This might be your lucky day

Jan. 28 is now officially my lucky day.
Yesterday was quite a lovely day with each event bringing more fun into my life. As I mentioned in my blog yesterday, I spent Friday night and into Saturday morning laughing with the Ya-Ya’s. I didn’t get to bed until 2 a.m.
I had to kick Logan off the computer at 9 a.m. to see if the results were in on the Scrappin Trends design team. I was so excited to find out I won!
David was in need of some new slacks for school and we had received a flyer from a place that sells big and tall clothing in the big city advertising a sale, so we dressed and went shopping.
The shop has clothes for men and women, and while David, who is 6 foot 4 inches, was browsing, I wandered over to the woman’s racks, where I found clothes were on sale for 75 percent off.
I never buy clothes for myself. I would much rather spend my money on pretty paper, ink and camera equipment. But my Sunday go to meeting wardrobe is really, really shabby. In the words of my friend Sandra, I was starting to look like “a bag lady.”
So I found a likely skirt and blouse and headed for a dressing room. Once David and the sales lady had me cornered in the room, they kept flinging selections over the door for me to try on.
When the lint cleared I walked out of the store with five shirts, two skirts, a nice pair of slacks and a pair of Capri shorts ~ all purchased for about $100. I think I doubled the size of my wardrobe.
After we came home David took all the tax receipts to file our taxes. We have both been nervous about this because we didn’t know what my income would do to our taxes. But since I work from home we were able to deduct the cost of the computer, the space I use as an office, and even part of our power, water and gas bill. My free-lance job qualifies me as the owner/operator of a private business.
We did end up having to pay some money to cover my SSI, but we still ended up with a sizable tax return.


I have a new blog challenge for those of you willing to take it on. To get more details, check my blog from last Sunday.

The topic for today is:

Describe a Childhood Birthday

I was born in December. Consequently, my birthday was often something of an afterthought. But I somehow never felt particularly slighted on my birthday ~ except the year I turned 17 and my mother forgot it was my birthday ~ but that is a story for another time.
It is kind of hard for me to pinpoint one specific birthday. I remember Mom making really fun cakes. She had a book in her recipe drawer with ideas for making cut out cakes from rounds or square cakes. I remember an elephant and a rabbit, but I don’t know if she ever made a cake using directions from this book.
We usually didn’t have friend birthday parties. But my 8th birthday was special. It was the year I was going to be baptized. I remember thinking I was so cool because I was turning 8 on Dec. 8. Since then I’ve always though of 8 as my “lucky” number.
Anyway, on this birthday I did have a friend’s party. I don’t remember the entire guest list, but I do remember I invited my best friend, Amy Ravenholt, and a boy from my neighborhood and church, Dean Robinson.
Amy and I both had intense little girl crushes on Dean. He was blond, blue eyed, and the son of the local banker. This made him a Very Important Person in our tiny community.
Dean had three older brothers the same ages as my three older sisters. He also had one little sister the same age as my little brother. It was something of a joke in our congregation that the Sorenson’s couldn’t have boys and the Robinson’s couldn’t have girls.
Our two families were friendly, but not close. I always had the sense that they either were better than our family or that they though they were better than our family.
But I screwed my courage to the sticking point and invited Dean to my birthday party. I remember we played the 8-year-old version of spin the bottle, all very innocent. But when the bottle pointed to me Amy thoroughly humiliated me by telling Dean “oh, you better watch out!”
I had my revenge when I was invited to Dean’s birthday party one week later, and Amy was not. His birthday is Dec. 16. I knew even then he had just invited me to be polite because he had been invited to my party a week earlier.
That was almost 40 years ago, and I still remember Dean’s birthday is Dec. 16 every year when I see the date on the calendar.