envelopes is mislabeled.
It is right at that moment that the three things I asked you to remember take their simultaneous toll, and I become meltdown number 4. At work. In the lobby.
*sighs* None of this counts as one of my finer moments.
For the 10:10am class, I had two kids to watch, and a concerned and upset Louise trying to get me to go home. It is nice that my boss was upset for me, but I don't like that she was upset at all.
Anyway. She called meltdown 2's mom, who had since calmed down, and talked with her. Meltdown 2's mom no longer things I am a horrible person, which is nice. And the two children at 10:10 are in the fiveish range, both kids I have had before, and are both very quiet and mellow kids. The boy, Z, loves to be helpful and play with babies- rock their carriers, find flung pacifiers, hold bottles, offer toys. I told him I could've used his help last hour, and he smiled at me, sweet and shy. The three of us spent the hour coloring cut-out butterflies I made, and it was balm to my sore self.
I left work just as tired and still worn, upset, and frazzled, but not in tears and sort of okay. Still prone to tears, but that was because I hadn't eaten yet (still haven't- I made food, but got caught up in straightening out credit card drama and forgot it until now).
Though finding out one of my checking accounts was closed when I tried to put money in it, my credit card was not accepting charges when I tried to buy art supplies for class, and coming home to Jasper yowling for an hour and a half put stress on that.
Jasper was really the hardest one to deal with, because at least the tellers and cashiers were QUIET, and I had other options.
After work I noticed a standard poodle frolicking on a leash, and went to pet him and talk to his owner. I love poodles, and I love standard poodles best of all. My sister and first dog was a standard poodle two years younger than I am, and I still miss her. This poodle was a year old, so still really full of energy, bordering on hyper. He and his owner are from nearby Roslyn (where Northern Exposure was filmed), and his owner has an older son who is thinking of going to CWU, so we chatted about the campus and campus life and poodles.
Then I went to the bank, to try to deposit my pay (which got straightened out) and transfer money to my other bank account, to cover a check for Monday. I found out that my checking account was closed in September 2007 for inactivity, which isn't a huge problem. I went to open another checking account (they're free, after all), and spent a while talking with the bank teller(?), and getting everything straightened out and set up and all my questions answered. I even got online banking FINALLY set up and working. It was nice, and I got a new credit card- not because I need or want one, but because this one will never be canceled for inactivity once activated, as long as I have an account with WaMu, and comes with free credit reports and my credit score once or twice a month, a service I pay freecreditreport.com $15 a month for.
This is something I am willing to get another credit card for, because hey, $15 a month is $45 just for this summer, $180 a year. This is okay.
I do not get to transfer money, I have to wait until Monday. This is okay, Sabrina isn't going to cash the check until Monday.
And, as I found out when I started going through my online account histories, beginning the battle of the budget that started this tale, the check won't bounce even if I don't transfer the money. A year of rounding up to the nearest 50 cents has left me with a surprising amount of "invisible" money in my checking account. Exactly how much I'm not sure, but that's what I'm doing ledgers for.
And I bought art supplies, for class. I have to go in to the art building and do homework this evening, I have things due tomorrow and paper whose felts need changing, but...
...right now the cats are all quiet and it's so, so nice.
That sound you hear? Is my brain grinding. This isn't a hard process, per se. The math is very, very simple. It's simply painstaking, because of all the entries. For those of you who are ninja accountants or awesome actuaries, it's a simplified version of the double-entry account system, which was what I could remember how to do without digging my accounting text out of a closet at my parents' house, 140 miles away.
I remember from class that this will be awesome and easy... after I get it set up properly. Heaven help me when I update them again to include student loan debt, gas, and insurance, which my parents are currently paying because they are good people who want me to eat.
As part of the parent-child karmic balance, however, I get to do the same thing to my parents' accounts sometime in July- their income and outputs, which are a lot more complicated than mine. It won't be too terribly awful, because my mother keeps everything. She just doesn't update it more than once a month or every other month, which means that with two children in college right now and a husband who pays the bills out of order, there have been some overdraft issues. The money is THERE, it is simply in the wrong places, so I get to spend a day or two helping my mother set up an accounting system more coherent than a four-slot brass mail file.
The sound you will hear then will be a slow, steady whine. Belts in my brain will probably have to be replaced.
I'm also kind of tired and soft-feeling right now, because everyone had a meltdown at work today, including me. In case you've forgotten, I work with small children. It's the in-class daycare for the moms taking Jazzercise.
