And now...

I got completely thrown off on Tuesday. I was doing some accounting homework at Homer's and I got a call from the HR big chief from the Blue Valley School District asking me to come in for an interview for elementary/middle-school strings. It would have been my dream job a year ago, but now I'm not so sure because of income. Anyway, it's funny because I worked my butt off last year trying to land an interview with him (or with somebody not from the KCK district), and this year I'm not even looking for a teaching job and it comes to me! Well, not the job, but at least an interview.

So I went and made a fool of myself. In my defense, I was completely flustered and, I think, rightfully so. He called me at about 3:00 on Tuesday and asked me to come in for an interview the next morning at 10:30. And it's not like I had time that night to study-up for it. I had accounting class from 5:45 to 9:45. And, yes, it lasted till 9:45.

Anyway, as for the interview, he asked me how I was planning on recruiting, and he could probably tell that I didn't have the slightest clue, despite my ability to BS. Then--this is when the dookie really hit the fan--he asked me how I planned to teach vibrato. I remembered watching my cooperating teacher do it when I was student teaching, but for some reason, I was thinking that vibrato was done on the bow instead of the neck of the instrument. Please don't laugh too hard--I'm really not that dumb. I think I was just nervous and unprepared. Imagine: You're on a date with a chick (spare me, girls) and instead of running your fingers through a her hair, you rub your wrist against her left elbow, not thinking about how rubbing your wrist against someone's left elbow has absolutely nothing to do with anything. And then she gives you this confused, scared, weirded-out look, like, "What the crap are you doing?"

I talked to Alicia about the prospect of teaching (it was a prospect when we talked about it, which was before the interview), and we THOUGHT we could get by on a teaching salary if I made sure to get a decent-paying summer position with my MBA. But then I crunched some numbers on Excel, and man--it is expensive to live! We're gonna have to cut down big time or buy some cheap shack in the ghetto. Say a mortgage is $1000 (insurance and everything included), plus we put money into our IRAs each month, we send money to our Malaysia parents each month (Malaysian custom), gas, student loans, utilities, insurance, phone, and cable. For us, that adds up to $2700/month. Okay, so if we cut cable, we pay $2600 and we don't have internet. That's not including tithing (because it's a percentage of income), all of the miscellaneous stuff like food, clothing, car maintenance, travel, birthday/Christmas gifts, haircuts, and etc. I know--everyone's told me that you just make sacrifices and you find a way to make it work. Ideas anyone?