Walgreens — $34.72

Tuesday night The Son played right and left field during a 8pm baseball game.  Something out in the grass made a real meal out of The Son — particularly his ankles.  Yesterday they itched; today he was in agony.  Poor kid has bite after inflamed bite on both legs.  And they’re huge bites.  Obviously he’s having an allergic reaction to whatever poison those bugs pumped into him.

Every 3 or 4 hours today I’ve nursed his bites with a regimen of ice, rubbing alcohol, and then a generous dollop of StingStop.  But I knew that wouldn’t get him through the night so after dinner I ran out for some serious supplies.  I don’t like giving my kids medicine.  I especially don’t like giving them things that will make them drowsy or will affect their moods.  The Son has only had Benadryl one other time in his life — a few years ago he had a reaction to an antibiotic (something else I rarely give to the kids) and he broke out all over with terrible hives.

But desperate times call for desperate measures and if you could see these poor ankles, you’d know these are desperate times.  With the help of the pharmacist I bought three different remedies:

• Children’s Benadryl — $6.49  (The Son at age 13, 5′10″ tall, and weighing 125 lbs definitely could be given the adult Benadryl except that he cannot swallow pills.  This will be administered tonight at bedtime and will serve both to make him drowsy and relieve the itching.)
• Claritin Reditabs — $19.99/40 tablets (I can’t give him the Benadryl and the Claritin at the same time but the Claritin takes longer to take effect and therefore was less ideal than the Benadryl for getting through the night tonight.  I’ll give him his first Claritin tablet tomorrow morning and hopefully it will provide the necessary relief through the day tomorrow without making him drowsy.)
• Benadryl Gel — $5.79  (This will be applied topically as needed tonight and tomorrow and beyond.  I probably didn’t need to make this purchase and could have just stuck with the StingStop but I figured as long as I was breaking so many self-imposed rules about medicating my children, I might as well break them all.)

On the advice of the pharmasist, I did not get the tube of Cortizone cream.  He said that it suppresses the immune system and could increase the risk of infection due to scratching.  Although he’s doing his level best not to scratch the bites, since The Son is still somewhat lax in his hygiene habits I took the pharmacists advice and went with the Benadryl gel instead.

Total Spent Today: $184.09 

I spent nearly the entire day driving.  Ugh.  For as much driving as I did, I actually did very little shopping.  With 4 people with busy schedules, three drivers, and two cars, our coordination of vehicles and schedules is sometimes quite complicated.

Safeway — $70.06
After dropping The Husband off at his office so I could have a car for the day’s events, my first stop was the gas station.  The Tank’s tank was nearly dry.  I pumped 19.36 gallons at $3.619/gallon.  [The Husband gave me his Safeway loyalty card on which he’d recently made a purchase over $50 which earned him a $0.10/gal discount.  Even with just my regular everyday membership discount of $0.03/gal. discount, this station always has the best per-gallon price around.]  My odometer read 123,574.

Costco — $3.87
A chicken bake thing and a soda for The Son.

Costco — $42.96

• a large container of Costco’s chocolate chunk cookies — $6.49
• a 2-loaf bag of Orowheat 7-grain bread — $4.99
• a 2-pack of Cetaphil hand lotion — $15.49
• a box of Goldfish crackers — $7.99
• my guilty indulgence — the latest Alexander McCall Smith paperback The Good Husband of Zebra Drive* – $7.99

REI — $32.35
I still had a merchandise credit of $39.87 (a result of returning my old BPA-containing Nalgene bottles) and The Son wanted his own pair of Crocs so The Husband and I agreed it was best to go ahead and redeem the credit before I had a chance to lose it.  The Son’s been wearing my Crocs for a couple of years now; when I received my Crocs as a gift, they fit him.  Now, however his size 11’s won’t even fit down into the toe box which leaves several inches of heel hanging over the back.  He finds them very practical for wearing to and from baseball — before and after wearing his metal cleats.

Silly boy and creature of habit that he is, he picked out the same sh*t brown color that I have.  Of all the colors he could have chosen (I thought he’d go for the black), he had to choose the one he was familiar with.

I’m sure I could have gotten the Crocs cheaper somewhere else but we had the merchandise credit with no other immediate REI-available purchases in mind so we felt it best to just do it this way.  BTW, the clerk offered to give me the remainder of my merchandise credit, $7.52, in cash which made me very happy.

Kroger — $34.85
I purchased one hundred dollar’s worth of Santa Cruz organic lemonade for $34.85.  The lemonade is an indulgence, I know, but one I find easy to make.  This lemonade is hands-down the very best lemonade on the market.  And I love that it’s organic.  It wasn’t actually all lemonade; I bought one bottle of Limeade (The Husband likes that flavor); 13 bottles of regular Lemonade; and the remainder were split about evenly between Raspberry Lemonade (my personal favorite) and Strawberry Lemonade (The Son’s favorite).

