Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Don't ever get dressed in the dark...

Wow, what a day.

Up twenty minutes earlier in my "Improve Myself One Stupid Ambitious Habit at a Time" mode, drop off JJ at the Park and Ride, back home for shower and waking the LC. Improptu conference at school at 8:15, then prayer group at 9:15. Construction meeting for carnival at 10:15, lunch for 5 to prepare for 11:30, then shopping.

I took the Coupon Clan to the store today to teach them the Way of the Fish. Three carts full for about $48. It took us over an hour to plan, but we did it. Let me say, I will be able to stop up anyone's personal waste management system with all the cheese we got. We have cheese, is what I'm saying. Oh, and Koolaid drink pouches to wash it down with. Enough to bathe in. Except that would be sticky.

And N, with the way she worked her deals, walked out paying nothing out of pocket, and only a little off her food assistance card. A cart full on a few bucks. I'm dying to hear what her husband said when she showed him her receipt.

So then home, and post office, then picking up the Little Critter, homework and preparing dinner, picking up JJ, serving dinner, doing dishes and laundry and cleaning, and finally coming in here at 9 p.m. to check e-mail and blogdom.

And only 5 minutes ago I realized my drawers are on inside out.

Saturday, January 27, 2007

Bringing people together, one coupon at a time

I've started hosting once-a-week coupon swaps at home. I might have mentioned this. Often there are 9 kids and six women in the house at one time. It's great, and we've become a little coupon society. You get to learn a lot about a person when cutting coupons with them.

S is a natural at this. She's learned how to scour the ads and work the deals for the free stuff. She's avoided CVS and Walgreens up to now only because she didn't quite understand them. Now I've got her working those deals as well. S is the one who will actually do the math on a deal where you get 10 bottles of syrup for $4. That takes some doing, let me tell you.

R is an on again, off again couponer. She really wants to save money, but she's pretty busy. Of course, my view is an hour a week won't hurt anything. She's also in charge of Box Tops at school, so she should notice how many free things have box tops on them. R even brought a friend along once, a friend who I think S freaked out because she hit the friend with way too much information at once.

G is, well, slow. Oh, she's super bright, but not in this area. Try as I might, I can not get her to pay attention long enough to learn this system. She wastes money paying for the Grocery Game and not printing out her lists. Even the lists with lots of free stuff. And yet she bemoans having to work two days a week and how her husband is always after her to save money. She'll do it right until it takes too much concentration.

T is right there with me on working these deals. She's the only person I have to worry about clearing the shelves before I get there. Good thing I hit more stores than she does.

And N just joined our group. N was excited to be invited to do coupons with us. I found out why. Her husband has been a truck driver with truck problems. They're living on food stamps right now, and his car isn't working, so they (like us) are a one car family. I really wanted to help her, so I had her come over and go through a few stacks of coupons I had, but while she was there, S came over with the new ads. We found pizza rolls for free, margarine tubs for 10¢ and toothpaste for 25¢. We loaded her up with coupons and sent her out to buy a bunch of cheap stuff. She's so happy! Now she feels as though they'll make it. You go girl.

I went through the pantry and gave her a few things too. Amazing the supply of stuff I have. I'll never miss what I gave her, and she'll absolutely use it.

I've been donating my "overstock" a long time; school, Ronald McDonald House, Katrina victims, even trying to get together packages for soldiers overseas. I hadn't realized there are people with needs right here. So I think the next step is going to have to be an overstock shelf somewhere in the house. If I had a set of shelves where people could come and get what they needed, it would be easy for them to see I'm not sacrificing when I hand them a bag of groceries.

And if I kept prices on them or attached stickers with what I paid, people would see how good I am at this and buy up some of the overstock, allowing me to keep doing that. I mean, I have a friend who was amazed at the syrup deal, but can't see herself buying 10 syrups. Put them on a shelf with a 40¢ price tag, and it becomes another thing entirely when she can get two bottles for the deal price. I benefit because I can buy in large quantities without Sam's and without worrying about spoilage. They benefit because they don't have to figure out the deals and stand in line.

So apparently my new corner store is going to be the Fish Market.

Gotta love it!

And to celebrate, here's a gift I want you to have. Just between us.

Thursday, January 18, 2007

Damn Media

Yeah, I'm on a rant. I HATE the media, especially the print media.

No, my favorite celebrity has not been hounded to death; that's not the source of my indignation. No, they didn't publish anything negative about me or mine. No, I don't think they've overstepped anywhere (this week) or rushed to judgement (in the last few hours.)

But dangit, do they HAVE to show, on the front page of the lifestyle section, a picture of a character in 24 with a huge red "X" on said character's face, implying that this character is killed early in season 6? Especially when I have just six (six!) hours left to watch of Season 5?

I've managed to watch 5 seasons in a year or so, and just when I'm ready to catch up and watch it weekly like normal people do, they throw SPOILERS into the paper! Rassafrassin'...

