Bike

My husband bought me a bike last Friday!! We got it at Target and I was so excited that when we walked out of the store, I immediately hopped on the bike and rode around the Target parking lot! I'm sure I looked like a ding bat, but I don't care! I also got a cute little bell that I attached to it. I love to ride my bike and ring the bell. I feel like a 9 year old again!

I tried finding a helmet, but apparently I must have a big head because none of the helmets at Target fit me. I'll be checking out a bike shop soon. I want a pink one.

A dollar

The other day, as I was waiting for the bus, a man was walking down the street and stopping to talk to people. I knew exactly what he was doing, he was asking people for money. Everyone was turning him down, as most people do. I mean, we've been taught not to give money to people who beg, as they're probably going to buy drugs and alcohol with it, or he's probably got tons of money stashed somewhere.

I was inevitably approached, and you know what? The guy asked if I had a dollar to spare. And right then and there I decided to put away my assumptions, because I don't know that he is going to use any money I give him for something bad. Yes, I had a dollar to spare. This man very politely thanked me and said that we all just need a little help sometimes.

Like I said, I don't know what he'll do with my dollar. It didn't appear that he was having a lot of success, so I highly doubt that he was going to do much damage with the money he'd collected.

You may say I've been taken, ripped off, and a fool for giving someone money. I don't know that, only he does. One thing I do know though, is that it made me feel like a nice person to give someone a hand. It was worth a dollar for me to stop being cynical and judgmental for a little while.

Need a vacation

Growing up, we were not the type of family that took vacations. I mean the kind that you go away for many days in a row. I was always kind of jealous of my peers in school who got to go away to Florida on Spring Break, or some other seemingly "exotic" destination. Our family just didn't have the money to do it. (One of the trade-offs though, was having a mom at home full-time, which was priceless.) Sure we took some adventures for 1 or 2 days, which were always fun but, I never grew up knowing what a real vacation was, nor really knowing why someone would *need* a vacation. I get it now.

Kevin and I both work full time, are still newlyweds, and have a fixer-upper we bought a year ago. And I think we're both just tired. Tired of doing what we "should" do, and feeling guilty about the things we didn't do that we "should've". (Just wait till we have kids right?!?!) I feel though that we are both running out of steam. I'm not saying we're working ourselves to death, not taking out any time for ourselves, but I think we both need to just get away from the routine. We don't lead a hard life by any stretch of the imagination, but even things that may not appear energy-consuming on the surface can take their toll after a while. Like planning the weekly menu, or running the Saturday errands...they start to get annoying after a while, ya know? On the whole, I am extremely grateful that we are able to pay our bills, have some fun, and even save money.

Despite it all, WE NEED A BREAK!!!

Kevin and I have been very blessed this year, despite the national economic decline of late. And we are gonna take that vacation! I think we're close to settling on an eastern Caribbean cruise. The cruise ship is named "Miracle". And maybe with a little stroke of luck, a little "miracle" will appear in our lives 9 months after that cruise is over...

Crash!

Welp, I got rear ended 2 days ago and have nice shiner under my left eye from whacking my head on the steering wheel (OUCH!).

No, my husband does not abuse me. (I'm going to tell people I got into a barroom brawl, to make me sound tough).

I was being pitiful for the last two days, but now I'm doing better. Of course the house is a complete disaster because I haven't felt like cleaning, but maybe tonight I can re-establish some semblance of order.

Why do I get in so many car accidents?
1988-was in a car that got t-boned

1996-hit someone head on (at a low rate of speed, thank goodness, but it totaled my friend's car)

2002-was hit by cute boy who was not amused that I told him he should take me out to dinner (pre-Kevin days)

2002-2 weeks after the other 2oo2 wreck, on my birthday in my 2 week old car. I rear ended a guy, and he was creepy and asked me out. (I said no.)

2006-got rear ended twice by the same person in NYC, on the way home from our honeymoon

2007-car got backed into by my brother (that one was kind of funny)

and now 2008-got rear ended, and my bumper is being replaced so that dent from when my brother rear ended me last year will be taken care of

Ok, that's 7 accidents, 2 were my fault. I don't need anymore thank you.

Some one was mean to me.

