Day 166: Colonics, Underwear, Groceries, Bedding, and Speech Therapy

How’s that for a inter­est­ing col­lec­tion of expenses?  It cer­tainly was a full day.  Here we go with my today’s daily dol­lar diary entry:

Alter­na­tive Care & Sup­ple­ments — $106.57
I started the morn­ing with a colonic ses­sion ($70) and bought a bot­tle of herbal sup­ple­ments specif­i­cally for­mu­lated to give relief for some of my IBS symp­toms (most of which are doing much bet­ter since start­ing the lavage treatments).

Wild Oats — $36.87

• 4 large organic bone­less, skin­less chicken breast halves — $21.25 (we had plenty of left­overs for lunch tomorrow)
• aspara­gus — $4.71
• organic sliced roast beef — $4.99
• organic sliced smoked turkey — $4.99

I’d hoped to pick up a box or two of Kashi cereal (either Cin­na­mon Har­vest or Autumn Wheat) but Wild Oats (now offi­cially Whole Foods) just raised the price to $4.29 per box.  They’d raised the price and then put it on sale for a very gen­er­ous $3.69.  Excuse me, but just how stu­pid do they think we are!!?!  Their sale price is the same as the reg­u­lar price at Kroger and Vit­a­min Cot­tage.  I told the clerk in no uncer­tain terms that I didn’t like hav­ing my intel­li­gence insulted like that and I fully intended to go up the street to the Super Tar­get for my Kashi cereal.  Which I did.…

Tar­get — $20.83

• 3 boxes of Kashi Cin­na­mon Har­vest — $3.29/box
• 3 boxes of Kashi Autumn Wheat — $3.29/box

Tar­get — $6.93
It wasn’t until I was in the check­out line that it occurred to me that I should check Target’s offer­ings in men’s under­wear.  With my reusable nylon Chico bags stuffed with Kashi cereal in tow, I wan­dered back to the men’s depart­ment where I found a pack­age of men’s Hane’s briefs in the clear­ance sec­tion.  The pack­age was sup­posed to con­tain 5 pair of briefs but some­one had opened the pack­age and the 5th pair had either been lost, mis­placed, or taken.  So this pack­age of 4 was on sale for a reduced price.

Would you believe that the Great Under­wear Search of ’08 might well be over!?  I kid you not!  It looks like these Hanes briefs might be the prover­bial glass slip­per.  I’m not going to count my chick­ens just yet but I am poised to go back to Tar­get and stock up on full-priced pack­ages of briefs if and when The Son gives me the thumbs up.  First he has to thor­oughly test them which involves wear­ing them all day long under his nor­mal street clothes on a busy day away from home.  If they can pass that test, then by golly I think we’ll have a winner.

I’ll tell you what — I never imag­ined that that elu­sive brand and style of briefs was sit­ting under my nose this whole time in Tar­get!  This should really be a les­son to me about my sub­con­scious snob­bish ways.

Med­ical Co-Pay — $25.00
I had to take The Son in for a blood draw so they could re-test his thy­roid lev­els.  Two months ago, dur­ing blood tests for a dif­fer­ent con­cern, we dis­cov­ered that The Son’s thy­roid lev­els were a bit ele­vated.  His doctor’s office sent a reminder card the other day to bring him in for a re-check.  Hope­fully they’ll call back in a few days with news that his thy­roid level is per­fectly fine — but I’m not hold­ing my breath.  Every sin­gle mem­ber of both my fam­ily and The Husband’s has thy­roid prob­lems.  There is no way my kids are going to escape that one.  I hate to see it start so young in The Son.  If this test comes out high they’ll refer us to a specialist.

The Com­pany Store — $104.93
I know I said I was going to wait a year on new flan­nel sheets for our bed but, well, I guess I lied.   So sue me 

I got an email this morn­ing from The Com­pany Store telling me I could save an addi­tional 15% off all clear­ance items.  The thought of hav­ing two sets of flan­nel sheets and two winter-weight duvet cov­ers was just too entic­ing.  I ordered a flan­nel duvet cover in a fall leaf pat­tern along with two match­ing pil­low cases (no shams this time).  I also ordered a solid col­ored queen fit­ted sheet and two pil­low cases in the same solid color.  I’m hop­ing that the fit­ted sheet will look good with the duvet cover (I didn’t bother deal­ing with their cus­tomer ser­vice rep this time) and that they both look good with my linen-blend bed­skirt because that’s the plan.  If every­thing doesn’t coor­di­nate I’ll have some tough deci­sions to make.

Speech Ther­a­pist — $60.00
Another 45-minute ses­sion for The Son with his speech ther­a­pist.  I can tell that she likes him and that he feels pretty com­fort­able with her.  I’m going to have to pull back to every other week before too long but I’m hop­ing to estab­lish a really good work­ing rela­tion­ship between them and some sense of own­er­ship in him regard­ing his assign­ments before pulling back.  This next week will be a good test since I’ll be out of town and he’ll have to be dis­ci­plined if he’s going to have his home­work done for his next session.

Related posts:

1. Day 167: Stu­pid Tax, Co-Pay, more Under­wear, & Choco­late Milk
2. Day 164: Gifts and Underwear
3. Day 138: Undies and Out­ers, Speech and Baseball
4. Day 188: Tide, Tam­pax, & Cargo Shorts
5. Day 25