I didn’t realize I left you all hanging on Tuesday with my “Big Step” post. At least, not until the lovely Shawna left a comment this morning pointing out my omission. Oops! Didn’t mean to leave you all a cliffhanger. So, in the interest in full disclosure: the bus adventure went GREAT. I met him off the bus that afternoon and if it hadn’t been for the other girls on the bus bossing him around, it would have been picture perfect. Alas, Harry saw me across the street and was wanting to cross the street. I don’t think he was actually going to because this is Harry we’re talking about and he’s cautious as the day is long. But some of the girls who ride the bus with him and knew he was new to the whole bus thing that day reprimanded him and told him he had to wait to cross. And this pissed my son off. He doesn’t like being told what to do by ME most of the time, much less some girl who has no authority with him. He hollered at the “lead girl” to be quiet and then burst into tears as he was crossing the street towards me. Poor kid.
But really? The whole thing went fine. He told me he liked riding the bus and was excited to ride it again yesterday. Which he did and this time, no tears because he crossed the street just as he was supposed to. He’s becoming an old pro, that one. He’s taking the bus again today, and by now it’s old hat. We have to turn in his “emergency contact” sheet, but other than that, it’s almost like he’s been taking the bus all along. I don’t know about tomorrow, since it’s a half day and we’ve been invited over for a play date at our friends’ house. I guess I’ll play it as it comes.
Speaking of riding the bus, it’s a darn good thing we decided to go with it this week. This whole budget crunch is especially difficult this month. While our “good” van was registered, we lacked the new tags to put on the license plate so we were reluctant to take it out when going to MOPS yesterday. Because surely if we had, a cop would have pulled in behind us and pulled us over for not displaying the tags as we’re supposed to. So we took Kile’s van. Which, it’s a good van too. It was my van before we got the current one and definitely does the trick. However, my husband (unlike myself) tends to drive the gas tank to empty before refilling. And yesterday, there was maybe an 1/8 of a tank left in there. Of course, it’s about 15-20 miles to MOPS and then another 15-20 miles back. Oh, and we are out of funds for the month. Payday comes around 9pm tonight (god bless direct deposit), but that didn’t help us yesterday. I had two dollar bills in my wallet plus about two dollars in change. We wanted to use that, however, for lunch since MOPS gets out about 11:30 and certain pregnant ladies are generally pretty hungry about then. We swung by del Taco (not out of our way and hence, not using any more gas than necessary) and had some crunchy tacos to fill our tummies with. It worked out pretty well. And we actually made it home on the fumes left in the gas tank. So that’s pretty good, I think. WE MADE IT.
It stinks to be so spent at the end of the month. And most months, it’s not quite this bad. But… ’tis the season. And we make do. I’m just glad there was no pushing of the van required yesterday, because that would have SUCKED.
This is me. I'm a thirtysomething stay at home mom to three kids. For years I was a stay at home mom to one kid and trying very hard to have more. It took a LONG time (ie: 6 1/2 years), but finally Liam arrived and charmed us with his blue eyes and ginormous, round head. Then we got a shock: I was pregnant again and this time it was a GIRL. Our hearts and home are full at last and now that we're done having babies, we get to relax (snort) and watch them grow (not too fast now, you hear?). Thanks for coming by, feel free to dip into my archives, read my About and History pages (just don't do Jackson's Story without tissues!) and make yourself at home.
