Mess & Mow - Vacation's First Weekend

This week was leading up to our first vacation of the year. I think I have only taken a day off since January. Too much work! We need the break. The husband was getting fed up with work. I know I was getting crankier too.

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Just like last June’s vacation we are staycationing. Last year I had a bunch of Groupons to keep us busy. This year I found a few places we have never been that we will check out on day trips. One overnight is planned for camping. With the dogs, cats and new kittens it is tough to get someone to watch them. Usually it’s the father in-law and lately the nephew. He started working so it gets tough to work around his schedule and how he says he needs 10 hours a day of sleep. 

In the first two days of vacation we have managed to get some stuff accomplished at home. The husband dragged his feet on mowing. Once the dogs have to make paths to get back to the house I know it’s been too long. I was surprised Friday when I got home with him mowing. I finished the mowing on Saturday morning.

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We also took a trip to the dump. I will not say how long it has been since he took trash, but it has been way too long. We have a “trash trailer” we put the bag trash in until we hook it up to the pickup to take to the dump. I am still amazed with all the recycling we have and the paper products we burn, how little trash we actually accumulate.

The bad part is that the recycling at the dump no longer has glass recycling. Now I am trying to figure out where to take our glass. We don’t buy much that comes in glass, but I have a recycling container full of glass. I checked the website for our county and they don’t have glass listed. I may need to ask around or check the other dump sites. We just go to the one closest to the house.

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Saturday I also planned more in my bathtub planter. I still haven’t added to the wheelbarrow planter. Thank goodness the house and porch plants are mainly doing well. I out the one that looks like a pineapple top outside and it did not like all that sun.

Saturday night we took the in-laws out to dinner to Betty’s Pizza. The mother in-law did not like the calzone. I loved my Stromboli. The husband didn’t eat lunch so he ate two dinners. Yes, he has done eating contests and won. It was a nice night with the family.

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Sunday the husband and I went to the Waldo Flea Market. He found a container and 296 photo slides for me and he paid for it! It has lots of great stuff – purchased slides from a cavern & of JFK’s funeral, to trip slides to a wedding to stuff around the house. They say 60s and 70s. I love them. We rarely see slides and I have that cool slide projector and hardly any slides. Somehow I have 4 slide holder containers and not enough slides.

We also went to the antique store but found nothing that interested us to purchase. We like to look around and comment. Antique stores are like museums the husband says. I like to look and he doesn’t complain.

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The other big news today is our old phones selling on ebay. I usually donate my old phones to domestic violence shelters. These phones are only 2 years or less so we figured we could possibly make some money to cover what we paid for the new phones. Well, the bidding ends today and we made more than we spent on the new phones. The husband was so funny watching them every day and doing a countdown to the end of the bidding. They both sold for more than we expected. I even added in my “terminal loop” dead phone in case they wanted a parts phone.

I am excited about going to new places…. Like a flea market, state parks and possibly some other Florida touristy places we haven’t been to before. 

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13 in 13: May Update

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1. Sell 150 items: 
24 items sold in 2013

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2. Weekly Blog Posts: 
Every week !

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3. Read a Book Per Month: 
Started reading My Mother's Keeper: A Daughter's Memoir of Growing Up in the Shadow of Schizophrenia by Tara Elgin Holley

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4. Track my Food to Lose Weight: 
The $5 bike (now up to almost $100 invested is now on the road. I rode it 1 time :(

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5. Monthly Adventures: 
Miniature Golfing in Orlando

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6. Get serious about starting a family: 
Still trying. Nothing yet :( I got kittens to compensate.

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7. Save Money: 
$300. Vacation will spend it, but we sold our old phones so that will restart the savings.

      

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8. Watch More Movies:

Pageant
Pennies From Heaven (1981)
Student Bodies (re-watch and made the husband watch it, he did not enjoy it)


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9. Improve at Work: 
My case load increased. I am usually now around 100. I managed to see as many as will show up.

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10. Take a Real Vacation: 
It's vacation time. A staycation where we go on day trips and have one overnight!

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11. Try Something New: 
Why is it whenever I think of something new I think food? We tried Fuddrucker's.

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12. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: 
Always re-using containers for leftovers. We gave a bunch of containers to the father in-law for his plants. We seem to have less and less trash with the two recycling bins for plastics and cans, plus a couple containers full of soda cans and one for glass. The husband has been good at burning the paper and cardboard when the container gets full.

We also recycle egg cartons. The neighbor fills them up with eggs. I also recycle plant containers and replanted house plants when they outgrew their container this month.


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13. More home improvement: 
I cleaned up the front porch by moving some things around. Still saving towards the big projects. They need to happen. The husband keeps bringing home free cups from restaurants & I need more cabinet space.

Phone Home

I got a new cell phone this week. It has kept me busy switching things over and downloading apps. The husband talked me into the upgrade. Also my last phone had ongoing issues – such as turning itself off, taking a screen shot rather than locking and being generally annoying.

