Necessity is the Mother of Five Children

We are broke. The deadbeat renter did NOT pay their rent again this month, so we are short $450 and as much as we would love to kick them to the curb, they still owe the city for an electricity bill that is still in our name. They even had the nerve to tell me that they couldn't pay rent on time this month, because they had to pay two electricity bills. I wanted to scream "IT WAS YOUR DAMN BILL !", but alas ... I refrained. We are seriously afraid that if we kick them out now then we will never see the money that they owe us and they will not pay the other half of that electricity bill either. So here we sit. TRAPPED AND SHORT $450 FOR THE MONTH !

The eldest boy child is down to two pairs of jeans and we came really close to going and buying some new ones for him yesterday, until I realized that we only had $200 in the bank and we still had to make it until next Friday (not to mention the fact that I haven't made my student loan payment yet this month and that is $250). So instead of driving to find him new jeans and spending at least $60 taking the whole family out to eat. We stayed home instead. We saved gas. We saved money on food. We saved ourselves the stress of taking the kids shopping and having to listen to the other four complain because they were not getting any new jeans and life is just not fair and we are the world's worst parents and God is going to punish us by making a volcano erupt in our back yard. blah blah blah

So we stayed home and cooked instead. Good thing that dear old Derek is a firefighter, because stand back everybody .... I AM COOKING ! We bought a $12 pork tenderloin at Sam's last week and got 3 meals out if (for 7 people !). The first meal - the hubby sliced up half of the tenderloin into "pork chops" and grilled them. Yesterday we put the other half in the slow cooker with some herbs, spices, and chicken broth and cooked it on low for 8 hours with enough left over to now make pulled pork barbeque sandwiches with it tomorrow night. We are so proud of ourselves !

Thanks @lavamama (Amity) for twisting my arm and making me buy a slow cooker and special thanks to the deadbeat renter for making us realize that we don't have to go out to eat to have a good meal, however you still us $450 ! We are not grateful enough to forget that !