Christmas 2007

The Gospel according to Luke

"(T)he stingy uninspired script consists not of springy dialogue, but rather of a deadening series of pronouncements. Mary to Joseph, "I am tired." Joseph to Mary, "We will rest here for the night." There's no fire, no give and take. And the audience soon grows weary of this passionless relationship." David Sedaris from Front Row Center with Thaddeus Bristol.

My kids participated in the Christmas pageant at our church. Their reenactment of the first Christmas was performed instead of the usual gospel reading. My daughters both dressed up as angels for the production but Lil' T didn't go up on stage. She contented herself with wearing the halo and wings. My son had the starring male role in the play -- you might be thinking Joseph or Gabriel -- sure, they had important parts too, mostly supporting though. My son was the Innkeeper. Really, the whole story arc and the dramatic heft of the play rests on that role's shoulders. Through his scant 6 lines of dialogue, he had us on pins and needles, wondering if his icy heart would melt and give the poor travelers a place to stay. His acting was stellar. I totally believed him as a money grubbing, heartless suck up who ultimately has a small shred of compassion, allowing a pregnant woman to give birth in a cave with his ox and ass sleeping nearby.

I am worried though. My son is being type cast. When he was in the third grade, he played an angry sea urchin. It was a break out role for him. He was the only child that truly acted his part. Sure, most of them were simply making statements about who they were like, "I am a star fish. I like to live in tide pools." But my son really acted like a prickly sea urchin. He shouted, "Hey, what are you doing here? There's no room in this tide pool for you. It is crowded enough as it is." Again, totally believable. But can you see how that is essentially the same part as the innkeeper in the Christmas pageant? The only difference was the costume. Instead of an outfit made of duct tape (a.k.a. duck tape -- for those who are hardware store impaired), paper cones and purple spray paint, he wore a middle eastern robe and pill box hat. I just hope that this typecasting doesn't crimp his ability to take on different roles. I mean, really, what's next down this track? Mr. Roper from Three's Company? Mr. Cunningham from Happy Days? The man from Chico & the Man? The troll from Billy Goats Gruff? I know it is still early in his career, but a mother does worry.


All I want for Christmas


A local radio station here gives out Christmas wishes in the days leading up to Christmas. I decided to try to get something for my mom this year through them -- something that I certainly couldn't afford, especially not this year. This is the entry I wrote, and yeah, it may seem a little over the top, but I wanted to win this for my mom. Oh well, I guess I'll have to fulfill this wish the old fashioned way -- earn it.

When my father retired 17 years ago, my mother treated him to an Omega watch. It was a lavish present for a man who was the son of immigrants, a veteran of 2 wars, worked most of his life as a civil servant doing pest control, sent the 4 of us kids to private school, and at one point took 2 jobs to keep us in our school uniforms. He told my mother that he would get her the matching Omega watch when she retired from her work as a clinic nurse. He promised her that he would. This past year, that retirement finally came. She did not retire on her own schedule but instead, as my parents always have done, put her kids' needs before her own and retired because of me.

In June 2007, my husband, the sole wage earner for our household, was laid off. I was an RN before I left work to raise my kids, ages 10, 6 & 2 years old. To get my license back, I needed to take an RN refresher course -- a 5 month class from a community college. Concerned about me and her grandkids, she said she would retire and come up here from Hawaii to care for my family. Also worried about how I was going to travel to and from the hospital for my clinical assignments, she shipped her only car up here for me to drive.

I always intended to give my mom her Omega watch at her retirement because my dad is unable to keep that promise.

Five years ago, our family gathered in Washington for a Christmas reunion. It was to have been the first one we had shared in over 10 years. At Christmas Eve dinner, my father announced that he expected us all to be in Hawaii for Christmas the following year. He ultimately got his wish, but not the way he had intended. That very evening, Dad died unexpectedly of a massive heart attack. We never had that Christmas all together like we planned. My brothers and I (two in WA, one in HI, and one in CA) went to Hawaii the following year to be with Mom for the 1 year anniversary of Dad's death. Every Christmas season since has been bittersweet -- a shame because Dad truly loved Christmas.

Because I don't have work yet and sadly, my husband has not found a new job, we're struggling this year. My Christmas wish is to give my mom the present my Dad had wanted to give her, the matching Omega watch. I just think that if I could give that to her, she could have Dad here with us for Christmas, even in this small way.