At $1.00 a jar, this stuff is cheaper than bottled water.  Cheaper than’s Dole’s non-organic juice.  Plus it comes in glass bottles which can be reused or recycled and won’t leech any chemicals.

I’ll continue stocking up on these products as long as the sale lasts — I think it will go all week — and store it in our basement.  I would have bought more today if I could have but I bought every single Lemonade, Raspberry, and Strawberry bottle they had in stock.

Actually posted on May 4 — still traveling but finally in a location where time and internet access are available at the same time.

Toll Charges — $12.00
More expressway toll charges.  They’re almost unheard of where I live but here in the East they seem to be a fact of driving life.

McDonald’s — $1.15
Can you believe what they charged me for a single plastic bottle of thoroughly-conventional milk — probably chock full of growth hormones and antibiotics?

Rite-Aid — $15.97

• case of Aqua Fina water bottles — $6.99
• Hagen Daz vanilla ice cream — $3.99
• Pringles potato chips — $1.99 (for my mom)
• 2 Starbucks frappuccino bottles — $1.50/ea. (for my mom)

Sally Beauty Supply — $1.80
A pair of fingernail clippers — and they actually work!  Has anyone else had trouble finding a decent pair of nail clippers since the post-9/11 airline restrictions?

Another big spending day.  How long has it been since I had an honest to goodness “no spend” day?  Too long.

The day started out poorly because the contractor I hired to repair and refinish our deck – one, didn’t show to start the job on Saturday as he’d said he would (in his defense, the weather was questionable) and, two, showed up over an hour later than he’d estimated.  I wanted to be here when he showed up so I sent The Husband off to take the kids to church hoping that I’d get away in time to attend the service.  It didn’t work out that way and, in fact, I barely got away in time to pick the children up before everyone else had gone home.

I could have had The Husband stay with the children or pick them up instead of me but I’d promised them bagels afterward and a trip to the mall for stage two of The Son’s shaving equipment procurement.

So here’s the day’s expenses:

Einstein Bros. Bagels — $15.14
We purchased a Dozen Bucket Deal (a baker’s dozen of bagels and two tubs of schmear).

I let The Son have a bottled soda because he asked and, well, why not?  He drinks more soda than I’d like (but then, is the absense of all soda really reasonable in this day and age?) but if you’ve followed my grocery purchases for the past 224 days you’ll see that I rarely buy pop for household consumption.  For the most part, the kids’ soda consumption is limited to dining-out occasions.  The Daughter passed on a drink of any type; not thirsty, I guess.  I was thirsty and would have jumped at an Odwalla or some such but Einstein’s alternative-drink selection is pathetic.

The Art of Shaving — $79.71 (and $12.93)
Last week I ordered shaving equipment (razor, brush, and blades) for The Son — a beginning shaver.  Today, The Daughter and I accompanied him to The Art of Shaving to choose his products.  The Daughter and I had visited this store Friday a week ago to research the various products available locally and we’d decided on the scent that we thought The Son should choose — Sandalwood.  We thought to today’s visit would be more ceremonial than anything.  But those 13-yos, with minds of their own….  Naturally, he didn’t agree with us that Sandalwood was a manly scent.  He didn’t like it.  He liked the Lemon instead.  Actually, in retrospect, I’m not all that surprised that he chose Lemon.  The Husband is a Lemon-Lime scent guy.  The Son probably associates with the scent — even if just subconsciously.

The second, smaller purchase was for a styptic pen — because there’s no harm in hedging our bets.  He is, after all, brand new to the world of razor blades.  

ImageTek — $26.00
Small package of baseball photos of The Son and his team.

In the past, I’ve always ordered a small package and every year the photos are, well, okay.  At best.  Last year, I didn’t pay for any extra photos so we only received a team photo and a small individual photo given to each player as part of their team participation. And, naturally, last year’s photo was adorable.  This year I’ve decided that I prefer the risk of getting several less than spectacular photos to getting only one really good photo.

Baseball Coach — $37.50
The Son’s portion of an upcoming weekend tournament.

Deck Contractor — $500.00
Our deck hasn’t been refinished since we bought the house 5 years ago — and it probably needed it even back then.  For me, the biggest hurdle to having work like this done is finding someone reputable to do it.  I don’t have a huge circle of friends living the same lifestyle in the same area so I can’t call on them for references.  Not many of my neighbors have a deck so I can’t look there — besides, most of the families around here have DIY dads in residence.  I found this particular fellow on Craigslist.  I have faith that everything will go well.

