Another day, another dollar

The propane heater installer never showed up yesterday. Not even a call or text. Companies and service people around here are such a joke. I don't even know why we are surprised by this LOL. This is being installed by our propane company, not some independent self employed guy.

I'm glad we are past the election. It all just gets to be too much. Like I told dh this morning. It really doesn't matter who is in office. The sun is going to come up each day and I still have to go to work each day to survive, no matter who it is or what is going on. The river is going to keep flowing past my house, just like it has for the last 20,000 years. Whether Trump was in office while we were building our house, or Biden is in office now - we still can't get anyone to show up and do any work around here 😜

It's a pretty day outside. Lots of blue sky with some puffy white clouds and a little snow on the mountain tops. The larch in fall color, makes for a pretty pop of color amongst all the green trees. The view out my window today

I still haven't tried making the "Christmas crack" candy in my new jelly roll pan. Maybe I'll wait until Friday morning. I have the day off and we don't have to leave for dh's dr appointment until just before noon.

I just checked the new weekly ad for the other grocery store we shop at for some things. No turkey's on sale this week, so while we are in town on Friday I will be getting my turkeys at Walmart. 

Yesterday afternoon, within seconds of each other I get an email from a friend that she is back in the hospital again and a text from my sis that she slid into a ditch, driving in the snow, and wrecked her car. She's a bit sore, but otherwise ok and will have to get her car fixed, of course. I'm hoping friend makes a quick recovery. She's been thru the wringer with her health this past year :(

Not much else is new. DD and two of her co-workers are dealing with another co-worker, who is causing lots of ridiculous drama and she's a victim. She's in her 50's for goodness sake! DD said they are in a no win situation with this lady. If they include her in their general conversations, she's offended by something they say. If they don't include her, she's offended they aren't including her. DD said they were talking about vacationing in specific areas of Hawaii and this lady commented that that's where retired people like to go and dd said "sounds right up my alley, because I'm like an old lady, LOL". This lady actually told their boss she was offended by this remark! Just insane. It sounds like their boss is just as annoyed with this lady as the others are. I told dd that she isn't required to communicate with this lady about anything other than work related stuff, and if she doesn't like it, tough shit. She created the atmosphere herself.

The big Tuesday

The jelly roll pan arrived yesterday. I think I will give the recipe a try after dinner tonight. I had also ordered some Christmas cards. For $10 for 20 cards, they are really nice! A nice quality card stock with nice envelopes and some stickers, as well. They came packaged nicely as well. I don't send out a lot of cards, but I'll have to work on these a little at a time. I actually have beautiful handwriting - as long as I don't write for very long, LOL. Carpal tunnel took care of being able to write nice for an extended period. I used to do calligraphy and even hand addressed all our wedding invitations way back when. Most days now, I have pretty crappy writing. So, I figure if I do one or two cards at a time, I should be able to manage to have the writing look nice.

Back when cursive writing was taught in school, even a bit before it was taught in my grade (3rd?) my mom taught me how to practice so that my writing would look nice. I can remember covering lined pages with loops and circles and similar, in order to get smooth at cursive. It sure worked. She had nice cursive writing as well.

Aren't you all glad election day is finally here and it will soon be over with, one way or the other, and we'll get a break (haha, ya right) for a few more years? 

We are getting our garage heater (propane) installed today, so that is good it's finally getting done. Dh puts out snow stakes along our driveway, so that when he's plowing snow he knows where the edge of the driveway is. He got those all put in the ground again, yesterday.

Well, I need to get back downstairs and wake dh up, so that he can get ready for the heater installer guy to get here this morning.

Sucessful Sunday

Yesterday was a little productive for both of us. I got a loaf of banana bread made. DH got his desk cleaned out a bit. Found me a red ink pen, LOL. I had ordered a box of red pens from Amazon but they have never shipped (3rd party sell) yet, so I cancelled the order. DH also found 2 papers printed out from when I got him online Visa gift cards so he could Christmas shop for me, without me knowing where he shopped. I checked them both and one had $5.11 and the other $11.77 left on it. So, I just used the small balance to purchase Amazon gift cards to add to my Amazon gift card balance. Found money is always satisfying, isn't it?

When dh asked what was for dinner and I told him the chicken/rice/veggies dish he kind of wrinkled his nose. I said oh well, that's what I'm making. We hadn't had that in quite awhile and it really is always good. I had some of the leftover Hawaiian rolls, so I heated them up and added some applesauce on the side. After he was done eating, he said that was a very good dinner. I should make it more often. It is easy to make. I like that other than the can of condensed cream of chicken soup, there's no processed foods used. One of these days I may try making my own cream of chicken soup! But not today, LOL. Well, I guess the rolls are processed food, but my goal one of these days is to learn to start making my own rolls and bread. There is enough of the chicken/rice dinner for me to have for dinner tonight, and I'll just make him some scrambled eggs, now that I have eggs again.

