Happenings This Past Week at Chez Sluggy

What a week!

I am worn out.
Between my usual stuff(cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping and deal hunting)and all my new caregiver chores, plus all the Holiday "getting ready" stuff,  it doesn't leave a lot of time for blogging OR "me" time.
Just sitting down, closing my eyes and doing nothing for 10 minutes is my idea of heaven lately.

On Tuesday we had some excitement since it was my Daughter's 24th birthday.
She wanted to go out to the newish Mexican restaurant that opened up here earlier in the year.  This worked out well since I had a $25 gift certificate I had bought a few months ago for a 50% discount.

Daughter had a shot and a beer to start things off and then some dish with a mole sauce with a side of fried plantain.

I'm not a big Mexican food fan but it was Taco Tuesday($2 tacos)so I got 3 tacos(1 carne asada/2 al pastor) and a side of rice and beans.

This restaurant is sort of dark inside so when my tacos came I put some lime and a verde sauce on and started munching down.
A few bites into taco #1 I noticed it tasted funny.....funny bad.
By the time I finished taco #1 it finally hit me-Cilantro!

I thought the green on top was finely shredded lettuce or parsley but no, it was fresh cilantro.

It turns out that I am one of the 4-14% of the population on earth who share a group of olfactory-receipt genes called OR6A2, that pick up on the smell of aldehyde chemicals that are both found in cilantro and soap.

Yes, cilantro makes food taste like Ivory soap to me.

So I spent some time picking all the cilantro out of my tacos.....

The Daughter happily ate my inedible tacos and she gave me a few bits of her enchiladas and mole sauce.  1 soapy taco, a few bits of enchilada and my rice and beans was plenty for me.

Then since I mentioned that it was Daughter's birthday, the staff came out to sing Happy Birthday, make her wear a sombrero and attempted to set the building on fire with a firecracker in her slice of cake...EEK!



After extinguishing the rocket Daughter ate her cake and I paid the bill and we made the treacherous drive home up the mountain in a snowstorm.
Fun times.....
Of course I had to get in on the hat action too. ;-)

On Wednesday I managed to roll some more coins.........

Another $10 added to my rolled coins for the year bringing me to $97.50.
So close to $100 in coins for the year.

On Wednesday we also got a delivery of meat.......

My brother and his wife sent us an Omaha Steaks gift bundle for Christmas.
Unexpected but yummy.

Of course it would have been nice to know I was getting 18 lbs. of frozen foods ahead of time so I could make sure I had room in the freezer for it all!!

Luckily, this time of year, my entire garage can sub for a deep freezer since it's below freezing here in PA.
Between eating some of this the past 4 days and making room in the freezer we've about made room for what is left.  Of course we saved the steaks first!! lolz


On Thursday Hubs had his 1 week post op appointment with the orthopedic surgeon.

 Here's the x-ray from the ER.  Oh he did a fine job breaking that leg, yes he did!
Spiral fractures of both bones...ouch.

Here's the x-ray taken after a metal rod was inserted into Hubs leg plus some screws into his ankle area during surgery.........

The leg in real life with sutures at various spots.  The incision on the knee is where the metal rod or "nail" was put in.

The next day Hubs went on YouTube and tried to watch a video of the surgery he had.  When the doctor started hammering the metal nail into the patient's knee he had to turn it off. lolz

Hmm, another patient in the casting room who didn't look too well.....hehehe

We go back in 2 weeks to get Hubs' sutures out.
We won't talk about how I almost killed Hubs once we got home, getting him from the car to the house.  No we won't go there......

Friday evening Daughter went to pick up College Boy from school after her last final exam.  College Boy's exams were finished on Thursday so he got to party before leaving for Winter break.  They beat a snowstorm that was heading East that evening/early Saturday morning.

Saturday and Sunday was cleaning, cooking, laundry, patient care-the usual.  Throw in some shopping and meeting folks who bought 2 of the fragrance sets I sold on the local FB yard sale site and it was a bursting full weekend.

Remember those fragrance sets I bought at Rite-Aid?  Well "buy" isn't quite accurate since I paid with Plenti points and received cash rebates too.  Ok, I "spent down "$21.74 in points when all was said and done.
I sold two of the sets for $22 cash so now I "made" .26¢ on that transaction plus I still have two fragrance sets for free to use for gifts.  That all worked out exceptionally well! 8-)))

A few Christmas cards got written and addressed as well on Sunday and they got mailed on Monday.

On Monday Hubs had his eye dr. appointment and shot. ouch.
I shlepped him into the car, out of the car and into the dr. office, back and forth in a wheelchair through the humongous office from waiting rooms to exam rooms and back again x 4.  Then he had a reaction to the shot so we got to visit at the office for an extra 30 minutes.
Fun times.....
Then it was shlepping him back into the car to home and back into the house.
I don't know who was more exhausted after that excursion, Hubs or me.


As for the Christmas tree..............

A space I cleared out for the tree.

It is up and lit, albeit fuzzy.........

I am glad now we decided to put up the small tree instead of the huge tree.  With the big tree up it would be difficult for Hubs to navigate with his walker in there where he is sleeping/recuperating.