I know, it reads like that overly saccharin Christmas song, Christmas Shoes. My husband will turn off the radio if he hears it playing. It is such an obvious tear jerker. Last night I think he was going to throw up when I started singing it. "Sir, I wanna buy these shoes/ for my Mama, please./ It's Christmas Eve and these shoes are just her size./ Can you hurry, sir?/ Daddy says there's not much time,/ see, she's been sick for quite a while,/ and I know these shoes will make her smile,/ and I want her to be beautiful/ when Mama meets Jesus tonight..."

My hubby and I changed the final lyric a little though, "So I laid the money down. /I just had to help him out. /Then he grabbed the money and he ran,/ and I think it might be part of his plan,/ and I think I heard him stop and say/ 'another one born every day...'"

But I think the difference between my entry and that song is that my story is truthful -- real -- I mean, we lived it. And are still living it. I still get teary eyed sometimes when I go to church, remembering that on my dad's last day, we attended Christmas Eve mass. We watched the last Christmas pageant performed there for years before this year's production. I heard my dad sing, O Little Town of Bethlehem and he boasted a little, like he often did when he sang, about how good his voice sounded and how well he knew the lyrics. And then he was gone. And Christmas has really never been the same since. I kind of get a little grumpy in the days leading up to it. I hope that will change eventually, but I doubt it.

My mistake though. The radio station had a cap for their prizes -- $600 per person. Had I known that, I would have asked for a new camera or something like that. And some of the stories they shared were shockingly more tragic than ours. And I thought ours was pretty bad. All in all, our Christmas was great just having Mom here. And even though money was tight, the kids had a great one.

Eat and get gas

What Christmas blog would be complete without a full recapping of what we ate for the Christmas feast? There was no figgy pudding or Christmas goose. I have not yet tried the scary Turducken phenomenon. My brother the chef has done it, and says it is fabulous. I think I'll wait for him to prepare it for me.

In previous years we've had the traditional Thanksgiving redux and we've also gone totally the other way with steak fajitas. But in our defense, the fajitas had red and green bell peppers in them.

This year, our decision on what to make was made by the upper management at Safeway. Prime rib roast went on sale for $4.99/pound. For those of you who have no frame of reference on that, it usually goes for at least $9.99/lb, often more.

I decided to make potatoes au gratin with leeks, oyster mushrooms & guyere cheese. It is a recipe I got way back in the day from Bon Apetit Magazine. I liked it but the kids didn't. They've got some kind of mental block against mushrooms. I blame their father.

The problem with choosing to make the roast and the potatoes was that there is only one oven in this house. The roast prepared in the oven takes about 3 hours at 200 degrees F. The potatoes cook at 400 for 1 hour 20 minutes. You see the conflict. So I decided to grill the roast using the indirect heat method. It was the perfect solution.

After a quick call to my brother the chef, I asked my husband to prepare the briquets. And like the Jews at the first Hanukkah, we were left with too little fuel to keep the fire lit. We only had 1/2 a chimney starter of charcoal. And in our own Christmas miracle, my husband found another 1/2 a chimney full of charcoal still in the grill. Thank goodness for poor housekeeping. Cleaning out the grill after the season was a chore that fell by the wayside. Amazingly, that one chimney full of charcoal was able to cook the roast for over an hour and imparted the most wonderful smoky flavor to the meat. Does that count as a miracle?

Since it was a special occasion, I decided to use our wedding china.

I do question my sanity looking back at it. Why add the stress of using the wedding china for dinner on Christmas day? As if Christmas isn't stressful enough. The meal is cooked by loving hands that will turn decidedly unloving, should you chip the wedding china. I actually have planned for that eventuality and got 13 place settings. I know that seems unlucky, but I think of it this way. I have 12 place settings and 1 replacement for each piece. My anxiety was sensed by my husband who while clearing the table and bringing the china to the kitchen sink mimicked the sound of a large truck backing up and in a loud voice said, "Beep! Beep! China in transit. Beep! Beep!" Then when he almost dropped a Tupperware container on the plates, looking at my barely contained freak out, he changed his mantra to, "Beep! Beep! China in danger. Beep! Beep!"

Oh, I suppose you all would like to know what we had for dessert. Mom and I made binbingka cassava and jello mochi. Both desserts almost didn't make it to the end of the meal. We had prepared them early and by the time we set the table for dinner, most of it had disappeared down the gullets of my family.

The meal was fabulous and festive. My son really had a fun time with his Christmas present from Uncle Dwight. It is a remote control fart machine. So yes, my table was set with my finest china. I had a brand new gold table cloth and deep red table runner both imported from Italy. The kids were drinking out of stemware instead of plastic tumblers. We even used cloth napkins instead of paper. And all the while, we had the sound of farting coming from under the table with giggle filled accusations flying. That's classy.

