Frugal Friday....the May 15th Edition

Well, well, well!
Another week in lockdown and another week trying to be fugal.
Let's see what passed for frugal around Chez Sluggy this week......

*  While I missed that great copy paper deal at Staples(free after member rewards back)I did find a great deal on packing tape........

4 packs of heavy-duty tape with 6 rolls per pack so 24 rolls of tape.   It was something like 41% off and free shipping so I jumped on that deal!
We go through a lot of packing tape here at Chez Sluggy between shipping out Giveaway boxes, shipping gifts to family and friends and the occasional eBay sale.  I was down to my next to last roll before I saw this deal.
I also bought 10 reams of copy paper too(on sale for less than $4 per ream)because we were very low.
My subtotal was over $80 so I got an additional $20 off my order so with tax it all came to $70.97.
I thought I had gone through my rebate portal site but evidently I forgot. oops!  That would have been $1.41 back....oh well.  It won't break us. ;-)

*  Remember that 2.5 lbs. of scallions I got at the restaurant supply store a few weeks back?  Well I kept one of the bulb ends and put it in a bowl of water.........

And it sprouted!  I need to get this into the garden so it can keep going.

*  I had to go to Dollar Tree for cards.  Talk about a cleaned out card rack!  Geez....
I did find 2 food items to buy there.......

2 large boxes of lemon Jell-O.  Total spent $2.00 on the food budget.  I like to have Jell-O in the pantry for a light dessert in the Summer months or for delicate stomach issues.

*  I found money!
Not much this week because I didn't go many places and the few I did go there wasn't any change laying on the floors mostly....except for Rite-Aid.

Found this penny at R-A last Saturday when I went to go buy myself some perfume.  It was in front of the  register counter.

And I found this one tucked halfway under the floor mat in front of the other register again at R-A when I picked up an Rx on Thursday.

Found Money This Week...... .02¢

Found Money This Year so far....$45.08

* This came in the mail this past week.........

a 15% off your purchase coupon for Ollie's(Good Stuff Cheap!)good until the middle of June.
Actually we got THREE of these coupons under 3 different account numbers.  Before anybody starts yelling about how I am bating the system, I never signed up for 3 accounts there, only 1.  I don't know how or why I got three of the same coupon and I may actually use them all if I get a chance. 8-)

*  I haven't been to R-A except for drugs and I haven't been to Weis(PMITA)Markets at ALL this past week(yet-may go today because I still can't find any yeast and I need OJ)but we did go out to P and R Discounters on Thursday/yesterday after an unsuccessful hunt for Collard plants(hard to find up here in Yankeeland).

I spent around $75(haven't sat down to add it up with the Dollar Tree spending)at P and R and here are the best deals I got......

Fresh broccoli for .99¢ lb. and it actually looked decent.

I got lucky as they were just stocking what little meat they had to put out so I grabbed 2 items- 1lb. of ground chicken breast for $1.99(I'll add to ground beef for tacos or something)and a bottom round roast steak, just over a pound of it and it was $4.99 per lb.
Before this pandemic and the meat shortage/prices rising I'd never considered bottom round roast for that price a good deal.
I'll probably make beef and broccoli tonight.

 The best deal yesterday was containers of fresh blackberries for .49¢ each.  I got Hubs 2 of them to have with his cereal or oatmeal in the morning.

 I also got this creamer and 2 boxes of "healthy" rice crispy treats with blueberries for Hubs.
All were .99¢ each.  Good deal considering what any "Smashmallow" brand item costs at full retail.
*for Jen G.  PandR had TONS of tofu-and none of it spicy either.  You need to come shop here! lolz

I also got 1.5 lbs. of Pastrami and .50 lb. of chicken breast lunch meats sliced at their deli counter and 2 Roasted chickens.
We had 3/4 of 1 chicken last night reheated for dinner with stuffing and brussels sprouts.  I'll use the 1/4  of chicken in a pot pie in the next few days and the other roasted chicken will become chicken and dumplings at some point.
I can also make Pastrami Reubens with some of the Pastrami as Hubs and Ex-College Boy would like that for dinner one night soon. ;-)
So that makes 5 more dinners I've got on my list of possibilities now(reubens, beef/broccoli, pot pie, chicken/dumplings, tacos)besides the roast chicken we already had. ;-)

That's about all I have for this week.
Staying home, turning off the heat for most of this week in the house, digging in the yard, going down genealogy rabbit holes online and not eating out/take-out(mostly)....what's been my new normal(most of it old normal really).
Hubs and I decided that we each got half of that Stimulus check for personal use since we didn't need it to pay bills(other than feeding Ex-CB and all since we don't charge him rent).  We each moved our half into our private accounts.  I know he'll spend his in short order but I am hanging onto mine for now.