Perhaps a few ornaments will actually get ON the tree this week if I do it.
Nobody here(the kids)seems to want to decorate and I just am stretched too thin to do it at the moment.
meh.
I bet if I said that no presents would be under the tree unless they decorated it that would get their butts in gear, eh?

And that catches everyone up on the highlights of a Week at Chez Sluggy.

I am soooo behind getting Christmas related chores finished at this point I can't worry about that any longer.
What gets done, gets done and what doesn't, well, it too will get done eventually...or not.

Maybe I just need to get lit like the tree and stop worrying about anything else. ;-)

I hope everyone is doing better than I am at keeping up.
All I can say is if you aren't in shape for the Holidays yet, don't sweat it.
Don't be so hard on yourself and just enjoy the season no matter.


Sluggy

What and How I Spent My Week

Well I can tell you what I didn't do this week......I didn't spend much money on anything other than food/paper goods! lol

I went to Rite-Aid early in the week, but that doesn't count because I don't actually spend money there, do I?
Hubs and I went to Big Lots last Sunday, as they had their 20% off Everything in the Store Day.
We stocked up on some food/paper goods, as they were cheaper there than even when they go on sale at the grocery stores around here.
That came out to $67.12.

Napkins(because we always need those), brown sugar(holiday baking ahead), and some canned goods.
I make no secret that I am not a big fan of canned foods, at least not canned veggies outside of corn and water chestnuts.  But tomato products, olives and green chilies are another story!  I like to keep these 3 types of products stockpiled.
Especially in the tomato arena, I love to keep paste on hand.  It's so handy...duh...on hand, handy...lol  I find tomato paste is the jack-of-all-trades in the kitchen.  It can be used in so many ways in so many dishes.  Why pay more for pizza sauce.....you've got a can of paste, garlic and spices and access to water?....you've got pizza sauce.  You need an easy sauce thickener?...tomato paste.  Need to extent a sauce to feed more?.....tomato paste.  Need to help or fix a meatloaf and out of tomato sauce?.....dilute some tomato paste and cover that ugly meatloaf.
If tomato paste was a person, I'd marry it. 8-)
I also love green chiles when I do Mexican style dishes(and even beyond Mexican).  But access to fresh chiles here in PA?  Not happening.  And those tiny cans in the grocery store?....You'd think they were filled with gold instead with what they charge.  So any time I can find them cheaply, I buy them.
I also picked up some cornbread mix and pancake mix cheap.  I know I can make my own mix just as cheaply, if not cheaper.  I buy these for my family to use or for when I am rushed to get something on the table.  I try to encourage the kids to cook things for themselves and if I have a box with directions on it that's already to pour out and use, they are more likely to cook it if they are hungry.  I should make up batches of my own pancake mix and such but as soon as I do it, the kids will never eat another pancake.
Seriously.....they would do that!  They drive me crazy that way.


I also picked up a few Christmas presents at Big Lots.  Now I need to spend some time going through what I have picked up through the year and start calculating where we stand with the Christmas budget for 2012.  That should keep me busy and out of the stores wandering around, being tempted to buy crap I don't need NEXT week.

I took #2 Son driving a bit this week, since he still needs hours of practice before he can take his driver's test for his license.  Of course we hit some cemeteries while we were out and I got some Find A Grave photo requests fulfilled and took some extra shots of headstones to pass along to other memorials on that site.
The only spending(other than on gas)was $3.39 for fast food for a starving 16 year old.  We justified it by calling it Drive-Thru Window practice.......

We got Chinese take-out on Thursday night for dinner.  There was $34 out of our Eating Out part of the budget.

Besides the Usual daily stuff I do, there was some working on stockpile organizing and some changing out the wardrobe to the Fall/Winter clothing.  Still have some items to go through with that.

We finished pulling up the garden this morning.  We had a severe frost last night so many of my Collards didn't survive but I was able to harvest a shopping bag full of the smaller leaves.

 I gleaned some Morning Glory seed pods that had dried out already, off those flower vines before Hubs yanked it from the deck railing too.
If I can get these seeds to germinate next Spring, that's a money savings.  Yay!

We'll be attending a local Church auction this afternoon.  I talked about that last year HERE.  I'm hoping to get some more goodies this year.  Wish us luck bidding! 8-)

Other than a quart of milk I had Hubs bring home, I've spent $0 at the grocery stores this week.  And we've eaten at home 6 out of 7 days.  Tonight is a frugal pasta and sauce dinner plus leftover veggies in the fridge.  The Collards are on the menu for Sunday dinner but I'm still undecided on what to fix with them.....maybe a pork chop or two?

Oh, I almost forgot to add that I bought gas this week.  I drive so few miles that I can usually fill my minivan tank once a month(unless Hubs or the Daughter uses my car for work that month).  I had 80 gas points from Weis PMITA Markets that had to be used this week.  The timing was right so I filled up on Sunday.  I saved $12.42 on my gas fill-up.  Go me!

I'm off to get ready for the auction now.

Sluggy