Ah, memories. Mele Kalikimaka!

Liar, liar, pants on fire

Let me just say that this was a long grift. If you don't know what I mean, to grift is to con somebody. Sometimes this can be a short term lie or sometimes it can be a long term lie. Some lies you have to set up, prepare a mark (a.k.a. victim) with a couple of believable lies -- commiserate with them, make them feel like you're a victim of the same circumstances. A grifter is a con artist. I never knew I had skills like these. But I do. I have the gift of grift.

About 5 weeks before my husband's 40th birthday, I told Hubby that the church auction was coming up. The real auction was taking place a week before my husband's birthday, but I figured that he had heard some buzz about an auction coming up and that was enough to validate my story. When there are church events, our director of religious education, Sister Anna, will often pluck me out of the parking lot or even church, and ask me to help out. I told my husband (who rarely attends mass with me)that after mass, Sr. Anna had asked me if I would help out with the auction. I told him the auction was scheduled for his birthday so I wanted to clear it with him before I got back to her. He, being the good soul that he is, assured me that it was fine. I could help out if I wanted.

The following Thursday, I complained again to my husband. When I picked up the kids from CCD, Sister Anna saw me again and asked if I would be able to prepare some food for the auction. See, it is a money making endeavor, so to cut costs, they were asking parishioners to bring food. I said, "Can you believe that they're asking people to bring food? I mean, they're charging $75 per ticket in the first place." So he told me that it was a fund raiser. That I can't blame them for trying to raise money. He really defended the actions of Sr. Anna, even though she was being absolutely ridiculous.

Some time during the following week, I asked my mother (in front of Hubby) what she would like to prepare for the auction. We came up with lumpia and pancit. It is traditional to have noodles on your birthday for long life. And everybody loves my mom's lumpia. My husband likes having potatoes in lumpia (I know, it is totally unacceptable according to Mom) so as a birthday treat, I told him that I'd reserve some that didn't have shrimp in it (he doesn't eat bugs -- his words, not mine) and put potatoes in that batch.

About 2 weeeks before the auction I started telling my husband that people weren't buying auction tickets as well as they had hoped. "At $75 a peice, how can you blame them? I might be helping out but there is no way that I'm going to pay for tickets."

Here's the scary part. My whole plan may have fallen apart because my son's soccer team won their division championship. If they progressed through regionals, then the state championship game would be on my husband's birthday -- the day of the party. It is a very strange feeling -- the definition of conflicted -- because I wanted my son's team to succeed. Of course I did. But on the other hand, part of me wanted them to fail because my plan for the party was going so well. I had even thought to mention to another parent from our church whose kid plays with That not to talk about missing the church auction which happened on the day of the regionals. She was awesome and didn't say a word about it.

Sadly for my son, his team didn't win the regionals. Yay for me, but I didn't cheer. He took it in stride and actually had nothing but good things about playing soccer in the snow. "Mom, it was so cool because when you kicked the ball, it would grow into this huge snow ball, and when you kicked it again, snow would explode everywhere. COOL!"

We were still on for our party. Here was the clincher. I had come up with an excuse for me to be making mass quantities of food. I had come up with an excuse for my mother to come with me. But the whole deal was to get my husband to drive to our friends Steve & Sharon's house for the actual party. My mother was the weakest link of the whole thing.

Having already told my husband that tickets weren't selling well and that they were massively expensive, I had laid the groundwork. Now in for the kill. I waited until the Thursday before the party. That is the day the kids have CCD. My mom picked them up from church that day. So she had opportunity to do this act.

"Honey," I conspiratorially told my husband, "don't get upset but for your birthday, my mom bought the three of us tickets to the auction."

"She what?"

"I know. I know. I'm sorry. She didn't ask me but she thought it would be good because there will be entertainment and lots of food. She thought it would be fun for us to do."

"Oh man, I get to spend my fortieth birthday at a church auction. Are you kidding me?"

"I'm so sorry."

"Why don't you guys just go, you and your mom?"

"She bought 3 tickets."

"Well, who is going to watch the kids?"

"I talked to Sharon, and she said that she's having a holiday party for the kids from their church. She said 3 more kids wouldn't be a problem and there will be lots of fun things for them to do."

Defeated, my husband resigned himself to feign gratitude and excitement when my mother told him about the auction tickets.

