Could be good, could be bad. I don't know.

Ms. Preschool is going out of town for a few weeks or a few months.

They aren't closing up shop. Her husband will take 4 full-time kids, and my part-time LM if we want.

Last time we weren't given the option. When BM was going she had surgery and they closed up a couple of months. Which I guess made it easier - we had no choice but to quit for a while.

IT was nice to save up some cash, though I remember it being HARD on BM.

But this time is different. We were invited to stay.

I am really thinking this is a good opportunity to pull him out for a few months and save some $$$$$$. We could REALLY use it.

But it also just sucks.

In one sense, I don't think LM will miss it as much. HE LOVES it and does well enough, but he is also content to play alone 24/7.

Then again, I may underestimate how hard it will be for him at home without his brother 5 days a week. IT will certainly be new territory.

I guess the plus is nothing is set in stone. The part-time spot is ours and if we don't want it no one will take it. So I guess we could always change our mind.

I am leaning towards the opportunity to save some money. The cost will be my hubby- he may go crazy.

We even discussed spending $100/month on drop-in care as a compromise (around 4 hours a week. On a per-hour basis it is twice as expensive as the daycare). & dh said oh he would feel guilty. I just had to laugh. HELLO. I Was mostly thinking about it more for LM than him. THough I knew he would appreciate the break. I See how much thought he has given to how this will affect LM!

But $100/month vs. $300/month, and considerably LESS gas... IT's tempting. Or we could even go for $0 and no gas...

We'll have to think about it and sleep on it.

She told me she would leave in OCtober which makes it an easier decision. Holidays are coming up. IT's a good time to pull him out for a while.

Gosh, I hope she is back for tax season!

Bad thinking, I know.

But August sucked and I just figured September would improve.

So I had my first signs yesterday that September is NOT improving.

It just wasn't a good day.

Dh put the kids down last night and I was downstairs by the AC unit outside when I heard it flip on and off with a ca-thunk.

"Lovely" I thought. Dh came downstairs and I knew he was turning the AC on for them. I told him he broke the AC.

He said, "Oh no, I accidentally flipped it on and off, but turned it back on." I said, "well, you BROKE it. It is not turning back on."

We argued a bit because it did not turn on after 5 minutes and he wasn't getting the point that it doesn't take 5 minutes to get going and that it was NOT working.

I asked him to go look at it. (Make sure it wasn't smoking or something, or nothing obvious wrong. LOL).

Anyway, so he did flip it on downstairs and it revved up. PHEW!

So I turned it on upstairs and it made the same cathunk. It flipped on and off. We argued more as I explained to dh I did nothing but turn it on. He insisted I turned it off the minute it started. I explained to him all I did was turn it on - he heard the same ca-thunk I did.

The good is the thing works. Of course since it only seemed to be the thermostat that stopped working, upstairs, since the downstairs was totally fine, I started to think maybe a fuse blew. So I started turning on all the lights and switches to test this theory, and the ceiling fan started making this horrible noise. !! I turned it off immediately and realized the kids had been playing with the dangly chains on it and they had gotten all wrapped up in the fan. LOVELY. They just weren't long enough to do to much damage so I was unwrapping all the chains. & mentally making a note not to touch anything. At that point I just felt JINXED.

Anyway, the plus is that it is September (though it is s'posed to be 99 degrees all next week) and regardless of the cathunk it seems to be more electrical than AC related. We still have AC downstairs... & AC at night is pretty unnecessary in September - it cools off rather quickly at night.

So I will probably have my dad look at it for an opinion and dh said we should get it fixed in February when maybe it is cheaper. He has a point.

It could just be a small simple repair (likely really), but I am bracing myself for the worst.

So I know, I should start thinking positively, but all I can think is, "UGH!"

I do admit I can't help but feel lucky that if our AC must die, September is the month to do it. Rather than in the middle of July or to find out on the first hot day of the year. I will admit that is lucky. Phew... But it would be way more lucky if it would just work as it should. Bah.

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Since last week we had about 7 no-spend days. Out of necessity anyway.

If dh has enough gas in his car for me to go to work and preschool today, then we are set for NSDs.

The credit card closes today and tomorrow I need to buy gas (for both cars probably) and I need to buy some work shoes. Just been putting everything off.

Dh did buy groceries over the weekend - that was the exception.