There is no long story to this. It's a very simple scenario that either you will instantly understand, or you won't. I was tired, had nine children to watch, and three of these children had meltdowns at once. I have two arms. This is not good math.
I got about four hours of sleep, because I am a goober who gets caught up in reading for pleasure. Since class started I average about seven to eight hours of sleep out of twenty four, counting naps, and I am used to nine or ten, continuous. It's a challenging adjustment, and I'm only about halfway through it. I get easily emotional when I'm tired- caught up in highs and lows of the moment. I also get sluggish, sad, or downright weepy when I have low blood sugar. Finally, from two decades of experience in escapism and suppression, I can handle nearly anything and not fall apart until it's all over and the dust is settling. Remember these, they will come up later.
The second part: This morning, for the 9am class, I had nine children to watch. By myself. While this is a boatload of children (average load is 4 or 5), it isn't the most I have ever handled. The most I have ever handled at one time was eleven kids, ranging in age from 3 to 11, with most of them in the 6-8 range.
This morning, I had nine children. One of them had just turned one, two were under a year old. Three of them were in the 2-4 bracket, the other three were 5 or 6. Remember that with eleven kids, the youngest three were about three, and this morning the youngest three were one and under.
This, I discovered, as three children had complete and total meltdowns at the same time, makes a big difference. Three meltdowns: 1)toddling about crying and hitting other children, 2)screaming mad at the top of her lungs and wiggling her way out of her carrier onto the floor, and 3)screaming mad at the top of her lungs, with an overflowing poopy diaper oozing up her clothes and onto the changing blanket, furiously kicking and wailing louder when I kept her from kicking excrement everywhere.
Shortly before this went off, I had two fussy babies; one fussy one-year-old looking for something her mommy didn't bring and trying to wander around and hit children who got in her way (and it's a small room, so they were ALL in her way); two five-year old boys playing legos; and four little girls wanting stories. While the play kitchen and food was out. For about half an hour, I held two or three children at once, tried to keep the one-year-old from assaulting the others, commented on how delicious the play food one three-year-old was cooking was, and read to four girls, including the three-year-old chef. Seven girls if you include the infants and one-year-old.
Having to change the diaper meant I had to pick up one meltdown-baby, put the other infant down (cue meltdown 2), and stop policing the one-year-old, who had reached her "it's naptime" wall (meltdown 3). This is when it all slid slowly, inexorably, into Hell.
Five minutes go by, and the mother of meltdown 2 walks in to see her daughter red-face, screaming at the top of her lungs, wiggled halfway out of her carrier onto the floor, with my back to her, and a boy who was not her son petting her while HER son was dumping legos everywhere, while four little girls in the wreckage of storybooks and plastic food either ignored her or gave her O_O face. All while I was, technically, watching none of them.
She is very upset. VERY UPSET. She does not say much beyond "how long has she been this way?!" She takes meltdown 2 and her son (who is a nice boy who is slightly bossy and VERY active) and leaves as quickly as possible, which is pretty damn fast. Three other mothers collect a combined total of five children, see me struggling to dress meltdown 1, who is now clean and fighting me every step of the three-month-old way, and herd meltdown 3 (meltdown 1's sister) back into the room. She had been making a bid for the dubious freedom of the bathroom after the mother of meltdown 2 left the door open. They very kindly shovel most of the toys back into the buckets, and get the heck out of Dodge.
Meltdown 1 & 3's mother and aunt arrive, and they are cool with all of this. They collect a fussy child and a royally-pissed-off and screaming one, realize instantly that she's not hurt, just pissed off, thank me very nicely, and the aunt takes meltdown 1 to walk it off while the mother collects the diaper bag, purse, carrier, and other paraphrenalia.
I go to the front desk to go ask Myrna, who's running the check-ins, what I should do when infants need changing or I otherwise have to get their moms, because that is, actually, what I am supposed to do. Changing diapers is not my job, nor is sitting with screaming babies, especially not when their mothers are right in the next room. What I am asking Myrna is what I should do when I cannot leave the room to go get their mothers, because I am not physically capable of carrying two infants and one toddler, all of whom are screaming and one of whom is oozing, and leaving a two-year-old and a three-year-old in a room where the oldest person is now six, regardless of how responsible that six-year-old is. Myrna is helping two women sign up for Jazzercise, so I wait patiently.
I am a little frazzled, and unsure if I smell like baby-poo-explosion or if I'm just imagining it, but still calm and handling things. If you have forgotten how or why, scroll up about ten paragraphs.