I practiced with my mother over and over again. She said that maybe she should add that I'd take him out to dinner another day too. She also was trying to come up with what kind of entertainment would be at the auction. She was suggesting menus and coming up with the guest list of who would be at our table.

My mother doesn't lie. It doesn't come easy to her. In fact, I think it may cause her physical pain. But we went over it again and again, and finally she streamlined it down to, "For your birthday, I bought us tickets to the auction."

When it came time for her performance, it turned into this. Nervously, while my husband was in the other room, my mother said, "Oh, for your birthday, I bought us auction tickets. Is that alright? Maybe Tess can take you out for dinner another time. Is it okay?" I may have pushed her too far. It was really hard for her.

And delivering the best performance of his lifetime, my sweet husband walked back into the room where my mom was sitting and said, "You mean the church auction? That will be great. Thanks." He actually seemed to be happy. Later he asked me for his Oscar. It was maybe an Emmy. Not an Oscar.

The morning of his party, my husband woke up with a bad cough. I thought I was sunk. But instead, I quietly pressured him into going to the auction by saying, "Honey, I'll go to the church and Mom should stay home and watch the kids while you rest, and then when it is time for the auction, she can go to Sharon's and drop the kids off so you can sleep."

"But what about the tickets? Your mom paid so much money for them."

"Don't worry about that. It is your health, okay?"

"No, I'll go. It'll make your mom feel bad if I don't."

Everybody was in place, the cars were parked in the driveway, but that was explained away by the party Sharon was throwing. The guests and I were crouched behind sofas and the kitchen island waiting for Hubby to make an appearance. I was keeping a lookout. Sharon answered the door and chatted for what seemed to be at least 10 minutes in the entryway. My husband wouldn't come into the house! She finally coaxed him in with promises of bacon wrapped Ritz crackers as appetizers for the party. I saw him enter the living room and I turned to the rest of the guests, counted three, and popped up to yell, "Surprise!"

That was immediately followed by, "Where did he go?"

Turns out that my husband got to the living room and realized that he had forgotten the diaper bag. He was just about to the front door when he heard us yell, "Surprise!...Where did he go?" Bummer. But Sharon says that she could tell he was surprised because he stopped in his tracks. He came back into the living room and we all had suddenly appeared.

It was a great success. Our friend Marisa, stage name Samira, made an appearance belly dancing. That was great fun. My husband admitted to me later that he didn't know where he should look. Marisa is smoking hot and here she was dressed in a belly dancing outfit.He didn't want to look like a jerk and stare especially with me standing right there next to him, but he took it in great stride and Marisa got a few of us to try belly dancing too.

I had mistakenly ordered a carrot cake which has walnuts in it. I had forgotten to check. My husband has a sensitivity to walnuts so that was a big boo boo. But luckily, I had arranged for our friend Julia to make a Chocolate Torte Royale -- a dessert that my mother-in-law made for hubby for all of his childhood birthdays. You also should know that when I brought out the carrot cake and realized it had walnuts, the first words out of my husband's mouth were, "Well, you better make me a Chocolate Torte Royale."

It was a great party. We have awesome friends. I hope I did his 40th birthday justice.

You can call me Flo

I took my final today. I never thought I'd take another final back when I finished my degree. But here I am, another final under my belt, seriously considering taking a few more to get an advanced degree.

This has been an amazing few months. I surprised myself because I went kicking and screaming back into the arms of nursing. I didn't want to go. I liked what I was doing and was content to have nursing as the safety net I didn't have to deploy. But that all changed when my husband started a new chapter in his life -- leaving IBM. It's been a tough road, but I think it has made us stronger. I think we both had fallen into complacency, which is never a good thing career wise. I graduated the first time during a nursing surplus. There is nothing quite like society telling you that even though there was a shortage when you chose this profession, you've unluckily graduated just in time for experienced RN's being laid off and joining the labor pool. Good luck finding a job. Yeah, those were the days. But I guess that is what the profession is all about. Like rabbits and coyotes, we come in cycles. Sometimes a glut, and sometimes a shortage. But be sure to watch because the next curve is right around the corner.

Right now there is a shortage. And according to some of our lecturers, there will be a shortage for some time. One of the statistics we were told is that by 2010 there will be 200,000 RN full time positions unfilled. The silver tsunami is on its way -- baby boomers are getting older. Johnson & Johnson made a huge advertising drive to get more people to consider the nursing profession. Elsewhere in the country, the backlog for nursing students is because there aren't enough masters prepared nursing instructors. Here in Washington, we've got people on waiting lists for ADN programs not for lack of advanced degree nurses (we've got plenty of them apparently), but because hospitals here are overburdened with students.

