Church — $15.00
Weekly offering.

Wild Oats — $59.49

• roast beef — sliced;
• gallon of milk;
• package of english muffins
• fiber capsules;
• Annie’s Mac & Cheese — 2 boxes;
• O’Coco’s cookies;
• 5 energy bars, 3 varieties (for The Daughter);
• 2 slices of pizza (for the kids);
• 1 tray of sushi (to share).

No purchases today. And too tired to write anything deep or noteworthy on the subject of household finances. I’m sure to spend some money tomorrow, though, so check back in

Best Buy — $20.00
Gift card for The Daughter to give to a friend/classmate for his 16th birthday.

Target — $10.22
Shampoo, conditioner, elastic hairbands, and bobby pins — all for The Daughter.

Gap Outlet — $76.92
Socks, sweater vest, and khaki shorts for The Son. The shorts will have to be returned because the inseam length is ridiculously long and The Son rejected them. I don’t blame him. Also purchased 4 pair of boxer shorts for The Nephew whose birthday is coming up soon.

American Eagle — $42.69
Boyfriend jeans for The Daughter. Good gosh, these things are so expensive!

Post Office — $17.46
Postage for two international packages mailed today. I mailed out 11 packages today. Thank goodness I’m all set up for printing domestic shipping labels here at home — I’ve got one of those really Zebra 4×6 thermal label printers. It makes shipping so much easier. Even though some international postage can be purchased on-line and printed at home, I prefer to do it by hand and buy my postage at the post office.

Auction Update
My initial batch of auctions have all now ended. I had 36 listings; 35 sold. My total sales value $681.88.

I currently have 16 active auctions. There have been 5 bids placed on 5 different items for a total of $39.95. My active auctions have a total of 15 watchers. This current batch of auctions start ending in 4 days 14 hours and 14 minutes.

I still have quite a few clothing items to list (I found a new stash today that included another boy’s Columbia jacket, a girl’s Obermeyer winter coat, and a beautiful F.W. Fischer gray wool dress coat that The Daughter wore a lifetime ago). But I’m really burned out on photographing and listing and since today was a busy away-from-the-house day, I’m behind on invoicing for and the shipping of items that have already sold. Guess what I’m doing tomorrow

Whole Foods — $30.22

• pasta (2 varieties)
• 3 whole chicken legs
• 2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts (for the ever squeamish Daughter and Husband)
• a house-brand natural soda (for The Son)
• a slice of pizza (also for The Son — his usual après cello lesson snack)

Netflix — $18.35
Monthly membership — 3-at-a-time unlimited level.

I’ve got to say, I love our Netflix membership. As do the kids. Even The Husband, who was sceptical for a long time, has joined the bandwagon. He doesn’t actively add movies to the queue, mind you, but he does come up with new movies for me to add to the queue.

At the beginning of the summer I gave The Son and The Daughter their own queues and allotted each of them one movie. So, when The Daughter returns her movie, or more commonly, her TV show DVD, Netflix sends her another disc from her personal queue. The same goes for The Son. However, The Son is much more interested in renting movies that we can all watch together.

I alternate between my West Wing discs (I’m now up to Season 3) and movies that The Husband requests. I’ve got the timing down perfectly. My West Wing disc comes on Wednesday. I begin watching it Wednesday evening on the laptop while The Son is at rehearsal; then finish it at home. If I send the disc back on Thursday, Netflix gets a movie out to us on Friday that we get in Saturday’s mail. Saturday is then movie night for The Husband, The Son, and I. Saturday’s movie then gets dropped in a box on Sunday, Netflix gets it on Tuesday and the whole cycle begins again.

Sometimes, however, something goes wrong — as it did this week. Ken Burns’ The War was on on Wednesday night so I didn’t get my West Wing disc viewed in time to make today’s mail pickup. But The Son’s disc (Super-Size Me) went back today so I added The Husband’s movie choice to The Son’s queue. His disc should arrive at the Netflix depository tomorrow and they should send out The Husband’s movie, a DeNiro flick called The Score, tomorrow getting it here in time for our Saturday movie night. The Son is a huge DeNiro fan even though he’s not allowed to watch 90% of what DeNiro has made. But tonight he made no complaints when I told him that I’d taken over his queue. After all, he’ll get to see this one. I checked — the movie’s rated R for language. Please. He’s got me for a mother; he’s heard it all before. Language in movies is not something that I sensor anymore. Sex, I mind. And graphic violence I mind. But language, not so much.

