Some Thoughts on Mother's Day

Everyone has a mom.
None of us would be here without her....not to play down your father's role in the matter, but hey!, it's all about Her today, right?

I am sitting here alone in the house without my kids today feeling sorry for myself.
Oldest son is hundreds of miles away at school.
Daughter left this morning to start a new life in Louisiana.
Youngest son left a few minutes ago to go to work at the restaurant so we won't see him until late into the night.
So I'm feeling somewhat forlorn and alone without my kids today and turning to the internet to entertain myself.

Here are some cute/funny videos I found that say some things I am feeling today on Mother's Day. I couldn't pick just one so I'll let you decide which one is best.








And this one is for a new blogger friend, Java....


Who says moms can't be "hip"?....




Now what are you doing wasting time on the internet!
You should be off doing something special for your mom or that woman in your life who has been like a mom to you in some way or another.

I'll be back later today with a tribute to my mother.


Sluggy

Fascinating.....

I just love Leanoard Nimoy.

My oldest brother, Dennis, was a big fan of Star Trek, right from the first time the USS Enterprise boldly went where nobody has gone before on our tv set in 1966.
Dennis likened himself to Mr. Spock.
He even began to style his hair like Spock's and started talking like him.
Here is Dennis with his prized hi-fi stereo he built looking all "Spockish"......

Dennis had a couple of Leonard Nimoy's record albums that he cut.
Yes, Mr. Nimoy fancied himself a singer and poet.
I'm sorry to do this to you, but play the clip below at personal risk to your hearing.....



And who can forget, really! I WANT to forget!!, this tune he performed on the variety show called Malibu University that aired the Summer of 1967....




Is it any wonder this series didn't make it past 7 episodes?

Here's a Bruno Mars hit music video he appeared  in last year.......



But here is the latest commercial for Audi pitting the Spocks(old and new) against each other.
Let's just say it's a BIG improvement over the Bilbo Baggins song.....
My brother Dennis would have liked this one.
 

Live long and Prosper,

Sluggy

My Friday Date

My Friday involves yet another appointment, but not a medical one.


Then my important date today is with him......

 

You see?
My date is IDEAL.

He is short compact and dresses in black.
And he is smokin' hot!.....

He's quick to heat up but he likes to toy with me and prolong the anticipation.
He takes his time and smolders.
And he is such an exhibitionist because he caresses my olfactory senses right on the front porch for the whole neighborhood to see.

And he is so meaty and spicy....

And the longer we do our slow, hot tango, the more tender he is with me.
But oh, he is sooooooooooo worth the wait!

What are YOU up to today?


Sluggy

Snowball Fights Anyone?

What a grey day we had in Pennsyltucky yesterday.
First off here was my view in the morning....

I was trapped in a hospital waiting on specialists to come poke and prod me.  Mostly I just answered questions about my sleep.  They feel I need a BiPAP machine at night so a new sleep study has been ordered.  Oh goody!  I get to try to sleep in a strange bed in a hospital with cameras watching me and all kinds of electrodes and gizmos hooked up to me next week.
Can.
Not.
Wait.
8-P

Then in the afternoon, here was my view......

Sitting in the car in the parking lot of the grocery store, waiting for my daughter.  I was out of turkey for my new tradition of a turkey sandwich daily for lunch.
Rain was a bad thing since my Hubs replaced my windshield wipers but they aren't working correctly.  They move alright but they just don't REmove any water from the windshield.  I think he pushed down on the center of the wiper arms when he attached them, so that the curve of the glass is not lining up with the curve of the blades, so they just flap back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.....

Here was my view from my back door in the early evening.
About 7pm, the skies opened up and it started hailing......

And it hailed some more......

And more......

And by the time it ended 5 minutes later, the deck looked like it was time for snowball hailball fights.....

Here's a shot from our front door after some had melted......

And here over by our shed.  Where the grass is dead it looks like white flowering ground cover plants.....

Now actual snow in May is not unheard of here but hail at any time of the year is a rarity.

Sluggy

 

APRIL 2013 Budget Results....Food & Toiletries Spending

 

Here are my FOOD BUDGET spending totals for APRIL 2013.

I have posted April's totals on the right side bar under Total Grocery Savings for 2013 and updated the Yearly Totals.
I am listing subtotals for each store I purchased from in April.  If you aren't interested in that much detail, just skip to the bottom for the Totals Summary.

My spending includes Food, Toiletries/HBA, Pet Supplies, Cleaning Products, Paper Goods & tax where applicable. We are a family of 5(4 at home this month)& 2 dogs. No kids under 17.
******************

MAINE SOURCE(restaurant supply)

OOP  $123.12

Value  $204.13

Savings   39.69%

SHURSAVE STORES(small local independent affiliated stores)
OOP  $243.20

Qs/Ads  $86.00

Value  $329.20

Savings  26.12%

WEIS MARKETS

OOP  $69.17

Qs/Ads  $10.25

Value  $79.42

Savings  12.91%

I am no longer adding my rebates received into my food budget directly. I will use them on food on occasion and will note that when used.  I will keep track of rebates/gift cards/certs received here as before however.

