Frugal Friday File 2022, week 14...

 

1.  Our meal subscription service offered free shipping again this week saving me $17.

2.  Having great luck seeing new books on Amazon, checking the library instead of buying, they actually have it, and I'm first in line to reserve!

3.  My car is still running beautifully after the accident with no repair necessary (knock on wood).  No, the tow truck to get it unstuck wasn't really a bargain, but repairs and a rental car could have been a lot worse.  Carey gave it a thorough once over, so we are feeling optimistic that we got off light.  (Carey says, "What's this we s&%t?")

4.  I gifted two Corning pie plates to Kasey (back from the days when I used to bake lots of pies at a time for church suppers etc.)  She was baking chicken pot pie, and sharing my extras was a simple thing when she feeds us every single Sunday.

5.  I am SO looking forward to the weekend.  Just to stay home and read my library books...aahhhhh!

The Sentence by Louise Erdrich

 A bookstore is haunted by the ghost of its most annoying customer.

I had trouble with the start of the book, but I have enjoyed this author in the past, so I persevered.  It seems a teeny bit autobiographical.  The bookstore in the novel is in Minneapolis and specializes in indigenous books and authors; the author owns a bookstore in Minneapolis that specializes in indigenous books and authors.

I'm not very far into it yet, but looking forward to more time to spend with it.

I'm an April fool...

Friday.  April 1, 2022.  12:28 p.m. CDT.  

I was on my lunch hour.  I ran by the library to pick up a book I had reserved.  I have entered and exited the library hundreds of times.  But this time as I was exiting I looked away for just a second.  My front passenger-side tire hit the curb and went over, and my undercarriage high centered on the curb.  You may or may not be able to tell from the photo that the driveway has a fairly steep angle of descent.

I was stuck but good!  I phoned Carey, and proceeded to wait.  

The library is a busy place, as is the Home Depot store whose driveway sits directly opposite the library drive.  Every single person entering and exiting the library rolled down their window to inquire if I needed assistance, as did numerous Home Depot customers.  The first fourteen times were very welcome.  The next twenty-two times were pretty embarrassing.  But the last hundred and thirteen times were just downright humiliating.  

Once Carey arrived and looked over the situation, we called AAA to ask for a tow truck.  Several hours and multiple calls later, I told them I would be calling for my own tow truck and submitting the bill for reimbursement.  Finally a tow-truck arrived, and the driver and Carey were able to fairly quickly get all four tires back on the ground, and after a quick once over I was amazingly able to drive it home!  All told, we were there for around five hours.  I never did make it back to work.

Carey gave it a closer examination once we were home, and he said that aside from a few small scratches to the under carriage, everything looked fine.

I am amazed and SO thankful!

Frugal Friday File 2022, week 13

 

1.  Sunday family dinner's dessert is so often decided by what I have on hand.  Yellow cake mix: check.  Instant vanilla pudding: check.  Eggs: check  Rum: check.  Pecans: check.  Butter, oil, water: check, check, check.  I didn't have quite enough rum, and I had a hardened bag of brown sugar that needed using up, so I subbed the glaze a bit. Turned out really yummy.

2.  Carey is painting the house trim, and rain gutters.  Then he will reinstall the gutters, which he took down before the new roof was put on.  He will paint the exterior walls as well eventually; that may have to wait for fall temperatures, however.  I'm just so thankful that he is willing and able to do these kinds of jobs that are expensive when hired out.

3.  I had accumulated enough 'points' to use for $10 off of next week's meal subscription order.

4.  I just finished a book that I really enjoyed:  The Crossing Places by Ellie Griffiths.  It's about a professor in forensic archaeology in a fictional English town who assists local police with a found skeleton.  It is the first in a series called The Ruth Galloway Mysteries, and I checked out the ebook from the library.  Unfortunately, it was the only one of the series the library had.  The subsequent books in the series are a little pricey as Kindle ebooks, and they are pricier still in paperback...I checked on Amazon and Ebay.  But then I realized that the boxed set of the first 10 books in the series broke down to less than buying them individually as either print or ebooks.  There are 14 books in the series.  As I work my way through the boxed set, I will watch (and keep my fingers crossed) for the last books at special 'deal' prices.

5.  And that's about it for frugality as it just didn't seem to be the priority this week.  We travelled to our hometown for a family funeral.  I sent flowers for the funeral and for my mother-in-law's birthday.  I've been eating lunch out entirely too often.