But I wanted to show you the picture of most of my classmates. Alan was late and I didn't get him in the shot. (Sorry, Alan.) But here we are. These are amazing women, every last one of them. And I'm proud to have met them, have studied with them, led some of them to victory twice in Jeopardy (mmm... chocolate), and most importantly, made friends with them. Remember these faces. If you are ever in need of medical care, hope you see one of these people looking at you. You'll be in competent and caring hands.

Christmas spirit all year long

Everyday I have to go to class, I need to take a bus from downtown to the college. There are always tons of people walking busily here and there. And much of the time, they try to avoid eye contact or contact of any kind with the homeless. They populate the streets. When the weather gets colder, their plight gets more dire. There is one man who lives out of a shopping cart under the overpass. I walk by there on my way to the bus stop. I've never seen him approach people but instead he puts a coffee can out in front of his lawn chair in silent appeal for spare change. Every now and then I've noticed fresh fruits or vegetables on his shopping cart. I remember thinking about how he must use his meager means to try to buy good food for himself. But today, I got to see a the real deal (Christmas spirit I mean)in action.

While all of us raced to get to our various jobs, bus stops, offices, we each keep our heads down and walk/jog as quickly as possible. I walked behind this one guy, probably middle aged. He wore blue pants, a blue windbreaker with no discernible brand name emblazoned on the back, carried a lunch pail and thermos in one hand with a messenger bag slung across his other shoulder. Without breaking stride, without even saying hello to the sleeping figure sitting in the lawn chair, this man placed a banana on top of the shopping cart which was piled with all the worldly possessions of that sleeping man. I noticed that he didn't break stride. He didn't slow down and fiddle in his bag looking for something to hand the homeless person. He knew what he was doing. He did it in a practiced quiet way. And he thought no one was looking.

But this time somebody was. Me.

And now I'm thinking about what I can do to help lessen the hardships of the homeless. I've thought about putting together some care packages. Or maybe I can convince my Brownie troop to do so.

But I suppose this is how it starts. Just one random act of kindness. Unheralded. Uncelebrated. But not uninspiring.

Buahahahahaha

I'm Catholic. To be more specific, I'm a cradle Catholic. This means that I was born and raised in the faith. This has brought with it a bunch of bummers. I remember thinking when I was a kid that it was unfair because some people don't become Catholic until they're really old, like 20 or 30. And those people get to live all that time not worrying about sinning or going to confession or worst of all, sitting in mass every Sunday -- for all those years! And then they still get to go to heaven. Where is the justice in that? But the upside of having gone to mass all those years is that you know all the words by heart -- somethings change every week, like announcements, homily and the readings of course -- but knowing what comes next allows you the freedom to notice other little things.

Kids are always sources of amusement, easy targets that way. There have been a lot of Altar Server trainings recently, so every week there are at least 4 (if not more) novice Altar Servers. They're always sitting right up front behind the altar behaving like little kids behave. Yes, I enjoy watching them fidget, make faces, and pick their noses then wipe the mess on their robes. I enjoy watching them bicker over who gets to ring the bells. I especially enjoy watching Father Emmett trying to discretely cue them on what they're supposed to do next. Sometimes he makes a movement with his hands to direct them and sometimes he whispers instructions to the kids. (That would work a little better if he remembered to turn off his microphone when he did it.) He's a sweet and patient man -- and let me tell you, those kids need it. I am particularly thankful, every time I watch these antics, that my son has no interest in taking the Altar Server training. I just don't want to sit there, staring at my kid picking his nose, sleeping or bickering behind the altar. It's bad enough that he does that in the pew.

Even better than watching kids are watching adults. You think you know what you're supposed to do because you've been to mass a gazillion times during your life. But then, when they ask you to bring up the offertory or maybe read the announcements before and after, you are all of a sudden on center stage. You realize that you've not been paying attention very well and you don't know where you're supposed to walk. Or are you supposed to bow? Or are you supposed to walk away the way you came or by a different route? Details, details. Those are the moments I treasure, when the adults, with all the eyes of the congregation on them, desperately try to recall what they've seen performed countless times, and come up blank. Priceless.

Today I witnessed, quite possibly, the most hysterical moment in church of my entire life. And sadly, I'm the only one who laughed.

