Whoops!

The grocery budget got a little out of hand this month. Of course I should have been expecting that since we've been eating in for almost all meals. It actually does take more groceries to cook 6 dinners a week instead of 2. Whouda thunk it?

The other problem is that I've been getting a little careless about the want it, grab its at the grocery store. I've got money in the budget for a treat or two but it can't get out of line.

Today, aside from what I was supposed to buy, I bought a carton of ice cream for me, some no sugar added ice cream bars for DH (Blue Bunny Turtle Bars--soooooo good, even w/o sugar!), some no sugar added pudding cups, a small packet of yogurt raisins, and a tin of mixed nuts. One or two of those would have been fine, but not all of them!

The good news is I think I can make it through to the 10th on $9. The pantry is full, we've got plenty of toiletries, I've got meat and veggies in the freezer and enough fresh and juice-packed canned fruit to make it though.

If we do go over, it will probably be from kitty litter. The money will have to come out of the fun money. And next time I'll be more careful!

Tonight's dinner will be enchiladas filled with chicken, beans, corn, and cheese in low carb tortillas (Buena Vida makes great lc tortillas!), oranges, and green beans. There should be plenty left over for a lunch or two (or ten--it's a big pan!)

DH got home from the hospital Friday, which was great news! He seems to be doing pretty well. He has to take an antibiotic for 2 weeks and take it somewhat easily physically, but is otherwise none the worse for wear.

The identified his infection as an aggressive strain of strep bacteria. The infections disease doctor said that with this bug some people notice a little bump one day and by the next morning their life is in danger! Very scary. I'm very glad we went to the ER when we did. And, of course, thank God for health insurance.

Until DH's blood sugar is back under control, I've declared a halt to all eating out. It's just too hard to get a meal that fits DH's guidelines. Why spend money to go somewhere and be tempted by all sorts of things that aren't good for you to eat and then pay money for a meal you didn't really want. Maybe later when we're a bit better at keeping things under control we can slowly start looking for good places to eat out. Until then, it's 100% at home.

This is quite a culture shock to us. It's kind of embarassing to admit, but we've gone entire weeks without cooking dinner in. And even a "good" week would have us eating out for several meals.

I think it's going take some practice to get good at this. I would appeciate any advice! I keep finding myself caught without the food I need to make what I want. Like I'll want to make a chicken dish, and realize we have no meat defrosted. Or I'll want to make a casserole and find out I'm missing a key seasoning.

I think the key is going to be a lot of advance planning, and also keeping a better pantry and freezer stock than I have been. This is going to be an adventure, but I'm sure it will be really good for us in the end!

Here's my bit:

You don't need it! It's amazing how little we really need to get by and live a happy life. The human race survived millions of years without the iPhone.

To that end, here's some tips:

1.) Don't tempt yourself. Don't hang out at the mall for fun. Don't read catalogs. Don't spend hours at Amazon.com. Giving yourself less opportunities to see things to buy gives you more time to enjoy what you have. Take a walk, watch a movie, or call a friend instead.

2.) Do the "cart purge". Anytime you're at the store, stop right before you check out and remove at least one thing from your cart. You didn't need it.

3.) As another poster mentioned, follow the 24 hour rule. If you're making a large or unplanned purchase, tell yourself that you can come back an get in 24 hours. Half the time you will have forgotten about it by the time you reach the parking lot.

DH got admitted to the hospital this week. Poor guy got an abcess, which is bad enough on its own, but it's also playing havoc with his diabetes.

The first day was very hard on him--he says this is the worst pain he's ever experienced. They gave him really potent painkillers and now he's getting IV antibiotics. Luckily it seems to be getting better and there's even talk of him coming home tomorrow.

I'm getting too good at this whole routine. I'm spending way too much time in hospitals, between all of my mother's issues and now this. It all looks the same--pack a bag, go to the ER, make a list of symptoms and medications, repeat the entire story to every doctor, nurse, intern, and interested bystander, watch someone you love suffer, try to get a decent meal out of the vending machine, wait for a bed to be assigned, trudge up and get them settled, go find your car, grab a couple hours of sleep, deal with work, then head to the hospital. It's just too familiar these days.

Luckily it was a quiet week for work, so it wasn't a problem for me to miss a few days. And the hospital DH is in is really nice. All of the rooms are private, and they have room service menus and better cable than we have at home. There's even 32 on demand movies you can watch for free. I guess if one must go to the hospital this is probably about the best place to do it.

But I'm tired of the whole routine. I just want everyone to stay healthy for a while!!!

Football season is back upon us again! I'm so excited!

I've really missed it, and now I can't wait to watch my beloved Bears play the season.

We enjoyed last night's pre-season exhibition game, and next weekend we're going down to their training camp to watch the last two public practices.

