What?

So today was kind of a strange day. I never knew what was coming next. Got up at my normal time but when I went to get Grace up for school, Riley was awake and whispering "daddy." I just said to go night-night in hopes she'd go back to sleep. She's never up that early. Each time I tried to wake Grace up she'd snore and complain so I left her to sleep a little longer.

After giving Grace an extra 20 minutes of sleep I went to get her up and she actually woke up this time. I don't know why I then bothered to tell her that she had 15 minutes to get ready because two minutes after we normally get ready to walk out the door she was starting to brush her teeth with her pajamas on. I was thinking there is no way she's going to make the bus, but it seemed like only one minute later she was running down the stairs with her clothes on and heading to get her shoes on. I was surprised. Good thing she had her clothes picked out already.

She did make the bus, and we didn't even have to run. Talking to the neighbor at the bus stop and she had some similar issues this morning. When I got back in the house Riley was saying hi to me. Luckily she did fall back asleep. And she slept for quite a while as she didn't wake up until 11:45. Actually that's later than normal nowadays. Normal for her these days is between 9 and 10. But Monday's are hard because she's sometimes recovering from the weekend when she doesn't always get a very long nap.

When Grace got home from school she was in a very good mood. She even watched Sesame Street with us...of course while she was doing her homework. I swear she can't do her homework without the TV on. Last week was turn off the TV week (which reminds me, she was supposed to return the paperwork for that today.) So she can do homework without the TV being on, but she seems to feel she can't. It was about this time when Julie said she was leaving work and coming home because she'd gotten sick and it wasn't getting any better.

After she got home she put Riley down for a nap and went for a nap herself. Unfortunately it was only a few minutes later that our neighbor started playing volleyball outside of our bedroom window. They practice by bouncing the ball and then "serving" or hitting it up against the side of their house. But our houses are pretty close together, so it also inevitably hits our house too. So anyway, she didn't get much of a nap. And unfortunately Julie really didn't get much better for the rest of the night. Oh, she felt better, but she still couldn't eat anything. Let's hope tomorrow is a much better day for her.

We made a ham for easter and so we have leftovers. Julie leaves this note this morning that maybe we could have ham for dinner tonight. If you read the last paragraph, you know she didn't even eat dinner, but the problem I had is that we don't really have anything else in the house to eat. So I had it for lunch and dinner. And I'll probably have it for lunch tomorrow. I haven't planned any meals for the week so I'm not certain what we'll do for dinner. I'm just hoping I don't have to plan for ham again.

I try to go as few places as possible these days. I don't want to pay to put gas in my car unless I have to. So I've been going fewer places. I'll be happy when the weather is warmer and Riley and I can get out on my bicycle and go places. Right now it's raining and the high today was a cold feeling 50 or so. Not such great bicycling weather, especially with a 2 year old.

Anyone out there use Twitter and/or Facebook? I have to say I'm addicted. But my addiction has changed. I'm not so addicted to Facebook anymore, but much more so to Twitter. I find myself posting completely different things on each one and spending much more time with Twitter. Facebook has mostly become a Mafia Wars habit and a good goto for checking in with my friends to see what they've been doing and to see pictures and things like that. With Twitter, you have a window into things you're interested in as well your friends. So I can still keep up with friends plus I can add in some news and fun interests.

I wonder why everyone isn't disenchanted with the gasoline situation. Certainly if you're very wealthy a 25% increase in gasoline costs probably isn't a big deal. But this is seriously a big expense for us. With Julie driving so many miles to work each day it really adds up if you look at it from a monthly viewpoint. 60-70 miles a day for 20 days at least each month. Luckily her car gets pretty good fuel mileage, but it's not THAT good. She doesn't get what I get and I wouldn't get much better mileage than her driving where she does every day anyway since I get my best mileage around town which is what I mostly do. So lets generalize and say Julie uses about 3 gallons of gas a day for about 20 days a month. That's 60 gallons at the new price today of $4.29 that's about $250. Then add in the gas I use and it's at $400 or so. That's like having another car payment. And what do we get in return?

Well sure, we get the money we need to survive in the lifestyle we want to live in. I definitely understand that as I pay the bills and see the money come in and the money go out. It goes out quickly when you have only one income, I'll attest to that. But let's look at a year ago when gas was "only" $2.85 a gallon. That same scenario would have put us at around $250-270 a month. Compare that to now and all my gas would be free since Julie is buying that much just for her car.

Julie was just saying tonight after the gas prices went up today that we need only wait and the price will come down. And she's absolutely right as they just play this game with you. This morning gas was $4.07 and they raised it to $4.29. Tomorrow it probably won't change, but if it does it will come down to $4.28 or maybe even $4.27. Then in another day or two it will be down to $4.20 maybe or $4.19. Then it will come down as low as it will get going forward; probably something like $4.10 or $4.14. Then it will start all over and jump 25 cents the next time to $4.35 or $4.39. So this cyclical up and down shows the general trend of only going up. It never really goes down, it just comes down to a false low that only feels low compared to how high they raised it a few days prior. The actual trend is up, up, up. I'm not surprised at all that they're calling for $6 gas by summertime. Around here we'll pay more for the summer blend of gas plus all this price gouging for gasoline made from crude oil that cost less than the gas we bought a few months ago for $3.25. It's just a big ripoff that lets oil companies get rich and crude oil producing countries get richer. And the gas we use to get to our jobs continues to cost more so our pitiful little raises are actually decreases in income because it's costing more to get to our job every day.

And how is all this going help our economy? I'm not going to spend money on anything I don't absolutely need because quite honestly I don't have extra income anymore. That all goes to the oil companies.

And...I'm off my soapbox. Have a good night.