Cliffs Notes on my day
This was a long day. Many things happened that are deserving of their own entertaining/enlightening entries. I’m too tired to write them all tonight and since tomorrow and Saturday look just as full they may never get written at all. So here is the cliff’s notes version.
I got up late and scrambled to get the kids out the door.
The morning was spent scraping together a last few edits for the Schlock book. We should have a new version to look at tomorrow. Then there will probably be more edits. At least the “to edit” lists keep getting smaller and smaller. I also spent time doing accounting. I paid all the bills, looked at incoming bills, and counted how much money remained. The answer is “not very much.” We need to move back into full frugal mode until we have money from the book. We’ll evaluate again after that. At least I discovered that I had squirreled away several pairs of shoes for Link which are now the right size. This is a relief because he was down to one pair of barely-fitting shoes.
I then took Patches with me to the dollar store to buy prizes for Link’s party. This turned out to be a problem later when Gleek was devastated that I’d gone to the dollar store without her. We resolved the issue by having her come along with me when I went on a different errand and we stopped at the dollar store on the way home. She browsed everything cheerfully, then bought gum with her own money and we came home.
I got fingerprinted this afternoon. That particular errand took 2 hours out of my day. They have a very cool scanning device so that ink is no longer required for this process. Gleek watched fascinated and to be honest so did I. On the way home Gleek examined her fingers. Then we discussed finger prints and hand prints and the fact that police sometimes use finger prints to find bad guys. Then we discussed toe prints and hand creases and the blue veins that are under the skin. Then we talked about what it would be like if our veins weren’t bendable. Then the conversation morphed into an impromptu a cappella song about our bodies and how glad we are that we’re bendable and that people don’t steal our bones.
All day I’d been trying to settle myself into a frugal mindset, the one where I think twice before buying anything. One of the ways that this was expressed the first year after Howard quit Novell was by baking. I couldn’t afford to buy treats for the kids, so I made treats instead. Today I made cookies. I made a big batch and made each cookie smaller than I usually do. I had enough to let the kids eat some, have some for bedtime snack, pack some for lunches, and give some away. I also made dinner.
Then I simultaneously managed homework time and Kiki’s crisis over a friendship. I listened to Kiki, provided information that she may not have had before, made a few suggestions, and tried to help her not let her emotions spin out of control. Kiki was very mature about analyzing what was going on and trying to figure out how she wanted to proceed. I watched her struggle and could see the path I would choose out of the difficulty, but my choice would be made on the basis of years of experience with personal interactions. The path is clear to me because I’ve walked similar paths many times before. The path was not clear to Kiki. I knew the path she took would be a stronger, surer path if she blazed it for herself. If I let her find her own answers then she will learn things that will make the next situation easier for her to deal with. So I tried to put up signposts to give hints about what the road might be like down various paths, but I didn’t tell her which path to take. She picked a good path all on her own. I can see that it is a good path, but she can’t yet and so she’s still all in knots this evening.
Then there were cookies and Harry Potter read aloud.
Next will be bedtime.