Teenage Boys are Strange Creatures

Just when I think I have my teenage boys pegged for life… they turn over a new and refreshing leaf that does this mama’s heart good.  It’s happening in repeating stages right now.  I’m not sure why, but I’m not voicing any of these questions aloud, so as not to disturb the force.

It all started about a month ago.  Holding my coupon envelope while pushing my grocery cart through Safeway, my cell phone rang. It was my 15-year-old son.  He was calling to inquire about the correct procedure for washing his comforter.  Glory be!  I explained that it is exactly like a load of clothes.  BAM!  I could hardly breathe for the clean-laundry-loving juice pumping through my veins.

I arrived home that day to find three large garbage bags stuffed full of clothing in the loft.  Inquiring minds want to know, so I asked a few children if they knew what the bags were for.  Seems it was my same comforter-washing son.  He had gone through his closet AND dresser and removed all the clothing that was too small, stained, holey and nerdy.  Never in his 15 years has he performed this action.

Then I glanced in his room.  Miracle of miracles.  I could see the carpet under his bed!  It is usually hidden by piles of smelly shoes, biking gear, magazines, dirty and/or clean clothing.  It was spotless.  I was speechless! Unbelievable.  I thought it would take a college roommate or his wife to convince him of his slobbish ways.  I’m not sure what happened to bring about this change, and I’m not disturbing the force and asking any time soon.  The amazing thing is that it is still that clean… a month later.  It was like BAM! he grew up.

I was basking in the realization that 50% of my sons were now considered not slobs.  Wow!  I realize 50% is not a passing grade, but I was at 0% just a month ago.

THEN it happened.  I was in Walmart picking out avocados that were ripe to perfection when my cell phone rang.  It was my 13-year-old son inquiring how to launder his comforter.  I about dropped to the tile floor in Wally World in shock and disbelief.  I explained that it is exactly like a load of clothes.  BAM! I could hardly breathe for the clean-laundry-loving juice pumping through my veins.

But, unfortunately, that is as far as son #2 got in the goal of living a tidy, laundered, clean lifestyle.  But he’s two years ahead of his brother in the comforter category. Yet, I have hope.

 

Minor Victory in my Post Adoption Life

As I have confessed here before, my life is so much different now that I have four children.  This week we will have been home from Colombia with the Colombian princess for five months… also marking HALF A YEAR that she has been our girl.  My, does time fly when you’re having fun coping issues. :o)  But a light has begun to shine at the end of the tunnel for me.  I’m back on top in a few areas that I feel are worth sharing for my own cathartic needs.

1.  I am back to being a coupon queen.  With the aid of my son (who loathes de-collating coupon books, but loves his mama) my coupons are all up to date in the file box.  I spent about a half hour making a list and checking it twice and headed off to do BIG saving shopping at Fry’s grocery store.  When it all came down, I filled two carts (mainly because I stocked up on paper towel) and the total would have been $280, but after my coupons I paid $106.  My pantry was bare-er than it has ever been in the past four years, but I remedied that in one trip!  My children are much happier now that they see a supply of food that will last more than two days!  Nora could not believe how much stuff I bought!  And she doesn’t even understand the savings yet!

2.  My Tupperware cupboard is cleaned out!  This is almost a miracle.  When do I have time to do mundane chores like that?  Hardly ever!  But this week, with the help of the same son and my little new helper, everything blinkin’ plastic thing was pulled from the cupboard and MATCHED with its lid!  Whoa!  I know!  We filled the recycle bin twice with those containers that were partner-less.  It makes me happy simply to open the cupboard door and look at the tidiness.

3. My master bedroom closet is clean!!!  That means I finally hauled out all the Christmas decorations, wrap and bows that were thrown in there in early January!  I also went through my clothes and threw out items that should have been thrown out years ago.  I also put together a BIG bag for Goodwill.  And filled the garbage can twice!  This does not mean that I touched any of Rick’s clothes or junk quality paraphernalia.  But I did count his t-shirts….. 33.  Why in heaven’s name does any grown man need 33 t-shirts.  They don’t.  That is on the agenda for today! (Don’t tell!)

I’m feeling almost close to normal… about three minutes off.

Affordable {FREE} Groceries

Another unbelievable week of coupons is upon us.  For those who don’t participate in Coupon $ense, please bear with me as I shamelessly brag about my grocery store savings.  It’s just too good not to share the diligence by which I’m saving my husband’s hard earned money.  It’s testimony time!

Today the store that sucked me in was Fry’s.  They have a Buy 10 Get $5 Off deal going on, with a maximum of 3 per transaction.  So here’s what I got:

8 bottles Powerade, 3 boxes Scalloped Potatoes, 3 Quaker Oats, 4 Mashed potato pouches, 6 cans evap milk, 3 xL liquid hand soap, 1 Hefty sandwich bags, 3 Colgate toothpaste, 3 Shick 10-count (cute pink) razors and 2 boxes Macky-Cheese.   THIRTY-SIX items should have cost $73.50 …………. drum roll please ……………. and I paid …………….. $5.31.  That’s a 93% savings.

