Frugalicious Fri-onday!

Totally slacking on this segment and just embarrassed myself by using the word "segment" in regards to my blog. As if!

Anywhatsit, I'm sitting here waiting on the life insurance exam lady to come and make sure they want to pay up when I kick it. Oh, I kick it everyday, but you know I mean when I kick the bucket. Yep, we already talked about death and wills and all that jazz and I'm not going to go there. I am going to reverse it and talk about kids and getting them on the path, God willing, to financial freedom.

We want Leelah to grow up in a home that is not ruled by money and we want her to not fall prey to the love of money.

For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.- 1 Tim. 6:10.

The LOVE of money, not money is the root of all evil.

Leelah has been digging qubo, Magic School Bus and all their informercials. She told me the other day, "Mommy, did you know that Tempurpedic mattresses have space cell technology? And that if you put a glass of wine on one side of the bed and jump on the other side it won't tip over?"
And then I asked her, "What's wine Leelah?"
Leelah: "Stuff that fancy people drink."
I was lazy and let that slide. It's true, it is fancy and was that a teaching moment on alcohol and the effects on your body- nope.
Digress!
So thanks to Qubo's commercials, she's all "I WANNA WUGGLE PEEEEEETTTTT!!!!!!!!!!"
I don't see the magic of that toy. Kind of lame in my opinion and definitely not worth $20. And we've been wanting her to learn about being responsible, that things cost money, etc. etc. so now's our chance and I totally let that whole wine thing just slide, so I had to act.

Thus John and I are making our child earn her wuggle pet. We pay her $1 for every "above and beyond" chore. So far she has $6.

Here's a list of some Above and Beyond chores:
-vaccuuming the cars
-cleaning the windows in the car (they've got her grime prints on them anyway!)
-washing the car (can you determine the theme here?)
-helping rake and throwing away the leaves
-weeding the garden
-windexing other windows around the house
and my mind just went blank.

But you see it is not paying her to do stuff she should already do. We don't have an allowance for her, but we do employ the "Spend, Save, Give" principle. So we do give her money for church each weekend.
Here is a list of stuff she should do because she is a member of the family:
-help dust
-make her bed everyday
-help feed Boo, take her out, etc.
-help set the table
-sharpen the knives
-refill the lighting fluid on our blow torches
Last 2 are not real, do not call authorities.

If you pay them for doing stuff they are supposed to do anyway, they are going to go around saying, "I cleaned up my toys- WHERE'S MY MONEY!"

Now she is finally beginning to grasp why we can't go to D'world until we pay off our debt, which we have calculated using Dave Ramsey's Debt Snowball will be in approx. 21 months!

Things That Bring Me Joy No. 7!

Architecture brings me joy!I snapped this on our walk to the Art Museum (I know I won't stop going on about that walk!). Yes, I did edit it to enhance the blues of the window.
Pretty, right?

Reasons Why I Heart Downton Abbey

If you aren't down with the show, Downton Abbey, yet then you are missing out! If you are psycho like me and your convex television unit doesn't receive pbs or you do live in the 21st century but just haven't witnessed this perfect tv show then just click here and you'll be whisked away to 1912- WAIT, STOP! DON'T TYPE IN "MAC N' CHEESE n BACON RECIPE" ON YOUR GOOGLE SEARCH TOOLBAR- WAIT, I know I said 1912, but this show is SO GOOD!!!! I know I said PBS- AGAIN STOP LOOKING AT THE NEXT 50 DAYS OF WEATHER FOR YOUR TOWN- come back.

As I was saying before I had to talk you into staying and reading my pathetic list of reasons I heart the show....

1. The scenery. The setting was made for my daydreams. So picturesque. So different than the concrete jungle I reside in. SO GLAD someone screen shot this because I screen shot it in my brain with my photo brain. It's one of my favorite images from the show:

2. The Clothes!!!! Oh the necklines, the high waistedness, the touch of sparkle, the sweetness!!! Can we just go back to this, please??? Can we just burn all the bootyshorts in the world and return to this beauty?:



3. The Sisters & Their Secrets! I can't get over these sisters! Namely, Mary and Edith. If that's what it's like to have a sister, phew! Maybe my only child thing wasn't so bad??? They are a mess and I love it.

