I feel like babbling on. . .

BRAIN DUMP:

Prince Charming has been working for CRS (the Canadian company) from home for the past couple of weeks. He planned to drive up to Ontario on Monday, but his transmission died yesterday. Since the car is almost 13 years old and has 136,000 miles on it, it’s not worth it to fix it. So, he will be flying. The room he is renting is 5 blocks from work so he can walk to work, but I know it is going to be COLD at times. He also has to figure out shopping so he can eat, do laundry, etc. Also he’d like to go to church. The closest Nazarene church is in the next town, so he may have to just go to whatever is closest. His cell phone doesn’t work in Canada so he’s going to have to figure that out too. He’ll be back the week before Thanksgiving and hopefully can find a car to buy then.

Our finances are really strained and I am starting to wonder what in the world God is doing, but we are both very grateful the car didn’t die on his way to Ontario!

A local clothing store has a 50% tent sale twice a year. Czarina, Hoodie Girl and I worked there Thursday and Friday for the first time. I am very proud of my girls; they both worked hard and were very helpful to the customers. Czarina could sell a screen door to a person who lives in a submarine. She really should work for commission. They both got commended by one of the bosses before we left yesterday.

Speaking of sales skills. . . Czarina was taking orders for donuts for a choir fund raiser. At church Wednesday night she sold some to the youth pastor. Then she asked his sister in law if she wanted to buy any. Miss Barbara checked her wallet and said she didn’t have any money. Czarina turned to Pastor Steve and asked, “Can you loan Miss Barbara $5.00?” Not only does she sell, she also arranges financing!

WORK ETHIC: The girls were both complaining, after working for 9 hours on Thursday, that some of the teen age boys, who were getting the same pay they were, were just standing around and talking most of Thursday. Well, the bosses noticed who was working and who wasn’t. On Friday, those boys got pulled out of the tent to direct traffic in the parking lot. . . in the rain. As Hoodie Girl said, “That’s a job where if you don’t do it, you get run over!” They both would like to get part time jobs, but first they need to master getting their schoolwork done in a timely manner. Speaking of schoolwork, they have a lot of catching up to do!

After one semester of college when I was 18, I decided I would rather work full time, since I was making almost $3.00 an hour at K-mart (35 cents an hour above minimum wage!) After 3 years my hourly pay had more than doubled, but I realized I did not want to work at Kmart the rest of my life, so at age 21 I went back to school and got a degree in accounting. The past two days reminded me of why I did that. 17 hours and 45 minutes of straightening up clothes and shoes and helping customers left me sore and TIRED.

Space Cadet and Corn Bread Muffin each cooked dinner the past two days. Corn Bread Muffin found a recipe for baked macaroni and cheese online and jazzed it up a bit with turkey bacon bits. It was WONDERFUL!

DON’T TRY THIS AT HOME: Hoodie Girl’s science project is how to fix broken and dented ping pong balls. Apparently you can fix them with heat, so she has tried things like putting them in boiling water (worked great) and using a blow drier (not so great, the blow drier overheated). She also used jewelry wire to hang a ping pong ball from the kitchen faucet (it is a very high faucet). Then she tried to use the heat from a lighter to get the ping pong ball hot. She got too close and the ball went up in flames -- about a foot high flame! We have a string hanging over the sink that we use to hang rubber gloves and other things. . . sort of like a mini clothes line. Hoodie Girl quickly got the gloves out of the way and I turned the faucet on. The wire broke, the ball fell into the sink, and the water put it out. No harm done (except to the ping pong ball, but it was already broken.) We both thought of taking a picture, but we thought putting the fire out was more important.