Co-op is the cheap way to go for a SAHM like me.  The parents are expected to put in ~ 8 hours of work for the school (on average) for a child who goes to class  12 hours/week; the cost is  ~$400-$700/month.  I’m looking at the places that are at $400 range first – considering that I’m surrounded by Albany, Berkeley, Kensington, and El Cerrito, the facilities are not bad.

I’ve only toured one school so far.  The one we toured today was the cheapest one in this area.  it has the feel and looks of Nathan’s school, but less structured and well maintained.  May was just observing everything at first, and then she quietly played by herself for a bit.  After we went out into the yard, May looked around, then asked if she could go back inside, and went inside alone, closing the door behind her.  I think she would do well there.  The school’s little library is actually run by a librarian, so all the books look very interesting, and they get updated very often. 

Tomorrow we’ll tour the 2nd one.  I should do something about the mountain of Son’s work clothes downstairs that are begging to be ironed….

everything is not in order, everything is chaos

but hey, who cares, I’m now the head of this household, and no one is here to nag me.  The breadwinner comes crawling back from work late at night with barely enough energy to shove some food into his mouth before he calls it quit and retreats to bed – I’m not even kidding about this.   We’ll play 2012 by ear and see if we can redress this situation.

Son just recently purchased an additional insurance that I don’t think anyone else in my family might have, basically covering everything we can possibly think of, because it’s been brought to our attention that people are more prone to suing when they learns of Son’s job title.  He was on the phone with the insurance representative for a good hour or so, answering questions like “what’s the total worth of your household possession?”  The national average is 15-20K.  I think our stuffs are worth less than 5K.  I was counting on interests and creditcard cashback to feed my online shopping habit, but this insurance is eating a chunk out of that, gah.