getting out and about...

 

Where there's a will, there's a way.

She even has a method. She stands on a chair in the Starbucks, and climbs into the cart, it's rather impressive.  One of the Target employees was not so impressed however.  Sonja was pushing the cart as we left the store, and he stopped her. He tried to get her to have Cam get out of the cart right then and there and get into one of the electric wheelchairs.  He insisted.  Camille was pretty embarrassed, he was adamant, talking about liability, and how adults cannot ride in carts, ect. Sonja just told him we won't do it again, and walked out of the store pushing Camille.  The guy was offering to help get her into a cart, but how mortifying would that be, at the front of the store, for Camille?

Anyway.  She is quite nimble, she is able to get out of the cart and into the car, no problem.  I can understand Target not appreciating this though.  It's all about the liability, especially in New York State.  

For the record, she tried the electric wheel chair after her last surgery, and they're not designed for narrow aisles, half the store isn't actually accessible.  Plus, she's a terrible driver, much more of a liability for Target, crashing into things, backing into things.  

Anyway.  We had too much fun, on our little outing.  We also went into Old Navy, where she was able to walk with the crutches. She can't put much weight on the owie leg yet, so it does get tiring.  She did find a nice pair of pants though, for six dollars, and Sonja found an adorable springy top for ten.  

We stopped at a home improvement store, a small local place, to get a bathroom sink for the house we are fixing up.  It was only $39 online, so imagine my surprise when it rang up $79.  The guy said the price just went up, this morning.  He was very nice about it, and gave it for $39, because it was still online for that, but told us they just got slammed with price increases from their major supplier.  Massive price increases, not just 10%, or a few bucks.   eeks.

Margaret is coming over with Wulf and Tennyson today.  She works from home so she'll work from here.  I should get up from my warm cozy comfy chair and vacuum.  It's not all that messy in here, not like the old days when someone was coming over!  My mother-in-law would stop over sometimes without letting me know, never ever when it was clean in here, but always always when it was over-run with Duplos and bags of groceries that hadn't been put away (not the cold stuff obviously, but sometimes there were canned goods and boxes of pasta and shampoo that sat in the bags waiting for me to get a chance, or to prioritize putting them away....). She usually gave me a heads up, she'd call and make sure I would be home...I'd get off the phone and say, "Kids, Grandma will be here in TEN minutes...grab the broom, put away those towels, grab that pile of laundry, who's socks are these? Why is the peanut butter out?"   And so on.   The backpacks and boots and sneakers and flip flops and jackets and sweaters and rain coats.  Eighteen of us lived here, so multiply all those things.  

Anyway.  Panic cleaning is amazing.  Now I don't have an army of kids to mobilize to help, but I also don't have the plethora of items strewn around anymore either.  Sonja leaves her lunchbox on the counter, no big deal.  Char leaves her backpack on the living room floor, no big deal.  

Anyway.  Life has changed, and what I would give for Grandma to be in such good health to be able to still travel up here for summers...can't complain for being 93, but it's sad to see her slow down.

Last night, we had an excellent dinner.  I had gotten some boneless ribeye steaks marked down at Wegmans, still too expensive, but there are only five of us, so three steaks were plenty...not like the old days, ha.  I let those steaks rest on the counter with some coarse ground pepper and salt...then put them in a hot frying pan with a small bit of olive oil, seared them, flipped, seared the other side, then turned down the heat and put a cover on loosely for a bit...I kind of over cooked them, but they were so melty and tender and good...oh, last step:  a chunk of butter in the pan and some rosemary, spoon that over them, put the steaks on a plate, and pour all the butter with pan drippings over the top, let rest for a few minutes...oh they were good.  We had them with fresh Brussel sprouts...the girls also had some air fryer French fries. 

It's expensive to eat steak, but...still way less than a lot of prepared things, or takeout or eating out.  If I were rich, I'd eat it all the time, but then I probably wouldn't appreciate it so much.  

Benjamin said the other day that if you make 30,000 a year or more, you are in the top 1% of the world's wealthy people.  I looked into it, and updated that's now around $60k.  That's in the entire world, so including many third world countries.  We were talking about it because one of the girls found a decent house for sale, and someone commented that it would make a good started house.  I thought, oh my goodness, how entitled we've gotten!  In most of the world, that house would be a palace.   We NEED to be thankful for what we have!  Updates and improvements and having the latest can simply consume us.  

Okay...time to get moving...have a really really nice day, a thankful day!