$$: Pool Fees, Swimming Gear, and Food

Posted on | November 1, 2008 |

Total Spent Today: $171.86

The Daughter and I were supposed to do some shopping/errands today but she had a mid-afternoon babysitting gig that took longer than expected. Thus we got a late start and only got one errand run because the stores starting closing and I had to be home to fix dinner (hey, don’t you call having the kids shove two frozen pizzas in the oven fixing dinner?).

So here’s the breakdown:

Swim Gear store — $120.51

A locally-owned store that we’ve frequented now and again over the course of the kids’ swimming careers. Technically, the store was closed when we arrived but the owner let us in anyway. The Daughter bought:

one practice suit — $40.00 (much needed as all of her old suits have degraded to the point where, alone, they push the bounds of decency; layered, as many competitive swimmers wear them, they work okay and provide good drag but she definitely needed a new suit to her inevitable rotation of usable suits)
a pull-buoy — $12.00
a snorkel — $42.00
a kickboard — $18.00

Of this purchase, the only item taken out of her clothing allowance is the suit. All of the rest of the gear, just as with the practice fins and hand-paddle things we bought years ago, are considered one-time equipment purchases. The point of the allowance is to have her learn to clothe her body within the limits of a budget, not to limit her ability to participate in activities.

Swim Gear Store — $4.30

As we were checking out The Daughter found a panda bear keychain that lights up. Being a fan of pandas, a collector of keychains, a lover of bling, and a teenaged girl taken with “cute” things — she just had to have it. The Daughter didn’t have her cash on her so I paid (I had cash from my Friday excursion) and she paid me back when we got home (so I suppose, technically that’s a $0.00 entry).

Kroger — $47.05

Our regular grocery store is in the same little strip mall as the swim gear store, so we zipped in for a few “essentials”:

2 Digiorno’s pizzas — $6.99/ea. (saved $0.30/ea.)
4# Horizon salted butter — $3.99/ea. (saved $1.50/ea.) — at this price, I’m stocking up!
Breyer’s chocolate ice cream — $4.99 (saved $0.70)
Keebler chocolate chip cookies — $3.69 (saved $0.20)
Oregon Chai — $3.39 (saved $0.60) — I’m not quite sure what this stuff is and I doubt I really want The Daughter drinking it but I let her get it anyway
box of Fiber One granola bars — $3.89

My receipt says I saved 15% or $8.10 off my total order but, honestly, that’s little consolation. Frozen pizzas are so convenient and they make a great Saturday night dinner (that’s the night we always have The Husband’s disabled adult son at our house for dinner) when I don’t have anything else planned or ingredients on-hand. Ever since Kroger stopped carrying Colman ground beef it’s become a lot harder to throw together a home-cooked meal when I don’t have the time or the means to do some prepatory shopping. I do try to keep a package of ground beef in the freezer for emergencies but on the whole I greatly prefer to use fresh meat when I cook. I’m going to have to work on this.

The cookies, too, don’t make me happy. They’re chock full of chemicals. In the old days, a bag of cookies would last us a couple of months because they were doled out to The Husband’s son at the rate of one per week along with a small serving of ice cream. Every now and again, The Husband would imbibe. Now, however, the kids are helping themselves to the cookies so I have replace the bag much more frequently. I really don’t want to be a food Nazi and for the most part they have good dietary habits but my food-purist self gets rather loud at times.

One thing we consume in quantity that doesn’t bother me at all is butter. But I absolutely insist on organic butter. Fat cells hold the concentration of all of the impurities and antibiotics fed to an animal so even more important that organic meat are organic dairy products — butter, milk, cheese, heavy cream, etc. And I firmly believe that clean animal fat is much healthier than fat alternatives. I’ve never been a fan of low-fat products, particularly for children who need a certain amount of healthy fat in their diets. I practice, instead, consumption of healthy fats in moderation. My views on sugar consumption are similar — moderate consumption of pure cane sugar as opposed to unmoderated consumption of artificial sweeteners.

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