I enjoy working. I can’t imagine not working. As much as I adore both of my children, working while raising them is exactly what I want to be doing. Sometimes though, I think I work too much, and then I decide it’s time to take a vacation. I started a vacation today….I’m actually not even going anywhere. My mom arrived from Ohio last night and I will be spending the next 9 days with her and Max and Tanner, relishing the summer and sun. We will just stay in town and play. I love to watch my mom with the kids. They are so excited she is here. Today, I got to have my mom all to myself. We have a tradition of going to the Garlic Festival every summer–so as usual we arrived at the festival within 30 minutes of it opening and were stuffed by 11 am. I bought a pepper steak sandwich, an order of garlic bread and one of those tall fruit smoothie drinks. This year, they put WAY too much pepper on the sandwich, but I still ate the whole thing anyway. It’s meat and I can’t help myself.
After checking out every artisan displaying their wares at the festival, we headed over to the outlets to do some major credit card damage. EVERY store we walked into was running a huge sale, so now I have a car packed full of goodies. I am one of those people who convinces my husband that I would be “losing money if I didn’t buy this.” We shopped feverishly and fast, to cover as much ground as we could, and of course we shopped until they closed at 9 p.m. In fact, our last purchase at KB Toys made at 9:02 p.m. will be enjoyed by the boys in the pool this weekend. I am usually so busy with work and the kids that I don’t get to shop very often. Correction: shop IN STORES very often. Now, on-line shopping is entirely different; that I can do from the confines of my studio, office and home, and I do plenty of it. But shopping in a mall, or the outlets? Three times a year tops, so when I go, I spend, without guilt! One of my favorite things in life is to get to a store’s check out and hear these magical words, “Oh! This has been marked down even further than what’s on the price tag!”