ETA: Oh yeah, and by the way? When you have in your possession the evidence to bring down someone extremely vile, corrupt, etc., someone who would stop at nothing, even murder, to get it back, what is Cardinal Rule #1 for surviving, or at least seeing to it that said villain is brought down?

MAKE A FRICKIN' COPY! JEESH!

OK, /rant.

Lunch with Pley (who looks fabulous even in the rain, for which I am jealous) was great; there aren't hours enough in the day to spend hanging out with someone as interesting as she is. We decided to celebrate the fact that we are not our genetics. And that we're smart couponers. And that Steve Burns is working on new music. And that we have such great husbands whom we do not currently desire to smack. And a dozen other things. She just picked the wrong part of town to live in. OK, the right part of town that wasn't MY part of town!

Friday, January 12, 2007

Once again, persistance triumphs over public servants

I got the title changed.

5 trips to the tax office, two faxes, two trips to the seller's house, one tank of gas and several valium later, it is done.

Once again, I am invincible. And I still managed to get the sheets changed as well. Look out, world, I'm on a roll.

Tuesday, January 09, 2007

Competence

I've been pondering that concept a lot lately.

I've been trying to get a handle on everything in my life, especially since I've been signing up left and right for things like:

* carnival chair
* precinct chair
* next year's PTA treasurer
* coupon train conductor
* a new devotional
* coupon swap meeting host
* a new business
* my regular job

and a ton of things I've forgotten for the moment. Suffice it to say, I am going to be busy.

But this is good. One, it helps me with the smoking. I'm down to 7-8 cigarettes a day, from a high of about 38. Two, it keeps me from having to commit to other things I'm not up for, but more on that another time.

I've recently restarted FLYLady, and have kept the sink shiny and dish-free. I've started a control journal to let me know what has to be done each day. The house has been company-ready in minutes for weeks now, and getting better each day. It helped, all that decluttering I did. And I feel a little sad for a friend of mine who is having difficulty just getting through the day with everyone fed. She is just overwhelmed and can't stop contemplating the magnitude of the mess and start working on it. Sometimes I feel if she'd just stop thinking about it and decide to do ONE thing, she'd see it isn't insurmountable.

Yeah, me with the super competence over here.

Except I have apparently reached the end of my abilities. I cannot get this damned car registered.

Last year we promised the Bigun we'd match her savings to buy a car, and so in December my dad went out and bought one and put it in my name. It's a great car, and a great deal. Never mind that JJ and I weren't exactly planning on dishing out $4200 in cash right before Christmas, but hey, the girl has a car. And I have got to get a plan to pay my father back.

Now, one thing I was going to do is get a loan against the car. He paid cash, and so there's no lein anywhere. Except that the cost of borrowing the money and the additional insurance we'd have to take out would cost us over $350 a month. Hell, in a year I could just give him that. We're still paying on her braces, and we have an AC replacement that will have payments due soon, and the expected work bonuses JJ was counting on to get some of this handled have been moved back to June. If he gets them at all.

But anyway, before I could really borrow money on it, I'd need to have the title in my name. I called the tax office to ask exactly what I needed. They came back with a form number that I printed up and sent to my father. When he gets the seller to sign it, she complains, saying she already sent along a power of attorney for me to do this. Well, um, the tax office didn't want THAT, they wanted their damned form. So that comes back to me, and I go down to the tax office. With a credit card.

Can you see the words "DUMBASS" beginning to appear on my forehead?

Ha ha ha. The tax office takes cash, and checks. Dummy. So while there, I attempt to find out how much cash I'll need for the tax I'll need to pay, because there are three ways of calculating it.

Stupid. Everyone knows they can't figure that out until they enter my information in the system! What was I thinking?

So JJ secures some cash a few days later and I go back to get it done yesterday. I wait almost an hour to get up to the window and discover that I'm really an idiot. Apparently I'm so dumb I let the seller sign the title with an extra last name that is NOT on the title. Never mind I wasn't even THERE. So they give me a new form that the seller has to sign, stating she is SC and also SCC.

By this time the seller hates me and wants me dead. She hate me so good.

I fax that off to dad, who faxes it back once it's all signed. And then I'm off again this morning to the tax office. I wait yet another hour.

Moron.

Because they don't want a faxed signature! They want the stinking original!

Why, oh why, and how can I possibly manage a 2100 sq ft house, run several events, work a job and start a business and parent and coupon my bumpus off, and not get a single fricking car registered? Where's the disconnect? People do this every day! But apparently people like me just ATTEMPT to do this every day. Day after day. While the tax office security cams record everything and they play them back during coffee breaks to laugh at me all over again.

I ought to be able to get this ONE THING done. Then I can feel competent again. In the meantime, I don't think I'm even up to mopping the floor. I might break it.