What frugal wins did y'all have this past week?
Tell us all about it!

Sluggy

Rite-Aid Last Saturday, Spending BC & Getting Myself Something

I figured I wouldn't get any gifties from my kids for Mother's Day,  I am so hard to buy for so they don't even try.
I guilt-ed Hubs into buying me this hanging basket of mini-petunias when we picked up the veggie plants last week.

So I went to Rite-Aid on Saturday and bought myself some perfumes.

There was a "Spend $40 Get $10 off" Q in the weekly ad that week.  I got 20% discount off the regular price as they weren't on sale BUT each bottle gave back $10 in Bonus Cash and I had $33.50 in BC on my card to burn.

2 x Vera Wang perfumes for 24.23 ea.after 20% dicount=$48.46
$10 off with Q=$38.46 +$2.34 sales tax=$40.80

I used $33.50 Bonus Cash so spent $7.30 out of my WAM to finish paying for this.
I earned back $20(2 x $10 any perfume over $21.99)in new BC.

Not a free or great deal(Who's getting those these days, am I right?lol)but I was able to roll the BC and still have a decent amount going forward.

Sluggy

Me & Alex Haley.....A Genealogy Post-Part 1

I mentioned that I read Alex Haley's magnum opus work "Roots" back in 2018.
The Hollywood crowd had recently done a remake that year of the 'made for tv' miniseries which aired back in 1977 that was hella popular back then and won a slew of tv industry awards.
A popular bit of history and entertainment if not quite accurate in all aspects.   After the book was published in 1976, claims of plagiarism and lawsuits by other authors and claims by genealogists of bad research would follow Mr. Haley to his grave.

First a little about the man, Alex Haley.

Alexander Haley was born in Ithaca, New York in 1921.
His family lived in Henning Tennessee, where his mother was from, for a time before returning to Ithaca NY.  Haley's father was Simon Haley, a professor at Alabama A & M University and Simon's mother, Bertha George Palmer Haley was a well read woman who encouraged her children to learn.

Alex Haley and I share a cousin connection through his maternal side.  It is a horrible way to be connected as a cousin(and nothing I am proud of)but you have to understand American history(particularly in the South in this case)and the flawed people who inhabited this part of the country and the times, and whom we come from.

At age 15 Alex was enrolled in Alcorn State in MS and the next year went on to matriculate at Elizabeth City State College in NC.  Then he told his parents he was dropping out of college so his father convinced Alex to join the military once he turned 18.  So in 1939 Alex joined the US Coast Guard and had a successful 20 year career there.

He served during WWII in the Pacific theater and eventually attained the rank of Chief Petty Officer 1st Class by his retirement in 1959. During the war he found a love for writing and once the war was over he requested and gained a transfer to the field of journalism within the Coast Guard.  Before Alex Haley came along the U.S. Coast Guard did not have the rank of Chief Petty Officer.  Because of his writing skills and accolades the rank was created for him.

Once out of military life Alex worked his way up to become a Senior Editor at Reader's Digest.  He also wrote for Playboy.  He ghostwrote the book, "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" with Malcolm X, which was published in 1965.
In 1973 Alex Haley wrote the screenplay for one of the "blaxploitation" films popular in that era called, "Super Fly T.N.T.", a sequel to the highly successful 1972 film, "Super Fly".

In 1976 Haley published a novel "Roots:An American Family".  It was called a novel based on one of Alex Haley's maternal lines, that family going back to his first ancestor to step foot on America, a man called Kunte Kinte kidnapped from The Gambia in Africa in 1767 and brought to the New World to the Maryland colony.
"Roots" the miniseries was so popular that a sequel called, "Roots:The Next Generations" was aired on ABC, that continued to follow another of his maternal family's line, that Haley family's journey from the 1880's to the 1960's and Alex Haley's recounting of his journey back to Kunte Kinte's village in Africa after the Malcolm X autobiography was published.

"Roots", both the novel and the tv series were also responsible for a surge of interest in Americana for regular people to take to researching their genealogy.  It wasn't until the internet came along in the 1990's though that amateur genealogy really took off.

I remember watching "Roots" on tv when it came out in 1977 on my family's small color tv in our den.  It fascinated me(I've since watched it as an adult and oh boy, the production values were so bad!lol)just like 130 million other American viewers.
Little did I know, that as a just turned 18 year old high school Senior, that I was watching a show about people related to me(albeit distantly)and that Alex Haley was my 9th cousin 1x removed.

