And the Winner is…. September 14, 2009

Crap!  It’s me.  I won.  Dangit!

I won something on eBay and I really wish I hadn’t.  I bid on the item, that really had quite a good price, but I made the fatal, well, ok not fatal but certainly costly mistake of not checking the price for shipping first.   Upon checking the shipping cost I realized why the item was still so reasonably priced, why I was the first and ultimately only bidder.  The seller was trying to make their money not from the item itself but from charging at least five times what it will actually cost them to send it.

See, the item is a rock climbing harness (something that I probably shouldn’t be buying anyway.  I have been climbing quite a bit lately anything to get me out of the house and away from the kids and I intend to continue to do so, it’s a great full body workout and well, really fun, but you can’t climb alone and the gal I go with has a spare harness so I don’t really need my own what I really need are climbing shoes but they’re considerably more expensive.)  and the weight, or lack thereof, of a harness is an important feature, a feature that is easy to ascertain for the most part and even if one can’t find the exact specs for the harness that they were looking at on, say eBay, they could certainly find comparable harness and see that they weighed under a pound and it doesn’t take a postal employee to tell you that it doesn’t cost $15 to mail a small 15 oz item from Washington state to Utah.  Hypothetically speaking of course.

I hate it when people do this!  I think it’s immoral, they list an item for a low low price just counting on some idiot (in this case that would be me) coming along and bidding without reading the fine print.  I understand that it’s a great way to get your stuff sold and to make a little cash but at what expense really?  It’s not theft technically, but it is slight of hand (which I like as well as the next girl when it comes to magic tricks) it’s sneaky and underhanded and … wrong.  (Yes, I get that it’s my responsibility to read all the fine print before I bid, I get my responsibility in all this but … well, if you cna’t see it then there’s no explaining it to you.)

As soon as I realized that the shipping cost was what it was I began hoping that I would be outbid, I thought that the chances of that were pretty good, I only bid 1 cent over the asking price afterall, and people don’t win $90+ climbing harnesses for $25 right?  You already know the answer to that so we’ll move on. (The answer is no they don’t, they win $90+ climbing harnesses for $40.)  Obviously I was not outbid.

Upon winning I did send an email to the seller asking if they’d be willing to come down on the shipping but I’m not holding out a lot of hope and as I told them, if they won’t come down I’ll go ahead and pay in full since I did bid and not paying what I promised to pay is also not exactly right (I might have mentioned this before here or here or… anyway) but either way I am the owner of two new climbing harnesses.

Did I forget to mention that just after I bid on the harness on eBay I found a brand new harness at REI.com for $30 with free shipping and (either thinking that I would surely be outbid or forgetting altogether about the harness I was in the process of buying on eBay (it was 2 in the morning, my thought processes were not exactly linear) or some kind of combination of the two) I bought it?  Whoops.

Hey, anyone want to go climbing with me?  I’ll supply the harness.

What Drives My Road Rage August 1, 2009

I’m a pretty calm driver, not much given to road rage or maddened careening and cutting off of my fellow drivers.  (My episodes of road rage mostly culminate in a shouted “you are a MORON!” and the occasional hand signal (unless you’re my mother in which case I never resort to hand signals, I don’t even know what that means).

Actually, in the interest of full disclosure (and so that this post makes some sense) I should point out that I’m not particularly prone to road rage directed at other drivers.  The radio on the other hand, well that’s another matter entirely.

I’ve mentioned my annoyance at certain radio commercials before but there’s a new one that drives me up the wall.  It’s a debt consolidation  commercial as the majority of the really offensive commercials are (followed closely by diet commercials and then those for used car dealerships) and the thing that gets me is the reasoning, laid out step by step as if it’s the most logical thing in the world and it’s a wonder that I didn’t come up with it on my own.  It goes something like this: 1. the credit card companies have been “sticking it to you” (that’s a quote) for long enough.  2. Now the government is bailing them out 3. so you shouldn’t have to pay them.

In his book On Writing Stephen King said something to the effect of, no writer should ever say “I just can’t express it in words” because we’re writers and that’s what we do, express things in words (so if you find that you can express it in dance, I guess it’s time to switch careers).  I think Steve’s a pretty smart guy, and he certainly knows his craft so I’m not going to disagree with him.  But I am going to continue to call myself a writer (of sorts) while professing that I don’t think I can express how much the above line of reasoning irritates me.

Let’s take it apart shall we?

