After my last post I realized a couple of things; that post was not witty, humorous or enlightening AND I need to be more proactive and less whiny.

So, I have entered the first phase of my “plan” to gradually untether myself from a life of endless toil and so to enable that I made a few key decisions; the first of which involved unloading my cumbersome car payment. I should have titled this post “How to kick the car dealerships ass”, because that’s pretty much what I did.

I decided to unsaddle myself from my car payment because, well, here I am looking at downsizing and it seemed a logical place to start. This may be tangential, but does it ever strike you as curious that we seem to have absolutely no problem going into a car dealership and signing up for a loan that is one-quarter of our college education (or our childs college education)? Seriously, I don’t think many people, myself included, really understand that when you sign up for these loans you might as well hand over you firstborn because by the time you end up paying off that shiny new care you probably could have put your kid through at least a year of college at a private institution.

Perhaps a hay wagon would have been even cheaper!

But I digress.

Here’s my first nugget of advice when dealing with care dealerships; don’t forget what you wanted going into it. I recently heard a story about a woman who went into a car dealership very clearly stating she wanted a black something-or-other sedan…they tried to convince her that what she really wanted was a green station wagon, and it almost worked. Truthfully it almost worked on me too, I made it clear that I wanted lower payments and an efficient car, so I tried the used mIni above and another small used car. All seemed well and good until the salesman came back to show me the paperwork. What it showed was indeed a lower payment…if I just paid them $4000 down.

I thought for a moment before I responded to him.

Me: “Um, why on earth would I do that?” (points to paper with very confident pointer finger)

Sales Guy: “Blah blah blah your car had a scuff from a snowbank blah blah blah mini is a higher end mode blah blah blah numbers numbers numbers blah”.

Me: “Yeah, but why would I spend $4000 on a used car just to cut $40 a month of my payment, that makes no sense, I would be better of applying the $4000 to my current loan”.

Sales Guy: “I thought you were ready to make a deal today. I thought you were ready to buy a car”. (crosses arms confidently, perhaps thinking I might realize his superior intellect and roll over quite passively).

Me: “Um, I was ready to make a deal, just not a dumb one”.

The manager came over and tried to make nice and tried throwing in some free oil changes and pens and such, but I was done after that comment and politely went on my way. Of course, the story doesn’t end there. Over the next few days they kept calling offering me better and better deals (a barely used Subaru is a hot commodity I guess!) and eventually I haggled them down to no money down and ended up lowering my payments by $150.00. I wasn’t mean, just firm, and i was very clear what I needed and wanted. With salespeople I ind it’s best to just say what you want even if you think you won’t get it. For example, after this success with my new car I went into Sears and tried to convince the sales guy to give me a vacuum for free. Of course he didn’t, but I bet he wanted to, that’s how  awesomely powerful my powers of persuasion are.

Izzie is shocked by my powers of persuasion

Stay tuned..my next post is the aptly titled and extraordinarily lengthy why-am-I-spending-so-much-money-and-what-the-heck-did-I-buy post.

Well, this was certainly a LEARNING week, and I’ll be honest, I really am not a fan of learning, especially when it’s hard learning about the world and how it sometimes sucks but doesn’t really it’s just that you are having a pity party for yourself. Don’t get me wrong, there were some really GREAT parts to the week, as evidenced by the above picture, but mostly it was hard.

I was feeling really good after my last posts; Izzie and I even did some preliminary videotaping to send to Ellen Degeneres, unfortunately they all had some measure of inappropriateness; Izzie pulled my shirt down in one of them, then she decided in the next one to tell Ellen how the boy next to her at school likes to touch her bum (what!), and finally, just as I thought we had a really good one, she swatted a fly and hit me in the face.

I guess we will have to try again.

Nevertheless my good mood continued undaunted and I envisioned myself living my newfound success as a blogger and freelancer of god-knows-what. In my imagination my world exploded with possibility, like Justin Bieber’s did in that G**gle Chrome ad; suddenly the world would have GREE fever (even thought i don’t have any foreseeable stupendous marketable talents).

I did make this yummy squash, so that was an accomplishment.

Unfortunately things kind of went downhill from there and I am fairly certain it’s because I want instant gratification and that really never happens, even to Justin Bieber. You may have guessed by now that I am a fan of bulleted lists, so here they are in no particular order……(drum roll)….the things that threw me out of my self-induced meteoric positivity and into a kind of pit of despair;

• I went into work on Monday to have “the talk” about not being happy with my new job situation. They were so supportive and understanding that it made me more nervous, plus now I think they might be trying to promote me or fire me and I am not sure which.
• I have no hot water and my landlord doesn’t know why (this is a recurrent theme in my life, the no heat or hot water)
• I did not win the lottery (nor did I PLAY)
• I did not suddenly happen upon large sums of money or become suddenly famous
• I did not write a book in one week
• Work was incredibly challenging and I had many late meetings
• I made baked beans and they were terrible
• I could not find any other jobs

Dear Garbage, you stink.

There are many challenges one faces as a single parent; the overwhelming volume of laundry, the desperate attempts to get your child to school and get to work on time, the constant nagging sense that coffee may be the most significant life partner you ever have…all these things are certainly daunting but I have come to believe that every single parent has some sort of kryptonite, something that sends you totally over the edge and leaves you cursing your ex, your parents, your child, the universe.

Mine is the garbage.