This payment was the required amount to finalize the contract bid and get the work started.

Einstein Bros. Bagels — $7.99
After church, The Son and I stopped for a half-dozen plain bagels and a tub of plain schmear.  It’s been a while since he’s asked for what used to be our weekly after-church bagel stop.

Vitamin Cottage — $27.42
Yesterday I picked up the huge container of protein powder I’d ordered (not through Vitamin Cottage, rather through the Lavage practioner).  Today I needed to shop for the other ingredients she wants me to put in his daily smoothies/shakes.

When I got home from the store I whipped up my first shake.  It did not get rave reviews.  In fact, it’s evident that it’s going to come down to a battle of the wills if I’m to get him to drink two of these things every day.  I can’t even imagine what it’s going to take to get him to finish just this one.

In addition to the protein powder, each shake is supposed to contain a portion of fiber, probiotic, and essential oils.  Because of my allergies, I can’t taste the concoction I brewed for him this afternoon but he hasn’t been shy in telling me how bad it is.  I promised we’d keep working on the recipe but he doesn’t seem convinced that we’ll have much success. 

• Lifeway strawberry kefir — $2.65 (saved $0.30)
• Cascadian Farm frozen strawberries — $3.65
• Cascadian Farm frozen peaches — $3.54
• Santa Cruz orange mango juice — $2.39 (saved $1.10)
• Udo’s oil — $10.79
• Brown Cow plain yogurt — $1.89 (saved $0.50)
• Newman’s Own peanut butter cups — $1.19

Parking — $2.00
Charged to my WaMu debit card since I didn’t have any cash on my person.  The Daughter and I attended a College Fair at a local university.  We were there for two hours — it was exhausting but interesting and very productive.  If nothing else, it helped The Daughter decide that she’s more interested in a small liberal arts college instead of a huge state university.  Her GPA is strong and her PSAT and PLAN scores this year were promising.  She liked that many of the recruiters from the smaller colleges had heard of and were familiar with the high school she attends.  In the end, it will all come down to the financial package.  We’re not interested in her graduating with debt and The Husband is pretty clear on what he’s prepared to pay (basically the cost for a 4-year in-state public university).  At this point, my fingers are crossed hoping that we can find a school that’s a good fit for her that will offer a comparable financial package.  Since she’s still just a sophomore, we’ve still got plenty of time before decisions are made.

Lee’s Razors — $140.89  [www.leesrazors.com]
After doing a lot of research and price comparisons, I finally felt ready to invest in shaving equipment for The Son.  I plan to write an entire post dedicated to my reasoning behind fancy shaving equipment as opposed to the more common disposable blades and canned shaving cream — look for that post soon.

In the meantime, I’m sure you’re dying to know what that kind of money bought, right?  Well, here we go.  I bought a three-piece shaving set for $119 that included:

• a Merkur HD (heavy duty) double edged safey razor
• a Vulfix #2233 Super Badger shaving brush
• a chrome shaving stand (holds the brush and the razor)

I also purchased a sampling of razor blades — 10 blades each of the three brands I’ve heard most about:

• Derby — $4.50
• Feather — $5.99
• Merkur — $4.90

Bed, Bath & Beyond — ($3.23)
I had to return/exchange one of the six towels I purchased last week (one of the side seams came loose in the wash and there was major fraying going on there).  I also returned one of the two bathmats I purchased and bought a different style in it’s stead.

The exchange went smoothly and, except for the one flawed towel, I’m very happy with these towels so far.  I’ll give a more thorough review in another couple of weeks after I’ve had a chance to use them and wash them several times — really put them through the ringer, so to speak 

This afternoon I picked The Daughter up from school and then we hit the up-scale mall before heading home.

~ o o o O o o o ~ 

Origins — $25.31
The Daughter needed to replenish her make-up supply.  I bought a box which contains a plastic covered dish which contains a powered substance referred to as “silk screen(tm) — refining powder makeup.”

The Daughter is, in my eyes at least, flawlessly beautiful with clear china skin and amazingly clear stunningly blue eyes (well, okay everyone comments on the eyes so that’s not just me).  Why she chooses to cover her face with this expensive powder substance, I really don’t understand.  I blame the media, which, believe you me, I’ve done my best to innoculate her against.  What does mom know, right?

In her defense, The Daughter really does use very little makeup and has a pretty good sense of self-worth and positive body image.  We are who we are and I love her despite, and maybe a little because, she’s chosen to reject my rejection of the bill-of-goods sold to women about beauty and femininity.

