Cheese Balls not Cheez Balls

First of all, did you know that ‘Cheez Balls’ are discontinued? Well if you didn’t know this you can join my group. We had this container forever that we use for throwing change in at the end of the day and I always thought it was an empty Cheez Ball container. Only to find out that it really was a Cheese Ball container and a knock off of the original. I kind of feel like I was cheated or something.

So why in the world am I even talking about this? Well, today was the day that we find out the amount of change we’ve gathered throughout the year! And it was being stored in a Cheese Ball container.

How this works is that when you come home or if I clean out my purse, all the change goes into this plastic container that we have just literally sitting around waiting to get filled up. It’s a pretty good gig and even the boys help out with tossing in their change when they’re home. Now normally we have a contest with everyone in the family and you guess how much the change was going to add up to. And what does the winner get? There’s no set amount, but sometimes they get $50 and I think once someone even got $80 for guessing it right. But sad enough, the boys aren’t around tonight and well.. Daryl and I are just going to pocket the whole thing. Whoo Hoo!!

Well of course I had a couple of errands to run tonight and before I was heading to a local town, I decided that I’d stop at the bank and drop the money off first – you know, so they can have it all counted when I came through again. First things first. I took my ‘Cheese Ball’ container and poured it into two ice cream pails to be able to get it to the bank. You can see that the container is literally on it’s last time and it’s starting to break apart. Then I grab my purse and out the door I go. I decided not to bring the pails into the bank at this time just in case they didn’t have a change machine in there. I mean it’s been a year since we’ve done this and maybe they don’t offer this service again? So after I said my hello’s to everyone in there (small town, everyone knows everyone!) I ask them if they offer change counting? I got kind of a funny look and then a funny throat laugh and said that they do, and the machine is right over there. Humm, OK. Then they said that it was self serve. Crap. I didn’t have time right then to do it and I was really glad that I left the money in the car at this point. They asked how much I had and I said two ice cream pails pretty full. Then I saw this scared look on their face and said – yea, self serve. So out the door I go and say that I’ll be back a little later. They were really nice about the whole thing, but somehow I got the feeling that they were hoping that I wouldn’t be back.

OK, after some running around in town, I go back to the bank. And guess what? I think I was right about the comment that they were hoping that I changed my mind. The first thing they said was , ‘Oh you did come back’. See what I mean?  They said the machine was self explanatory, but when I was standing reading the instructions, I ended up getting help anyway. Then after the machine just stopped for some reason, guess what? Now there was three of us working on it. By then end of sorting out the two ice cream pails of coins, having the machine stop for a little bit, changing out multiple coin bags that were full, and jamming the machine with foreign money that got stuck (note for next time: do not mix in foreign currency when you bring change to the bank – they don’t like that at all!!) my time at the bank was finally done.

But after all of this, I was the one that was smiling. We were around $650 richer!!

Now where can I get another Cheese Ball container for next year?