Ongoings and other made up words

Lots of random ongoings to report. Nope I don’t think ongoings is a real word, but I like it.

The Teenager is officially a senior and I am officially feeling old and my heart is soft. Without a doubt I feel that MY senior year of high school was LITERALLY just a few years ago. I have this sense of needing to capture this last year of her truly being “the kid” (as I like to refer to her) in my memory.

Speaking of The Teenager, we are having to take drastic measures to get her to drive. She’ll be 17 in just a month or so, and she is afraid to drive. I paid for behind the wheel 2 (yes I said TWO) years ago, but she still hasn’t taken it. Good grief. I am glad that she’s cautious, but for many reasons, I want her to get going on this. This afternoon will be forced practice session number uno.

We got a new car and I am sooo happy. Ok, it’s not “new” like in the conventional sense of the word – it is a 2002 and has over 140,000 miles on it. But, it is new to me. Plus we were able to pay cash for it so we can continue to avoid a car payment – and THAT is a good thing. We traded in the 1994 Suburban with over 265,000 miles on it for a 2002 Envoy, so things are improving! We’re excited to now have two vehicles with A/C. A year and a half ago we had two vehicles without A/C and that sucks. And it’s funny because ten years ago, both Mr. Jill and I drove new (in the conventional sense of the word) SUVs. But that meant we had like $1000 in car payments each month which is just absolutely insane. So we made some drastic changes and now we’re coming back around to a midpoint of driving nice cars again but with more miles and more years but still no payment. For some reason, that transition makes me really proud of our new lifestyle. I feel smarter and that we’re teaching the right things to The Teenager.