Just when you think you're doing everything right...

At various points in my life, I've gotten on health kicks. After some period of eating out too much, I find myself eating a thin-crust mushroom and pineapple delivery pizza while watching something just as nutritionally void on TV. I recognize that I cannot go on this way any longer. It's bad for me. It's making me feel bad. This is not a sustainable way to live, I and make an action plan to change. To my credit, I'm pretty good at following through on these things. I hit the gym hard. I find exercises I love. I eat better.

After a couple weeks of nourishing my body with an appropriate number of fruits and vegetables, an excessive amount of diet soda, and a healthy dose of exercise, my back starts to hurt.

There is shooting, crippling pain in my low back reminding me why I should have kept my core strong while I was zoning out on the couch.

I did the right thing. I got my butt in gear. And yet, the universe deals me this blow to remind me that there is always a price to be paid for weeks or months of bad habits, even once I am doing the right thing.

Guess what? That happens with your finances, too.

Though the blog is new, I've been starting these good habits for a couple of weeks now. And, true to form, about two weeks in, I am being dealt a blow. Through a freak accident, I didn't get paid for three days that I was out sick. We're on the road to fixing it, and there's no one to be upset with. It was a very forgiveable human error that is on its way to being fixed.

However, this does leave me painfully short in the meantime. In the old days, I could have absorbed this and it would have been no big deal. But, with a baby, comes bigger deductions: I have a flexible spending account for daycare. I have a flexible spending account for healthcare. I am paying for my little guy's insurance, and of course I chose the PPO, because while it's pricier, I wanted to be able to go to whatever doctors I want to or need to go to.

Thus, I am reminded why it's important to have some kind of cushion to fall back on. Sadly, my cushion construction was scheduled for phase two of this process, after the Blood Letting, which is still ongoing.

In the short term, I've been able to shift a couple of things around and a check will be issued to be sometime next week.

Like that lingering soreness in my back, this will clear up in a week or so and all will be back on track. Thanks for the lesson. What a bite.