The "If" Game

My husband and I talk about everything from the practical to completely ridiculous.  One of the things we he does a lot is what I call the if game.  Maybe it's part of his analytical nature, but he has a tendency to think about a situation and go into his "well if this happens, then we need to do this.  And if this goes wrong, we'll do this..."  To be honest, most of the time I tune it out and just throw in the appropriate 'uh-huhs'

About the only 'if game' I can get into is "If we win the lottery..."  We discuss this one usually when we're on our way to buy something that's going to be on the expensive side.  So here's a list of things we're going to do when we win the lottery (in no particular order)...

1.  Quit our jobs so that Nick can farm full time and I can be a stay-at-home Mom (when the time comes) and do book keeping for the farm.  Needless to say, lots of money would be spent on the farm.

2.   Build the dream house.  Yes, there's a dream house.  You can see it here.  We'd love to build this house whether we win the lottery or not.  But with lottery money it would be easier and have those things that we could live without like granite countertops and fancy schmancy closet organizers.

3.  Buy new vehicles.  Nick wants an F-350 and I'm thinking I want a Mercedes convertible but we'll have to have a family vehicle too.

4. Give money to our families.  Nick's already decided on the amounts we'd give to our parents, my sisters and his brothers and best friend/boyfriend.  (No, my husband isn't gay...but he and his best friend have been attached at the hip since forever, so we wives call them boyfriends).

5.  Buy Campbellsburg and turn it into a Southern Indiana version of Little Nashville.  I want that little building south of Jimmy's that used to be the video store for a photo gallery. 

The rest we'll invest.  And while all this is fun to dream about, please don't think we're discontent with what we have.  Quite the opposite, we're very blessed and quite thankful for what we have.  But it is fun to make out plans for the money we haven't won yet.  It should also be noted that neither of us play the lottery with any regularity.  We're one of those couple who just buys a couple of tickets when the pot is like 500 million.

And the New Experiences Continue...

As if dealing with the break-in at my parent's house on Tuesday morning wasn't enough, I got to experience another first yesterday. I rode in a cop car! When my sister-in-law called Friday night and asked me to go to Cincinnati to the Ikea store I was pretty excited. I'd never been and was anxious to see the place for myself (yet another new experience).  She picked me up in her Ford SUV which I didn't think twice about.  I ride in the same kind of SUV to work every other week.  It was all good.

I found some great picture frames and a shelf that will go in the kitchen to house my cookbooks. It was on the way home that we had a bit of an issue. My sister-in-law breaked for a turning car and her car started losing power. We were in a little town called Dillsboro when the car lost power completely and we had to pull to the shoulder. We sat there about 5 minutes when a good-samaritan police officer (as police officers usually are) came to help us. He called a tow truck for us and when it got there 20 minutes later, the cop very kindly gave us a ride to the mechanic's shop and waited to maked sure the vehicle was going to be driveable. I'd never been in a cop car before. I rode in the front and had to hold the radar gun.

The mechanic informed us that both the battery and alternator were bad.  He replaced the battery but didn't think we'd make it home.  Although my fabulous friend Molly agreed to drive to Aurora from North Vernon to rescue us, we decided to get the car back as far as we could.  We made it to the McDonald's drive-thru in Seymour...that's right THE DRIVE-THRU!!  My sister-in-law went to pay for my nieces "Mac" (her burger of choice) and the window refused to budge...a familiar symptom.  As she was pulling to the second window, the car died.  So what does Megan do?  She tells her sister-in-law to put it in neutral and she'd push it out of the way, even though said sister-in-law told her that she couldn't.

The people in the car behind me looked at me like I was nuts...as if they've never seen a car broken down in the McD's drive thru.  But I did push the car to safety in a nearby parking spot.  At least this time we had access to a cool building and food rather than being stranded at the side of the highway with no a/c and a sleeping 5-year old.  Since my husband knew exactly where we were, he came to rescue us.  We had to stop and jumpstart my sister-in-law's car again on the way home, but we made it back to town and took her car directly to the mechanic shop.  That brought our trip to Ikea to a close, as well as a pretty eventful week.  I'm really hoping next week is a little tamer.

A Whole New Experience

Today I got to experience something I never thought I would have to experience, and pray I'll never have to repeat. My parents have been on vacation, and like a good daughter I took in my childhood dog quite willingly and made twice-daily trips out to their house to feed the barn cats and water my Mom's many flower pots.

This morning was no different until I rounded the corner of the house headed for the back door and the glass from the door was in a huge, shatterd, shardy pile on the top step. The door was standing wide open. Cats were in the house. My heart stopped. At first I thought maybe the storm this morning had blown something into it but as I told myself that was stupid, I saw the marks around the dead-bolt and the inside pane of glass pushed away from the door. I stood there on the patio just looking at the mess for a minute. Break-ins are one of those things you think always happen to other people. My parents house, the house I grew up in, the house I left to go to college, and came back to when things were going wrong, the house I spent holidays and the night before my wedding in, had essentially be violated. It made me feel sick. But it didn't take long for my practical side to kick in and make me realize there was no way I was going in that house alone (because obviously robbers could still be there at 9 am).

I first called my aunt, who didn't answer her phone. Then my uncle, who was driving through Cincy at that point. I walked to the neighbors house. They had already left for the day. My husband was at work 40 minutes away. I was trying to figure out who else I could call that could be there quick when my aunt called back. She was there in a matter of minutes and together we called the cops and braved what used to be a window to see what damage had been done in the house. It wasn't too bad. Just the tv's, and the laptop, the wii, some beer and 2 2-liters of Mountain Dew is all that's missing. Nothing ransacked, and nothing broken aside from the door. Nothing that can't be replaced, except maybe my parents' sense of security for awhile, and a memory I never wanted.

At some point during all of this I called my parents and broke the news to my Dad. I've relayed the story to them and the conversations I had with the very helpful detective at least 3 times. My husband and I are sitting in their house and they're on their way home, their vacation cut short by someone who doesn't respect other people's property. On one hand, it's sad that there are people in the world who don't know better than to think that breaking in to someone's home and taking their belongings is ok. On the other, it's infuriating. My parents are good people. They would do what they could to help someone, if asked. They work hard for the things that they have, and they've worked hard to make this house their home. I don't understand what makes people think they have the right to break in to someone else's home and take their stuff!! And maybe we'll never know who the culprit is, but I sure hope someday, someone sets them on a better path than they're on now.

A Brief Pause

It seems as though I've taken an unintentional break from blogging. It's been super busy around here. Two weeks ago I threw a backyard bash for my husband's 30th birthday. There was about 25 adults in our house and backyard, and pulling that off was kind of a lot of work, although it was loads of fun. It took about 2 days of solid work - shopping, cleaning, food prep, and gathering objects - to get things ready. I have a couple of projects I did that week that is on the list of things to blog about.

I found out right after the birthday bash that my sister is having a baby girl. We're very excited about having another niece. Nick has 2...this will be my first. Plans began immediately for the pink baby shower that I've been dreaming of since my sister first handed me her ultrasound photo across the dinner table at my parent's house. I'll remember that moment for the rest of my life when my sister nonchalantly handed me that photo right as we were sitting down to our family dinner. Needless to say there are projects in the works for this shower, but I'll have to wait until August to share those because the only thing my sister gets to know about this shower is the time and date and I'm pretty sure she reads this....