Dec 8
I only stay up late when my kids come home. The funny thing is I’m sitting in my living room alone so I have no one to blame but myself. The college kiddo went to pump iron with Hatcher at the gym.
She had an indoor meet today at GVSU and so I was running around like crazy as soon as I got up to get all the things done so I could leave for it and get there in time as it’s the first event. Last night I found out that she had to stay for the whole meet…til like 8pm and she was planning on coming home with me. So I also had to stay in Allendale til 8pm. I had a renter leaving and a renter coming and I didn’t plan on that originally but the renter extended her stay so I had to skip pickleball in order to clean it and leave in time with out being rushed. The things I sacrifice!
There were over 6 heats of the 5k!!! That’s about 2 hours of laps! She was in the first heat and she ran okay. Not the time she wanted and she also didn’t feel well toward the end and you could tell but a respectable time. I left to get groceries and then headed back to watch her roommates and friends and of course, the high jump. I think the winning jump for girls was only 5’6″. I was dissapointed. I was jumping almost 5’5″ in high school and my biggest competitor (which I was no competition for) was jumping 6′. I was expecting bigger jumps! Crazy though…that field house looked like a jungle of athletes…chaos and movement everywhere and it was hot in there! We finally got to leave…drove home while Aly talked my ear off and then Christmas was waiting on my porch in multiple packages. I unloaded groceries…and then unpacked packages…then wrapped them and also I had to redo the lights for the tree. Again. Long story. Tell you later. I’m so tired but then remembered…I didn’t blog. I don’t know about this daily stuff.
One piece of the conversaton on the way home that I will leave here and is relatable to the season ….We live in a very instant gratification world and ads are in our face all the time and we often fall for the marketing and add to cart and before we know it…we have more stuff than we know what to do with. We also have alot of debt (not all of us but its “natural” and so alot of people do). I try hard to not just buy to buy…spending money makes me a little sick…so I was thinking..what can we do without? If we were to really be super conscious of what we are buying…from the grocery store to the department stores (ha, do we even know what those are anymore?) could we cut back? What if we took half of what we spent on our kid at Christmas and put it in the bank? I’ve always thought it silly to buy gifts for babies and toddlers anyways. Like, can you go to Aldi and NOT buy from the “special isle”. You know what I’m talking about! You don’t need another ceramic travel mug or cute socks, or even another little area rug. We think we are saving so much becasue we get deals but money leaving your pocket is never saving. I thought I might like to challenge myself to stick to the grocery list better and to quaduple think any puchases I make and if I’m buying something off an ad…it was spontaneous and shouldn’t happen. We think big spending gets us in trouble but all the little spending adds to big and can cause just as much trouble. I wonder how much money I can save? And that doesn’t mean I get to go on a shopping spree with the money saved but I do get to watch it grow and thats fun too. I actually really feels good to have the money in your account when something comes along you didn’t expect, wheather it be a fun expendiure or not. I was just thinking about how much stuff we have…and if I could do it different, But I often think of weird little ways to challenge myself.
Also I decided I am going to do the sensible stocking idea (which I kind of already did) because everyone likes new things…even if they are necessity items.
Okay. I have got to go to bed!