December Already?

I cannot believe it is already December of 2008. I don't know where this year has gone. Mainly getting life organized again, I guess. My thirtieth year is drawing to a close, and I feel like it flew by. I didn't do ANYTHING I initially planned on doing for my thirtieth. I guess I'll have to celebrate my 30+1 the way I wanted to celebrate 30.

I have realized what I want in life... it's a pretty good place to be when you know what you want.

Keith just stopped by, surprising me with a knock at the door. Haha! In the UPS uniform. Awesome. There's something about that brown uniform. It made me laugh when he asked if I had any packages that needed delivering.

I'm about ready to make myself lunch. Dinner is already prepped and in the fridge till about 4pm. I feel so industrious today. I even prepped dinners for later in the week!
I went grocery shopping at both Redners and Aldi, found a couple Christmas goodies for the kids too!

Frank is getting them the DS units, so I'm in charge of finding CHEAP games en masse. I'm probably going to run up to GameStop later this week, maybe tomorrow... and see if I can find any that are on the "Santa" list.

Anyway, I'm off to start some baking. Making banana muffins, apple crisp, oatmeal cookies and some rolls for later. I figure by the time the kids get home I should have at least the cookies and dessert made. The bread should be rising... and be ready for rolls later.

I really missed being domestic. I can only hope that someday I can do this again full time... and not worry about making money to pay the bills. I read on the inside of one of my old cookbooks... and it said.. "An industrious wife is a man's best savings box". I shared it with my mom, and she laughed at the box reference (yeah, my MOM laughed... I get my gutter mind from her), but we agreed on how it is true. It takes time to prepare foods, plan menus, and grocery shop, do laundry. Being a housewife is a full time job in itself, being a mom is a full time job too! Add another full time job on top of that and every now and then you feel like you can't keep up. And it's true, somewhere some things suffer.

When I was working full time, we were all eating a lot of QUICK meals, whether I fed the kids chicken nuggets, or mac and cheese... Now, I get to make garlic chicken with broccoli, or beef and noodles with mashed potatoes, or sesame ginger chicken... Veggies with every meal... The time and energy to put love into the foods I make.

I spent $160 between the two stores today. $78 at Redners and $80 at ALDI. Of course, in the ALDI, there was about $30 of non-food purchases (a mini-guitar for the girls for Christmas, hat/glove set and a pair of cordoroys for Madelyn), so I spent $130 on food items.

Barring buying extra milk, that should feed all of us for the next 2 weeks. I stocked up the cabinets again and I have just about everything I need to make treats for the kids and dinners and plenty of room for leftovers.

Keith and Ron have been overjoyed that I've had extra leftovers over the past several weeks to feed them too! Ron packed up a bunch of Tupperwares for me to fill up for them. Haha!

Anyway, off to bake.

I need to find a Christmas tree... this week... I don't have a stand, so I can't get a real one. I should check Craigslist. Hm. Ok, off to do that first.

I have lots to say. Always.

Getting worried more about the state of our country.




I had to go grocery shopping really badly this morning. So I left the kids with our neighborhood babysitter (she lives across the street) and darted out to the store. It's ALWAYS cheaper to NOT bring the kids.

Being budget conscious, I'm usually a label checker- and price smart buyer.


I really haven't bought a lot of meats lately, because, well... money. But I had initially planned on buying chicken for this week, because I could turn it into a variety of meals.


As I strode into the store, I passed what are usually my favorite part of the store simply because of financial issues. Yeah, fresh fruits and fresh vegetables were not on the list this week. I thought about my weight gain over the past year, and I know that finances (or lack thereof) are playing a major part in my size. I have no choice but to accept that at the moment.

I passed the deli counter, simply because there was no way I could justify the lunch meat in that section. A quick glance showed me a pound of ham at $7.99.


I walked through the bread aisle and picked up the 99 cent king sized loaves needed for kids lunches. I also picked up bagels and hot dog rolls. I had to pass (still pissed off about this) the peanut butter and jelly section. Argh.

I grabbed some cans of beef ravioli and corned beef hash down the 99 cent aisle. Corned beef hash is J's favorite breakfast treat. I found that they were having a 2 for $5 sale on the big family boxes of cereal, so I grabbed two of the boxes of Honeycombs. After that, I picked up two boxes of cereal bars (one strawberry, one apple cinnamon) for the kids lunches - they have snacks that they need to have midmorning, so I figured that was probably a decent snack choice.

