Slept too long

Well, after I wrote my entry last night, I went back to bed, and half an hour later, was still lying there, so as I said I’d do, I went downstairs at 6 a.m. and washed dishes until 7:30.  There were THAT many, and I STILL didn’t finish them all.  I went to bed, then realized I needed to pump, so I didn’t get back to bed til 8 something.  I got up at various times, finally got up for the day at like 12 something.  I was TIRED.  Now, of course, I’m NOT tired in the least.  While I washed dishes, I rehashed everything in my mind, including things I’d LIKE to tell Becca, if only she’d listen.  She was supposed to do those dishes, 3 or 4 days in a row, she’s been putting them in the dishwasher, and it doesn’t get them clean, they always have lots of little flecks of goo on them, and it’s… gross.  So I put away what WAS clean, and proceeded to wash the rest of them.  I went over all kinds of things in my head, but as I suspected, it was theraputic to wash the damn things.  Even though it’s hell on my hands, it felt good to have them in the hot soapy water.  Now the countertops need cleaning.  I’ve made dinner three times this week, and only ONCE did I pop something in the microwave.  🙂  Though I am a HUGE fan of casseroles, lol.  Tonight was tator tot casserole, last night I did a Pineapple rice and Shrimp bake w/ ham, it was GOOD.  That was the first time we tried that, and it was well received by everyone.  I did make one boo boo, but it didn’t seem to affect things much, and that was that it called for an 8 ounce can of pineapple, and I used 20 oz!  Oops, but it was fine with that much. 

Oh good grief… 11:30, and Shabree and Sammi are just now going to bed.  Evidently Jerry told them they could stay up?  I don’t believe it.  I just put Sammi to bed, and told Shabree to get to bed, and she had a fit.  For the next week, I’ve GOT to send her to bed at 8, she needs it, and she needs to start getting back into the school schedule.  God, I am such a freaking pushover these days…what the HELL is wrong with me?  Especially when it comes to Shabree, I give in SO easily.  Gees.  No wonder she’s such a brat.  Though when she’s good, she’s very good.  But these late nights aren’t good for her.  Got to remember that. 

Not much else happened today.  I went to the store, and got the last of the money off the EBT card, which I then gave to Jerry for gas in the morning.  Still trying to decide whether or not to go to McDonald’s on Saturday.  I told Jerry it was up to him. 

I am hoping he’ll pick up Syd and drop Bec off, since I’m no longer picking up the bookcase.  I just DON’T feel like going all the way out there in the middle of rush hour traffic. 

