Confessions – Page 20 – The UnderToad

Friday Surpriday

As followup to what was otherwise one of my most annoying days this Fall, I received a nice little surprise in the mail today.

Take a journey back with me to September 22 of this year, and what I announced to the world through the annals of Facebook:

I had just left the volunteer first peek of my first (and last) consignment sale. I went in with really hopeful expectations and yet a pretty small wishlist in the first place, but managed to walk out with very little to show for it. I was annoyed and disappointed in what was purporting to be a colossal waste of time. (And on top of that, it turned out I actually managed to make less than my predicted profit, which I really didn’t think was possible.)

I came home just in time for my 9:30 appointment with a little website called Totsy (aptly named because it is geared toward all things “tot” for desperate deal seeking mothers, like me, who like to outfit their children in really trendy shit but not actually pay premium prices for any of it). From my very limited experience with Totsy, it seems this website advertizes for and then conducts closeout sales for any number of different stores and websites. It looks like the majority of their sales revolve around brand new products trying to gain customer attention, or seasonally old products, simply trying not to go to waste. The sale I had marked on my calendar (let the patronizing begin), and the only time I’ve actually utilized Totsy, was a Stride Rite shoe sale.

Most parents know that Stride Rite pretty much owns a monopoly on decent children’s shoes, which is why they can get away with charging $50 for a pair of shoes that is only meant to last six months before the kid outgrows them. This is also why I had the Totsy Stride Rite sale marked on my calendar. The way it works is the sale is advertised, but you cannot see any of the items nor the prices until the sale opens at a specific time. Once it does open, you must shop and pay in a hurry, because your cart empties itself every twenty minutes. I’m sure you can only imagine what happens when two hundred thousand mothers are all attempting to purchase $10 pairs of brand new Stride Rite’s at the same time, online.

Long story short, the crashing Totsy server managed to occupy me through four episodes of Dawson’s Creek. It seemed like every time I got my cart filled and my information down, the order would fail to go through. I’d refresh and refresh, and then my twenty minutes would be up and my cart would suddenly be empty. It is like the virtual equivalent of running through a crowded Walmart on Black Friday, sucessfully grabbing the exact five items you had your heart set on, and just as you get in line to pay for your rightfully obtained deals (and celebrate your luck) a big man in a black coat comes up behind you, grabs your shopping cart out from under your unsuspecting gaze, and chucks your treasures to the back of the store. There’s no time to retaliate (or cry), because you have to go retrieve them before someone else does, and start the process all over again. It was an adrenaline rush, if nothing else.

My sale opened at 9:00. At 11, I finally got a confirmation email. This should have been cause for a double fist pump, but by this time, between Dawson’s Creek, a hot laptop, and the whiskey, I was pretty much just ready for bed. Big surprise, the next morning our credit card called with news of some “potentially fraudulent activity” from the night before, as I had been charged for the same order a total of five times. I called the company and prepared myself for a morning of sitting on hold and more frustration.

Not the case. I was pleasantly surprised to find the lady answering the phone spoke English as her first language (point for Totsy), one, and was actually really cool about the entire thing from the night before. I was right when I guessed that they’d been fielding phone calls all morning from other moms (who were possibly much less cool than I was about the whole thing). She ended up canceling all but one of my orders and said I wouldn’t actually get charged until it shipped.

I sort of chalked the entire thing up to “lesson learned” and though I’ve been diligently checking my credit card statement for the past few weeks, I wasn’t about to go into this deal with the same high hopes I’d had for the consignment sale.

The good news of the week is that today, almost a month later, I received four of the five pairs of shoes I had my eyes on that night (for a grand total of $46). My credit card was charged appropriately, and I also have a $5 credit in my Totsy account as an apology for the big man in the black coat. Can’t say I’m in the mood to fight the same laundry-basket-wielding moms who elbow each other through consignment sale doors, literally or virtually, again any time soon, but Totsy has officially scratched a competitive mom itch for me, this month.

