The dirty Grinch Bastard

So I guess someone did steal some of my Christmas gifts, twice. Mixed emotions here. Of course, at first I didn't think anyone stole anything. I assumed I'm a ding bat who misplaced shit. I'm actually quite OCD about my Christmas gift planning. I don't exactly have binders like my friend who is really OCD, but I have a spreadsheet saved as Christmas/Year. I do spreadsheets for the auto sum option. How I organize it in case anyone is curious to steal the idea?
____________________________________________________________________________________
Something perfectly fine to steal, my OCDish spreadsheet organization:

Christmas 2012

The Kids

Kid A               Kid B                      Kid C

BIG
Item A            Item A                    Item A
Item B            Item C                    Item D

MEDIUM
Item A            Item B                    Item C
Item D            Item E                    Item F

SMALL/STOCKING
Item A            Item B                     Item C
Item D            Item D                    Item D

OTHER PEOPLE's KIDS
My nephew     Item
My nephew     Item
My niece         Item
....

OTHER PEOPLE
My mom        Item
My sister        Item
My grandfather....

Note: Two things I do as I go about this. I type everything out, but if it's in black, I already got it. If it's in gray, It's something I'm thinking about getting. Red, I need to get it. Pink, it's on it's way, being shipped.

Then to the right is where I do my totals. I don't do all my shopping at once from one fund. I take a pay day and grab some things here and there from September to Black Friday while saving for Black Friday. Then I blow my biggest wad on Black Friday and damn near finish my shopping. Then I leave the beginning of December to get caught up/bills, and I do last second shopping the 2 weeks before Christmas (evening out the kids, grabbing for people I still need to buy for, etc.). With that, as the time period changes, so do my budgeting needs. It's a jumbled chaotic mess of numbers and lists to the right of all that.

My OCD actually gets worse while wrapping gifts because I pattern code. It is deeply important to me to make sure the kids have the same amount to open. The kids (with mine only one at a time like this) under 3 are allowed to have more. Some things all 3 have the same exact thing, like this year, all three got their own pillow pet, slushie maker, bubble wand, Nintendo DSi (the big gift), etc. The DSi's are wrapped in the same wrap. The slushies a different wrap all three the same... Then there are those gifts all 3 will probably play with or fight over, but I'm not buying all 3 of them the same thing because it was too expensive to do that just to be fair and they still will fight when one can't find theirs, and I usually have one in mind to open it, so I chunk them, and then I put all thre of their names on it with the kid intended to open it listed first. For example, Easy Bake Oven, Donut Maker, Playdough Food Fun thing... Similar items. Similar size. Each kid opens one. All 3 plays with all 3. That chunk is to be wrapped in the same wrapping paper.
_____________________________________________________________________________________


So with all that said, I actually keep an inventory of my items I buy. I usually don't actually check things off as "Black" items until they are at the storage location (usually my mom's house because my kids will find it otherwise, but one year it was a car).

The Story

First, I recently bought some items from the Dollar General. My daughter asked for a touch screen Spiderman game once, and I said no, but I snuck it all ninja like into the purchase to save for Christmas. That had been in the back end of the van for weeks. I forgot about it actually. Then the Christmas party for the school was coming up. I was told by another parent that the school's deal is to buy a toy for the same gender as your child, $5 budget. So I bought something from the Dollar General for that and something for the 2 year old on sale 50% off. (Note: It turns out my kid's class decided to do a book exchange instead of a toy one, so I ended up buying books last second). I threw them in the back of the van. On Sunday, my hubs is getting ready for work, and I want to run out to Walmart before he goes. Van won't start. I go to jump it, but the battery deal wasn't cool. Here's how the parking lot went down...



Now, where the flat bed was, nobody usually parks there. The neighbors were moving OUT.

To get the jumper cables to reach, I ended up pushing the van back and then parked Escape perpendicular to the van in front of it (like an upside down T in this image). Me, by myself, pushed the van. These people just stared at me too while I was doing it.




