$$: Coyote Sighting Edition

Posted on | November 18, 2008 |

Total Spent Today: $1,954.94

coyote

A coyote crossed the road in front of me this morning as it traveled from one section of greenbelt to another. I can’t remember ever being that close to a coyote before and seeing it there, in the middle of an upscale suburban development, was a glorious testament to the will and drive to survive of God’s creatures.

Today started a little ominously. As always, I woke up tired and feeling as if I hadn’t slept at all. About halfway through my Tuesday morning egging-on-of-The-Son-so-he-wouldn’t-be-late-for-class routine, The Daughter called from school. I knew before I answered the phone that it wasn’t going to be good news. It wasn’t.

She was feeling very sick to her stomach and could I come get her? What was I going to say? No?

A quick calculation of time told me that if I left that very second, hit nothing but green lights, and didn’t come to a full stop in order to let her into the car, I could drive into town, pick her up, and make it back out to the house just in time to switch bodies in the passenger seat and get The Son to his first class in time.

Of course, I could have called on The Husband — which I did, by the way, but only as back-up driver just in case something went wrong and I couldn’t make it out to our section of suburbia in time. Really, it’s been a while since I had an opportunity to don my super-mom cape and even longer since I had enough energy to even want to prove my worth as a wife and mother. I saw this as a good opportunity to earn a few mommy-brownie points. After all, all I had to do was drive.

I’m happy to report the pick-up and round-trip drive went smoothly. Not only did I arrive home in time to get The Son to school, I actually managed to make a lunch for him too.

I left The Daughter napping on the couch and headed off to deliver The Son to school. We arrived with exactly 0 seconds to spare before official class-start-time — his fault he was late, not mine or The Daughter’s. After the drop-off, I set off to run what turned out to be an entire day of errands. I managed to spend a boat-load of money.

Here are the gory details:

~ ~ o o O o o ~ ~

Kwal Paint — ($6.24)
Remember back in September and October when I spent bazillion dollars on paint samples for the exterior of our house? And there was one time when the guy charged me $11.97 per quart for two quarts instead of the $9.00 I had otherwise been paying? Well, it never seemed worth the gas or the time or the trouble to make the trip down there just for a $6.00 refund but today I happened to be driving right past the Kwal store and I happened to have all of my old Kwal receipts in my wallet just in case. The guy was really nice; he had to run the refund by his manager (who happened to be the guy who overcharged me) and then he issued the refund.

Target — $31.52
A Vick’s humidifier. This time the fan isn’t making a very unhealthly grinding noise so we’ll consider it a keeper. It is, at this moment, pumping desperately needed humidity into the air in our living room.

Costco — $72.68
Yesterday The Husband came home from his annual physical and announced that his doctor had told him to get a blood pressure thingie from Costco. Being given such orders, The Husband did what any man would do, he told me. Well, okay, he asked me if I would pick one up the next time I was at Costco. Being a good Suburban Wife, I was happy to comply.

It’s an Omron HEM-775 Blood Pressure Monitor featuring a ComFit(tm) Cuff. Apparently this piece of high-tech equipment usually costs $61.99 but the manufacturer is currently offering a $12.40 instant rebate so our price was $49.59.

The Husband decided I should wrap the box and stick it under the Christmas tree for him. Merry Christmas, sweetie. What a nut!

I also picked up a two-pack of 20-oz bottles Cetaphil lotion for The Son — $16.99.

Costco — $18.00
Naturally, while at Costco I stopped at the pumps and topped off The Tank’s tank. I pumped 9.839 gallons at $1.829 per gallon. The odometer reading was 134,938.

~ ~ o o O o o ~ ~

My next move was dumb and I admit it. No point in lashing me with a wet noodle, there’s no way you could inflict any more guilt than what I’m already self-inflicting. The worst part is, I made the same mistake twice today. Two times.

I stopped by Discount Tires on the way home. The Tank needed new tires. Earlier this fall we’d toyed with the idea of replacing The Tank before the end of the year so we’d been holding off on new tires figuring we wouldn’t recover our expense and it would be better to sell it as-is and let the new owner take care of tires as they so desired. But then the economy tanked and we, like most of the rest of the country, decided to tighten our belts and put all large-spending plans on hold.

I’ve been around the block enough times to know that you never go shopping for new tires when there’s snow on the ground. Everyone and their uncle will also be at the tire store and you’ll wait in line for at least 36 hours. So I waited until after our first snowfall had become a distant (3 day) memory. The weather was a gorgeous 70 today — perfect weather for buying tires. And it was. My wait time was 45 minutes. Problem is, I overpaid.

And I’m really annoyed with myself. I’ve been buying tires from Discount Tires since I was 16. Over the years I’ve shopped around but always ended up back to Discount because they consistently meet or beat others’ prices and their customer service has always been stellar. So I walked in, chose a tire similar to my old tires — which were excellent in both wear and ride — and handed over my credit card.

Discount Tire — $990.28
That bought me four LT265/75R-16/E1 123R Michelin LTX M/S tires, four replacement certificates (yes, I always buy them; yes, they’ve saved my butt), plus installation and disposal of my old tires.

These tires are larger than the factory spec tires. It’s the size and type of tire that The Tank had on it when we bought it (used) and I’ve always just put the same type of tire back on it. I like how it handles with the “light truck” tires.

Anyway, it appears that I would have paid less if I’d gone through Costco (though maybe their website price is for the smaller SUV tire and not the larger, “light truck” tire I bought. I’ll have to do some more research. I’d really like to discover that I didn’t over-pay after all. Overpaying is the type of guilt I can carry around for decades.