Before mass started, the lector (reader) went to the podium to make announcements. People rarely start listening then but I perked up. He thanked people in advance for getting Giving Tree Christmas presents for those less fortunate. He thanked people for all the help with the auction and that the tickets were almost all sold. And lastly he thanked us for participation in the recent blood drive.

"Thank you to those who gave blood in our blood drive as our need for blood continues to grow." And then he added, "Uh... in our community."

After he said the word "grow," there were a couple of ways he could have gone with it. Like he could have just walked away and not have noticed the fairly macabre sentence he had just uttered. "Our need for blood continues to grow..." Because he added, "in our community," it suggests his brain heard what he said and realized that it came off oddly. If he hadn't noticed it himself, it wouldn't have been funny. But part of me wishes, deep down, that instead of adding "in our community," he would have just ended with, "BUAHAHAHAHAHA..." Now that would have been funny.

Peace be with you. Buahahahahaha....

***Update: I drove by the church today. There is a sign up that they're having ANOTHER blood drive this Wednesday. (12/12) Our NEED for BLOOD continues to grow...

A whole lotto nuthin'

Today my mother asked me, "Can we go to the store to buy lotto tickets?"

Seemed like a strange request, but I said that we were low on milk, so why not? We could got get some Lotto tickets.

Then she told me the really cool part of why she wanted to get the tickets. See, she had a dream last night. I totally believe in prescient dreams. I really think they are true.

Like this one time, I dreamed that my brother Norm took me and my friend Charlotte to visit some waterfalls. I was lying down in the back seat of his car on the way there. Charlotte lived in Hawaii; Norm & I were going to the UW in Seattle. Chances were slim this would ever happen. When I woke up, I thought it was a bizarre dream. But a few months later, Charlotte came to visit for a weekend, Norm offered to drive us to the falls, and I laid down in the back seat of his car because of some heavy partying the night before. So it came true! Doesn't that give you chicken skin?

While I was pregnant with Lil'T, I had another one of these dreams that just felt prescient to me. I was walking in the back yard of our house, which was a big yellow house, and the kids and my husband walked out. They were followed by a 18 month old toddler boy. He was wearing a yellow and gray striped play suit and little baby work boots. I thought, "Huh, I guess I'm having a boy after all. It's not a girl." And then out popped Lil'T from the house. She looked about 3 - 4 years old. She was dressed in lavender coveralls wearing heart or strawberry shaped sunglasses. Her hair was done up in 2 ponytails. She told me she loved me and then gave me a kiss, then followed her brothers and sister out to the yard. We don't live in a yellow house, but paint is cheap. If I do get pregnant again, I'll paint the house.

Anyway, back to my mom. She didn't dream about a winning lotto ticket exactly. She actually dreamed about buying a used Volvo from her friend's daughter. It was only 5 years old but it had 17,246 miles on it. That was what she remembered. So she figured, it might be a sign, right? Well, we went to the store and while I was checking out with our milk, she went to the counter where they sell the lottery tickets. There was a line building up behind her and it turned out that she was having the guy punch in the numbers individually, instead of filling out one of those scantron forms so you can do it yourself. When I approached the counter, she asked me for a number off the top of my head. She said she didn't have enough numbers. As we left the store, she said that she had only used the mileage from the dream so she was short 2 numbers. She used the 17, 2, 4 & 6. She didn't even use the 5 (from the age of the car).Well, I certainly couldn't have that, right? So we put the groceries in the car and the nice young (incredibly patient) man behind the counter gave us the forms to fill out her numbers. We still had to pick out an extra number, because you need 6 numbers.

As we were leaving the store, we started chatting about the dream again. Mom said, "I remember thinking, why does Phyllis's daughter's car have this sign on it?"

"What did the sign say, Mom?"

"Oh, it said $26,000. But it's kind of a high price, because it was a used car, after all."

Seriously, I think if you could have seen me at that exact second, I would have had my jaw on the floor. I told her that I couldn't believe she didn't mention the 26 before. And if we were off on the lotto ticket by the number 26, I'd have to eat my hat!

The nice young man behind the counter saw us coming, and without even greeting us, handed us the forms to fill out. Who knew that buying Lotto tickets could be such an ordeal?

Mom promised that after she buys her Volvo with her winnings, she'll pay off the mortgage on our house and those of my brothers.

And can you believe, as we were walking out of the store the very last time, she said, "Well, it was a lot to ask for a car from 2002."

Aaaaggghhh!!!

***Update: (12/11) We checked all of Mom's Lotto tickets and not a single one produced a winner. I know you're all shocked. But in her defense, she said that she didn't dream about a lottery ticket, but a car.