Life Happenings and Frugal Shenanigans

It has been a year so far.

Alvah has been in an awful mood since the beginning of the year.  We aren't sure why completely, but it has not been fun around here (we suspect that part of his problem is hormones, part of his problem is allergies and the rest?  No idea).  Not fun at all.  Top it with my mom went back into the hospital in March and got diagnosed with stage 4 dementia.  She's fighting everything that is there to help her, which isn't helping anything.  Honestly between Alvah, my mom, the cost of everything and the never ending list that continually gets longer of things that need to get done or need to be replaced around here...I've been in survival mode and just taking it one day at a time.  It is all you can do sometimes.

We did find that part of Alvah's mood problem was definitely his allergies giving him a time when his mood went even FURTHER downhill a few weeks back and he started doing some weird, new, and concerning behaviors.  So, we got him into the doctor and she ran some tests.  Tests came back with strep and a sinus infection.  Not good news.  So, for the first time since he was like three, we ended up with him on antibiotics.  Liquid since he doesn't do pills, which is rough when you have a kid who hates strong flavors and really has problems with textures (like gritty antibiotic liquid for instance).  He was on them for two weeks because he's allergic to penicillin so we had to make sure the other antibiotics got his sinus infection.  He finished the antibiotics with only the first day thrown back up on us, which was good for him.  He got through that and then his allergies are going bonkers again because we are having a raging allergy season this year (of course).  

We have an appointment with the dentist next week to talk about putting him under sedation to get his wisdom teeth checked, get teeth x-rays accomplished (for the first time) and any work done with that and any other work doctors need to get done on him (like his mental health doctor really wants to do bloodwork to make sure his meds aren't messing up his blood sugar and things...we are pretty sure they aren't, but it is good to check).  His doctor wants to check his wisdom teeth to make sure he doesn't have an impacted tooth that is impacting his sinuses.  I get it all, truly, but if I could, I'd find a way around it.  I'm utterly terrified of putting him under.  It would be terrifying if he reacted well to medicines, but his body reacts so weird to drugs, that I'm...well...I'm trying to remain calm and not panic about it.  Any prayers would be appreciated as this is going to be a rough go here.

Armina got her grades finalized and graduated from high school this week.  It is crazy.  It seems like yesterday she was in preschool and now she's a high school grad.  Still trying to figure out where the time went there.  She is going to work as an assistant swimming instructor starting this summer, so that is exciting for her as she wants to work toward getting her swimming instructor license.

There's a depressing list of pressing items around here.  I'd go into them all, but honestly I'd probably just depress myself again, so I'm going to instead focus on a few things that I've been doing around here to save money.

1.  My son has been not nice to my house this year.  He went bonkers one day and kept slamming his chair into the wall and managed to put said chair nearly through the drywall.  I patched the huge hole/massive dent and used some food storage to make a improvised chair rail on the wall so he couldn't do the same thing again (hopefully).  Doing that also just tore the heck out of his chair, which has been trying to fall apart on the upholstery end for a bit here.  The back cushion split at the top and side and was spilling the inner cushion out everywhere.  I knew I had to fix that before I could figure out how to make some kind of new slip cover/upholstery for the chair.  I didn't have anything resembling upholstery tacks that would be big enough to hold the fake leather together, so I went looking through what I had and found, of all things, some crappy nails I got with a picture hanging kit I bought a while ago.  I used the nails, since they were decently long and had a nice big head on them, to secure the double folded fabric to the wooden back of the chair.  It is NOT even close to the nicest upholstery work I've even done in my life, but using what fabric I had with the chair that was in decent shape still, I got the job done.  It is actually holding up pretty well so far, which is good.  I've got some ideas on what I might be able to use to reupholster the top portion of the recliner here and am hoping to get time this weekend to work on it.  

