Petty Cash Breakdown

I rarely carry that much cash around with me as I pay for everything with a credit card, debit card or on-line.  So a trip to the ATM for around $60 would usually last me a week or longer.  That is, until Piper started school.

Talk about being nickeled and dimed to death.  It seemed like every time I hit the ATM, an envelope was in her school folder requiring twenty dollars here, ten dollars here, forty dollars there.  Lunch money, after care money, trip money, raffle money, pie sale, charity drive… 

Friday was the last straw.  I went to the ATM for the second time this week and sure enough, the minute I came home with my 60 bucks, there was another stupid envelope asking for $40.  Talk about losing it.  It was reminiscent of Diane Keaton’s neurotic freak out in Baby Boom.

“That’s just it! I’ve been nickeled and dimed by this school for the last time! I just went to the ATM and now I’m out of cash. AGAIN. I… I… I… I can’t take this. Another. Forty. Dollars! UGHHHHHHHHHH!

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After the dust settled, my husband made the wise suggestion that I take a larger chunk of money out next time and then just keep it stashed away in the cabinet (like my mom used to do in 1977).  Wow. Why didn’t I think of that? (Probably because I am completely unorganized?). So I made a mental note to withdraw more cash the next time.

Well, that night I had one of those anxiety dreams.  You know the ones I am talking about?  Where nothing goes right and it is just stress, stress, stress at every bizarre corner?  Yeah, one of those.  In this dream I went to my usual bank but it was closed, so I went to a different ATM and it was out of order, then another ATM but it stole my card because I kept punching my PIN in wrong.  Frantically, I took a bus across town to the last bank that was open and got there just in time. Total anxiety.

Then I went through this entire charade of explaining to them how the ATM stole my debit card and, of course I couldn’t find my ID… total anxiety bullshit. Finally they agreed to give me my money.

I told the teller, “Please, Please. Give me enough cash to get me through at least one month without going to the ATM over and over again.”  And she did.  She stuffed $300 in one of those long white envelopes and I left.  But when I finally get back home and open the envelope, I discovered the teller had given me three $20 bills and a $240 bill (apparently in my la la land of anxiety nightmare, they actually make bills of $240 denomination). 

“Oh no! What is this huge bill? I’ll have to break this huge bill. I only have $60 to use before I have to break this huge bill! I…I…I… can’t do it again. I… I… can’t… Another. Trip. To. The. Bank! UGHHHHHHHHHH!”

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Not deterred by my nightmare, yesterday I went to the ATM and withdrew $120 - my new petty cash stash (I checked and they were all twenty dollar bills).  So today, as I am getting ready for church, I pull out my weekly church envelopes.  Since it is a new month, the envelopes for today, Nov. 1, are right on the top.  I take the first two and notice yet another Nov. 1 envelope and then another one and another one.

I say to my husband, “Oh no! They misprinted the envelopes!  All the envelopes for this month say Nov. 1 on them.” But NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!  There was no misprint.  Turns out there are SEVEN envelopes for this week.  He tells me that is impossible.  So, I started reading them off to him:

“This one is for My Weekly offering, this one is My All Soul’s Day offering, this one is My Renovation offering, My Parish Improvement offering, My Seminary offering, My Beloved Departed offering. I…I…I… can’t. I can’t…I can’t possibly fill them all… Another. Seven. Envelopes! UGHHHHHHHHH”

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Just picture your beloved Momish in this clip instead of Diane Keaton and you’ve just witnessed my petty cash breakdown!

I Could Have Been Dead You Know!

Yesterday at work I got a helpdesk ticket from one of our employees having an issue with his Blackberry. Because he had a different model, I needed to check my phone. “Hold on,” I told him. “Let me get mine…” 

Only, when I got back to my office, I couldn’t find my phone.  But I have this bottomless pit of a handbag, so I called my cell to make sure it wasn’t just buried in there.  {crickets} 

OK, so I must have left the damn thing home on the charger or something. Minor worry, but nothing to panic about.

When I got home, no phone. The charging station was empty. 

Holy shit, where the hell is my phone? My husband asked me when I last saw it. Well, I know I had it Monday, because I updated my Facebook status while waiting in the doctor’s office.  Did I have it on Tuesday? YES! I called T for our playdate. Wednesday? When was the last time I used the stupid thing?

Starting to panic (company paid phone and all), I gave it another call.  {ring, ring} I heard it, but faintly.  So I go searching for it. Calling it again and again each time I get the voice mail.

Finally, I found it in our hall closet.  On Tuesday, I had a play date after work and took my backpack instead of my handbag, then forgot to transfer it back.  Schwew!