4. It's made me want to clean my house and care for my home better.

I love how the Granthams interact with their staff. Am I down with caste systems- heavens no! But the show's characters' interactions with each other are brilliant. I love how much pride Mr. Carson and Ms. Hughes have in their work. Kind of reminds me of Colossians 3:23
"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men,"
5. Maggie Smith.

I saw someone say this and I think it's so true: "Maggie Smith is a rock star!" She is full of quips that only she can get away with. She rocked as Prof. McGonagall in HP and she rocks in DA as Violet, Dowager Countess of Grantham. Go ahead on Maggie Smith!
6. I love the way the men in the movie fight for their country (with the exception of that wretched Thomas!). I love the spirit of a rally! I love the comaraderie of everyone pulling together to do what's right. This show seems to be all about upholding what is right. Well, except for a scandal or two...

7. The acting is spot on as the British would say, as is the writing. Really.

8. My most favorite thing about DA:
Mr. Bates & Anna's love.

I am a sci-fi/action kind of girl that doesn't have time for love stories, but I tell you what- their romance has made a believer out of me. No, I'm not going to go too far and rent the Notebook or read it, but oh my word. Beautiful. I just love the dignity in which he treats her and the compassion that she has for him. I yelled at the TV during the first season like a dude yelling at a football game when I thought things weren't going to work out for Mr. Bates' job. Oh how my heartstrings are pulled by him and his heart. Not in a hubba-hubba way, just the whole goodness of it all. Thank you PBS/Masterpiece/Downton Abbey for making a show all about goodness prevailing with a hint of "you don't say!" moments. You have stolen my heart!

Courage at the Bus Stop

Look. Leelah has gotten 2 tardies so far.
And what does that really mean? I've gotten the tardies. ME. And while my nature wants to put 2 tallies on the ever growing Mom Fail Scorecard, I won't. Jesus won't let me. Phew, must be that whole forgiveness and grace concept thingy-ma-dealy-bobber.

However, the time has come for our sweet little bug to get on the bus. You'd think since it's yellow and synonymous with school, I'd be all for the bus. But alas, it has taken all of God's courage to let her get on it. You see, they are not given tardies. It's a free pass and giggles, apples, and rain boots on that yellow mode of transportation to Learning Land!

So why do my glasses have tear stains? Because I miss her so much. Even that last little bit of driving is a joy. Seeing her think about the upcoming day as she looks out the window and sings along to Mandisa's "Good Morning" jam. Dang, I miss that girl.

Being a parent takes so much courage.

We decided we'd try the busventure on Tuesday morning. We stood there hand in hand at the stop waiting and as it made it's famous half squeal/squeak sound to signify its arrival, Leelah squeezed my hand like crazy and said, "I think maybe when I'm older." And then we walked to school. And I got to continue being the fish "Marlin" from Finding Nemo who wouldn't let his little fish grow up for just a couple more days.

So today while she was eating her oatmeal, I asked her about riding the bus and her response was so sudden- "YES!" So we ran (I gimp jogged), hand in hand to the stop again. But this time as we were running/gimp jogging she let go of my hand and started to run faster. And then on to the bus my little Leelahbug went. And I waved and smiled with an excited, mommy-so-proud smile at my little lamb's new adventure.

And then cried/brisk gimp walked back home. Thank goodness our dog Boo was there. I swear, sometimes that silly Maltipoo is the only little reminder that I'm going to be okay in our nest until the day ends and my loved ones return.

I like to think that this morning, Jesus rode to school right next to my favorite little girl while patting her mommy's back as she showed courage at the bus stop.

Things that Bring Me Joy! No. 6

SQUIRREL!

