The hot sting of disappointment

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

My husband and I are getting an income tax refund this year. A healthy enough sum of money that we were going to go on a little weekend get away for our anniversary. I’ve been shopping for hotels or bed and breakfast places.

But then the brakes on his '99 Isuzu Rodeo started to feel spongy and he had a couple of close calls when he had to brake hard so we took his car to the shop this morning.

The cost of the brake repair is almost the total of our income tax refund. (I think we’ll have about $100 left) so, there goes our romantic weekend get-away. We really needed the vacation and I was so looking forward to it.

I’m really just terribly disappointed. I feel like crying. Poop! :frowning:

No, it’s not the end of the world. Yes, it’s nice that we’ve got the money now and don’t have to put the repair on the credit card. But damn, I was really looking forward to the trip.

At least I’ve got a couple off days off work. That’ll be fun. I may paint the bathroom. Nothing like a freshly painted bathroom to put the romance back into a marriage, right? Right?

2

You need a vacation at home! Tell everyone you are leaving town, or just put the phone on voicemail, turn off the cell phones etc.

Buy wine. Order take out from nice restaurants. Set the table with pretty flowers, candles, paper plates (if you don’t want to wash dishes). Keep the lights dim and light candles around the house.

Eat a leisurely dinner. Rent a stack of movies. Go to bed at 8:30. Go to sleep whenever. :cool:
If you have kids, send them to wherever they were going to go for the weekend anyway.

Make an at home vacation for yourself! :slight_smile:

3

That’s a pretty good idea IvoryTowerDenizen I’m going to work on my bad attitude and maybe by Friday I’ll be ready to embrace plan B.

The kid is 19 so she’s not around much anyway but maybe I’ll suggest that she stay at a friend’s.

We’ve picked up the car and it brakes quite well now so all’s well that ends well. At least my sweetie didn’t get in a wreck from having bad brakes.

4

Heck yeah!

My wife and I had a similar experience, not with the brakes failing, but essentially our free place to stay wasn’t available any more. We sent the kids to a friend’s house, got a bottle of wine, and had a vacation at home.

It was better than most of our other vacations.

5

Puh-leeze. Don’t even get me started about being disappointed about our taxes. For months we’d been talking about how we were going to spend our refund. Trip to Italy! Champagne! Caviar!

And then we actually had our taxes done. “You owe the government $1,300.” “Excuse me?” “You didn’t claim the right number on that temporary job you had last year, and your wife is being penalized for withdrawing her retirement money 30 years too early even though she doesn’t work at the same job anymore. Oh and you also owe us $270 for telling you all this.”

It’s almost enough to make me want to defect to England, if that wasn’t what made us leave in the first place.

6

Thank you for sharing. I feel better knowing that others are sharing my misery. (not that I want any of you to be miserable)

We’ve decided that, screw it, we’re still going out to dinner. That’ll be way less expensive than the weekend get away but will still feel like we celebrated.

Ooh, maybe champagne and chocolate covered strawberries when we get home from dinner.

My best friend says I should cover the bed with rose petals, buy a very pretty ribbon, tie it around Mr. Jones penis and sing a song to his schlong as he lays in the bed of rose petals.

I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t stop laughing for a week.

7

“sing a song to schlong” is going to be stuck in my head for the rest of the day.

Too funny.

:cool:

8

Go ahead and shout, *“Is this thing on?!?” * into it.

You know you’ve always wanted to do that. :slight_smile:

9

What makes you think I haven’t already? :wink:

10

This is creating some very weird Seseame Street songs in my mind…

Sinngggg, sing a sooonnnnng…to a schlooonnnngggg…

11

[QUOTE=velvetjones]
, buy a very pretty ribbon, tie it around Mr. Jones penisUOTE]
A blue ribbon? “I don’t know where you’ve been, lad, but I see you’ve won first prize.”

12

Yep. I had pretty much the same experience. Last year, I graduated from college partway through the year and got a job. Since I only had the job for half the year, but they withheld like I was making that salary all year, I got a mega refund, in spite of the fact that I marked extra exemptions on my W-2 so it wouldn’t be so big.

Then I did my taxes this year. I owed almost $1000. Somebody forgot to change his exemption status. :smack:

13

Are you sure this is a friend? I dunno. Friends wouldn’t let friends sing songs to schlongs.

14

Awwwww, velvetjones, that’s too bad. I’m sorry to hear it didn’t work out the way you’d hoped.

However! As others have pointed out, there is much to be said for a nice “at home” romantic vacation. My husband is on a much needed vacation this week, and we decided, for once, to not plan on finding a nice hotel somewhere new and exotic, but just to “laze around”. Well, it’s turned into the most romantic vacation ever. No wine, no caviar, no fresh flowers in our room, no mountain view - we’ve just been getting out and taking advantage of the warmer weather. We dug out the kayaks and raced each other around Green Lake, we dug out our dusty golf clubs and played a few lousy but fun short games, we’ve visited family, went for long, romantic drives by the water, and taken slow walks together at sunset. It’s only April and I’m sunburnt and glowing as though it were July. :wink: My husband told me tonight that this has been the happiest vacation he’s ever had, and by far the most relaxing. We’ve discovered interesting, wonderful things right here in our own backyard. Tomorrow, we go geocaching!

Naturally, your tastes will vary, but get out there, hold hands and explore your own neighbourhood together a little bit - sometimes what you find might surprise you. It’s nice not worrying about if you left a window open or the oven on (even though you checked fifty two thousand times before leaving) or that the pets were left enough food and water until the BIL checks on them, and does he know not to leave the door open so they won’t run out?! Even though they’ve never shown the slightest interest in the front door, the day we leave would be the day they… well. You know what I mean? :smack:

Stay in, or go out - nothing needs to be too expensive, or even cost a dime, depending on what you have handy. Order in some new, exotic food and make faces over it together, or even cook a meal together. Put on some music and dance together. Lay on the grass and learn constellations together (or make up your own, I like doing that, too!) Rent a DVD and pop some popcorn. Fun stuff! Vacation at home can be just as fun and relaxing as time away from home. I hope you two have fun, whatever you do. :slight_smile:

15

I know how you feel. I just had to write a $3200 check (fed) and $884 check (state). I’m going to find me a boatload of tea and dump it in some harbor.

Hey, are legal fees deductible?