1. The credit card companies have been “sticking it to you” for long enough.  Exactly how are the credit card companies “sticking it to you?”  You got a contract, it was your responsibility to read said contract (I know that none of us really does but whose fault is that?) you signed said contract therefore you are obligated to abide by said contract.  I’ve gotten, skimmed and signed my fair share of these contracts and without exception the deal is something like this, well lend you money and you ‘ll have to pay it back with interest.  The amount of interest varies as do some of the penalties but well, that’s the deal.  Now I’m not the champion of the credit card companies, in fact I think that the entire money lending industry is evil and immoral. (Except what you do Chris, you are in the only decent sector of the whole evil thing and even your sector has been run by a lot of immoral folk more interested in making money than helping their customers for the majority of … well forever.)   But the morality (or lack thereof) aside, they are pretty straight forward in what they do and what they expect.

Now, I’ve been on the wrong side of credit card penalties.  A few years ago I missed two credit card payments to two different credit cards.  (I had written them in my checkbook, I had entered them on the spreadsheet I just hadn’t actually sent the payments.)  As soon as I realized my mistake, and make no mistake about it, it was MY mistake, I called both companies to see if they would waive my penalties (they’ll do that sometimes).  Company A.  said, “no problem, we’ll take that late fee right off and have a nice day.”  Company B said “we’ll take off part of the late fee but it’s still going to cost you about $30.  The amount owing to that particular company was only about $12 if I remember correctly (which I probably don’t) so I wasn’t too happy about that but well, I signed the contract, I made the mistake, so I put on my big girl panties and paid the bill (and then promptly closed the account) all the while vilifying company B and praising company A.  Until I got my next bill in which credit card A, the card with, up until that point, the lowest interest rate of any of my cards, and saw that my little bitty interest had suddenly gone from something like 9% to 32.5%.  I wasn’t happy about it.  The rate was too high, the bill was more than I could pay and I ended up refininacing my house because of it, but not once did I suppose that the credit card company was at fault.  They weren’t sticking it to me, they were running a business.  Is there anyone out there that views credit card companies as anything other than sharks?  I doubt it.  So here’s a tip, swim with the sharks and you’ll occasionally get bit(ten).

2. Now the government is bailing them out. Now I’m not really in favor of bailouts of any kind, but well, you’ve got a company that you promised to pay later so that you could have that new pair of jeans now so they paid the store that had the jeans and you took them home but when it came time to actually pay for the jeans you, well not YOU necessarily but a lot of people, refused to pay.  That leaves the company out of that cash and without the jeans.  I think they deserve one or the other and I wonder how most consumers would feel about having their lattes repossessed?

3. So you shouldn’t have to pay them. What? Please someone tell me how this makes sense!  Other people didn’t pay causing the company to nearly go bankrupt, resulting in a government bailout because the government’s not going to let one of its country’s major industries (and make no mistake, Credit is one of the county’s major industries) implode, so now, even though you had been paying up until now, you shouldn’t have to any more.  Gaaaaa!!!!!!

Can we please stop being victims and take a little, just a tiny bit of responsibility for our actions?!

I’m not trying to condemn those who get themselves into credit trouble, as I mentioned before, I’ve been there.  Nor am I saying that it’s somehow wrong to try to work out a deal with your credit card companies to get your rates lowered, maybe come up with a new, lower one time pay-off amount, I’ve done that too, and I took the credit hit for it.  But I never once thought that it was the credit company’s fault.  The fault, well, I suddenly find myself wanting to quote Shakespeare.

A Movie, a Book, and an Announcement February 19, 2009

I’m not pregnant.

Let’s just get that out out of the way right now, because apparently that’s the only news a married Mormon woman in her 20s or 30s can have, but that’s not my news.

Moving on.

I watched “the Pursuit of Happyness” last night.  It wasn’t my first time through but I found that I was bothered by the same thing this time that bothered me on my first watching (That isn’t always the case you know, sometimes those things don’t bother you the second time through or sometimes you realize that you missed something the first time or…) first of all, it’s one of the more depressing movies ever made.  A single father with his kid spending the night on the floor of the subway bathroom, give me a break!  But that’s not my real problem with the movie.  The thing is, he doesn’t spend the movie pursuing happiness, or even happyness, he spends the movie pursuing money.

Now I get that while we all know that money doesn’t buy happiness it does actually contribute greatly to it when you’re to the living in the bathroom in the subway station kind of poverty.  But well, they wouldn’t have been living in the bathroom in the subway station if he’d have g gotten a job.  I’m pretty sure that McDonalds was hiring, even in the 80s.

