About sixteen years ago, I met him for the first time. My trainwreck sibling brought home this adorable puppy he had no business adopting because he had not one thing in his life that wasn’t a mess. I was furious at my sibling – he didn’t even take care of himself, how could he drag
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January 24, 2008
I was idly sitting at my laptop, pecking away at some keys and rifling through some clutter on my desk when I happened across an envelope wedged between my tape dispenser and Lone Wolf comic book. It was an envelope from work, so I thought that maybe I’d forgotten to send out a rebate for Walgreens or something, and I’d just stuck it in a used envelope.
*peek* Oooooh!
I was supposed to lend MaDucky $300 two weeks ago, but didn’t remember to go to the bank to get it. Actually, I just didn’t deposit $120 worth of cash and planned to withdraw the remaining $180. I forgot to do that and just paid the bill electronically for her. And then forgot all about the original $120 in cash! Man! I must be losing my mind. But that’s awesome! Another $120 towards those bills.
*yay*
January 23, 2008
Puppies are soooo cute … and cuddly, and adorable, and lovable. Right up until they break your pants.
Alright, so little Miss M is still cute, but I’ve learned my lesson about trusting her off the leash: don’t!
She’s still a youngun, so I should have known better, but she’d been so complacent and trustworthy all day that when I took her out to do her business before we left work for the day, I didn’t bother to clip on her leash. Why bother? She’d been impossible to motivate beyond eating, drinking, sleeping and occasionally peeing the entire day. Uh-huh. The dang dog’s nocturnal!
We went outside and she moseyed around the planters, sniffing and twitching her tail, checking out possible Hot Spots. The second I stopped paying attention, she bolted for the center of the biggest, most overgrown planter in the courtyard. I jumped right in after her, grabbed for her collar and *shhhcrack!* I stopped. Dead in my tracks. Uhm-hm. That dog made me bust my jeans open.
*shaking head*
I couldn’t believe how breezy it was, suddenly. Luckily, it was dark, we were alone outside, and I had a long shirt on that almost covered up the hole.
After I got over my fit of giggles, I hauled Little Miss Wriggly back into the office, and clipped that leash right on. *tsk* See if I ever trust her again!
R reminded me to try the Stitch Witchery bonding tape from my sewing kit. The tear was straight, extending from the corner of my pocket up to the waistband, so I found some cute green ladybug scrap fabric, and gave it a whirl. The jeans are hanging up to dry now, but it looks like the bonding tape did the job and sealed up the edges of the hole perfectly. Now I can add some stitching to reinforce the repair job, and hide the fact that my jeans had a temporary back door.
In the meantime, I inducted my backup jeans from the New York trip into the jeans rotations. It can sub in for the other jeans until they’re all better. Thank goodness for back-up clothing!
January 22, 2008
It’s a good thing I was so well prepared for R’s wedding gifts.
I paid for her bridal shower gifts using my hoarded Victoria’s Secret gift cards. No coupons to use there, but I did find everything on sale.
For the actual wedding gifts, I redeemed a $100 Macy’s gift card from my Thank You points last month, used a great all-purpose “11% off anything in the store” Macy’s coupon from my business trip in September, and bought three gifts from her registry for a total of $60 after coupon.
And the lady handed me back the coupon, which doesn’t expire until March 31st, back. š I have an extra one, so if anyone wants it, shoot me an email!
A few weeks ago, I read up on wedding gift etiquette, it’s a pretty hot topic on some wedding forums, and learned a few things that seemed contradictory:
1. Guests usually send upon receipt of their invitation, and have up to 1 year after the wedding to send a gift.
2. The bride and groom, however, are not supposed to talk about their registries in the invitation.
So … how do the guests who may not be very close to the bride and groom find out about the registries? I understand that it’s bad form to actively solicit gifts, but is it really preferable to send your guests on a scavenger hunt to find someone who’s in the know? And is it fair to the organizing person who is inevitably fielding a dozen wedding-related calls a day to have to return another dozen calls with a recitation of the registry stores? I can tell you I got pretty tired of getting the calls and texts asking, hey, where are they registered (again!)? There’s got to be a compromise somewhere in there.
3. The guests are not obligated to give gifts that are equal to the value of their plates.
Culturally this is a little funny for me, because that’s exactly the rule of thumb of gift giving in our community. You give at least what your plate probably cost, based on $50 increments, and much more if you’re family or close friends. And even more if you’re immediate family to either bride or groom. My parents, back in the day, gave my mom’s siblings from seven hundred dollars to a thousand dollars as their gift alone, and that doesn’t include paying for part of the wedding. Ma’s the oldest, so it was expected.
In R’s case, though, I didn’t feel obligated to calculate proper return on the cost of our plates because I’d done so much work, and spent so much on all the pre-wedding stuff, that the gift itself pales in comparison. Not to toot my own horn, but I was at that girl’s beck and call, and was darn good emotional support through some pretty tough nights! I was there for her, dangit! š
I also didn’t feel awkward about being creative in financing her gifts. After all, she still got things she liked from her registry, and it doesn’t hurt her at all that I didn’t go into debt for it.
