Yeah, I name my cars. So what?
Now that I’ve let go of Grace (insert tears here) and Ethel (insert yippy skippy happy dance here) and gotten into just one car, I’m searching for a name for her. I can’t just keep saying “the car”, it’s just not me!
I’m also looking at new plates. And I have six characters to work with.
I need help people! Suggestions! Now!
No, that one isn’t mine. I have been too busy to take pictures yet.
I am seriously going to miss Grace. The only good side to this whole deal is I’m now only responsible for one car, one car payment, and insurance for me, myself, and I… on one car. I won’t miss Ethel so much, I truly despised that car, but I will miss Grace.
The guys at the dealership let me spend a little alone time with her saying goodbye, they were all pretty entertained by a girl being so in love with her car that she cried when she finally walked away. The manager told me I could come in and drive any of the Zs on the lot any time I get to feeling angsty. That was actually pretty cool of him. Guess what I’ll be doing when bringing the new car in for her routine maitenance?
When I’m done being depressed, I’ll post pictures of the new car. And eventually she’ll tell me her damn name. Till then, it’s just the car.
Okay, intelligent key fobs? Sorta cool. Push button start? Rawks. It’s definitely cool, it’s just not Grace.
Yours truly decided that the very -best- way to spend the weekend would be to be as productive as possible.
I got this craving for BLT’s, so Tetris dragged me to Wal-Mart (*twitch*) to hunt down an electric skillet. Why? He wanted one. Why Wal-Mart? I think he likes to watch me twitch and cringe. Upon walking out, the normally polite and reserved man turns to me and says, “Well, now that we’ve left there are maybe two whole teeth in that store.” Yes, thanks for making me go. *hmph*
As a little girl, I had tons of Barbies. My absolute favorite was the first Ballerina Barbie that came out in 1976. When my little sister and I each received one for Christmas, you can believe there was squealing to the heavens.
I loved the tiny crown on her head and the frilly tutu (my favorite outfit was the gold and black number that I cannot find a picture of dammit!) I loved everything about her and took her with me everywhere I went.
Barbie was everything to me. She was a princess, a ballerina, a scientist, a doctor, an astronaut. She was all of the things that I thought one day I would be.
And shuffled within our Barbies were these other dolls. Tiny compared to the Amazon legged Barbie. Dawn Dolls. They were petite, and oh so graceful.
*sigh*
I had this dress. I miss this dress. I’m staring at the picture of this dress remembering all of the magical fantasies I created for the princess.
By the time I was 12, I had a developed a very strong sense of charity. My step-dad told me that my cousins down the road weren’t getting much for Christmas. So a wee Sabre packed up -all- of her Barbies, Dawns, and clothes, and presented them to my cousin (just the one, I was pretty sure her brother didn’t give a damn about no stinkin’ dolls) for Christmas. My cousin later shared the wealth and spread the dolls even further around the family.
And I never saw them again.
That is until my soul sister sent me a vintage Ballerina Barbie, which was received with the same amount of squealing and delight as the original. She sits ever so proudly on the Barbie shelf in my bedroom, along with various princesses and even Galadriel.
Yes, I, a grown woman with a grown child, have Barbies in my bedroom. Deal widdit.
My little sister? She has tons, and they have their very own room. Envious beyond words.
Debt, it’s the American Way. We finance ourselves to our eyeballs, pay a gazillion dollars a year in interest charges, and when money is tight, well, we just get another loan or refinance.
Yeah.
Having grown up in rather extreme poverty, and watching my step-dad constantly re-mortgage a house that was given to him free and clear (!!!), I hit my twenties with a pretty screwed up concept of financial management. It didn’t help that in those early days I was also a SSAHM and didn’t have two pennies to rub together. Once the kids hit school, and I got a job, things dramatically changed.
Oooh, you mean you’ll give me a credit card? Nice! Suckers!
Ha. Little did I realize that I was the sucker. Fast forward to my mid-thirties and I had developed much of the same mindset that my step-dad had and others had: if you can’t afford it, finance it, interest rates be damned! Couple that with carrying debt based on bad relationship decisions, and you have a recipe for… well, I wouldn’t call it disaster, just piss poor financial management. A little loan there, a little living expenses on the credit cards here, and before you know it, I’m paying out a few hundred dollars a month in interest charges for, well, hell, what was all that for? Nothing I can put my fingers on now, I’ll tell you that. Just stuff.
I made two very quiet resolutions this past new year’s eve. One I’m still working on and is a private matter not to be spoken of in such a public forum. The other? Well, to erase a whole buttload of debt, clean up my finances, and start planning for the years ahead after the kids are in college and I’m running free. Because you know I am -so- leaving the country when I’m clear of this here mommyhood gig!
