Maybe Campbell's will send me a big check.

Marvin Gardens gets paid on Tuesday, so I am certainly hoping we put more into our savings. Although $13,000 in four and a half months is nothing to sneeze at. Why I would sneeze at my savings is beyond me. Where did that stupid phrase come from?

My grandmother was always going around with phrases that didn't make any sense, such as, "You tell him your ass would make him a Sunday face." I was about 28 before I figured that one out.

At any rate, last time, I asked you to remind me to tell you things and you didn't. Fortunately, I can go back to my last post and remind myself. Some good you are.

First of all, people are forever asking me the same things about this not spending thing. The most annoying one is when I say, "We are not spending this year and we have saved X amount of dollars" and people say, "Since when?" Okay. I just said we are not spending THIS YEAR. Were you thinking I went by the Aztec calendar?

Then people want to know the details, and I will give you one today: bringing my lunch to work. I prepare my lunch the night before in under two minutes. Have you tried those Campbell's Soup at Hand soups? They come in a microwavable container. So I have 6 million of those at the ready. Then I throw in a bottle of water, yogurt, a piece of fruit and maybe an Odwalla bar. Done.

And speaking of the details, Mother's Day is tomorrow, and the whole gift-giving thing was causing us much consternation, which sounds like I just said 'constipation,' but I didn't. However, last week I had a brilliant idea for my mother.

Many years ago, my paternal grandmother made tapes of her life story which are FAS.CIN.ATING. My mother has always wanted to hear them, even though this is her ex-mother-in-law's life story. I asked Marvin Gardens if he could transfer the tapes to CD for my mother's gift. I thought this would take 10 minutes. It took every spare moment of Marvin's life from last Sunday to Thursday. I have the feeling he may have made this harder than it had to be, because then he had an excuse to play with the computer, the CD player, and other noisy electronic devices.

So, that was free, other than the fact that Marvin FED-EXed it to my mother, despite the fact that she will be here in five days and would have been just fine waiting for her gift. Marvin sent something free to his mother too, but I think she hasn't gotten it yet and do not wish to ruin her surprise.

Oh, and I was gonna tell you how yesterday was the 10-year anniversary of when poor Marvin made the fatal error of proposing to me on a Ferris wheel (I looked it up. 'Ferris' gets capitalized and 'wheel' does not), but since I was EXTREMELY busy last night watching Anne of Green Gables, I did not blog and what is the point of telling a story about being proposed to 10 years and one day ago? But here is me on said Ferris wheel, glad that some idiot finally wanted to marry me.

Nice acid wash.