I've come to appreciate moments of relative calm.

UPDATE on my ding: I got a quote for $670, asked the perps to pay $400. I spent forever whiting out our personal info from the quote only to accidentally fax them the original anyway. Augh! Fire myself for incompetence. Am just kind of sick about this - I'm afraid that now that they have my personal info they will come attack/key/maim my young.  I could put their personal info here but I won't do that. Suffice it to say, I've looked it up and, besides being quite generous Republican supporters, the husband (who was in the car with his son, the "perp" and mondo dingeroo) is the son of a rather famous Milwaukee couple who's been honored within the last 12 months at a gala fundraiser.  Money. And I'm dumb enough to do this research AFTER I only asked for $400 on a $670 quote, and my husband is due to be unemployed in 18 days. That's what I get for trying to be fair. Sigh.  Anyway, I have too much school stuff due this week to let this continue ad infinitum. 

Yesterday I had nothing planned with the kids. Read=no deadline of time frame to hustle them anywhere by any time. Ahhh, right? Hahaha! I managed to make that difficult too! At one point, we had our agreed-upon list of walking errands (Henry must be ok with not only the agenda but the Ordering of Things, and then it's relatively smooth sailing except then Helen decides to just screech or whatnot)..anyway, we were kind of ready to go and Helen grabbed my (luckily cold) coffee off the table onto herself, my school text and notebooks, and the floor AND in the same moment Henry, who had been sitting and playing with this sound-sensor motion Thomas train on his HEAD realized that every time I or the baby shrieked about this coffee mess, the back wheel of the train caught up his hair and twisted it inside! Which caused more shrieking, which caused more twisting until I had the wherewithall to SHut it Off. Then I turned it back on, whistled twice (to make it run backwards), and voila! The hair was freed. Points for me.

Then he mopped the floor out of "being tired of waiting for us" and I hope it's not the last time he tires of waiting in Just That Fashion.

Then, I had a customer call yesterday for paintings! What's this? I have an art business? I haven't managed www.steinmanstudios.com in a while, maybe should? Ahem, oh yes, why yes, certainly I can come up with something witty. Give me a moment (or a shower, a sitter, and a freshly mopped floor?).

Then, I checked in with the wildly bad customer service at Chase Bank. I have a separate blog's worth of fresh doodoo about them, but suffice it to say, if you call the Commerce of the Currency which is a governmental body, and alert them to practices, they will give you the Magic Executive Office number, and they will actually tell you the right answers to things. And seeing as there may be ten people out there who HAVEN't heard my story, I'll paraphrase. I wrote our monthly giganto check to the Cobra people at my husband's previous employer, who are in Duluth, GA. Was tracking the check because of course you want your family's health insurance to stay intact. So. Imagine my surprise when I went online, as I do, and checked my bank balance, and checked for posted checks, found that one, opened the "view check" and saw quite plainly that it had been altered! Heart in mouth, the company name had been crossed off and written out for CASH in big letters. And worse, it had been DEPOSITED into another bank (Guaranty Bank, Headquartered right here in Brown Deer, WI, but with a branch, oddly, in Duluth, GA). I quickly called Cobra hoping they had some kind of crazy workaround to the normal way of depositing checks, and they let me know that no, not only don't they do that, but where is my check. Primal Scream time. Suffice it to say that I notified Chase, on April 14 (check had posted April 8), and besides telling me "the race is on - you better get to a branch to try to beat the people from taking out the money" they were quite careless, and managed to lose the paperwork I had to file at a branch (Fox Point Branch, in the Best Buy parking lot - again, not my favorite place ) - and then deny it. It was lost in interoffice mail. My favorite Chase employee quote was from loss-prevention specialist saying "We've just gotten so big, who knows where our interoffice mail goes." Thanks.

So, I'm thinking of switching to M&I Bank. Anyone had any good bank experiences lately? I'm fresh out!

In other news, the latest in D2D asks has arrived. This phase targets SHS Alumni, so I got the letter. I didn't get the SHS Alumni newsletter, because I haven't FINISHED it yet and every moment I live and breathe I think OH NO I have to finish that. But my PC is upstairs, and I can't get to it unless I put the kids in the van and run up there, and that isn't right.

Meanwhile the D2D army marches on and tries to take on as little liberal, academic, education-based water it can. As you may know, I'm very interested in how alumni feel about the first major fundraiser for SHS. It will be nice to have a track that can be used for track meets, and a field that will work for regulation soccer. Bleachers that aren't falling down, all that. I'm a little worried from the picture that the new steroidal bleachers will block the sun to the pool. I am RELIEVED the dome has been scrapped. And I'm a little worried about AstroTurf..there are new studies looking at the lead content in them: http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2008-04-20-articial-turf-lead_N.htm

Anyway, the dome, that took things into ridiculo-land for me. Something that would make the whole deal maybe more palatable would be a matching plan, where we sister up with an MPS school in dire need of sports facilities, and at least make the effort to help them out too? Maybe that's too "Old Shorewood" of me to think that way. I'm also concerned about D2D being a temporary team, and when it's done, they'll disappear. Who will pick up the slack at the school, and will the records be shared with the school of who donated what, and will people be able to rest assured that the record of their donations is held at school past the D2D flash? These are things I for some reason am asking, .. so far I get weird looks, like that isn't a current issue. Oh well.

I've got to get sketching! I am thinking maybe for the art that will come to Shorewood, maybe a permanent marker for the Pig 'n Whistle location...maybe a retro tin pig'n'whistle would be affectionately welcoming people to the land of people who eat soy beans on purpose. Kind of a juxtaposition and a statement that says we're real, and yes, we have a sense of humor. Tut tut. We're a unique community and not a cookie-cutter burbo. I also am pleased to say I have a fun painting in (yet another) silent auction this weekend! (Did I mention my new business model involves creating art for silent auctions? Although this leaves me a little out of the "making a living' loop!!), for the Bal du Lac and the Milwaukee Art Museum, which is being co-chaired by friends Al and Kristin Fraser. Am I going? Ha ha. But I send my painting to enjoy it for me. 

AND, advice for the day, if you find yourself thinking you need a bigger house, a new kitchen, or are biting your hand over someone else's new granite countertops, consider going to graduate school. I'm serious. Take a class! Get your head out of STUFF and up into thoughts. Granite Countertops deplete the Earth of a nonrenewable resource anyway, and will soon (mark my words) devalue your house anyway because of their cost to the environment. So if you consider yourself Earth-conscious or remotely "green," stop coveting your neighbor's granite. Tis not green 'tall.