Running late again....
and the dogs weren’t even so frisky this morning. I’m feeling oddly drained, rather than energized. Martha returned from school in a foul mood last night. Precipitated, I think, by the fact that her father picked her up in the big blue van with squeaky brakes. Having an ugly car is one thing, but an ugly car that calls attention to itself is too much. Shades of Uncle Buck. Fran tried to cheer Martha up. She explained about all the vacuous, richy-bitchy types that she went to school with at Lake Forest and how their lives (so far...like 4 years later) haven’t been all that great and that mild adversity and living in a large wacky family has helped to make her the hard working young woman she is today. Thank you, Fran. I don’t know if Martha appreciated it, but it cheered me immensely.

“Do you know how awful it is to be broke all the time and get picked up in a peeling, squeaking van when other kids get into Hummers and Jaguars?” was not the kind of thanks I was looking for, at the end of a rough day, for the 20+ years of doing without ‘stuff’ to be a stay at home mom.

Even Rick was in a bit of a snit. He and the boys had spent the afternoon at another (much less well off Catholic school) working on their service project of upgrading the schools computers. (Keeping the Mac in Immaculate Conception is Chuck’s slogan)
As they were getting settled in the van to come home, RIck was sure he saw a woman in the parking lot taking down his license number - you know, because the car looks so darned disreputable.