You just gotta love a system that can save you this much money.  If you’re curious, you can check it out at www.CouponSense.com.  It is not available in all areas, but if it is in your town……. needless to say, I highly recommend it.  I get 3 Sunday papers each week + the C$ fee so I pay $30 per month for the whole schpeel.  I saved that twice over just with one trip to the store. 

I have cut my grocery bill in more-than-half from $570 to $250 per month for a family of five (plus a dog).  My pantry has never been this full.  I started C$ in January and I have tracked my savings all along on the site.  In coupons ALONE I have saved more than $1,065 and received more than $89 in rebates.  The other deal is knowing when the stores have their super sales.  Totally worth it!

I know you’re thinking I spend hours per week cutting coupons and filing them alpha-chronologically, but NO.  The site tells me where the best deals are.  I pick one or two stores every other week.  I clip the ones I need (3 at a time) and it maybe takes me 20 minutes every other week.  Well worth it, in my humble opinion.  And no, I don’t get paid to advertise for Coupon $ense, but I should.

I’m done preaching now.  (I didn’t think about the election for a whole 15 minutes just now!)

McDonald’s is a Dangerous Place

Minding my own business…. (isn’t this how most horror stories start???) … Keeve and I were at Micky D’s this morning shoveling hotcakes and sausage and breaky burritos.  We had two hours to KILL (maybe not the best choice of words here) while Larisa was at a drama meeting.  So I brought my Coupon $ense box and was the psycho with the scissors in the corner of the dino-playland.  Keeve was running in and out of playland with 5 or 6 little kids who only spoke Spanish.  Isn’t childhood great?  You don’t even have to speak the same language to play together. :o)  While darting in and out of the yellow tubes, my son got a straw jabbed in the back of his mouth.  The pain made his eyes water and the taste of blood lead him to the napkin dispenser. 

So as I’m locating W232 a $1.50 coupon off Doritos Salsa (which is on sale at Safeway for $1.69!!!) Keeve shows up beside me with a rolled up bloody napkin in his mouth.  This first thing I thought was he pulled a tooth out.  Nope.  With napkin wad filling his mouth he pantomimes the straw going in and the tears started.  I did look in his mouth, but I looked at his cheek and saw a little dot…  a microscopic dot.  He continued to change the medical gauze for ten minutes until it stopped bleeding.  I thought he was fine.

We ventured off to Safeway and saved $119 while only spending $53. Thankyouverymuch. Then to pick up Larisa and on to home.  We unloaded groceries and Keeve poured himself a bowl of Trix, because Trix are for kids. The first bite brought on more tears and I wondered if he needed a nap.  Mothers are tele-pathetic sometimes, able to determine the needs of their children with precision.  He said it REALLY hurt.  So I looked again to see if the teeny dot had grown.  Then I saw IT!

OK, I probably should not have yelled, “OH MY WORD!” But I did.  (spoiler warning for those with squeamy stomachs)  There is a 3/8 inch hole in the back of his mouth.  I remembered the over-sized straws at McD’s.  No wonder he cried.  I called the 24-hour nurse… who called back in 78 minutes.  Let’s just refer to her as Speedy.  Speedy said there is nothing that can be done if there is no bleeding.  It will heal on its own.  I told her that it hurts when he eats.  Speedy said to give Keeve pain reliever, jello, milkshakes, pudding and ice cream.  You know, the little poke might be worth THAT diet plan!?!?  Just a thought.

Keeve is on the couch full of banana pudding and blue jello… watching his third movie. He says his throat is “a little better.”  Maybe a milkshake and a few more movies will help.

Blundering Butterfingers

Yesterday I did a Coupon $ense Safeway run.  The targets: Charmin TP, Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal, Nature Harvest bars and eggs.  Of course I also picked up a few dozen other on sale items, but always the pull is the outstanding prices on the C$ Hot Deals.  I mean, please.  The Cinnamon Toast Crunch is normally priced at $2.89 a box.  Safeway had a special for 4/$10.  Then I had a Safeway flyer coupon making them 4/$6.  On top of that I had 75 cent coupons for each of the four boxes…. that are “doubled” to $1.00.  And the grand total for each box was a mere FIFTY CENTS. (An 83% savings) Why don’t they just hand them out on the street corner???

Onward to the broken egg picture.  The 18 count eggs were on sale B1/G1  (buy one, get one free), so 36 eggs were placed delicately in the cart.  At the check out stand, the eggs didn’t fare so well.  They were the last items I was pulling out of the cart and somehow the edge of the top carton caught the side of the grocery cart and out they plopped.  Trying to correct the situation, I gripped the carton firmly enough to hang onto it, but too firmly for the eggs in my G.I. Joe kung-foo grip. 