It's hopefully pretty rare that someone is literally mean to you. I mean, I can't really remember the last time before today that someone was just mean. This is what happened.

I was pulling into a parking spot today, and misjudged a little, and *tapped* a car on it's bumper. I mean, really, tapped. It just so happened that the person whose car it was, was coming out of the store. She saw what happened and came running to my car, yelling "No, no, no, no" and wagging her finger at me. She was accusing me of trying to flee the scene of the crime because when I tapped the car, I started to back up, as driving forward was not what I wanted to do. I profusely apologized and she was so snotty to me, I became defensive. I won't go into the details, but pretty much, there was NO damage to her car, and she was acting like was on a mission to steal her first born child. I offered all my info, name, number, car insurance, and she didn't take it, and at the end, she felt compelled to give me a driving lesson. This was not a good experience.

I obviously know, I was completely to blame for bumping the car. I can live with that. Sure I feel pretty stupid about it, but I can't unring the bell. And yes, she had the right to be angry. But I think what struck me is her behavior in this situation. It's amazing how poorly people handle things sometimes (me included). It can take the slightest thing to turn people from Dr. Jekyll into Mr. Hyde. Some are more vicious than others. It's a good lesson, to remember that no one is perfect and sometimes people do things unintentionally, and that doesn't mean that they are the devil incarnate. My misjudging, and her nastiness are hopefully not indicators of how we are as people on the whole.

I was very upset after the encounter. I called Kevin and cried on his shoulder. That helped. It then occurred to me that the way I could redeem my feeling stupid and being angry at the mean lady was to continue my shopping and be extra nice to everyone I encountered. It really worked. The shopping also helped. (I'm a girl, ya know....retail therapy is good.)

I'm pretty much over it now, and I hope the mean lady is doing ok too. I truly am sorry about disturbing her, and will now be much more careful about parking.

Passwords

For those of you who couldn't care less about the minutia of my life, this is a blog you may want to skip.

So. Passwords. I am sick and tired of carrying around 25,000 user names and passwords in my brain for different applications. They tell you not to use the same password for everything, and you must also base your user names and passwords on certain criteria (e.g. must be 6-15 characters long and contain a number and a symbol and a letter of the greek alphabet). Ugh. It seems to me, the more technologically-advanced we become, the more we inconvenience ourselves.

This is the year 2008, we're in the 21st century, people! Here's what I want to know. Where are the technologies where we use our thumbprint or an optical scan to access everything? If "they" expect us to use technology, they better make it less tedious and annoying. I have much more important things to use my brain power on.

Peapod

So Kevin's friend, Jason, who is a lazy bachelor (love ya Jason), was singing the praises of Peapod, the online grocery store order/delivery thing. Immediately I poo-poo'd him because, well, he is a lazy bachelor, and I thought he would only order groceries online because he couldn't tear himself away from a video game. He was explaining, that yes, there is a delivery charge, but the groceries are the same price. Uh huh. Right.

So in my efforts to PROVE HIM WRONG, I did my own little game of The Price is Right. I went onto the Peapod website to look up items I know. The price of...milk, spaghetti, cereal. I just kept making my list and watching the total on the side. I made a whole week's work of a list, and realized some things:

I was having fun.
I HATE the grocery store and uh, this would be a great way to avoid it. (Seriously, those old ladies in the store may look all sweet and innocent, but they will mow you down if you're in their way.)
When you're not actually IN the grocery store, it's easy to avoid buying things that you didn't have on your list, like chips and Entemann's.
The website makes it MUCH easier to see the sales.
You control your spending, as you can track your total as you're going along.
You can create a list of things you buy all the time, and the website saves it.
If you forget something, you have time to change your order.

and...

The prices were the same.

Color me ashamed for being so judgmental about this! Of course there are downsides, like the delivery charge, but it's not too bad really. And yes, there were some things I could not find. But when you weigh the good vs. bad, the good is far better. So I made my first order on Peapod. (I'm like one of those people who set out to prove there is no God, then became a 100% believer!) Now if only I could get them to stop at Dunkin Donuts on the way to my house, and pick me up a medium french vanilla coffee cream only.


Busy mommies out there....you gotta do this. I know I will love this even more when I'm a busy mommy.