Sephora

Jane has final exams today. She was supposed to take two tests in the morning and leave school just at lunchtime. The kids could stay for lunch and study time if they wanted but few choose to do so. Jane wanted sushi for lunch and since SugarFish is just around the corner from school she really wanted to be there.

After dropping kids off at school I stopped home just long enough to make some beds and check in on Airtime. Day two is different than day one. I spoke to three start up guys, one waitress, a retiree in the deep south, a woman at an ad agency and a poultry farmer in Pakistan.

I played a little tennis with Christina in the late morning. It’s the first time we’d played together and we’re a great fit. Lots of deuces and when we got to 6-6 we just quit. Neither of us has a killer instinct although she hits like a man (and I say that with reverence).

Since I had to pick Jane up at 12.45 there wasn’t much for me to do at noon except kill time. I popped over to my PO Box and threw out all the junk mail. That’s always good for 10 minutes. I wound around town, got Jane, took her to SugarFish and nodded in all the right places while she talked and talked and then talked some more. She’s the most excitable child I’ve known and the world delights her. Halibut fin sashimi also delights her. She’s an expensive child.

After our lunch Jane went back to school to take one of the exams she’d missed when she was ill. I wondered what it would be like to send the kids to a school where I could arbitrarily pick them up and take them out to lunch. I suppose I could now….

Again after dropping Jane back to school at nearly two I needed to be back to school by three to fetch Alexander and then I’d have to wait with him until Jane was done with her third exam. I dropped her off and ran to the mall and picked up some facewash for myself. It was going to be a $20 trip to Sephora but then I thought of how hard Jane worked for her grades and grabbed her a lip stain (which she LOVES and I have to live through her because lipstain on anyone over 25 is just red seeping into wrinkles). When I was checking out a new mascara caught my eye and then of course my favorite products were available in travel size for just 500 points.

Who has 500 points at Sephora? Ugh… women with limited self control. In other words, I do.

I grabbed Alexander a snack at the mall, one of those gross bags of pretzels. He’s always ravenous and I like to pick him up with food. Of course when I arrived at 3 I’d expected that Alexander and I would hang out and wait for Jane to finish her exam. I was wrong, Jane finished a few minutes early and Alexander refused to leave school. He wanted to stay and play Pokemon with his friends. I let him. If you’re going to make four trips to school in one day what’s the difference with a fifth?

His teacher noted that I always have food with me. I explained to her that I’m a Jewish Mother. It’s what we do. She giggled and said something about Italian Mothers… we might be one and the same.

Jane and I rode home together. She talked a mile a minute about the 243 question English exam and how she knows her teacher likes her because he used her name in a question (to break up the monotony). I showed her the benetint and she squealed. It was an actual squeal, I’m always surprised that she’s my child. I’m pretty sure I never squealed though I do recall spinning a lot at her age.

I came home and the Jaguar dealer called. The car is wonderful in that it’s fast and it’s beautiful. Unfortunately it does some quirky things. You can’t put gasoline in it. I mean you can put some gas in the car, you just can’t fill up the tank. When it’s about halfway full the nozzle just clicks that it’s done. This happens at every filling station at every angle so long at the tank is below about a quarter of the way full.

I brought in the car with the tank about halfway full. I explained to them that some of the gas would need to come out of the tank. Since this is the dealership that put a mechanic in the trunk of the car I figured they’d be able to siphon some gas out pretty easily. I got a loaner car. It’s a nice but stripped down Jag that smells of old man cologne. I can’t fault them for the bad taste of their clientele.

The lady who calls with bad news called me 24 hours after I’d dropped the car off to ask permission to put gas in the car and add it to my bill. I was nice when I said yes. I didn’t mention anything about the fact that it had taken them a full day before getting to my problem and that my hands smelled like Drakkar.

Today’s phone call was triumphant. The Jaguar lady told me that they’d filled the car up with gas so they’d be able to return it, no problem. I reminded her that the tank was rather full when I dropped it off and her solution was to send the store manager home with our car so he could run it out of gas and try again.

Which is when I yelled at her. A lot. And I might have cussed.

Now I’m back to googling for BMWs because as much as our BMWs were uninteresting, dull even, they ran and they seldom needed service. The bluetooth worked on the BMW for more than just the first 200 contacts in an address book. The park assist didn’t last for thirty minutes and ding at you like you’re an old man in need of dinging.

The problem with BMW is that even the valet knows they’re ordinary.