Pregnancy Cravings, Potty Training, and Planning

I’m lucky to have a pretty sweet and attentive husband.  The other day, I may have mentioned a pregnancy craving for coconut cream pie.  What does Mr. Smith do?  The next time that he goes shopping, he buys me a whole pie, for almost ten dollars.  It was delicious, but the satisfaction was short-lived, as I started to suffer from pie remorse.  We simply cannot afford such indulgences.  Mr. Smith has not fully boarded the frugal train with me yet – especially regarding food.  He thinks that happiness cannot truly be achieved through financial independence, if we have to survive on beans and rice to get there.  I’m making progress with him, but we definitely need to work on putting together a plan that works for all of us.

I remember asking him to go out to Burger King to buy me a slice of their chocolate pie a couple of times when I was pregnant with Goofball.  So, on the one hand, I think to myself that it could be worse – I have a whole pie for the cost of a couple of those slices.  But then, I realize that I’m just making excuses for myself again.  We will never reach our goals if I keep relying on feigned justification for frivolous spending.  I happened to come across this blog post about “the broke mindset,” discussing the “we deserve it” mentality and how it perpetuates debt.  Our little indulgences will continue until we stop making the excuse that they are “deserved.”  If every success is negated with a reward, we will never achieve our goals.  We deserve to be free from debt.  We deserve to live free from the demands of working stressful jobs for the majority of our adulthood.  These are the lasting rewards for which we should strive, instead of temporary treats.

It was a big weekend for Tornado, she traded in her pacifiers for big-girl underwear.  I clearly have issues with being unrealistically optimistic.  She’s adjusting, slowly, to the loss of her treasured “binky.”  Potty training is not going as well.  This afternoon, after a series of four accidents within twenty minutes, we forfeited and put her back in a diaper.  Perhaps we will give it another try next weekend.

One of the reasons that we suffer from our current debt problems is my tendency to assume that the improbable can effortlessly be accomplished.  It was frustrating that we seemed to make no progress at all with potty training, although I had been proud of my idea to fit it all into one weekend.  Likewise, I can be rather carefree when it comes to planning for the future.  There were much harder times in our past, like when we had to roll coins in order to pay for our rent.  Instead of listening to a very loud wake-up call, I carried on with the unsubstantiated expectation that everything would work out in the end.  I do wonder whether or not we can reach these new goals that have been driving me lately.  For the first time in my life, I feel the need to map out everything, actually do the calculations and research, and figure out whether it really all is a crazy pipe dream.  Or, maybe it can be reality.

I think of that quote to “shoot for the moon.”  While it goes on to provide assurance that the worst result is landing among the stars, we can’t expect to even get off the ground if we never take the time to build a well-engineered rocket ship.