Got My Mind on My Money, and More Money I Did Find

Whew! Such a busy day Friday! And I spent part of it with Hick! Not exactly by choice.

Hick and I have our own interests, you know. We don't have to be in each other's hip pocket all the time. And by that, I mean that Hick has no reason to be in MY hip pocket. I don't go out of my way to seek his company. And I definitely don't want anything to do with any of Hick's pockets. Ever since that time he put his hand into his coveralls hanging in the BARn, and felt a nest of hairless baby mice.

Hick is currently in the throes of birthing several yards of concrete for the foundation of his freight container garage. So he's busy micromanaging the concrete pourers. Just that morning, before 8:00, he let me know that they didn't tie off their rebar. They just laid it out. So he was going to tell them to do it right, and tie off that rebar! He was kind of heated, having just paid them half of the money for the job on Thursday. After I wrote the check, of course, for which he gave me the command and the amount, but not who it was going to.

I was busy getting a package ready to mail The Pony when Hick had his rebar crisis. Poor Pony is so far away! If we get a notion, we can hop in A-Cad and go visit Genius. Get there in less than two hours. Not that we ever have such a notion. But The Pony is 9 hours away. It saddens me to even type that. Last year, when he was a freshman, and on his own for the first time EVER...I caved to the university mailers and got him those care packages that are sent out several times a year. He had a meal ticket and a car, but I know how The Pony loves to graze on his snacks.

This year, I can't send The Pony those care packages. His university apartment clubhouse will only hold packages sent by the USPS. And those care packages are sent by FedEx.

Anyhoo...I got some snacks together, including Chex Mix, and stuffed them in a flat rate box, and wanted to get that to the main post office before Hick and I started our togetherness. He was waiting for the concrete guys to tell them how to do their job. We had already planned on driving separately to our appointment with our financial advisor, as Hick had business afterwards at the pharmacy, the barber, and a ringside seat for the concrete slab. I was headed to the credit union and bank, and to Walmart and Save A Lot. Shh...don't tell Hick, but it was to get supplies for his surprise retirement party that is probably going on as you read this. His four sons planned the festivities, with three of them attending. We're having a giant platter of BBQ, with Genius and The Veteran manning the grill.

Did you ever get so bored that you felt like jabbing ice picks into your eyes, ears, and nostrils, just so you could liven things up with some screams and spurting blood?

You have not lived until you've sat through an hour-long appointment (at the crack of 9:30, an hour at which I am usually stretching out in bed and wondering if I can sleep another half hour) with your financial advisor and Hick, each droning on about their joint pains, and people they know, and flirting with complimenting a Fidelity rep in Arizona about her British accent. I wasn't sure I would be able to maintain consciousness until 10:30.

I survived, though. Lived to buy mass quantities of meat to feed 16 people. As you might imagine, I was dragging when I bagged my last grocery at Save A Lot. Only one stop left, and that for my 44 oz Diet Coke. I hated to think of carrying all that meat into the house and shoving it into FRIG II's bottom. Save A Lot was out of boxes, too. Even though I checked every aisle I went down, and the freezer cases too, to see if I could redistribute some items and snag a box. No such luck. So I had to put about 25 pounds of meat into plastic bags. Yeah. I know there's a box in the picture. But it's WAY too large for me to carry full of meat. I needed boxes half that size.

Whew! I was ready to take that stuff to the car and get my soda. As I pulled back my cart from the bagging counter, and turned it toward the door...

I found a penny!

It was a 1984. Fitting, perhaps, seeing as how I'd been listening in stereo to my checker and the one beside me talking about a recent news story, and their conspiracy theory. Not that I minded, of course.

And for all you antipennyites...YOU ALREADY GOT YOUR STORY before the penny, by cracky!
______________________________________________________________________

This was penny #33. It's resting comfortably in my penny goblet on the kitchen counter.