a new bike or an iPad?

I have a few hundred extra, unbudgeted bucks.  Someone stole my Cannondale out of the bike room in my building's bike room. There is a code to get into the room so it was probably someone who lives here and owns a bike. Yuck. It was about $700 bucks worth of bike, more if you count the two locks, the bike helmet, the special seat, lights, water bottle and mount, ankle wraps that I kept wrapped on the frame.  I loved everything about that bike.

Or an iPad?  I don't need an iPad. I have a perfectly good, one-year-old MacBook Pro. But I covet the new technology.

Decisions decisions.

Or I could pay down a little debt.  I owe a couple friends some money, not much, but I do owe.

I have just decided. Pay the debt. Wait for the bike. I don't need an iPad.

a memory from raising my child

When my daughter was two years old, we still lived in Omaha. A Fuddruckers restaurant came to town.  Fuddruckers might still exist, but I haven't seen one in years.  I only patronized a place like Fuddfuckers, as I usually referred to the place, to please my daughter.  Fuddruckers mostly sells hamburgers, fries and drinks. Their special thing is the toppings bar for the burgers, and, in the mid-eighties in Omaha, anyway, games that cost money to play. The restaurant had a noisy game arcade.

For my daughter, the favorite feature was the way they announced your name when your burger was ready. "Rosie your burger is ready!"  Hearing her name called in the exotic environment thrilled her.
They took names for each burger so my name was called and her name was called. Thrill city. For a two year old.

She loved to hear her name, then rush to claim her food, and then carefully select her toppings.

My memories of Fuddfuckers are a little faint. I remember that I always called the place Fuddfuckers, pretending I didn't know I was saying it wrong.  I always used profanity in front of my child. I decided, while still pregnant, that I would not be a hypocrit in the way I talked to her, that I would talk to her like anyone else.  No baby talk and no edited profanity withheld. So I said Fuddfuckers, and every time I did, it titillated her a bit.

We loved Fuddfuckers. The clanging, pinging game machines, the endless announcement of ready burgers, background music. A blaring cacophony of suburban, middle class exotica, an escape from our very dull life in very dull Omaha.

At this time, Rosie was really into She-Ra, Princess of Power, which was a cartoon show. At the time, He-Man was a popular boys cartoon and She-Ra was an attempt to  cater to little girls, to sell them junk at commercial breaks, to appeal to the different market.  I didn't let Rosie watch it at home but she spent every weekend with her father during the two years of our custody battle. She watched it there. And she talked about She-Ra, I heard her, I tuned in.

My point about the visitation is that she spent a lot of time with different rules. Her father and his mother, who really took care of her during the visitations, let her watch a lot of crap on television. And Rosie was in love with She-Ra, Princess of Power.

At Fuddfuckers, the kids at the register, very young kids themselves, sixteen, seventeen, were happy to write down 'She-Ra, Princess of Power' on the burger order, and then to call out 'She-Ra, Princess of Power, your burger is ready".

I love all the easy, little ways you can make a kid happy.  It made me happy to make her happy.

door-to-door

I live in an almost new apartment building, less than two years old. In the first year, lots of kids in the building came around selling stuff for school fundraisers.  My policy is to buy from every kid who asks me. I will buy raffle tickets for things I don't want and things I would like to win. I will buy at least one box of cookies -- more if it is Girl Scout cookies because I used to hump those as a kid and I buy them for the memories -- I also hustled GS cookies for my kid.

A time or two, since moving here, I have even just given a few dollars to a kid looking to go on a class trip to D.C. or something like that. I totally want every kid to go on such a school trip. Wouldn't it be awful to miss out because your folks were tapped out?

The door-to-door sales campaigns have died out.  I don't think any building children have knocked on my door to sell something this school year, thus far.

But last year about this time, a brother and a sister were selling fifteen dollar boxes of cookies. They looked like really crappy cookies. And it was irritating that the school fundraisers had chosen such large bundles.  Fifteen bucks would buy me three or four boxes of Girl Scout cookies and most of those are good cookies. Mostly, I give cookies away, esp. cheap crap manufactured ones.

That fifteen dollar box of cookies looked like baked sawdust dusted in crystalize sugar crumbs.

Still, I bought a box. I didn't have cash. The kids balked at taking my check and I said "Well, that's all I have, a check or nothing. Or you can come back."

They decided to take my check. They cashed it.

And I never got the cookies.

I didn't take their names or apartment numbers.  I don't remember who they are.

Another time, a girl was selling raffle tickets. As I counted out my money, after agreeing to buy two, she began to write her name on the tickets I was about to pay for.  I pointed out that the point was to write down my name so I had a chance to win. I got the distinct impression that she thought the point was to buy herself as many chances to win as possible. She did let me write my name but something felt wrong.

So. Do I buy this year when the holiday hustle picks up? Someone will be selling gift wrap, for sure.