Aveda — $30.00
Ironically, this purchase was for me.  Years and years ago I bought a bottle travel-sized of Aveda’s Hydrating lotion.  I use it very sparingly but it’s the only lotion that I can stand to apply to my face.  Between the harsh, super-dryness of our winter air and the nightly use of a CPAP mask, every once in a while my face gets super dry.  Or more accurately, my face gets super dry patches (my forehead, the bridge of my nose, my upper lip — all places where my mask rubs against my face).  The Aveda lotion is amazingly light and effective — not heavy or oily like most lotions, nor overly perfumed.

The clerk informed me that the lotion only has a shelf life of two years — I hope that’s not really true because this bottle (the smallest bottle they had) is about twice the size of my old supply and that bottle lasted, um, maybe 8 years?  Maybe I’ll have to make an effort to use it more often.

~ o o o O o o o ~

While at the mall, we also stopped in at Crabtree & Evelyn and The Art of Shaving stores to check out what they had to offer in the way of shaving supplies for men.  The Son has the most adorable fuzzy little caterpillar living over his top lip.  And yesterday, while giving him his annual kick-off-baseball-season short haircut, I also took the opportunity to trim some of the long, scraggly, wiry hairs growing out of his chin.  I’m thinking that shaving is around the corner for him.  Being that he’s a serious creature of habit, I’d like to introduce him to the concepts of wet shaving and double-edge safety razors before he settles on, and gets used to, canned shaving cream and disposable blades.  I didn’t make any purchases because I’m still in the research phase but The Daughter declared The Art of Shaving’s Sandalwood scent the winner in the “clean and manly” sniff test.  We both hated Crabtree & Evelyn’s Sandalwood and found their Normad line pleasantly masculine, we both agree that the scent was too strong.  I’m sure I’ll be reporting some shaving equipment purchases over the next few months.

~ o o o O o o o ~

Kroger — $72.26 (shopped with The Son and The Husband in tow):

• 2 massive packages of Kroger T.P. — $5.99/ea. (saved $1.60/ea.)
• Breyer’s chocolate ice cream — $2.50 (saved $3.19)
• Breyer’s french vanilla ice cream — $2.50 (saved $3.19)
• Breyer’s specialty ice cream — $2.50 (saved $3.19)
• Horizon chocolate milk — $3.19 (saved $0.50)
• Horizon 2% milk — $4.88 (saved $0.41)
• mega box of Q-Tips — $4.39 (saved $0.13)
• Hormel smoked sliced ham — $3.99
• Vlassic pickles — $3.81 (saved $0.18)
• Hillshire Farm sliced turkey — $3.99
• Marantha organic peanut butter — $4.29 (saved $0.70)
• Spice Island medium grind black pepper — $3.68 (saved $1.81)
• Amy’s cheese pizza snacks — $3.29
• Amy’s pizza pocket — $2.29
• Lay’s BBQ chips — $2.50 (saved $0.18)
• Dole orange/peach/mango juice — $3.34 (saved $0.35)
• Orowheat bread — $4.19
• tomatoes — $2.48
• bag credits — ($0.10)

Today was a lousy day.  I slept poorly.  My mom slipped on the ice a few houses away and really got banged up.  The Daughter was in rare teenage form — can they get any more annoying?  I got up early for an appointment but her heat wasn’t working and there was no hot water so I had to go back again this afternoon.  Just another day in paradise the ‘burbs.

As bad as it was, it was a lot better than my neighbor’s day.  Her 53-yo husband died of a massive heart attack three days ago.  There but for the grace of God….

Alternative Care & Supplements — $136.65

I had a Lavage treatment (colonic) — $70.  It’s been a few months since the last one.  It’s the one thing that has helped my debilitating IBS symptoms but I went just a little too long between treatments.  I also bought 2 month’s worth of a product called ColonMax (contains magnesium and other things) and a bottle of probiotic capsules — $66.65 total.

Whole Foods — $46.16

I still hate Whole Foods but I do like their chicken better than that available at Wild Oats.  And with what I’d been through today, the thought of going to more than one grocery store was unbearable.  So I bit the bullet and paid Whole Foods’ jacked-up prices for the items I needed for dinner or within the next 24 hours.

• 2 full boneless, skinless chicken breasts — $16.66
• 3 whole chicken legs — $4.96
• 1/2 gallon Horizon chocolate milk — $3.99
• 1# Horizon salted butter — $5.49
• 2 bottles Odwalls Superfood — $2.50/ea (for my mom)
• organic red cabbage — $2.76
• red bell pepper — $1.72
• organic radish bunch — $1.99
• avocado — $1.99
• bag credits — ($0.20)

The Daughter and I made a library run this afternoon — we both had a stack of DVD’s on hold and I had several Personal Finance books waiting as well.  Oh, and The Son had a Raymond Chandler book on hold.