My Domperidone arrived today.  I need to send that gal an email telling her it got here and thanking her profusely for it.  I appreciate it so much.  I’m not sure what I ought to do with it though, becasue it’s only a month’s supply, and for the time being, my supply is doing fine w/ the Metamucil (it’s got a type of fiber that is good for milk production.)  Even going 5-6 hours at night, it’s doing fine.  I guess it’s probably going to be as strong as the Reglan, and I kind of want to save it for when I need a larger boost.  But that may never happen…?  I don’t know.  From here on out, I’m not going to need to produce as much.  I have 12 ounces in the fridge for her for backup, from pumping at night at naptime.  I am probably over-feeding her at this point, as we’ve been laying down so much feeding constantly.  It’s always hard to tell, but I have also been giving her two jars of baby food a day, then sometimes giving her a formula bottle with cereal, though not all that often, except for when Syd put cereal in the formula.  I’ve got 2 month’s worth of formula, plus a can, and I can get more from the food bank next month, if necessary.  I guess I am going to see how I’m doing when I go to my next WIC appointment, and hopefully I can get more food and no formula.  My appointment’s not until the 23rd of next month though.  That’s okay, these checks don’t run out til the 22nd.  Because I got eggs, milk and cheese tonight, I don’t actually have to go shopping for a few days, except we’re out of fresh fruits and veggies.  I went last Thursday, but we’re SO well stocked up, I don’t really need to go for a few days, though I DO need to figure out what I’m doing tomorrow night for dinner, unless Jerry cooks.  I was thinking Broccoli and Rice as a side to chicken, though I STILL need to do the lemon chicken, though I have NO idea if I have everything I need for that or not.  I’m pretty sure I have everything for broccoli and rice, though I may not have the broccoli.  I had better check.  I used the last bag of mixed veggies (corn, peas, lima beans, green beans and carrots) tonight on the tator tot casserole.  So will definitely need to pick up a bag of that.  But I don’t think I need tator tots, though again, need to check.  I basically need to do an inventory of everything.  Like I’m not sure if we have bacon.  I THINK we do, but I’m not sure.  We got a bag of fresh green beans from the food bank the other day, so Jerry was suggesting a green bean and bacon soup, I suggested sautéing them instead.  But I’m not sure if we even have bacon.  I think we do, as I keep picking up bacon and it ends up being an extra.  Anyway, it would be good to empty the freezer a bit, and get some stuff out of there.  I have been buying too much frozen food lately, because it’s been on some good sales. 
I don’t know if I mentioned this, but Jane called on Monday, asking if we could get them milk and eggs (figures), so we devised a plan to take Syd over there.  I also got a couple of boxes of food together for them, and then we went to the food bank on Tuesday, and gave them another box of food, plus 4 loaves of white bread that we got.  I bought the milk and eggs (and chocolate, AF was visiting) from Wal mart, and took Syd over there.  I was going to pick up that bookcase, but of course, she never answered my calls, because she’d already given it to someone else.  Sigh.  So anyway, they were fairly grateful for it… oh, I forgot, they were also out of toilet paper, and Syd donated trash bags to them as well….  They are going to OWE me, big time, lol.  No, seriously, we are GOOD to them.  However, they are doing this a lot now, looking to us to bail them out when they don’t have anything left over at the end of the month.  And they were not certain if they’d get their food stamps for this next month (hence their hesitation at having Sydni come over… they weren’t sure they could feed her.)  When Syd started telling Jane all the food that was packed up waiting for them, it started to sway Jane.  She didn’t want to say no, so she handed the phone to Steve so HE could say no, and he couldn’t either, so Syd got to go. 

I’ve been all over the internet, reading about "Food Stamp Challenges" which amounts to eating on 3 dollars a day per person.  And when the new amount that we h

