Thanks, you guys, for your frugal site suggestions. I love it that there are so many blogs and forums out there devoted to saving money. Like a couple of you mentioned, I’m really most interested in saving money on the cleaning and paper products that I use regularly – and if I can save a few bucks on decent litter, I am THERE.
I’m in the process of updating my links page, but it’ll be a while (I’m trying to convince Fred to write me a simple little links organizer that will sit on our server – along the lines of Blogrolling.com, but it would pull from our own server instead of from Blogrolling’s). Once it’s updated, though, I’ll have a little section of just the money-saving blogs/ forums so y’all can check ’em out, too!
Tell me, sweet darling readers, if this makes sense to you. You and your husband or significant other get into the car to drive to town to, for instance, take the recycling back to the recycling center. As you are on your way to the recycling center, you both decide to swing by the grocery store because Diet Pepsi is on sale, buy one get one free (which adds up to 75 cents per bottle, and that is an EXCELLENT FREAKIN’ PRICE). You drop your stuff off at the recycling center, go to the grocery store, and you realize something.
“Hey,” you say to your husband or significant other. “Since the pet store is right here, I’m going to run over and check on their price on that cat food I was looking at.”
And he gives you the look. He doesn’t say anything, but you KNOW he’s thinking “Every time we go out to do an errand, she has to ADD ERRANDS on to what we’re doing!”
Seriously. If we’re out doing errands, and I think of another errand that needs to be done, what does it hurt if we do that additional errand? Would it make sense to ONLY do the errands we set out to do, come home, and then go out at a later time to get the additional errand done SO WE CAN WASTE GAS AND KILL THE PLANET? What the fuck?
And this is apparently a widespread “problem” – Fred told me that he and a coworker once bonded over the way their wives would “add errands” on.
I ask again: what the fuck?
I watched the Octo-Mom on Oprah yesterday (it was on last week, I DVR’d it. I DVR all episodes of Oprah and then decide which ones to watch based on the description. I end up deleting about 9/10ths of them, and then fast-forward through most of the ones I end up watching).
I didn’t watch the entire interview between Oprah and Octo-Mom, because her voice (and those great big fake hooting belly-laughs) were annoying the shit out of me, but holy CRAP is that woman in over her head. She appears to routinely get only about three hours of sleep per night, and that lack of sleep probably explains (1) why she would ever think that anyone on earth would EVER believe she’s never had any kind of plastic surgery (how are those great big plastic lips treating you, Octo-Mom?) and (2) that she has no idea who Angelina Jolie is.
Please.
It was interesting to see 24 hours in her life, though.
Maura is really coming out of her shell since we’ve allowed her the run of the house. She actually has her favorite spots in the house – in the picture above, she’s laying in the sun in the kitchen. She also likes to hang out on my desk, sometimes she lays by the back door, and in the afternoons she can be found laying in the cat bed on the chair next to my bed. She has her playful moments, and she’s starting to be more interested in the kittens than annoyed by them, especially when the kittens are playing with each other.
Yesterday, she was laying in the kitchen and Rhyme and Bolitar were play-fighting. She reached out and smacked at Rhyme’s tail as it whipped by. He turned and hissed at her, and she just looked at him like “What’s YOUR problem, kid?”
She sure is a sweet girl.
Corbett and Reacher, watching Kara in the back yard.
Fond of the office supplies, these kittens.
Better call the dishwasher repair guy. It appears we’ve got an infestation of kittens again. ::sigh:: WHERE do they come from??
I love how Rhyme is all “I WILL KEELL YOU!” and Reacher’s like “What’s going on over there?”
Rhyme: “I WILL BITE YOUR FACE OFF!”
Reacher: “Is it snack time yet, you think?”
“Trying to SLEEP here, lady.”
Previously
2009: Yes, I APOLOGIZED to her for not keeping my account. I guess that showed THEM.
2008: No entry.
2007: No entry.
2006: I have no skillz, but I’m a quick learner!
2005: Spot let out a sad, drawn-out demon-from-hell sound.
2004: Meme-licious.
2003: No entry.
2002: No entry.
2001: No entry.
2000: I live to please you, my beloved readers.
I am a total “add errands on” kinda gal and my husband gives me the same look I’m sure Fred gave you. Yes, it makes sense to add them onto other errands if you are already out! I rarely go out for just a single thing–I usually wait until I have a bunch of things to get done and do them all during the same trip.
I’m such a freak that not only do I make a list of the errands to run, I plan them out based on location and ease of access. For instance, I would plan the route so I take right turns out to the next place as that means less sitting in traffic and no wasteful back/forth.
Sigh.
That being said, if I remembered something not on my list I would certainly prefer to ADD it right then instead of having to make another trip later.
Hi Robyn,
Can you post this on Friday? Thanks 🙂
My friend Sue and her daughter Holly volunteered at a Soft Power Education school in Uganda last summer. They were overwhelmed by the need, and Holly has made a real effort to supply books for their newly formed library.
Holly has now entered a contest on “What am I doing to change the world” through Red Rose tea. The winner will be given a seven-day, all expenses-paid trip for two to live and work in Africa on a ONEXONE partner project.
There is a limit of one (1) entry per person/email address permitted during the Contest Period, so she’ll need support from as many people as possible. A confirmation message will be sent to your email, and you have to click on the link to make your vote count (check your junk mail folder).
