Glad This Week is Almost Over....My Bitchfest

I think I have a manic-depressive aspect to my personality....ok, I see some of you who know me out there rolling your eyes, saying "Duh!" and just plain snickering......so cut it out! ;-)

Anyway, most everyone on the planet feels a sense of letdown after going on vacation, right?
What comes over me when I get back from vacation is a whole other level of letdown......I liken it to depression.
I get sad....sad that the good times are over.....real sad, like want to cry all day sad.....and then reality bites me in the ass and laundry needs doing, meals need cooking, the house needs cleaning, the dogs need looking after and I am here again, alone and having to do all these chores.....with leaky eyes.

And then I sink lower and just don't want to do anything but sit, or sleep, or wander the interwebs......making the chores pile up higher.....which leads me to get more depressed.

And this goes on until I finally snap out of it and get back to living life.
If I'm lucky, I'm only caught up in this cycle of blah for a week or so but it has been known to stretch out to almost a month before.

I tell y'all this to explain why I haven't been very chatty lately and god help me....perky!......ok.....more like "as-perky-as-I-get perky"(which isn't very).

I don't do perky.
Must be my dna or something.

I spent most of this past week sighing deeply and wandering around the house trying to ignore the chores.

I'd start to feel better and then I'd sit down and try to edit the many photos I took while on our Road Trip or upload those lame videos I made and I'd just feel even sadder......because I miss being on that trip and seeing/meeting everyone/doing fun things.

Plus I would also be sad about Tanner not being here.  I didn't get a chance to have a letdown after she left because we left on the Road Trip 4 days after she went home, so we were busy preparing for the Road Trip during that time.
I guess I am doubly sad, mourning the end of 2 fun times of my life.

Yeah, I am a big old emotional mess inside a hard snail's shell......

Then while I was going through my sad/letdown cycle,  annoying and bad shit started happening the middle of this week.
First the very expensive a/c system we had installed in July?  Yah, we come home and turn it on and it's not throwing off cool air.
WTF?!?
We had a heat spell the last couple of days here and by tonight I had it jacked all the way down to 65 degrees and it was cooler outside and no where NEAR 65 degrees in here and didn't even cut the humidity in the air.
Again...WTF?!?!
So now we get to call Sears and bitch about this and want to slap people around over it because I just paid that bill and now I wish I hadn't.
Plus I'm having flashbacks to earlier this year when the 3 week old freezer shit the bed.
PTSD anyone??!

Then the 4 month old tv remote died tonight which sent Hubs over the edge because he couldn't watch his baseball.
Forget that!....what about Project Runway?!?!lolz
So he went and wasted $15 on a universal remote(those things NEVER work!)before ordering a new remote from the tv manufacturer for $40 + shipping a few minutes ago.
Good times......

Shall I add that the mail brought 2 headaches today....
1-the Local tax company has no record of us filing our local taxes.  We don't owe them anything as it's taken out automatically by the employer and it always lines up as accurate but the tax collecting company needs their recordkeeping to be correct.  So Hubs has to take care of that.  It's a hassle but nothing outrageous.  Oh, and Daughter got a notice from them too about her local taxes so having to deal with her form will be a PITA since we have to mail everything to Louisiana to get her signature and then mail it back to them.
More good times.....
2-Got the EOB for our dental plan and the wisdom tooth dentist overcharged us on our copay by about $100 so now I get to go nag his office about a refund.  Oh goody!  I get to call someone on the phone.....one of my FAVORITE things!lol  I bet if I didn't contact them they'd keep my money too. 8-(

Plus I am having problems with my durable medical supplies supplier about my BIpap machine.  Their customer service sucks donkey's ass and I just found out today that we should have been getting bills from them(with co-pays owed)for the last oh.....5 months....but we have yet to see one bill.  Because we weren't getting EOBs or bills I assumed our insurance paid 100% on this stuff.
I am a donkey's ass for thinking this, right? 8-)
The sleep disorders clinic no longer has them as an approved supplier for their patients but once you sign up with one(might be a PA state thing)you are locked into keeping them for your needs for 3 months.  But this shouldn't apply to me since I've used them for 5 months now so I should be able to "fire" them.
But if I do, the 3 months credit toward my 10 month then I don't pay for the BIpap rental until I give it back goes away, and I would end up paying more in rental monies if I switch suppliers now.
Sigh.

