Furlough and the Single Parent

Its always exciting not knowing when or what your next pay check will be. Its actually not. It can be a little scary, but as this is only the first day of the furlough its not really the time to start freaking out yet! As a single parent with only one source of income its feels a little more uncertain. What about the other parent you say? Well he is supposed to be paying child support that I haven't had increased since my daughter was first born, but that only happens when the state can track him down. He changes jobs like most people change underwear! He tries to stay ahead of the state to avoid paying child support and seems to not care one iota if his children have what they need. It gets on my nerves at times like this when money is tights and I have received $40 bucks in the last 3 months. I had to put off paying my daughters preschool today because I am to worried about what will happen later this month if we are off for an extended period of time. 

I was doing ok this morning trying to prioritize bills until my mom called and seemed to want to stress me out about crap that didn't have anything to do with furlough or was out of my control. Anyway back to the single parent and furlough part.  Is it scary having one income that is now in question? Uh,  hell yeah! Am I going to sit in a corner rocking myself and crying? Uh,  not quite. I will survive and hopefully I can lean on some family if it gets to bad. Things could be worse I could  have no one to fall back on. Oh yeah did I mention my only living parent is also a federal worker?! Hopefully she is more prepared then me! Times like these are a little hard,  but that has been most of the last few years. Doing it on your own will always be a struggle no matter if the government is a pain in the booty and decides to shut its doors cutting off my pay or not. Now in closing never ever ever under any circumstances tell a single parent that you feel like a single parent because your significant other is working hard bringing home a paycheck and you feel all alone. You are probably really not and it just pisses off the single parent! It has happened to me more than once and just makes me want to tell people to grow up. Someone always has it worse than you and when you are bitching about your life you probably are oblivious to what is going on around you.