Now that we can spend money again we need to prioritize. We have a few things we want to do in September but we have to sit down and see what we can fit in the budget. Still trying to save our pennies and make up some of these computer and dental costs, from the regular budget. Which means little if any eating out, maybe skipping date night, etc. We'll see.

I could deal with ebay, and probably still can, since they are a large marketplace. BUT I am none too happy with our experience all the same.

2 non-payers in 2 weeks (maybe selling 5 things a week, in a recent pace = mostly video games and accessories).

The first was kind of a long story, but the second person just fell off the face of the earth. What is our recourse? Sit and wait. We can close it amicably and go resell since he hasn't gotten back. But SCREW that. This person needs a mark against their account. To do so means give it time. In the end he can pay and I don't know if it will even matter. I don't understand what recourse sellers really have. I guess we need to educate ourselves more since this is becoming all too common. (20% of sales, for this month?).

Anyway, today someone retracted a bid. It wasn't a huge deal. The whole thing was rather fishy to me though since we had never seen the bid show up in the first place. Maybe it was immediately retracted. Said it was placed the 29th and removed the 31st, according to a notice.

Anyway, doesn't seem to have affected anything, since we never saw this high bid (they did not show up as highest bidder last we looked). BUT the person had to nerve to say they retracted our bid because we changed our listing.

It just peeved us. & there just doesn't seem to be a lot of recourse - though we did file a complaint. Wish the idiot just said he typed it in wrong. He clearly just wanted to retract his bid. We don't make it a habit to change our listings, and overall thought that was pretty impossible anyway, once you had bids.

So mostly, had to gripe.

Still good money and dh has time to deal with all the annoyances. Like I said, I mostly think we need to educate ourselves more. But I am really *getting* all the ebay complaints now. We aren't exactly high volume sellers. I think I Would go crazy if we were...

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Well, I am making the first step into the waters of credit card deep freeze.

I am still not sure about dh's credit.

Mine NEEDS to be frozen. I am peeved at what little regard creditors have for fraud alerts on credit reports. Mine have been respected (as far as I know) but I have heard a few too many stories. & from my ID theft experience, it is clear that the creditors could care less.

I mean, I Seriously got an advertisement in the mail from Zales about how I am one of their best customers. Bite me! I was never your friggin customer. Since the thieves opened 7 different retail cards I get all sorts of crap like this. Just an example of how much I hate all those creditors' guts. They think now is a good time to reel in the real me - look at my credit score - they WANT me! IT's plain as day what little regard they have for ID theft victims. I am now just a business opportunity.

I have the recourse to freeze my credit free of charge, so this is the route I have finally chosen to do.

I was kind of waiting for my free credit monitoring to kick in (lawsuit settlement against one of the bureaus?) but it is taking so freaking long and the credit monitoring I have paid to deal with this the last year just went up from $12.95 to $14.95/month.

It was pretty impossible to combat the ID thieves without monitoring. A free report every year does NOT cut it. Each bureau reports different items.

But I think now that things have settled down, I have enjoyed the security.

So this did it. I saw the increased charge over the weekend and I called to cancel. Boy were they annoying. Their last ditch plea was to charge me 1/2 price for 3 months. Whatevah.

But I already paid for September so it gives me a month to just freeze my credit. I will give it a whirl.

I am kind of tempted to leave dh's credit opened so at least one of us has some open credit. But I am also extra petrified of his identity getting stolen, and worse, someone getting a mortgage in our name or something (since we do have equity - it is the up and coming crime against those with equity and high credit scores - 2 strikes against us). I can't think, "IT will never happen to us." Instead I probably think too much, "It will happen to us." Since it already has.

So it will cost $30 to freeze his credit, and a fee to unfreeze it for anything. But for the long run, it's cheaper and more proactive anyway. Technically no one can issue credit whereas with the monitoring you are just informed after someone stole and used your data.

From a credit standpoint it is no biggie. No plans to borrow money. If so it would be something we would have plenty of time to unfreeze. I am more worried from an insurance and job search standpoint. Everything from this point will be a PITA. Dh had his credit checked for our satellite switch and mine was just checked over the weekend with our new phone setup. So you realize how often this stuff comes up, regardless if you use debt.

But will be worth it for peace of mind. I think. We'll give it a whirl.

Anyway, between that and our new cell phone arrangement, will save $45/month. That is good...

Anyway, not much else going on. Just crappy stuff like this...