2.  My grocery budget has exploded the last bit, along with so many others, but I worked really hard to get it down.  I have been working to get it down from over 400.00 every two weeks (eek!) to around 250.00 every two weeks.  I have been using the extra money in the budget from doing that the last month and using the other 150.00 to buy bulk meat when it was on sale at my local butcher (I have found with the limits at the grocery store on sale items, it just doesn't lead me to being able to stock up on anything, really).  I got hamburger (20 lbs), breakfast sausages (10 pounds), 10 lbs of steaks (a nice Mother's Day sale I was able to jump on) and 40 lbs of chicken thighs (those were from Costco as it was much cheaper there)...not all at once, but just one item at a time.  Like tomorrow I'm picking up some bratwurst and chicken sausage I got on sale cheap with a Memorial Day special my local butcher was putting on.  Not tons, but enough to see us through for a while.  Once meat is out of the week to week grocery budget for a bit, it will allow me to get my grocery bill down to the 250.00 every two weeks and hopefully keep it there and I can start to put the extra money into other bills I need to pay.

I have gotten a few freebie coupons of late through my grocery app and was actually able to GET said freebie products, mainly due to the timing of my grocery pick ups the way they have gone the last bit, which was super nice as I haven't had freebie coupons that lasted more than a day the last like three years and the freebies were always like energy drinks, which weren't even worth clipping to me.  I got a few that I'll share with my grocery haul post, but one that I got this week was a 4 pack of Haagen Dazs waffle cones.  I got the berry flavor, which worked out in my favor as they have been consistently out of the salted caramel ones (the husband and daughter wanted the berry flavored ones).  They were pretty good, but not 10.00 good which is around the price point they are normally.  Seriously, the price on stuff.  Geez.

3.  My daughter's favorite shirt tore (it is basically worn out, but she still loves it), so I mended the tear for her (I have a few more tears I noticed this week that I have to mend as well now).  

I also mended a few pairs of my son's sweat pants as the seams on new clothing seem to just suck.  I had to sew the elastic back into a few pairs of pants, sew up the crotch on a few pairs as well where the seam just came undone.  I noticed about three other pairs in the wash that I need to mend as well.  Hopefully I can get more mending done this weekend as well.

4.  I've been incorporating more and more food storage items that need to be used up into our day to day meals.  We actually sat down and had an MRE night the other night (military rations) for dinner as my mother-in-law had gifted us some a few Christmases in a row and the MRE's reached their use by date in 2024.  It was actually really fun to see what we got with the meals and I made sure to put everything aside in the accessory packets to use up as well.  We still have enough MRE's for at least one more dinner night and a few lunches for my husband and I, but we'll get them eaten up.

5.  I've worked on decluttering my den.  It is free for me to do it, needed to be done and I'm hoping I can get it cleaned out to the point that we can move the bookcases from upstairs downstairs and get more of a library set up going in the den (which was our original plan for the space when we moved in over a decade ago).  It is slow going with everything going on, but slow and steady win the race.

6.  I've been making sure to use up fresh groceries to avoid things going bad.  For instance, I found that buying a bag of carrots that they would go slimy before I could really use them.  So, I switched to using canned carrots or frozen carrots for soups and cooked dishes and then I've just been spending a bit more and buying baby carrots to use for fresh things like coleslaw in smaller bags.  It saves me fridge space (at a definite premium with this new fridge) and also stops me from wasting food (which upsets me more and more the more expensive life gets).  It also keeps me accountable to use the carrots IN a certain dish when I buy them, to keep me more on task for meal planning.  I'm not really doing a day to day meal plan anymore as I find I just can't keep to it in this stage of life, but I buy with the intent to use veggies and things in certain meals over the next two weeks when I buy them.  For instance, I bought asparagus to make with some poached chicken and rice pilaf one night in the next couple of weeks.  When I will make it, I'm not sure, but I will make it.

I am going to start sharing my meal plan ideas with the blog again.  They aren't the most popular posts in the world, but it will hopefully illustrate how I'm consciously grocery shopping so nothing goes to waste, if possible.  Every cent counts and I don't want to throw those cents away.