At this point, I'm feeling pretty successful as a shopper. I've gotten a good start at getting things cheap, and I head to the meat section. Without so much as a glance to the pork or beef, I walk right over to the chicken breasts and spy a really nice family package of chicken, containing about 6 chicken breasts. I leaned in and saw the price on the package, and thought, that has to be a typo, that shouldn't be a 1 in front of that 9... no, it really was. A pack of six chicken breasts showed a $3.60/lb label and it was over $19 for the package. What!?!?! Wow. The one below it was $18. In the freezer across from the fresh meats, there were bags of breaded all breast meat chicken nuggets 2 for $6. Two bags of chicken nuggets won out over the fresh chicken by $13.

I picked up some of the pre-packaged lunch meats, which usually are about $2.50 when they're on sale, between $2.49 and $2.99 on average, and found that now the CHEAPEST one was priced at $3.19. The highest in the section was $4.09. It's true that the price of gas is really killing a good number of Americans. Why is it cheaper to get processed food rather than fresh food?

I picked up a gallon of milk, noticed it was about $3.60 too. Cheese, also more expensive. Cream Cheese was expensive. Eggs, ridiculously doubled in price in the past year. Even the cheap margarine spread was $1.19.

I know my kids and I enjoy cheese and crackers as a snack, so I got an extra thing of cheese and went to find the crackers we like - a multigrain Wheat Thin that is usually about $3 for the big box, as they're frequently on special. No special this week. They were $4.19. I passed them up for a different kind of cracker- that box was $2.49. I grabbed a box of generic Saltines (one of my favorites with soup or ham salad) and realized that the generic box, which is usually around 89 cents, was now at $1.29.


I decided with the expenditures at the store, I would bring lunch this week to work, so I stocked up on the 10 for $10 section... and got myself some 2/$.89 burritos as well as some ham and cheese pockets for the microwave at work. For my breakfasts, I am on the bagel and cream cheese plan for workdays.


I just see the costs of everything spiking... and that concerns me. I'm a single mom, I work my ass off, and it seems as though there's still never enough to go around. My phone bill is due, my car insurance is due, my car payment is coming up... and with such a budget, there's two things here. One, I'm not making enough money and two, the costs of life are ridiculously high at the moment, leading to a quality of life that pretty much blows.



One interesting thing from last night

I saw my army friend last night and saw some pretty graphic photos of what life is REALLY like as a soldier in Iraq.


To say the least, they were disturbing - but at the same time, as he was explaining what was going on over there and what their "rules of engagement" were, as well as what is being done to innocent civilians in the name of a Jihad, well... I think it's something Americans SHOULD be shown.


These photos would NEVER be on the New York Times or on CNN. The truth is, I don't think most people would be able to handle seeing them. Surprisingly, I wasn't disgusted, or moved to tears. There was only one photo that made the mama bear in me growl hard and fast...


One of the photos showed two small children, dead, they were shot execution style by the Iraqi insurgents - two of many, when they raided a daycare in Iraq. The children were about 2 and 4 years old respectively. Now I know why we fight. I would fight too. Seeing those pictures were difficult but at the same time affirming.


J shared with me that he had come home to less than welcoming America. He's been called a list of names including "son-killer". After seeing pictures that represented what he did and saw day in and day out to protect our basic rights as Americans, I simply cannot understand how any American could not support the men and women who fight for this country.


So, please, even if you don't agree with the war - or the reasons for it - at the very least, support the American soldiers who are defending our rights to be able to express our own opinions.


I did get to see one really cool picture of J that I want. It was him, at sunrise, in his army garb, crouched down and aiming his gun (with scope). The sun was just coming up behind him, making his body and gun look like a shadow in the glaring fresh light. It was one of those pictures that makes him look like G.I. Joe. Fitting, I think.


My weekend wraps up.

The kids and I are finishing up straightening up the house, I just made lunch not that long ago, and since the day is still nice, we were thinking about heading to a park... but I just got texted about meeting up with the guys that I will see on Tuesday to jam for a bit and go over some songs for Tuesday night. Oh, cool, they'll come here around 7 tonight to play some songs.


I have to say, I'm pretty psyched about the whole music events lately. I'm really finding some more and more musically oriented people and I'm really enjoying these random singing/jamming events.

I'm once again being encouraged by random strangers to pursue singing every time I open my mouth to do it. It's pretty awesome. It's happened for years, and I've been getting more and more comfortable jumping up on stage and doing something at random as well. Just feeling it and not being afraid that it won't be "right".


I've learned that it's the randomness in music that is sometimes what makes it "right", and seeing people dance, sing and groove along to what you'd doing is instant feedback that it sounds a-ok.

So that is all for now, I have to go play Sargeant Mom and make sure the kids actually pick up their stuff so I can finish vacuuming and then do laundry.