Of course then we couldn’t have all the touchy feely follow your dreams lessons that we get from the movie, never mind that it would be a really crappy boring movie, but a lot of me thinks that when you have a kid to feed and clothe and protect from pedophiles, maybe your dreams aren’t quite as important as all that.

Anyway, what I’m saying is that he meets this guy who drives a nice car and that’s all he knows about him.  He doesn’t know if he’s happy, he doesn’t know if his wife just left him because he was sleeping with his secretary, he doesn’t know if he’s contemplating suicide (rich people do you know) all he knows is that he drives a nice car.  So he puts himself and his son through hell so that he can too.  Doesn’t that make you all warm and fuzzy?

Speaking of money-

I recently finished reading “How To Debt-Proof Your Marriage” by Mary Hunt.  I loved loved loved it for the first three quarters of the book.

The first third of the book is really a lot more about marriage than it is about money and while it wasn’t information that I particularly needed (a lot of her suggestions were things that I was already doing (Dangit, I’m a good wife!)) it was pretty good and she made some really good points.  (Why is it that we’re more comfortable talking about anything, ANYTHING in our society than we are money?) Seriously, sex v. money, which would you rather discuss?

After the marriage advice she started talking about how to manage your money.

First- Give away 10%. Oo, I like this.  It sounds sort of… familiar.  Now she’s not Mormon, the book was written from a non-denominational point of view (if I had to guess, I’d say some sort of protestant, not quite praise Jesus enough to be baptist, maybe episcopalian)  but she does say that the first 10% belongs to the Lord and so you ought to give it back, not necessarily to a church but to some sort of charity or worthwhile cause.  I can get behind that, I thought, go on.

Second- Save 10%. She says that we should have saved somewhere in a fairly liquid account, enough money to live on for 3 (it should be 6) months.  This one’s a little harder for me.  It’s advice I’ve heard millions of times (including in the sealing room just before I was married (and from a really rich guy, no less))  and it’s even advice that I follow.  Sort of.  Unfortunately, the money that I save for two months inevitably goes to covering the power bill in the third month.  Still, hearing it again and seeing her put a number on it (she says $10,000 although the book was a bit dated and I don’t think that is very reflective of 3 months income for most families today) helped me to rededicate myself to this idea and resolve that I WILL DO IT!

Third- Bills. You’re supposed to compile all your bills.  Regular monthly bills like water and power are easy, irregular bills like car repairs and home improvement expenses are harder.  Monthly bills should be reduced if possible but then paid as usual.  A separate bank account should be opened for irregular bills (she calls it a freedom account and while that’s fairly descriptive, I also think it’s pretty lame so I’m going to call it … something cool) and then money should be regularly deposited into that account for those things.  Figure out how much you spent on car repairs last year, add a few dollars (your car is another year older after all) and divide by 12.  That’s how much you should put aside for car repairs.  The same goes for clothing, gifts, Christmas, whatever.  Ingenious.

Yes, I know it’s obvious but some of us need it spelled out in a little different way.  Shut up.

There’s also a plan in there for paying down debt, pay exactly what you’re paying now on all cards regardless of how the minimum payment go down and once you have one paid off apply that amount to the next card and so on, you’ve heard it before.  It’s a good plan.

This is the point where the book sort of fell apart for me.  Part of it, of course, is that I had unrealistic desires.  What I wanted, what I think everybody who picks up a book like this wants, is for her to give me some magic formula for spending less money without my actually having to, you know, spend less money.  Instead she talks about reducing spending.  WHAT?! I’ve got to say, at this point I was not much of a fan of Ms. Hunt’s.

Luckily I stuck with her long enough to read that we should not over-pay our taxes.

Again, this is something that I’ve heard countless times before.  And I flatly ignored it.  I viewed income tax as my involuntary savings plan.  And it worked, sort of.  Every year when I do the taxes we get money back.  A lot of money back. and that money nearly always goes to paying off a credit card that we had to use because we had to have the car fixed a month earlier.  (Maybe I should have mentioned up-front that we really don’t carry much debt, it’s just the unexpected car problems or plumbing bill that isn’t a part of our normal spending that we end up putting on credit cards. And we usually pay it off within a few months.)  She also made a big point throughout the book of telling you that you do not need to make more money, you just need to live within your means.  Whatever?!

The final chapter is called something like “finding money you didn’t know you had” but it really should be called “just don’t read this chapter because it will turn you off to my whole system because here I’m going to teach you how to be really cheap which involves a lot of self deprivation which obviously you’re not a fan of or you wouldn’t be in so much debt in the first place, stupid”.