Took this while promenading to the art museum. I like to think she is an Artsy Squirrel who eats artsy acorns.
Plus, if you've never read this children's book:

You're missing out it's delightful!

Things That Bring Me Joy! No. 5 or is it 6?

Those crazy paper/whatever material trees!??

Frugalicious Friday No. 15! Preparations.

On fun note, this is how I looked during the morning send off of J & L today:

But it's not how I feel- that's a good thing!

Hey. It's time to talk about death.
Boy, that sure didn't have the ring to it I thought it would...
What about this?
Let's talk about dying.
Nope, not much better- wait:
Let's talk about Dying!
Okay no matter how fancy you type it, it's not fun to talk about or think about. Especially if you are not prepared financially.

If you are a Dave Ramsey listener already, please forgive me, but if not I'm talkin' 'bout wills. You've gotta have one. You just do. Trust me. Stuff can get messed up. If you have kids, come on! Well we don't have a will, but we are getting one in place- soon!

We purchased one online and it was C to the Onfusing! So it stalled us. Sure we have a list of 2 Parent Takeover Choices (Gillian's legal term) and have talked about how Leelah is going to get my extensive Charming Charlie/Sam Moon/With Hints of James Avery bauble collection, but we currently don't have that in writing so it's as good as nothing.

UNTIL TUESDAY! Thanks to some friends (they're on the kid takeover list they're that good), we have a referral for an attorney and we are going to meet on Tuesday to plan our estate package. I know, I know, "estate" sounds very Bruce Wayne to me. We don't have a manor. We do have a "cottage", i.e. suburb brick 1 story that we continually drive by because it looks like everyone else's "cottage". So we are going to plan the following:
1. Who's gonna take care of our kid.
2. Money- cha ching! Read: Life insurance in the form of a trust. (Again, scary word for "cottage" folk but important.)
Sidenote: Dave recommends you get life insurance that equals 8-10 times the amount of your yearly income. It is icky for me to think about this. He recs and we use Zander insurance. I can say from set up, they were on their game.
3. Power of attorneys- medical and decision making.
4. Just tell them you want the "estate package" without fries and they will know what to do, but shop around so you don't get hosed.

Do it. We had to save up for many months to get this taken care of. And thank the Lord, we are ready to talk about Death on Tuesday. We figured it'd be best to derail the debt snowball to get this knocked out first. Sometimes you have to do that.

It's part of growing up. I'm looking forward to this in a weird way. I'm sure there will be some self-defense mechanism jokes geared at my funeral preparations in hopes to lighten the mood. But let me encourage you that it's cool to grow up!

Things that Bring Me Joy! No. 5

Globes are so cool, right?!

I'm Normal Now.

Hold on, let me just clear away this plate of Lonely Mom Nachos I just slaughtered... Dang, those nachos were without hyperbole, sufficiently fantastic today.

First let me just say to all 6 people reading this over the next 4 days that this is not just some retrospect of me. Even I wouldn't want to read that. Gross.
This is for 2 sets of people:

Set 1. My people:
This is a shout out to dorks everywhere!
Past dorks, present dorks and future dorks.
Some random website's definition of Dork:" a silly, out-of-touch person who tends to look odd or behave ridiculously around others; a social misfit." Gillian's definition of Dork: a person who does not fit in or has issues.
Set 2. Them/Noodle Salad People/Cool Kids:
If you are someone who is and has always maintained a certain Super Mario Bros. 8th level of COOL- current and past alumni of SHS (located at 14555 Fern Drive
Houston, TX 77079) and any Middle School or High School I'm looking in your direction. Then this is for you too. Especially if you are raising a child. No that is not meant to any one person. I said people! Doesn't matter, y'all probably aren't reading this anyway, but if you are I can almost guarantee you will think twice before bullying someone after reading this.

This is me, circa 1st or 2nd grade:

I don't know where the heck my glasses were at that moment. Probably being crafted by some skilled coke-bottle-artisan at Eye Masters. And it's cliche now to talk about how the fashion was to sport Dorothy Hammil bangs, so I won't mention it.