I got a personalized puzzle ordered to ship to dd for her birthday. I picked out one of her recent photos from a hike they did. Hopefully the picture will turn out good on the puzzle. It looks difficult too! haha.

Now she is starting to plan some snow shoe hikes for them to do and sounds like some friends want to join in, too.

I was up a little earlier this morning, still adjusting to the time change, of course. At least the last 2 nights/mornings Amos has settled back down and is not being annoying, like he was most of last week. I wish they would just do away with DST. Winter is just less daylight hours, no matter which end of the dark/light is adjusted to. And honestly, being in bed at 10pm in the summer and it's still light out is also annoying. But, I just really hate having to adjust my internal clock 2 times a year. It's annoying. I should move to Hawaii or Arizona, LOL.

The jelly roll pan I ordered is coming today, along with some other stuff I ordered, including some Christmas cards and new socks for dh. I came across another recipe I will want to try using the jelly roll pan. This is one is using ritz crackers, peanut butter, caramel, and chocolate. Yum.

I'm trying to get logged into work and it's not working. So far, no one else has commented with this issue in our Teams chat. Yep - it's Monday alright!

A successful trip

It was a rainy drive into the city yesterday. They had predicted it would be snowing, but it was still way too warm for that. Almost 50 degrees when we left our house. I think we made record time there and back, haha! 2 hours. We got to Walmart in 45 minutes. The last few orders they have been texting me 15 minutes before the hour and right as we were about to turn into Walmart at 3:45 I got the text it was ready. Going in an hour earlier than the last 2 trips was also better. That way we got home at 5 and I was done getting all the groceries put away by 5:30.

Our extra big cooler, along with the regular size one worked great and it really helped to just leave them both in the back of the pickup. While I'm sure Walmart had eggs inside the store, I decided we'd swing in the other grocery store for them. I also wanted to get the salmon we like. I got the eggs, but unfortunately they were out of the salmon.

And just for comparison - a frozen Butterball whole turkey at Walmart is $1.04/lb. At the other large grocery store a Butterball whole turkey is $2.19/lb. Before we go into the city next Friday, I will be watching prices again, just to see if the other grocery store has put them on sale. 

This past week Amos has been super annoying both at night, after I go to bed, and early morning. He starts waking me up at 6am (I prefer to get up around 6:50) so I thought for sure, with the clocks set back an hour, he'd be waking me up at 5am. Thankfully, he finally decided to be good last night and even this morning I got to sleep until 6:45 (new time).

DH did opt for the full double cheeseburger. I knew he would! I tried to say just get a single. He did decide to hardly eat any of the fries. He said he felt pretty good when he went to bed last night. I guess we'll see how today goes.  

Walmart was having a deal on the fabric softener, buy 2 get $5 Walmart cash back. Well, then they said they were only able to fill my order for one. If you are going to offer a special for buying 2, then you should have made sure to have plenty in stock, LOL. After a couple of adjustments to my order, my total ended up being $370. The 2 pack of 18 eggs at the other store ended up a little over $10. The non-food items in my order (laundry detergent, TP, store brand pepto bismol, and some hand sanitizer wipes) came to $60.82. Other than the TP (dh goes thru a lot), the other items I do not buy each trip, so they will last quite a while before needing to purchase again. 

I also got some ingredients to try making some "Christmas crack" using saltine crackers. I don't have a jelly roll pan, so I tried to order one with my Walmart order, but they said they were out of stock, so I ended up ordering one from Amazon that should be here Tuesday. I was hoping to try making it today, but oh well. I also have 2 very ripe bananas so I will just make some banana bread today. If this "Christmas crack" turns out good, I will make it for my neighbor sharing Christmas treats. It seems super easy to make. This batch I am topping with chopped pecans, but there are other toppings that work well. Green and red sprinkles or mini m&m's make it look festive, too. I got two kind of chocolate chips, One bag of the more expensive Ghiradelli chips, which I will use first, and another bag of Walmart brand chips (which I have bought many times) and will try those the 2nd batch and see if I notice any difference.

DD gave me the yearly message to stay out of looking at order history on our shared Prime account, LOL. Well, I ordered the jelly roll pan from our shared account, so I will have to ask her to look at tracking for it, haha. Then she says "or, I could just do my Christmas gift ordering from my dh's amazon account." I said he pays for a prime account and you pay?! (split with me) and she said yes - isn't that so dumb?! Very dumb!

