October 28, 2022
1. I made a giant 4 lb batch of beef-turkey chili that everyone, even Smol, loved. My taste buds are being weird again so all the lovely melded flavors were lost on me this round. But we had enough for a good dinner, enough to put up a meal to freeze for a busy week, and enough for a small meal later. Not enough to share with our friends as I originally intended so now I know to make an extra lb or two next time.
2. The kids got their flu vaccines and there weren’t any tears! JB opted for the FluMist, I didn’t know that was a live vaccine, and Smol didn’t get a choice but they were a champ for the jab anyway. Now it’s just me left for the flu, and JB needs to get their bivalent booster.
3. I scrubbed our bathrooms until they were about 80% clean and gleaming. At that I needed a 2 hour nap after. I’m glad that I stopped there instead of pushing for the full 100% because I’d be useless the rest of this weekend.
4. Halloween scavenger prep included buying prize stickers from a small business (check), making little tissue paper ghosts from used tissue paper (check) and finding hiding places for them (not yet). Gonna call that progress!
5. I stretched a pound of bacon for a week: breakfast egg and bacon sandwiches, breakfast burritos, adding some crunch to avocado turkey sandwiches that PiC got from work free. Usually it all goes into one giant bacon pasta. Nomz.
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October 21, 2022
1. We got our bivalent boosters! I’m just waiting for them to be available for JB now that it’s approved for their age group.
2. Mom win: JB really wanted to decorate a pumpkin this year and I remembered in time to get them one. $5, except there was a mysterious basket discount of $1 which made it $4. I got 35¢ back on that Safeway receipt. I haven’t cancelled Ibotta yet so may as well make back a little bit of cash with that data.
3. Moriah‘s girlfriend needs gender affirming surgery and they need some help funding it.
4. This show is Very Cute and also they have an all Native writers room which is pretty amazing: ‘Spirit Rangers’ creator made the show she longed for as a Native American child
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October 14, 2022
1. I normally do all the laundry and run the dishwasher. I quite enjoy the former and happen to be best placed to note when the latter is ready, but PiC did all of it this weekend before I could decide where to slot it into my day. Part of me wanted to be annoyed he stole my jobs, but I’m choosing to focus on the fact that when I’m extra tired and need a hand, my partner is going to step up and that doesn’t mean I’m lesser for it.
2. JB’s been participating fully in their self defense classes and that makes me feel good about the time and money we’re spending on them.
3. Marian Call is having a living room concert! Join the concert, pay-as-you-can, replay available for 24 hours.
Before we had kids, we went to Marian Call’s intimate concerts at Comic Con and she was absolutely wonderful. Support a fantastic Alaskan musician!
Challenges this week: still sick. 🤢
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October 7, 2022
1. PiC’s bike had a flat (boo) but I remembered that I had run across an old REI gift card circa 2018 when I was working on some other chores. It covered the two inner tubes with 89 cents to spare. Since gift cards don’t expire, back into the bin it goes until the next REI adventure calls!
2. I’ve balanced our planned income and expenses for the rest of the year. I just need to adjust one rough spot where we’ll be short $700, briefly. It may be a matter of timing of debits and credits but we’ll see. Fingers crossed!
3. Our 2023 spreadsheet is set up and ready to go when January rolls around. There is something deeply satisfying about having a fresh spreadsheet waiting to be populated. At least for something I enjoy populating.
4. I took some notes from this chili recipe, and a couple on the fly liberties, to modify my current favorite chili recipe: omit water entirely, use baking soda with the beef, spice the cooking ground meat first before adding the liquidy ingredients and it produced quite a tasty chili. I had every intention of saving half to freeze but the family ate it all by Day 2.
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September 30, 2022
1. I adore my soot sprites bag, a birthday present from a dear friend. It holds exactly everything I need for our twice daily dog walks..
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September 23, 2022
1. “Because we’re a nation of sociopaths, we’ve never seen a law we didn’t try to break.” Favorite quote this week from The Cosmic Avenger.
2. The T-Mobile Tuesdays app doesn’t usually yield much for us but last Tuesday they had a promo code for 10 free prints at Walgreens and I’ve been needing just a few prints. Savings: $3.84.
3. I preemptively ordered three dinners for Bentocart delivery because we had so much going on this weekend before an extra heavy week. Normally I wouldn’t have scheduled anything before a week like this but we had a dear friend in town so we had to embrace this rare occurrence and not punish myself by forcing myself to socialize AND put in extra hours cooking to prep for the week.
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September 16, 2022
1. I’ve made a little more progress in setting up our household computer in case my work computer bites the dust. I was fighting with our password keeper, though, that’s still not working quite the way it should. Once that’s settled, I will do a work day on that computer to make sure it’s an adequate substitute.
2. I made JB’s Christmas present!!! It needs just a little more work to secure the fraying fabric but I finally powered through my hesitation and self doubt and made them a pair of packing cubes. It would have been cheaper (time wise) to just buy them a pair of $10 packing cubes but these are made with that Hello Kitty fabric I couldn’t resist so I believe this is called making the most of what you have 😬😁
This settles two things for my holiday anxiety brain: they will now have packing cubes to use for annual travel and I’ll be done with their present once all the bits are tidied up. Now I have to get going on the last remaining gifts. I’m also tempted to make myself a new cube too.
3. We’ve come up negative on our weekly COVID tests.
4. Even only three days a week, and even with how hard the transition has been, daycare has been such a huge help. We can get more work done, reducing that frantic hamster in a wheel feeling we get every single day, and I can even cook dinners some nights of the week instead of just hoping we can throw something together from the pantry. Five days a week would probably feel like a miracle but I’m not yet prepared to pay $2600 a month for that. 😓
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