Confessions

Psychotic Money Saving

As an above average deal-finder and coupon user, I have admitted before that it is a conscious goal of mine not to let money saving become an obsession. (The fact that I’m blogging about deal-finding again is arguable proof that I’m not fully succeeding at this goal.) But I’d like to say for the record, that obsession, for me, is a far milder term than it is for so many others, when it comes to the grocery budget. I’d say comparatively, I’m not nearly as psychotic as the so-called extreme couponers around me, who’s visible-to-the-public-obsession manifests itself in the following ways: (1) spending hours clipping and organizing coupons into what looks like one of those baseball card display binders, then walking up and down every single aisle of the grocery store attempting to match sale prices with an available coupon; (2) purchasing dozens of Sunday newspapers, or worse, stealing the coupon inserts out of the Sunday papers at Walmart; (3) anger at the cashier when a coupon doesn’t scan correctly or when the price on the register doesn’t match the price they planned to pay, resulting in entire carts full of products left at the front of the store for a bag boy to put away (I swear I’ve never done this but I’ve seen it more times than you can imagine); (4) stockpiling Windex and BBQ sauce whenever it is free (which, by the way, is about every 6 weeks) as if either one of these items will be the most helpful in the event of an apocalypse. *Sidenote: does anyone ever get to the very bottom of a bottle of Windex? It is like the Loaves and Fishes of cleaning products. I think I’m still using the bottle we purchased in Greensboro six years ago.*

Lord, no. I am not this bad. I’m actually a little humiliated to admit some of the things I haven’t caught myself doing in a while, which is to say, at one time in my life, I may have displayed one or more of the following behaviors: (1) refusal to purchase something I actually need with the knowledge that I can either find it cheaper somewhere else or have a coupon for it at home; (2) anger at my husband for buying something at Sam’s Club that seemed like a great deal to him, but was still more expensive than the price I can find it for on a regular basis elsewhere; (3) waking up in the wee hours of the morning, panicked at the thought that I’ve let one of my drug store rewards expire, and the subsequent inability to fall back asleep as a result.

In fact, number 3 above, is the reason my brother-in-law believes drug store rewards are a scam. His explanation is that they are lying to you when they advertise something as “Free, after…” and they force you to come back into the store within a couple of weeks and buy something you probably don’t need, just to spend the “reward” they gave you for the item you purchased guilt-free two weeks ago, believing it was free. To some extent, I would agree with this. In fact, I hope more people are treating the system this way than the way I am treating the system. Because if everyone was able to roll-over drug store rewards in the way that I have done this year, the system would cease to work. Drug stores would go out of business. And so would my source of joy. In life.

So I was doing a little mental math in the car this morning on the way home from Lowe’s Foods.

The subject of my number crunching: gas rewards.

Lowe’s Foods, a local NC grocery store that is on the high end for prices (similar to Rosauers in Spokane or Ukrop’s in Virginia, but a notch below The Fresh Market and Whole Foods) has introduced this new Gas Rewards thing. I’ve actually been getting the print-outs all year, as my store was one of the pilot stores for trying out the program, and throwing them away. All these months, I’ve been looking at this little slip of paper and assumed it was telling me I could save five cents TOTAL on my next gas purchase. I kept filing them away assuming they’d build up over time and then forgetting about them. Now that it has been launched state-wide, there has been more explanation and advertisement for the way it works. Every time you spend $100 at Lowe’s you earn five cents off per gallon on your next fillup at certain gas stations. For a minute, I was kicking myself for all the times I let the reward expire.

But then it hit me.

Five cents off per gallon for every $100 of groceries purchased?

My car, when the gas light is on, only requires about twelve gallons to fill up. At five cents per gallon, I’m saving sixty cents.

Without going into the algebra lesson let me break this down quickly: this is less than 1% savings, people. I think the value of the dollar is depreciating at more rapid rate than I’m accumulating gas rewards.

This also brings me to my next point. I have admitted to my deal-finding obsession within the confines of grocery and drug store walls. But nobody has said anything about the gazillions of people who are willing to drive across town to save five cents a gallon on gas. Number crunching or not, if you were to add up the amount of time it takes to make it to another gas station, not to mention the ounces of gas burned to get there, you might be surprised to find out that your sixty cent savings was spent in the journey. Who’s the psycho now?

