“Are you buying lunch, or am I?”
“I will.”
“Thanks. Oh! You also need to write me a check to replace the savings we used for car repairs. Wow…I sound like a gold-digger.”
“You are a gold-digger.”
“I beg your pardon.”
“You’re expensive.”
“I am not!”
“Well, someday, you will be expensive, so someday you will be a gold-digger.”
“No I won’t, I’ll be a trophy wife. They aren’t the same thing at all.”
– C. and J.
Gold-digger! The nerve of him!
“So…we’re not eating out again until after, approximately, the birth of our third child.”
– C.
Indy, though a blessed luxury after four years without a car, does come with a certain amount of wear and tear. She’s 12 years old and I’m increasingly of the opinion her previous owner didn’t love her as I do.
We came back from Christmas to find her battery (the one she came with: a secondhand, refurbished one at that!) had died. J.’s parents had generously bought us a new one for a Christmas present but when they were bringing her back to life, the mechanic said we should keep an eye on our timing belt because it was obviously old and cracked. Also a mount and filter needed to be replaced (thanks, Indy’s negligent previous owner).
So, when I took her in to get her oil changed yesterday, I batted my eyelashes and asked the mechanics if they could pretty please also check the belts for me because I was ever so worried about them (no charge!). Unfortunately I went to pick her up I got some scary news. Both the timing and driving belts seemed to be in immediate danger of molecular disintegration. And even a non-tech type like me knows that when those go, the entire car goes. They recommended immediate replacement but as it was already late afternoon and as it was going to be “at least a half day job,” they said the earliest they would be able to do it was today.
This morning I drove J. to school and then to the shop to be there when they opened at 8am thinking that, as they said it would be a half day thing and they are first come first serve, everything would be done by noon and I could go into work after lunch. I dropped Indy off and then walked the half mile home.
I’d just got to the door when I realized I’d turned all of my keys over to the mechanics and was locked out, and our landlord would be no help because J. and I had just changed the bolt lock. Sigh. I trudged back to the shop, sheepishly asked for my keys and headed back home grumbling. My grumbling increased exponentially forty minutes later when the shop called to explain that the water pump attached to the belt was leaking everywhere and needed to be fixed as well. Don’t worry, I didn’t let them charge me double labor.
The rest of the day I spent checking my phone every ten minutes to see if the shop had called. I did five loads of laundry, scrubbed the kitchen counters and floor, and cleaned our room. I rang Susie every two hours to update her and explain that I was still fully planning on coming into work, until about 3 when I became resigned to my fate. I watched two full movies on AMC while I folded clothes, as well as part of the Westminster Kennel Club dog show. I’d gone verifiably stir crazy by 11. When I began looking around the flat and thinking of decorating ideas I realized I’d reached a Stepford Level of Battiness. They called at 4:50 to say they had finished.
Praise be to Jupiter, Odin, and Quetzalcoatl that we have a Pell Grant to cover tuition and a fat tax return on its way (hurrah for being young, poor, at university, newly married, and living on a tiny income!), as well the fact that we like to save money for just such circumstances. It’s a steep bill buts it’s cheaper than a new car! I’m glad we’ve got the means and common sense to take care of ourselves, I just wish it wasn’t so bloody expensive sometimes.
The downside: $800.00 and an even larger pile of work on my desk tomorrow.
The upside: three day work week and clean laundry.
“This is always going to be a problem for us, you know.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well in June there’s your birthday, July our anniversary. And then November is my birthday, followed by Christmas.”
“Oh my. We did not time that well…”
-J. and C.
J.’s birthday is tomorrow, and oh the problems! I ordered his present weeks ago, and after much angst that it wouldn’t come in time, I happily opened the mailbox yesterday to find it snuggled inside along with my mother’s christmas present (Poverty means that you have to buy presents in conjunction with paychecks. The more people in your life, the more paychecks you have to start thinking ahead. I have to think very far ahead). I got it inside, past J.’s grabbing hands and demands of, “What did you get me?!” and snuck it into its hiding place, when an Awful Realization struck.
I think J. may already have what I got him. Uh oh…
Never mind! He’s under orders to appear absolutely thrilled in front of my in-laws and I will quietly exchange it later if it is in fact, as I fear, a double.
Another realization that struck me this past week, though not as awfully as the first, is that I am now in charge of J.’s birthday. His last one we celebrated at his sister’s house complete with parents and four nieces and nephews (which I have now inherited) and it was definitely his parents’ show. This year it’s my job. Which meant a frantic scramble to call up Darling and my sister-in-law to coordinate a family get together. Today I ordered the cake he wanted (thereby pushing Gio and Buddy’s presents to next paycheck’s shopping list. I’m already behind!) and am I hoping haven’t forgotten anything else.
Also unlucky? I’ve already run through my allotted Pandora minutes for the month. Sigh.
“Common sense is not so common.”
-Voltaire
A couple things that I noticed today because I’m (still) in a rather bad mood and grouchy towards the silliness of my job. Such an attitude invariably spills over into other aspects of life and I do recognize that I need to snap out of it soon. I’ll put on rose colored glasses again shortly, but meanwhile I’m still way too irritated!