No really, it’s comprised of some, I’m sure, great money saving techniques but to anyone who actually needs the book to get out of serious debt it’s going to be a tough pill to swallow.  It includes things like, scour the grocery ads every week and buy only the stuff on sale. (Who has time to really study that stuff and then go to three stores?) She devotes a paragraph or two to getting cheap internet (dial-up what?  Not a chance, you saw what happened to me when I needed a cord, can you even imagine what I would do if I needed a phone line?)  She talks about spending less on groceries, spending less on cleaning supplies, spending less on your car … by getting rid of it, or, buying a used domestic car (used, I can get behind, domestic not so much (she argues that domestic cars are cheaper to repair.  She may be right but for my money my Honda or Toyota requires fewer repairs than her Dodge.)(said the girl who drives a Mazda.)) be patient, save the money first, go without, crazy stuff like that.

In all honesty I think that the last chapter in the book was a mistake on her part.  It’s all good advice but a little, no a lot, distasteful to someone unused to focusing on saving, and maybe slightly offensive (not a good idea to tell people that they’re crazy/stupid to want to buy a brand new car) and it’s liable to kill any remaining desire the possibly newly financially responsible person has to actually be financially responsible.  It almost did that for me.

But her ideas kept rattling around in my head.  (There’s not much more in there after all.)  Until I put together the fact that I get a lot of my own money back when I do the taxes (enough that in theory we could have had an extra $750/ month last year) and if I had all that money all year then the credit card to buy the tires would not have been necessary.

So I think we’re going to try it.

Hey, speaking of making more money, even though I was assured I didn’t need to, I keep looking at my three little boys and thinking that before too long they’re going to be three teenaged boys and somebody’s going to have to feed them.  So, I’m going back to school.

Ayudame Por Favor February 4, 2009

Hey, I need some info about church courts.  It’s for a book I’m writing, nothing to worry about.  Anyway, if you know anything about how this stuff works and would be willing to help a girl out let me know in the comments or you can email me a h.alisonwonderland@gmail.com

Thanks for your support.

And for you who are selfish and unwilling to help me in my time of need can’t help me I’ll leave you with the annoying things I heard on the radio this morning in no particular order.

Commercials.

1. Announcer: Are you drowning in debt?  Are you unable to make the payments on your house? your car? or your credit cards? It’s not your fault!

Me: Um, yes, YES IT IS!

(No offence intended to those in debt.  Despite multiple warnings and exhortations to the contrary I am in debt myself (Although I  am perfectly able to make the payments.  So far.)  but I am also fully aware that it is MY OWN DARN FAULT!!!!)

2. Announcer: The average person gained 15 lbs over the holidays.

Me: 15 lbs?  No stinkin’ way.  The average person who stopped by your weight loss center?  Sure.  But there is now way that the average person went up 3 dress sizes over the course of November and December.  And that ’s just the average.  I only gaind 2 or 3 if any ( I don’t own a scale and if I did I wouldn’t use it) so to make up for me there’s someone out there who gained 28?  Nope.  Flat out, not true.

3. Announcer: ARE YOU DRIVING A CAR YOU DON’T LOVE?  ARE THE PAYMENTS HIGHER THAN YOU’D LIKE?  HERE AT PICK YOUR USED CAR DEALERSHIP WE CAN GET YOU INTO THE CAR OF YOUR DREAMS REGARDLESS OF YOU CREDIT HISTORY!

Me: I get that you’re just trying to make a living here, and I can respect that.  And while I may not like your methods or the fact that you prey on those who are perpetually irrespnsible with their money (see above note about my debt), I can get past that too.  But really WILL YOU JUST STOP YELLING AT ME?!!!

More Virtual Randomosity February 2, 2009

I’m thinking about pinching the Infantile Delinquent this morning just to see if he could possibly whine any more.  I’d be surprised.

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A conversation with the neighbor kid:

Neighbor Kid: “I didn’t ever went there.”

The Pea: “You didn’t ever go there.”

The Princess: “You need to learn your grammar.”

Probably both rude things to say but I still couldn’t have been prouder.

________________________________________

Remember this post?  Oh and this one?  About how the elementary school is teaching my kids to buy on credit.

Well, I have this friend who we’ll call Keidi (hi Heidi) who got a bill from her daughter’s private school the other day.  For $181.00.  A HUNDRED AND EIGHTY ONE DOLLARS!!!!!!!!  It seems that Keidi’s six year old has chosen to not eat the lunch lovinly provided by her mother every day, all year.  And the school didn’t bother to let Keidi know until now.