January 21, 2008
and I shouldn’t whine about it being unfair. I promise I’m trying to keep a positive outlook despite all the turmoil of late.
I’m just worried.
I worry about letting my brother come home to live. I can’t trust him to clean up after himself and not run up all the bills. I can’t trust him to treat my parents right. I can’t trust him to behave in the house. I can’t trust him. Period.
I worry about not letting him come home. He says he has nowhere else to go.
I worry about my mom. She’s so confused half the time, and we never know which half it’s going to be. She can’t eat well, sleep well, and insists on trying to work. I can’t “ground” her, she’s my mom! BTW, E.C., getting her not to drive has really been a combination of a guilt trip (I worry so much about your driving, we can’t afford to lose you, we can’t afford for you to have an accident serious or not, etc.) and making sure that everyone around her knows that she’s not allowed to drive so we have to plan ahead to make sure that everyone’s got rides
January 20, 2008
The big wedding was yesterday, and it was absolutely lovely. They have the first half of the wedding photos on DVD already, and those pictures were totally worth getting up at 4:30 (bride and MOH) and 6:30 (rest of the bridesmaids) for. Seriously. They were some awesome photos. I definitely want to find out how much they paid for that photographer because he was quite good. Though, his assistant was a little creepy at the reception; I think he might have been hitting on me.
Highlights
We had serial spill problems: the mother of the bride was picking up litter on the church lawn before we got there, and discovered a carton of milk still had milk in it by spilling it on her dress. She had a back-up, thankfully, and ran home to get it.
The bride started freaking out that her parents were missing due to the above incident, I had to chase family members down and pin on their boutonnieres, the bride’s grandma forgot her cane, there was no water in the church for the bride, and I had a case of severe stage fright and got all emotional because my best friend of 14 years was really officially getting married and leaving us. It’s going to be so weird not having her five minutes away, just up the street. The ushers didn’t know when to start ushering. And they forgot to hand out the programs, so the guests didn’t know to leave the church for the reception site after the ceremony. Whoops ….
The ceremony was lovely, we had an Honor Guard because the groom and groomsmen were all military, and again, the post ceremony pictures were wonderful. The flower girls were darling, the groomsmen were spit and polished, the bridesmaids were sparkling, and the bride and groom were gorgeous together.
I might be biased.
And the other spill? During the bride’s moment to thank the guests, she got choked up and her groom, I love the guy – he’s just as klutzy as I am, flailed out his arm to grab her hand and comfort her. Except his go-go-gadget arms smacked her champagne glass instead, flinging the entire glass of champagne on her dress. Ironically, this happened just as she thanked me for all my help and support, and there I was, frantically wiping champagne off her dress. Show and tell!
I missed most of the hors d’oerves because we were late making our grand entrance, but I did get a crab wonton and it was heavenly! Our lunches were either stuffed chicken or steak, both of which were unbelievably tender, with perfectly steamed and sliced peppers, snap peas, green beans and other veggies, and a side of the creamiest mashed potatoes ever. The chef really outdid himself.
The wedding cake was three tiered: one lemon cake, one carrot cake and a mystery tier for their anniversary. I was a little confused because they didn’t do an official cake cutting part of the night, but that’s ok. The mystery tier is in my freezer because they haven’t any room left in their freezer, and I keep wondering if I can steal some …. mmm…caaaake. They only need a slice or two for next year, right? Right?
Anyway. I was so tired after we unpacked their 13 tons of gifts that I could barely eat dinner that night. BoyDucky was awesome and made us soup and dumplings, but it took me half an hour to get through a bowl of chicken and rice soup.
And I’m still tired today. But everyone was very pleased with how it went off after all the stress of the past few months, and I’m happy for her. She’s got a good guy, and she’ll be happy with him.
Zounds! It’s just past halfway through the month, and I’m down to 48 cents in my Expense account.
I still owe:
$393 — truck, 1/23
$129 — cell phone bills, 1/29
$197 — electric bill, 1/30 (Yes, that’s crazy. No, I have no idea what the HECK is going on with that. Yet.)
$719 — Total
How did this happen?? Well, I’m out $400 because of a bailout car payment, this time for MaDucky. Her paychecks are all screwed up and she didn’t have enough to cover the sedan’s payment, so she had to borrow from me. Now that that’s gone, and I’ve scraped the last of my pennies together to make the rent today, I’m all out of money until the 30th.
Man!
I expect $62 of purchase reimbursements, and another $87 for transportation costs from the office. $20 from the girls at work. Other than that, I’m out of luck until the end of the month. Shoot….. I think I’m in t-r-u-b-b-l-e!
P.S. I have an eerie feeling I talked about this not that long ago!
January 14, 2008
This little girl, M, was supposed to come to work for Show and Tell today, but her new daddy (best friend’s fiance) was suffering from separation anxiety so I’ll just bring her with me tomorrow and Wednesday. Apologies for neglecting the blog, as the wedding draws closer, it’s harder to make free time!
Thank goodness her cuteness makes up for all the pre-wedding stress and jitters.
