I am NOT a stupid person but...

I don't believe I've ever had to deal with a company like Sirius Radio before. Oh...my... God... I called today because our new car came with Sirius Radio and the initial free six months subscription is almost up and I wanted to renew it. We have one "receiver" in the house, and I'd just bought a one year subscription for that ($142), and now wanted to add a second "receiver", which the web site states will be $6.99 a month. Sounds SO simple, doesn't it? After a confusing initial automated voice "menu" I finally arrive at a customer service rep. I told her what I wanted, provide my account number, provide the ID number of the new receiver and told her I wanted a year's subscription... and (drumroll)... how much would it cost? "Well," she says, "What they do is take the cost of your first receiver and divide that between the two receivers." "So, " I respond, "You're telling me that I will get each receiver for half of what I paid for the first receiver... in other words, the second receiver is free?" "Oh no," she says. "A one year subscription on the second receiver is $77.00." "OOOOOk...." I said. "So it will cost me $77.00 to add the second receiver for one year?" "Well, if you divide the first receiver's subscription in half, it will actually be $55.00 for the second one," she replies, AS IF I'M STUPID. I'm starting to get confused. "So it will be $55.00 for a one year subscription for the second receiver?" "Well, Ma'm," she says. "That depends on what kind of car it's in and the plan the dealer picked out." "What?!?! I thought you just said it was going to be another $55.00." "Well, I can't tell, ma'm, until I actually put your receiver ID number into the system and find out what kind of car it is." "Miss," I TRY and say with respect,"Are you actually listening to yourself? So far you have told me the second receiver is going to be free, it's going to be $55, and it's going to be $77. Let's try this again, shall we? Can you please just put the information in and tell me how much the second receiver is going to cost me for one year?" "It will be $83.00, ma'm." THUD.

The Food Budget discussion -- and a challenge!

I've gotten two comments about my food budget efforts. One from a friend of 20+ years (wow! Karen! I never counted them before! LOL) and one from my daughter-in-law. (Karen, meet Lisa. Lisa, meet Karen.) Both have the same-sized family, both include paper goods and toiletries in their shopping totals. One spends less than me (Karen) and one spends more (Lisa). Karen is in New Hampshire, Lisa in Colorado, and I'm in Ohio. So I'm asking these two wonderful ladies (and anyone else reading this who wants to join in!) to join me in a bit of comparison shopping and we'll see how our prices of groceries compare. When you get a chance, email me with the cost of the following items: 1 quart of milk 1 lb of bananas 1 can of Campbell's vegetable or vegetable beef soup 1 dozen eggs, large 1 pound of ground beef, 80/20 fat content 1 pound of boneless chicken breasts 1 can of green beans or carrots or corn 1 can of tuna fish 1 quart jar of Mayonnaise 1 box of cereal 1 50 ft box of aluminum foil In your email, if you could mention whether it's store brand or name brand, that would help. I may have mis-stated the breakfast deal around here. I do "cook" Jeff's breakfast every morning. Some mornings, it does include cereal or oatmeal. His favorite breakfast is egg, bacon and cheese on a bagel, but we're cutting back on the bacon around here. I also make a breakfast burrito of scrambled eggs, low fat cheese, little bits of ham. One morning a week may be sausage, eggs and toast or English Muffin (we use the new Thomas's 100 calorie English muffins and each eat just one half), and a second morning of just scrambled eggs and half an English muffin. It all depends on time constraints (how late he gets up, if I have Brayden here, etc.) and what I've cooked that week (I don't like to give him the same breakfast over and over). He does frequently have a bowl of cereal at night for a snack. Jeff's lunch usually is a sandwhich or a wrap, and I do buy one pound of lunchmeat a week, which is unbelievably expensive ($8 to $10 a pound!) because we prefer Boars' Head meats (no fillers or chemicals). He usually also has a small portion of baked tortilla chips, two low fat cheese sticks, and either two sugar free cookies or a yogurt or a sugar free pudding. In place of chips he also likes celery sticks if I give him a small container of ranch dressing to dip. He does also like leftovers from dinner for his lunch. This week I will probably not buy lunchmeat, since we're having roast beef, and I have a meat slicer so I can slice it for sandwiches. Dinner varies widely. I've gotten away from all meals being meat, starch, vegetable, but we do still eat fairly hardy meals. I just made up my menu for the week, so here it is: Sunday (today): Steak fajitas (with onions, peppers), Salad Monday: Meatballs (from freezer), beef gravy, brown rice, vegetable Tuesday: Roast beef (bought on sale last week), 1/2 small baked potato, vegetable Wednesday: Baked chicken breast, vegetable, salad Thursday: Lentil soup (from freezer), cornbread (homemade) Friday: Fish (if I can find some reasonably priced that he'll eat), cooked cabbage slaw, salad "Vegetable" can be canned, frozen or fresh. We eat a lot of brocolli and green beans around here, as well as cauliflower and spinach. The fish is the only thing that had to be added to my grocery list this week. I have several meals of meatballs and lentil soup in the freezer, and bought the roast beef on sale last week. Chicken breasts are also coming out of the freezer. So... are foods more expensive in different parts of the country?? Let's find out!

