Recently we received our State and Federal tax refunds. We immediately deposited them in the bank and waited for them to clear so we could start on the 101 home improvement projects we have waiting for attention.
The Federal check cleared at once. The funds were available within a couple of days. The State one, as in California, well, we're still waiting for it to clear.
I can remember when California ran out of money and had to issue IOUs. This does not give me a warm, fuzzy feeling inside.
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Oh boy. Most people have a dream that recurs when they are under stress or in a particular situation. Mine is being lost at school, not being able to find my class, nor my locker, missing my homework, etc. And it is always my math class. I had that dream last night. Sigh. And I have no trouble figuring out why.
Math class. No homework. No locker. Can't remember the teacher's name and I can't find the room. It's about numbers, or more specifically, money. Sigh.
Yesterday the guy that is doing a lot of our window coverings put up the outside blinds. I came home to them being done, not even knowing they were ready.
Back story here a bit. Our library and my office both have angular windows that are hard to fit. Here are some of the ones in my office and if you look through the French doors you can see the same ones in the library. Well as you can imagine, the sun is pretty strong in there. 
We have new double-pane windows but still, the glare is bad. In my office it shines right on my monitor and in the library it shines right on the TV which is placed across the room from the windows. When we first moved in we thought about putting shutters up there (there are plantation shutters in the library on another window you can't see) but the cost to do both sets of windows was going to be <gulp> $6K. Since we had just spent $12K on the double-pane windows we decided to hold off for a while. Then the window covering guy said he had figured out a way to use the outdoor cheap blinds and have them cut and roll DOWN instead of up so we could to them outside. We figured "cool" and that it would be an inexpensive solution we could live with for a few years until we decided to spend the money on the shutters.
Another back story, the window guy just ordered $3K worth of woven woods for the two patio doors and the other big window in my office so there's been a lot of money exchanging hands to "pretty things up" and mostly for me, and I always have a hard time with that.
So yesterday I go home from work and as soon as I walk in the the house I notice the outside blinds are up. And they look, so-so. Okay, I knew it wasn't going to be great but I figured I could live with it. Then I got closer and there were holes already in the blinds. Holes that are a result of the inexpensive blinds. Holes that can't be fixed and make the two most dramatic rooms in the house look horrible. Absolutely horrible.
Window cover guy wants to get paid for the inexpensive solution. My bad here. This was one of those things that sort of evolved over the past year without (gulp) a written estimate. I was expecting about $500. He was expecting $1,000. YIKES! $1,000 for something I can't stand to look at????
Window cover guy is now ordering shutters for both sets of windows, at his cost and I am dreaming about math class. Which means I feel really rotten about spending that much money to make things "pretty" (okay, and reduce the glare.)
Sigh.
Thing is, I have no trouble at all spending money on my kids when they need. And while right now I would have rather spent the money getting started (at last) on the landscaping, at least we have the money to spend.
So why do I feel so bad?
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Things to Do
Quotes
"We are a species that needs and wants to understand who we are. Sheep lice do not seem to share this longing, which is one reason why they write so little." Anne Lamott
"Love the writing, love the writing, love the writing...the rest will follow."Jane Yolen
"The whole thing is, you’ve got to make them care about somebody." Frank Capra
"As writers, we must be willing to feel our sadness, our anger, our terror, so we can reach in and find our sweet vulnerability that is just sitting there waiting for us to come back home." Nancy Slonim Aronie
"Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they're yours!" Richard Bach
"Yet somehow, we write; and most of the time, we like what we write. The dark place seems less dark when we get there. It was only the journey that was fearful." Susan Shaughnessy
"You must want to enough. Enough to take all the rejections, enough to pay the price of disappointment and discouragement while you are learning. Like any other artist you must learn your craft -- then you can add all the genius you like." Phyllis A. Whitney
"Writers write about what obsesses them. You draw those cards. I lost my mother when I was 14. My daughter died at the age of 6. I lost my faith as a Catholic. When I'm writing, the darkness is always there. I go where the pain is." Anne Rice
"I write in terror. I have to talk myself into bravery with every sentence, sometimes every syllable." Cynthia Ozick
"There have been societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories." Ursula K. LeGuin
"Your first job is to get your own story straight." Natalie Goldberg
"Only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking." Naomi Wolf
"Few children learn to read books by themselves. Someone has to lure them into the wonderful world of the written word; someone has to show them the way." Orville Prescott
"A writer either speaks to adults and bores kids, or speaks to kids and upsets adults." Ursula K. LeGuin
"I'd always thought you had to be a special person to write. And then I realized you just have to start." Abigail Thomas
"You will recognize your own path when you come upon it, because you will suddenly have all the energy and imagination you will ever need." Jerry Gillies
"But they’re not telling the truth if they don’t teach, one, that writing is hard work, and, two, that you have to give up a great deal of life, your personal life, to be a writer." Doris Lessing
"A poet's autobiography is his poetry. Anything else is just a footnote."Yevgeny Yentushenko
"And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the
greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't
believe in magic will never find it." Roald Dahl
"I compose sometimes with a pen and notebook, sometimes on the computer; it makes no difference. If all I had was a chisel and a rock I would write on the rock." Ursula Le Guin
"If you want to write from a place of emotional integrity, it is important to learn everything you can about all kinds of emotions, including those that exist in you, that you wish didn't." Elizabeth Berg
"And this is the way a novel gets written, in ignorance, fear, sorrow, madness, and a kind of psychotic happiness as an incubator for the wonders being born." Jack Kerouac
"Successful writers are not the ones who write the best sentences. They are the ones who keep writing. They are the ones who discover what is most important and strangest and most pleasurable in themselves, and keep believing in the value of their work, despite the difficulties." Bonnie Friedman
Who am I?I was born on the Cancer/Leo cusp and share a birthday with Ernest Hemingway and Robin Williams. The similarities don't stop there as I can go from depressed to ecstatic without ever passing go. I feel scared most of the time though my friends call me brave and I find it easier to believe in my friends than to believe in my own abilities to make what I want out of my life.
Who am I? A wife, a mother, a daughter, and even, gulp, a grandmother.
Who am I? A writer who never gets tired of playing with words, even when the words are hard to find. A writer of books for children and articles for grown-ups and many things in-between.
Who am I? A motivational speaker, writing instructor, workshop leader and full-time follower of dreams.
Who am I? Read and find out.
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