Day 225: Dining, Toiletries, Pictures, Contractor, and a Tournament

Another big spend­ing day.  How long has it been since I had an hon­est to good­ness “no spend” day?  Too long.

The day started out poorly because the con­trac­tor I hired to repair and refin­ish our deck – one, didn’t show to start the job on Sat­ur­day as he’d said he would (in his defense, the weather was ques­tion­able) and, two, showed up over an hour later than he’d esti­mated.  I wanted to be here when he showed up so I sent The Hus­band off to take the kids to church hop­ing that I’d get away in time to attend the ser­vice.  It didn’t work out that way and, in fact, I barely got away in time to pick the chil­dren up before every­one else had gone home.

I could have had The Hus­band stay with the chil­dren or pick them up instead of me but I’d promised them bagels after­ward and a trip to the mall for stage two of The Son’s shav­ing equip­ment procurement.

So here’s the day’s expenses:

Ein­stein Bros. Bagels — $15.14
We pur­chased a Dozen Bucket Deal (a baker’s dozen of bagels and two tubs of schmear).

I let The Son have a bot­tled soda because he asked and, well, why not?  He drinks more soda than I’d like (but then, is the absense of all soda really rea­son­able in this day and age?) but if you’ve fol­lowed my gro­cery pur­chases for the past 224 days you’ll see that I rarely buy pop for house­hold con­sump­tion.  For the most part, the kids’ soda con­sump­tion is lim­ited to dining-out occa­sions.  The Daugh­ter passed on a drink of any type; not thirsty, I guess.  I was thirsty and would have jumped at an Odwalla or some such but Einstein’s alternative-drink selec­tion is pathetic.

The Art of Shav­ing — $79.71 (and $12.93)
Last week I ordered shav­ing equip­ment (razor, brush, and blades) for The Son — a begin­ning shaver.  Today, The Daugh­ter and I accom­pa­nied him to The Art of Shav­ing to choose his prod­ucts.  The Daugh­ter and I had vis­ited this store Fri­day a week ago to research the var­i­ous prod­ucts avail­able locally and we’d decided on the scent that we thought The Son should choose — San­dal­wood.  We thought to today’s visit would be more cer­e­mo­nial than any­thing.  But those 13-yos, with minds of their own.…  Nat­u­rally, he didn’t agree with us that San­dal­wood was a manly scent.  He didn’t like it.  He liked the Lemon instead.  Actu­ally, in ret­ro­spect, I’m not all that sur­prised that he chose Lemon.  The Hus­band is a Lemon-Lime scent guy.  The Son prob­a­bly asso­ciates with the scent — even if just subconsciously.

The sec­ond, smaller pur­chase was for a styp­tic pen — because there’s no harm in hedg­ing our bets.  He is, after all, brand new to the world of razor blades.   ;-)

ImageTek — $26.00
Small pack­age of base­ball pho­tos of The Son and his team.

In the past, I’ve always ordered a small pack­age and every year the pho­tos are, well, okay.  At best.  Last year, I didn’t pay for any extra pho­tos so we only received a team photo and a small indi­vid­ual photo given to each player as part of their team par­tic­i­pa­tion. And, nat­u­rally, last year’s photo was adorable.  This year I’ve decided that I pre­fer the risk of get­ting sev­eral less than spec­tac­u­lar pho­tos to get­ting only one really good photo.

Base­ball Coach — $37.50
The Son’s por­tion of an upcom­ing week­end tournament.

Deck Con­trac­tor — $500.00
Our deck hasn’t been refin­ished since we bought the house 5 years ago — and it prob­a­bly needed it even back then.  For me, the biggest hur­dle to hav­ing work like this done is find­ing some­one rep­utable to do it.  I don’t have a huge cir­cle of friends liv­ing the same lifestyle in the same area so I can’t call on them for ref­er­ences.  Not many of my neigh­bors have a deck so I can’t look there — besides, most of the fam­i­lies around here have DIY dads in res­i­dence.  I found this par­tic­u­lar fel­low on Craigslist.  I have faith that every­thing will go well.

This pay­ment was the required amount to final­ize the con­tract bid and get the work started.

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Related posts:

  1. Day 41
  2. $$: Church, Din­ing, Gro­ceries, Cos­met­ics, & Swimming
  3. $$: Fluff
  4. $$: The Day’s Expenses plus Swim Meet Tips
  5. Day 220: Gas, CPAP Sup­plies, The­ater Ticket, and Dining
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