Part of the reason it doesn't seem real is that we have been so busy, our minds on other things. The huge fundraising event for the kids' school that I'm involved in is this Friday, two days from now. I managed to sew 47 drawstring bags and another mom sewed 28, and I stuffed all 75 of them with candy and trinkets, so that's ready to go (we'll sell them for $5 each at the event). My latest assigned task is to buy 5 rolls of blue painter's tape. Then on Friday I have to work at the school from 2 to 5 to help set up, and from 7 to 8 as a cashier. From 5 to 7 I will float around, helping with what needs doing, and also (I hope) eating dinner, as served by Kid A. Kid A will be a waiter and Kid B will be a host. It will probably be a blast, but I'm very much looking forward to it being over.
Another thing that's been going on is a mild disaster -- Rocket Boy's blue Ford Escape hybrid died. This is the car he was planning to drive to St. Louis, so we are glad it died BEFORE he tried to do that. The car had been making a strange noise for a while and was finally determined to have rusted so much that the shocks separated from the body. His mechanic was very impressed and took a photo of the damage to show us. So we're selling him the car (for parts) for $300 and Rocket Boy is going to drive his dad's old Mitsubishi Montero to St. Louis instead. The Montero is 28 years old and not in great shape, but we spent $580 getting it into better shape and it should last the trip. I have been complaining about the Montero for years -- WHY do we still have this old car, we NEVER drive it, WHY do I have to keep paying for the registration and insurance? And now here we have the answer to all those questions: so we don't have to try to buy a new used car now, when we have no money and no time. Rocket Boy wins that round.The "no money" thing has been making itself really obvious of late. Rocket Boy needs to find a place to live in St. Louis, but it seemed too complicated to send him out there to house hunt. So instead he arranged an Airbnb for May 8-31, hoping to find a more permanent place to stay after that. It's a relatively cheap Airbnb, but it still cost over $800 for that time period. So we decided to put it on my credit card (RB hasn't had a credit card for many years). He hit "purchase" or whatever on the screen, and the Airbnb website magically lifted the $800 from our checking account, because he had his debit card listed as the default for payment. We tried to get the money back, but it would have taken 8-10 days. Fortunately we did have that much in our checking account, because the money from our rental house had just landed there. But we'd also mailed a check for $400 to our tax preparer a few days before. We didn't have $1200 in the account. After some major freaking out on my part, I begged our tax preparer not to cash her check, we arranged to sell some mutual funds, and nothing terrible ended up happening. But it was scary.
On a more pleasant note, a few days later it was Easter. I feel strongly that we are too old for egg hunts -- the kids of course do not believe in the Easter Bunny any more, etc., etc. But it's such a small investment for a substantial amount of fun. We save all the baskets, plastic grass, plastic eggs, and stuffed rabbits & birds from year to year -- I haven't bought anything new in ages. All we have to buy is candy -- and then hide everything. Rocket Boy and I have this down to a system. Each boy has five baskets and we have maybe 72 plastic eggs. I fill the baskets with grass and chocolate and hide them around the living room. Then together we put six jelly beans in each plastic egg (matching the color, if possible) and Rocket Boy hides them in every room in the house, including the bathroom, including the twins' room while they sleep, including our dresser drawers, including the microwave... When they get up on Easter morning, the hunt begins -- and it lasts and lasts for days and days, because it takes forever to find all the eggs. Kid B is the champion hunter, so Kid A spends a lot of time complaining, but it's still fun. Yesterday I bought a bag of half-price leftover jelly beans at the grocery store, and after the boos went to bed I sprinkled a few jelly beans in all the baskets again. This afternoon Kid B said, "I swear there weren't any jelly beans left in that basket," but I denied everything. It's fun. We also dyed a dozen hardboiled eggs, using dye that Rocket Boy saves from year to year in little water bottles. I should end this post and go make dinner -- we splurged on a ham and this will be the fourth night we've had it for dinner, but we do run out of sides and have to make more. We still have vegetables left, so I'm just going to make some biscuits. Oh, one more recent disaster -- on Sunday, the first night of the ham, I put some spicy mustard on my slice, dissolved into a coughing fit -- and threw out my back again. It's only been a month since the March back episode, so I obviously didn't heal properly from that. So I'm taking pain pills and trying to be careful about bending over and lifting things. And hoping for the best. What the heck I'm going to do when RB leaves and my back goes out again, I don't know. Burn that bridge when we come to it.
No comments:
Post a Comment