There are a lot of things that can go wrong in this post. Lord, please protect those you need to.
Kindergarten:

Halloween Costume Day. I remember this day vividly. We had to parade around the school in our costumes. I guess my costume didn't make the cut- I thought it was beautiful for the record- and I endured an hour of all grade levels yelling out horrible names with pointing fingers and let's just say I was a crying ballerina/princess/fairy/whatever the heck I was supposed to be. I've had a lot of bad dreams that weren't actually dreams. (STICK WITH ME- IT'S NOT ALL SAD!) And I do realize that this is simply suburbian pain and is nothing compared to other worlds of pain.

From K-12, I went to a total of 7 schools in the same city. It sucked. I knew I was really in for trouble when I began first grade at a new school. A private school. It wasn't the majority of the kids' faults for thinking I was weird. I was and they'd been raised together. I had a couple of people befriend me, and that was air into my lungs. St. Cecelia alum, I'm sure you were perfectly nice. I'm so very sorry for any pain I inlicted on any of you. And thank you to the people that befriended me how I was.
It didn't help that homelife wasn't all roses. It was scary and I was hurting. There, I said it. I'm sorry for the implications, but this is important.

Sometimes the people you are the meanest to have the worst situation going on at home so lay off or maybe just smile at them once. These people didn't ask to be picked on- okay some do and they are just jerks you've got to pray for- but people like me, shoot, I was just a big ball of weird because of some heinous homework if you will. Would you please remember this Set 2? As Jack Nicholson's character so brilliantly stated in the movie, As Good As It Gets, "Some of us have great stories, pretty stories that take place at lakes with boats and friends and noodle salad. Just no one in this car. But, a lot of people, that's their story. Good times, noodle salad."
I was an un-noodle salad person in a school full of noodle salad peeps.
And I'm sure there were others like me that were better at hiding their luggage from home who had less bushy hair and less glasses out there. I didn't corner the market on weird.

So you combine the homeload of not-awesomeness (being yelled at day in and day out), the new school number 4 & 5, and combine that with hormones and a living out daily as a contestant on an episode of "What Not To Wear" and you've got: MIDDLE SCHOOL.
Oh crap. Just typing that gave me goosebumps from fear, shame, and remembrance of acne. SUCK SUCK SUCK!!!
Come on, who's with me!?!? SET 1!?!?! Oh shut up, Set 2- y'all were having the best time ever. Sorry, Set 2 about saying "shut up" to you.
Here it goes- go grab a barf bowl:

I know that I am "fearfully and wonderfully made" and I know I would die if Leelah said she ever looked like "barf", but what crappy forest am I in really? I know, THE FOREST OF SHAME. Oh well, at least it was in a rad marithe francois girbaud shirt!Ever been to 3 middle schools from 6-8th grade before (same city)? I have!
I want to take a second and thank some friends who decided to be nice when they could have joined in the crowd of mean.
Thank you:
Bonnie W.
Leigh W.
Meredith G.
Tally K.
Simone W.
Katie K.
Sarah H.
Steven A.
I'm thinking super hard to remember anyone else... I'm sorry if I left someone out.
These people made the pain go away. Even if it was just a smile. Like a scene out of a movie, these girls took me in at the lunch table and gave me the breakdown of how stuff went down SFMS. And how, it would be okay if I didn't wear a Yaga shirt and maybe considered eyebrow, lips and face enhancement.
Are you someone that can change the course of someone's life? That'd be pretty great if you were- answer: YOU ARE!
I didn't have a clue at the time that God used these people as instruments in my life for good. And for once, I started looking forward to going to school. Like I had a chance. A respite, if you will, from home drama.
Oh and I had gotten contacts. Back when my eye contouring allowed for that.