“HA!” I told my husband.  “No one can say I’m slave to technology!”  In this day and age when everyone practically lives by their cell phones, I just went two whole days without even KNOWING mine was missing! 

Then I checked and saw I had five missed calls. Oh No. I hope it wasn’t work or my boss or my mom or anything serious.  But nooooooooooooo, turns out all the calls were from me while trying to find the damn thing!

Talk about your bursted bubbles. Not being a slave to technology is one thing, but being completely unpopular and unimportant is quite another.  Two whole days??

What if I was lying dead in some ditch somewhere? Huh? Huh? Then you’d be sorry!

Freaky Friday

In the spirit of Halloween, I ‘m gonna tell about this rather freaky thing that once happened to me. 

{Dim the lights. Gather closer around the fire…}

It was the summer that I had just turned 17, when I found this book in a thrift store and bought it for a nickel:

Seriously, how could I pass up a book titled “Lori” when my is Lori, spelled just like that? It was printed in 1973, so it was all beat up like that when I bought it, but I have saved it for all these years. Because reading this book was one of the weirdest experiences in my life. 

As you can see from the cover picture (also how she is described in the story), the title character is of average height, has long brown hair and dark brown eyes… Hey that’s cool. I too am of average height, have long brown hair and dark brown eyes…

The second page states the book is dedicated to Jane, Jim, Lisa & Lori.  Hey, my sister’s name is Lisa. Lisa & Lori… how weird is that?

The story begins on the day of Lori’s 17th birthday, July 20th. Gee, what a coincedence. My birthday is in July too and I just turned 17 like a week ago. Hey, wait a minute! Today is July 20th! Oh, now that’s totally creepy…

Then on page 9, we learn that Lori’s mother died when she was six, so she doesn’t really remember her all that well. Hey, that’s sorta like me too. My dad died when I was eleven, so I don’t remember him all that well either…

The plot centers around how upset and distraught Lori is because her father moved them far away from her boyfriend Johnny.  Now that’s just funny because I kinda know how she feels. A few years ago I had this HUGE crush on this kid named Johnny. Not John, Johnny. And that summer his parents moved and took him away and I was pretty upset about that. This is getting crazy…

So up until this point, one could say all the above is just coincidences, a tad eerie but completely manageable, if you know what I mean.  It’s not like it was exactly like my life or anything, just strangely similar in a few minor ways.

But then on page 68 we learn that of all the girls in the orphanage where Lori volunteers, her favorite is this wiry little girl named Mica.  Whoooaaa. Whoooaaa. Whooaaa! Stop right there. Did I read that right? This can’t be happening. Because my cousin, who is also my best friend in the entire world, just happens to be named Mica!

Not Jane or Mary or Ann or Beth or any of the other 5,000 common girl names in the world, but Mica!

Totally freaking freaky!

{cue the Twilight Zone music now}

The Time Traveler's Wish

Got my first Rebel Reminder, the one to remind me to go see The Time Traveler’s Wife.  And, here’s a shocker… still haven’t gotten around to see it yet.  I really want to see this movie. Time traveling is thoroughly interesting to me.  Just like everyone else I am sure, I wish I could travel through time.  Pop back into the past, pop ahead into the future.  Most of the time, I wish this for noble reasons.  For example, some of the top moments on my list would include popping to:

• circa 30 AD to meet Jesus, hang out with him and his followers, see what the whole Mary thing was really all about. 
• summer of 1776 to stop our founding fathers from writing “We the people in order to form a perfect union.”  I am sure I could convince them, even as a woman, that there is no such thing as more perfect.
• April 14th 1910 to let those idiots know there’s a significant iceberg up ahead. (although I debate this one now and again. As much as I would love to save all those lives, Titanic is on of my favorite guilty pleasure movies.)
• circa 1900 to push Hitler in front of his school bus or something like that to be rid of him for good before he did any bad.
• circa 350 B.C. to have a long chat with Plato, disguised as a horny Greek school boy, of course.

There are many more, and like I said, most of them are rooted in noble and meaningful reasons.  But every so often, I would just love to pop back in time to an event in my own life.

Take last week, after sitting at my desk in front of a computer all day.  My neck hurt, my back hurt, my legs hurt.  Stiff, stiff, stiff.   I thought back to when I was dating this guy in my mid 20’s.  He was studying to be a massage therapist.  Every day he was trying out this technique, working on that technique, perfecting yet another technique. And of course, I was his number one guinea pig.

Sitting there at my desk, aching from head to toe, I wished I could pop back to 20 years ago.  Because during that time, I actually uttered the words, “Oh please! Please, not another massage!”

How I would love to just pop back to that moment and seriously smack myself right upside the head.

{pop. smack. pop.}