Bears training camp is held at a small college about 90 minutes south of Chicago where there is no drinking (fine), swearing (fine), smoking (yay!), or dancing (huh?) allowed. Should be interesting to see. We're coming down on Friday for the afternoon practice and then staying the night down there and attending the Saturday practice.

In other news, I tried my first CVS ECB deal this week. They were offering $20 back on $20 worth of Kraft purchases and they had South Beach bars at the same price a decent sale at the grocery store would be. So I bought $20 worth and now I have $20 to spend at CVS in the next month or so. I'm hoping that will be profitable.

Otherwise it's been a fairly quiet week. More overtime for work, which I wasn't thrilled about. However between that extra pay and DH finally being reimbursed for some expenses I was able to make a big payment on my student loan. I've only got 4k left to go, which is awesome.

Of course what's kind of dumb about it is that they've lowered my interest rate again so it's just under 2.5%. Hardly makes financial sense to pay if off, but I just want it done, especially when it's so close to being paid!

Once I'm done with that loan (hoping by October) I'll probably split most extra money between beefing up the EF and the car fund--they're both funded but more could never hurt.

Maybe I'll also pull aside 2-3k as a baby fund, though I'll be horrified if I actualy spend that much outfitting a baby! I'm more of a hand-me-down/garage sale/thrift shop kind of gal.

I called my doctor and officially made my "I can't get pregnant" appointment today. We knew it was coming since it's rather unlikely we'll be able to conceive without a little help, but making the appointment made this whole baby thing feel really real.

It's funny, they made us "try" for 6 months, even though I have a known fertility issue (PCOS, for anyone who is interested), but even though technically it could have happened anytime in here we didn't take it too seriously because we knew the odds were against us.

They weren't able to get me until the end of the month, but in the meantime they want me to start cutting as many refined carbs as possible, both to help with the ultimate goal and also to help alleviate some of the annoying symptoms of untreated PCOS.

DH and I have already had a lot of long talks about this. The good news is that most women with my condition are able to get pregnant with fairly minimal treatment. So the odds are good and we're both fairly young (I'm 27 and he's 30). But he's also diabetic and I seem to have a fairly bad case of PCOS, so we'll see.

We've already agreed we're not willing to do injectable fertility drugs or IVF. To us it's not worth the cost, hassle, or potential risks. So if the first line treatments don't work that's it for us. We may consider adopting someday, but I also think we'd be perfectly happy childfree.

I'm sure the next few months are going to be quite an adventure!

We made it home safely last night, and actually had quite a smooth trip both ways.

I wish I could say I had a better time on this trip, but I just spent WAY too much of it working for it to really pass a vacation. We had some nice moments, but always with work hanging over my head.

We stayed at the Flamingo, which I will not do again and wouldn't recommend to anyone. While the location is great, the place is just not nice. We've decided the decor could be best described as klassy--lots of hot pink and gold. We were in one of the "Go Rooms" that looked like what would happen if Austin Powers and IKEA had a love child.

The hotel is old, complete with that old-casino stench, and the service is very hit or miss. Housekeeping as a real mess. Our room didn't get done up one day until almost 7:00pm! And half the time something (shampoo, hand towels, etc.) would be missing. After a few days of this I called to complain, and the guy just said they had 4,000 rooms and they were backed up. Well, unless some hotel fairy magically dropped new rooms on the hotel overnight, they've always had that many rooms and need to staff for them!

The problems continued and finally on our second to last night, I had enough. They had forgotten to give us any TP, and 4 hours after I called for some we STILL hadn't gotten it, so I went down to the front desk. The lady who helped me was nice, and they gave us about $60 in food and beverage comps, but even with her calling housekeeping on our behalf it took them almost an hour to finally deliver our supplies. Ugh!

Hotel problems and work nonwithstanding, we did manage to have some fun. We channeled our inner 90 year olds and played 3 sessions of bingo, and held our own $5 penny slot tournament (DH won, with $2.50 remaining after 15 minutes). Not to be outdone, I challenged him to a $5 nickel video poker duel and won. Lots of silly fun.

We also had an adventure heading out to a restaurant called Four Kegs that we'd seen featured on the Food Network show Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives. The show featured their stromboli, which DH loves, so we had to make a trip. It was, as advertised, quite a dive, but the food was AMAZING! What made it really special for us was they had Sicillian pizza that tasted just like how DH's mom used to make it. When she passed away her recipe passed with her, and I was sad that he'd never get to have it again, so I was overjoyed to find this. It was a really nice moment for him to get to remember his mom's cooking like that.

So now it's back to the grind. I've got another "working trip"--this time to San Francisco--coming up next month. Hopefuly it will be more of a vacation next time!