Picture of my living room right now while we’re in the process of putting up Christmas decorations.
I started out the day with a bit of optimism and was looking forward to getting stuff done. But everything went haywire fairly quickly.
First thing on today’s agenda was to get Isaac a bank account since he starts his first job on Monday. I stopped at the ATM and took out $20 to start his account. I thought kids accounts had to have a minimum deposit of $5 so I figured I’d have change to get Christmas lights . Wrong! Minimum deposit is $25 but she let us do $20 since he’ll be having his checks direct deposited. So nothing leftover and I’ll have to use my debit card for the lights.
We left the bank to go to the dollar store and the truck starts to sputter and die. I could barely keep it running. I stopped and put gas in it along with some gas treatment. That’s doesn’t help. So we go over to O’Reilly’s to have them pull the code to see what was wrong with it. The code for the idle control valve came up. I’d just replaced that in June so it was under warranty and I didn’t have to pay for it. But the part wasn’t going to be in for 2 hours. So we went to get the lights and headed home.
At home I wanted to get the house clean and decided to hang up a shelf at the end of the stairs so they could hang up their costs. First I got a metal sliver in my finger from the screw and then the shelf came off the wall. So I left that project for Darrell to do later.
When it was finally time to go get the part, Darrell drove me into town and Isaac decided to ride along. We went back to the parts store but it didn’t come in on the truck and wouldn’t be there for another two hours. Also they said we needed to bring in the old part in order to not get charged for the new one.
We left there and went to the dollar store and to Fleet Farm to get stuff for the rest of the projects I wanted to do today.
Back at home, Darrell, Isaac and Ben started bringing up the Christmas boxes so we could put up the tree and decorate the house. That’s when Sarah told me that she’d volunteered to work Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Well that’s just wonderful! First of all, I’m not particularly fond of Christmas – it just seems depressing always. Secondly, the kids dad gets them Christmas Eve this year and he’s never too prompt about getting them back to me so it could be close to noon before I can start celebrating Christmas with the kids. And now Sarah has to leave for work at 6 pm. I’d planned to open presents a little at a time all day until evening, so now I don’t know how I’m going to do that now.
While we’re starting to put together the Christmas tree, Darrell is outside getting the part off the truck. When he’s done, him and I go back into town to pick up the new part . We go back home and Darrell puts it in only to find out that it didn’t fix the truck. Just wonderful!
I end up burning supper and the boys are trying to get a sliver out of the paw of Butterfingers, our little boy kitten.
I’m sitting here now thinking about Sarah working on Christmas. Everyone always tells me how I’ve done such a good job with my kids and I should be proud of how they are all hard workers. They all tell me that kids growing up and starting lives of their own is a good thing. All I can think about is how in just a few years I’ll be spending all my holidays alone because all my kids will be grown up with lives of their own. Because I’ve done everything right I get to spend the rest of my days all by myself and alone. I guess when I was having kids I didn’t anticipate how the last years of my life were going to be spent alone because I did such a good job of raising my kids to be independent adults. Wow, what a fantastic reward.
