Mommin' It Up!

March 8, 2010

Bringing the Grind to a Grinding Halt

At the beginning of the school year this year, I did something crazy for me. And then I got even crazier and I told you about it. I started a schedule. A schedule for eating, tweeting, blogging, exercising, chores, and yes – EVEN – PARENTING! I was really surprised by how much I actually loved being on a schedule. It was great.

But…I only made it ’til about Labor Day. (Just a shade over two weeks! Wow, I’m an overachiever!) Around then, something happened, and I got out of my routine. And for some reason, I never tried to get it back. So instead of a nice routine, a pleasant schedule, I’ve got myself thoroughly enmeshed in an unorganized, unproductive, daily grind.

I allow myself blog, email, and twitter too long in the mornings, I take my shower too late, I never eat breakfast until about 10:30, and if I eat lunch at all, it’s usually about 2 or 2:30 when I feel like I might die so I grab a Mountain Dew and a hunk of cheese/chocolate/cookie dough or something else not very, ahem, well-rounded.

What? That’s not healthy??

Seriously!

So. I have got to break up with this grind. The problem is, I don’t really want to. It’s like the grind is the boy we date in high school that we know is bad for us but we date him anyways because he’s mysterious and exciting! (I say, “we” because, well, I never dated a bad boy. But you get my drift.) I haven’t been brave enough to break up with the grind and go back to my sweet, sensitive, attentive schedule. And the truth is, I do know why. It is because I am afraid of failing again. And failure seems so much more acceptable to me when it’s the product of a lack of effort.

But. I have decided, win or lose, to make the effort a second time. For myself, my family, my house, and my sanity! And once again I am crazy enough to tell you about it. So why don’t you do me a favor and ask me how it’s going? And while you’re at it, leave me some tips to help me stick with my fresh, new routine!
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bagelfuls This article about making mornings easier is part of the Kraft Bagel-fuls “Break up with your Breakfast Routine” sweepstakes. Visit BlissfullyDomestic.com for all the fabulous details.

March 6, 2010March 6, 2010

A Blogger Walks Into A Drugstore…

Ok, three drugstores. One of them multiple times. It is possible that I went a little overboard on the couponing this week. But as I now have enough of my faaavorite paper towels (Viva, they are the Rolls Royce of paper towels, thank you Walgreens for the great deal on those this week!) to last me for a couple months and enough laundry detergent for about the next year (at the rate I do laundry – hey I am saving it up for when my new Frigidaire washer & dryer arrive in May!) maybe I will take this week off. 🙂 Here are a few of the things I got!

Stop #1 CVS: My friend Jen and I went in, since I am her coupon guru and she is my apprentice. It was lots of fun, we made friends with the new manager at my fave store, and I got some sweet deals!

Huggies box diapers $19.99
2 Excedrin $2.50 each
CVS pain relief $2
SoftSoap body wash $4.99
Total = $31.98

Coupons:
CVS $5/$30 email coupon
$2 Huggies printable coupon
$4 off Huggies big box diapers CVS CRT
Two $2 off Excedrin printable coupons
$3/2 Excedrin CVS email coupon
$.75 cents off SoftSoap printable coupon
$1 off any body wash CVS CRT
total = $14.23
I paid with 12-ish extra care buck and paid $2.63 cash including tax, and got back 8 ECB, 4 for the diapers and 4 for the body wash. YAY!!!

Next stop, Rite Aid! I am recently love, love loving Rite Aid. They have great printable coupons available through their Video Values program where you watch short commercials and get to print high-value coupons. SCORE!

