Wednesday, December 7, 2005 11:05 am  <|>
<237> Want What You Can: Holiday time brings the thoughts of cheer and love into everyone's hearts.... yeah and it also brings gifts and wishlists to worry about! ;) As you get older, the fun and allure of Christmas does seem to dim I'm sad to say. I mean, one of the best things at Christmas time was reading through the Wishbook and writing out your list for Santa. This, for us mature types, of course has today been replaced with the year round available Wishlist thanks to Amazon, but it's not really the same. I'm sure everyone misses those days of childhood, especially around this time of year.

For me this Christmas, I'm just looking to get by. I'm getting kind of disappointed about buying presents. I know Dan gets this way too right about now. We both want to give our friends and family nice things, though we know they aren't expected and it is understood to some degree that we can't afford to do too much anyway, but still it's kind of annoying. Like my parents for instance, every year, insist on no presents. I hate this because they aren't the kind of parents who say that and don't mean it, but I still go against them and try to manage something small. My mom still helps me out in buying my brother's presents (his birthday happens the day before Christmas Eve as well). That leaves me mainly to think about gifts for my closest friends plus cards for everyone which I did last year and really want to be able to do this year again. I'm trying to keep my shopping down to a minimum, which I'm being fairly successful at I guess, but it just gets to you every once in awhile when you feel like you spend your days working hard, doing things on the side to help out more and saving what you can when there is nothing really to be saved, yet you are left struggling to buy a couple of Christmas presents? I just can't help but feel like I shouldn't be feeling these things by this point, but I guess I'm still doing a lot better than a lot of people and I try to be thankful for what I have in the first place. I really do try not to complain, but sometimes you can't help but feel a little selfish about it, even if it's concerning being able to get things for other people!

All else aside, what would I like Santa to bring me this year (since you are all dying to know I'm sure?) Well, if we are talking money as no object and all that, then the things on my most wanted list right now would probably be the Canon PIXMA MP780 All-In-One Printer, a Canon Digital Rebel Camera, a good widescreen monitor, and of course there are endless amounts of books and things that I'm always hoping for.

The printer was actually a contender for Christmas, but right now I'm looking at no large present from my parents for Christmas because I had to ask them for a different favor that I feel terrible about. I've been scrapping by with what I could these past few months, but as good as I feel I am with managing money, what I can't do is make it appear out of thin air. I've had to dip into my loan from school since the summer between missing 3 weeks of pay for the residency and then another week and a half for the England trip. That plus not getting money for forced days off (like Thanksgiving) really hit me hard. Even with a pending raise, it doesn't help in time. I need to pay my tuition now (which I haven't had to do until now because of some billing confusion at the school). They are so great to have let me wait this long, but I need to pay before the end of the semester on the 15th and I simply don't have all of the money. I've done my best to not spend much of anything I make save what I have to here and there and one single bigger purchase that I just needed to do sooner than later somehow... but now I'm in a lot of trouble and it sucks. So I sucked it up and finally asked my mom about helping yesterday. It's not that they wouldn't help or take care of the whole thing if they could, but they can't. They don't have that kind of money either and I certainly wouldn't want them to. I'm close to being able to pay the whole tuition back myself but the way my paycheck falls I am short and still need about $500 extra on top of that... so we're not talking peanuts that I need to borrow :( My mom said they would try to figure it out and help me and I will be paying them back with everything I have as soon as possible for the next bit of time, but I just hate that I have to do it this now at all and what if I didn't have this to fall back on (because I almost don't as it is?) I refuse to regret taking on grad school at this point in my life. I really feel like it was the right decision and hopefully with the coming year it will be easier to manage things and figure everything out without cutting it so close, but I can't count on steady paychecks, holiday bonuses or anything like that this year and that's the thing that last year really helped to save me when things were tight. I will have the second half of my loan in February, most of which goes right to tuition and what's leftover going towards paying for my plane ticket to next summer's residency, but unless I have this raise or a new situation, I'm simply not going to be able to afford it. I know I'll figure it out somehow. I really try not to let it bother me, but I feel worse about that sometimes because whether it bothers me or not, involving my mom makes it really worry her and I hate putting that on my parents. It's my decision but then I still have to rely on them as fall backs and I want to be able to get to the point where I don't have to do that or even consider it. Oh well, for now there is nothing I can do, so I'll just keep making do as I can.

But on a lighter note, I'm going to go ahead and get my holiday cards at least so I can feel like I'm doing something nice for the holidays for my friends and family. I'll worry about the presents some other way... at least I got a bit of it done already. I always have to struggle with tiredness and cold when winter hits. It makes me cranky I think, to be cold when walking outside and huddling under blankets in my house (though we've resolved to keep it comfortable in the hours we are there in the evenings this year). Last year our apartment was a sauna actually because we didn't pay for gas/heat and so the apartment building was all on the same one control. Where for some people this would mean it was too cold, for us it meant the heat was on nonstop and made our place super warm.... to the point of it being too hot FOR ME!! Now that means it had to be really bad. Lucky for us our apartment now is controlled on a much nicer digital thermostat and we have electric heat, no gas at all, which is good timing when the price of gas is soaring and it's cold outside! So, until next time, stay warm everybody.