Confessions

A Grammar Lesson

I frequently receive emails with a disclaimer that reads, basically, “I hate emailing you because I’m always afraid you’re correcting my grammar and judging me.” And, for the record, oh, semi-educated world, such fear is not entirely unfounded, but only half-way correct. I’m not correcting your grammar. I’m simply noticing your grammatical mistakes. And judging you.

That said, English teachers actually have a much harder time getting away with grammatical mistakes than the average human, for obvious reasons. It might come as a surprise to know that in sending weekly parent-student emails from my classroom, I actually freaked out before pushing the send button. Only the bravest would have dared call me on an actual mistake, but the truth is, it did happen from time to time. I also reread every single one of these blog posts about four times before pushing “publish” and even then, John (or my mother, or my brother-in-law) often sends me an email before the end of the day with a brief correction.

I know I’ve already admitted to losing my grip on spelling at some point in my life. It seems like it had to have happened with the onset of word processing everything, or more likely, the invention of the squiggly red line and right click button, but it very well may have started in 6th grade when the bell dinged in round 1 at the Area-District Spelling Bee. My word? Podium. (It’s like my subconscious decided at that very moment, “So what if you can’t spell? Good spellers are stoopid! Take that!”)
Sidenote: before publication, I was forced by that very red line to right click “subconscious,” above.

There are certainly such things as “acceptable grammatical mistakes” in the proper context. Some call it poetic license. I call it, my blog. And while I’d never use them in a professional format, or in an educational publication, for example, in my personal writing I wholeheartedly embrace the bending of certain grammatical conventions like punctuation. And sentence fragments. The difference between me and everyone else at this point is, I DO IT INTENTIONALLY.

At any rate, there have been plenty of times whilst wielding a magenta Expo, that I’ve had to stop and ask 29 wide eyes, “Wait a minute. Is that even right?” And one argument that arose with frequency (not only in my classroom but between me and legal writing “friends”) was a question of commas. In fact, up until three days ago, I didn’t even know this particular comma had a name. Now I do. And I understand him. And, if I go back into the classroom one day (assuming the school is in no way associated with the Baptist church), I will make an overhead projection of this very visual, and teach my classes accordingly.

A lesson on The Oxford Comma:

I cannot take credit for finding this picture. I have Facebook and Josie to thank for that. And while I’m standing at my grammar podium, I’ll say this: I know grammar snob blogs exist en masse. I am not the first (and hopefully won’t be the last) to complain. But a recent hormone induced riff with John has put in the mood to make lists, so without further ado, here are the mistakes which make me want to chuck Expo markers at people’s heads. Note: these were also displayed in permanence via homemade laminated posters around the walls of the room I once called home from 8:30 to 4pm, five days a week.

A lot is TWO. WORDS.

Y.O.U. + A.R.E. = you’re.
It isn’t that difficult, people.

Your 4th grade teacher was being lazy when she taught you that sentences cannot begin with the word because. They can. It is called a subordinate clause and it doesn’t matter if it comes at the beginning or the end of the sentence, as long as it is connected with a comma to a subject and a verb. What she should have been proclaiming from the rooftops, instead, was: “Never begin a sentence with the word which, unless you are asking a question.”
NOTE: the rant wasn’t part of the poster. It merely verbally accompanied my pointing out of the lesson within. It often concluded with, “And if you are still in touch with your 4th grade teacher, do the world a favor and pass this little nugget along. If not for yours than for my future.”

There. They’re. Their.
There’s a difference. They’re’s a difference. Their’s a difference.

If I see any of the following:
LOL | B4 | b/c | ♥ | 🙂
I will physically throw up on your paper, let it dry, and then hand it back to you.

Confessions

What Should I Read Next?

