The girls are home!

We drove up to camp to pick them up yesterday (through a torrential rain storm). This was church music camp, and they've spent all week working in bell choir and on orchestral pieces to present to the parents. My parents came, too, so they got to see the show as well. The music was truly excellent this year, probably the best program we've seen yet. Both girls played with the bell choir, doing separate pieces. They both played in the orchestra, and then there was a musical/dramatic presentation of The Old Turtle. They had a great time at camp, but it's good to have them back.

Fiona was disappointed about the black belt pre-screening but she took it well.

Stressful day

This was an extremely stressful day.

I went to church by myself. The girls begged off, saying that they were fighting colds ("and we've been doing worship every day for a week," Delia said a little dolefully.) I felt like a pushover, but I left them and came by myself. It was absolutely pouring rain all day. After yesterday, it seemed a bit much. Church was not the respite I hoped it would be; I wanted to talk to several people, but they were all absent today. The text for the sermon was definitely not one I wanted or needed to hear today, from Luke 12:49-56

"I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing! ... Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division. From now on a household of five will be divided, three against two and two against three; a father will be divided against his son and a son against his father, a mother against her daughter and a daughter against her mother, a mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law."

Thanks a lot.

Came home, talked to kijjohnson, a conversation in which we compared the various ways in which our lives sucked. Then I chivvied the girls into the room and started talking about rearrangement of furniture. Side skirmishes occurred where Rob was obviously bristling about some of the decisions we are contemplating to get stuff out of the room so that we can rearrange (because he cannot bear to get rid of ANYTHING). This made all of us tense. We still have a very long way to go. I am trying to decide whether to get a sewing table ( like this one )

so the girls have a space to work, but it would take much less space than the table Rob got for the sewing machine (which doesn't go with anything in the room and takes up much too much room). ( It folds down quite cunningly, and it's a great way to store the machine out of sight )

but geez, is this the best way to spend $200 right now? Rob's in rather a snit about this, too, because he feels we're snubbing the table he got for the sewing machine. Among other grievances.

I balanced the checkbook. I decided to take our CDs of the 7th Harry Potter book back to the bookstore because they were defective, with a bunch of skips and I wanted to exchange them. So I went out in the pouring rain to run the errand. The first bookstore didn't have any of the CDs left. They told me I could order them and they'd be in the store in a week.

This ticked me off. I had come out in the rain and gotten drenched for nothing (since I couldn't find an umbrella). I stopped at the Starbucks next door and drowned my sorrows with a coffee and an espresso brownie. Then I decided to drive to the Mall of America Barnes & Noble to see if they had the CDs there.

So I did. And it was there that I realized that the checkbook was missing from my purse.

Understand now: in twenty-five years of having a checking account, I have never NEVER EVER misplaced my checkbook. I always keep it in my purse, and I've never had a purse stolen. I hadn't used it, but could it have fallen out of my purse at the first store?

I drove home to look for it. No checkbook. I drove back to the first store and check the Starbucks, too. No one there had turned it in. I entertained for about thirty seconds the idea of driving back to the Mall of America to look there, but who are we kidding? I hadn't a snowball's chance in hell in finding it there if I'd dropped it there. And besides, I couldn't have dropped it there in the store--I'd discovered it was missing the instant I opened my purse. Unless my purse was open and it had dropped out of my purse in a parking lot?

I drove home and tore up the house. For hours. The girls' room is an absolute shambles, and I had to pick through all that crap, scattered all over the place. And all the other obvious places: you know how you get when you empty a purse compulsively, knowing it's the tenth time you've checked, but goddammit, it's GOT to be there because I NEVER put it anywhere else. Nothing. I was so upset I couldn't eat dinner.

Sunday night's our family night, and Delia came up with an excellent suggestion: we would watch "It's a Wonderful Life." How absolutely perfect. When George Bailey kicked over the table in the living room where he had painstakingly built a model bridge because he couldn't find the money and his whole life was going to hell anyway, I had tears rolling down my face. I felt like I knew just how George Bailey felt.

About a half an hour after we finished the movie, Fiona found the checkbook where I'd placed it, on the edge of the bookshelf where we keep the videos. I don't know why I put it down there, but thank goodness she found it. I wouldn't have been able to sleep tonight otherwise.

The weather has sucked all day. The girls' room is still a mess, but we're a little farther along than we were. We watched a good movie tonight.

And I know where the checkbook is.