A Jen Too Many

If you are one of those people who frequently find they've gotten too busy to breath, because they can't say no, you might be interested in this list of 20 Ways to Say No.

Unfortunately, there aren't any tips on how to say no when the cashier ringing up my groceries asks me if I want to donate any money to support the latest worthy cause. I mean, what am I supposed to say when I get ambushed just as I pull out my wallet?

• "Sorry, I donated elsewhere."
• "No, because I need all my grocery money to feed my family."
• "Sorry, but no, because I'm an evil, greedy, selfish witch who doesn't care about the terminally ill."
• "I'm so sorry, I'd love to, but my husband's paycheck didn't get direct deposited this week. We're living on our limited savings while the bank and his employer try to figure out what happened, and I need every penny I can scrape together to make our house payment. I'm hoping they won't turn off our electricity before we find the paycheck."
• "I can't, because I'm using all my extra money to cover the deductible for my own family's medical bills."
• "No, because you put the names of the people who donate money on the little balloons / shamrocks / puppies in your window and I believe in donating anonymously."
• "Sorry, but I can't afford to donate even $1 to save adorable children who desperately need more money for research on their tragic illness. I'm saving all my money to buy a Dalmatian fur coat."
• "I'd love to! As soon as you tell me how much of my dollar is going to research and how much is going to administrative costs."
• "Umm, errr, uhhh ... Look! Space aliens!"

I never can seem to just say, "No, thank you." I stammer and stutter out a no, feeling like I have to justify why I can't donate a lousy dollar, and then slink away feeling like a rat, worrying about what the high school student who just rang me up is thinking of me.*

It's enough to make me stop shopping.
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*A quick justification, lest I sound like a evil, selfish, greedy witch who doesn't care about adorable terminally ill children, babies, kittens and puppies - I do donate to worthy causes. Just not at the grocery store.

You know when you have a cold, and you hit the part where you're so sick the cold medicine just doesn't help anymore?

Yeah. I hate that part.

Ah, yes. September. Time to sharpen new pencils. Time to make those first marks on clean white paper. Time to crack the binding of new schoolbooks (or tape together the ancient and tattered one you got stuck with.) Time to go back to school. Time to get sick.

And might I just point out how viciously unfair it is, that Oldest Girl Child's cold only lasted about 36 hours, whereas I am on my third day and still going strong?

Might I brag just a little? I am so proud of this bookshelf I made for my daughters' room. We recently, finally!, got twin beds for both of them. We had a huge wooden bunkbed for the Oldest Girl Child and a toddler bed for Youngest Girl Child. You'd think we were all set for the move out of the toddler bed, but...

1. The bunkbed was one of those that had a full bed on the bottom and a twin on top, and it took up a huge percentage of the room and,

2. I realized that I just do not have the courage to put my little OGC onto a top bunk, as much as she would love to be there. I just knew she would fall off and break her arm or neck.

So I decided that I just couldn't live with anything but twin beds for the two of them.*

Two twin beds take up less space that that one bunkbed, which meant we had room for more furniture! Yay! Because we desperately needed a bookshelf in there. I was keeping their books in a big plastic bin, which just wasn't working. So off we went to the store, where there was a very nice sale on cheap bookcases.

Children were involved, however, which meant it wasn't fated to be that simple. They had fake wood-grain bookcases, they had black bookcases. They didn't have pink bookcases, or white bookcases. Which is what OGC decided she wanted. Pink, or white. Either one would work. Nothing else would do, and while the world wouldn't come to an end if she had to put up with something else, her little heart just might be broken into a million Humpty-Dumpty pieces.

Desperation / mother / invention. (You should have seen the way her little shoulders slumped and her head drooped! You'd have felt desperate, too.) I considered paint, I considered contact paper. I decided on fabric.

Now, when I say in the About Me section that I have too much fabric in the basement? So. Not. Kidding. As in I have not only 3, 4, 5, 6 yard lengths of fabric, but actual bolts of stuff I found cheaply** that I loved and decided I Must Have. I justify it by calling it my year's supply of fabric. My husband not only doesn't complain, I have fooled him into thinking I am very cool for my preparedness. (Don't read that bit, honey.)

So we picked up the wood-grain bookcase and headed back home to find the perfect fabric. Naturally, the fabric the girls loved, though, wasn't one of my bolts, it was a 2 yard length that I'd picked up thinking about Halloween costumes. So I got creative, and used three different fabrics. Pink and shiny to cover the shelves, 100% cotton floral to cover the sides, top and bottom, and blue floral flannel to cover the back.

I covered each piece separately, wrapping the fabric around, then using my staple gun to fasten it to the wood in the areas where it wouldn't show when everything was put together. (If you do this, make sure you pull the fabric tight, as tight as you can. Even as tight as I pulled it, I'm already having a slight problem with the fabric loosening on the shelves. Luckily I can pull those out and tighten it up prettily easily.)

Putting the bookcase together went pretty easily, except that the company had supplied evil plastic pegs to hold the sides and top/bottom together. When I lost control of all the various pieces had a crucial moment and they tipped over, the pegs snapped off. Whereupon I lost my temper and just used nails to hold everything together (covered later by flower stickers.)

Of course, in the end it made very little difference at all. Everything is all covered with books, and where there aren't books there are various treasures, like the Really Big Rock they dug up out of the back yard, but at least the sides look cute!
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*Luckily I have a very nice husband, who never, ever pointed out how very much money we had paid for the bunkbed when we bought it not long after OGC was born. A furniture store near us was having a going out of business sale. Which meant things were on sale, but still expensive.

**It's amazing what you can pick up at yard sales and the Walmart $1/yard table.