Read her entry at this site, and if you are willing, vote for her. Should she win, she and and her fiance Alan would do this volunteer work this summer as part of their honeymoon. Thanks, friends, And cross your fingers.
http://www.redrosetea.ca/reachoutwithredrose/EssayContest/EssayView.aspx?author=yes&id=5f9e7f37-bf1d-4e41-9877-1be6c7fb9ca8
Absolutely! 🙂
Thanks so much!!! 🙂
I’m also an errand adder-onner. My FI gives me “the look” and says this is why he hates going anywhere because we never just go where we originally planned. But, I say, if he didn’t want to go anywhere else he shouldn’t ask, “do we need to do anything else?” duh.
Check it out, two Aimees in a row in the comments here 😉
Oh, Ed used to whine about add-on errands, too. His reason for whining used to be that he only had two days off a week and there I was filling his entire day with my rotten errands. Never mind I would only add-on small things that were nearby where we already were, right, not like we were at the pet store down the street and I would go “oh, hey, let’s drive 500 miles the other way to look at light bulbs!” I take him on errands of any kind as little as possible because he’s such a big freakin whiny BABY about it. Which may be why he does it, “oh, if I annoy the crap out of her, she’ll let me stay home.”
I don’t get coupons either. I subbed to a few coupon blogs a while back and I almost never see anything we’d actually use. Lots of processed foods and cleaning/hygiene products. I save money by not using paper towels for anything except cat barf- I use maybe a roll every 4-6 weeks and probably only that much because I have an elderly cat who pukes a lot. I also don’t use commercial cleaners at all anymore. I have two spray bottles, one that is 50/50 vinegar/water and one 20/80 Dr. Bronner’s/water (or something like that, I just squirt some soap in the bottle until I think “that’s enough now!” and then add the rest water). I clean everything with those. Sometimes I sprinkle a little baking soda for scouring. Besides things to clean US, the only commercial cleaning products I still buy are dish soap and laundry soap. The laundry soap is the pain for me. I tried making my own for a while, but I don’t have a good place to keep it in my stupid apartment and I didn’t actually like it very much. My kid and her dad have super sensitive skin, so I always have to buy the “free” or “natural” kinds.
I wrote a book here.
I must have lucked out; Tim’s really easy going when I do “add-ons.” Maybe it’s because he naps through them.
I thought of something to really “annoy” any DH/SO that does the eye-rolling.
Wait until you get back home, let them sit down and then get ’em back up and out to that “extra errand”.
When they really start to bitch, just smile sweetly and say:
“well, I didn’t want you to complain about the extra errand while we were there”.
If you do it enough, maybe they’ll quit bitching.
*evil grin*
If you have a Kroger near you, they have had Petpride scoopable cat litter in the 40lb. box on sale for something like $7.09 for weeks now. I love it and I have tried the rest and I really think this clumps the best. I have 4 cats and I am TERRIBLE about scooping and cleaning the box and the smell is fine for days… yes days, shut up I said I was bad!
oh thank goodness. I tried to log on about an hour ago and all your posts were gone!!! No calendar or archives even. Must have been a nightmare!!!
My husband does the same (totally annoying) thing. “You said we were only going to ____! Now we have to go to ____, too??” Where I am going in for something we NEED, that HE will also use.
My husband is the Errand King in our family. We are exhausted and the kids are getting crabby after a long day? Hell no, can’t do it TOMORROW. We must do it NOW!
As a kid my mom would drag me on errands, and I loathed them as much as husbands appear to (I’m not married). She would say “We’re going to go Here and There.” So it was set in my mind that that was all the torture I had to endure. Once we were in those places, she would inevitably say “Oh let’s go Over There too! And I need to hit up That Place.” And it made me so mad because my expectations were all shot to hell. I guess this is what spouses who hate errands feel like.
Would you say that Bolitar is the most fearless of the Bookworms? I ask because I had a dream the other night that a friend of mine was dealing with all these kittens, and she had them in a sort of cage only one side was open, and Bolitar was the one who kept jumping out… it was a pretty weird dream, actually, if I need to say that.
Yep, get all the errands done in one trip. Today (hubby’s day off)…gas station to fill the car up, diner for breakfast, post office, drugstore and Publix for groceries. All in that order, all in the same area, all told to him ahead of time. DONE! And yes, I plan the route as well. He can never say I didn’t tell him ahead of time where we were going. However, I do ask him if there is anyplace he wants to stop and I work that in the plan. 🙂 AND, off subject, but I do think Maura should become a permanent resident with you and Fred. Just sayin’. For real !!!
You can clean everything with vinegar and water in a spray bottle. It’s probably the cheapest thing on earth.
Don’t know if anyone suggested checking out the Tightwad Gazette, but it’s well worth the money. (Or check it out from the library free before you buy.) The author took frugality to the extreme. (And she lives in MAINE!) I still dig it out and look up stuff all the time. Not that I would ever reuse a vacuum cleaner bag, but if you are living on the edge…:)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUFyD-FTf-E
How is Miz Poo doing these days? She looks real tired in pictures. How old is she now? ‘Enquiring’ minds want to know.
My husband is the one who likes to add errands on to errands. I’m all, “OMG, we went to Target AND stopped for gas, kill me now.” And he’s all, “Hey, paper towels are on sale at CVS let’s stop and stock up!”
My husband is an enormous infant about errands in general but add ons? OMG you’d think I was pulling his toenails out slowly. It’s amazing how he will persue something HE wants though. My sister and her husband run errands togeather quite frequently, BFF and her husband too. I live in an area with a lot of retirees. When I worked retail you’d see many poor little old ladies rushing and a nervous wreck at the check out because “My husband is out there and he’s so impatient.” Poor things! I hope I never have to become one of them! “Add ons” save gas and wear and tare on a vehicle-smart thinking in my book. (My phonetic spelling-not so smart-lol! I think I will add a large print dictionary to my wish list).
Just plop a top on that box of kittens, tape it up and send it to me!