Churchy

J. is playing music at church today - his once a month 'gig'. Two services. I seriously had hoped to be there. I always think I will go. But I was uber-lazy this morning and when I woke up at 7 (late for me), I went back to sleep and slept until after 8:30 (VERY late for me). Now I'm all groggy and drowsy and seriously feel like I could easily go back to sleep AGAIN for another round. But I won't. It's Sunday and there's stuff to do! I'm just not feeling churchy today. :-)

Son #1 left for work - after a quick perusal of his bank account. He insisted he had enough $ for something and so I said sweetly 'let's take a look at your account online together'. Sure enough, he appeared a bit shocked at how fast he went through his last paycheck. So we had a discussion about budgets and how it's easy to spend a ton of $ on fast food, eating out, beverages, etc. - and it does go very quickly when all you are doing is swiping your debit card and not really being aware of how much you are spending. This day and age of 'instant' everything makes it too easy - and guys don't carry checkbooks around so he doesn't really enter anything into a register. He just spends and occasionally (usually when I make him) takes a look at his bank account online.

Son #2 is still sleeping and I'm debating about waking him up. He works for us now...but he does get weekends off. Though this particular work week was pretty 'light' on any work. Sure, he did a few things. And we appreciated the help and paid him accordingly. But he put in as few hours as humanly possible. He is supposed to spend 16-20 hours a week either working for us or looking for a 'real' job. (Please note: I have no idea where our budget will 'find' 16-20 hours of 'pay' for him - but I don't have to worry too much about finding any actual 'cash' 'cuz he owes us for his monthly car insurance and cell phone on top of gasoline, so I may never have to actually come up with any cold hard cash. Poor kid - broke and working for your parents. And as J. said yesterday 'and he doesn't even get the family name displayed over the door or anything').

I am off work for not one - but TWO weeks. It is insane for me to do that. I will regret it a zillion different ways. And there are two days in those two weeks when I will be working because there are mandatory meetings that I don't want to miss. I just have so many carryover days to use up - so I wedged in time off. Which may end up just being secret code for 'working at home and not counting the days as work days'. Yesterday, I went in to finish up one big thing and packed up my entire desk into a rolling crate and brought it all home. Plan to spend at least an hour or two a day organizing, culling and getting some projects done on the remote 'work at home' system. We'll see. No plans other than some doctor appointments. I am going to the Napa outlet malls with a friend for a day the 2nd week of vacation - and there will be a visit to V. Satui winery! But other than that, it's pretty much a 'stay-cation' - working on home projects. Sleeping in. Yeah!

J. is doing a big Costco shop and I will be heading to Target shortly for some toiletries and a gift card for a cousin who's having a baby. It's a huge treat to go to Target - I so rarely shop there lately.

There are so many things happening on the work front that I would love to write about - but I won't. Let's just say that there are big changes afoot and change is always challenging for everyone. Even me. I know we will get through it all and end up stronger and better for it - but the drama to get there is just unbelievably stressful - even for me and I handle stress better than most. So maybe taking the two weeks away is a good survival strategy - just step off the treadmill for a couple weeks and let things 'play out' and simmer down. Here's hoping.

I'm going to head upstairs and get dressed for the day - and then head out to run my errands. Tomorrow, I hope to go with H. over the hill to get his Schwab account into his name - it reverted to him when he turned 18 and until he comes in personally to sign a bunch of papers, the account is frozen. My fear is when he sees the account balance, he will immediately want to 'sell everything'. And we are attempting to encourage him not to look at that account as 'liquid savings'. We'll see. If we go over the hill to do that, I'm going to visit friends at my old job while H. attends his one Monday class. So that will be a fun day! Could be, anyway...I haven't actually run that plan by H.. We'll see -