ave kicks in, we’ll be eating on 2.80 a day, per person.  Now, we can do this.  When we go over 600 in a month, it’s because we’ve bought a lot of junk we just don’t need, like ice cream, soda, etc.  And when I say we can do this, I mean eating fresh fruits and veggies, cheap proteins like chicken, turkey, pork roasts, but we even buy beef when it’s on sale.  Of course, I have a freezer, I have a car, I have a pantry… plenty of storage space, so I can buy on sale, and stock up and fill the freezer and the pantry.  I can buy in bulk (though I usually just buy smaller quantities from the bulk section, which I LOVE.)  Now, if we ate more beans, then this would be even easier, but the truth is, we like beans, but not THAT much.  And I’m really not into "subsistence living"  I want to eat WELL.  I have to admit though, that the first month or two on food stamps, we had nothing left over at the end of the month, and we weren’t buying a ton of junk.  We were buying the spices we’d run out of, and stocking up on things on sale that we were out of.  We may have to learn how to bake our own bread…however, I happen to like the wheat bread I can get at the store.  And oatmeal… is CHEAP and good for you.  I pay 65 cents a pound for oatmeal.  Which actually went up like 10% in the last few months, it was 50 something cents.  Still, that’s pretty cheap.  I KNOW we could live pretty well on 600 dollars a month in food stamps, but it really doesn’t hurt that we have a full spice cupboard, and have discovered the spices in the bulk section (what we’ve learned is that most of the cost of spice is in the JAR, not the spice.)  It’s amazing what an onion, garlic and some salt can do for just about any meal.  We buy our garlic minced in a jar, and just add a teaspoon for one clove.  It lasts for a LONG time.  We’re actually quite fond of sugars too… Jerry can take the cheapest cut of beef, marinate it in dr pepper (or Dr Thunder, lol…) for a day or two, then cook, and it’s delicious.  Then he makes a sauce that is dr pepper, molasses or honey, and I’m not sure what else, and it too is YUMMY.  We even splurged and had a very expensive cut of meat, and dinner that night cost as much to feed all of us as a meal for ONE at Black Angus (and was much yummier, thanks to my awesome cook husband!)   So I’m not worried about going to 600 dollars a month.  That amounts to 150 a week, and that’s usually about what I spend anyway.  We have enough meat stocked up to last us 4-6 months, and in fact, need to empty the bigger freezer a bit.  I’m going to try to go the weekend without needing to go grocery shopping.  You know though, I do tend to forget that we have WIC, which has GOT to be another 100 dollars in food at these prices (well, the formula alone is 40 dollars a month)  I got milk, eggs and cheese tonight, and it was 25 dollars!  I get two of those, plus 4 boxes of cereal, about 5 and a half gallons of milk, 2 jars of peanut butter, and if I wasn’t needing formula (which I am greatly hoping not to need this next time) I would get another pound of cheese, a gallon of milk, 4 cans of tuna, and 2 pounds of carrots.  I don’t know WHY they pick the things they do, and evidently they’re changing things to include soy, which I don’t eat (but many Asians do, and what do they do with the beans or peanut butter?)  I have a cupboard FULL of various types of beans, esp red kidney and pinto.  I know WIC is also changing in other ways, but I don’t know exactly what for sure.  Oh, I forgot the juice I get too…which I think they may be either down grading so you don’t get as much, or eliminating in favor of more fresh fruits and veggies.  Problem with juice is that it’s a LOT of sugar.  It’s good stuff…but full of sugar.  NOT what you want to give your 8 month old, lol… though I do get apple juice for her, a whole 64 ounce container of it.  Ye gads… I would NOT give that to her.  I have enough of a time getting the older kids to take it easy on the juice.  They want to drink a container of it a day.  I SO need to get a new water filter, ours is on its last legs, and the fridge water is just… ugh.  I am pretty picky, and I will drink that water when the flter is working, but not now.  So I am drinking WAY too much Sam’s Choice caffeine free diet cola.  And my poor liver is tweaking on me.  I should make some Mother’s Milk Tea and drink that instead.  I really, really should.  I LIKE water, and if I had to eliminate soda from my diet completely, I’d replace it with water, so long as the filter was working properly (LOL)  Seriously!  I have a HARD time giving up soda though.  It may be time though, I guess we’ll see how the food budget works out.  As I said, my liver seems to be tweaking, it’s been giving me a pinching feeling on my left side.  I KNOW it’s my liver, all I’ve been drinking is soda lately.  No water, no juice, no tea.  It’s time to give up the soda for a bit.  Next week, I think I’ll give in and buy the filter for the fridge.  I am going to go easy on the groceries this month too… just in case.  I don’t want to have to move a bunch of groceries if we end up moving.  Of course, we already HAVE a bunch of groceries.  I guess I’d better come up with an actual "meal plan" for the next few weeks, and try to use what we have up a little.  Since frozen meals were so cheap a couple of weeks ago, I went a TAD overboard in buying them… they were 89 cents a piece, too good a deal to pass up!  We’ve worked our way slowly through them.  I will not buy any more of those for a bit, for sure.  I will stick to the perishables, the fresh fruits, veggies, breads, eggs, milk, etc. 

I’m going to sign off… I’m basically "talking just to talk" at this point… or writing just to write.  I really do need to put a meal plan into place, and get some of the food out of my freezer and off my shelves.  I want to stay put where we are, but I do need to be realistic…and besides, Jerry’s been wanting to use up what we have for awhile.  Sometimes when I go shopping, I’m not very good at keeping to the shopping list.  If it’s on sale, I don’t care that there’s already 10 pounds of it at home… I’m buying 5 more pounds!  So… yea.

Outta here.