I couldn't get the hood open on the van again. It was stuck. So I grabbed the husband. Actually, I marched up the stairs all adult like, stomping and stuff, opened the door, screamed, "I could use some mother fucking help," and went back down. The neighbors did have children outside, but in my defense, guess where children come from? Mother Fucking. So the hubs gets the hood open (I thought he broke it actually, but I guess he didn't).

We go to jump it and it doesn't work. I give up. We'll tow it to the mechanic. Sometime at this point, while the hubs was outside, I showed him what all I bought from the Dollar General, accidentally showing the neighbors. Had it been iPads or something, I wouldn't have broadcasted it. I wouldn't have it in the van either. But, 35 bucks worth of shit from Dollar General?

That was Sunday at like 2PM. The hubs left for work. 2 hours later, my mother picks me and the kids up to go have my daughter's birthday party at her house. Then she loans me her car for a few days, so I get home about 10PM. The hubs returned home at midnight. The next morning, Monday, school, my oldest daughter on the way wanted a bottle of water. Knowing I keep a bunch in the back of the van, she opened the hatch and none was there. The Dollar General Stuff wasn't either. I just assumed the husband brought it in. Nope, someone stole 35 bucks worth of Dollar General toys and like 6 bottles of water. They probably took other stuff too that I don't remember being back there.

SECOND, another possible robbing... I bought gifts through September and October. The hubs got a big bonus check when the union FINALLY decided on a contract (after a month long strike). We decided to use what we needed on bills and the rest on Christmas and Back-To-School clothes we didn't buy before school because strike. Well at that point, I thought the 2 year old's eczema might of been dust, and just in case, I bought a Miele vacuum. It was $600. Insane I know. I thought for sure it was dust for a bunch of reasons. I wanted to get her tested, but I couldn't get someone to do it until about a month later to find out not dust, milk and soy. Milk I kind of knew, but soy I didn't. The Miele is the only vacuum out there that seals or something so that it emits zero dust or particles out. It's the best vacuum for allergies (and it makes cleaning a thousand times easier, like you can feel the German awesome in it).

Anyway, when we went to buy the vacuum, we had to travel 3 hours to get to the closest store to get it. In that town (Columbus OH if you want to call it a town) was a Chipotle, which we had for lunch (I love that place), and then a JC Penney Outlet Store. I went shopping. I bought clothes for the kids, pillows for my sofa, some other stuff, and then had the hubs take the kids in the car to wait for me to do a crash throw things in to the cart of toys for Christmas. With that trip, we realized the back end of the van was TOO full of stuff (mainly Christmas gifts).

So when we got home, I asked my mom if I could store the kids' gifts in her garage. Yes. So I drop them off. I probably had 3 BIG bags of stuff from JC Penney Outlet, and then a few Walmart bags. Her garage is cramped. She hoards. The big bags were really out of the way, further into the garage. The Walmart bags, they were close to the door. I also at that point started my spreadsheet black listing the items I did have with a huge gray list going. After Black Friday sales, like a month later, I had another load to dump off. I noticed the bags were less, but I figured my mom had to rearrange the garage to get to Christmas decorations and they were there, somewhere.

Then my middle kid's birthday party hit, the day the van died, and since I didn't make it to Walmart before the hubs went to work to get her a birthday gift, I dove into the Christmas stuff and gave her some things from there (I replaced it. She's not getting any twofers). What I wanted to give her early, I couldn't find. I just assumed I hallucinated the item and grabbed something else.

Today (yesterday) I go there to wrap gifts. It's the hubby's only day off til Christmas. I don't want to be up all night some time in the near future wrapping. I start off with my OCD. I grab everything. Set it out. Stack them in 3's. That's when I noticed shit was missing. So I called the hubs and had him email me the spreadsheet so I can view it from my mother's house. I know EXACTLY what I'm missing. About a hundred dollars worth of stuff, including the item I though I hallucinated.