The $1.40 that I owe periodically for my kids is one thing but there’s no way I would pay $200 that my child’s elementary school let my six year old charge.  NO WAY!!!!

________________________________________

I met Cheryl and Annette the other day.

I invited them over for book club.  We read one of Annette’s books and she was our featured guest (and I wanted to meet Cheryl so I used that as an excuse) both ladies were absolutely delightful.

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One of my neighbors had a yard sale yesterday and I saw, as I drove home from church, that they had a big old table for sale.  I really want that table (since I’ve ruined my own) but I made the better choice and didn’t shop on the Sabbath.  All I’m saying is that I expect some blessings for that (like maybe them still having the table.  And the dressers they had out there. For really cheap.)

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Happy Monday Everyone!

I’m Not Even Getting Paid For This January 7, 2009

I locked in a 5% interest rate for my mortgage today.  5%!   That’s a freaking fantastic rate!

I know the market’s crappy and you’ve lost all the money in your 401K, (who hasn’t?) but apparently that’s a good thing for mortgage rates.  (Something about the fed wanting us to spend money so they lower interest rates which makes it so that I can get rid of my old rate and get a new really really low one, which of course in the end means that I spend less money rather than more but whatever.)  But I’d recommend getting on that.

Because I’m a super kind caring person, and because I love my brother, I’m going to tell you about how you can do it too.

See, my oldest brother (remember this guy) is a mortgage broker and he’s fantastic and he has this thing called rate watch where you tell him what kind of rate you want and he calls you when the market hits that number.  It’s that simple.

And the thing is, that even if we didn’t share a lot of DNA I’d still want to work with this guy.  Seriously, this is classic Chris and this and this.  Even if you have no interest in refinancing click, read, these are great blog-posts, or just go over to his blog and read through the archives, look for the long posts, they’re worth reading, I mean it!  (And they’re not just marketing, he believes it, he really does.) Who wouldn’t want to work with a guy who feels that way about family and God and helping others?

He’s based in Utah but he can help you no matter where you live so seriously, you should give him a call, (801) 787-2162 ask for Chris or an email chris@thechrisjonesgroup.com, or just go here and sign up for ratewatch (it’s on the right of your screen).  I promise you won’t regret it.

Revisited July 28, 2008

For those of you who are new to the Wonderland please read this post before you read this post.

School started today.  The Princess went off to begin third grade and the Pea headed out to first grade.  His first full day of school, morning and afternoon.  And that means one thing: lunch.

His lunch was packed with care by his older sister (she beat me to it, it was made before I got up) he had a juice box and a sandwich (peanut butter and jelly on a hot dog bun), he had a nectarine.  I even added a little baggie of carrots.

So he went off to school and guess what.

HE DIDN’T EAT HIS LUNCH!!!  HE “BOUGHT” LUNCH AT SCHOOL!!!!!

He was told at the beginning of the day to put his backpack in his locker.  He did.  Apparently not many kids bring their lunches to school or possibly he wasn’t paying attention (I’m sure that wasn’t it) but whatever happened he didn’t end up going back to his locker to get his lunch.  “They made me get the school’s lunch,”  he said when he got home.

*Deep Breath*

Since it was the first day of school many forms and permission slips were sent home.  Amongst them I found one for free and reduced price lunches.  We don’t qualify for either but I’m sending it back anyway.  See:And when they send me the bill for the lunch that the Pea ate today I’m taking a page out of Lisa M’s book (I linked to her blog but she gave me the idea on the last post of this nature.  Somehow I’ve failed to follow the link to her blog and read it before now.  I plan to rectify that oversight.) and declaring it an unautorized expendeture.  I will not pay it! You think they’ll get the message?

PS Bonus points to the first person who figures out what the phone number on the form is.

Hey, Let’s Go To the Mall! June 30, 2008

When I got up this morning I dressed for construction.  Before the day was far spent I had been to the lumber yard, with the Pea and Irish1. Whatever possessed me to think that taking a five and a two year old boy to the lumber yard was a good idea I don’t know.  Needless to say, it wasn’t.  We left there with not enough joist hangers (to hang 5 joists you need ten hangers, not five) so we went back and got five more only to discover when we got home that they were the wrong ones (all of them) after all.  I haven’t been back yet.

I got home and cleaned.  And measured in preparation for cutting rim joists (not nearly as dirty as it sounds) and I nursed and yelled at the Pea and listened to Irish1 whine and ignored Irish2 crying (why won’t he just go to sleep?) and just did all my normal day stuff. But by about 5:00 (I say about because I had no way of knowing what time it actually was) I was done. D-O-N-E. Done.

