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July 24, 2007
 How odd
everything feels!
It's odd to me that I have not been
able to find the time to write in my journal since July 11, almost 2
weeks.
It's odd to me that I feel as though
I have been in constant motion ever since I last wrote and only just now
are things showing the prospect of slowing down.
It's odd to me that I have been back
from my trip for over a week and have barely written a single word about
it.
It's odd to me that I have memories
of a wonderful trip to the GHFCW and photos to support those memories, yet
it feels as though I never left.
I guess I'm right on track because my
horoscope for today says:
Although you are often very capable of
carefully adjusting your reality in order to make it even better,
something may be out of whack today. It's more difficult to maintain your
focus on the most crucial things; it's as if the controls have been placed
out of reach and you have to make it through the day without your usual
sharp perceptions. Instead of struggling to find reality, let your
imagination teach you what logic cannot.
I prefer
www.tarot.com
for daily horoscopes and they are dead on more often than not and will
email them out to you every day.
So I guess I'll just hang here in my
odd place; my nonreality.
The complications continued, but that
did not keep me from having a good time. Sure, the Mormons paid up
(God bless those Mormons), but Eric's bank put a 10 day hold on the check,
so he really doesn't get the money until tomorrow. He was able to
beg and squeal and give puppy dog eyes to cajole them into giving up
enough of the check to pay the mortgage, so that was good.
There were a few other financial
glitches along the way, but overall, I was able to do all I wanted to do
and had a really excellent time. I have to say, this was by far the best
GH Fan Club Weekend I've ever attended, bar none. A number of
factors came together to make it just kissed by the angels. The only
thing I would have changed (which I couldn't) is I would have left out the
next day and taken the rest of Sunday to rest up before coming home
because I had to hit the ground running on Monday.
The flight home was an absolute
bitch. We got to the airport really early. Our flight was due
to leave out at 9:30pm, but she got there around 7pm because Delena was
antsy. The flight ended up taking off over an hour late, so we were
at the airport forever and ever. Because the flight was so
delayed, they ended up moving us to another gate where another delayed
flight full of people was already hanging out, so there were no seats and
my back was killing me from standing all weekend, so I guess that ended up
being the only truly challenging part.
We got to the house around 1am and
were all so exhausted we could barely move the next day.
I have been doing the mail almost
ever since I got back. Eric had taken to giving me most days off
before I left, but this time, he had to get ready to complete stage 2 of
the Mormon job and could only do the Somerset route, which left Grizzly
for me. I didn't realize how spoiled I'd gotten on not doing the
mail until I was back to doing it again.
Since then, I don't feel like I've
had 2 minutes to sit down and when I do, it's to post other people's work
or do site maintenance. The bare bones is all I have been able to
accomplish, so off topic things tend to take a back seat while the real
work is done.
Poor Sage's site fell apart and I
helped him out a bit on the repair. It seems to be running well now.
Today is the first day that I have
felt anything close to being caught up. I spent 2.5 hours helping
the boys clean out their shithole room yesterday. I still don't
understand the thing all three of my kids do where they jam their dirty
clothes behind dressers and in boxes with other things and, of all things,
back into their clean clothes again. I pulled out a full load of
hidden filthy clothes from their room last night. It's not as though
they have to struggle to find a place to put them. There is always a
clothes basket right in their room that is specifically for dirty clothes
and *I* am the one who does their laundry, so it is a mystery as to why it
is under their bed and behind their dresser and desk or in the toy box.
That being done, the last load of
laundry is in the dryer as we speak and I will have clean clothes in
everyone's closet by the end of today. The house isn't terrible and
can be gotten to a pretty nice place with about an hour of basic cleaning.
I don't have to do anything outside
of the house other than a quick mail run until Friday, when (get this)
I have to do ALL of the mail, Somerset and Grizzly Flats. I am a
little nervous about this since A) I've never done it before and B) He has
about 4 times as many mailboxes as I have, meaning I'll be doing about 5
times as many boxes as usual and C) I'm not very familiar with his route.