1) In spite of the hiring freeze the University has imposed on every department, they were still able to give all employees a raise, which was rather lovely. However it was my job to individually calibrate and apply said raise to all 150+ of our student employees, which was rather horrible. And despite several emails to student employee supervisors warning them that this project would take several days and that they would have to get any other wage changes to me before then, a pile of “so-sorry-I’m-late-but-it’-just-been-crazy-and-don’t-you-look-nice-today-could-you-possibly-help-me-out” paperwork stealthily grew on my desk. Which was rather irritating, but manageable. However, today a new bunch of supervisor raises appeared on my desk and one kid, when you add up all his raises together, is getting a 10% wage increase because (and this I quote from the supervisor comment section of the form), “He has improved very much. He now diligently wears black socks.” This kid will end up making nearly as much as me because he has finally learned to match his footwear to the black shoes, pants, and belt his uniform requires?! (*teeth grind*)
2) Even after many requests, nigh unto begging, they still will not update the office website! Currently people trying to muddle through our new (still now quite functioning) parking monitoring program call the number listed on the parking and traffic website…which sends them straight to my phone. However hearing, “University police,this is C.,” tends to make people start panicking a little. (*head shake*)
3) And it’s not just work being ridiculous! Driving to work today I heard a commercial. “The current credit crunch and recession making it hard for you to buy a car or house? Something drastic must be done! We have bailout money for YOU YOU YOU! Good credit, bad, credit, no credit? High income, low income? Doesn’t matter, you WILL be approved for your big purchase!”
Now…wasn’t it the poor decisions on the part of lenders/banks/credit companies to lend people money that they didn’t qualify for (coupled with people thinking that their actual income should not be a factor in purchases) that got this country in the financial mess it’s in? (*facepalm*)
There! I finally feel purged of the angst! At least, I’ve complained myself hoarse, and that tends to make for a bad dinner conversation, I’m pretty sure my poor in-laws got an ear-full of it sunday night, to say nothing of my long-suffering husband! I’m grabbing dinner with Catriona tonight who apparently has much to gossip about, (but won’t even give me any hints as to what, the minx!) so I have to be in prime perked ears position. Vent-fest over.
“Naked people have little or no influence in society.”
-Mark Twain
Women of the world, raise your voices in the age old cry with me, “I HAVE NOTHING TO WEAR!”
And, melodramatic as it may sound, I genuinely mean it! From the moment I got engaged, my so-called frivolous spending (Frivolous: as if looking good isn’t important. Did none of you endure high school? I spent mine more or less a tragic mess) was sharply curtailed. Money was put towards a new apartment with a significant raise in rent, utilities had to be set up (which generally involved some sort of fee in varying degrees of heftiness), and I had to start putting down payments on everything. My parents paid for the reception which was gorgeous (pictures may or may not be forthcoming, the photographer we used for it did a terrible job. And I’m not saying that facetiously, ask Venice. Bad), but I paid for my gown myself, plus shoes, veil, jewelry, hair, salon time for my bridesmaids and mom, bridesmaids presents, plus extra invitations when we discovered we didn’t have enough. All that means much less money to spend on food, frolic, and fashion than a single girl might be used to.
Which leads me to my current predicament: this has been the first summer I’ve worked a legitimate post-university job. I spent my first two university summers working in Belgium (significantly cooler than the western U.S. desert I’m currently sweltering in) and the next two either taking classes (and therefore in jean and tee shirts) or travelling/visiting my family in England. My student jobs on campus all required me to dress up for work so my wardrobe had a couple pairs of nice trousers, pencil skirts, and nice shirts…all appropriate to an autumn and winter climate. I also have a fair amount of jeans and teeshirts, which I can only wear on weekends now. I have a new reason to long for my student days!
And so, now the many lovely cashmere sweaters I’ve amassed are no good. The carefully-tended-to-make-them-last classic wool trousers are worthless in 90-100 degree weather. Even long sleeves shirts are a heat-exhaustion risk for me because I like my weather much cooler, with more clouds in the sky, and a decent wind blowing, and not even 4+ years in this part of the world has cured me of that. My boots, scarves, hats, dark tights, and coats, fabulous as they are, are simply useless to me until September!
Women seem to be slightly more at the whim of the vicissitudes of fashion than men. It may just be me, but I’ve observed that our clothing seems to be made of flimsier stuff, which means that we either need to A) replace it often as it wears out, which costs us more, or B) have a large enough wardrobe to begin with so that we can rotate clothing so no one player gets too much time in the field. This also requires not only money, but time, and planning! And, even though I’m getting better, putting outfits together is not a skill that comes effortlessly to me. My fabulous and talented friend Janssen over at Everyday Reading has an equally fabulous and talented sister who spent a couple of months showing her daily outfits on her blog, sadly she’s not doing it anymore because I got some really good ideas from it (along with bouts of mind mangling jealousy). And this girl occasionally makes lots of her own amazing clothing! Oh mother, how do I now regret those basic sewing lessons I scorned in my youth!
Of course it’s currently mid-July, so summer won’t be lasting much longer, so I should probably suck it up and just continue to rotate my two pairs of lightweight trousers for another month and a half. We’re now starving newlyweds, trying to save enough to get to England to see my family for Christmas. But…but…
Small Dog Syndrome 