Lost and not found

As you know, we have a wonderful new car. With this new car comes a very fancy key and alarm fob. With it you can program the postioning of your seat, control the windows and a few other things. What you can not do is send out some sort of signal so that it will beep when you have misplaced them. This would be a wonderful add on since my keys were lost on Thursday.

I am a backup babysitter for neighbor, so when she goes out of town, I watch the little girl she normally watches. So on Thursday and Friday I had this 6 1/2 year old girl at my house. She gets along quite well with my son and is normally well behaved. On Thursday, I had to remind her several times to leave my car keys alone, that they were not for playing with. On Friday morning, I was going to run to the post office before she came over, but could not find my keys anywhere. I looked on counters, in drawers, in the dishwasher, in all the toys - they were no where to be found.
So, Lauren comes over and I asked her if she moved my keys. Yes, she admits that she did and that she put them on the counter. Where? The counter near the trash can? Could they have fallen in? Oh no, today is trash day and the bag is already out on the corner - I'll just run out and get the bag. Wait what is that noise, that rumbling sound? The trashmen!!! They don't come until 4 pm, why are they here at 9 am?!?

To cut this story short, I ended up at the dealer on Saturday, having the remaining keys reprogrammed along with my new key and alarm fob. And what did this high tech key cost? $137, and that is at list price with a discount. It would normally have been $164, but I begged and wheedled for some sort of break since we have had the car all of 2 weeks.

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

Well, got the new Harry Potter book in the mail yesterday and finished it yesterday too. Yes, it is meant to be juvenile fiction, but I figure it is destined to be a classic some day, I may as well get a head start on the reading, since I am so far behind on reading my classics as it is.

Obviously, it was a fast read. This book concentrated more on emotions than action, which is not necessarily a positive. My feeling is that there could have been more details about the daily activites of our threesome, which would have made the story a bit more fun to read. Plus, some of our favorite characters did not get as much attention in this book as they have in the past. We barely get to talk to Hagrid at all this time around. Of course, if J.K. Rowling had done this there probably would have been another 300 pages added on top of the 600 plus that are there already, which would would have made the book more likely to be used as a stepstool rather than read. On the other side of the coin, the story line did move along quickly and I am already waiting patiently for the next tome.

Maxima 2005

I bought a new car the other day - a 2005 Nissan Maxima. For all those of you who have had bad experiences with this car; don't tell me, I do not want to know.
This car was the "surprise" for the sweetie that I mentioned in a post back in January. I have been working since January, saving every dollar to put toward this car. I had originally planned on not telling my husband I was working so that I could buy the car and just put it in the driveway for him. There were several kinks in that plan. One, I had no clue what specific details he wanted in this car, and two, I could not keep up appearances at home while working. So I broke down and told him back in March that I was working for the past three months and had he even noticed.
He said that he had not noticed, although it explained why I was so tired all the time. He did notice a few things around the house. One, that all the laundry was not done by the weekends. He said he thought I was just being less anal retentive about getting it done. He had also noticed the more thrown together striaght from the can meals that we were having, but he thought it better not to mention them. Smart man.

Twister

Today I experienced my first official "non-confirmed" tornado. We had a thunderstorm move in quickly and with it gale force winds. It came in without much warning, and it blew my neighbor's Rainbow playground set (this is the big, $1000+ set made of wood that has the fort, slide, triple swing option) right over, upside down onto it's roof. It was destroyed and shattered part of a plastic table it landed on. The scary part is that my neighbor was weedwhacking around the play equipment when the storm came in and his 7 month pregnant wife was cleaning up the yard toys at the same time. They almost didn't make it inside in time. We were lucky, it just blew our portable shed's roof off and our heavy gas grill went for a small trip into an iron fence.

The reason why we suspect that it was a small tornado that touched down - the neighbor on the other side of me had nothing destroyed, not even the 5 gallon jug of sun tea she had left out on her patio. In fact, a candle she had placed standing up in a plate of rocks was not disturbed in the least bit, it was still standing tall.

My Sister's Keeper

I just finshed reading a wonderfully engaging book called My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult. It is the story of a girlnamed Anna who is conceived in order to save her sister Kate through the donation of her cord blood. Only as time goes by, Anna finds herself being asked to give more and more of herself, literally, to keep her sister alive. We meet them when Anna is thirteen and is now being told she has to donate her kidney to her sick sister. We get to see all sides of the family and the author truly makes you understand each member of the family's viewpoint on these events.

As a parent, I can identify with needing to do anything and everything to save your child. As a twin, I know what it is like to be feel responsible for your sister's health, to feel the guilt that goes with not wanting to be self-sacrificing all the time, and the self doubt that you are the cause.

Read this book - it is worth your time!

Independence Day

Monday is Independence Day, were we Americans celebrate our "freedom" from England, with bar-b-ques, parades and fireworks. It is also my son's birthday. From his excitement over the day, you would think his birthday is the reasong why everyone celebrates. He began the countdown to his birthday this Monday and has gotten more ramped up with each passing day and I can't understand why. We are not having his birthday party this weekend, it's next weekend; his dad won't be here, he's out of town for work; and I've told him I have no presents for him since I'm giving him his dream party (more on that in another post, although I do have a small present for him).

Don't get me wrong, we will do something to celebrate the day. In fact, he has already made out an itinerary. First, he had planned on playing legos with his dad (this was before he knew that dad would be gone), then he was going to play a game with me, my choice. We could go rent movies and watch them and then go to Souper Salad(a buffet style salad bar restaurant) for dinner . The only thing is, this is all normal stuff that we do on the weekends. In fact, aside from renting a movie, it is the exact same thing we did last weekend.

It is nice that he does not have wild expectations for his birthday. He is a down-to-earth kid who appreciates time spent with his family. We're still cool in his eyes, although I don't know how much longer that will last. He is already giving me my morning hug and kiss outside the daycare center, rather than allowing me to get them once we are inside in front of the other kids. Still he is a sweet boy and hopefully we will follow his plan for a "fun filled" birthday.