I have a babysitting issue or a
vehicle issue attached to this situation, depending on how you look at it.
Either I have to find someone to watch the boys while I do the mail
delivery since the mail jeep is a 1 person ride or I have to find a
vehicle to use (Eric will have my jeep) that can fit the mail and the
boys.
Other than that, I am without dilemma
for the rest of the week to my knowledge and that is a good place to be.
The only thing I have planned for the
coming weekend is Burger Night on Friday night and then a birthday party
on Saturday. With any luck, I can keep the days open and
uncluttered.
GFORCE has finished bingo for the
summer and will resume again in October. We went out in a bang in a
couple of ways, at least for me, personally.
Since we started bingo in...I want to
say January...we have a tradition where we have a cute ceramic cookie jar
in the shape of a bear on the table where the bingo paper cards are
purchased. Most people want to win the cookie jar itself because
it's so precious. When you buy your cards, you can put a dollar in
the cookie jar and have your hand stamped. At the beginning of the
night's games, we pick a number out of the hopper and if you bingo on that
number any time the rest of the night, you win the money that's in the
cookie jar. If no one wins, it rolls over to the next month.
Over several months, it had built up
to a whopping $63 in ones and we'd made change out of it and such so that
when I pulled it down to take it out of the box for this month, there were
a couple of twenties, a couple of fives, a ten and a few ones in it.
I counted the money, noted the denominations in my head and put it on the
table as I was setting up.
On about game #2, I went out to the
table and checked the cookie jar so I could announce to people how much
it's worth now. We have people coming in late and buying cards
through the first couple of games, so we tend to wait a bit. When I
checked it, had $43 in it.
?!
It was light by a twenty and a five.
I called in the people who had been working the table (meaning nearly all
of GFORCE) and asked if anyone had made change from the cookie jar and
maybe not put the money back in from the cash box or something.
Nope.
Then Robin, the K-2 teacher and
principal of our school said, "But Nathan's hands were sure in the cookie
jar and he was going on about how much money was in there." Nathan,
for those of you who do not know (and all of you SHOULD know) is my son
who will be 8 in September, is completely money obsessed for reasons we
cannot fathom since he gets almost everything he wants anyway, and just
graduated out of Robin's class and will start Tanis' class (3-5) in just
under 3 weeks.
?!
"Where's the phone?"
I called up Eric and told him to pat
down Nathan and explained what had happened and he said he didn't have to
because Nathan had just come to him showing him his money.
...Of which he only had a couple of
dollars the day before.
So Eric grounded him off of having
any allowance whatsoever until January 1st and I pulled money out of my
purse, which I had by some miracle, and all was well.
I talked to Nathan about it the next
morning, and I swear to you, the kid is clueless. He has no idea why
what he did was wrong. When I asked him about it, he said, "So
who exactly does the money belong to." I told him it belongs to
GFORCE and we keep it there in case someone wins it. He countered
with, "So when I took it, it didn't belong to anyone, right?" "No,
it belonged to GFORCE." "But not a person, right?" ...and we went
around and around about that for a while. "If you found $20 in my
purse, would you take it?" "Of course not, because it belongs to
you." "If you found $20 in the school's kitchen on the counter,
would you take it?" "No, because it would be someone's lunch money
that they lost." Then he asks me, "If you found $20 on the sidewalk
and no one was around, would you take it?"
He wasn't making it easy for me.
I left him with the notion of, "You
had one vital piece of information and that is that the money was not
yours. Whoever it belonged to, it wasn't yours."
He still doesn't get it. He
feels he's being unjustly punished. By the time we were finished, I
wasn't even sure I got it any more.
Plus for the first time in Grizzly
Flats' bingo history, someone won the cookie jar that night...on the very
last number called of the night.
Then the guy who won it donated $20
of it back to the school.
...probably my $20.
Life is weird.
Nothing else is coming, so
apparently, I'm done.
Be Particular,
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