7.  Side tangent here.  I just wanted to take this opportunity to say "thank you" to those who order through my Amazon associate links.  Google Adsense has become harder and harder to make any money from (honestly I'm seriously thinking of just taking it off the blog entirely just to save everyone the aggravation of seeing ads) and to be 100% transparent I never made much from them to begin with (like maybe 100.00 per year on really great, "I'm blogging four times a week" years).  The Amazon associate fees have really helped me to be able to buy food for my pantry to stock up on ingredients, or other things we need around the house (like I used this month's fees to get Alvah some socks since he grew out of regular sock sizes, is now in size 12+ socks and goes through roughly five pairs of socks a day as he changes them out constantly).  I don't make much commission from the Associate link, but it does add up and DOES help out.  So, to those who have done it and wondered if it helped us at all (since I get that question from time to time), I can answer you with a definite YES and thanks again for supporting the blog (and all of its irregular posting schedule and very flawed and human content).

8.  I had purchased a small, boneless ham for New Years last year (sales on ham just weren't there and we don't really eat much ham at one sitting anyway) and when we went to pick up the groceries the manager in charge of the Pick Up and Go orders asked if we'd just like to get our ham, and an additonal small ham, for free, as they were expiring the day we picked them up and they were the last two they had.  We really appreciated that they did that for us and I made sure to put them both in the freezer as soon as my husband got home with the groceries.  One we ate for New Years and then made into soup for later (baked potato soup, but instead of bacon I use up any left over ham, or a canned ham, in it) and the second one we ate part of with Easter Dinner and then I froze the other part to use for later.  Turned out "later" was last night and I made another big pot of soup, which will last us through lunches over the weekend (husband, daughter and I all love the soup, so it is one soup that actually gets eaten by all of us, not just me, for left overs :).  I was able to use up some wrinkly potatoes that were not looking their best and the left over ham, so it was a win-win for me.

I'm going to call it good there as I'm very tired (son is sleeping about once every other day at the moment) and my brain is about to go on break, I fear.  

Enjoy!

Life Update and Craziness

Man it has been a hot minute hasn't it?  

It has been so crazy around here I've felt like I haven't had a chance to breathe, let alone do anything else.  I know that is an over exaggeration, but it sure does feel that way.

December, after my last blog post, was busy and not in a good way.  Alvah came down with a nasty cold-like virus that had him congested and not being able to breathe out his nose for a while and he'd run a fever on and off.  We finally broke down and made an appointment at the doctor's and, of course, the day of the appointment, he woke up feeling fine and got a clean bill of health from the doctor.  Sometimes you just need to make the appointment to motivate a kid, you know?

Luckily, he got better right before the Christmas holidays, so we were able to have a nice, peaceful, Christmas at home for the most part.  My husband took a week off and this year, for the first time in it seems forever, no one got sick through the holidays and we were able to have a good time without nursing ourselves back from the flu or something.  Definitely an improvement over the year before.  I was even able to adapt a recipe to make it sourdough and I was able to gift some loaves of 7-Grain-Maple-Honey-Whole-Wheat-Sourdough-Bread to some people (the recipe turned out really good and I am proud of it...a couple of the loaves are up top there...I forgot to put the split in them before baking and that's why the one went crazy on the side).  We celebrated New Years and my birthday without incident, which was also a nice change of pace.

Then the new Year rolls around and yeah.  First our garage door opener broke its gears which had stripped out from age, it looked like, so we had to order a replacement kit of those and my husband was able to install them.  The garage door acts a bit clunkier than it used to, but it does work (new garage doors are definitely becoming a more and more urgent need, though).  

Then Alvah's mood has just been...ugh.  I was warned years ago from people that autistic kids and puberty are just a bad combo.  I always hoped that Alvah would go through it okay, but nope...it's been a heck of a struggle the last few years.  His mood this winter has been awful and he's had a couple of severe meltdowns that really worried my husband and I.  I have started to up his meds and give them to him at regular intervals throughout the day, and that helps, but it still is not easy by any stretch.

