$$: Allowance, Fuel, Dining, & Hot Date!

Posted on | October 24, 2008 |

A busy, busy day with but with nothing more than the regular, expected expenditures of a normal day.

Had an appointment with a roofer, logged a couple of volunteer hours at The Son’s homeschool co-op program, took The Son to a corn-maze outing with some friends, and attended the ballet with The Son. Lots of driving mixed in there to get all of those things done.

The Son’s Allowance — $30.00
The Son recently received an allowance raise. [His raise hasn't been covered on my blog because it happened during my little unplanned hiatus. I need to update details on allowance and financials for both kids but I'll save that fun for another day.]

Anyway, today’s $30 represents his October allowance.

Corn Maze — $0.00
The Son paid his own way out of his allowance. With his student discount, it set him back $8.00.

Subway — $6.55
A footlong “designer” sandwich for The Son’s dinner grabbed quickly between the corn maze and getting gussied up for our hot date.

Safeway — $47.68
The Tank’s tank was dangerously low and the only thing that sounded worse than pumping gas all dolled up in my best duds and pearls was running out of gas at 11pm on the way home from the ballet, tired and hungry, and, of course, all dolled up in my best duds and pearls.

I pumped 18.001 gallons at $2.649 per gallon. The odometer read 133,340.

Parking — $10.00
I’ve been categorizing parking in my YNAB Auto: Other category but every time I log another parking fee that was incurred during a Recreation: Entertainment or a Recreation: Vacation event I consider whether it wouldn’t be more accurate to charge these parking fees as entertainment or vacation instead. What do you think? How do you handle these miscellaneous vacation- and/or entertainment-related expense.

Bar Tab — $3.00
During intermission, I bought The Son a Sprite at the bar. The drink actually cost us $2.00 but I had The Son leave a $1.00 tip.

That’s a pretty big tip and I actually wouldn’t normally have left one (though I probably should, but that’s not the point here). The reason we left one this time is that I was using the moment as a “teachable moment.” The Son, quirky and probably-Asperger’s lovable guy that he is, needs repetitive social lessons if he’s to grow up and have a prayer of conducting himself in public without being a constant source of embarrassment to his poor mother.

Now I’d never want word to get to The Son that I’m using our cultural outings as teachable moments so, shhh, don’t tell! I absolutely love the fact that he’s not just willing to accompany me to the theatre (and the ballet, and the opera, and to art shows, etc) but that he really enjoys them as well. These “hot dates” with The Son are so incredibly dear to my heart; he has no idea of the gift he gives me with each outing.

When we go out, we both get all dressed up in our Sunday Best. He looked so handsome last night in his black dress pants, lace-up dress shoes, blue oxford-cloth buttondown, and blue/black argyle tie. He really needs a sport coat but I can’t justify buying one right now because he’s still growing too fast. For my part, I had on the dress, the shoes, and the coat — a gorgeously classic Ann Taylor black wool coat with black velvet collar and my white silk/wool scarf. By the way, that coat is 25 years old. No one will ever convince me that buying cheap is more frugal than buying classic quality.

Sexist as it may sound, I always make a point of giving The Son our event tickets before we go out. This way he gets practice with dealing with ticket takers (what are those people called, anyway?) and ushers. I also give him the cash that might change hands during intermission as it did last night at the bar. He’s pretty good with the tickets (though he does tend to wait too long before hunting them down from whatever pocket he put them in). But he needs a lot of work when it comes to handling cash. The poor bartender was working her bar alone and had a line no less than 50 deep. The Son pulled out his (my) $20 and handed it over — all nicely, tightly, and sweatily folded into a tiny square. First strike. Well, no first strike was the fact that he didn’t know what he wanted when we finally bellied up to the bar. Second strike was that he mumbled when he did finally order. Third strike was the wadded and sweaty $20. Fourth strike was that he was clueless as to what to do with the $1 I wanted him to leave as tip even though there was a very obvious pile of $1’s just off to the side. I always try to make my “instructions” as gently and unobtrusively as possible but nonetheless he gets that annoyed 14-yo boy tone in his voice. Ah, well. We’ll just keep working on it.

The ballet was incredible. Neither of us had seen Swan Lake before. In fact, this was only The Son’s second professional ballet performance. I took both children to see Copland’s Appalachian Spring many years ago. The Son was completely enthralled back then. Of course, Swan Lake is a much more traditional ballet. His comment was that it was “just a little long on dancing and a little short on plot.” Obviously he enjoyed the evening, though, because he asked if we could go see The Nutcracker next year.

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