Tomorrow is my son’s forth birthday. Every time someone has a birthday in his daycare class, he reports with glee that they had cupcakes to celebrate. The cupcakes are provided by the parents, of course and are served as an afternoon snack. Along with the snack, they sing the daycare version of “Happy Birthday” with the ‘cha-cha-cha’ between verses. Nothing tickles him more than to report that it was one of his classmate’s birthdays and all the goings on during afternoon snack to celebrate. And, every time he reports another birthday, he asks me if we will bring in cupcakes for his birthday. And, of course, every time, I answer with a resounding “yes, baby!”
Well, my husband and I have been having a lot of financial difficulty lately. Our financial picture looks like this: our income – outgoing monies = a big negative. As soon as I get paid, all of my bills are paid immediately. I have to rely on my husband scraping together gas money for me just to get to work and back. I can never eat out for lunch. I repeat; I can never eat out for lunch. This is not something that I can afford. I don’t mean that I can’t afford it because it will take money away from my retirement savings or a discretionary fund. I mean, I can’t afford it because I just don’t have it.
The last time my husband gave me some cash for gas, I held back ten dollars because I knew this special birthday was coming. I was hoping to work from home a day or two to save on gas and make the ten spot stretch its way thru a pack of mini cupcakes for his class and a little something special to put a candle in after dinner so we could make a big deal out of his special day.
Here is where it all went awry. Yesterday, my boss was particularly rude to myself and another colleague in a pretty tense meeting. This colleague and I both received an invitation via outlook for lunch late this morning. We both chatted about our suppositions as to why she wanted to have lunch with us at a nearby eatery (prices are a little more than 15 a head for lunch on average). Her knowing that I have been on a very tight budget, we decide that she must be treating us to lunch to apologize for treating us so badly in the meeting previously mentioned. (More on this in another post.)
The entire lunch goes by without mention of her bad behavior. She fills the conversation with what all three of us have in common, motherhood. When the check comes, she reaches into her purse, pulls out a twenty, places it into the check folder and hands it to my colleague. My colleague gives me a slight look and then puts in her twenty. It is now my turn to make the awkward move of taking out my ear-marked ten and embarrassingly state, “This is all I have, will it cover the balance?” My colleague offers to put in more for me so that my boss will get change back but, my boss said it was fine and we were all set. This embarrassment is nothing in comparison to the guilt I feel from spending my son’s birthday treat money on a lunch that I didn’t want to have in the first place.
I am in no way blaming my boss for this. I should have checked the subject of the email appointment. Typically, when she treats she expense the lunch. She also specifies in the subject of the meeting that it will be a working lunch. When I got back to my desk, there it was in the subject, “just catching up”. Should have paid better attention! Should have passed on the lunch and just ate the tiny can of tuna I packed.
I have searched the house and, nothing! I don’t have anything to bake, no cookies to pass out…nothing. The best I can come up with is a pack of stickers that he can give out and hope that he is excited about it. He is such a good kid, always very grateful for what he is given. But I know he wanted cupcakes. And now he can’t have cupcakes or even a little sweet treat with a candle in it after dinner because his mother made a selfish decision at lunch time. And that is why I am half pig and half thief. I stole his birthday treat money and then ate it in the form of a ham sandwich and fries.
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