We got the schedule and details on high school graduation for Armina at the beginning of the year (I'm still in shock that I have a graduating senior this year) and so excitement kicked in for the daughter.  We got her cap and gown in the mail (it fits!) and we ordered her class ring and got it in the mail.  We had budgeted for it, but not enough it turns out, but I got it sorted and we paid off the difference this month (I'd go on a rant about how everything costs and arm and a leg, but I'd be preaching to the choir so what is the point?).  She loves her ring and it will be a keepsake for her, so I'm glad we were able to do that for her.  

And then the bigger costs kicked in as first my phone decided to not hold a charge anymore and I had to purchase a new one.  I got the cheapest phone that would meet my needs for a smartphone and was able to just pay for it out of the bank account, which was way better than having to finance one.  Not a super fancy phone by any means, but it works fine for what I need a phone for.  Still expensive (over double the price of what I paid for my last phone), but at least it was doable.

And then the fridge decided to die.  Luckily, I was able to catch that it was running warm first thing in the morning and I had gone to bed late (for once Alvah's not sleeping schedule had worked out in our favor).  I turned the fridge to it's coldest setting and put a remote probe thermometer in it to watch the temperature and we were able to keep the fridge at about 39 degrees for a few days until we could find a new fridge.  I looked online and found one that was in stock that would meet our space needs.  It is an interesting design for a fridge.  The bottom two cabinets that left is a freezer compartment that is fixed, but the right hand lower compartment can be set to different temperatures...anything from a wine fridge, to a regular fridge, to a freezer compartment.  We decided to go with the smaller freezer and use our other freezers to make up for the lack of space and use the flexible compartment as a fridge compartment.  

I really wanted to get the fridge delivered, but no one could deliver right away (we were looking at four days at least before we could get one), so we found that Lowes had it in stock and we could pick it up that night.  So, I signed up for a Lowes card to get the 12 month interest free payments (so I can pay it off without the 30+ percent interest on a credit card hitting me every month) and we went to pick it up that night.  The fridge ended up being a multiple day affair.  The first night we got it out of the truck and into the garage (thank God my husband didn't get hurt during this entire ordeal as I was scared to death for his safety).  The second night my husband and I worked together to get the fridge up the front door steps and up the stairs and into the kitchen.  There my husband put the doors back on the fridge (it was to heavy to get up the stairs with the doors on) and we set it to cool for the 24 hour period they told you to do in the instructions.  The third day we got the food into the new fridge, forced the old fridge out the deck door and onto the deck until Spring (my husband is going to try and fix it to sell it for cheap) and started the process to get the ice maker cycled and working properly.  So, the fourth day we had ice.  

I ended up taking the middle shelf out of the fridge so we'd have room for more than one gallon of milk as it just made life too difficult.  It was a "flex shelf" where you could move a panel back or forward to open up space for larger items, but it just didn't let us have a good set up that way.  So, after removing one shelf and using the flexible compartment we got it working good for our needs (we just got groceries last week and was able to fit everything in the fridge, so I'm happy with that).  The fridge was too tall when I measured it originally and I was panicking that we'd have to cut the shelf above the fridge, but my husband looked at me like I'd lost my mind when he got home from work and simply screwed the fridge feet in a bit and it slid right into place (oops on my part for not thinking of that lol).  The new fridge is actually slimmer (less deep) than our old one so we gained some floor space with the replacement, which was a nice find and with the lack of handles on this one we can actually open the fridge when the dishwasher is open and still be able to remove things from the bottom compartment of the fridge.

