Hot! Hot! Hot!

another installment in a summer tale of avoiding debtor's prison

Don't you just want to eat some watermelon in this awful heat?! Well, don't rub it in if you are eating some, because it's not in season here yet so I can't buy any. In fact, if I stay true to my local eating challenge I just might not have any watermelon at all this year. They don't grow well around here.

I'll have to be satisfied gazing at my watermelon fabric instead. I just listed the above apron in my Etsy shop. I'm not sewing again, I already had this and figured I may as well list it. As I ironed it out I couldn't help but feel refreshed looking at those luscious wedges of red and green fruit. This is one of the things aprons can do for us, give us a little perk when we're wilted.

I call it better living through fabric and I know the vast majority of my blog friends wouldn't argue with me on this one. It's why we buy fabric that makes us giddy even when we don't specifically need it. We know that one day we'll be feeling blue so we'll look listlessly through our fabric stashes and when we come across that piece of fabric again it will light us up from the inside out.

If your fabric stash isn't making you happy then it may be time to liquidate it.

I heard that collective gasp.

RELAX.

I have a couple of Etsy orders to get out today and I want to say a special THANK YOU to Diane of Kentucky for her large order of fabric! While Etsy certainly isn't paying many bills at this point in time the extra money I have made from selling fabric there has been easing our very tough financial situation. In order to fix our situation we are going to have to do some very stringent budgeting.

I don't even know how people do that. I am not exactly a spendthrift but just as I started to mentally work out a possible budget I realized that most of Max's pants are either too small and/or are ripping out at the knees. I know I can patch a couple of holes and that's not a bad idea...but you can't make a pair of pants that are too small get magically big enough. I have to spend some money to clothe my kid. Luckily I just bought lots of new things for myself for my Scotland trip because I was really in need of some basics like socks so I should be set for quite a while. Whatever I find I need in the near future I can sew.

Sewing for a boy is not an easy prospect. Unless you want him looking like some freak from a cave. Boys clothes I don't do. Never have. I don't do all those crazy zip flies and to even locate the appropriate fabric is mission impossible. (My kid, as you might have guessed, doesn't wear jeans. He's picky about the fabrics he'll wear. It's a tactile issue.)

The trick we face now is to whittle away at our impressive credit card debt without earning ourselves bad credit in the process. We've had A+ credit for years now in spite of all our troubles and it would be nice to keep it. On the other hand, I'm not sure we'll be able to accomplish this feat without some damage to it. Everyone says to avoid debt consolidators like the plague but that may end up being our only option unless we can somehow make enough money to cover all our monthly needs AND make payments on our credit cards. We've always managed before, but we haven't always had a kid to clothe and feed. We've always paid our debt down to nothing and we've been proud of that.

But these are tough times and until I land another part time job or some fabulous book deal, we are still on very shaky ground. I'm not letting myself be scared today. Even though the creditors are literally calling us. They didn't used to do that. In fact, when we first had one of our credit cards we would constantly get invitations to not pay our minimum payment without penalty. Now if we're late paying by a few days they call us to ask for payment.

A friend of mine who is an investment broker was trying to convince me that we're not only not in a recession but that our economy is still healthy which is proved (apparently) by the profit reports filed by public companies in our country. I say that a great way to find out how healthy an economy is is to try to find a basic job in it. I say how healthy it is can be seen by how quickly your credit card company hunts you down when your payment hasn't arrived on time. Fear itself isn't an indication. Shit, you can just say "The plague has come back!" and half the country will rush to their doctor's office immediately and get whatever shots they're told they need, and they'll believe they need them even if all indications point to the opposite conclusion. However, the only reason credit card companies hound people for payment is if they've been getting hosed.

The truth is that if you've tried to refinance your home and within one week a number of lending institutions have suddenly gone belly up...that's not a good sign.

So my thoughts are turning towards budgeting and I'm not especially distressed by it. I don't love being in the very precarious position we're in. But having gotten a part time job that I can really enjoy and look forward to is a huge step in the direction of fixing our situation. I am feeling lucky again. Haven't felt lucky in a long time.

I'm going to view this challenge of getting out of debt and danger of losing everything as a kind of strategy game. Hopefully at the end of the game we'll still have our house, our good credit, and will learn to live within a small means. I should think of myself as a modern day Jane Austen character. One of the penny pinching poor but genteel relations of richer folk. Middle class people in reduced circumstances.

I am also considering selling my scooter. I'm not sure I could get enough for it to make it worth while but it is in great condition and Vespas do hold their value well. It's worth considering. Without the Vespa around I would not be able to run errands on it which means I'd have to solely rely on my bicycle which means I would get more fit. It would make me sad to have to sell it but at the same time, it's only a vehicle. Right? It's only a thing. A luxury.

I don't know all the answers but at least I have a sense of adventure about my still gloomy financial situation. I am the porky but (hopefully) lovable heroine in an early nineteenth century setting trying to avoid debtor's prison. Let's see where it all leads.