As everyone who has read the book or seen the show knows Kunte Kinte was kidnapped near his village in Africa and brought to Maryland aboard the British slave ship the Lord Ligonier and was sold to John Waller, a wealthy planter from Spotsylvania County, Virginia(outside of Fredericksburg VA).  In the tv series they changed the name of the slaveholding family to Reynolds from Waller.  Maybe because the then living in 1970's Wallers in Spotsylvania Virginia had enough clout to make them change the family name in the show(one was a District Court Judge by the way)?  I don't know but this newspaper article appeared around the time the tv show aired in the Washington Post with an interview with then Judge Absalom Waller. (Judge Waller is my 7th cousin 3x removed as well.)

My first hint I had Waller ancestors was finding the first wife of my 11th Great Grandfather, Sir William Waad(Wade).  Her name was Anne Waller and she lived her life in London and died in childbirth at the age of 19.  Her father was a "citizen and stockfishmonger" in London named Owen Waller.
But come to find out after a few years of research that this line of Wallers probably has nothing to do with the Wallers that came to Virginia Colony.

Then I found another direct ancestor Waller on my Weatherford line. Susannah Waller, my 7th Great Grandmother, born 1680 in New Kent, Virginia married William Weatherford around 1700 and died about 1758 in Lunenberg County, Virginia..

Susannah's father was John Thomas Waller and had a brother Dr Robert John Waller,  Robert had a son, Colonel John Waller who is the Waller 1st Immigrant to Virginia. Col. John is my Susannah's 1st cousin(and I am 9 x removed).  John Waller, being the fifth child and not the first son inherited nothing from his father as primo geniture was the rule of the land at that time so he took his chances on this New World and arrived in Virginia some time before 1696.  We know this because in May of that year he purchased 1039 acres of land in King and Queen County along the Mattaponi River  along the Pamunkey Neck in VA.  This land became his first plantation he named "Endfield".

Eventually he moved his growing family northward to Spotsylvania County Virginia(about a 60 mile journey)to land he purchased around 1724 and named "Newport Plantation" after the town in England where he was born.

Col. John Waller had 5 sons and 1 daughter with his wife, Dorothy King Waller: Mary, John, Thomas, William, Benjamin and Edmund.

Their first son, John Waller III is the person who originally bought Alex Haley's ancestor Kunte Kinte from that slave market in Annapolis Maryland.  He is my 2nd cousin 8 x removed.
John Waller III's brother, Dr.William Waller is the second owner of Kunte Kinte.  Kunte kept trying to run away from John Waller's plantation so he had his overseer chop off part of Kunte's right foot to keep him from trying to escape.
Being brothers this makers Dr. Waller my 2nd cousin 8 x removed as well.

Photo of William Waller's headstone in the Waller cemetery in Partlow, Spotsylvania County, Virginia where the old Newport Plantation was located.  He was a Revolutionary Army Colonel as well as a Doctor.

Dr. William, so the oral tradition goes, was so incensed at his brother treating a slave thusly, that he bought Kunte and the slave Kunte Kinte lived out his days under Dr. William Waller's control as a gardener for the family.

I'll continue this story in Part 2 of this post on Me & Alex Haley.


Sluggy

This Week on the Dining Table

The "Homemade Beans" Edition................

We woke up to this Saturday morning, May 9th.........

So this called for the warming slow cooked dinner above.  I had a "?" for Saturday's meal plan but luckily I had soaked some dried beans the day before just because.  I used a Goya pink bean, the usual to make a Puerto Rican rice and beans dish, but they worked fine in a good old New England Boston Baked Bean dish too.
 It's a tangy version of that stuff from the can with a lot less sugar.  Mostly a meatless meal(if you don't count some strips of bacon lol)and was accompanied by this which is required of any Southerner.........

Cornbread made in a cast iron skillet. nom nom
Kim's Sissie and I were texting each other photos of food on Saturday...I was making dinner and she was making enough carrot cakes and cinnamon rolls to feed her whole neighborhood.  I am still waiting for her to drive up here with my share of those baked goodies. ;-)

Moving On....

Onward to the meal planning-

This is what was planned.........

1. Sunday--Cheeseburgers, leftover Veggies
2. Monday--TV dinners
3. Tuesday--leftover Ham Steaks, Asparagus, leftover au gratin Taters reworked

4. Wednesday--Halushki

5. Thursday--Assorted leftovers

6. Friday--Quiche, Salad
7. Saturday--?

And this is what really happened........

