Guardian Angel

Maybe some of you can relate to this.... I was looking at my house today, thinking I needed to get my butt in gear and organize and clean. The house was looking like it had taken a hard hit on summer vacation and needed some tender loving care. The girls have been a little crazy trying to find their "stuff" and get off to school. I can't think straight and more importantly feel guilty for wanting to read a book/blog more than organizing a house. So I got in my car and ran some errands. Mind you,my car didn't look much better than my house. A few road trips and the markers, books, map of the country with 1/2 the states filled in because we saw those license plates, napkins from every fast food restaurant within the northeast and a few pairs of shoes was leaving me dissatisfied with disorganization.

I was coming out of the post office and a white haired lady had parked near my car and was looking at it with an amused expression. I was expecting her to say "I bumped your car" or "you should be ashamed of yourself with that mess" , but instead she chuckled and asked if I had a little girl. I said I had 2 (maybe 9 and 11 aren't so little, but they are kids and girls). She said that she enjoyed seeing all the drawings and markers in the back seat. She then went on to say that she had a litter of kids (6-8 of them, I can't remember) back in her day. She was very into keeping things clean and neat for appearance sake. For the past 3 years she has had full custody of her granddaughter (who was starting 1st grade today). She said that time has taught her that spending time and ENJOYING her granddaughter are what is important. She figures that her granddaughter will remember all the drawings and playing with her grandma more than if her grandmother had the neatest house/car in the neighborhood.

I swear she was a little angel coming to remind me of what is important in life. Many times it is so easy to get caught up in the little things that society holds so dear....everything has it's place, my car is washed and polished, my kids have on the latest trends.I think what is really important is the love and respect you share with your kids. I am grateful for that Grandma/Mother to remind me to slow down and take stalk in all the wonderful moments and things in my life. Hopefully, she will be spreading her word to more errand running moms. I am pretty sure I will.

Rising Costs = Lack of Morals

We all know that the gas prices are skyrocketing, we are close to hitting $4 here. Price of milk, bread, food in general is going up. Here are 2 stories of people on the Cape that have taken matters into their own hands.

One is Jeffrey Windle. A Harwich man that has been arrested for embezzling 12 million dollars from the off-Cape company he worked for. I feel ok about mentioning his name, because he has been arrested by the Feds and it's all over the papers here. He and his wife and kids once lived in a little house in Dennis, then "came into some money" and moved into my favorite house in Harwich. It has a beautiful view of the water, a tennis court, a pool and a farmer's porch. He also purchased a few yachts, nice cars and a condo in Florida. He was also the treasurer for his small church in Dennis. Yes, he hit them up for about $400,000, too. The big joke in the papers is that his name rhymes with Swindle. Coincidence? I feel really badly for his kids. I can't believe that his wife didn't know about where the money came from. She thought it was bonuses he was getting from work.

The second story, unfortunately, comes from my high school. We have a very small high school. Everybody knows everybody and probably their parents and grandparents. In Massachusetts there is a thing called School Choice, where if the enrollment in our town is lacking in certain grades, kids from other towns can enroll. Our small size makes our school like a private school, therefore, we have quite a few school choice kids. Recently, there has been money stolen from wallets and lockers. There has also been missing Ipods. Evidently this kid is smart enough to only take the unengraved ipods. (Let that be a lesson to you, engrave your kids' ipods.) There was a party at some kid's house a few weeks ago, where $65,000 was stolen from a family (mattress) safe. Yeah, I don't know what they were doing with that money in a safe in their house. OK, so all these robberies led the police (who's idea of excitement in this town is jaywalkers) to one kid. Evidently he is on the baseball team. The police took a cruiser 1 1/2 hours away to the ball game and arrested the kid. This is a school choice kid. He is from one of the Cape towns, who's high school has police in the school all day because it's one of those "tough" towns. I had been enjoying my election for 12 hours when my sister in law says to me that we should ban school choice students. Never mind the 100 other choice kids who are great.

I just hope that with the economy struggling (ha struggling, read tanking) that this is not going to be the norm now.