So I handed the kids over to Sean and headed for the mall, a place which despite being located at the end of my street (just past the Costco) I hadn’t been to in at least three years, to replace the battery in my watch which had stopped working nearly two weeks ago (I hate not knowing what time it is) or possibly to just replace the watch itself, since I don’t really love it.  I was still dressed for construction, orange “Spartans” softball t-shirt I stole from a girl-friend in high school, denim shorts, no makeup.  Not the look I would have chosen but I wasn’t spending another minute at home even if it meant I went out looking like white trash.

The store closest to my home is a largish department store.  I’ll call it Nacey’s.  It was close, it was convenient and they sell watches, and presumably batteries, so I went in.

Ahhhh.  It was quiet.  It was clean.  No one referred to me as Mom mom mom mom mom.  It may have been heaven.  I went in for the battery, possibly a watch. But since I was already there- I really did need another pair of shorts, this long length that’s currently in style is highly convenient to a card carrying Mo like myself, I really ought to take advantage while I can.  And I realized as I got dressed this morning that I’ve lost a whole stack of shirts that I took out of my drawers last time I was pregnant.  So I’m low on shirts.  And did I mention that it was quiet and clean?

So I wandered around.  I picked up a couple pairs of shorts.  I made it to the watch counter.

Oooooh, look how pretty.  Wow I really like this one.  And it has a crystal face, a must, (I’m very hard on my watches) and it’s titanium, (I’m very very hard on my watches) and it has a cool metal mesh band that is infinitely adjustable, unlike the metal link ones, that always end up either too long or too short, or the  leather ones that stretch and wear out. (Did I mention how hard I am on my watches?)  And it’s so pretty.  And it’s $130.00.  Eeek.

I really do wear and love my watches (I say watches but I ought to make it clear that I only own one functioning watch at a time, I’m not the kind of girl that has a different watch to match her outfit.)  I probably get $130.00 worth of use out of them but- I couldn’t do it.  I couldn’t bring myself to pay $130.00 for a watch.  “I’ll think about it,” I told the woman at the counter.  I continued wandering the store.

8 days ago we took Irish1 to the ER for stitches.  He’s fine.  It’s not an interesting story so I won’t bother telling it, except for the part where he refused to stand on the scale.  So I held him and stood on the scale and then I handed him off to Sean and stood on the scale again.  I honestly couldn’t even begin to guess what Irish1 weighed.  But I know what I did. 117 lbs.  117.2 to be exact.  117 lbs!!!!  I don’t think I’ve been this skinny EVER! (Go ahead and hate me, I’m too thin for it to bother me.)  I weighed more that that by a minimum of five pounds when I was in high school.

So why is it that now that I’m at the smallest I’ve ever been, and let’s face it, the smallest I’m ever gonna be, maternity shirts are the height of fashion?!!  The high waists, the flowing lengths, come on people!  My stomach’s never gonna be this flat again, can’t I show that off?  Just a little?  I’m not looking for a bikini top here, I’m not even into showing my midriff, (aside from the undergarment issue there’s the fact that skinny does not equal anything in terms of muscle tone, or skin color) but I’d like something slightly form fitting.  Is that too much to ask?

Apparently it is.

I grabbed a couple possibilities from the little boy’s department (my secret source of cute, cheap t-shirts) and with my shorts and a skirt (the only one for under $50 I had seen ) headed for the fitting room.  One of the pairs of shorts was OK.

Alright, so I wasn’t doing fantastically but the shorts weren’t too expensive ($24) so having to look at myself, partially dressed, in the horribly unflattering light (fluorescent?  Really?  Don’t you want me to think I look good so I’ll buy something?) hadn’t been a complete waste of time.

I thought.

I really did need to get a watch.  I was trying to justify the $130.00.  I headed back to the watch counter and looked around.  There was a clearance rack on the counter, 40% off.  And there it was.  Angels sang, trumpets trumpeted and light shone from heaven right onto my watch, the same one I had loved before, in the clearance box.

“Um, can I see this one?” I asked.  The same woman (who now that I think about it may not have been my biggest fan since I kinda got her hopes up before about making a big sale and then I walked away.  But honestly, how could I have done any different?  They tuck the price tags under so you can’t get even an inkling of the price until they unlock the display case.  And how much could she have believed I was gonna buy it?  She could see what I was wearing, I was the walking definition of low budget.) unlocked this display case and handed me the watch.  Yes, it was the same one.  Titianium, crystal, pretty.

“What’s the clearance price on this?”  I asked, unable to do the math in my head what with all the excitement.

