The Holy Water Worked!

My car is out of the shop-- the belt just needed to be tightened! He changed my tires and everything and the bill came to $158! That is the smallest amount I have spent with him, I think. This is so excellent! Yes-- the Holy Water worked! The mechanic laughed when I told him this. I told him that his job is a ministry (he goes to a church that is similar to mine) and he hugged me and said he was glad that I feel like this. I gush-- I am so "born-again" about my vehicles.

My second eldest just got a job. It's at a little restaurant. She was so nervous for the interview and got dressed up--she was hired on the spot,then another girl went in looking like she'd been drinking and she got hired. My daughter was like, "I shaved my legs for this?" That is fine-- she is happy to have a job!

Every time I go to the store I am getting sticker shock. Everything is shooting up in price. The grocery store is the worst. I have always been frugal but I feel like I am getting silly about it, like my grandparents who'd been raised in the Depression. Everyday I bake three excellent meals,including desert, but even if I have extra tea I use it in my cakes. Parts of chicken that I used to throw away I now prepare in a soup. My eldest daughter was watching me shop and cook last weekend and she said, "You pinch Lincoln till he screams!" (President Lincoln is on our pennies. A common expression of someone saving money is that he or she "pinches pennies.")

I am getting pay-back for being a biatch in high school. I remember a woman who I look a lot alike now, with her two children in a mall. She was pretty and sweet and her two kids were 4 & 5 or so and she was sitting on a bench and carefully counting out money to buy them a pretzel to share. I thought, "Geez, Lady! It's just .85! Don't be so flipping cheap!" I went up and got myself a pretzel and paid for one for one of the ladies' kids and told the clerk that when the particular mother went up to make something up about the pretzel batch being about to expire or something, which she did so the lady and her two kids all had one and when I ate I heard the mother say a fast prayer and tell her kids that it was their lucky day as they got a free pretzel. Of course my being nice was condescending. I was not going to have children and I thought she was silly for having to budget for something so cheap. Now pretzels are not that cheap, but when I have the kids with me, I start them out with, "If I buy us pretzels, we will have to share. Are you all OK with sharing? If anyone doesn't want to share, you get no pretzel." (That is if I have some money to even buy pretzels or snacks.) I am so glad that I am in this situation now-- it is good for my soul! Yes, when we get a little extra from a nice baker, I am like that mother who was so happy and I say a little "prayer of thinks" and feel blessed, but I am paranoid about what people are secretly thinking of me when they offer it!

It's only the second day of summer and I drank 14 cups of tea yesterday. That is a stress sign. I drink tea to calm my nerves. The kids know that if I am having tea that they need to be quiet. I was having just three cups a day on the average all winter. I don't spike it-- it's just pure tea with almond milk, but I must be stressed! At least my vice is tea and not something stronger. I seldom have alcohol as too much in my system causes my skin to break out. I may have two or three glasses of wine or stout beer in a month. One of our neighbors is a man in his 50's with grown children. He can afford expensive lawn toys like rototillers and saws. He's going to till my lawn for me tonight. I am so grateful for him! He and my husband are going to make some playground equipment for the kids later.

I am keeping up with my art-- I have a dance class this evening. I am going toward something but I don't knwo what it is. Music, art, dance-- it's all for a purpose. I just don't know what!

The kids don't seem to mind the doing of school work in the mornings and going over things. Cloud is 12 and pouts-- she says it's not fair. Her brothers on the other hand do multiplication tables and match or beat their best times. The babies get read to and furiously scribble over their papers as they do their multiplication tables too. They always claim to beat their older brothers and they laugh, "How'd I get beat by a four year old? Man, I'll send him to school instead of going next year to fourth grade!" My four year old beams! They don't claim to beat Cloud-- she glares at them! (They giggle at her behind her back. Sigh.)