Money ain't fun

Money is related to math isn't it? That figures why I have a pounding headache this morning and a resolve to subtract from my sum total.
My daughter and I went to a meeting on our long-awaited Europe trip last night, and we wrote checks for over five thousand dollars.
When I returned home, I faced the breadwinner here, who knew of the money, but wasn't anticipating it to be that much.
I chose my non-salaried life, didn't I? Perhaps though I can scrape to pay my share from other sources besides his. With Cody home, though, I can't substitute teach, nor take the British Literature teaching job that was just offered to me.
This is when mothers tell their teenage daughters the importance of independence, of making money, of having freedom.
Maybe I'll call the trip teachers and tell them that only my daughter will be going. I did this about 20 years ago when my parents told me that it would be tough financially to send me to England for a semester. I really hate being a burden. Yet my daughter says that she doesn't want to go without me, even though friends of hers are going.
Maybe I can figure out a way to scrape through on my own: garage sales, e-bay, credit debt, an old small teacher's retirement money fund.
However, ultimately, it's not imperative that I go. I chose this lifestyle, of staying home. Home has its benefits; there's books and children and flowers and a freedom of sorts if I watch the outflying money that it takes to live regardless of the pile-sum that it's pulled from.
Subtraction ain't fun.