  So I have to give up taking classes, again....the first time, a couple of years ago, it was because the red-headed stepchildren moved in.
I sacrificed then. Now it is because, since I have a job, I qualify for a whopping ZERO in financial aid. The tuition is due right around property tax time, and still in the season of ridiculously high-cost summer daycare. So there is no way I can come up with the $354.....and that is just the tuition, I'd have to pay for books too, of course.
I thought about checking into taking out a personal loan, but my husband has already taken out FOUR that I am trying to pay on. And then there is the small matter of my just-discharged bankruptcy, which probably wouldn't let it be possible anyway. I mentioned the problem to my mother in an email this morning. She will tell me to quit feeling sorry for myself. She'll say that SHE feels bad for me, but that is what mothers do--they sacrifice. Maybe I am being selfish here, but when my husband ENCOURAGES me to take the classes, and then I can't afford it.
Yeesh. It makes me wonder if he wasn't setting me up, knowing I wouldn't qualify for aid; he wasn't worried about me being busy two nights per week in the fall because he knew it wouldn't happen. Sure. Just mess with my emotions--that's fair, I guess. And then there is my mother, who paid my brother's bills when he left his wife and moved into the old homeplace (after Dad died and Mom "moved on up" to a better neighborhood), which is another gripe of mine entirely, for another blog entry entirely.
If it was HIM who was not able to afford to take a couple of classes to get HIM that much closer to a college degree, she would pay it in a heartbeat, no questions asked. But me, no. She will tell me I was selfish for wanting to do anything for myself. She, who now has a masters degree in Social Work because while we were in elementary school she was getting her bachelors; and before my first son was even weaned off the bottle she was graduating with her masters.
She is telling me about sacrifice while I remember her not being home when we got home from school EVERY day. If only I could afford to quit my job and just go back full-time. I could get aid if I quit my job. And now that my kids ARE in school, I could have days off when they are off....and summers with them as well. No more daycare costs, because I would take all my classes in the morning when possible. I would be home before they got off school.
That would be so great. Not only that, but if I went to Western IL University full-time, I would be done in little more than 2 years. I would have a degree...then if I stayed in longer I would have a masters in 3 more or so after that.
I could get a better job that I actually enjoyed. I could pay for MY kids to go to college. The way it is now, I'm not sure how we will ever pay for Christina's college....unless I am going too and they really give us a lot of aid. She graduates in two years. I don't have the luxery of getting my bachelor's before I have kids in college like my mother did. I was so dumb quitting school the first time. I kick myself for that. Education is so wasted on the young. 
