So Bored

I can't think of anything that I feel like doing. Not that there is much to do anyway.

We've already been on a bike ride today and have already done the laundry that needed doing and have already done what little grocery shopping we could afford to do and have already started dinner in the oven and I've already read a book. I don't have any supplies to make anything and don't feel like doing that anyway since nothing much is selling these days so what's the point. I added up what I've made and what I've spent for the year so far and have not made any profit so no more buying supplies, not that I have any money for supplies right now anyway.

Whine whine whine.

I had one small order going to Australia this morning so we had to drive all the way to the post office after getting some money out of savings to buy gas for the week because our checking account is empty until next Friday. I thought the post office opened at 9, but we got there and nobody was in line because they don't open until 10 on Saturdays so we just wasted 7 miles worth of gas and still had to go back later when they opened at 10. As we were driving to the post office we saw a Farmer's Market in the parking lot of a restaurant/strip mall place and thought it might be kind of fun to go to a Farmer's Market and it's not that far from the house so we could just ride the bikes there and get in our exercise for the day. So, after we got home from the wasted trip to the post office we got the bikes out and rode over to the Farmer's Market. It wasn't a very big Farmer's Market but the strip mall/restaurant place is only a few years old and is very nice and in an upscale part of town so it was an upscale kind of Farmer's Market I guess. Everything looked delicious of course, lots of tomatoes and squash and honey and nuts and bread and even a cheese booth. We ended up getting some cheese and a loaf of very pricey bread for Keith's lunches this week. Pricey bread but I tasted a little of it and damn that bread is good! I also had a sample of dried strawberries which sounds weird but tastes wonderful, so I got a little bag of those and some dried fruit trail mix. There were lots of other things I would have liked to have gotten, but that old not much money in our pockets got in the way like usual. We are considering riding down there again next Saturday and just getting free samples from everyone and making a meal out of it like Sam's Club shoppers do.

Anyway, that was the highlight of our day.

After the bike ride we went back to the post office and then stopped at Winco for some lunch meat and milk and stuff and that's the least amount of groceries I've ever bought at Winco. I had a budget of $50.00 and ended up spending $34.00 of it. $34.00 doesn't get you much in the way of groceries, that's for sure.

Our budget got messed up this month because of the expensive blood work bill for me, and then today we get Keith's expensive blood work bill in the mail, so there goes the rest of the budget right there.

Whine, whine, whine.

Sigh.

I was totally shocked the other day to see Harri sleeping on the couch with Buddy just a foot or two away. Harri is the extremely Timid One and Buddy is the Bully so it's unusual to see Harri anywhere near him.


We call Harri our little vampire cat because of her two teeth that stick out the top of her mouth, very vampire fangy, so I played around in Picnic and gave her some bloody vampire teeth and vampire eyes in honor of Halloween coming up.


Speaking of Halloween, we are really tempted to just turn off the lights this year so we don't have to buy any candy. Candy that we usually eat before Halloween and then have to go buy more.

Here's Buddy looking especially disdainful.


Or just sleepy.

Well THAT Was Weird!

Yesterday I was sitting down to eat my lovely diet lunch of an apple, cottage cheese, and an egg on one of those 'thin' bagels. I haven't been eating much bread at all, like maybe 4 pieces in the last 3 weeks, but an egg sandwich sounded really good and the bagel was whole grain and only 100 calories except for the butter that I put on the bagel. Anyway, I'm about halfway through lunch and all of a sudden my face starts tingling and then burning. Burning to where I am in pain and starting to panic because WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON AND WHY IS MY FACE BURNING!?!
I had to go get a wet washcloth to put on my face because it was BURNING! and then it started tingling and burning on the backs of my upper arms and I'm starting to think that maybe I am having an allergic reaction to my lunch or maybe someone has poisoned my apple or my cottage cheese. I googled face burning and tingling but came up with tons of different causes, none of which was a poisoned apple. I was wondering if I should dail 911 or call Keith at work to come and take me to urgent care, and then finally after about 20 minutes of extreme burning it started to go away.

So, I tried calling the doctor and of course they were still on their lunch break and the office was closed but I was advised to dial 911 if it was an emergency which by now I was thinking maybe not so much because if it had been a poisoned apple I'd probably be dead by now instead of starting to feel better.

Anyway, I finally get through to a real person at the doctors and they take a message about my weird symptoms and say that a nurse will get back to me later. Later ended up being about 5 pm when the nurse finally called me back and said that it sounded like flushing and that was a side effect of my new cholesterol meds. A side effect that was not listed in the side effects when I googled my new meds, but that is beside the point, I was just glad that it wasn't poison.

So, I google flushing, which I'd never actually heard of when it doesn't involve a toilet or a city in New York, and what do you know, niacin causes flushing in almost everyone who takes it. Now, Keith was advised to start taking niacin for his cholesterol issues so I though maybe I should start taking it, too, since we both have the same cholesterol and too fat for our own good issues. But, I guess I shouldn't have taken the niacin on top of the new cholesterol meds and all the other vitamins and fish oil pills, etc. that I'm already taking because IT MAKES YOU FEEL LIKE YOUR FACE IS BURNING OFF!