I need to say for the record that there are several things I do not miss about teaching public school. Namely: parent complaints/meetings; student sense of apathy; 30% failure rates due in large part to laziness, then the direction to “give them an option for passing” long past due dates; classes with 30+ students; poor regulation of heating and cooling, resulting in never being able to dress for the season; lack of windows. There are also several things I do not miss about teaching private school: parent complaints/meetings; student sense of entitlement; 20% A-B borderline students, then the direction to “give them an option for the A” long past due dates; classes with only one student who would rather carry on 90-minute personal conversations with me, than do work; working the “car line” from the parking lot from February to April, the coldest rainiest months of the year (which was, essentially, calling the names of mostly high school students to alert them to the fact that their parents were waiting, a fact they very well could have ascertained themselves by simply watching out the windows of the gym).

That said, there are probably more things I actually do miss about teaching, both public and private school, and it helps me once in a while to remind myself that the bad days and the good moments did not usually feel equal, even though they probably were. I miss getting to dress up in adult clothes and cute shoes without the risk of being stepped on or touched with grimy hands (though, not so much when I was pregnant, because most kids thought this was a free pass to belly rub their way into my good graces). I miss writing on white boards. I’m a freak. But I really like multi-colored white board markers and notes which require their use, in full. I do actually miss those moments when students decided to like me, and then told me so. It was usually late in coming, but often worth the months of sarcasm, me vs. you verbal fights, and write-ups. I’m quite sure now that I’m gone, there’s not a single student left who still hates me. I miss journaling for the first 10 minutes of every class, with my students. (I was an excellent role model.) But most of all, I miss the reading time. I miss reading Ender’s Game (and other books) aloud to my classes. I miss Fridays, which were made up of silent reading, three times a day, 45 minutes at a time. On average, including the texts I was teaching, I could read close to seven books a semester. Fourteen a year. All because of my personally implemented mandatory Friday silent reading.

It took me almost three months to finish the last book I read, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. I also realize that as Oprah’s bookclub pick from 2008, I was a little behind the trend curve to even pick it up. I found it a little more than ironic, therefore, while trudging through the ever slow second half, that I never caught the fact that it is a modern parallel to Hamlet. I’ve read Hamlet on my own at least four times. I taught Hamlet. How the death of the father by poison, then the revelation, by way of a ghost, to the father’s son, that the uncle did it, escaped me, I can only blame on my months out of the classroom. In fact, I don’t think you can Google The Story of Edgar Sawtelle without seeing “Hamlet” somewhere in the byline, yet, seriously, I read the entire book not knowing every character would basically be dead by the end. Had I known of the intentional parallel, I might have finished the book a little sooner. And. I might have liked it a little more.

As it was, the story was okay, but it didn’t blow my mind, as it did Oprah’s and so many of her million viewers. I’m now picking up two books simultaneously – one for bookclub: Shadow Tag (Louise Erdich) and one that has been on my to-read list for more than a year: The Book Thief (Marcus Zusak). If you’ve read either feel free to pass along some nuggets of opinion, and don’t worry about spoiling the endings. I’ve always been a reader who skims the last chapter of a book to make sure the ending is worth the entire read. Surprise ending are so overrated for busy people with long to-read lists. For this very reason, I have a very select handful of good friends I can count on to recommend good books, and outside of that list, I generally (politely) ignore you-should-read… suggestions.

I can assure anyone, however, that I can always be counted on for suggested worthwhile reads, even if your taste resides at the Nicholas Sparks and John Grisham level. Don’t be offended, Sparks/Grisham lovers. I’m not mocking nor looking down on you. It’s just that, if I can get just as much (or more) out of the movie version, I will more than likely forgo the reading of the book. I can, however, suggest something for even you.

Confessions

How to Succeed When You Hate Your Job

Ignore the title of this post. It has very little to do with the actual content of the entry. However, I’m suddenly getting really good at perfecting titles which actually attract random readers to my completely not helpful but hopefully entertaining blog, via Google search terms of desperation.

Sitting at Panera this morning, unsuccessfully attempting to connect to the alleged “Free Wifi,” I overheard a woman behind me saying to another woman, “…well, you’re right. And if you don’t like it you shouldn’t do it, because you’ll never be good at something you don’t like to do.”

At the risk of commenting completely out of context, but because I was afraid to do this in person, to this statement I would like to publicly declare: bullshit.