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I am not usually a person with the latest phone. Even when I worked for a cell phone company and I could have any phone I always ended up with the boring, out of fashion or never quite caught on phones. Plus I don’t see the point of paying a ton of money for a phone I can’t even take into work. For 9 hours a day it is turned off in the car.

Last October when my phone went into the eternal loop and died I wanted to get the Samsung Galaxy S3. I didn’t have Galaxy S3 money. I bought a refurbished version of the same phone I had. Call it laziness. Call it being cheap. I still spent more on it than I wanted to.

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The husband was fed up with his phone even though we just got him a new battery 6 months ago. He looked around and decided he wanted the Galaxy S3. Now the husband and I look for different things in phones. We have never had the same phone, until now. We went to our provider about an upgrade. They wanted over $100 per phone. Then I remembered what a co-worker said about his upgrade a few months back – Radio Shack’s website. We ended up getting two phones for $100, plus free shipping. So now we have the same phone but in different colors. The husband almost broke the phone in less than 24 hours, so he bought a camo cover (big surprise).

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Today we listed our old phones online hoping to get a few bucks. Plus to my surprise the husband went through the drawer we have been putting all the phone do dads for years. We found 4 phones to donate to a domestic violence shelter and a bunch of chargers to take to the local thrift store (once they move).

Did I mention my favorite local thrift, the ARC Thrift Store is moving in a couple weeks? Well, they are moving to the next building over. But the whole building will have AC (not just less than half) and the rent is cheaper. I love this thrift because A) they aren’t far away, B) it’s a great cause,  C) they have awesome prices and D) the people who volunteer there are great.

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I have been going there more often lately because A) the husband keeps finding bicycles there and B) the prices are dirt cheap. This weekend I bought 40 books for $2. I was ramdomly picking them off the shelf just to get to 40. I am only keeping 4 of them for myself. As soon as I got them I used the new phone to list half of them online – the half with ISBN numbers. See, the new phone is already handy.

The husband still got the best deal. They let him have the Charlie the Tuna stuffed animal for free with purchase. 

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Lately

This rabbit keeps coming in the yard. It is not afraid of the dogs. 

A new cookbook for 25 cents.

More kitten photos. 

Mother's Day

Although I am not a mother, I do have new additions to the family this week. I knew what was about to happen when the husband came back from the neighbors house saying "You know how you've been talking about getting a kitten?" He already had a name, Midnight. 

The next day we went to the neighbors and the husband picked up his black kitten. He thought it would be good for me to get a kitten too. I was leery of picking a kitten since the last one I picked out died before he was 4 years old. The husband picked up Midnight's striped sister. She still doesn't have a name. I tend not to rush the naming process. 

So our life is now filled with crying kittens when they are hungry, watching where we step and unhappy older cats. The kittens soon progressed from being in a box, to the bedroom, to all over the house. They are fascinated by the dogs and Midnight has no fear. The husband is totally wrapped around the kitten's paws. It is adorable. 

 

We have big cups that I found for the husband. He thinks the world is made for small people and nothing comes in his size. I had to get him the big cups. He mainly eats cereal out of them. In the winter he has giant sized hot chocolate. 

So of course I had to put the kittens in the cups for photos. 

Brother and sister

Serious face

Separate cups

She is getting bored

Now Midnight is bored

A cup of midnight joe

Surprise face

Two museums in One Day!

Last week the coupons/Groupons hit again.

I bought a 4 person pass to the Butterfly and Titanboa exhibits at the Gainesville science museum - the Florida Museum of Natural History. We took the nephew and his girlfriend.

http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/

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I have been to the Butterfly Rainforest, but the husband had not. It was fun.The butterflies landed on the nephew. I move too much and must not smell sweet enough to get their attention.

The husband compared Titanboa to our trip to Graceland - disappointing. He thought it was a live gigantic snake. Poor husband. I would say it is not worth the regular price unless you have someone who is obsessed to giant snakes. There wasn't much to it.

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We all had fun wandering around, looking at strange bugs and past gigantic Sloths and Armadillos that roamed the land.

After the world of science we went to the Harn Art Museum next door. It was larger than I expected and had a wide variety of art. Plus it is FREE. 

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After art and nature we were hungry. I had a groupon for four people so we knew it was a day to use it. We went downtown to Sweet Mel's. 

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Most of the reason I got this deal was due to the large variety of burgers on the menu. This bar/restaurant has a eating challenge, but the husband declined. He did get the biggest burger they have - The Boss. This footlong burger comes on a hoagie roll. He definitely didn't complain about being hungry after that.

The nephew tried the mac and cheese burger. His girlfriend has the Philly Hump. I had the grill cheese burger. Although it was too much bread for a sandwich, it was definitely different. The burger was in between two full size grill cheese sandwiches. I did decide the way to take the burger to the next level would be to put bacon in each of the grill cheese sandwiches.

I also tried the Hell fries. Fries in buffalo sauce with cheese and jalapenos on top. It was good. My mouth was warm. The others had the Black & Tan Onion Rings. I tried on and they were good.

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It was a big day out for us. We finished the day off by going to ToysRUs.