So, problem solved and no, I won't be taking any more niacin any time soon.

And, it looks like my eating cottage cheese instead of a peanut butter sandwich is finally paying off with my not so accurate scale saying that I've lost 6 or 7 pounds. We'll see for sure when I go back to the doctor in a few months for the results of some more expensive blood work to make sure that my new meds aren't screwing up my liver and I get weighed on their fancy digital scale. I was starting to get rather discouraged at being hungry but not seeing any changes on my scale, so seeing a little weight loss is good and does give me incentive not to run to the store and buy a tub of Ben and Jerry's because ice cream is sooooo good.

I think Mother Nature played a cruel joke on us when she made it so very easy to gain weight and so very hard to lose it.

And, speaking of losing weight, we were doing pretty well on taking a little bike ride after dinner the past few weeks, but lately our air quality reports have been telling us that the air quality is not just unhealthy for sensitive people, but UNHEALTHY FOR EVERYONE! So, do you go outside in unhealthy for everyone air and go bike riding or do you skip that bike ride until the air is better? Exercise is good but not when the air will give you black lung while you are exercising.
Plus, Keith is outside in the bad air all day anyway and I still have to ride the bike on my errands in the morning, so...it's probably better to just stay inside after dinner and watch Jeopardy.

Again?

Another weekend gone by? Another dull weekend gone by? We did try to think of something, anything to do this weekend but came up with nothing, folks. Keith napped a lot.

I did make him go for a bike ride Saturday morning, and our weather has so far been cooperating so that we can go for a bike ride without having heatstroke. It's been really mild for us here, temps only getting up into the mid to high 90s later in the day with the mornings being cool enough to open the windows instead of living in a dark cave with all the curtains shut and the a/c blasting away. I'm hoping that this continues for a few more weeks, it's really odd but really nice that we are not having our usual over 100 degree days.

I went to the Goodwill bookstore and got two bags of books for $10.80. Have I mentioned before how much I LOVE the Goodwill bookstore? I was in Target the other day and was looking at a book that was $12.00 and was very tempted to buy it but then realized that I could get 12 books for that same amount of money over at the Goodwill bookstore. I'm getting cheaper by the minute here.

I even made my own cleaner refill for my Clorox mopper thing. It's the cheap version of a Swiffer mopper and I was all set to mop the bathroom floor (shocker, that!) and the cleaner jug thing was empty so I googled homemade refills and made my own. Because I didn't want to spend the four bucks or so for the commercial refill stuff. Ah, frugality at it's best.

I cleaned out the refrigerator and washed all the shelves. I didn't quite get to the pantry and have it on my list for today, but we'll see. I think it's time to clean it out because the other day I got out the corn starch and looked at the date on it and it had expired like last year sometime.

Yesterday I fooled around with making little paper pillow party favor/gift boxes out of some of the immense amounts of paper I have around here. They came out really cute and kind of addicting to make. I will have pictures tomorrow and will be listing some in the shop.

What else?

I've already cleaned up two piles of cat vomit this morning and the cat boxes are waiting to be cleaned. Harri usually stands right by the box as I'm cleaning it and jumps in as soon as I'm done. I guess she likes a fresh bowl. (Ally McBeal reference there)

And that's all.

Long Weekend- Yawn

We had a rather ho-hum holiday weekend. We didn't barbecue anything for the Fourth of July because it's not payday yet and our cupboard is kind of bare plus we don't even HAVE a barbecue if we even had anything to barbecue on it. We thought about going up to Tehachapi for their Hot Dog Festival and Fireworks, what could be more festive than hot dogs, right? But we had no money for the extra gas to get up to Tehachapi, so maybe next year we'll go.

We did rent some movies from the whatever company it is that has a box at Vons, it's not Red Box, and even though the box is red if you try to return a Red Box movie there it won't work as we found out a few months ago. Duh. We watched The Book of Eli which was totally stupid, and Crazy Heart, which was good, and then actually rode the bikes to Vons to return them the next day. We haven't ridden the bikes in a long long time but it was fun to get back on them even though by the time we got ourselves together and the bikes cleaned up it was getting really really hot. When we returned those movies we got two more, The Blind Side, which we both liked, and It's Complicated, which was not all that great. At least you're only spending a buck for a stinker movie, not like if you had spent $50.00 on admission and popcorn for a lousy movie.

We almost forgot that it was Fourth of July while watching The Blind Side until I heard banging and popping noises and the cats started running around the house going WHAT IS THAT NOISE!?! and we remembered what day it was. We only had a few houses on our street who did fireworks, so it wasn't too noisy.

Last night after dinner we took another bike ride around the neighborhood and it was really nice and pleasant with the sun going down and the day cooling off. Our neighborhood is in a big area called Riverlakes, there is a lake here that we never see because it's in the rich part of the neighborhood, but no river unless you count the irrigation canal. We live in the 'bad side of the tracks' ghetto next to walmart part of the neighborhood, and as you ride the bikes up towards the golf course gated community part the houses start getting bigger and bigger and nicer and nicer.

Then it's back to our ghetto street.