Well, my blog has gone all wonky on me.  Broken theme, which happened out of the blue, and it took a ton of people much smarter than me to help me get the theme re-installed, but now I am stuck with a missing header.

Bear with me…

Normally when I go grocery shopping, I don’t pay much attention to how much things cost. If it’s on my list, I get it. There’s also the game we play where my husband and kids sneak stuff into the cart– and it usually goes unnoticed until we get to the checkout line.

Now given the high price of gas, not only have we started paying a little closer attention to what we are putting in the cart, but I’m now noticing that HOLY HELL– groceries are getting expensive, girl! We do our grocery shopping at Wal-Mart, because they have the cheapest prices.

The receipt in this picture shows the total from our most recent grocery shopping trip. We didn’t get a lot of extras, just the usual stuff. Besides FOOD, we did get toilet paper, paper towels, body wash… that accounted for probably $50 of the total.

While I admit to not ever really knowing how much my regular items “usually” cost, I did find myself mentioning about a bazillion times through the store “I really don’t remember ________________ costing this much the last time we were here!” I think my husband and kids got tired of hearing me say that phrase… maybe.

Now that we lugged it all home, put it all away, the cupboards, refrigerator and freezers are full, I predict it will be one week before my kids start complaining that we have “nothing to eat.”

Last Friday, a Nevada, Iowa high school student was killed. He was a passenger in a car driven by a 18-year old Kaleb Hoversten, who crashed into another car after stealing $50 worth of gas from a local convenience store. A police officer tried to pull the car over, but the driver fled, driving as much as 90 mph, when he finally crashed into a car driven by a 38-year old man (who is still in serious condition).

When this story first broke a few days ago, there were several comments made on the news station’s Facebook page and on their website where people blamed the high price of gas for the reason this 16-year old was killed.

Um, what?

The price of gas has NOTHING to do with this child’s death, and people that are insinuating otherwise are being foolish. I understand that gas prices are high, and I myself hit a record high of $120 to fill my tank two days ago– but I’m sorry… it doesn’t matter what the price of gas is, Kaleb Hoversten had no intention of paying for it.

He made a choice of deciding when to stop the gas pump, whether he stopped it at 5 gallons, 10 gallons, or the approximately 13.3 gallons I figured he probably put in there (our gas is currently about $3.759/gallon). He made a choice to drive away from the gas station, knowing he didn’t pay for the gas. Then, when the police tried to pull him over, he again made a choice to try to get away. These choices are the reasons his 16-year old passenger, Brice Nelson, was killed. NOT the gas prices.

Let’s just do a little math here, shall we?

Assuming today’s price of $3.759 per gallon, he stole $50 worth of gas. This equals 13.3 gallons.

If gas was $1 less per gallon, those 13.3 gallons would have cost him $36.69.

Bottom line, I would venture a guess that Kaleb didn’t have the money to pay for any of the gas, regardless of the cost. Unfortunately, the price he will be paying now– being charged with vehicular homicide, also having his 3rd passenger (14-year old girl) in critical condition, and the driver of the other car in serious condition– that price is much higher than any of us could ever put into our gas tanks.

(Photo Credit: whotv.com)

Did you ever have something you could threaten your kids with when they were little?   Something that would make them stop whatever bad thing they were saying or doing and immediately begin behaving?

When my youngest daughter was probably about three years old, she was pretty much naughty on a consistent basis. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. She loved to push our buttons and test every limit and boundary we set. Around Christmastime, we always pulled the old “We’re calling Santa” trick to get her to shape up, but that only really worked pretty much during the month of December.  Any other time, and it was like “Santa who?”

So we had to resort to other tactics.

Enter Mrs. Smith, stage right. One particular time, when Courtney was being especially horrid, we threatened to take her to a babysitter rather than going with us to dinner.

Me: Courtney, if you don’t behave, you are going to have to go to a babysitter.

Courtney: To Aunt Darcie’s? (favorite aunt)

Me (thinking frantically): No, not to Aunt Darcie’s.

Courtney: To Jodi’s? (daycare provider.)

Me (exasperated): NO, not to Jodi’s!

Courtney (pouting): Then where would I go?

Me: I’m taking you to… to… MRS. SMITH’S HOUSE!!!!!

Courtney: (pout) {gasp} *blink* *blink* {much sad lip quivering} Who’s Missus Smiff? {more lip quivering}

Aha! We had found something that worked! FINALLY! Over the next few years, we began adding to Mrs. Smith’s persona, and boy did this lady become scary. Mrs. Smith was the scariest babysitter ever.

Did you know Mrs. Smith lived in a scary old house across town? And for lunch, she serves cold macaroni and cheese? And when kids get in trouble, she locks them in a dark closet? When they are really bad, they have to get locked in the basement? WITH NO LIGHTS ON?

Of course, we were pretty much insuring our child would need therapy someday.

The older kids played along, too– adding tidbits of scary information to the facade of Mrs. Smith and her horrible life. How she was missing a finger, or a leg, or how she had a crazy cat that had sharp claws… you name it, my kids’ imaginations ran wild.

That lasted a few years, and then Courtney got smart. She realized that she never really got sent to Mrs. Smith’s house. She figured out Mrs. Smith was not real, and now we just had to go back to our regular old methods of punishment — beating them and locking them in dog kennels.

What? You’ve never tried it?