The Ebb and Flow of $

Clay arrived at the airport late last night after being with Kateri for the last 5 days in Ohio. I’ve been particularly busy in that time with getting Mariah off to high school, shopping for JJ’s move out to school, Tristan’s bday, soccer practice and on and on. So, this morning he takes the cup of coffee I made for him and opens the refrigerator, reviews it’s scant contents and says, “grass and potatoes, that’s all anyone needs”. Kateri’s wheat-grass is still sitting in there doomed to wither and be sent to the garbage can and there are still a few useable potatoes left in the bag on the bottom shelf. We’ve gotten by just fine on hot-cereal for breakfast, pbnj for lunch and whatever, magically, wonderful concoction I come up with for dinner. There just hasn’t been any extra $ to run to Costco and buy all the fun, convenient foods that we usually have. I told him he can go to the commissary tomorrow after work for me. :-) He actually does a very good job of the grocery shopping when given the chance. But having the fridge be bare made me think of how our $ seems to go in cycles. There is the, “we have plenty of $, let’s take everyone we know to dinner” cycle, the,”Oh, gotta buy everyone new shoes. Thank goodness I didn’t splurge too much at Costco” cycle, the “just buy exactly what you need” cycle and the, “hmmmm, having a birthday party tomorrow. How am I gonna pull that one off?” cycle. Yesterday we were in the last cycle. But let me tell you, saving up, “store-credit” can be a good thing! I realized that I had NOTHING for Tristan’s party and couldn’t go out and make lovely goody bags, so off to Tuesday Morning I went with my $36 in store-credit. His whole party actually cost me $10 out of pocket. Now, while I was creative and everyone got “prizes” for games that we played, there were no children randomly singing my praises and shouting for joy because of the magnificence of the whole event. So, while having a virtually free party CAN be done, don’t expect elation from the children. Just expect messy cupcake faces, which are always a sign that they’ve had a good time.
Have a good day~