A Nice Day with my Honey

Understand, my husband has been working at least 80 hours a week, sometimes more than 100 hours per week, since mid-December -- this includes weekends, holidays, vacation days (I'm serious! He was on vacation for a week and worked from home every day!) and every day in between. I know he sometimes has to do this -- it's the nature of the beast with his line of work and because his employer is the world-wide business model for running a major corporation with the fewest possible number of employees. Doesn't matter, of course, that the employees are all overworked and over-stressed -- it just matters that they are the model for others on how few employees you can get by with.. But I digress.

Yesterday was actually the first day he has had work-free for almost 2 months. It was my regularly scheduled day to babysit for Brayden, so "Umpa" got to spend some nice time with his grandson, and "Umma" got a bit of a break.

But today, today was so nice. Jeff and I drove up to Dayton to Mendelson's (kind of a salvage, junk, discount, overstock store in a giant warehouse that takes several hours to walk around). I bought some large (18 x 24) parchment paper to copy some purse patterns onto, a snow shovel for Brayden, and some hook and loop closures for purses. Jeff bought some photo albums for his collections.

We then decided to go out for lunch, and ended up at the 2nd Street Public Market in Dayton. It's kind of an indoor farmer's market, with many craft stalls and food stalls, fresh flowers, jewelry and purses, etc. We had a really good bowl of soup there, and later a fairly good cup of coffee. We just enjoyed walking around and looking. Many different foods to try, but after the hearty soup, we weren't hungry. Definitely a place to go back to! I've been to their web site since we've come home, and found that in warmer weather months their priority is locally grown fresh fruits and vegetables, as well as gardening plants and flowers. I can't wait to try this place again!

When we came home, Mary called and asked if we would babysit for a few hours so she and her friend Rachael could go out to eat. Since it was just for a short time, we agreed, and Brayden was here once again. Brayden's vocabularly is increasing so fast, it's just plain fun to watch. Today he said, "Up we go!" when we went upstairs, as well as the words "purple" "Ice" and "bump bump". He's at such a fun age, it's hard to stay away from him. He and Jeff place "race cars" up in Jeff's office. They each get one of Jeff's NASCAR collectible cars and race them across the office. Jeff has always let Brayden win, but today introduced the concept of NOT winning to Brayden, and he took it well. He even clapped for "Umpa" when he won!

Tonight we just sat and watched a bit of TV together -- again, something we really haven't been able to do for a few months -- and it was nice to just relax and enjoy having nothing pressing or stressing. Thirty years of marriage and Jeff is still the person I prefer above all others to spend my free time with -- how cool is that??? LOL