REBATE CHECKS RECEIVED IN April.....$0.00

GIFT CARDS and CERTIFICATES....$0

TOTAL Value of Cash/Store Checks/Gift Card Rebates Received...$0.00

COUPONS and FREEBIES

Zero

*********************
My best 3 Store Savings Totals were Maine Source at 39.69%, the Shursave affiliate market at 26.12% and Weis Market at 12.91%.  l only shopped at 3 different stores this past month. 8-)

TOTAL Out of Pocket........$435.49

TOTAL Coupons & Store Sales Savings...$177.26

TOTAL Value of Items Purchased............$612.75

TOTAL Savings of...................................29%

This closes out the April food/toiletries spending.

THOUGHTS & COMMENTS for this month.....

I went into April with $400 budgeted for food/toiletries for the month.  Overshot the budget by $35.49.  Not bad considering I didn't do any of the shopping the first half of April.

Exactly 1 ManQ was used in April.  I did NO Rite-Aid shopping in last month either.

Looking ahead to May---We'll stick to our $400 food budget again this month.  With the sudden changes I need to make to my diet this month I am not sure how this will affect our food budget.  I suspect we will need to spend more on food. May will see even more changes in our food spending.

 

And here is the run down of my Food & Toiletries Spending for 2013 so far--

2013 Total Saved $1109.98

2013 Yearly Total Value of Items  $2527.45

2013 Yearly Total Spent $1426.47

2013 Yearly Savings Total of 43.56%

How much did you spend on food in April?
 

Sluggy

Retiring on the High Seas

Hubs and I are in the pre-retirement phase of life.
We are still undecided about where we will be moving to once he retires from his job.
The only thing for sure is that we WILL be moving from here.

We go back and forth on where to go, what size house to buy, etc.
But I think I have found our retirement abode on Craigslist.

Check it out!
HERE

What do y'all think?

Sluggy

My Sexy Medical Test

Well I had my CAT scan last Tuesday.  It went well.  Too bad they don't take you early if you show up early though, since Hubs drove me and he arrives EARLY everywhere he goes.
Drives me nuts sometimes......

I have a touch of claustrophobia but I didn't feel any anxiety when they slid me into that machine.
Piece.
Of.
Cake.

They snapped pictures and then were going to inject a contrast and afterwards take some more pictures.
The contrast agent gets into your system via an IV line.
IVs.
These are always much fun with me, finding an acceptable vein near the skin surface of my arm and keeping an IV needle in it for any length of time.
I have "Houdini" veins.....now you see them, now you don't.
Also, I get really bad black and blue marks from IVs that take forever to disappear.
Here's my arm just this morning, a week after having this latest IV needle inserted.....

Back to the story......The technician who prepped me found a vein quickly and accessed it.
But after the first set of photos, when they injected the contrast, the needle came loose and the sticky liquid instead of shooting through my veins, shot into my ear, in my hair and all over the pillow.
What a mess!
Afraid to move I was frantically waving my fingers on my other hand trying to get someone in the control room's attention.
When they realized something wasn't right and came to fix the problem(ram the needle around in my arm looking for the vein again), it took about 20 more minutes before the IV was ready to function properly.

The technicians had said that when they inject the contrast you'll feel a warmth in your chest and you may get warm because of the iodine in the solution.
Well, of course I am weird, you all know that, so after I got that warmth in the chest sensation, my nether regions started tingling and heated up like nobody's business.
It was better than any "adult warming gel" for "her enjoyment" advertised on tv.
I know this is TMI and many of you are x-ing out of this page about now but I must say I rather enjoyed this part of the program and I am looking forward to any and all CAT scans in my future.
And my advise is, that if you ever have a CAT scan insist on one with contrast. ;-)

So the doc was checking for Pulmonary Embolisms(aka blood clots in the lungs) to rule them out.
Thankfully that was all clear.  Although it's been a month since I went to the hospital in crisis and I'm pretty sure if I had had a PE, it would have broken loose and killed me loooong before I had this test.

The images did come back showing a nodule on one of my lungs.  It is very small.  Now these can be either cancerous or not, so there is concern depending on what your risk level is.  I am not low risk and I'm not high risk for one of these to grow into something bad.  Because of being exposed to secondhand smoke from my SAHM as a child and having asthma, I have a moderate risk of this thing growing and changing.  So the plan is to keep an eye on it and have another scan in 6 months.

Oh goody!
Can't wait.....and I am serious.
The next time though I'll insist the technicians buy me dinner first.   ;-)

Sluggy