Frugal Friday: Money Saving Weekly Recap

This week went down in history as one of the worst we've had with my son.  His moods have deteriorated the last few weeks, BAD, but this week took the cake.  We finally broke down and made an appointment to put him under at the hospital so his dentist can do any dental work that needs to be done (X-rays, teeth filling, etc) and potentially taking out wisdom teeth that might be impacted that might be causing his problems.  My husband and I are so torn about everything.  Half of us wants there to be wisdom teeth to take out and that would explain a lot of his moods and maybe he'll be BETTER after they are out, but the other half of us is dreading recovery from surgery so badly that we are hoping he doesn't have any wisdom teeth at all.   Either way, neither one of us are eating much and we are just sick with anxiety and stress right now.  Any prayers you guys could send our way that everything goes WELL with him getting knocked out and everything...man I'd appreciate it so much.  I'm a big ball of not good right now.  I am praying that they can zonk him good pre-IV and that Alvah is just not freaking out during the experience.  Praying HARD.  I want this to go well.  Please God, watch over us during this entire mess.  Amen.

After that is done we are going to switch the son's meds to put him on a medicine that he doesn't sleep on, but makes him really happy, in the hopes we can get his system detoxed off of the HORRIFIC amounts of meds I've been forced to give him and get him back to baseline.  Then we can figure out if we need to try switching his meds completely (I had an emergency pow wow with his mental health doctor a few days ago) or just being able to use his old meds once he's been off of them for a little bit.  Everything is an unknown commodity right now, and man I hate it so much.  I am one of those people that tries to make myself useful and being completely helpless like this is really hard on me.

My husband and I somehow managed to get some frugal stuff done this week, despite just living in a not great situation, so let's get to that and off of anxiety inducing, depressing matters.

1.  Alvah normally takes Zyrtec everyday for his allergies, but the store didn't have a coupon for the Zyrtec this week, while Amazon had a good coupon and a good deal overall for the pills.  So, I ordered Zyrtec from Amazon, saving 12.00 off the normal store price by doing so.

2.  I fixed a clogged bathroom sink.  The upstairs sink has driven me nuts for years because it gets clogged really easily and I could not figure out how to really clean out the drain with the drain we had in it.  I finally, quite accidentally, while trying to clear a hair clog from it, pulled part of the drain out with a paperclip and realized that you could remove that part of the drain to clean it.  It also made it MUCH easier to scour the drain pipe to clear soap scum if you did that as well.  So, next time I have to clean the drain it will be MUCH easier to do, which is nice.

3.  I fixed cracks in drywall.  Luckily we had picked up light joint compound a few weeks ago, because, unfortunately, it's come in handy.  I still have more patching to do, but at the moment, I just found it better to barricade the walls with stuff so they aren't so easily bounced off of and I'll worry about fixing everything when the son is in a better headspace.

4.  Husband fixed his MP3 player by soldering in a new battery (the old one bulged).

5.  Husband fixed a broken push broom with a electrical conduit strap and some ingenuity.  The handle had broken on said broom, but he got it up and working again, which is good as now that Spring is finally coming here, it'll come in handy to sweep the crud off of the driveway.

6.  Used up leftovers to make sure there was no food waste.  My daughter was out of the house this week to avoid the craziness here, so it was just my husband and I.  Neither of us has eaten much, so a big bunch of leftovers I had from earlier in the week just saw us through the week.

7.  Fixed a hole in a comforter.  Our washing machine isn't spinning things right and comforters get caught in it and end up getting holes torn in them by accident when I'm trying to switch between the washer and the dryer.  I managed to find one that had happened before it next went into the washer and I fixed it and then quilted through the inside when I did so to help hold the stuffing in place where I had accidentally ripped it.

8.  Daughter’s sneakers started to die and the top of her shoes was starting to disintegrate.  I, luckily, didn't have to order new shoes (man sneakers are spendy anymore) and was able to pul out a pair of sneakers I had in reserve that I had gotten for 25.00 on a pre-Christmas sale earlier.  I had actually stored them under my bed for myself, but my daughter is in between and 7 and a 7 and a half, so she finds she can wear either size, so she just took my 7 1/2 sneakers I bought and is very happy with them.  

9.  I par-baked some pizza crusts and put them in the freezer.  I was planning a pizza day a few weeks ago, but it didn't work out, so I had a bunch of sourdough starter to use.   So, I made up three pizza crusts with it and put them in the freezer.  This way all I have to do is defrost the pizza crust for a few hours, put on toppings and bake pizza normally in oven.  We are actually trying one out tonight so we'll see how they bake up.  I'm hoping they bake up better than freezing the entire pizza with the toppings and everything, because I find the crust gets too crispy while you are waiting for the cheese to melt in the middle of the pizza.

10.  The menu plan went flying out the window this week because my son’s behaviors went REALLY bad, but I still managed to make food at home, which is an accomplishment as take out was such a temptation this week to just not have to worry about one more thing.

And there you go folks.  Our frugal accomplishments for this week.  Sure hope your week went better than ours.

Enjoy.