While it rained down here, I can look out my office window at the mountain top across from us and see there's now snow up there. Winter is here.

I know one thing I am getting dd for her upcoming birthday, but I see I need to order it now in order for her to get it around her birthday. She loves to do puzzles and so I'm going to have one made from all the pictures she shares of one of their hikes. Now I just need to go through her pictures and pick one.

It's grocery day

Plans for today are going to pick up a grocery order at Walmart this afternoon. It's been 3 weeks already since our last trip. My fridge is showing it, haha. Very little to be had in there. I opted for an hour earlier pickup then the last 2 times we went on a Saturday afternoon. I wasn't planning on us needing to stop anywhere else this time, but dang - Walmart keeps showing ALL eggs out of stock. How can they be out of stock of every brand of eggs? I was hoping that when I checked again this morning, while there is still time to add to my order, the issue would have been fixed. So, now I either need to go inside Walmart and see if they really do have eggs I can buy, or stop at at different store.

We have to go into the city again next Friday, for dh's doctor appointment, that is at 1pm. Since I have the day off work, I'll be in no rush to get right back home to work, so I plan to have us stop (probably Walmart as they typically have the best price) for frozen turkeys. And since I'll be at a store, I'm going to buy a couple more milks and bread and another gallon or two of the Milos sugar free sweet tea dh likes to drink. 

Speaking of turkeys. Over the years I have tried the cheaper store brand type frozen turkeys (usually because they were free with a min purchase) and I have also tried Butterball and Jenni-O, which I have been buying the last several years now. I'm not sure I'm noticing/remembering any difference from these higher priced turkeys and the store brand. Anyone with experience with that? I do remember last year (Thanksgiving I think) dh said the turkey was a little dry (it was a Jenni-O turkey). So, which is better or does it even make much difference?

Last night for dinner I ended up making some ham, turkey and cheese sliders. This time I only did half the amount of rolls and saved the other half of the Hawaiian rolls. We usually have half left, with the whole 12 pack and try to eat the rest as leftovers, but don't usually eat all of them. So, half will be how I make them from now on. When I buy the 12 pack of rolls, going forward I'll separate them in half to freeze. I have found the Walmart bakery 12 pack of Hawaiian rolls to be much better than the King's Hawaiian brand. They are much fresher and almost $1.50 cheaper.

I still plan to make the rice, chicken and veggies dish next but probably not until tomorrow night. We probably won't get back home until around 5 today, so once I find eggs (LOL) I'll likely be making scrambled eggs for dinner. I know it's going to be VERY hard for dh to not stop at Wendy's and get a burger....my guess is if he's feeling anything close to ok, he'll end up stopping. And then end up regretting it. He's been craving a burger for weeks now.

We've pretty much got a system down for loading up our Walmart order (because it's always large since we only go about every 3 weeks). We don't let the helper help, LOL. Our cooler isn't quite big enough, so dh has also been bringing this other (even smaller cooler). Well yesterday he decided let's try our much bigger cooler and the one we normally take. He has this bar thing going across the back of his pickup bed (covered with a canopy) and the 2 coolers fit right at the end, between the bar and the tailgate, so they won't slide around back there, coming home. Plus he was always putting both cooler back up in the back seat area, with all the other groceries, and just too crowded. Now he won't need to try to fit the coolers I filled up, while he was loading all the non-cold stuff, in the backseat anymore. This new plan should work better and I won't have to put as much stuff in cooler bags.

Once I add the cost of eggs, my grocery total will be $386. Usually at some point between our 3 week trips I have to get a few other things from town, totaling about $50 (mostly because the little store is so expensive to shop at). That puts us at about $625 a month for food, cleaning, paper and laundry products. I could reduce it, but in trying to eat healthier, better quality foods, some things I am willing to pay more on. I buy expensive milk and eggs. I typically buy organic produce. This order also includes 2 jugs of fabric softener, because there was $5 cashback on 2. These will last quite a long time.

This month will be extra due to buying 2 turkeys next week, but the turkey dinner will be lots of leftover meals, so I'm guessing my next order 3 weeks from now, will be more like $300.

Well, I need to get down to our mailbox. I wrote a nasty letter to Dell's corporate headquarters. I'm sure it's futile, but maybe someone there will read it and get a piece of my mind.

Friday and November

It's Friday again, and November, already. I've been sitting here at my computer for about 45 minutes and suddenly realized I'm cold. I forgot to turn the heat up upstairs! Usually, I do it (from my phone) when I am making my coffee. First I had a little bit of research to do for my side job. I found the info (an old account number) they are looking for, in one of my saved files on my computer.