~ ~ o o O o o ~ ~

Anyway, after my first visit to Discount Tire, I made one more stop on my Tuesday-errand run. Guess who I was shopping for:

Kroger — $8.13

a 2-liter bottle of Canada Dry Ginger Ale — $1.25 (saved $0.24)
a box of Keebler saltine crackers — $3.19
1/2 gallon of Horizon chocolate milk — $3.49 (saved $0.20)

Yup, that’s right. I was shopping for The Daughter. I finally headed home, The Tank freshly shod and my mom-to-the-rescue remedies for sick tummies finally procured.

~ ~ o o O o o ~ ~

I had a whole 1/2 an hour at home to dine and rest before having to head out again. The Daughter, feeling slightly better, announced that she had to acquire a copy of a new Jonas Brothers book [don't ask] released today. Apparently the book is a combined birthday gift for a friend with whom The Daughter et al will be lunching tomorrow (provided she’s healthy enough to go back to school). We decided to stop at the bookstore on the way to picking up The Son from class.

Borders — $23.11
The Daughter, having a Borders gift card, decided we should stop here first. Upon making her purchase, however, she discovered that said card only had a $3.53 balance. Oops. The remainder, $19.58, was applied to her (my) credit card with (believed) promises that I’d be paid back this amount (since The Daughter is responsible for paying for all gifts using her allowance or Sunday childcare/babysitting earnings).

Barnes & Noble — $0.00
The Daughter also had B&N gift cards and, naturally, since she needed a copy of said Jonas Brothers book [don't ask] for herself, we drove down the street to procure a copy. Upon checking out at B&N, The Daughter discovered that the book was cheaper at B&N than what she’d just paid at Borders. After some mom/daughter discussion, it was agreed that she should, having additional B&N gift cards, purchase a second copy of the book and that after picking up The Son, we’d return the Borders copy. I mean, come on, they really should get it together an not charge several $$ more than the store across the street.

Naturally, the purchase of the second book, which, by the way, had not yet been shelved at B&N so each time we wanted a copy we had to first find an employee and then wait for said employee to travel to the back of the store and bring one copy up the front of the store where we were standing in an impossibly long mid-day line waiting for the lone clerk to check out all of the mid-day book-buyers — naturally, that purchase made us late picking up The Son.

Miracle of miracles, he actually was not in a bad mood at having to wait outside for 5 minutes. Did I mention it was a gorgeous 70 degrees today?

So we picked up The Son and instead of being able to take the short, quick, direct highway route home we had to take the longer city route because we had to go home via Borders. Except not quite.

The Daughter, never too happy to be forced to socialize with family, was happily perusing her new Jonas Brothers book [don't ask] when to her (forcibly voiced) horror, she discovered a page with a printing issue in the form of a large purple streak down the middle of a full-page glossy photo [don't ask]. So we first stopped by B&N where I left the kids in the car and went in to make the exchange. Again, I had to find a store employee who had to trek to the back of the store who then made her way back to the front of the store with a replacement book. Such efficiency.

I returned to the car where I found The Son waiting outside of the car because apparently The Daughter had felt it her responsibility to educate her younger sibling on the finer details of each Jonas brother [don't ask]. Amazingly, he was quite too-natured about said torture.

Borders — ($23.11)
After piling back in the car we drove down the street where, again, I left the apples of my eye in the car while I went into the store. This time I did a return. The clerk put the entire purchase amount back on the credit card making our math for today’s book purchases all that more complicated. This time The Son had stayed in the car and the children were engaged in a lively and amusing debate over the issue of whether or not heterosexual males evaluate the looks of other men in the same way that heterosexual females evaluate other females. Ah, the joys of mothering teens.

Finally, we went home. But I was not done spending for the day.

~ ~ o o O o o ~ ~

I was home a whole 10 minutes before The Husband arrived home ready for his afternoon nap. Since The Daughter was still feeling too queasy to go swim a couple of miles, I took the rare opportunity of having access to the Impreza during business hours and took it, too, over to Discount tires. The Husband had recently mentioned that he’d noticed the Impreza’s tires were looking a bit, well, tired. They were actually more than that. The two front tires were practically bald.

Discount Tire (take II) — $640.57
This outrageous sum bought me four P205/55R-16 Goodyear Assurance Tripletred tires plus the replacement certificates, etc.

These things have a killer thread pattern. Very nice. And a nice ride with excellent handling if the short trip home is any indication. This time the wait time was about 1-1/2 hours.

I can’t tell if I overpaid for these too. Costco doesn’t offer this particular tire, at least not in my area, and I couldn’t find any reliable comparable prices online.

If it’s any consolation, and it is for me, Discount Tire is much closer to our house and I’m always quite good about taking in the cars for regular free tire rotations and air-pressure checks. I know myself well enough to know that I’d be much less likely to stick to a tire-rotation program at Costco, if indeed Costco offers free rotations. It’s just too far from the house.

Live and learn, I guess. Anyway, it was a good day. I got to see a coyote. And I got to spend a lively afternoon with two of my most favorite people in the world even if, or maybe because, they were discussing something as ridiculous as the Jonas Brothers [don't ask].

edit:

Oops. Forgot to mention that my scheduled Sharebuilder buy went through. I ended up buying 12.2439 shares of GE for $196 (plus the $4.00 transaction fee). I don’t have a total in front of me right now so I’ll have to report in some other time as to how many total shares of GE I now own.
photo credit: prorallypix