In the last month, I’ve paid out a few dollars shy of $12,000 in debt reduction. I’ve paid off three loans and three credit cards. (Updated: It’s actually over $12k, and four loans, forgot about a personal loan I paid off mid-Feb. Whee!) And while this may not seem like a big deal to you, to me it’s a very big deal. In doing this, not only have I cleared myself of debt and ridiculous finance charges, but I have also finally purged a great deal of my past. Several of the aforementioned items were in large part due to two very bad relationships. One of them I’ve been carrying around since roughly 2001. For nearly six years there has been a ghost in my life, in the form of a monthly statement that would piss me off every time I saw it. For the last year or so, another ghost saw fit to join in the fun.
Living with the financial ghosts of my past has never been a good thing. But now they are gone. And that, so much more so than the cleared balances, is a beautiful thing. Gone. Finally, forever, goodbye.
Next up, getting those damn cars paid off!
The store received a call at 2:10 p.m. from a male who said a bomb was there. Lyndon Overweg, Mitchell public safety chief, said the caller did not go into specific details.
The SWAT team was dispatched, along with many officers to help clear out the store.
Overweg said police recommended the store be evacuated to allow SWAT team and other officers to search the building. But Wal-Mart opted not to, he said.
“We look at it from a public safety standpoint,” Overweg said. “How they approach their issue, you’ll have to talk to them.”
Wal-Mart District Manager Steve Hanselman in Sioux Falls said Wednesday night that Wal-Mart would never put its customers or employees’ safety at risk. He said the decision to keep the store open was not based on Saturday’s six-figure sales number.
“What is most important to our associates is their safety,” he said. “Myself, Wal-Mart and city officials came to the decision that it was a hoax.”
Nice to know that Wal-Mart and “city officials” have better insight to these here bomb threat thingies than the po-po. Thank gawd for their wisdom! Someone might have missed out on the low low low price of stocking stuffers!
Fuckers.
Okay, as a rule, I generally avoid Wal-Mart. Two reasons, they treat their employees like shit and it’s always overcrowded with noisy people and unruly children. However, we decided to swing by on Saturday to see if they had something I needed for my BBQ on Sunday.
So I’m sitting here, pissy because I have no cigarettes and because I don’t want to be alone but I can’t be around all my smoking friends right now. How do I fix this?
Retail therapy, baybee!
Trotted my hiney up to Linens N Things last night and bought all new bedding. When I came home I unpacked my room and put all my stuff away. You would not believe how much of a girl I am when it comes to my room! Mostly my house is not so girly (shut up about the baskets, it is NOT!), but my room? Wow. Teddy bears, Barbies (don’t even whisper it), and stuff. Girl stuff. Lots and lots of it. Baubles and shineys and sparklies, soft material and soft lighting, a nice warm place for me to hide.
I got everything put away, cleaned and polished, and washed all the new bedding. Tossed it on the bed and crawled between the softest sheets I have ever laid on. I eyed the 1000 thread count sheets, but at $150 for a set, I went for the 650 instead.
Oh.My.God. Chocolate colored pure heaven.
*sigh* Hey, I may be sleeping alone, but I’m sleeping in style dammit! I may never leave home again.
Is it me, or has the world always been this rude? I am noticing an ever increasing trend of absolute rudeness and “me first” attitudes. Or maybe it’s always been like this and I’m just getting grumpier as I get older.
My morning commute, as I’ve noted before, can be a trip through the darkest levels of hell. Over-crowded highways, oblivious cell phone yackers, and the jerks who always have to cut you off only to slow down once they are safely in front of you. As I get onto 495 from the Dulles toll road, there is a section where the two lanes merge into one before merging onto the beltway. Most people, having had plenty of notice that the lanes are merging, politely take turns, one car from the left lane, then the car from the right lane. This makes sense and provides a continuously flowing stream. Inevitably, there is that one jackass who has to gun his engine, race up from behind, and practically run the other car off the road while he bullies his way in. You can almost hear him yelling in a petulant childish voice, “Me first!” Yes, I’m talking about you, Virginia HNG 6255; you and a thousand others just like you.
When we bought the Z, my friend Rob, kept asking me about the tires on the front end. Rob, who is a fanatic about all things Nissan, kept insisting that I go outside and check for uneven tire wear and weird cambering. I dutifully looked at the tires and reported back that all was well in wonderland.
At this point, I must interject that it needs to be understood that I listen to the stereo loud when driving. Very, very loud.