2 Suave shampoo/conditioner $1.99 each
2 Carefree pantiliners .99 each
2 Nivea lip balm .99 each
Tampax $2.99 each
Satin care shave gel $1.99
Listerine pocketpaks $3.99
Garnier styler $2.99 (one of my fave hair products, I have been waiting for a sale for forever!)
$19.90

Coupons:
Rite Aid $3/$15 printable coupon
$1/2 Suave manu coupon
$2 off Carefree Rite Aid video values coupon
$1/2 Carefree manu coupon
$1 off Garnier Rite Aid video values coupon
$1 off Garnier manu coupon
$1 off Tampax manu coupon
50 cents off Listerine manu coupon
99 cents (BOGO free) Nivea lip balm coupon

Total = $8.41 – paid in cash and I will get $6 single check rebate, 1 for the Suave, 1 for the Tampax, 3 for the Listerine and 1 for the Gillette shave gel. 🙂

Finally, WALGREENS. Now I will tell you that Walgreens is my THIRD-favorite drugstore. However I was in there about 80 bajillion times this week because they had some sweet deals I could not pass up. And I CAN BE BOUGHT. I do the coupon shopping for my BFF Luanne (because she is coupon challenged, and I LOVE her) and I went in a couple times to load her family up on toilet paper, paper towels (VIVA!!), laundry detergent, Kleenex, and feminine care products (she has two daughters, they need their own Fort Kotex) and I did a few transactions for myself as well (Viva, Kleenex, laundry detergent, clearance diapers, lots of free plus overage Tylenol PM!) Here’s a couple examples:

2 Purex BOGO free, $5.99
6 Kleenex, BOGO free $2.19 (for two)
total = $12.56
coupons:
BOGO Free Purex – $5.99
two 50 cents off 3 Kleenex – $1
total = $5.57 and I got back 3 register rewards for buying the Kleenex, yippee!

Then, much to my frugal delight, I made a magical discovery in the baby aisle at Walgreens. They had some sizes of Walgreens brand jumbo pack diapers clearanced to $2.29. YES, I SAID $2.29 FOR A JUMBO PACK!! I about died of nerdy happiness. I got SIX packs as I have some peeps to get baby gifts for. I used several register rewards I had accumulated through the weeks and paid less than $5 total out of pocket. WHEEEE!! Oh, and I got two more bottles of Purex, (pictured with the kleenex above), WHAT UP!? Somebody give me a high five!

Ok, that’s all for me this week. From Fort Kotex and the Viva Palace, I bid you happy couponing!

Wanna see some more sweet deals?? Check out the round-up at Shopping SUperstars at the Thrifty Mama’s place!

March 5, 2010

A Little Less Crazy, A Lot More Bald

If you’re not still to scared from the unbridled anger Emily released a few days ago in her rant about birth control pills, allow me to add a wee update about my journey with these things.

As you may remember, I started taking them a year ago, hoping to balance out my super-crazy hormones, which were causing headaches, acne, and (in my opinion) sleeping problems.

They cured my acne but they made me batsh** crazy and depressed. So I tried another kind, and another kind, and then anti-depressants on top of that. Then another kind of anti-depressant after a few months. I had a sleep study which came back negative, increasing my suspicions that hormones are at the root of my sleeping problems.

Because my sleeping problems are the main issue at this point, I asked my doctor last month if she could test them. She said I would have to be off the birth control pill for at least 30 days before she could do that. So I stopped taking it. My next appointment is near the end of April and I wanted to make sure my hormones were good and natural by then.

And I feel about 90% less crazy. Even with the anti-depressant, I was having very low moods before my period, and times of anxiety. And this month, I have had none of that!! I am still taking the anti-depressant, but it is amazing how different I feel now that I have stopped taking the pill. A couple more months of this, and I may be able to stop taking my A-D.

(Of course if my giant ZITS come back, I may get depressed all over again.)

Also, since I stopped taking the pill, my hair is falling out like CRAZY, just like it did for a few months after I gave birth. Fortunately, I have tons of hair, so I am not too worried about it (I wish the gray ones would fall out! Or some of my excess eyebrow!) but I find that to be rather odd and just another sign that hormones are FRAPPING WEIRD and they do CRAZY things to us lady people. (Check back with me in a month. If the hair loss speeds up and my zits come back, I am gonna be really fugly, and really depressed!! Nothing cuter than a bald, acne-covered 32-year-old woman.)

So, I am a little less crazy, which feels awesome. And a lot more bald, which at this point, is still ok. And also, a little bit more hopeful that one day I’ll be back to me.