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!