Child Care is expensive!
Aug 18, 2003

Who can afford this? The community college child care program bleh. It's unrealistic even for people who can afford it! $20 a day until your child is 32mos old, then it goes down to $13.00 a day for 5 hours, and you can't drop your child off for less than 5 hours either. My son won't be 32 mos old for another 9 mos! I'll be dishing out a whopping $82 a week for this shit. Then when he's old enough, I'll be dishing out $72 a week! That's usually all the money I make in a week, if not more! *scoffs in disgust*

On this plan, your dishing up fees at $328 a month, that's what it costs to rent a decent apartment or a modest home in this area! I only need you to take my son for 3 hours at the most per day, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I only need a sitter for two hours. On Saturdays and Sundays? Who needs you? It's ridiculous! I was advised to contact CCRS and see if they'd be willing to dish out the money for me, since I don't make the kind of money to dish out for day care. We'll see where that goes. I'm afraid they might send my child to one of their certified home day care workers though. Doesn't sound scary to you? Well, not naming any names, I know someone who was an in home state paid babysitter. It's supposed to take all these requirements before you can get it too. I may not keep a pristine house, but I definitely wouldn't let my son in it if it looked like that. Animal feces in corners, 3 dogs (two outside) and 7 cats, bugs, dirty dishes always piled in the sink, stove coated with what looks like 1 year's worth of build up, you know, that kind of stuff. If that's all it takes to be a state paid babysitter, are there many more requirements for being a state paid in home day care worker? Would they let me complain if I didn't like who my son was with? Or would they just say, "Look lady, you're getting this for free, shut up."?

Free isn't all it's cracked up to be anymore. I guess it's time to call public aid and all that, call this CCRS place and see what's up. In the meantime, I'll have to find 4 different people willing to babysit my son for a few, meager pay hours a day (why so many different people? Everyone I know who could babysit him, have busy schedules). I have a lot of friends and family, but some of them are out of the question for various reasons. Sometimes I won't need them because the fiancé (also father) will be home from work. Everyone finds some way to rip you off when it comes to your children anymore. Hidden costs everywhere, sometimes I can just see the smirks of Haha! You have a kid so you have no choice but to pay me! Nya nya nya nya nya! Nobody ever said having a kid was cheap. I've always heard the exact opposite, but why, when it comes to raising our kids in all the right ways to the bests of our abilities, do we get bit in the ass by over charging? Another case in example. It costs $1.09 to buy a case of 12 zebra cakes, twinkies, whatever. Go to the store for fruit? It's gonna cost you $2.00 for two of your son's favourite kind of apples, unless they happen to be on sale, sometimes you'll get lucky and can get 5 or 6 of them for $4 (Granny Smith of course). Want grapes? It's gonna cost you $2 for a lb of those, or another words 3 servings (vs. the 6 servings in a package of snack foods IF you eat 2 cakes per serving). If you want your kids to eat right at snack time, you gotta dish out more money. On top of that, you have a limited time to eat fruit before it goes bad, especially in hot weather with bananas (another favourite of my son). So bananas, costing what they do, will probably be about $.50-$1 more than the package of snack cakes for the same amount of servings 1 individual package (or sometimes two cakes)=1 banana. With the heat in my kitchen, we're talking 3 days tops, if you buy them mostly green with little yellow. That's all the time you have to eat them, where the snack cakes can last 6 days if you eat both in a package 12 if you eat them one cake at a time.

I'm not even going to get into the fact that when I buy fruit and such, I have to keep in mind my roommates' 3 kids and their love for fruit and sneaking into the kitchen to consume anything they can before everyone gets out of bed. I could say something, but it wouldn't be right being as they share their groceries with us.

Circling back to the free thing. Us folk who need the free stuff, the folk who can't afford everything get a bad rep. People see poor people coming in to purchase pop and candy, etc on LINK cards and the rest of us get lumped in with those who abuse and just sit and let the state and the taxpayers get us through life. What does that get us? Most of the time, bad attitudes. It's free so we should have no right to complain if it's unsanitary, unkempt, or just plain dangerous (this can go as far as WIC who still gives you vouchers to get free cans of tuna saying you and your children should eat it at least 2 servings of it per week, more if you can--let's forget about the fact that tuna is one of the oily fish in the sea more prone to mercury poisoning. There is in fact an advisery saying that you should avoid tuna if you're pregnant, nursing, or under at least 2, maybe more. It goes on to list safer oily fish to eat in order to obtain what you need.) More often than not, the people in these positions to offer free stuff don't know as much as they should, but act like they know more than anybody else. I was once told that I wasn't feeding my son enough because he was too short. Oh, he's the right weight, but he's not tall enough for his age...hm...here's mom, only 5'5 and already stated that she's one of the tallest people in her family, and here's dad 5'4 who says pretty much the same thing, both of us have already said our mother's are the same height 4'6...let's see...duh! Genetics hello?

I'm not on any financial help right now besides financial aid, and I haven't been for at least 1 year now. Why? Because I don't need it. Sure, I could get it, and I might be needing it soon if the fiancé and I get to move out on our own soon, but, I haven't taken advantage of the money other people need more than I do. In case you're wondering, rent is cheap and I don't have to pay for any utilities, and I have a free babysitter on occasions (of course, we have a back and forth system going since they have 3 kids and a newborn).

I'll stop going on about it, this entry is probably already 5 times longer than it needs to be.

It sucks to be poor. I'd like to go for a nice middle class. It has its problems too, to be sure, but hey, I'll take them if it means having my own home and living on my own two feet (well, my two feet and my fiancé's two feet too lol).