One Million Dollars for Preservation

I was watching the home improvement channel last week and saw the neatest style of wrought iron doors and wrought iron gates. I would have never thought to put them on my house before seeing them on the television but they looked great on a house that was very similar to mine. I got on the shows website to find out where I could possibly order these doors and gates from.

The closest retailer for the wrought iron doors and wrought iron gates was about three hundred miles away. I was really intent on having them, so I made a few calls and found out how to get to their showroom and my husband and I drove there to check out their showroom.

It just so happened that they had the exact style of wrought iron gates and doors that were on the show, right in their showroom with tons of other designs. I knew that I did not have to look at any other designs; I just wanted to get the ones that I had already set my mind to and take them home for my husband to install. We ended up having to take the floor models since they did not have any of them in stock and they take four weeks for delivery. I knew that I could not come back and they even gave us a discount on the floor models.

My brother tried to play a trick on me with a gift he gave me. He had obviously found a website that you could design your own funny t shirts. I had been trying to get my boyfriend to propose to me and was having no luck. I guess that my brother thought that he could help me out.

At my thirtieth birthday party, we were having a great time and then it was time to open the presents. I opened the gift from my brother first, and it was one of those funny t shirts that said “Will You Marry Me” on it. I was a little shocked, and asked who the funny t shirt was from. My brother said that it must have been from my boyfriend. I knew it was not. I was trying to laugh it off, because I wanted everyone to think it was a joke and that it did not bother me. I then opened another gift that had another one of those funny shirts in it, and it said “You did not answer me”. I was starting to get a little embarrassed but continued to open gifts anyway.

The last gift was in a huge box, and then had a bunch of smaller boxes in it until I got to a diamond engagement ring. I was really mad at my brother then, he had gone too far. It was actually from my boyfriend and he and my brother had tried to throw me off with the funny t shirts. It worked.

I had to take my son on a college visit last month and was shocked at the amount of offensive shirts that are worn by college kids. I wanted to cover my son’s eyes but then remembered that he was eighteen and would probably start doing the same thing once he got away from home. He commented that a lot of the kids had some great funny shirts when we left. I then knew that what I called offensive shirts, my son thought were funny shirts.

I guess that I can pretty much count on him wearing them. I hope that he has his own money to buy them though, because I will not be doing that for him. His father says that it is harmless and that all the kids do it but I thought that my son was a little more mature than that.

I remember some of the things that I did in college and would never tell my son those stories. Hopefully his father has not been telling him all of his college stories but I have a feeling that he has already. I guess if wearing some offensive shirts is the worst thing he is going to do then I should consider myself very lucky.

The home theater installation bill came in the mail today and I was dreading opening it. I knew that my husband had given the okay to do some upgrades from our original plans. The original estimate was about two hundred dollars more than what I considered to be reasonable but now I was expecting it to be about five to six hundred dollars more than the first estimate.

I opened the bill to find that they had given us a twenty percent discount and the price was one hundred dollars less than our estimated price. My husband had referred four other people to this company while they were working on our house, so they give you five percent off for each client you send their way.

The other people had signed up with them to do some home audio installation in their homes. I was so glad to see that because my husband went around bragging about his home theater, other people decided to use the same company for their home audio installation needs.

We could have afforded more upgrades, if I had known about their referral program; instead I have been sick about getting the bill for the home theater installation.

When I was chosen to head up the committee for my daughters school fundraiser, I had lots of ideas. The only problem with most of my ideas was that I would need lots of volunteers to make them work and volunteers are hard to come by.

I then ran some of my ideas by our current PTO president and she loved the one about the kids making a donation of any amount and being able to design funny t shirts in class. I knew that I could get the local stores to donate all of the t shirts and one of the art stores told us that they would give us all the fabric paint that we would need. I was excited to announce it to the students the following day.

The PTO president and I each designed funny t shirts that night and wore them when we were in front of the kids to announce the fundraiser. We had taken pictures of ourselves while we were designing the funny shirts and I think that the kids really got a kick out of them.

We raised over seven thousand dollars with that fundraiser and it is planned for next year too. The best part of the fundraiser was that we also planned a funny t shirts day for them to wear their shirts, they loved it and wore their t shirts proudly.