Here's the deal: I'm not a frivolous girl. I occasionally over-spend at Target (just one more pair of yoga pants won't break the bank) but tend to spend my cash wisely. Lovin' the deals at Marshall's, I might splurge on a great piece from Anthropologie now and again.
Food, we spend top dollar for. Heaven and earth opening up to swallow me might be the only way to put a halt to that.
And like every family, we budget and pinch and conserve where we can, putting more cash towards the kids and their sports/schools/dramatic productions than to luxury villas by the sea.
So when the hub told me that the car would be going in to get a few things fixed, I thought OK, no biggee. It turns out that beyond an oil change and fan blower adjustment, he had the cruise control fixed. To the tune of $700.
Everyone knows I whine incessantly about teaching. The peanuts for pay. The 24-hour days. The indentured servitude. But the kids, I gotta say, I love 'em. I really, really do. Who they are and what they do, it RAISES YOU UP, it restores your faith in humanity, and makes everything seem more important. They make things matter! Just consider my student Liza Stoner, who's willing to ride her bike 1500 miles to Washington D.C. to raise awareness of electric cars! She left yesterday, and I'm on pins and needles every day for her updates from the road.
How do we feel about rewarding a kid for grades? I'm curious. My son has completed his sophomore year with a 4.0 that he's kicked his ass to keep up all year long. I rather think that he deserves a lot of kudos and maybe a nice treat (especially seeing that he's about to inherit a car which his sister has worked quite hard to wreck). But we live in an area where most parents think that a specially imported Mercedes makes a nice little birthday gift. We are not those people. Yet he has longed after the iPod Touch for so long, I'm aching to get one for him. But is that too much? Should I even be dishing out the goodies for grades?
I am SO keyed up about the price of filling my car right now that it seems to be replacing all my other normal anger. I know this isn't a new topic, and I feel like I've been dealing with it on a pretty cerebral level for a long time, but for some reason I have flown straigh past logic into bilthering rage.
