There is no Such Thing as a Free Lunch...

…but there is such a thing as a free haircut.

At the beginning of August, my wife saw an advertisement on TV about JCPenny giving free haircut to kids in 6th grade or lower throughout the month of August. I must say that I was skeptical. There are tons of kids out there that fall into that category and I am sure most of them usually get haircuts at the beginning of school at their parent’s request. There must be a catch. There is always a catch.

Well, my wife finally made the appointments for their cuts and we stopped by the school, picked up the kids early and off we went. When we got there, I soon realized why they were giving away free haircuts. The place was like a ghost town. There were at least five hair dressers in their salon and none of them were busy.

They assigned one hair dresser to all four of my kids. She did an OK job on each. My two boys just got their hair buzzed but she took a longer time with them than with my two girls who just got a trim.

Anyway, after all was said and done, our bill was $0.00. Yep. A free lunch. Or in this case, free haircuts. That was great. Can’t beat free unless they had paid us to cut my kids’ hair (like that would ever happen). I started out with t he kids and my wife got the receipt and we all loaded back in the van and were on our merry way.

My wife said how cool it was that we got all four of our kids hair cut for only $20….and there it was. Yep. Nothing is free. Not even a free haircut. She paid the woman $20 as a tip. She probably should have paid a bigger tip, but that is all we had. The reason we were getting free cuts in the first place. Money is almost extinct around our house these days. We still thought it was a good deal.

School Rules

This is the first full week of the new school year. For us, that means that four of my five children are off learning and as luck would have it, all able to take the bus. A big gas savings. Also, with them at school, our grocery bill will be lower since they eat at school. Another savings.

We, at the prodding of my 9yr old son, have put him back in regular public school. For the last two years he has been at home attending an online public school which is another way of saying homeschool. He really wanted to get back to being around other kids his age and out of the house. Hopefully he will not have too much trouble integrating back into school.

In addition to money saving due to the kids back in school, I have more time to work on my writing. One problem though is trying to keep my 4yr old that is sill at home, from getting too bored. Right now we are out side. She is trying to talk to the birds. So cute. One problem this week in particular is that we are having the bathroom and pluming repaired due to water leaks and I can't leave the workers here alone (I am not a very trusting person). So, no trips to the parks or library until next week. I hope they will be done by then.

I am sill trying to find some work at home program that I can do. I would really like to get back into graphic design, specifically logo work, but I don't have a good computer or software. But I am working on that problem. That would be the ideal solution because I am an out-of-work graphic designer.

Back on the topic of school, the bus is never on time or even close. It is always at least 30 min later than the time stated on the schedule. I don't know what the cause is, but the better get their act together. Maybe for the first week I could understand problems with new bus routes. Hopefully next week will be closer to the schedule.

The start of school us usually accompanied by all sorts of little problems that need a little adjusting and tweaking at first to get on a more regular schedule. That is my plan at least. Keep at it until a regular pattern can be figured out, the same as it is for the teachers and the students for that matter.