My first internal reaction was this, “That’s not true. I happen to loathe vacuuming and cleaning the bathroom, yet, I keep my house cleaner than most people I know. And, no one can get my bathrooms as clean as I can, except perhaps my own mother, who also hates cleaning her pristine house.”

But then I sat there thinking (while the Internet failed to connect and my tea was still too hot to drink) and realized this was quite possibly the worst piece of advice I’ve ever overheard. And to prove it, I composed a mental list.

Things I Don’t Particularly Enjoy, But Am Good at Nonetheless:

Clean my house.

Teach classrooms full of unruly (and possibly borderline asshole) teenagers the importance of literacy, THEN, actually get them to read books and write complete sentences by themselves.

My hair. (Some people might argue that this is a stretch, that I have naturally good hair that just doesn’t take much work look good. Admittedly, I would have agreed with this, right up until I had children, and instead of going gray, as they say, I’m going curly. Slowly. Also, I only shower a couple days a week, so trust me, good hair is work, and I manage it with despondency.)

Be nice to people who I don’t like.

Run (and anything else remotely “athletic”).

Cook.

This list might be a work in progress, but for now, this is all I can remember from my half-hearted musings while attempting to keep my cool about the lack of Internet for my two and half hours of scheduled work time away from home this morning. Ah yes, #6: have a morning of actual productivity even when the Internet doesn’t connect.

Confessions, Eliott

Tonight’s Lesson: Metaphors

Sarcasm and figurative language. Two well-used, yet, still mostly foreign concepts to my four-year old. Obviously I didn’t give birth to an idiot. Eliott understands things in context and what she doesn’t understand, she’s especially adept at pretending to understand, but all of a sudden, her sense of literalism is getting the best of her (and me). I think her sudden questioning of things (like freaking out when she hears “Cady is in the car just dying to see you,”) is exactly half four-year-old-style-literal-reasoning, and half four-year-old-style-asking-questions-makes-me-feel-like-part-of-a-conversation. I decided the easiest way out is to just introduce her to the term metaphor now. For one, it eliminates lengthy explanations of the why’s behind figurative language. Plus, I see it as a bonus, if not for her than for her future high school English teacher. Grasping this abstract concept could effectively put her in the 90% percentile of her high school class, 10 years early. Tonight’s example:

Mommy, how come you never give me ginger-ale? You know Mimi let me have ginger-ale one time.

I know. I could kill her.

NO! Don’t kill her, she’s your mother!

Well. I wouldn’t really kill her, Eliott. It’s a metaphor.

Oh yeah. What’s a metaphor again?

It’s like, when you say something that you don’t really mean, in order to express an emotion for which there are no other words. Like, you know sometimes, when you and Carter are being really loud, I tell you to chill out or my head is going to explode? But does my head actually explode? Have you ever seen my brain guts all over the kitchen?

No! (I assure you she is giggling at this, not freaking out. Don’t call DSS.)

Yeah, but it feels like my head might explode, so I just say it will, and that is a metaphor.

Oh yeah. So tell me another metaphor.

Okay, maybe I say, “I’m so hungry I could eat the entire house,” but am I really going to actually eat the house?

No! (More giggling.)

Exactly. I’m just so hungry I feel like I could, but I really can’t. That’s a metaphor.

[Insert several more examples provided by me. Bedtime is beginning to feel strangely similar to 3rd period at public school. Then, it’s Eliott’s turn.]

Oooh, I know a metaphor.

Okay, tell me.

I say I’m going to go get a haircut, but I’m not really going to get a haircut. (Giggles uncontrollably.)

That’s a good one, Eliott. Do another one.

Okay. I say I’m going to go to the dentist, but I’m not really going to go to the dentist. (This time, whispers:) But I really am going to go to the dentist, so it isn’t a really a metaphor, but I’m just saying it is a metaphor.

[Pause here for my laughter.]

You are actually blowing my mind right now, Eliott. And that’s another metaphor.