High School:

I finally started to care less about what the cool people thought. Let me eat a snack pack everyday in my brown bag lunch and make stupid jokes if I want to. I'm not hurting anyone! And the less I gave a crap, the nicer people were to me.
I decided one day- I'm just going to start smiling at everybody. No matter how scary, how mean, how pretty, how cool, how hot of a boy, or how un-alike me they were. Well, it sank in in my junior year.

School had become, dare I say, fun. My list of chums stuck around with me up through High School. Our numbers were growing (Jane P., Katelin M., Melissa B., Rebecca D., Stephie B., Tracey C., Jose C., April K., etc.) Thanks for being kind. There were so many cliques, which makes sense. But we were just normal. Even though I had been kicked out of school twice for living out of the district- yeah I'm in counseling now- and I dislocated my hip during drill team tryouts which I made and subsequently dropped out due to said hip snap and had to crutch for 3 months- great practice for the 7 months of crutching in 2010!
This being quasi-normal thing was feeling so good that I did something so insane simply because I thought it would be fun.
I tried out for cheerleader? Yes, that should be a question. I was a mess. And...

I never bring this up. I don't want this label and I'm not bragging. But I do have to own it because God blessed me with this Cinderella opportunity. And I can't stress enough how insane this was for me to do. I didn't realize it at the time, but it was a blessing. Even though it required me to hang around and go to practices with the "cool" people (Maybe I should have thought about that before I tried out.). I realized that they were nice too. Thanks fellow cheerleaders for being nice to an unknown. And it was fun. I still think the votes were miscounted in my favor, but I'll take it!

What was the point of this mini-novel anyway?
Be nice to a dork. Do it. If it's hard for you, then just smile at someone. You never know the impact that a smile can have.
I still had to deal with crazy inner strife until I accepted Jesus, which wasn't until after college- April 2007. And now I can truly say that I feel at peace, which I guess means that I feel normal. I fit in with myself. And with all the major drama that has gone on since then, that is a big deal.

Parents:
1. Pray.
2. Don't flip flop schools if you don't have to.
3. Pray.
4. Speak words of life into your kids.
5. Be nice to everyone you can and let your kids see you befriend a person from Set 1.
6. For goodness sakes, don't be a jerk to any employee anywhere you don't know what they have going on in their life!

My Not Gonna List for 2012 (It's short. Just like me.)

I'm calling resolutions "Not Gonnas". Mostly to avoid failure that seems to be linked with the word "resolution". Okay, maybe it's not linked per se, but you get it.

1. I'm not gonna complain this year, a la Phil. 2:14:
"Do everything without complaining or arguing..."
Definitely going to need God's help with this, because complaining is one of my best skills. Truly. A lot of my best joking material is composed solely of fine-tuned gripes. See, I'm already complaining about not being able to complain. Yeah, I do okay about not complaining (through God's grace) about stuff like not seeing or not walking but day to day mishaps and oddities- nuh-huh.

2. I'm not gonna wish for better.
"Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God." Phil. 4:6 I know I get anxious when I start to compare or measure up, when I should just be saying thank you!
Pretty sure I'm going to have to pray daily for contentment. It's usually the wishing for better that leads to complaining. I mean, I woke up in America today. I'd say that's having it pretty good already.

3. I'm not gonna read the Twilight series. Wow. I already made that happen. Score 1 out of 3 - sweet!

UPDATE: 4. I forgot this one: I'm not gonna talk on the cell phone and drive. I just can't. After seeing that car graveyard during our Spring Staycation after our wreck, it just did something to me. Plus, I don't really have the best eye skills. John and I have promised each other not to call while we know the other is driving. That's especially hard for John since he's in the car for 2 hrs everyday. I did call him the other night out of a dinner emergency. Remember that collect call commercial a while back: Mr. Wehadababyitsaboy!? I called him and was like "Needchinesefoodorderandpickuppleasebyeloveyou!" OH and we didn't wreck due to cell phone use, some dude thought his car would work better without working brakes and sideswiped us.

I told you it was short. HAPPY NEW YEAR!