Let's see, what else can I bitch about? ;-)

*  I finished paying all the bills for August this week and now I get to add up the damage.  I am HOPING we come out in the black and not the red for this month.  It's anybody's call which way August will have played out with the spending.  The semi-annual car insurance bill hits in August plus we had some unplanned medical bills(wisdom teeth co-pays)and a big check we wrote as our present to the Hub's sister's wedding.  "IF" there is anything leftover this month for the $20K Savings Challenge it is going to be tiny. 8-(

* How about the fact that I gained 12 POUNDS while on vacation?
Yikes!
Not so bad because I already lost 9 of it.  I chalk that part of it up to eating restaurant food(over salted/high sodium content=retain water)for 11 days(except for 2 meals of home cooking).
Let's chalk the last 3 lbs. up to too much alcohol and fried foods and I am on the way to losing that piece of it.

*  And the last part of this week was hot and humid, thus making my feet swell and feel like crap so it's been hard to get much walking in.

On the good side of things.....

I did go to a medical appointment today and I finally went grocery shopping, the 1st trip since we got back a week ago.  I figured the store would be cooler than the house today so why not loiter a bit in there. 8-)
I got some good deals(a few coupons the store sent me in the mail, and some instant discounts on bakery and meats).  All totaled I spend $108.48 on $191.82 worth of groceries, for a 43% savings rate.
Weis PMITA Markets had London Broils Bogo this week plus I had a snail mailed Q $2/$10 meat purchase so I got 5.65 lbs. of beef for $14.17 or about $2.50 lb.
They also had party size Lay's snacks BOGO($4.99)and I had a snail mailed Q $1/1 item so I got 2 mega-sized bags for $3.99.  If we have company Labor Day weekend or if #2 Son needs snacks I am set now.
Arnold breads were BOGO as well($4.29)and I had a $1/1 Q so 2 loaves of good bread cost me $3.29.  I also picked up some preformed burgers for cheaper than just plain old ground beef after Instant Meat discount Qs.  The flyer had some Qs as well so I got a hunk of cream cheese for free, another bag of chips for .99¢ and a case of Poland Spring water for $1.99.  Potatoes were BOGO and Jamestown bacon was 3/$9($3 each....not bad but not great but we need it for BLTs to use up all these tomatoes here).
I did splurge today and buy a pint of gelato for myself....it was on sale for $3.99.
Bad Sluggy bad!
Bananas, Cantaloupe, Watermelon, bagels 50% off, muffins 50% off, chuck steak $1 off, shrimp burgers $3 off, 2 1lb. bags of shredded cheese, sour cream, 2 bags of frozen French fries(for #2 son), a second cream cheese hunk, some deli turkey meat, a hunk of green leaf lettuce, a bag o' salad 50% off and a big box of greens 50% off round out the groceries procured today.

That trip and the unloading and putting it all away in the heat just about did me in though.

Can I just go back on vacation now??? lolz

Ok, I'll shut up now and go start adding up the receipts from the road trip and see how far off the tracks we went with the spending there.
Oy!

Sluggy




 

This Was Too Good Not to Share

It would be hilarious if it wasn't so close to the truth.
I feel for all those Millennials out there in the coming years.....

 

Sluggy

31 Years Ago Today.....

....I married my best friend.

 

 

We met in college. He went to Johns Hopkins University and me at Goucher College.
We met at "The Rat" on Disco Night.  He asked my girlfriend to dance and she declined.  Then he got it right and asked me to dance.

By the Spring of my freshman year, we were inseparable.....

Our relationship survived being separated during the Summers while in college.  He worked in Baltimore while I worked all over New England in Summer Stock theater those 3 years.....

 

 

After graduation I moved back to Virginia Beach to live with my mother and work as a waitress and also pick up theater jobs when they became available.  He moved to Charlottesville to go to graduate school.
Guess what I did on my days off?  If you said, "drive to Charlottesville" you would be correct.
Somebody had to go balance his checkbook, right?

1 week after we married, in the Fall of his second year in Grad school I moved to North Carolina and started and then dropped out of Grad school.  A week later I moved in with my new husband in Charlottesville to his bachelor pad.  That 1st year of marriage was spent living with the hubs and his 2 roommates.   It was my version of "2 and a half men".....

Hubs finished his Masters and we relocated down to Virginia Beach in my mother's townhouse until we got established and found our own place.