Auction Update
My auctions are doing great. I really couldn’t be happier. So far I’ve had 28 auctions close; 27 of them sold for a total of $569.36. I’m working hard to get as many items listed as possible before the end of the month as that’s when eBay’s listing sale ends. And as of right now I have 18 current listings; those items have a total of 40 bids for a combined total of $129.59.

Sometimes I feel guilty for ending my boycott of eBay but I can’t argue with the cash I’ve managed to raise or the fact that I’ve saved quite a bit in listing fees. Yes, I still have to pay the Final Value Fees and the Paypal fees but there’s no way I would have brought in that kind of bidding on any other site. Craigslist is great, for certain things, but not for kids clothing.

Still, despite the cash I’m bringing in, I am burning out and ready to take a break for the work of listing auctions.

Costco — $48.26
Fuel for The Tank; purchased 18.15 gallons @ $2.659/gal.; odometer reads 114298

Wild Oats — $43.98

• salsa
• tomatoes
• green onions
• cheese (3 varieties)
• Kashi cereal
• 1/2 dozen packages tortillas
• toaster pastries
• 1/2 gallon milk

Wendy’s — $2.21
Dinner for The Son

School — $47.50
Ten school lunches in October and November. These are catered hot, organic meals. We allow The Daughter an average of two hot lunches per week.

School — $31.90
School photos. We ordered a sheet of wallets photos of The Daughter and one 8×10 class photo.
[I should take The Son in for some “school” photos — especially if I can get another coupon for Target. It’s been a couple of years since I had individual photos of The Son taken.]

School - $15.00
Test fee for The Daughter to take the PSAT test in October. As a sophmore, this will be a first for her. Literally. She’s never taken a standardized test before. Ever.

School — $12.00
Test fee for The Daughter to take the PLAN test in November. She’ll be an old hand at tests by then School — $43.00
Our Sally Foster wrapping paper fund-raising order. Not a very impressive order but neither The Daughter nor I are very good at asking people to spend money for fund-raisers.

Auction Update
Fourteen of my auctions ended today. My total sales were $314.16 — a total that I couldn’t be much happier with.

There were a few items that ended a lower than I’d hoped but there were several that went as high as I’d hoped and one, The Son’s last year’s winter coat and snow pants, that went higher than I would have dared to hope.

I added three new auctions today and relisted the one item that didn’t sell. So now I have 25 current auctions. There have been 65 bids placed on 22 of the items for a total of $277.57. Hopefully the 13 items ending tomorrow will get a few more last minute bids before they close.

Pixie Soap — $20.00
A gift box for my sister who developed a scary, nasty infection in her jaw this weekend. Apparently she’s trying for a year now to tell her dentist that something was wrong with the filling but he kept saying it looked fine. Whoops, guess he was wrong, huh? I suggested maybe it’s time to find a new dentist. Anyway, I wanted to send her a little “get-better” gift so I contacted my friend Patty at Pixie Soap and asked her to put together a $20 gift box including a wooden soap dish and two or three bars of soap (including my personal favorite, Oats Gone Wild).

iTunes — $1.06
Downloaded the Paul Oakenfold remix of Elvis’s Rubberneckin’. I heard this song at the theater the other day in a preview shown at the Harry Potter movie — I think it was for a movie called Fred Claus with Vince Vaughn. I won’t be seeing the movie but I could not get this song out of my head so I bought it. I already own the Oakenfold remix of Elvis’ A Little Less Conversation — a 5-star favorite in my iTunes. I’m pretty sure that Rubberneckin’ will end up on my exercise playlist.

Barack Obama for America — $15.00
Matching campaign donation; my second donation to Obama’s campaign and my second ever politican donation.

iTunes — $1.06
Downloaded What I Like About You by The Romantics. The Daughter, whenever possible, catches some gawdawful teeniebopper drivel on the Toob called What I Like About You and the theme song, naturally, is an equally gawdawful cover of this classic tune. When The Daughter was home ill last week she watched the show several times over the course of two days and I couldn’t get the song out of my head. So I bought the real song and added it to my iPod.