Confessions, Eliott

Before Bed, with Eliott

About two weeks ago, Eliott started inviting me into her bed at night to talk about her day. I swear this is something she completely made up; it was not in any way prompted by me. Discussions start out much like the end-of-day pow-wow from the wilderness camp. We talk about the good part of the day (“good” translated to Eliott as good behavior), the bad part of the day, the fun part of the day, the boring part of the day, and what we’re looking forward to tomorrow. Then, the conversation often moves to more important life questions, philosophical ponderings, or princess fantasies. (For instance, once she learned where Cinderella and every other Disney princess lives, she became suddenly interested in talking about Disney World. Nevermind that I’ve never even been there, in her mind, I’m Cinderella’s personal paparazzi.)

Understand that through most of these late night discussions, she is also scratching my back, which is why they so often go on far longer than they probably should. I figure, this is the one and only time in her life that she’ll actually like me, let alone scratch my back while she pours out her heart to me, so I’m maximizing on the opportunity.

Anyway, tonight’s debriefing was not entirely unlike any other night, for the most part. But because I didn’t fall asleep during it, I had the mental capacity to record a few of the nuggets for which I so often listen to without response.

On Jesus:

“Eliott who are you talking to in here?”

“Oh. I was just talking to Jesus. About my bo-bo. So he can heal it. But Mommy, how does he heal it?”

“Uhh…”

“I mean, like, does he just look at it or does he touch it or does he have a machine or something?”

“Yes. He can just look at it or he can touch it.”

“Well, I never see him touch my bo-bo’s.”

“That’s because he probably sends the Holy Spirit to do it.”

“Well I never saw the Holy Spirit. What’s the Holy Spirit look like?”

“Remember on Charlie Brown, when Snoopy makes Charlie Brown invisible and you can’t see him, but he’s there? Remember? That’s what the Holy Spirit is like.”

“Yeah. You know who the Holy Spirit is? He’s Jesus’ invisible machine.”

On donuts and milk:

“Pop Pop can’t have a lot of milk because it makes him fat.”

“Who said that?”

“That’s what Mimi says.”

(After a short discussion about what “fat” means, insert my feeble attempt to teach Eliott about how to be polite in regard to this subject.)

Eliott’s very matter of fact response: “Well, I can just say, ‘Are you so fat because you have a baby in your belly, or just because you ate a lot of food?”

Confessions

Stay At Home Mom Tournaments of Fortitude

This week I was unofficially indoctrinated into a subsidiary of stay-at-home-mom-land, a phenomenon of which I assume the majority of the world is largely unaware. I participated in my first church consignment sale.

Apparently these things take place with regularity at churches and clubs around cities. Usually, the point is to fund-raise for whomever is hosting the sale, but the sellers get to take home a percentage of their profits. In this sale, a fundraiser for the Mothers of Preschoolers group (which I do not go to) of a church I do not attend, consigners get to take home 60% of the total price of the item. Also, every single one of these consignment sales follows a pretty standard pattern: day one, preview sale for volunteers, day two, sale opens to public, day three, sale opens to public but everything is half-price. Sounded dummy proof to me.

Somebody color me dummy.

First I was issued an email outlining the procedures of consigning, which included what and what not sell, how to create price tags, where and how to affix price tags to items, and how to present items: clean, on hangers, sorted by gender and then by size. The email was easy enough to follow, and let me tell you, the A/B honor roll student in me followed directions perfectly.

My first challenge was the question of prices. I went to another sale the weekend before to see what kinds of prices people were asking for the same stuff I had. I also got advice from consignment sale champion friends of mine. There seem to be generally two schools of thought on pricing: price to sell and get rid of everything quickly or price high hoping to get rid of some things then make your rock bottom price at the half-price sale.

My thought: I’m pricing this crap at a number that I would buy it knowing it was used. However, I also realized with the final day half-price sale, it would be pointless to price anything at a $1. (Apparently this bit of self-acquired knowledge actually puts me above the thinking curve of most consigners. Next time, perhaps I should direct these women to my blog.)

I’m trying really hard not to sit down and calculate the number of hours I spent pulling out clothes and toys, checking for (and removing) any stains, sorting, acquiring hangers (including those for pants/skirts and those which hold two or three piece outfits all in one), and safety pinning index cards to each of my almost sixty items. Yes, at one point there was blood.