I called my mom. She didn't move it. Nobody touched it. We looked everywhere in her garage. She made her husband check the storage unit, like maybe someone accidentally took it there, like a man she married, you know how men pay attention though I think he'd notice Dora and Strawberry Shortcake. Nope. We looked all throughout the house even though nobody touched it. No where. I looked all through mine in case I'm hallucinating memories (though that hasn't happened yet, like I forget a lot, but what I do remember is fairly accurate). Nothing here. This is a few things. Like it would be hard to miss. We are talking the Stylin Strawberry Shortcake, the Ballerina Dora, some big box of crafts, a kid's Sewing Machine...

I know it was there now I think about it because I showed my nephew the Ball you sit on and bounce. It wasn't blown up yet, but I showed him how I needed a pump for it. He wanted to see what kind of pump. Not bad for a 12 year old. Kind of responsible of him.

I think someone stole them because they were near the door. That door is usually closed and can't be opened from the outside without the opener, but they open it and leave it open when mowing the lawn or something like that. Anyone walking by could have easily taken those bags and just those, like the only other thing of value within a good reach were golf clubs and the weed eater, unless they wanted a tarp or bins of question mark storage... And the bags would be about the only thing you could grab in a flash because you can hear someone mowing in the back yard or something.

Irony: This is from my mom's house that I just blogged about Black Thursday describing it as a peaceful location with zero crime rate.


My Feelings


Okay, so my initial response (and a part of me) is like, "Well if they stole toys, that's pretty desperate, and I frequently donate to charity, so I guess that was more charity." I mean, to steal toys, that's more desperate than selling your pain pills illegally on the street for Christmas money. I know crackheads who won't steal your toys. You'd have to be pretty desperate for those toys to steal them at all, especially from someone who obviously bought them for their kids. Right?

Then the dark side enters. Read this part SCREAMING in your head all Samuel L. Jacksonish. Who the fuck steals from kids? I mean really? There's fucking charities out there who will hook you up with Christmas if you are too broke. If you aren't broke enough to qualify, you don't need to steal. That's fucked up stealing from other people's children. And to top it off, that crap from the dollar general, they don't seem to have any more of it if I were to replace it. That takes a serious asshole to steal from kids, or another kid, which that I wouldn't be as pissed about as if it were a grown up.

Then there's the territory deal. That is my van. If you aren't riding in it, don't get in it. I mean, people coming up in my shit with their nasty germs and stuff. Fucking annoying. Unless you are some sexy CIA agent spying on me because my IQ might be a threat to some country, you don't need to be up in my shit.

Today is supposed to be the end of the world according to people who misquote and misunderstand the Mayans. Something foul is definitely in the air, but I think it's the distinct odor of Christmas being around the corner. Fucking people. Can we ever be what we advertise to be? I mean Christmas is the time to give, not steal. The time to be jolly and nice, not fuck people over in traffic. Everybody is an asshole this time of year. It's fucking CONTAGIOUS. You think I enjoyed wrapping gifts today? Fuck no. I'm freaking out about making my shit match because I'm missing stuff. Did I let anyone ahead of me in traffic? Fuck no. I'm having one of those days, stay the fuck away from me with your bad driving.

They took more than just those gifts. I let them also have my good attitude and this day off. Just a few days ago, I was wiggling my ass SINGING and DANCING to Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer at Walmart, in front of people. I'm still dancing, just not to Christmas music. I was also supposed to enjoy my husband's day off because that was my day to do Christmas stuff I don't get a chance to do on days he works. Now we've added to my to do list, as I have to go shopping again to make shit fair with the presents, like most of that crap was for the 2 year old so she has nothing but the really cheap shit coming her way. And, I have to do this with money I don't really have, and I'm probably going to lose sleep trying to get everything done in time for Christmas, something that I can't really do because I have neurological issues I'm still battling from the last 5 years I didn't sleep. Like the snow ball effect is fucking me up. Had I figured it out before today, I could have planned a little better for it. No, now we just throw this huge expense on my lap last fucking second because people are fucking selfish assholes....

And then I'm back to, fuck it. It's just material shit. Considering the events of this last weekend, I'm just happy my kids are with me. We may be surrounded by assholes, but at least we are surrounded by assholes together.