Penny Pinching Mom

On the Lookout for Giveaways

I wish I had thought of this earlier in the year. A great way to get my hands on some Christmas gifts for the family would be to win stuff. I couldn’t tell you how many contests I’ve seen on blogs and passed up just because my immediate family and I had no use for the prizes. But if I had entered some of them, and actually won one or two, that could have put me ahead on my Christmas shopping.

When I get my work caught up I’m going to see what kinds of giveaways I can find. Whether it’s gift certificates for acrylic nail tips, free audio books, sewing machines or coffeemakers (all stuff that my family and I don’t use but I could probably give as gifts), I’m going for it. Now if I could just win a thing or two and get it in time for Christmas, that would be awesome.

Please Don’t Freeze!

I’m seriously dreading this winter. I always dread winter, but it’s especially true this year. For one thing, we have wood heat now, and unless we can keep a fire going all night (which I really don’t want to do), mornings in this house are gonna be mighty cold.

Another thing that concerns me is the pipes freezing. There’s another wood stove in the basement that we can use when it gets really cold, and hopefully that will keep it from happening. I’ll probably leave the faucets running a little just to be sure, though. But I’m not sure how cold is cold enough to be worried about it. I know 32 degrees is the freezing point for water, but how cold does it have to be outside before it gets that cold in the basement and crawl space?

It would be really bad if a pipe were to bust, because they’re copper pipes. Do they even make those any more? If not, we’ll have to pay out the wazoo to get someone to fix it. At our old place we had a pipe bust, and it wasn’t copper, but it was some other kind they no longer make. The plumber was able to fix it by making a piece that would fit, but it cost us about $100 bucks for the piece and about a half hour of work!

I’ll be glad when we can afford to get this place replumbed. I hate copper pipes, and it needs it desperately anyway. I just hope it will all hold up until then.

Another Lean Christmas

Money is going to be tight yet again this Christmas. Sometimes I wish I could just cancel the holiday. I’m not concerned about getting gifts myself, but it pains me not to be able to get my family what I want to get them.

I could get a gift for Hubby and Pumpkin together. Pumpkin always wants toys, but Hubby is a kid at heart. I’ll bet they would both love to have one of those cool RC helicopters. The problem would be getting them to share.

I’ve considered doing crafts for most of the people on my list, but even that might prove to be too expensive. I guess I’ll just have to wait and see when it gets a little closer.

Gas Is Finally Going Down

One of my favorite things to complain about is gas prices. For the past few years, they have just gone up and up and up. Now they’ve finally come down significantly, and that makes me happy. I got some yesterday for under $3 a gallon, and that’s the first time that has happened in a very long time.

I still think gas is higher than it should be. The sudden drop kind of makes you wonder if there is any real reason besides greed that it got so high in the first place. But I suppose I should be grateful that it is finally getting a little more affordable.

I’m not planning on driving more just because gas is cheaper, though. I’ll probably make the trip to my mom’s that I’ve been putting off for a while, but other than that, I’m still going to be keeping my butt at home as much as possible. I’ll use the money I save on gas to buy groceries or pay bills.

How Do They Do It?

There’s this guy Hubby works with who is all the time blowing money. He used to race lawnmowers (yes, that’s right, the redneckiest sport ever invented), and had about 4 of them that he was constantly pouring money into. He also has a bunch of hunting dogs, some of which he has paid thousands of dollars for. He just went out and bought himself and his wife fancy unlocked cell phones. And so on and so forth.

Now, I realize that he has been with the company longer than Hubby, and he has a position that pays better. But he lays out of work at least once a week, sometimes more. And his wife does nothing except cleaning houses every now and then. How do they end up with all this extra money?

I guess a big part of it is their living arrangement. They are renting a house that by all rights should be condemned, and they aren’t actually paying any rent because they’re doing just enough “work” on it each month to knock the meager rent down to nothing. I don’t think they have any vehicles they’re paying on either. So I suppose it all evens out.

Maybe my priorities are all screwed up. Maybe I should live in a dump, drive a clunker, and spend all my money on stuff I don’t need. Yes, I’m being sarcastic. But it’s none of my business how they spend their money, so I’m just going to zip it now.

The Display Is Taunting Me

I go to the drugstore much more often than I would like to. Hubby is on two types of long-term medication, I’m on one, and all three of us have had intermittent short-term problems such as infections lately. So I’ve been in there at least two or three times a month for the past few months.

It’s nice how they put the pharmacy all the way at the back of the store. That way you have to be exposed to a bunch of products before you get there. Clever. Particularly clever is where they put their alli display. I think they put it there just because they know I’ve been thinking about diet pills.

So far I’ve fought the urge to try it due to budget concerns. But every time I walk by that display, I have to stop and look. I suppose I could go the long way around and avoid it, but I’m usually in a hurry when I go in there. Must be strong…

A Little Cash for Me, and Two Smiling Kids for Her

I made ten bucks today. I know, that doesn’t sound like much, but it’s ten bucks more than I had. And I helped a fellow struggling mom in the process. So I’m happy about the whole situation.

The $10 was for two of Pumpkin’s old Halloween costumes. I was looking for stuff to sell to help tide us over this month, and when I found those, I thought maybe I could actually sell them if I priced them low enough. So I put them in the paper for $5 each.

I got a call last night from a lady who said she had two girls that could wear them. She asked if she could come by today, and I said that would be fine. She called early this afternoon to make sure she was headed in the right direction, and a few minutes later she showed up at my door, cash in hand. She didn’t even examine them closely, just said that her girls would love them and handed me the money.

I was a little bewildered at first. When I put stuff in the paper, I’m used to people calling and asking a zillion questions, trying to talk me down on my already more than reasonable price before they’ve even seen the items, and then saying they’ll come look at them, never to be heard from again. Either that or they actually do show up, act interested, and then disappear.

