a financial voyeur's dream come true: all the intimate details of how, where, and why I spend money

Today I cov­ered all the bases and, really, I don’t feel like I did all that much shop­ping.  Okay, here we go with a tour of today’s spending:

Kroger — $15.95

The Son and I started the day with a stop at Kroger on the way to church.  Yes­ter­day at the bas­ket­ball game I got the word that it would be appre­ci­ated if I’d bring donuts to church in the morn­ing.  Who was I to say no?

And then, of course, last night as I was get­ting ready for bed I dis­cov­ered that The Daugh­ter, who’s been using our mas­ter bath more fre­quently these days because her brother tends to camp out in the kids’ hall­way bath­room, had helped her­self to my tam­pons.  I needed a “super” and there wasn’t a sin­gle one left.  What made this lit­tle inva­sion of pri­vacy really annoy­ing is that The Daugh­ter recently had me buy a box of her pre­ferred tam­pons and that box was sit­ting unused under the sink in her bath­room.  Her tam­pons, same brand dif­fer­ent prod­uct, were use­less to me because she prefers the scented vari­ety [let’s not even get into how utterly stu­pid I think it is that any­one would make per­fumed tam­pons and how com­pletely idi­otic I think women are who use them — includ­ing The Daugh­ter;  clearly it’s col­lu­sion between the per­fumed tam­pon and t.p. man­u­fac­tur­ers and mak­ers of yeast-infection products].

• 2 dozen donuts — $9.98
• box of Tam­pax tam­pons — $5.50

Nat­ural Gro­cers — $52.43

My luck didn’t get any bet­ter after church.  I stopped at a dif­fer­ent store than my reg­u­lar haunt hop­ing that they’d have the vit­a­min C chew­able tablets I like.  My local store no longer car­ries my favorite vari­ety and this store didn’t have them either.  They did have other things I needed and I knew there was no way The Son was up for a sec­ond stop before going home so I bribed him to coop­er­ate with shop­ping by agree­ing to buy him a Gin­ger Ale.

• 4 bags of Cas­ca­dian Farms crin­kle cut french fries — $2.99/ea.
• 2 pkgs of Apple­gate Farms roasted sliced organic turkey breast — $5.49/ea.
• 1 pkg of Apple­gate Farms sliced uncured ham — $3.65
• 3 Amy’s frozen cheese pizza pock­ets — $2.15/ea.
• 1 box of Amy’s frozen cheese snacks — $3.69
• 4 Brown Cow cream top vanilla yogurt cups — $0.59/ea.
• Organic Val­ley muen­ster cheese — $4.75
• Alexia frozen Moz­zarella snacks — $4.29
• pint of organic but­ter­milk — $3.75
• Gin­ger Ale — $0.55

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T.J.Maxx — $67.74

On the way home from church, The Son announced that he been think­ing he’d like to try boxer shorts again.  I can’t imag­ine that he’s going to find them any more com­fort­able than he has in the past (he’s tried the tra­di­tional cloth box­ers, knit box­ers, and knit boxer briefs — all with the same results: no).  I can’t even guess as to the source of this deci­sion on his part but I’m not going to second-guess it.  He’s asked to try them so we’ll give them a try.  He has come unbe­liev­ably far in push­ing beyond his old com­fort lev­els and learn­ing to wear things that just a year ago would have been out of the ques­tion.  Who knows, maybe he’ll decide to make the switch.  Then again, maybe he won’t.  My only job was to pro­cure some box­ers for him to try.  Nat­u­rally, that called for a trip to T.J.Maxx and I find it very, very dif­fi­cult to walk out of there empty-handed.