My next challenge had me wishing I was still sitting in my house surrounded by only my crap. Because I wanted the chance of first-pick at everything else in the sale, I also volunteered to work one day of set-up.

Picture me in the middle of organizing what was basically a gigantic community baby/kid themed yard sale all in one room. It was like a hoarders paradise. I knew instantly that I would not be shopping on “open to the public” day here, nor at any other consigment sale for the rest of my life. The sheer amount of stuff was overwhelming. I didn’t even want to think about sharing the space with other stay at home moms ready to fight for a good deal. I had to suppress my extreme OCD as three tables of unorganized kids’ shoes screamed to be put in order by size. (Okay, I did break down and mostly fix this problem.) I had to consciously focus on not focusing on the entire room, or my head started spinning and I fought nausea. I’m not exaggerating.

I thought I was a little out of hand with my close to 60 items to sell. In comparison, I had a small lot. Also, it turns out I was one of the few consigners who apparently read the consigning procedures email. Sorting? What? Price tags correctly labeled? Nah… And of those who did catch that things actually needed to be on hangers, you’d be amazed to see how many people apparently do not know how to correctly use a hanger. You think I’m joking. I started getting high on my own stench of over-achievement. (Did I mention I typed my price tags?) I also greatly underpriced most of my stuff. Well. Comparatively. I felt pretty confident when I signed the go-ahead-and-donate-what’s-left-over-waver that I wouldn’t actually have any items left over. For me, the experience was a purging, not a trade-in. However, even if I make $100 at this thing, I’m fairly certain it means I worked for about $4.50 an hour in preparation. (Note to self: next time you are thinking about consigning, Claire, think about Ebay instead.)

I arrived at the preview sale about ten minutes early, with the thought in mind that I might find some princess dress up clothes and maybe some games or puzzles. The line of women was already out the door. I knew I was in for trouble when I noticed almost everyone came with a large tote, empty laundry basket, or worse, a double-stroller, but no kids.

Anyone wondering how stay-at-home-moms scratch their competitive itch? We enter unofficial tournaments of frugality. Instead of comparing golf-handicaps, we casually chat about how much money we’re not spending on our groceries. We brag about the great sales we found and the loot we scored. Obviously I’m guilty of this. Everyone in my family believes I’ve officially grown up to be cheaper than my father, a feat my mother believed was actually impossible.

But I’ve decided to draw the line at consignment sales. All the work and worry did not end up paying out in the way of say, triple coupons at Harris Teeter. Give me a pair of scissors and the Sunday coupon inserts any day over a consignment sale. Perhaps I’ll be singing a different tune when my surprise check comes in the mail, but for now, I’m just going to go sit in Eliott’s empty closet and relish my moment of successful purging. I have exactly two hours before my children’s fairy godmother arrives. This moment won’t last.

Carter, Confessions, Eliott

How to Get Rid of Stray Cats

Currently, this seems like one of those things I’ll never forget. Because I hear it every night. Sometimes twice. However, from previous experience I know that in a year or two, this will likely become another one of those things that might as well have never happened. (For the same reason I cannot hold grudges, I have learned I must write down all moments of cuteness when they happen.)

This is Eliott’s exact dinner prayer, every night it is her turn to pray:

Dear God. Thank you for this day. Thank you for this food. And thank you for Mommy and Daddy. Thank you for our jobs and thank you for our family. And help us to get a job. A-men.

That last part is carried over from the year John was about to graduate from Law School. We figure, now, it could simply mean more clients, so we haven’t stopped her. About two weeks ago, Carter decided she was ready to start praying at dinner as well. At first, she copied Eliott’s words immediately after her, which of course made Eliott mad, and recite her prayer louder, which only made Carter raise her voice in response. (The result was a little like a Pentecostal church service at the dinner table.) Anyway, we’ve worked Carter into the dinner time prayer rotation. Last night, her prayer was exactly this:

Dear Got. Thank you for day. Thank you…food? Daddy? (Incoherent noises including lots of spit.) No kitties. Back yard. AY-men!