Still having to make bland meals for dh. This is hard. We had gone grocery shopping just before he got sick and stocked up on all our usual food, which almost all of it hasn't gotten eaten. We had even gone to Costco and a few things for the freezer, that have gone untouched. I don't know how bland it was, but I used up some chicken/pasta/broccoli stuff that comes frozen in a bag. There was enough left for one meal, so got that used up. Mostly I've been making him scrambled eggs for dinner. But, as of yesterday, I'm down to 2 eggs (he likes 3 scrambled) so I used one egg and made pancakes for dinner last night. I also made up pancakes with the rest of the batter and froze them. I'll give them a try, reheating in the microwave, one of these days.

I don't know what I'm making for dinner tonight. Tomorrow we are going to pick up an order at Walmart. I'm making sure to get lots of eggs (my one lone hen isn't laying now anymore, shorter days of sunlight, I guess). I need to come up with some other "bland" type meals, but I really have no ideas. I tried just baking some chicken (seasoned with a little olive oil and salt and pepper) but he didn't seem to like that much. I thought it was really good. I do have an old recipe I haven't made in awhile, with chicken, rice and mixed veggies, just a casserole style dish. If I can remember to take out some chicken to thaw when I go downstairs next, that would be good for dinner tonight.

All dh's ER visit bills have now been processed by insurance (and now just co-insurance owing). I'll need more detail (they haven't posted the actual EOB yet) as I'm trying to figure out what radiology he had twice...he's got 2 identical bills from an imaging company and the hospital charges are showing 2 large bills for radiology. He only had the one cat scan, as far as I know. I'm sure it's all correct, but I will go over it all to make sure, when I can see all the details. I'm sure the radiology charges are related to the one cat scan but they just break it up into separate charges for whatever was done.

It was snowing a little when I got up yesterday morning and we had deer in the back

My boss talked me into also just taking the Monday off before Christmas. Of course she did, LOL. So, between Thanksgiving and New Years I will end up with a total of 3 weeks off work (though almost half of it will be paid holidays, as my company is generous with the day after Thanksgiving, Christmas eve and the day after Christmas, and also adds in New Years eve as a paid holiday, along with the 3 main days of holidays.

Holiday plans

I never could find a red ink pen around this house, so yesterday I ordered a pack of 12 from Amazon for $2.35. I also had in my cart an oil filter for the lawn tractor - for next year, I guess. DH realized, after doing the annual maintenance, that he really only needs to change the filter yearly, the other parts that come with the whole maintenance kit, he can change every other year, so he doesn't need to order the whole kit every year (at $92). So, we just have to buy the filter, for less than $10. He went ahead and put it in the Amazon cart, so he wouldn't forget about it (and so he doesn't have to look it up again) and have it on hand for next year. Both of these went on the $20 Amazon gift card I earned for doing that survey. Both of these were free shipping, so I didn't need to get to the $35 for min order. I also have a couple other items in my cart, but they ship from Amazon and I need the $35 order to get free shipping. I could just order from my shared Prime account with dd, but then I couldn't use my gift card balance (as the Prime account is under her name/email). Something will come up to add to the cart soon. It always does.

I still really need to clean up/off my desk. Geez! I also have a stack of stuff I need to shred. I'm going to do that right now.....I'll be back....

Ok, that didn't take too long. Most of it ended up being garbage and some of it I got filed away in the file cabinet. I still have a bunch of misc "junk" on top of my 2 short file cabinets. I will try to get to that during my lunch break. Just a bunch of junk that needs to find a spot to be stored, I guess.

I just asked dd what their Thanksgiving and Christmas plans are this year. I figured they will stay home for Thanksgiving this year (to spend with his parents) and come here for Christmas and she confirmed that is their plan, but I wanted to make sure, so when I buy my turkey's I know what sizes to get. Plus I want to buy both at the same time. One year I waited until mid December to buy a turkey for Christmas and had a hard time finding one! I'd love to do ham instead, but dh insists on turkey.

I am taking a week off during Thanksgiving - the Wed before Thanksgiving through the next Tues after. That will be nice. We always get Thurs and Fri off and I usually take the day before, but this year I decided to use up some of my PTO and take a couple extra days. I thought I had already put in for my PTO during Christmas/New Years, at the same time I put in for Thanksgiving, but I guess I did not! It won't be a problem to take it off, I just thought I had already taken care of it in our payroll/time off system. I'm going to work the 23rd, then take off the rest of that week and all the next week. Wooo!