Are you ready to win a million dollars?: Our weekend fun
April 27, 2016
Free fun: the patented homebody edition
Lest you ever have the mistaken notion that PiC and I are a happenin’ couple…or whatever means “cool” these days, let me regale you with our Saturday night.
Some people get dolled up and go to Disneyland’s Club 33 for a drink and whatever else you do there.
Us?
Well, our dinner was a little late. While I tried to finish booking travel arrangements before running off to cook, LB had snuggled up next to me to crunch on these puffed cereal squares PiC had found at Trader Joe’s. They’re good, we all eat them.
Ze waved hir cup at me and tried to help me type so, of course, “No, LB, do not break Mama’s computer with your grubby fingers. Sit down.”
Ze sat.
Ze crunched.
Ze offered me a square.
“No thanks, honey, that’s for you.”
Ze took a bite, then offered it again. This time demonstrating what ze wanted with an open mouth, saying “ahhhh”. Nothing like your kid turning your tricks against you.
“Oh, no, DEFINITELY no thanks, that’s really for you. Here, see? I’ll eat this one.” I popped an unlicked square in my mouth and crunch-crunch-crunched. Ze smiled, satisfied, I thought.
Nope. Fool.
Ze took another square and offered it again. “No, thammmf!” Ze jammed it in my mouth. My hands were protecting the computer and ze knew ze had me. To really make sure of it, ze pushed half hir hand into my mouth so the cereal was not coming back out.
Laughing, I turned to PiC who wasn’t helping even a little bit, and gestured wildly. He took a picture. THANKS.
I turned back and *jam* another cereal square. And another! Ze grinned madly, this was fun!
But I still have my standards, if there was drool on it, I wasn’t eating it.
After the dozenth very aggressively offered cereal but was uncompromisingly shoved into my mouth, ze sat back on hir heels and started eating again. A clear dismissal, or at least an easing of hostile sharing.
Soup’s on!
Dinner was the usual. Rice and fish spoon-catapulted all down my front. Milk dribbling down hir dimply chin, both parents gingerly treading around and through the rice moat surrounding hir high chair. You know, the usual.
Bath and bedtime are always good. They’re the easiest part of the day and no matter how hard the day was, you’re guaranteed lots of grins and laughs. That makes the wind down of the night so much easier.
Closin’ down the bar
I joggle at PiC’s elbow as he does the dishes, impatiently. Just when it’s my turn to rinse, I disappear, having just remembered it was time for Seamus’s medication. My timing is impeccable. But the magic hour rolls around when we’re both parked at the table and it’s time. FOR MONOPOLY!
Not the board game, though it’ll come as no surprise to anyone who’s read a word of this blog, I loved the board game and finagled a game as often as possible. No, we’re “playing” the supermarket board game where you get game tickets for certain purchases from Safeway. Our regular purchases always earn a few, and we stick the individual pieces to the paper board game piece in the faint hope of filling all four or five parts of a property to win anything from a $5 grocery gift card to a $500K vacation home or $1 MILLION DOLLARS.
PiC reads off the numbers in his loud Bingo voice, and I cheer or boo the pieces, gluing pieces to the sheet when we hit on an empty space. To date, we’ve won 3 instant win vouchers for 2 more game pieces and we’re one or two pieces away from winning big or small on a variety of stops on the board.
It’s all VERY exciting.
Right, I’m not fooling anyone, I know the rest of the world actually engages in real fun but look, this is our kinda fun, alright?
Besides, what if we did win?
We’re close on the $5 grocery card, $15 grocery card, $2,500 Big Joe Grill and groceries (what say I skip the grill and get that all in groceries?), $200 cash, $1,000 grocery card and $1,000 family vacation.
PiC and I have an agreement that if we did win, we tell no one. Except if he gets the $5 gift card, he’s singing it from the mountaintops. I’m not sure if this blog is exempt from the “tell no one” agreement yet, but I think it should be.
:: PiC says the real value is our goofball selves having Family Time, I say the real win is the million dollars. What would you want to win if you had to pick one and it wasn’t the $1M or $500K home (because I seriously doubt anyone will win those)? Do you think anyone’s really going to win anything? Have you ever? We’re going to need a new free and easy pastime when the game is up in May, suggestions?
If I ever won a big jackpot, I would add it to my early retirement fund. If it were a huge jackpot (like at least $1 million) I would probably cut way down on the hours I work. That’s about it! I can’t think of anything I would buy, although I would probably pay off the remaining mortgage on my house.
Definitely. Any wins go toward our retirement savings, and after some contemplation I would consider whether it’d be a good ROI to pay off the mortgage or if there was a better way to invest it.
You must be super happy that Safeway is giving way DOUBLE Monopoly tickets through May 3rd!
I give all my tickets to my neighbor/friend who is on a fixed income. I don’t have much luck with those “games” anyway.
How can they legally advertise that certain prizes can be won if they don’t make it possible to do so?
You’re telling me – we’re one ticket away from winning on 18 places on the board and even double tickets probably aren’t going to help us win.
I think because they post the odds in the store, spotted them the other day, they get to say it’s winnable IF you can beat the odds? I don’t know. But it’s just freebie fun anyway since we’re not buying anything just to get tickets, these are all normal purchases.
I’d use the money for college! It’s fun to dream sometimes!
Especially when it’s free 🙂
I’d be happy with any of it, but $1,000 grocery GC would be lovely. Well, assuming Tim didn’t use that as a license to get more groceries. I think we’d have to institute the “saved savings” policy: For everything we would’ve spent at the store, put it in savings.
Otherwise, $200 in cash would make me plenty happy!
We keep rooting for the same prizes! And yes, it’s getting tossed right into the saved savings pot, otherwise it’ll just trickle through our fingers.
We figure that they never make all of the tickets to win a prize available in any one city. So my daughters and I share our extras (we live in three different cities). But we still find ourselves needing just one more to win for numerous prizes. It’s fun to try though!
That was our theory too! We were joking that we should trade with people on Craigslist.