Huge financial burden on board. And a work anniversary.

If we are friends on FB, you might have seen the picture I posted yesterday of a window sticker on the car in front of me. It read "huge financial burden on board," and I laughed and commented that the owner of the car might want to acquire a new car before said HFB is old enough to read; otherwise they may not like the nursing home they find themselves in, 40 to 50 years from now.

My wise and thoughtful friend Karen commented that in her experience raising children had been nowhere near as expensive as the commonly published estimates, and nobody had gone hungry. I'm always glad to learn that my friends and their children have never had that experience. I certainly didn't, growing up, and I was gobsmacked when it happened to us when the children's father went back to school.

I lost 21 pounds in approximately three weeks, because I gave part of my portion to the kids, but I had it to lose. Firstborn lost ten pounds in the same period, because she inherited a healthy portion of my stubbornness and refused to eat much of what was available. Thankfully, her fifth-grade teacher noticed and brought it to my increasingly-stupefied attention; we went on WIC, for which the government and Heaven be praised.

In looking back, the real HFB was the children's father. We made incredibly wonderful human beings together, and I learned or honed a lot of baseline virtues while married to him. But boy howdy, was it ever hard!

Which brings me to something that happened earlier this week. On Wednesday I celebrated 23 years at my job. My initial goal was to hold the job longer than the children's father had ever held a job. My next goal was to earn more annually than the children's father had done. I have now worked there longer than I was married to him and nearly eight times as long as his longest stretch of employment. I now earn approximately twice his annual salary. It long ago ceased to be a matter of bitter contempt, but it continues to be a source of quiet satisfaction.

There are only a handful of people with greater tenure there than I. I've seen a lot of people come and go. I have reserved parking! But I still have a ways to go before I can safely retire. The mortgage needs to be paid off. We need to get Middlest and Fourthborn on disability so they will have means to live on when I go Home.

I have no doubt that this is all doable. I look back to where I was, and compare it to where I am, and it's so evident that Heaven has watched over me and blessed me one hundred-fold.

I had a really great day at work yesterday. All of my To-Do's were current by the end of the day, and I had both inboxes under control. I'm looking forward to Monday morning.