While we were at the library, I remembered that yesterday’s shower had been one of frustration and fear that I wouldn’t be able to shake enough shampoo out of the bottle to properly wash my finally-starting-to-grow-out-but-still-way-too-short hair.  So we dashed across the street to Ulta for a bottle of shampoo ($13.93).

Which reminds me — I hate shopping in Ulta.  I really need find another source for my Matrix Biolage shampoo.  I hate Ulta because they put the shampoo in the very back so I have to walk past all of the overpoweringly stinky, asthma-inducing perfume-y smells just to pick up a bottle of shampoo.  Did I see someone buy Biolage at Target the other day?  I’m going to have to check that out.

And before leaving for the library, the daughter and I had decided that the best way to use the entire Pyrex casserole dish of left-over mashed potatoes (brought home from yesterday’s Thanksgiving feast) was to make a Shepherd’s Pie.  So after the library and Ulta, we popped into Whole Foods for about 1.75 lbs of ground turkey thigh ($7.67).  That, plus the left-over candied yams, rutabagas, brussel sprouts, and pie made a wonderful dinner.

Over dinner we looked at Time’s What The World Eats photo essay as mentioned by Eric @ A Penny Closer (thanks, Eric, for that fascinating link).  I suggested that as a family we try to keep a food diary for just one week.  No one else was interested.  I think I’ll keep working on them — I think it would be a fun and fascinating exercise.  Enlightening as well.

Not the “no spend” day I’d been hoping for but not too bad either — especially considering it was Black Friday.

As predicted last night, I had to make one more trip to the grocery store — mainly for the yams I needed for candied yams for our Thanksgiving Day feast.  And what a feast it was!  We received a very warm welcome this afternoon when we arrived with eight pies (five different flavors, eight pies) plus two casserole dishes filled with candied yams.

In addition to the yams we needed, it wasn’t too hard to come up with a list of additional items needed.  I also picked up a few things that were on sale or items I had coupons for – things I knew we’d need before long.

• Tampax slender regular – $2.79 (saved $0.20)
• Tampax regular — $4.49 (saved $1.90)
• Tampax super — $4.99 (saved $1.40)
• Playtex super — $7.49
• Nexcare band-aids — $4.99
• Tums — $2.50 (saved $2.09)
• Horizon chocolate milk — $2.99 (saved $0.50)
• a lemon — $0.70
• yams — $5.54 (saved $3.27)
• Kroger raisin bran — $1.89

I saved a grand total of $10.36 or 18% off my total purchase. 

Church — $15.00
Weekly offering.

Einstein Bros Bagels — $11.30
Bought lunch for The Son and The Daughter. We ate there and I splurged letting the kids have “sandwiches” and cookies and sodas, too. No bucket deal this week. We had an hour to kill before dropping The Daughter at school for a play rehearsal so we “dined in.”

handyman — $100.00
Labor to build the frame for the new retaining wall. They’ll be out here again next week or the week after to drill through the existing cement porch to install several rebar pieces. Then they’ll do the actual pour. I hadn’t realized that a new retailing wall would be so expensive — it’s only 12′ long, 1′-9″ at it’s highest point and tapering down to 1′-2″. It’s such a small and insignificant feature in my backyard landscaping project, I really hadn’t considered it’s cost because I didn’t assign any value to it. I’ll have to take closer care from now on.

Proactiv — $45.85
This was The Daughter’s second shipment and I’m still feeling extremely wary about this whole thing. See, it’s set up kind of like the Zit-Zapper-Chemical-of-the-month club. You make your first purchase innocently enough but it’s not actually an outright purchase. Instead it’s the first of what they hope will be a long string of regular monthly purchases. And they stack the odds in their favor by taking your credit card info and then automatically mailing out a box of stuff every month and charging it to your card. The only way to end the madness is, well, I don’t actually know how to stop it. Apparently you can’t do that by logging into your on-line account. I tried. I was successful, however, in switching our delivery schedule to every 16 weeks instead of every 4. My plan is that in the next 12 weeks I’ll either have figured out how to stop the deliveries altogether or The Daughter (who, by the way, has incredibly soft, to-die-for china-like skin with the occasional teenage blemish) will have finished using Delivery #1’s chemicals, have started on Delivery #2’s supply, and decided that she just has to have yet a third shipment of the stuff. At which point we’ll leave things be and let Proactiv send another box of chemicals and then start the process all over again. I figure, if nothing else, I can cancel the card, right?