Frugal Friday File 2022, week 12...

 

1.  I worked some overtime this week.  Unheard of!  My self-reliant boss is on crutches this week and has needed just a bit of additional help.

2.  We had leftover taco soup (which is a lot like chili) a few days ago.  I also had a half package of ground beef, a package of tortillas, and some grated cheese that needed using up.  So I decided to combine everything into a an easy enchilada casserole.

3.  I think I've mentioned this before, but here goes.  When Carey retired in December, he had enough vacation built up to be on his employer's books till the end of the year.  But without warning, they did not do things that way.  They paid him for his vacation time (eventually after  much argument on Carey's part that it was due him), and they also ended our medical insurance, without any mention to us, as of the 10th of the month.  I only learned about it when a medical provider called me to tell me a claim had been rejected, and that coverage ended on the 10th which he advised me was extremely unusual.  I was, of course, squeezing in appointmets before year's end, so panicked.  That particular provider told me that we were not at fault, so they would be writing off the charges for the 3 visits (God bless them!).  That still left another specialist's charges.  

Thankfully, I phoned my employer's HR Dept for advice on how to approach the situation.  Since I had signed up for medical insurance through them to start in January, and Carey was within their number of days since his life-change event (retirement), they made our medical retroactive to December 14.  

The specialist invoice arrived last week.  Several hundred dollars was billed, but the insurance decreased that to just $58, which I happily paid on Friday.  

And, in case you are curious, I did phone the other provider and gave them the new insurance information to resubmit; but was assured again that it wasn't my fault, they plan for a certain percentage of loss, and since it had already been written off, they were not resubmitting.  (God bless them!)

4.  Finished my library books.

5.  I was late for a doctor appointment on Friday and got pulled over for speeding.   I pulled over in a safe spot for him to exit his vehicle and approach mine, and I had my license and registration ready to hand him.  The officer asked me if I knew how fast I was driving, 'Fifty plus miles per hour.'  Did I know what the posted speed limit was? 'Thirty-five.'   He thanked me for my honesty, and gave me a warning.  (God bless him!)

Frugal Friday 2022, week 11...

 

1.  We are still ordering three meals a week from our subscription service.  I admit that it is a convenience, but it also keeps us from eating out when I am exhausted after work, so it still feels like a frugal win.  We use Front Porch Pantry which is a Texas company which only delivers within the state...actually I think they are just starting Oklahoma delivery as well.  One day last week they offered free shipping if you purchased a certain dollar amount.  Definitely grabbed that deal!  Saved about $18.

2.  The Amazon Firestick that we had on our living room television was no longer functioning.  Carey suggested that I order a new one.  I was looking at them online when it occurred to me that we very rarely use the Firestick to view programs on the bedroom television, so we just unplugged that one and moved it to the living room.  Twenty to forty dollars saved by not buying unneccessarily.

3.  Staying home this weekend and conserving pricey gasoline.  I have a list of chores to progress through.  I really filled it up so I could prioritize what I feel like working on once I get started, and I won't worry about trying to scratch everything off the list.  

4.  Now that we have a working Firestick on the TV, I am using my library's Kanopy service to watch a couple of documentaries this weekend.  I get up to 5 shows/movies a month free.

5.  I found some old 32¢ stamps.  I used two of them to mail a letter to a friend who has also used odd combinations of old postage on her mail to me.  I can't remember the last time I actually licked a stamp to affix it to an envelope!

Frugal Friday File 2022, week 9...

 

1.  Still working on the freezer and pantry meals.  I found some chicken thighs in the freezer over the weekend; bell pepper, onion, and carrots in the fridge; Trader Joe's curry sauce in the pantry.  Yummy curry and rice on a chilly night

2.  Kasey brought us over a box of beautiful ripe tomatoes that were left over from a meal at Beau's workplace that he was responsible for organizing.  I used about half of them to make a Tomatoe Pie.  The last onion had gone into the curry, so I used dehydrated onion flakes sprinkled over the layers of tomatoes instead of fresh.  And I used up all the little bits of random shredded cheeses from the cheese drawer to make the topping.

3.  I wear my seat belt.  Tickets are not frugal.  Neither are ambulance trips nor emergency rooms.  And then there was that time it saved my life.

4.  My trips to Sonic have decreased in frequency.  When I do go, I use the app to get half-price drinks.  

5.  Library.  Nuff said.