1. Sunday--Cheeseburgers, leftover Veggies
2. Monday--Chicken w/Korean Sauce, Green Beans
3. Tuesday--Halushki

4. Wednesday--Fend for Yourself(I ate dirt.)

5. Thursday--TV dinners(Mine was raw weeds undressed.)

6. Friday--Pizza take-out(I had leftover dirt and weeds.)
7. Saturday--Boston Baked Beans, Cornbread

Last week saw 4-5 nights of home cooked dinners(depending if you consider TV dinners home cooking lol),  1 night of leftovers/FFY, and 1 night of Take-Out.
I had picked up tv dinners for nights I didn't feel like cooking and got some frozen chicken apps among the stuff we found at the Amish Surplus Outlet and ate those last week.  The quiche and the ham steaks from the freezer didn't happen so they move to this week.
I didn't feel any cooking inspiration last week, just anxiety over making meals.  With the possible meat shortage I will try to stretch what I have here as much as possible and look to meatless(or mostly meatless dinners-we had two last week)without resorting to dinners with more carbs.

What got put into the freezer last week....
* 3 lbs. of Broccoli
* 1 box Sausage Breakfast Sandwiches
* 2+ lbs. Chicken Tenders
* 1.5 lbs. Haddock Fillets
* 5 TV Dinners
* 2 boxes of Chicken w/Korean Sauce

What got taken out of the freezer and used.....
* 5 TV dinners
* 2 boxes of Chicken w/Korean Sauce

4 trips, 3 a week ago on Thursday but after I closed out the books on May came to $151.55 for Weis, P and R Discounters and Maines restaurant supply, and a trip last Monday to the Amish Surplus Outlet for $77.41 had me spending $228.96 this past week and brings my May Total spending on food to $228.96. 
One third of the week through May and I am over halfway through my monthly food budget.  Not good but I am still trying to find good deals.

I am at .10¢ earned in Ibotta rebates in May. rah.

My savings percentage last week was 36.66%(without Rite-Aid trips)for May and the  monthly savings total comes in at 36.66%(w/out R-A).  The Surplus Outlet trip was 47.01 in savings but the other 3 stores brought my rate way down.

I have 20 more food shopping/spending days in May.

Leftovers going into this week........pierogies, au gratin potatoes, Halushki, chicken w/Korean sauce, baked beans and cornbread.

I have fresh produce of asparagus, lettuces, yellow squash, sweet potatoes, celery, carrots, onions to use this week.

Here is this week's "food plan".....

1. Sunday--Petite Steaks, Sweet Potato Fries, Asparagus
2. Monday--Ham Steaks, Broccoli or Tossed Salad, Baked Potato or reworked au gratin Taters
3. Tuesday--Leftovers

4. Wednesday--Quiche, Salad

5. Thursday--Pork Tenderloin Sammies, Squash and Onions

6. Friday--Hungarian Goulash over Mashed Taters or Noodles
7. Saturday--Leftovers

What needs buying for this menu?
Not a thing.
The quiche will be meatless and the goulash will take a very little bit of beef.

What's left on my master list of meals we can make from what's here...........
*Shrimp Tempura
*Roasted Chicken
*Kielbasa sandwiches
*Tuna Casserole
*Hot Dogs, Beans
*Chicken and Dumplings
*Shrimp Ravioli
*Breakfast for Dinner
*Spaghetti and Meatballs
*Stuffed Shells(found in freezer)
*Haddock Fish Dinner  new
*Chicken Tenders  new
*Pasta w/Meat Sauce  new

What is getting fixed and served at your house this week?

Was last week's plan successful, did you go off plan or did you not even plan what was going to be eaten last week?

Any great deals on food at your stores this week?  

Sluggy

My Journey to Motherhood

Every mom has their own unique journey to Motherhood and I am no different.
If you are lucky, you fall in love, get married(or not nowadays), get pregnant right away and have a baby.
That's the easy way.

Well that wasn't my trip.
I didn't plan on being a mom when I was little.  I wanted a career in the entertainment industry.
I was talented(or was often told such), creative and artistic as a kid.  I loved theater and excelled at most of everything involving that world.
I planned to major in theater and go on to a career in it.

But then I fell in love with a Political Science/English major nerd in college during my first semester.
We decided to marry after we finished school.

And after being exposed to what goes on in the real theater world I decided before graduation a career in theater was not for me.
Especially back then in the 1980's making a living in that art field would mean living in/near NYC(a place I hold no love for).  One couldn't make a real living doing Regional theater and it also involved moving around a lot so having a marriage meant a lot of long distance separations and Hubs and I decided we didn't want our marriage to look like that.