“Let’s see how it rings up,” she says.

“It’s $130.00,” she says.

“But it’s on clearance.”

“No, it’s not, I guess someone put it away in the wrong place.”

That’s it?  Yup, that was it.  I probably could have fought it, asked to see the manager.  I know suburbancoorespondant would have but I was too deflated by this point.  I had been considering paying the full price but after seeing it at 40% off (and having that little dream snatched away) I couldn’t even consider it.  I took my shorts and wandered off to buy them.

I went to five different “service centers.”  Apparently the woman at the watch counter is the only person who works at Nacey’s.  I found a rack, hung up my shorts and left.

I glanced around a few other stores in the mall, $50 for that?  It’s not even a whole shirt, really?  Who buys this stuff?

There was a kiosk in the middle of the mall.  It had a sign that said they replaced watch batteries on site.  There were some watches for sale too.  They weren’t cute.  “I give a discount for Spartans,” the man working there said.

I walked away.

But let’s face it, this trip was not going to end well.  I walked back.  “How much for a new battery in my watch?”

“$8.00 but for you I’ll do it for 7.”

I’m sure I could have talked him down to 5.  I paid 7 and walked straight through Nacey’s looking neither to the right nor to the left (5,000,000 because I can’t remember) on my way home.

I now remember why I haven’t been to the mall in three years.   I think I’ll stick with Zarget.

Credit Card: REVOKED! May 28, 2008

I cut up the Princess’s credit card yesterday.

No, obviously not an actual credit card, she’s only 8, geez how crazy do you think I am? It’s a metaphor. Make yourself comfy and I’ll tell you the whole story.

Nearly two years ago I sent to Princess off to her first full day of school. She was a big girl, she was in first grade, she was six. Being the exemplary mother that I am, I packed her newly purchased Disney Princess lunch-box with a healthy, nutritious lunch, I even wrote her a loving note on the napkin just like the mothers of the girls who weren’t me always did when I was growing up and I wished my mother did too (in her defense my mother may have done something like that when I was in grade school had she made my lunch, but since lunch making was one of the morning chores for myself or one of my six siblings she wasn’t really in a position for writing napkin notes.) I loving placed said Disney princess lunch-box in my darling daughter’s Disney princess backpack and sent her off on the bus to school.

Fast forward a few hours and I got a phone call from the Princess. She had hurt her arm- that’s right she needed first aid in the first grade (10,000)- So I went to the school and picked her up. As we were driving home I asked, “did you like the lunch I made you?”

“I didn’t eat it.”

“What do you mean you didn’t eat it?”

“I went through the line and they gave me pizza.”

Pause. “Sweetheart, they don’t just give you food, you have to buy food and you didn’t have any money.”

“They said I could bring money tomorrow.”

And so began my daughter’s education in buying on credit. SHE WAS SIX!!!!!

I realize that it was only $1.20 but that is SO not the point. The point is that the school, an institution I’m trusting to teach my daughter, has just taught her that she can get what she wants now and pay for it later. Gone are the days of sending your kid to school with lunch money which they handed over to the cashier at the end of the lunch-line. Now you send money in to the schools and it goes in your child’s account. they they go get their lunch and give the “cashier” their account number. I’m completely serious.

In the intervening nearly two years Sean and I have done what we could to disabuse her of the notion that she can’t just get lunch on credit to no avail. She is currently in charge of making her own lunch, something she does about four days a week. The other days I plan for and send money. But some days she makes herself a lunch and she doesn’t eat it!! She just eats in the cafeteria. And the school sends notes home telling us that we owe them money.

And they’re mean about it, collection agencies have nothing on Unnamed Elementary for getting their money. They take the Princess out of class and have her call home to remind- by remind I mean tell, since the note that they sent home with the Princess is still in her backpack- us that we owe 20 cents. 20 CENTS!!!! You’re calling me at home to demand 20 cents?!!!!! Is the school system really that hard up? (Again not the point but I couldn’t help but mention it.)

But we can’t not pay it. We live in a very… (how do I put this?) non-affluent area. There are a lot of kids at that school who are on reduced or free lunch, there are a lot of kids there for whom the meal(s) they eat at school are the best meals they’ll get all week. We can afford the lunch, we can afford one for her and one for a friend. I would just like to afford it ahead of time.

Yesterday I got my big break. Instead of the Princess calling me about money owed, the “lunch secretary” (I kid you not) called. “The Princess didn’t bring her lunch today and she’s going on a field-trip but she already owes $1.00.”

