Day 67

Wendy’s — $3.52
Two ham­burg­ers and a vanilla frosty for The Son after his les­son before head­ing off for orches­tra rehearsal.

Costco — $19.32
Ugh. This is the kind of trip I just hate! I’ve been want­ing to get up to the north Costco because I’d been told that they carry a larger selec­tion of organic items and that they had the Nature’s Path organic toaster pas­tries that the kids like for break­fast. I also wanted to see if they had the Fruitabu fruit “flats” (which The Daugh­ter likes) or “twirls” (which The Son likes). They didn’t have either.

It gets worse — while wan­der­ing around look­ing for the toaster pas­tries, I found the cases of Hori­zon vanilla milk but no choco­late milk. Were they out? NO. They’ve replaced that prod­uct with a dif­fer­ent brand. WTF?! The Hori­zon choco­late milk was the whole rea­son for renew­ing our mem­ber­ship this year [see this post]. I’m so very ticked!

I did find a 15-package case of Annie’s Mac & Cheese for $8.99 — that makes the price $0.60/box! Look­ing back at my notes the very best price I’ve got­ten on those lately is $1.25 less 10%. If I remem­ber cor­rectly Vit­a­min Cot­tage had them on sale for $0.99 this sum­mer. Today’s $0.60 per box is a great price but, as The Daugh­ter said, it will take her 6 months to eat it all.

The other item I picked up was a box of assorted fla­vors of Stretch Island fruit leathers. Never mind the fact that Stretch Island and Fruitabu are made by the same com­pany — as soon as The Daugh­ter laid eyes on the box she announced in no uncer­tain terms that she doesn’t like that brand, she only likes Fruitabu. Kids!

Costco Gas — $45.74
The Tank was thirsty. I pumped 15.888 gal­lons @ $2.879/gal. My odome­ter reads 116,396.

Vit­a­min Cot­tage — $2.59
While The Son did his cello thing, I ran out for an Odwalla Straw­berry C Mon­ster to tide me over until I could get home for some dinner.

Marshall’s — $118.80
Another Ugh! How did I man­age to spend so much and in less than an hour?!

Okay, I was there to find another pair of bas­ket­ball shorts for The Son because 1) the red ones I bought look less than ter­rific with his just-issued red jer­sey uni­form and 2) I expected his uni­form to include a jer­sey and shorts because, after all, that’s what the high school uni­form con­sists of but it turns out that the middle-schoolers are only pro­vided with a jer­sey. He needs two pair of shorts if he’s going to be play­ing two games and hav­ing at least one prac­tice each week. I found a pair of reversible Addias shorts in black/gray that I’m hope­ful will look okay with the jer­sey and that The Son will acqui­esce to wear. Cost: $13.00 (retail — $35.00)

I also needed to see if I could find a smaller pair of warm-up pants. The Daugh­ter con­vinced me to get him a size Large dur­ing our ear­lier shop­ping trip but they’re sim­ply too big in the waist; no mat­ter how much I cinch the draw­string, they fall off the boy. As I’ve learned over the years, too big isn’t an issue — he’s sure to grow into them. But, in the mean­time, he needs a pair of warm-up pants that he doesn’t have to con­tin­u­ously hold up with one hand and that don’t threaten to fall off and take his shorts with them when­ever he needs two free hands. I found a pair of black Nike pants that I hope will fit and meet with The Son’s approval. Cost: $16.99 (retail — $40.00)

While look­ing through the menswear depart­ment, I found a nice Colum­bia fleece jacket that I thought The Son might approve of. His favorite spring/fall-weight jacket is now offi­cially too small. But he’s very par­tial to it and is reluc­tant to select a replace­ment. He has a new Colum­bia winter-weight jacket that we picked up from Burling­ton just before I started blog­ging but it’s meant for cold days and is too heavy and bulky for merely crisp days. I made The Son try the new Colum­bia on before allow­ing him into the car after rehearsal — if it had met with an imme­di­ate veto I was pre­pared to take it back imme­di­ately. It passed the first round of approvals. We’ll let it sit around for a week or so with­out remov­ing the tags to see if it’s still a “go” or if it becomes a “no”. Cost: $34.99 (retail — $65.00)

As long as I was shop­ping, I did some planned birth­day present hunt­ing for my youngest nephew and god­son. He’s a skinny, petite lit­tle pis­tol and what he really wants are “swish” pants — wind­breaker ath­letic pants that make that “swish” noise when you walk. I found just the thing and in the right size too. Cost: $12.99 (retail @ $20.00)

As I was shop­ping I called my sis­ter to con­firm the lit­tle guy’s size and see what else might be on his wish-list. It turns out that he’s sud­denly out­grown all of his undies and maybe his Aun­tie, shop­per extra­or­dinare that she is, could find some new ones. He’d expressed inter­est in box­ers like the ones his older brother wears but upon try­ing them doesn’t like all that extra fab­ric, etc. So his mom and I agreed that maybe he’d like boxer briefs. Sure enough, I found two pack­ages in that usually-elusive littlest-boy size so I snapped them up at $5.99/package (retail — $15.00/ea).

My final pur­chase was a nice hoodie sweat­shirt branded with the local col­lege foot­ball team’s logo across the chest. This pur­chase was a bit of a might-have-to-be-returned risk, which I hate tak­ing, but that’s just the way it goes some­times. I did call The Hus­band and ask his opin­ion but he was less than help­ful. The intended recip­i­ent is The Husband’s third son who is spe­cial needs and has a birth­day later this month. The ques­tions are 1) is it the right size and 2) does he need a hoodie? I tried call­ing The Husband’s daugh­ter because she’ll know what size her brother wears and will have an edu­cated guess as to whether or not a sweat­shirt will be an appre­ci­ated gift but I couldn’t get her on the phone. I’ll try again tomor­row. Cost: $19.99 (retail @ $38.00).

Over­all I’m extremely pleased with the items I found and the prices I paid but it sure is depress­ing to see how quickly it all adds up.

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