The Cheese Stands Alone

Robert and I went out shopping first thing this morning. We needed some stuff. I'm going to make biscotti tomorrow, and we were out of butter and vanilla, plus I wanted to stock up on some more cheese at Meijer. I did some research and found that shredded cheese freezes well, plus their block cheeses have July sell-by dates on them. I'm pretty sure they will stay good, especially since we eat quite a bit of cheese. I ended up buying seven and a half pounds of cheese for fourteen dollars, which is pretty much impossible to beat, at least around here. I picked up the butter there too, but headed to Sam's for the vanilla. (It was an icky cold rainy day today, but that worked in my favor since I could leave the cheese in the car for a half hour.)

I haven't been to Sam's in quite awhile. We don't go as often now that I'm couponing, since coupons actually work more effectively with smaller packages. Smaller packages generally equals being able to use more coupons for the same volume, after all. But there are some things that are just cheaper there, like real vanilla extract, and 42 pounds of cat litter. Don't buy generic cat litter, especially if you have a small apartment. Gack. I also picked up a flat of bottled water with sport caps, like I do ever couple months. They are very handy to have around, and if you just rinse out the bottle, you can use it over and over, refilling it from the Brita pitcher, or even from the tap. M and I typically go through a bottle a week each, which means one flat lasts quite some time. One thing they haven't got yet is the big 40-packs of iced tea tubes. I hope they come in soon! That is definitely the cheapest way we get our caffeine, and we go through lots and lots of it. I bought seven boxes at the end of last iced-tea season, but it didn't come close to lasting.

Robert was in a hungry mood today, and alternated being smiley and laughing at my funny faces with being unbearably fussy. He also seemed to have a rash around his neck this morning that went away after a little while, so I'm going to keep an eye on that. I haven't changed detergent or anything, so I'm not sure what it would be from. It's sad when the baby is upset and can't tell us what's wrong. I keep wondering if he's getting enough to eat, but he had three stinky diapers, including one diaper-burster, and soaked through another outfit, so he's got to be getting a fairly decent intake. I kind of wish he'd gain some more weight. I know I'm probably just being a paranoid new mom, but it's hard not to worry sometimes.

After Robert went to bed (went down screaming, was sound asleep in less than ten minutes), I took a look at the coupon deals for the coming week. CVS is totally blah, but Walgreens is looking very good. I will probably be making several trips and spending much of the last of this month's budget there. There's not much left, even though I've been using gift cards where I can. I've done pretty well, I was up to a 75% savings rate for a little while, though now I'm back to 73.5%, after the Kohl's trip. So far I've spent 204 dollars on 760 dollars worth of stuff this month, and have fifteen dollars left to spend over the next five days. Let's see if I can make it work.