Creative Financing

"It's called creative financing," I told my husband when he reacted with less than enthusiasm about the fact that I had recently acquired a new (low interest!!) platinum Master Card. I really tried to sell him on the low interest rate, but it didn't seem to matter.
"It's called going into debt," he said with a dour expression on his face. "And creative is bad when it comes to finances. Very bad. 'Creative' and 'Financing' just don't go together."
"Mmm," I said, pausing, as though thinking about it, but really I was thinking about something else, namely the trip to Mexico I was planning on booking ASAP.

"We can't afford to go to Mexico," my husband said for the millionth time on that matter.
Which was true, to a certain extent. There wasn't exactly money in the bank to fund it. But that's where the creative financing comes into play.
"We can't afford not to," I told him.
"What the hell does that mean?"
I wasn't exactly sure, but I had heard Suze Orman say it once, although it sounded much more convincing coming from her. Why I was even watching a crap financial show like that, I can't imagine. She must have been on Oprah or something.
In fact, I think she was.
People in the audience were asking her if they could afford this or that, and she would give her take on it, which was usually no, by the way. According to that lady, from what I could gather, it was all about squirrelling all your money away like chipmunks during- whatever- monsoon season. Whenever they do the bulk their storing. I don't know. I don't know that much about chipmunks and their habits, quite frankly. 
Anyways, in this one instance, a lady asked if she could afford a divorce.
Suze broke down the numbers.
Sadly, she couldn't. They were up to their eye balls in debt, house was being foreclosed on. They had like seven kids, no savings.
But she said yes!
She said "the reason being: there are some things in life that you can't afford not to do."
And I know that sipping tequila in the sun is a divorce not, but- but I quite honestly feel that if I don't get a vacation at some point, I might as well reserve a room in a mental institution sometime soon.
Quite honestly, I feel that I left a piece of myself there last year. A piece that, who knew, wasn't opposed to drinking daiquiris at ten in the morning.

Leaving Mexico last year was tough, to say the least.
We took the kids to the beach, dug our heels into the sand, looked up at the sun.
"Feel the sun on your face," I told the kids. "And try to remember that feeling," I said, knowing that we would return home to a city blanketed in snow, amidst a winter that was dark and oppressive and unrelenting.

Later, as our cab pulled away from the resort, Payton looked up at me, tears threatening to spill from her eyes, her chin wobbling.  I squeezed her hand, and she smiled at me through the tears, a sad sort of smile, which made me start crying, which made her start laughing. "Mom! You're crying!"
And then we were both laughing and crying all at the same time.
"We won't say good bye," I told her. "We'll say "see you later!"
And only with that were we able to board the plane, and watch Mexico disappear beneath us.
I feel the need to go back there physically, viscerally.
Hopefully we will get there, somehow.