i was drawn to the ocean

Gratitude List:

~ Milena's love and appreciation
~ Milena did a lot of dishes tonight, and gave Avery and Evan a bath!
~ not spiting the face
~ managed to get everything i needed at the store (except what i forgot:  mushrooms, sour cream, and now we need more chocolate syrup, too) for VERY little money
~ remembered to put the trash and recyclables out tonight
~ Milena scooped the litter box tonight

There.  i put 6 things on my grat list in honour of it now being 06/06/06.  And so far, i think i'm okay with all that.  Perhaps i really have gotten over my irrational 6 issues.

In other news, my head hurts like HELL.  i have no idea why.  Maybe a tension headache... *shrugs*

After not-very-restful sleep for either of us, Milena and i got up this morning and i took her to work so that i would have the car to go to my ortho. appointment. V kindly agreed to keep Avery for me, and Evan was at school.

( stuff about my knees )

Tonight we had fresh strawberries with angel food cake and Cool Whip and Hershey's Lite chocolate syrup. Mmmmmmmmmmmmm the delectabiltiy. But i'm getting ahead of myself...

Slept in this morning, which was very nice. Then, after lunch, Matthew and i went to the grocery store. Once again i had a meager budget to work with but i think i did pretty well. i AM the bargain woman! i got bananas, strawberries, corn on the cob, pork chops, ground turkey, salad dressing, romaine lettuce, cereal, milk, raspberry sorbet, black beans, tomato sauce, batteries, tuna, bread, soup, and lots of other stuff and i only spent around $70! This is buying for 5+ for the week, mind you. And last week, i only had about $60 to work with. Do i rock or what. :-D

We came home from the store and put the groceries away, and then we all headed outside to do some work in our pitiful yard. Pulled a TON of weeds, found a dead carpenter bee that i'm saving for Tara, and a perfectly halved walnut that i'll put in the offering some time, i think. Our Yule tree that we'd set outside back in December (undecorated at this point, of course!) was nicely dried out, so Milena cut the branches off and then set to sawing off a section of the trunk for this year's Yule log. The boys took the branches to the compost. Our compost is doing much better now, i think, now that we've got a lot of weeds and dry grass, etc. in there. We really need a rake and some good sturdy garden shear-type things. We've got some seeds to plant...maybe next weekend, depending on the weather. If i'm not in too much pain, i'll probably get back out there tomorrow and work on some more weeding. i also want to clean the downstairs bathroom and mop the kitchen floor tomorrow. And as always, there's lots of laundry to do. But i'm getting way ahead of myself again...

So we came in from the yard, filthy and tired, and i made a cop-out dinner of Manwich sandwiches, chips, potato salad. And then we had our strawberry angel food cake deliciousness. i did the dishes while Milena gave the boys haircuts and baths. i've been playing around online and i think in a few minutes we're going to watch some TV we'd taped before going to bed.

( i am behind on some grat-posting though... )

Grats on the correct day for once!

Tonight's Gratitude List:
~ lingering hugs with Milena
~ got some household stuff done that really needed to be done
~ Matthew was a great help at the store, as he always is
~ all the boys were good today
~ affection from my boys
~ justbarelybytheskinofmyteeth managed to get what we really needed from the store with the little cash that i had
~ the Irises
~ a conversation with athanasios whom i don't get to talk with very much
~ my friends and chosen family
~ pride accompanied by a sense of accomplishment

Sunday Night Grats:

1. Matthew was SO good while he was here over the weekend
2. A very pleasant weekend with Milena and the boys
3. Shelby took Avery and Evan out to play in the snow the other night
4. Shelby lit the crisis candle when we were out in the bad weather the other day
5. Shelby was in a really good mood this weekend and even watched a movie with us
6. Got Evan's mittens done
7. i can knit mittens now!
8. my friends and chosen family
9. hope
10. coupons
11. Matthew was very helpful (as he usually is) at the store
12. i managed to stay within my extremely meager grocery budget (i had less than $70 to spend to feed our family of 5 for the week) and still got everything we needed including some higher priced items like razor blades
13. humourous moments with my kids
14. taking lorazepam less often

i just got back from the grocery store. i took Avery and Evan with me. And it was nap time. Yeah, i'm that dumb. But not as dumb as the bagger.

He put my bread on the BOTTOM of my cart underneath milk, canned goods, etc. Argh! What an asinine thing to do! i am going to call the store manager and complain. i didn't discover it until i was putting my groceries in the van and i didn't have the energy to drag Avery and Evan back in there to bitch about it in person.

Well, at least i didn't spend much money. Finances were really tight this week and i only had $55 on me. My total came to $50.19. This is good because we need to get a few other items from Target.

i love autumn. i love autumn decorations, especially natural ones like pumpkins and cornstalks and mums. i really, really wanted to decorate our porch really cute for autumn, especially since we're having guests over this weekend. But it is so damned expensive. i just can't justify spending money on aesthetics when we're this broke. le sigh.

In better news, the West Chester Coldstone is now offering Cake Batter ice cream again! And it tastes just as good as it did before, when it was all salmonella-y. :-)