december 5: catching up

my pre-new year's resolution is to CATCH UP. what that means, to me, is to catch up on my finances, to catch up on my housekeeping, to catch up on my job tasks, to catch up on my yoga practice, to catch up on my friends, and to catch up on my personal goals.

i feel like, maybe, i've finally got a handle on what my diet is supposed to be. it feels pretty simple now. just eat raw fruit and veg. nothing else. for any reason. no permission given to eat anything else. no need to, it just makes me sick. so - while i'm not resting on any laurels - i have none, not after this last fiasco - i feel like i no longer have to put tremendous energy and effort into focusing on what i eat. fruit and veg, keep it simple, don't screw around. i feel like i'm "caught up" on my food. taking that burden off my back is liberating. now i can really move forward. once i've caught up on all that other stuff, that is. now it's the other stuff that's holding me back, not the food.

so i'm working on catching up on my finances. i got a little moleskin ledger book, and i am meticulously tracking my money in and money out. i've done this many times before, and it is brilliant. it works so well, because it just keeps it all front and center. it shows you the truth, and somehow, just knowing the truth makes it all easier to manage. so i got paid last night, and this morning i sat down with my computer, my ledger book, my checkbook, and my debit card (i have no credit card), and i went through my stack of bills, one by one. paid rent, utilities, the IRS (i have a tax debt), and my dental plan. my car insurance is on an auto-pay, and that went through last night. i paid my "pay by mail" toll road usage. and i tallied it up. aghast. last night at midnight, i got a very nice salary payment, and by 9am this morning, i had $92.25 to get me through the next 2 weeks.

see, here's the real problem: my landlady lives in belize, and she has an accountant who handles all of her money for her. this accountant gets our rent checks usually about a week after we send it, and then she rarely deposits them in the bank until at least another 2 weeks have passed. so i pay my rent at the beginning of the month, but the money is still in my account at the end of the month. my november rent hasn't been deposited yet! so that has gotten me into the habit of "floating" my rent, counting on it not going through any time soon, so i can nibble here and there at whatever is in the account. and it usually works. but it's not a healthy habit, and i'm ALWAYS stressed out over "what if it went through today???" i dread coming home and seeing an envelope on my mailbox, delivering the dreaded "letter from san antonio" which tells me that my bank has had to cover an overdraft. i had a brief spell in early september in which i went 3 weeks overdrawn. that was horrible, and terribly expensive. so i'm still working to catch up from that, and the only way to do it, right now, is to suck it up and only have $92.25 in the bank, as far as i am concerned. the bank might think i have more, but i know better.

there is some good news in all of this. my next paycheck will not be as heavily abused by bills. my family is not exchanging christmas gifts this year. i'm going home for christmas, and can enjoy my family's groceries for a week. it is feasible that i can actually "catch up" before i get paid again on january 4.

but in the meantime... that's a lotta bananas, folks. a lot. that's what an 811rv does when the money gets tight. you eat bananas - cheap food at 45 cents a pound. i don't know what this is going to do to my trip to dallas on the 12th - so many reasons to go - i need to go to ikea, there's a raw fu party, and of course i need to see my bf! time to make some plans. time to catch up.