My world lately has revolved around two things.

1. My best friend's brand new baby girl (she turned a month old on Oct 3!

2. Trying to keep my self from drowning under the intense fear of the debt that I am in without a solid job in sight.

If you are visiting from Twitter you have probably read my tweets about A, the baby. I am absolutely smitten. She was born 3 weeks early, but was the size of a 5 week premature baby (5lbs) and had some complications from that. She spent the first four days of her life in the NICU, making me respect the work of www.friendsofmaddie.com that much more. Even though A was only there for a short time, I saw all the support that her mother needed and the things that could have been done to help in such a tough time.

Since coming home from the hospital, however, A has absolutely thrived. Her pediatrician said that he wanted her to gain an ounce a day. She came home at 4lbs, 13 ounces on Sept 17th. She now weighs more than 7lbs. That is more than an ounce a day!

On to number 2. If you are coming here from Twitter you probably don't have any idea about that. In fact, most people don't. I have been subbing (yeah, that I've mentioned) and managed to accumulate 13 days in the second half of September, which is awesome. I even worked the first 4 days of October. As of right now? I have one job booked. November 2nd. In order to squeak by and make all my credit card payments (I HATE making minimum payments, so I try for at least $100/month per card) plus my phone and car payments I have to work 9 days. Any more than that goes into savings. I truly try not to spend money beyond paying my bills, any extra cash flow comes from babysitting and I haven't done any of that since August so I'm feeling very strapped right now.

I know that it always works out. I know that I was feeling burnt out. I know that having a fever for nine consecutive days isn't good. I know that I should be glad for a day off because the phone will start ringing again.

And yet? I'm scared to death. I have less money in my bank account than I've had since 16. Without a steady job, getting any kind of loan is almost impossible, pretty much unless I go back to school (totally NOT an option).

There's more I could say but I'm going to stop venting now.

My twitter cloud.

These are the things that are on my mind lately.
I am not surprised about any of it.

Perhaps one day I'll make a real blog post.

I'm going to try my hand at Not-Me-Monday this week.

It's been a long week.

I did NOT threaten to treat high schoolers like little kids if they couldn't get their act together and respect me.
I did NOT neglect to mention something to a parent that I should have (nothing that could harm a kid, I promise!)
I did NOT fib about missing a statement for a past due bill.
I did NOT roll back over and go back to sleep upon receiving a text from my friend at 4am saying she was in labor.
I did NOT tell her I would leave in an hour and then leave in 11 minutes to get to her house.
I did NOT find myself terribly frustrated with her four year old countless times that I feel really guilty about right now.
I did NOT spend a ton of money on a gift that almost ended up personalized to the wrong name.
I did NOT call and cancel my hotel room for the weekend and call back 11 hours later to uncancel.
I did NOT drive to Oakland despite having very little money in my bank accout.
I did NOT fall apart at a baseball game when they released doves signifying hope for breast cancer research.
I did NOT get to my hotel room so tired I could barely move.
I did NOT then proceed to stay up until 2am twittering.
I did NOT consider paying for the person behind me on the bridge and then end up paying only for myself. I swear one day I'll follow through.
I did NOT send 40 text messages including several while 'driving' or sitting in traffic going 2mph this weekend. This does NOT leave me with very few for the remainder of the month.
I did NOT answer the phone while driving in California. I also did NOT forget my handsfree headset for the millionth time.
I was NOT the only one who got to hold my friend's little girl.
I did NOT update her facebook to say that no one was allowed to hold her so please stop calling, they won't let you in the NICU anyhow.
I did NOT feel terribly guilty posting pictures of me and baby five minutes after that post.

I feel like a such a grown up. I have time to kill before working today (half day sub in 4th grade). So, I helped get K and B off to school and drove to the coffee shop. Where I now sit, blogging. Which is kind of a shock if you consider I'm not much for the blogging lately (or really, in the past eight months).

However, I have spent a lot of time on Twitter lately (as my old blog nickname, find me if you want to). It's kind of fun to have a quick way to interact with others.

My picture taking has kind of been on a slide lately. I average 700 or so pictures a month. The month of August? I've taken 175. And they are mostly portraits and candid shots of the kids, which I won't put up here. Therefore, this is my first post here that won't have a photo.

Last week, I was sick. Like seriously, almost went to the ER because of the pain sick. I discovered that going to urgent care in my town can be $188 to walk in the door (although the doctor gets the final say and in the long run he only charged me $50). I don't have insurance, I don't have a full-time steady job. I won't get paid for today's work until October and the doctor's office was going to cost $200 before prescriptions? I drove home, considering the fact that I could go to the ER and have the medical care written off by filling out hardship forms. That is so not my style. But what other option did I have?

I ended up back at urgent care at the insistence of others. I told the doctor who looked in my throat and was writing a prescription to please keep in mind that I didn't have insurance or a lot of money. He wrote an $88 prescription. Yeah, that worked out I guess. I called back and made them choose one of the meds of the $4 list, but that caused yet another delay in medical treatment for a serious case of tonsillitis.

I couldn't eat for four days. Swallowing was too painful. I lost 8 pounds (not that I couldn't stand to lose weight, but that rapidly?).

I've had insurance for two years of my life, from 14-16 when our state first offered it to the children who were low(ish) income and didn't have other care. I haven't been to the doctor since high school.

Healthcare shouldn't be so prohibitive.

My friend and I took her daughter (A) and her daughter's best friend (B) to our local AAA stadium for a ballgame last Friday night. It was B's first game ever, and A's first game since I took her and her mom to Oakland when she was about 19 months old. The girls are both turning four shortly and it was a lot of fun.

I snapped this picture after the game while we were waiting for fireworks. I love how A has her arm around B. B was scared because they were sitting up on this ledge since we had to move from our seats before they would set off the fireworks. When A saw that her friend was scared the first thing she did was put her arm around her to calm her down. I was also standing right there holding on to her, but stepped away to take this picture while A's mom "held" both girls.