Some things to top off the craziness that has happened of late.  I opened my door one day to find lynx prints EVERYWHERE.  They were all over our driveway, all over our front and back yard, side yard, you name it.  The part that blew my mind, though, was the sun was just rising when I found them and there were paw prints on my front porch and around my front windows, right up against the house.  And the paw prints on the porch were still WET!  I was cautiously looking around when I went to dump the garbage in the can for sure.  I took a picture of a paw print that was kind of jammed together (normally they are more spread out since the lynx have built in snow shoes) but was super duper clean in the snow.  I know it doesn't translate on the camera how big these paw prints were, but trust me...they are impressive.  We have a lynx that has come around every year for years and stays through the mating season and has its cubs.  I've only seen it rolling around on top of my storage van once and seen its cubs running across the road really early in the morning one day when we had a really late Spring, it was icy, and the cub slid a bit as it was trying to cross on some glare ice.  I slowed down to be sure it would be safe, but it got out of the way and disappeared into the ditch QUICK.  Other than those two sightings, all we ever see are paw prints.  Not so many at one time, though.

Then one day last week I got to dial 911...not something you really ever have to do.  I heard a crashing sound while I was inside the house and it sounded like a car crash (we live near a major road, so we do get them in by the house every once in a while).  I looked out at the major road, though, and the traffic was running smoothly, so I thought maybe the building next door just got its dumpster picked up (it was like -13F out, so  sound travels different in those temps).  Then, suddenly, I saw a garbage truck that had turned down our road backing up it and turning around.  That confused me as they pick up the garbage on this road that day, so I thought maybe the truck had issues.  Then I saw the smoke.  I put my jacket super quick to go and see what was going on as the fire was right near my house (like RIGHT near it) and I was worried about something being wrong.  I walked outside to get a better look and realized that what I was looking at was a vehicle on fire! 

I ran back inside and called 911, reported what was going on and once the call was over ran back outside with my fire extinguisher worried someone might be in the car.  By the time I got to the end of my driveway (total I was in the house like 3 minutes) the car was completely engulfed in flames and I realized that my fire extinguisher was going to do nothing.  Luckily my nearest neighbors were there and saw the accident right after it happened and watched the three, well-known, drug addicts, grab as many small propane tanks as they could from the car and run for their lives toward the neighborhood drug house (this seems so common for people to talk about the neighborhood drug house in their selective neighborhoods anymore anytime I bring ours up to people).  The fact that they ran off of a straight road, that wasn't super slick, at high speed, on a bright and sunny day, on a low speed road, kind of tells you something in itself, but fleeing from the accident is another layer of bad all together.  As we waited for first responders a bunch of small camp propane tanks exploded and zoomed off into the woods in either direction, which was loud and scary I gotta say.  It wasn't long (thank you first responders) and the fire department had the fire under control in record time.  My neighbors and I were asked to stick around to give statements on what we'd seen and we waited, in the cold, for quite a while, as the cops checked out the scene with the firemen.  I kept running into the house to check on Alvah, but did stick around until the cold really started to get to me and my elderly neighbor.  We told a fireman where we'd be and went into our heated dwellings.  My driveway became home base for the first responders and they left just enough room at the end so people could turn around and go the other way if they needed to turn around.  Finally after a few hours, once they were sure everything was out, the cops got a tow truck in and hauled the car away under police escort.  

Anyway, it was an interesting afternoon to be sure.  

I nearly posted up a picture of what happened, but I was worried it might be traumatic to some who might have experienced a vehicle fire or had a loved one be involved in one, so I decided to just not show it.  I know no one was hurt in this incident, but either way...I decided to not include the photo.

When it comes to the year in review and other frugal things, I haven't had a chance to work on all of that.  Alvah picked up a stomach bug when we were out running around all over the place and I've been taking care of him this week.  Lately it just seems like one thing or another happens all the time.  I have plans to work on a pantry challenge if I can ever get things started around here and got a few blog posts I want to do as well, but I'll see if God has any other curve balls to chuck my way in the meantime.

I hope you are all having a relaxing, not stressful at all, start to the year and I'll hopefully talk at you soon.