Hubs was at this point beginning his Master's degree before going onto a PhD, and then a career as a University professor.  So I was headed for a life as a professor's wife who would support him in that role and have a little hobby on the side.
But before finishing his Master's program Hubs had a change of heart about a career in the Ivory Tower of academia and decided to find a career in the business world.

Our move to Tidewater Virginia didn't bring about  a business job for Hubs so we packed up and moved to New Jersey.  Hubs found work at Prudential after a short term stop gap job working security for Warner-Lambert(the makers of Listerine among other products)at their world HQ. I commuted into Brooklyn working jobs with Theater designers I knew plus a couple other theater jobs and then working as Assistant Manager at a fabric shop and then Caldor Dept. Store while we lived in NJ.
Once we moved to Pennsylvania and bought a tiny house I worked for a few years(first as a CNA in a nursing home in NJ then as a waitress in a long established family restaurant), we paid off Hubs student loans using my various salaries, Hubs climbed the corporate ladder and we decided after 4 years of marriage it was time to have a baby.
But the problem was during our 4 years of marriage we hadn't been using birth control and I never got pregnant. We were both young still(I was 27, Hubs was 28)so we didn't worry about it.  But we had a fertility problem and we didn't even know it at that time.
Then I got pregnant in early 1988.  I found out on a trip to the ER for a pulled muscle that I was 5 weeks pregnant.  Two days later my appendix ruptured and I had emergency surgery, became septic because of the rupture and got pumped full of blood thinning drugs because of my condition.  I spent 5 days in the ICU before I was out of the woods and they transferred me to a regular room at the hospital.  A couple days after moving me I miscarried the baby/fetus.

After 6 weeks home I was cleared/healed up and we tried to conceive.  But it was not happening so we began the process to adopt.  We were accepted by Holt International Adoption Services.  While we completed the dossier we decided to apply to a private foster care agency in our area.  Sometimes these foster care placements became adoption situations and were a lot cheaper than going international.  Besides, fostering would give us practice being good parents.

After having 3 foster care placements(1 was short term until the child had his court hearing, 1 was from NJ for a special needs child which we ended as she was violent and attacked/harmed me, and a set of half siblings-one of which was a sociopath we and the state agreed to have removed from our care(and ended up institutionalized for his/society's own good)and the other was yanked because the state wanted them adopted together(even though they hadn't grown up together and had no relationship).

I started to see a fertility doctor after the 2nd foster placement failed.  It was at this point that Hubs was tested and I realized that the problem was me.  You see, I had gone years since puberty started without having a monthly period, or a sporadic period now and then.  My body wasn't ovulating on a regular basis.  I had undiagnosed Poly Cystic Ovarian Syndrome or PCOS for short.  This is back when it wasn't a known condition like it is today.  Besides lots of other things it involves a very high testosterone level in the woman.  Woman with these kinds of testosterone levels find it hard to get pregnant. (I also have undiagnosed Hidradenitis Suppurativa which I am sure just added to the difficulties conceiving.)
With the help of the OB/GYN and a couple of courses of Clomid the fertility drug, a somewhat regular menstrual cycle returned and my testosterone levels naturally going down as I aged I was finally able to conceive again at the age of almost 32, which back in the 1990's was considered high risk and a geriatric maternal age. lolz

My eldest was born in 1991, 9 years after Hubs and I married(and 14 years after we were "together").

We figured it would take another decade to make another baby so we were quick to try for another baby but this one didn't take long......daughter was born 17 months after her big brother. ;-)

We relaxed a bit(and were exhausted too)after having 2 kids so close in age to care for but when daughter turned 2.5 years we were pregnant again for the last time.

Ex-College Boy came along in early 1996, a month after my 37th birthday.  He was the only C-section(due to his enormous Toddler sized head!).  My OBs advised us to not get pregnant again due to the condition of my uterus, fibroids they discovered while doing the surgery and all the scar tissue they dug out of me from that appendix surgery.  They remarked while I was being put back together like a jigsaw puzzle in the OR that they were amazed I ever got pregnant due to all the scar tissue(not to mention the PCOS).

So we went through a lot to have our 3 children and we ended up being much older than most folks are when they have babies.
Would it have been better to be one of the lucky couples who have children easily(sometimes too easily)?
Maybe.
But having had worked so hard to get them here I hope they know they were very wanted(though they may have tried our patience along the way)and are loved to the moon and back.

Many of my college friends either didn't want kids or never had any.  I don't know all their reasons but I am thankful for mine.

What's your journey to Motherhood story?
Happy Mother's Day to all those readers who chose to take up the challenge of motherhood.


Sluggy