“I didn’t know about the $1.00 (I really need to be better about making her clean out her backpack when she gets home) but I was actually aware that she didn’t bring her lunch today. The note that was sent home about the field-trip said that lunch would be provided.”

“It’s provided but it’s not free.”

Am I stupid that I thought “Lunch will be provided” meant that it was free? It’s ok, you can tell me if I am. But If I had known that I would have had her make a lunch. (No, it’s not about the $1.20, it’s about the fact that I’ve never been that impressed with the nutritional content of the school’s lunches anyway- tater tots are not a vegetable)

“Ok, well since I misunderstood could you go ahead and give her lunch today but since I have you on the phone can I request that you not extend credit to her.”

“So if she doesn’t have money you just want her … to go … hungry?” Asked the lunch secretary clearly aghast at the very idea.

“YES!!!”

She’s a sturdy girl, one missed lunch isn’t going to hurt her and maybe we can undo a little of the damage you have done by giving my six-year-old a credit card. I guess we should have called the school to ask for this before. I’ll admit the idea did occasionally occur to me but I didn’t think there was any chance that they’d go for it. Now that I know they will, well let’s just say that the Pea will be eating the lunch I make him on his first day of first grade.

Run Faster Than a Locamotive, Jump Tall Buildings in a Single Bound April 14, 2008

I had a roommate in college who always told the greatest stories. They were interesting and funny and always came to the perfect entertaining conclusion. It wasn’t until we had lived together for about six months that I realized why that was.

She was telling a story to some mutual friends when I realized that I had been there when that particular anecdote happened. And it hadn’t happened the way she was telling it. Not that it was completely wrong, she had just rearranged a few things, added and deleted some details, that kind of thing. I realized this about the time she was bringing her story to the perfect humorous conclusion and I turned to her and said, “that’s not how that happened.”

“I know,” she replied, without batting an eye, “but I like the story better this way.”

Bear that in mind when reading my posts, the way I write it may not be exactly the way it happened but I like the story better this way. Besides, I’m a novelist, not an essayist. What do you expect?

(There was some discussion on MMW about the following and kids here, I don’t think I chimed in then but I did know that Sean has some weirdness in this area. I just didn’t think it was quite this bad.)

I was going through the credit card statement yesterday, trying to figure out how on earth we could possibly owe as much as the number at the top says that we do, and I saw a few charges that I knew weren’t mine.

“$100 on Ebay?” I asked Sean.

“I bought some mumble mumble mumble,” he says. “But I’ve got some stuff I’m going to list.”

He’s always got some stuff he’s going to list. Sometimes he even lists it. Sometimes not. But I didn’t pursue it because another charge caught my eye.

“$72 to Nike.com?” I ask.

“Yeah,” Sean says, not elaborating.

“On what?” I ask.

“What? you want a bottle?” Sean’s attention is fixed on Irish1. He holds out his hand, Irish1 takes it and they exit the room.

About five minutes later when Irish1 is happily drinking his bottle. I ask again.

“$72 on Nike.com?”

“Here, let me load up the game for you.” He holds out his hand for the Princess and the Pea because obviously they can’t load a playstation 2 game on their own. And apparently doing so requires his whole concentration, because he still doesn’t answer me.

A few minutes later, the Princess and the Pea both happily occupied playing Sly 3, Irish1 happily drinking his bottle, I try again. “What did you buy on Nike.com for $72?”

“You remember,” he says “I bought those socks but they were the wrong ones so I sent them back and they sent me the right ones.”

I don’t remember, (who can keep track of his socks?) but this is one charge, not two and there’s no refund and recharge so apparently there was no difference in price on the “right” socks. Which means… he spent $72 on… SOCKS?!!!!! I’m grasping for something to say. Several very rude and sarcastic options come to mind. In the interest of my marriage I say nothing.

I can’t stop myself though, from mentioning it to my sisters on facebook. (We have a group there and we chat on a daily, if not hourly, basis.)

“How many socks?” They ask.

Well, that’s a good point maybe it was a lot of socks, I doubt it, but maybe it was.

So that night I ask him, “how many socks did you get for $72 on Nike.com?”

L-O-N-G pause. Sigh. “Eight,” he finally says.

8?? Eight!!!! There’s only one way 8 socks are worth $72.

“Do these socks give you superpowers?”

____________________________________________________

Ok, so that last part didn’t happen but the rest of it I promise, cross my heart and hope to die, is true. After he told me 8, OK it might have been 8 pair (which is still way too much to spend on socks) I actually didn’t say anything at all.

But I like the story better the other way.