 

Unfortunately things didn't work out quite the way we wanted in Virginia so after New Year's Day in 1983 we loaded what little we owned and hauled it up to Northeastern New Jersey to move into the basement of Hub's parent's house.
After finding work and 8 months in the basement, we rented out the other half of Hub's oldest brother's 2 family home in West Orange, NJ.

 

Hubs career took off(and I worked various jobs plus did some self employed type things to make ends meet)and after 2 years we thought we were ready to buy a house and in 1986 we moved to Dingman Township PA, outside of Milford in the Poconos.

That is where we learned the meaning of WINTER as that area averaged 100 inches of snow per Winter.
We also learned how expensive electric heat could be and the joys of losing Power in the dead of Winter on a regular basis. 

Unfortunately, money was real tight there(who knew house expenses were so much!?!)so I got a job or two while Hubs commuted to NJ 5 days a week for his job.

We got pregnant a few years later but I suffered a miscarriage when I developed appendicitis.  Some fertility treatments followed but with no luck.  We became foster parents and I quit my job to stay home.
While fostering a year or so later, we finally became pregnant again.

Our oldest son was born in 1991, our daughter followed quickly after in 1992 and our youngest son in 1996.

 

The years passed.
We survived congenital defects with 2 of our kids and the sleepless baby years.
We barely got through the potty training. 
We lost a beloved pet and had to pass another pet on to another family.
Vacations happened, schooling happened and we lived life.

Our house seemed to grow smaller as the kids grew and the days went by until our 1000 sq. ft. house just wouldn't do any longer.
In 2000 we moved further west into PA into a bigger town(and a bigger house) for the opportunities it would afford our kids.

More years passed as the kids grew some more and we entered the dreaded Teen years.
We survived teaching them to drive and the high school drama.
We survived more pets(4 dogs anyone?)and saw 2 of them go over the Rainbow bridge.
And then the kids started moving away from home for college and beyond and the house sighed in relief and then started growing ever so larger. 
And Hub's career prospered some more and we were busy living life.

The next thing you know, I turn around and it's 31 years since we said, "I do." and I wonder where the heck the time went?


Which brings us to today, 31 years into this journey.

I can't wait to see where life takes us next! 8-)

Sluggy

WTF is Up With the USPS?!?

I'll tell y'all I am real upset right now with my local US Postal Service.

I had 2 giveaway boxes to mail off when I returned home from the Great Summer Road Trip of 2013.
One to Judy for winning the Boring Blog Box Giveaway and one to Linda for winning the School Supplies Giveaway.
So I packed everything up, printed out shipping labels and scheduled a Mail Carrier pickup for Monday, August 26th.
And Hubs put the boxes out on the front porch that morning at 7am.

And come 7pm at night, those boxes were still sitting on my front porch.
I checked at 3pm and the mail carrier had been by and left mail in the mailbox and had not taken the packages.  I left them out for 4 more hours after that, since if it's a heavy mail day, my regular carrier will circle back around to get packages after she finishes her route.

Still no pick-up by 7pm so I brought the boxes in and figured it was a substitute carrier that day.  This has happened before with subs.....they either forget to pick-up packages or they don't get the paperwork for it for some reason.

So I went back online to reschedule the carrier pick-up for Tuesday, Aug. 27th.

I get up this morning and check my email and this is what was in my inbox from the fine folks at the USPS......I have blacked out my name/address.   Click on it to embiggen.

Yes, it's an email confirmation that the USPS picked up my 2 packages on Aug. 26th, received in my inbox at 4:12 am.

But guess what is still sitting out on my front porch??

Click on the second photo to embiggen and read the note I left.....

I also emailed the USPS and complained about the slack service and downright lying to their customers.

It's no wonder I hate dealing with large corporations......

Sluggy

Bread & Soup is What's for Dinner

When the broccoli from the garden needs picking and you have a cool-ish day, why not make Broccoli Cheddar Soup?

That's just what I did today......I only needed 1/3rd of a brick of Velveeta from the store(cost under $2 for that much).  I had all the other ingredients at home.

And I cut my French bread recipe in half and made 2 loaves of nice crusty bread.  The recipe makes 4 loaves but with only 3 of us at home now, that is way too much bread.

No bread machine needed......just my two hands and a little elbow grease......

A simple and filling dinner and pretty darn cheap too. 8-))

And there are plenty of leftovers for later this week.

Tomorrow we eat some on the tomato crop coming in now......

Sluggy