I'm in the wrong middle-class!

I didn't think such a thing was possible, but apparently - it is. See, in *my* middle-class, we are shopping second-hand stores for clothes for the kids. We are having "freezer week", in which we work on cleaning out the food in the freezer, because we just don't have much money to be buying a ton of groceries. We have to decide what is more important - me having more than one bra, or paying the bills (I don't like bras anyway...). And quite frankly, in *my* middle-class, we couldn't really care less about what the stock market is doing, because our problems exist in the here-and-now with the basic, everyday kind of things.

Oh, and lest I forget, we certainly cannot afford custom-made glasses where the frames ALONE run, at a *minimum*, $375. I happen to be the one in the family who needs glasses, and I am still wearing ones we purchased 5 1/2 years ago. The purchase price was a little under $300, but that included the lenses. I just got another pair of glasses (because, really - it's foolish to have only one pair when you need them for everything and you have two children, two kittens, and a clumsy dog)...those cost $125, including lenses. See, that's all we can afford.

So, I must be in the wrong middle-class, because Sarah Palin says she's from "middle-class America", and yet she had an income of $170,000 dollars last year! No, I did not add any extra zeroes. The year before? THAT must have been her middle-class year...oh, but wait...no, she still made $130,000. Dang. I guess that explains how she can afford those pretty custom-made glasses. Like the rest of her soccer-mom, middle-class America friends, right?

The Republican party decided to release those figures late last week, which apparently is the best time to try and get things buried. Traditionally, people don't pay much attention to the news on Fridays or the weekend. Well, no wonder! We're busy banging our heads against the wall, trying to figure out how we can afford Christmas this year, pay the bills, afford gas, and still be able to have an occasional fun time with the kids. So while the Republican party is trying to hide the fact that Sarah Palin's version of "middle-class" includes an income that most of America could only dream about, the rest of us "middle-class" folk are just trying to survive.

So. Where's the sign-up sheet for Palin's version of middle-class? 'Cause I must have missed it, and I'd really like to fix that...then maybe I could afford those pretty glasses too.