• 3-pk of Joseph Abboud cot­ton box­ers — $9.99 (this style has a but­ton fly and a back seam much like a pair of pants or shorts would)
• 1 pair of Tommy Hil­figer cot­ton box­ers — $7.99 (this style has the more tra­di­tional panel back with two off-set back seams)
• 3-pk of Nau­tica crew­neck under­shirts — $14.99
• 1 men’s cot­ton dress shirt — $29.99

Unfor­tu­nately, I com­pletely messed up on the Nau­tica under­shirts — The Son needs a size Large and I bought Medium.  I’m pretty sure it was the only pack­age they had of the Nau­tica brand so I’ll have to return them and either try a dif­fer­ent store or wait and hope they get in some Larges at some point.  The Son wears these as pajama tops; he cur­rently has size Medium and would like to move up to a size Large.

The dress shirt was a par­tic­u­larly bit­ter dis­ap­point­ment.  It is an absolutely gor­geous Ike Behar dress shirt in the most beau­ti­ful silky cot­ton with french cuffs, no less.  It’s a won­der­ful french blue color with white stripes and solid blue col­lar and cuffs.  The tag says “com­pare at $125.00″ and it’s very easy to believe that the shirt orig­i­nally retailed for that or more.  Even bet­ter, The Son loved it imme­di­ately.  The bit­ter dis­ap­point­ment is that it’s just not big enough.  The col­lar size was per­fect (15) but the sleeves are just not long enough (32).  His cur­rent french cuff dress shirt, pur­chased last Spring for his con­fir­ma­tion, is a 14–1/2; 32/33.  It could have been the bar­gain of the year had the sleeves only been a lit­tle longer. 

Kroger — $50.46

• 3 pkgs of Hormel Nat­u­rals sliced lunch meat — $3.00/ea.
• win­ter­green Altoids — $1.99
• Degree antiper­spi­rant — $5.89
• 2.47# Hon­ey­crisp apples — $7.39
• 2.16# Blood oranges — $2.16
• 2.17# ripe Bananas — $0.76 (per­fect for banana bread)
• loaf of Rudi’s organic 100% whole wheat bread — $3.00
• 2 car­tons Hori­zon organic choco­late milk — $3.79/ea.
• gal­lon of Hori­zon organic 2% milk — $3.99
• car­ton of Dole orange/peach/mango juice — $2.99
• Cas­cade dish­washer deter­gent — $4.71

Safe­way Gas — $15.60

Might was well start the week with a full tank of gas, right?  I pumped 6.875 gal­lons @ $2.269 per gal­lon.  At the sta­tion, the odome­ter read 25,078.  I still can’t believe that we man­aged to put on that many miles in just one year.

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Oh, and I can’t for­get the day’s two online purchases:

Pixie Soap — $27.60

I’ve been out of my favorite hand­made soap for an awfully long time — maybe as long as a year?  If not really that long, at least it seems that long.  Patty at Pixie Soap was offer­ing a Sat­ur­day night spe­cial — 20% dis­count for 4 or more bars of soap.  I think I actu­ally paid just after mid­night last night so this pur­chase does offi­cially belong in today’s post.  I ordered 4 dif­fer­ent vari­eties that I’ve never ordered before: laven­der, goat’s milk, pep­per­mint, and Cal­en­dula Avo­cado plus two bars of my favorite, Oats Gone Wild.  These hand­made soaps are too expen­sive to keep in the bath­rooms where my fam­ily tends to leave soap bars float­ing in an inch or two of water but I love keep­ing a bar in the base­ment guest bath­room and, more impor­tantly, one next to the kitchen sink where I can use it frequently.

Shirt.Woot — $15.00

All of The Son’s class­mates seem to be turn­ing 15 at the same time.  He’s got two more par­ties to go to in the next few weeks.  This t-shirt is for the class­mate who, though not diag­nosed or acknowl­edged by his par­ents, clearly has Asperger’s and is slightly less high-functioning than The Son mean­ing he exhibits more clas­sic Asperger’s symp­toms.  The Son has men­tioned that this class­mate, more than his oth­ers, has enjoyed The Son’s var­i­ous Shirt.Woot t-shirts so that’s what he wanted to give this fel­low for his birth­day.  We picked out a design from the among the “Reck­on­ing” designs.  It won’t arrive in time for the party but that shouldn’t be a big deal — The Son will sim­ply present it when it does arrive in the mail.