Making it Work One Month Later

I always thought housewives just took care of the kids and did housework while watching "The Young and the Restless."  I think that's what a lot of people grow up thinking when they see daytime commercials advertising Spic and Span, diapers and vacuum cleaner bags. I think some of it also stems from the fact that my mom did exactly that. She stayed at home with me when I was little and I don't remember her really taking me many places or doing much except for the random prayer group where I played with the other kids and maybe baking or going to grandma's. I know she made my pants when I was really little, but that's all I really know about her daytime activities. In fact, it's really bad when I can still remember the CBS daytime lineup for Central Standard Time from when I was 3. The Young and the Restless at 11.  News at 12. Bold and the Beautiful at 12:30. As the World Turns followed shortly after and then Guiding Light. Maybe she did more. I don't know. I guess I'll have to ask her.
I now know differently about housewives and I know that I handle things a bit differently than my own mother did.
It was initially a big hit to our pockets for me to stay at home with our daughter.  My husband and I are both used to just using our own earnings to pay our own personal bills and buy anything we need for personal use. So when I lost my income, we had to reshuffle how we view our monetary world. I now work from home for a couple of hours during the day editing titles for a freelance site while my daughter naps and write a couple of articles during the weekend, but I still need a little ingenuity to make this work sometimes. (I think back to the movie Reality Bites when Winona Ryder's father tells her to show him a little ingenuity when she asks him for money and she uses the gas card he funds to charge other people's gas while they pay her cash.)
I realize now that housewives need to have two master's degrees.  The first is in Health and Human Services.  This is obvious because we take care of the children, find random objects around the house to disinfect, and get at least one of the following on us each day: Poop, urine, or boogers. I digress.
The second advanced degree is in Economics.
I now need to apologize to those housewives that I assumed did nothing during the day but mop.  Let me tell you the first thing I realized in the last month.  HOUSEWIVES HAVE TO BE SHARP AS A STEEL BLADE to survive.  In addition to working during the day, cleaning, and caring for my child, I now have to do all household monetary procedures. This includes paying ALL bills (not just my personal bills now) and taking care of back insurance claims from my illness a couple of weeks ago when I didn't have my insurance card yet. I have all of the receipts organized along with all of the tax forms, outstanding bills, and statements of bills to pay.  I am now responsible for college prep for my daughter in the form of a 529 plan and keeping track of savings. I know every nickel that goes out the door.
Most importantly, I have become a coupon junky.  I clip coupons, find them online, save my store coupons that print at the register, hardly ever go somewhere without a coupon, and hoard formula checks from the company like Golum from Lord of the Rings. 
This is where that smart thing comes in handy.  I've learned to shop so smart, my bill is now about 30% to 40% lower than what it was.  I look at sale bills and actually plan a menu around sale items and hope I learn to cook it later, then apply coupons to it. I shope at big bulk warehouses, but actually compare to other stores before just assuming they have the same price.  For example, Sams Club diapers. I can buy a 200 diaper pack for about $34.  Sounds fantastic right?  Not when Luvs goes for $16.99 at Target for a box of 108. I can get 16 extra diapers for the same price and they're name brand. Plus, Luvs sent me a coupon. See what I mean? I'm a woman obsessed.
We eat more at home.  I usually read about 100 books a year and that has not happened since my daughter has come home. However, I read the hell out of cookbooks and online recipes trying to find something a little more interesting than the typical chicken, rice, veggie combo.  This is especially important since we don't go out to each much anymore for various reasons. #1- I need to lose baby weight. #2- It's flu season and I don't like having my daughter out at a restaurant. and #3- It saves money.
So Tori had to learn to cook.
I think I'm doing pretty well given that this is complete foreign territory. Sometimes I view it as some type of quirky anthropological experiment. It's like I'm testing myself to see if I can do this just as well as I could implement a company's Learning Management System, write their standard operating procedures, and deliver a training on a corporate project. It's all about balance I guess.For example, I'm typing this one handed and holding my kid in the other.
As my friend Summer would say, "I'm biting my lip ang giving it hell."