This week has been crazy with the blahs and keeping appointments and trying to be motivated. As a result, I haven't seen the rest of my family since Monday night. So despite feeling like death warmed over, I finished getting my glasses fixed at Target and bought Atticus a soccer ball for Christmas and got through traffic with enough time to see them. Bowed out of going to my grandmother's Christmas party, and was fixing my supper when Atticus hit me with his second most important news (first was when was it okay to go to my house and play again). "I got a soccer ball!"
Dad ruined my train of thought that we have a psychic in the family. "Grammie (my mother) bought it for him yesterday."
I shooed Atticus out of the room so he could show me his new Hot Wheels car. "I was buying the soccer ball for his Christmas."
"Well, it was the last one Wal-Mart had."
"I BOUGHT the soccer ball tonight for his Christmas present." Kai, my sister and Atticus' mother, walks in and I repeated it. "I just bought the soccer ball tonight when I got my glasses fixed. I told you that's what I was getting."
"I didn't buy it." And she fled back to the living room.
Mom came bustling into the kitchen the next time Atticus was out of earshot to defend her purchase (and yes, she was there when I said I was going to buy one) and offered to exchange it for me. "He wants a football too. And it was the last one Wal-Mart had."
After sending her off to the party with confirmations that I could go back to Target just fine on my own, I turned to Dad. "The reason I went with soccer is because I sucked tossing the football back in P.E. class. And who takes Atticus outside to play? ME!"
He laughed. "You can still kick the soccer ball."
"It's going to be the cake plate year all over again." And he laughed harder.
The cake plate year is legendary in my family. Mom decided to make a list of all the stuff she really, really wanted and needed, tired of our guessing at items and not getting it right. Me and Krista dutifully ignored the list, but Kai followed it. Item number one was a fancy glass cake plate with a cover and a stand so you can display the dessert on it. And the day after Kai had bought a really nice one and told me about finding it, in bustles Mom showing off the cake plate she had just found for herself. Kai good-naturedly took her cake plate back and went for item number two on the list, which Mom promptly bought for herself before Christmas too.
I think Dad felt sorry for me last night (it has been a stressful week so I'm fairly certain my expression showed it), because we worked out a payment plan and ordered a new computer for me with a USB headset microphone. So now all I have to buy is a new phone because the one I have doesn't have a mute button and a new modem because mine is still dead Jim, and I'll be ready to apply for Convergys virtual call center job again! Looks like that'll probably happen in January. *crossing fingers*
I was invited to an outing to see Tron this weekend, but I don't think it'll happen. I couldn't focus on bill paying last night and woke up too late to do it this morning, so I have to do it as soon as I get home tonight. If I get home tonight, I had planned on stopping at an AT&T store for a new modem and Barnes & Noble for the book portion of Atticus' Christmas (and the above episode is why I claimed books as my province when he was born), but now I have to go back to Target for the third time this week!
And now that I think about it, the budget I'm tweaking for 2011 (using Quicken's process that I find quick but clunky) needs to be tweaked again because I didn't make sure the computer payment is added to the monthly bills.
It's not the number break down that I find clunky but the report of monthly spending versus the budget. Using gasoline for the example, according the Quicken's report I have spent $121 on it month to date, okay. The next column is the amount allotted under the budget, which it says is $98. Third column is the difference between the first two. What I can't figure out is where $98 came from when the monthly allotment is supposed to $191. I think that Quicken takes the total monthly amount divides it by how many days are in the month and then multiplies it by how many days have passed. At least, when I do that it comes very close to what the report tells me. Problem is the way I'm used to looking at a budget is subtracting what I have spent from the total monthly allotment until there's no more to spend. For example, I can take $70 out of this paycheck for gasoline until I get paid again. It's a theory I understand not that I've been very good at following it, but I'm buckling down on it in 2011. Honest!
What I would like to do is change the report to show that math instead of what it shows. I have no idea if I can do that, so I've got a research project for today while I'm working on lawsuits. *rolls eyes*
Read Free!
The BookWorm
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