I hate garbage, I hate that we create it, I hate that it smells, I hate that I have to sort it a million different ways and i am sure i am not doing it right and am single-handedly killing the planet. Under normal circumstances I have methods of coping with my garbage aversion; not normal or healthy ways, but ways that work for me.

Dear mound of boxes, go away.

At my previous apartment we had the most wonderful thing in the world; the trash room. The trash room was simply a room, you put your trash in there and it magically disappeared every week and even if you forgot to put your trash in the trash room periodically (as I MIGHT have done) you could still stick it in the trash room until the pickup the next week and it would stink up the trash room and not the living space. Other methods I have of dealing with trash are to carry it in small bags to various locations and dispose of it in the trash receptacles I favor; I am especially fond of the solar compactor recycling stations. You may think it’s impossible to dispose of ones household trash in this manner but all it takes is a little dedication and a moderate degree of insanity.

This move has been different, and I am convinced I must have subliminally chosen this town for its ability to pay back my bad trash karma. The first week or so I moved here I simply avoided thinking about the trash; I moved the bags from the kitchen to the porch to my car and then successfully pawned off the boxes on some other moving folk. When the time came to deal with the trash I asked my landlord, who proceeded to lapse into some gibberish about a sticker and a trash barrel and the mini mart. At that point I lapsed into a coma and had to go lie down and hide the trash in the laundry area. I covered it with an elaborate tent of broken down cardboard boxes and pretended I forgot about it.

After about three days my house was permeated with the smell of trash but it was raining and I was stymied. I couldn’t put the trash on the porch, it was rainy and would subsequently get grosser. I disposed of some using my small bag method but then I ran out off bags and quite honestly it didn’t even make a dent in the trash. I moved the trash to my car and circled the dumpster at work but was too chicken to try to sneak my bags in, they were cumbersome and I was sure to be caught or accidentally contaminate myself with medical waste as I stuffed my bags into the dumpster. At this point I decided maybe I should try to figure out this trash system, so I went to the town website and read this;

This was followed by a list of places to buy the stickers.

I know what you are thinking, that’s so simple, right? Well, maybe for you smarty-pants-trash-wizard but it threw me right into a panic. What if I bought a trash barrel that I THOUGHT was less than 40 gallons but it was mislabeled? What would happen? Was the sticker supposed to go on vertically or horizontally? What if I placed the sticker on the top bag and it shifted and became the middle bag? What if it was raining and the sticker fell off?

This exhausting train of thoughts led me to abandon my trash yet again; I spent hours surfing the internet trying to figure out why trash existed and how I could make it disappear. After three hours of planning my new no-impact life and placing a preliminary order for a worm bin I realized I still had trash to deal with. Luckily I was rescued by a kindly citizen who not only understood the trash and patiently walked me through the process, but actually gave me a sticker too. The trash now sits my the door awaiting its maiden voyage on Monday.

I’ll let you know if I survive it.

Dealing with the trash makes me look insane.

See what I'm up against?

Welcome to Act One of Mommy Impossible.

Of course, you may be noting already that I have veered off course, why would I name my first post “Act One” instead of something more fittingly MI5 like “Case Number One”.

The answer is quite simple; I wanted to call it Act One.

This blog, should you choose to follow it, follows me as I attempt to achieve the impossible; to change my life dramatically over the course of a year and achieve my dream of becoming a philanthropic foundation president, which of course means I need to make some money which I am thinking must somehow be related to the success of this blog.

It begins with Act One.

In Act One I have two main objectives; spend more time with my maniacal and slightly deranged but absolutely amazing five-year old daughter and stop working 60 hours a week AND manage to pay my bills somehow. I have a number of possible options; I will probably try all of them since the likelihood that any of them will work is slim to none. Izzie (the five-year old and I) brainstormed today and came up with the following possibilities;

• record an incredibly cute and endearing video and send it to Ellen Degeneres (or Ellen DeJeans as Iz calls her). We had some conflict about what to include in this video, Izzie felt we should ask her if we could live with her and if she would buy us some jeans (because she is Ellen DeJeans after all) and i argued we should ask her to give us some money to record the next year of our lives spent trying to accomplish our mission.
• pan for gold (Izzie’s idea). This might not work so well in Western Massachusetts though Izzie is CONVINCED we might find gold or possibly a pirate ship in the river.
• find someone to give us money (my idea). Izzie then asked us who we knew who had money and I was dumbfounded. So that idea’s out.
• invent a new invention (Izzie’s idea). I asked her what we should invent and she quickly whipped together an invention the consisted of foil muffin wrappers, paper muffin wrappers and soap. She explained that the soap was on the paper wrappers and then wrapped in the foil ones and you could take them with you in your purse. I explained that, while brilliant, this idea had already been capitalized on and was called “soap leaves”. The conversation degenerated from there as Izzie tried desperately to convince me soap did not grow on trees.
• write a book (my idea). Then I remembered you don’t make any money from that.
• cobble together a mish mash of jobs that allow me to a) survive and b) see Izzie as much as possible. This, unfortunately, seems like the most viable option.

 There are a number of requirements and goals I am imposing on myself as I attempt to make this life shift, and I am determined to stick to them. They are, in order of importance.

• pick my daughter up at school and drop her off at least three times during the week
• work at least part-time at the cute pub in my new town
• write until my fingers bleed, about everything, even if nobody reads it
• downsize my expenses as much as possible