Prior planning and priorities...

Went up to visit my mom with one kid yesterday.  Just the pixie--the imp had a lego club meeting thing in the city library.  

They've squeezed six cats and two humans into a 400 sq ft space that's been expanded by flooring and sheet-rocking half of the attic.  That is, by the way, the only way it can be defined as a two bedroom space, as well.  Even if there's not really a safe exit from that attic bedroom, in case of fire. 

I love my family very much, but I can't think about their situation very often.  I'd offered to help them get out of that place in the past--or even just my sister--and have been turned down.  "We're waiting on God's time."  Or "God will tell us when it's time to move."  

Okay.  Fine.  Never mind that you're sitting on the roof peak, the water's at your waist, and you just waved off the helicopter.  That's their choices, and I don't get a vote. Never mind that I think He has been telling them to move for almost a decade and a half, now.  Ever since Grandma passed. 

I love my family.  I do.  But they're also a spectacular example to my children of "this is how you fuck your own life up."  I spend a lot of time explaining to the kids exactly what choices Granny made to land her (and my sister) where they are, and what choices they'd need to make to get out.  And I lead them through why we, Odysseus and I, make the choices we do, even when another choice would be more fun.  

It's a difference of looking at short-term vs. long-term.  

It's also a difference of priorities.  

Mom was talking about needing this, that, or the other for the house--furniture, or small appliances.  I wasn't paying attention.  She doesn't need what she thinks she does, she only wants it.  What she needs, if she's going to stay there where she is, is a new air conditioner.  She doesn't think her old one will make it through another year (even though it seemed to be cooling and dehumidifying things just fine last summer).  

I have things I would like, too, but it's all going to have to wait.  I would like a recliner that isn't electric, isn't half-worn-out, isn't too big for my frame, and coordinates with my living room.  I'd like a bread machine capable of doing gluten free bread (my old one I let go didn't).  

I'm not doing any of that because first priority is get our savings back up.  We've got insurance coming up in April, and tuition toward the end of July.  

And since I am not my mother, I'm not going to buy the things I want to, then wonder why I don't have enough and panic when the bills come due. 

I'm working on teaching the kids to do likewise. Because I don't want them fucking their lives up like my family's elder generation did.  If they fuck their lives up, I want them to do it in a way weird enough I had no clue it was possible to do it that way.