I talk to Myrna, Myrna doesn't know, and says to ask Louise. Louise is all of our boss. I go to close the daycare's door so it isn't in someone's way when she leaves the restroom. Louise is there, talking to a grad student who's looking for volunteers for his thesis, so I wait patiently. While I wait, I try to find an answer to my question myself. I think, but I still do not know how to fetch mothers mid-meltdown with that many kids. I do, however, figure out what I should have done differently to prevent the scene meltdown 2's mother walked in on- gone to get meltdown 1's mom the minute I realized her diaper needed to be changed.
Now that I think about it, meltdown 2 would still have started crying, meltdown 3 would have still hit the wall, but I could have taken the time to seatbelt meltdown 2 into her carrier so meltdown 3 wouldn't step on her (she stepped on her sister meltdown 1 twice), and meltdown 1 & 3's mom could've dealt with noxious baby ooze while I handled meltdown 2 and seven other children.
...maybe. Because now that I think about it, that still wouldn't have made it all that much better. But, at ten-something in the morning, on little sleep, no food, and my ears still ringing, it made a clarion kind of sense.
And I feel myself start to get upset.
It is right at that moment that Louise has time to talk to me, gets "I don't know how to get their moms when I have so many kids and three of them go off at once" from me, and Myrna remembers that oh yes, I haven't been paid- there are two for Michaela, but none for me, so one of the envelopes is mislabeled.
It is right at that moment that the three things I asked you to remember take their simultaneous toll, and I become meltdown number 4. At work. In the lobby.
*sighs* None of this counts as one of my finer moments.
For the 10:10am class, I had two kids to watch, and a concerned and upset Louise trying to get me to go home. It is nice that my boss was upset for me, but I don't like that she was upset at all.
Anyway. She called meltdown 2's mom, who had since calmed down, and talked with her. Meltdown 2's mom no longer things I am a horrible person, which is nice. And the two children at 10:10 are in the fiveish range, both kids I have had before, and are both very quiet and mellow kids. The boy, Z, loves to be helpful and play with babies- rock their carriers, find flung pacifiers, hold bottles, offer toys. I told him I could've used his help last hour, and he smiled at me, sweet and shy. The three of us spent the hour coloring cut-out butterflies I made, and it was balm to my sore self.
I left work just as tired and still worn, upset, and frazzled, but not in tears and sort of okay. Still prone to tears, but that was because I hadn't eaten yet (still haven't- I made food, but got caught up in straightening out credit card drama and forgot it until now).
Though finding out one of my checking accounts was closed when I tried to put money in it, my credit card was not accepting charges when I tried to buy art supplies for class, and coming home to Jasper yowling for an hour and a half put stress on that.
Jasper was really the hardest one to deal with, because at least the tellers and cashiers were QUIET, and I had other options.
After work I noticed a standard poodle frolicking on a leash, and went to pet him and talk to his owner. I love poodles, and I love standard poodles best of all. My sister and first dog was a standard poodle two years younger than I am, and I still miss her. This poodle was a year old, so still really full of energy, bordering on hyper. He and his owner are from nearby Roslyn (where Northern Exposure was filmed), and his owner has an older son who is thinking of going to CWU, so we chatted about the campus and campus life and poodles.
Then I went to the bank, to try to deposit my pay (which got straightened out) and transfer money to my other bank account, to cover a check for Monday. I found out that my checking account was closed in September 2007 for inactivity, which isn't a huge problem. I went to open another checking account (they're free, after all), and spent a while talking with the bank teller(?), and getting everything straightened out and set up and all my questions answered. I even got online banking FINALLY set up and working. It was nice, and I got a new credit card- not because I need or want one, but because this one will never be canceled for inactivity once activated, as long as I have an account with WaMu, and comes with free credit reports and my credit score once or twice a month, a service I pay freecreditreport.com $15 a month for.
This is something I am willing to get another credit card for, because hey, $15 a month is $45 just for this summer, $180 a year. This is okay.
I do not get to transfer money, I have to wait until Monday. This is okay, Sabrina isn't going to cash the check until Monday.
And, as I found out when I started going through my online account histories, beginning the battle of the budget that started this tale, the check won't bounce even if I don't transfer the money. A year of rounding up to the nearest 50 cents has left me with a surprising amount of "invisible" money in my checking account. Exactly how much I'm not sure, but that's what I'm doing ledgers for.
And I bought art supplies, for class. I have to go in to the art building and do homework this evening, I have things due tomorrow and paper whose felts need changing, but...
...right now the cats are all quiet and it's so, so nice.