Quick explanation: The outdoor cat who belongs to the neighbor behind our house knocked-up a stray who had her litter sometime last spring (wasn’t anyone listening to Bob Barker?!). The stray, and the litter, frequently attempted to bed down in our swing-set playhouse, much to John’s and my dismay. The last thing we need is worms in our sandbox, let alone a bunch of cats in heat right beneath our bedroom windows, know what I mean? I for one am not much of a pet lover, and I hardly count cats as pets. (What John doesn’t know is that he might be getting a .22 for his birthday.) Anyway, every time we see one or more cats in our backyard, John and I go the meal-time appropriate version of ape-shit. I’m not sure if she’s on our side, or if Carter’s prayer is to save the kitties from Mommy and Daddy. At any rate, between the two of us and the Holy Spirit, I’m feeling fairly confident we just might nip our little feline problem in the bud.

If that doesn’t work, my next step is a couple cans of poisoned tuna.

Confessions

Cold Front Reconnections

I get headaches. A lot. In fact, up until about five days ago, I was having a seriously difficult time remembering the last time I did not wake up with a headache. Some mornings (often Saturdays) it is all I can do to get out of bed. Most mornings however, it is not a migraine which paralyzes me, but rather the combination of a sore jaw and need for caffeine. On these mornings, I like to double up the jolt and throw back an Excedrin with my coffee, you know, in despondent denial of my drug addiction.

But I have found a cure.

To say the idea is revolutionary would be a bit of a stretch. To say that I came up with it on my own would be a downright lie. The fact is, all I’ve needed to do is what both John and probably Dr. Oz have telling me (and the rest of America) all along: drink more water.

Water?! (I believe this one calls for a double fist pump.)

Every night since last Saturday, I have made myself drink about 16 ounces of water with my vitamins just before bed. The immediate and positive results have been three-fold. First, no more waking up with headaches. At all. Second, no more restless leg and mild insomnia (caused, I believe, by the St. John’s Wort). But the best part is this: the natural waking up and necessity of getting out of bed at a decent hour (usually 7:30) because I have to pee.

Again. Not revolutionary. In high school, it was sort of this cool-kid thing to do to wake up early, drive to the top of Mt. Spokane, and watch the sunrise with a boy or girl you weren’t ready to admit you had a crush on. For me, this was before my days of coffee and making-out (which, don’t get me wrong, are mutually exclusive), a simple fact which has my adult-self a little perplexed by the allure of the situation. But alas, I indulged the cliche this-is-not-a-date, dates. More than once in fact, despite the ungodly hour and Young Life Allstar company. The point of this story: A tip from one of my best girlfriends (who to my knowledge, still does this crazy thing from time to time) was to “drink an entire Nalgene” the night before so waking up pre-sunrise was inevitable.

So yesterday, as I was going on Headache Free Day 5, I had a conscious thought that I might give up drinking coffee for a while and start drinking green tea instead (how do you like that Dr. Oz?). For one thing, I actually like green tea, and for another, I think I might be developing an intolerance to half-and-half, which is really my favorite part of the coffee.

But when I woke up this morning, a cold front had blown in. A real one. An actual, “Hey, Eliott, you can wear your tights today because it’s Fall outside” cold front. And let me just say how wonderful it was sipping my coffee in the car on the way to school today. WONDERFUL. Wonderful like reconnecting with an old friend, wonderful. Wonderful like those days in the woods of juvenile delinquency, when all hell was breaking loose, and the only thing that made me feel like a rationally functioning adult was my coffee (because we couldn’t have anything the kids couldn’t have except coffee and nicotine) so I often enjoyed it all day and usually after dinner as well. That wonderful. Wonderful like I wish I could hurry up and finish this increasingly slow book and get into something that causes me to really escape for a few hours.

Green tea? What was I thinking? I just found the water-cure and it’s getting me hyped up on some sort of a health kick. Oh no no no. This will not do. Coffee. You can stay. For the winter. (And John, if you read this before you leave work today, bring home donuts!)