Discouraged January 13, 2009

Professionally I am feeling pretty discouraged this week.  I have been working on paying myself a salary, which admittedly wasn’t huge anyway since I didn’t get started cooking for real until about May and haven’t been working every single day anyway… but then this week I have been working on paying taxes on that amount, and god dammit, 75% of what I paid myself I turned around and paid to the government (and yes, this is correct – I’ve been working with an accountant).

Now, I am a liberal and beleive I need to pay taxes, but 75%?!?!  So basically that comes down to the fact that on a given day, I am taking home about $50 (sometimes less with my most annoying client!).  This is too much work to be doing for $50.  It’s such bullshit that most personal chefs out there are working under the table, so they are taking home 100% of what they earn, while those of us who play by the rules are getting totally screwed.  How can we compete with their prices and still earn an amount of money that makes all the labor worth it?

Now that this is all becoming clear, I don’t know what I am going to do after the baby.  First of all, it would be absurd to pay for child care.  I would be paying way more than I am earning in a day.  Even to have Mike’s mom come in once a week (or drop the baby off there) so that I can earn $50 seems totally crazy.  I have never thought that I would be a full-time at home parent – though I think I would love it, I think I would/will really struggle with not contributing financially to the household.  We could make it work, but I think I would feel guilty not earning anything.  I don’t know… And I did tell a couple of my clients specifically that I was planning on coming back.  I would hate to disappoint them.   Hell, now that this is becoming clear I have a really bad attitude about my most annoying client – who pays me way less per day than other clients. 

Very discouraging.  Maybe this was too good to be true… and I’ll have to get a real job at some point down the line.  Makes me want to cry.

 

Edited to add:  Thank God I was wrong about all of this.  I checked with the accountant, and I was figuring one of the taxes double.  So, it wasn’t 75%.  It was still a lot, but much more manageable.

Movement (?) and Cribs January 5, 2009

The past few days I have been feeling what I think is the baby movement.  It started at 21w1d and has been kind of off-and-on.  Some felt like gurgling, some felt like muscle spasms, and some felt like gas.  I am not sure if it is the baby moving around in there, but I am choosing to believe it is.

I went nursery shopping with my mother-in-law this weekend too.  I know it is still a little early, but I am nothing if not a planner.  We went to a bunch of stores in the Chicago suburbs, and though we didn’t find anything to buy that day I did make a decision later after doing a little on-line shopping too.  I found a modern-looking crib that I just ordered (along with a mattress) and I’ll head back to Babies R Us before too long to make an armoire purchase.  My mom will stain the changing table to match and then we’ll be in business.  Maybe next week (when I only have two days of cooking planned) I’ll head out to Babies R Us and register too.  I am not sure how many showers I’ll have – maybe just one with my girlfriends here after a surprise shower over the holidays at my aunt’s house.  I thought my mother-in-law’s friends might also throw one, but maybe not – I haven’t heard a peep yet. 

I’ve somehow come down with another nasty cold and didn’t sleep much last night.  And there’s lots to do around the house to get cleaned up and caught up after the holidays.  Good thing I had today free to take care of all of it.