The Cerebral Mum

My computer is at least 1000 years old and was cobbled together lovingly by my friends PC and Shaun using discarded parts and ingenuity. My monitor is the size of mouse poo and I had been rapidly shrinking the display on it as the edges became blurrier and blurrier. Last night it fizzed. This morning it popped.

I am now going to do something which goes against the grain with me and talk about money. I say goes against the grain partly because I think I have read too many English novels and partly because I have a very specific notion of “class” which is worthy of a post in itself. But this is my blog and I’ll cry if I want to, cry if I want to, cry if I want to…

Money is just money. You can do fun things with it but beyond covering the bare necessities, it’s really not that interesting. This morning when I heard that ominous sound, it really did seem like being able to access my computer was a bare necessity. It was a disaster of untold proportions.

What was I to do while I drank my morning coffee if I couldn’t look at all my site statistics to see who had been reading my blog? How was I to transfer the loan payment for the house I can’t afford to live in, already a day late? How was I to download the forms I need to fill out so I could go back to university next year? They are due in 3 days and I can’t afford the late fees. And tomorrow is Big Sis’ birthday: I need to make a lemon meringue pie. All my cookbooks are packed. If life without books is hard, life without books or my computer is untenable.

So panic. I need a monitor. I need a monitor now.

And I needed to buy laundry detergent. And toilet paper. And baby formula. And a present for Big Sis’ birthday. And I’m scraping the bottle of the change barrel. Last month we were down to our last few cents to keep us in milk; this month… Money is sometimes depressing. So off I go, with $35 in my pocket for the next three weeks, hoping against hope that somehow I will find a way. If only formula wasn’t so bloody expensive. It’s not like I would have ever started feeding Cas the stuff if I had had a choice. (Cleft palate children can’t breastfeed.)

Fortunately, or so I think, I live at the end of the earth in an outer suburb that used to be a separate town, where dead-end drug users shoot up behind the op shops and pawnshops which breed here like flies. I try one. I try another. The only monitor I find even close to my price range is $25. That’s too much.

And that’s depressing.

So my mind starts adding up all the things I wanted to do, that I cannot. Like the present I was hoping to buy for Caspar’s first birthday, that present I’ve had my heart set on for ages.

And I cannot buy it. My little drummer boy’s first birthday and I cannot buy him that special gift I know he will love.

Now that’s depressing.

So I move on. I find good laundry detergent I can afford, $2 a box. I find a pink leather iPod cover for $3.50 to give to Big Sis. That’s a nice present. I realise that Caspar doesn’t need the most expensive baby formula any more. He eats 3 meals a day and his digestive system has matured enough so that it won’t make him constipated and gassy like the last time I tried an alternative. I find some on sale for less than half the price of my usual formula. I have $10 left. And my mind, so hooked on the percussion desk for his birthday, lets it go.

Maybe for Christmas.

I start to calm down.

I leave a message for Shaun. He always has computer junk lying around. So what if he’s on holiday. I won’t die. Big Sis has a computer and it doesn’t matter if I have to reset every password I’ve ever had because I rely on my computer to remember them for me.

And two days ago, Caspar took my pen from me and did real scribbles in my notebook. I can afford crayons. He will love crayons. And I will love sitting and drawing with him and pinning his artwork on my fridge.

That’s right.

Money doesn’t matter.

I don’t like getting down to my last penny, or having to pay my bills a little late. I don’t like not being able to fix the things that break or go out for coffee every other day. Sometimes it’s stressful. Today, I had a bad hour. Verging on tears, it was still just a bad hour.

In a few months, when the house is sold and I have no more debt and I have a five figure bank balance (hopefully), Cas and I can live a slightly easier life. Perhaps I still won’t be able to buy whatever I want. Perhaps I’ll only go out for coffee once a week, but what can money buy that compares to the delight in my son’s eyes when I blow raspberries on his feet, or his giggling pride when he toddles back and forth across the room?

What can compare to his slimy kisses in the morning or the way he hands me my glasses when he thinks it’s time for us to get out of bed?

The death of my monitor was a bad hour. Not the first, and not the last.

But it’s only bloody money.