But then this lady said her husband had been out of work for some time, and she had three kids to buy costumes for. I nodded my head knowingly. She was apparently struggling just like us, probably much more so. And when that’s the case, you’re thankful to find stuff for your kids that you can afford. And thankful she was- she thanked me several times in the short time she was here.

I was glad to see the costumes go to someone like that. I hope those girls feel like little princesses in them. As for me, I’m a whole ten bucks richer. What am I going to do with all that wealth, you ask? Well, I don’t guess I’ll be buying that expensive acne treatment I’ve had my eyes on. It will probably go toward groceries. If I don’t need it for that, maybe I’ll put it toward Pumpkin’s Halloween costume for this year.

Don’t Fail Me Now!

My computer has been acting crazy for a couple of weeks now. Knock on wood, it has done fairly well the past couple of days. But I haven’t done anything in that time frame to cause it, so I’m betting it’s only temporary.

I have a ton of work lined up, and I can’t afford for my machine to die. I wish I knew enough to figure out what the problem is. I’ve scanned for viruses and spyware and come up with nothing unusual. I did a disk error check and defrag, and that didn’t help. Maybe it’s the fact that I’m running Windows and it sucks in a lot of ways. I could try slapping some Mac memory in my machine. Maybe that would be a good influence and turn things around. (Just kidding, I’m not really that computer dumb.)

I really hope it will hold out until we get our taxes back. Even though I’m self-employed, I’m hoping to get a refund due to our new mortgage and the fact that Hubby has a lot withheld from his check. If so, maybe I can get a new computer then.

Setting Limits

I’ve been facing a bit of a dilemma with Pumpkin. It’s a situation that I find extremely difficult to handle, so if anyone has any constructive suggestions I’m all ears.

This girl has always had a very healthy appetite. Sometimes I think if I let her, she would eat 24 hours a day. I’ve been trying to present healthy portions and not encourage snacking, and that has been enough to prevent excessive weight gain. But unfortunately that’s not the only problem.

Pumpkin had stomach problems when she was born. She had a lot of gas on her stomach, and she couldn’t keep anything down for the first few days of her life. The doctor who delivered her sent her to a university hospital, where they kept her for several days, only to say that nothing was wrong with her besides gas. I was relieved but perturbed about the whole situation.

After that she had colic, but other than that her stomach was fine until last year. She started complaining with pain, and I took her to the doctor several times over it. She couldn’t find anything wrong either, and suggested adding more fiber to her diet to keep her regular. That has helped quite a bit, but she still has stomach problems when she eats too much fat or grease.

So I try to keep things like that to a minimum. But seeing how she’s such a picky eater, it’s hard. She was begging for that fried chicken that you buy frozen for a couple of weeks, and I finally gave in. If she just eats a couple of pieces she’s fine, and that’s all I gave her.

But after she ate, she and Hubby went to his parents’ house. They had eaten the same kind of chicken for dinner there, and she asked for a piece. Hubby said he tried to tell her not to eat it, but she did anyway. And she ended up with an awful stomachache.

I know we should put our foot down on things like this, and I try hard. But I worry about making her self-conscious by putting strict limits on her diet. I don’t want her growing up the way I did. Oftentimes I felt like I was just a walking blob of fat and acne, because that’s what certain members of my family always focused on. I know they were trying to help, but it just made me feel like crap about myself.

Setting these limits is for her own good, but it requires walking a fine line. All I know to do is present healthy choices as much as possible, and to just say no to the greasy stuff. She might get mad, but I’d rather see her angry with me than in pain. I just hope she doesn’t take it upon herself to interpret it the wrong way.

The New Illiteracy

I learned to read at a very young age. I actually taught myself, more or less. So it has always been hard for me to grasp how anyone can get by in this world without knowing how to read. But I’ve met a number of people who can’t over the years, and I’ve gained some insight into how they make it in the world. It’s certainly not easy for them, but they adapt in ways I probably never could.

Today, most of us use computers in one way or another. Some can do anything and everything with them, and others just learn what they have to in order to use them in their jobs or for the purposes they want to use them for. And then there are people like me, who know their way around them quite well but haven’t been bothered to go in-depth and learn all about the nuts and bolts of them.

But you might be surprised at just how many people can’t do anything with a computer. There are tons of them around here. As I’ve probably mentioned, just about my whole extended family fits into that category. I’m not saying people around here are stupid by any means- just that a lot of them don’t bother with computers much. And I’m sure it’s not limited to my geographical area, there are probably people like that everywhere.

It’s hard for me not to take basic computer knowledge for granted as well. Here’s an example: Yesterday the mother of one of Pumpkin’s friends came over so I could help her get an online background check done that she needed to enroll in CNA classes. She brought the paper telling the website to go to and the code to punch in, but she doesn’t have Internet at home. So I said I would help her out. I went to the website, put in the code, and it asked for billing information.

I prefer not to mess with other people’s credit or debit cards, so I asked her to type that information in and offered her my computer chair. She looked at me like I had just asked her to install a Cat5e Keystone jack. She said that she couldn’t type very well, and that it would probably take forever, so I begrudgingly took the card and put in her information.

I finished up the request and printed out a confirmation sheet for her. By the time I was done, she and Hubby’s great-aunt (who had brought her over) were in awe. They said there was no way they could have done that so quickly. I fought the urge to roll my eyes.

I don’t mind helping people with small stuff like that. Not at all. But I have a hard time grasping the concept of them not being able to do it themselves. I guess I’ve just always had the interest and independence to want to do things on the computer for myself. That, and at times I prefer tinkering with the computer to human interaction. I guess that makes me a geek, huh?