I have never broken a single egg in a grocery store in forty-two years.  That should count for something.  But no.  I looked up from the slimy mess that was dripping through the cart onto my Charmin TP, and said to the checker and the bag-girl, “Clean up on aisle 3…. I just broke a bunch of eggs.”  The bag-girl immediately grabbed a roll of paper towels and was heading around through an empty check-out lane, but then she disappeared???  What in the world??  Not a good time for a potty break.  She returned a few moments later and said, “I just went to aisle 3 and there weren’t any broken eggs.”  Oh.  See the drippy mess by my shoes???  I kindly replied, “It was a poorly timed joke,” and half smiled at the poor girl as we started wiping together.

The egg shells were still in the bottom of the cart so I picked up each goopy mess and dropped them back into the carton.  But, when I finished there was a vacant spot in the carton.  One egg was MIA.  How could that be?  They wouldn’t fit through the cart slots??  I looked all over and finally lifted up the carton to reveal the culprit, hiding from me!  Eleven or twelve of the 18 were smashed and oozing.  BUT, the whole mess was cleaned up in time for me to pay and run from the store red-faced.  “Did you need help out, Mrs. Crosby?”  Not today!

When I retold the entertaining story to my family, my daughter asked, “Did you have to pay for them?”  “No, broken eggs are absorbed into the dumb shopper fund.”  :o)  Thank God, Safeway has a dumb shopper fund.

Use Drugs and get FREE Goods

Has anyone else caught onto the FREE Gift Cards when you transfer your prescriptions?  I have a monthly script to fill and I am making at least $10 a month if not up to $30 a month by transfering it from pharmacy to pharmacy to pharmacy.  The coupons are in the Sunday paper from CVS, Walgreens, Target, Safeway and Albertsons.  Of course, I have to keep track of it all in my daily planner or I don’t remember where it currently is.  Last month I did a FREE $30 Albertson’s gift card and then used coupons combined with their store sales and got TONS (that would be 2,000 pounds) of FREE groceries.  Specifically cereal, granola bars, popcorn and yogurt.  This month I’m going to CVS for $25.  Yes, I learned all this from Coupon Sense.  They rock my socks.

Shop Strong, Sistahs!

The New Me…. according to my family

Yes, I’ve become the coupon lady.  Relax, I’m not buying cases of cat food for the cat we don’t have just because I have a coupon…..   But I am buying six bottles of Aunt Jemima’s Buttery Syrup in one trip….  well, wouldn’t you if you could buy it at 77% off?  Never in my life have I run out the front door in my PJs… until now.  The explanation… the Sunday morning newspaper coupon books draw me like a fly to fly paper.  Yes, I’ve joined the coupon saving women of Arizona. 

Let me set you straight right up front.  We don’t clip every single blinkin’ coupon, nor do we keep them filed alphabetically in see-through baseball card holding binder pages.  That’s for obsessive compulsive coupon clippers, of which, I am not a card carrying member, and never will be. (unless I’m put in a home later in life….)

I simply found out about a system, called Coupon Sense, that organizes the coupons and the grocery store adds in a tidy, accessible website.  I type in my grocery list.  It spits out a paper telling me what store has the best deals that I’m currently in the market for.  I only cut the coupon if I’m going to use it….. when the item is already on sale.  You can’t knock a system that costs less than two venti frappuccinos and saves you HUNDREDS of DOLLARS. 

Seriously.  I feel compelled to testify.  On my grocery bill the first month, I saved 49%.  YES, SAVED.   Now, keep in mind this was for a family of five, plus a dog, two chickens and too many guppies.  Total cost would’ve been $454.  Store savings: $154 (going when what I needed was on sale!)  Coupon savings: $69 (See, this ain’t the $.25 coupon deal you’re thinking I’m sucked into.) Total spent: $231.  A savings of 49%, thank you very much.  And I didn’t even pick up the FREE mustard…. because we don’t like mustard. My freezer is stocked.  My pantry is bulging.  I’m elated, to say the absolute least.

“Then you must be spending hours getting ready to shop at seventeen different stores,” you think in your sarcastic inner-voice.  Ixnay on the Oicevay.  Ok, it might have taken me two hours because it was my first time doing it…. and so I saved $223 for those two hours.  Can’t beat that with a short stick on a Saturday night.

I’m climbing off my soapbox now.  Breathe easy.  It’s not available in many states yet.  Although, I would recommend some entrepreneur-minded individual to start it in each state.  www.couponsense.com.  If it suits you, great.  (put my name, Linda Crosby, under referral)  If not, great.  Shop strong.  Peace out.

www.LindaCrosby.com