I have been trying to get this budget under control for three months, and just this month, it all started to come together, but we hit a few snags. This resulted in trips to the grocery store about every other day, and never having the right foods in the house. You know when you have lots of hamburger meat, half a bag of tortillas and eight thousand popsicles, and you try to make a dinner out of it? Yeah, that's what it's been like.
So, today I decided to fix it. I planned a menu for two weeks. I hate doing that. Especially after I had to eat April's lunch today and I never want to see food again. (Not the lunch she made, but the lunch she couldn't eat, and didn't want to hurt the cook's feelings.) Ugh. So I made up some meals we might eat and we might not.
Then I added a bunch of random stuff to the list. This was mostly stuff that I remembered wishing I had in the house throughout the last few weeks, but I probably won't ever want it again. Like buffalo wings. I love wings, but I don't really eat them when they're around. But it's covered, just in case.
Then I went around the house and made sure we put everything on the list we might need in the next two weeks: toothpaste, laundry detergent, dog food....beer. (Ok, beer wasn't on the list, but I did regret this later.)
Then I loaded up the kids and went shopping. For three hours. This was our Epic Trip to Avoid Walmart for at Least Two Weeks.
I usually get a lot of looks when I take my kids shopping. Mostly, it's either other worn out moms with sympathetic smiles, or older couple who ask my kids if they have girlfriends and stuff. Today was the same until we got to filling the second cart. Then I started getting looks that were clearly judgemental. I think they said things like:
You're making an eight year old push that heavy cart?
Do you really need those cookies?
That's a lot of bread. (Someone actually said this to me once...I was like, hi, this is a lot of kids.)
Why is that second cart full of beer? (hahaha! Just kidding! But I still regretted this.)
THREE HOURS LATER, I was ready to check out. The checker started crying when we started unloading the second cart. My kids, who had been very good up to this point, started asking for every single impulse item near the register, and trying to hop on the moving carts of everyone walking by. I was flustered and yelling at everyone. This took another half hour.
We left, and on our way out, we ran into a Large Family! They had five kids, long hair, skirts and two parents...my kind of people, right? So I smiled all big at the mom. She glared at me. What?!?!?! I'm like you, lady! I home school! I go to church! I believe in marriage and kids!!! (I realize that I sound all racist about home schooling here, but that's because I am a little racist about home schooling, because home schoolers tend to be racist against the whole world.) But wait, I looked down. I was wearing shorts, all sweaty and screamy, my kids were still half dressed because we just left the pool, and I didn't have husband in tow or a ring on my finger....so nope, prolly not their kind of people after all. So, basically, I don't fit in with the DINK's (double income no kids) from my town that give me looks in the store, and I don't fit in with the crazy big family people, either??? Darn.
On the upside, our van was so full of food that the suspension was taxed, and we got to ride home like this:
