My nine year old son woke me up with exciting news today!  He informed me that our garage had been broken into last night, and our bikes and lawnmower stolen.  Then he told me that the thieves decided for fun to stick some of the bikes they decided not to take into my neighbor’s garage, so they didn’t take all of them after all.   The ones that were left were obviously the ones that weren’t in great shape, but at least some of them were left.  I jokingly said that it saved my husband the job of reorganizing the garage to make more space, so it wasn’t all a loss!

Now my dear 9 year old son has been baking cookies for his business.  I told him I was very unthrilled with the idea of him baking today, and that for this one time, I wanted him and his partner to use his friend’s kitchen instead of ours.  But they couldn’t do that because his friend’s family had other plans.  Then he told me his friend couldn’t come and would bake on his own, so I somewhat reluctantly agreed.  The reason I agreed was that they had taken orders for over 10 family packs (usually they sell door to door), and I didn’t want to keep him from being able to meet his commitments. 

When he started baking, I supervised him, but since he’s been making these cookies on his own for a while now, I haven’t felt it’s been necessary.  That was too bad, since today he decided to make five times the already large recipe, and filled the very large mixing bowl to the very top with a dense mixture of chocolate chip cookie dough.  Surprise – when he turned it on, it started making a very unpleasant sound and stopped running.  I called the Bosch repair company, and it seems that he managed to ruin the transmission. 🙁  I really wasn’t pleased with that; their transmission failure rate is less than 1% over 20 years, and I’ve only owned my Bosch mixer for eight years.  When you get a mixer this expensive (it was $500 at the WA dealer my mom bought it, with the accessories), you look at it as an investment, as something that you’ll use forever. 

The problem with owning such an expensive mixer is that it isn’t cheaply repaired or replaced.  The advantage is that it’s such a high quality that repairs should be uncommon, but I think that might not be taking into account nine year olds and their idea of what is appropriate usage.    I give my kids a lot of leeway in using things that a lot of parents wouldn’t, and for the most part, that’s worked out well.  But there are times like right now that leave me feeling a little grumpy and irritated.

Avivah