7 Quick Takes: 09.12.09 - Pragmatic Compendium

1. I can’t think of anyone sweeter to spend my birthday with than PinkGirl. Notice her calendar entry for Wednesday:

I had a plan for Wednesday, but when PinkGirl woke up with a swollen face (abscessed tooth), my schedule for the day changed completely. By 8:30 a.m., we were at the pediatric dentist, by 9:00 a.m. we had seen the x-ray, decided on extraction (baby tooth) and PinkGirl was breathing “ice cream air.” After pausing twice for hugs and soothing from mom, my brave girl had a little white box containing the “dead tooth.”

Her plan? Put the box under her pillow and make mom PROMISE not to do anything. (Dad was on travel.) If the tooth was still there in the morning, then she would KNOW there is no tooth fairy. BUT. If the tooth fairy DIDN’T come:

“Mom, go ahead and do it, but LIE to me. I don’t want the magic to be over.”

“You bet.”

After our previous discussion about the tooth fairy, she didn’t really have to ask me twice. I had already recruited her big brother to assist me so that I could honestly tell her that I didn’t do anything with the tooth.

2. FavoriteSon and I both forgot about the tooth that night.

No worries, the Tooth Fairy gets a second – and third – and fourth . . . chance. PinkGirl has decided that I must have scared him/her off when I checked on her before going to bed. But before we could give the tooth fairy another shot, we had to find the tooth. Which she took to school on Thursday to show all her classmates. Her “Don’t forget to brush and floss your teeth!!!” speech was undoubtedly compelling.

Friday, we found the little tooth box in the bowels of the van. FavoriteSon did his thing with the gold dollar and the note. This morning (Saturday), PinkGirl told me she forgot to put the tooth under the pillow. FavoriteSon retrieved the note but couldn’t find the gold dollar. Wimp. I found it. Tonight? Saturday night? She forgot it again. She’s already in bed. I’m thinking she KNOWS. But the gold dollar and the note are ready if she decides to put the tooth under her pillow.

3. I’m finding routine difficult to attain right now. My lack of blogging is an obvious sign. I’ve been working a lot. Time consuming client projects with learning curves. And invoicing, which is good. FirstHusband has been traveling a LOT. New school schedule. Three round trips to school per day. (drop off, pickup PinkGirl, pickup FavoriteSon) Learning a boatload of new songs for praise team. Busy. I know LOTS of other people going through the same thing. BUSY.

Hopefully, I’m busy with the things that support my goals. I’m trying to make sure I’m not busy with stuff I don’t care about, but I’m not confident. I’ve got to examine my to do list and start saying no to stuff. For instance. I want to sing at a Disney Candlelight performance with my church choir. I want to feel the power and goosebumps that come with singing the Hallelujah Chorus at DISNEY. I want to sing in my church’s Christmas Cantata. I want to ring handbells with my church handbell choir. And I already sing on the 9:30 praise team, work part time and barely keep my head above water as a home manager (a.k.a. homemaker, housewife, etc.) Seriously. (excuse me, note to self.) JULIE!!!! WHAT are you thinking? Make a decision. You do all of those things – You are going to seriously suck at all of those things. Choose on purpose, for crying out loud. Do some things WELL instead of doing all of those things “good enough.” Or NOT nearly good at all. (okay. I’m done with the note to self.)

I HATE “good enough.” And I REALLY hate not good at all.

4. Online Christmas Shopping. Got some Swaptree swaps in process right now. Got some paperbackswap.com book requests to ship out. Sold a book on Amazon and had to ship it out – and in the process choked my paypal multi-order shipping tool and had to use INTERNET EXPLORER instead of Firefox. Ewww.

Tangent . . . This is one of those things I’m changing because it requires me to be busy doing stuff that doesn’t support my goals. I used to buy some books just to sell, but it just takes too much time. Time I want to spend on other things. Researching pricing, listing, packaging, shipping, organizing . . . Besides, I’m trying to declutter and the listed books take up too much space. I just sold a book that was listed for more than a year. For a whopping profit of $13 (after deducting amazon fees, postage and the price I paid for the book). What’s the hourly wage for that work, I wonder? And I stored that stupid book for more than a YEAR. I need to go through my listings and delete the ones that have been there for a long time. I’ll just donate them to the Whale of a Sale (see #6, below).

Bought a few cool, unique presents for the kids on ebay. I want to be nearly done with the Christmas shopping before December 1st.

5. Raccoons vs. FirstHusband, part . . . oh who the heck knows? THIS time, it’s the prevention of bird feeder destruction. My bird feeders were picked off one by one, left for dead by the very creatures who benefited from their provisions. Lying in pieces on the ground, empty. FirstHusband theorized they were climbing on the bird feeders and they were too heavy for the chains. I theorized that raccoons joined forces and bounced on the bird feeders, enjoying a little raccoon bungee jumping

So FirstHusband got some heavier chain. After first considering tow chain, he settled on 90 lb chain. Good news. Four days later, all the bird feeders are still hanging – except for the suet feeder. The CHAIN for the suet feeder is still hanging in the tree. The suet feeder itself? On the ground. Broken. And one suet cake gone. I said:

“There’s one suet cake out there on the ground. I should get it before the raccoons do.

FirstHusband: “They earned it.”

It appears FirstHusband underestimated the tenacity and teeth of his foe(s). Originally, the suet feeder had a rope to hang from. Then wire. This time, he had FOUR fishing line leaders. Took the raccoons two nights to chew through them.

FirstHusband’s turn. Should be interesting.

6. Church rummage sale, the “Whale of a Sale” is about to begin. We unload the storage unit on Saturday, spend two weeks setting it up in the gym and then, the first Friday and Saturday of October, the WHALE!!! I’m the book lady. I take off nearly two weeks of work and pre-shop set up the book section. Freakishly organized.

I buy nearly $100 in books every year. I guess, in full disclosure, I should mention that hardbacks are $1.00 and paperbacks/kids books are 50 cents – and, that I don’t load up on books to sell either. I resell fiction after I read it, but most are for me and my family. My family! Yes. That’s it. I buy GIFTS. Lots of GIFTS. yeah. that’s it. GIFTS.

7. Labor Day is RIGHT. I’d like to say we did some yardwork, but in reality, we were CLEARING LAND. This:

Came from here:

and here:

and here:

and here:

We also trimmed three trees – holy cow, THAT was a lot of work in and of itself. Our yard waste pickup requires the branches to be bound. And we removed a LOT of branches. They were blocking a big portion of our view and there were some branches actually touching the ground.

And FirstHusband fixed my water pump fountain:

Now, thanks to his thoughtfulness and amazing fix-it ability, I’ve had lunch on my back porch this week enjoying the peaceful sound of trickling water. Gotta love him.

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