Too nice of a mom

I’ve been going around in a black cloud for most of this week, worrying about money, primarily. And I know, I know, these are all problems of privilege – I am fortunate to have all this stuff to worry about. I remember being at the courthouse for something related to my second foster kid, with her mom, and it started pouring outside. I said, “Shucks, this is the kind of rain that makes my basement leak”, and she said “At least you HAVE a basement”.

My house is my biggest asset, but most of the remodeling done on it is almost 20 years old now, from when my mom was living and living with me and could help with the expense, and now I feel like everything’s falling apart.

Like the garage – with the rotting footings and crumbly roof tiles and cracked slab.

We had a contractor out to talk options yesterday and it was stunning. In the range of $15-$30K to salvage and patch up and leave the bulk of the problems to the next owners, $80,000-$150,000 to rebuild and turn it into useful space – like a one-car garage with a studio/office for me in the other stall, instead of a falling down two-car garage with junk filling that second stall.

A section of the big black cloud is guilt – that I feel like I can’t help my kids as much as my dad helped me. On Monday I’m supposed to go to Chicago to help John sell the Outback. We put $3000 into it in April and May, and it’s been back to the garage that “fixed” it twice, but the check engine light still keeps coming on, and on Wednesday John said he drove it two miles and it started smoking. We have to take it to a Car Max in the suburbs that’s like 20 miles away, and it’s supposed to be 94° in Chicago on Monday. I’m dreading it, but when I outline my dread to Mark he just says I’m too nice of a mom. He says I feel like I don’t have enough money because I’ve given too much to my kids. He says sensible parents cut their children off after college, and my financial advisor says the same, actually. Although my dad helped me buy my house when I moved back to Madison as a single mom with two kids, when I was 40. And as above my mom helped remodel this house, and that’s when I was 46 – although back then, she was rich – my dad’s TIAA-Cref was paying her a yearly income in the 6-figures – more than I’ve ever earned.

On Thursday to try to lift the black cloud, I started trying to teach myself counted cross stitch as I’ve been trying to do since winter. As the overleaf shows, I have a long way to go. I’m going to make a row of hearts in different colors then try one of these trees. And eventually maybe I’ll do the cut work. My grandmother on my mother’s side did that stuff, tablecloths, although somehow I don’t think any got passed down to me.

It rained like crazy last night – run for your life flood warnings on my phone – and the basement leaked despite the $1100 landscaping I got done at the end of last summer. It was probably enough water to be shop-vacable; a thin layer definitely less than and inch, and maybe less than a half inch, from the wall to just under the bed – but at 2:30 in the morning when I went down to clean, I couldn’t face the noise of the shop vac and just used towels. I’ve been resigning myself to being OK with that amount of water all morning. I mean, if there’re run for your life flood warnings coming in, and I only got that much water, it should be OK, right? And as the day has progressed I’ve heard more about how severe the storm was. There’re trees down, and the Whole Foods and the bike path by the Shorewood Pool are both flooded.

So, I guess the water level in my basement was acceptable – but I still got up tired and cranky, and Mark was grumpy all the way to the Farmers Market until he got some coffee.

Before we left for the market, I made myself an iced coffee and allowed myself an extra spoonful of my homemade vanilla syrup in it, and lost of 2% milk. I used this dead bird beer pint glass I got at a benefit a year or two, and ironically the next thing I had to clean up was the dead bird I found in the driveway.

I got my second CSA box of the season on Thursday, and it’s added to my woes a bit since it’s more stuff to use up. And somehow even though its only June, I got 3 pounds of zucchini – seems like it’s too soon to be overwhelmed with zucchini. And a giant bunch of chard, probably my least favorite green. And bok choy, a huge head of red romaine, scallions, sugar snaps, parsley, almost 2 pounds of rhubarb, and a small box of strawberries (I ate those for breakfast today).

We’ll have a big salad for dinner tonight, and I am going to make zucchini pickles, and a big stir fry with bok choy and sugar snaps, and I think I will look for some kind of grain bowl with chard, for the chard. This sounds good.