Hey, Y'all!

On Our Table

I've shared my menu plans here before, but this week seems like a booming success of planning awesomeness, so I thought I'd let you know what we're eating up in here!  I generally do the bulk of my grocery shopping at Publix. They have great Buy-1-Get-1-Free deals, almost always including things I really need, like apple juice or pasta.  They also double coupons up to 50cents and have the best produce in town.  Their meat prices, however are H I G H, so I do my meat shopping at our smaller "local" stores, the Piggly Wiggly and Lucky's Foodland.  For less than $20 at the Pig, I bought a huge family pack of chicken breasts, a big pack of thick-cut pork chops and a 1.6 pound package of ground beef.  Combined with the rest of the stuff we bought at Publix (which included some non-food items, like parchment paper and Drano, plus some "Stock-up" items like salad dressing and soy sauce), we spent less than $100 at the grocery store this week.

Here's our menu plan:

Sunday:  Grilled teriyaki pork chops with rice and grilled asparagus.

Monday:  Grilled chicken Caesar salads (We are seeing a pattern with the grilled-ness, yes?)

Tuesday:  Pork fried rice (2 grilled (!) pork chops with veggies like bean sprouts, carrots, peas and leeks)  **I did the math (!) and this meal cost us $2.02 per serving.

Wednesday:  Grilled chicken breasts with baked potatoes and kale.

Thursday: Lasagna because MAN are we gonna be sick of pork and chicken! Also garlic bread. Possibly grilled.

Dean and I are heading to my mom and dad's for the weekend and Marcus has a crazy bunch of work commitments Friday through Sunday, so our grill will be neglected for a few days.

 

What are you eating this week?

 

Profound Randomness (Now with more parentheses!)

For some reason, I'm putting a lot of pressure on myself to write something profound. Or profoundly funny. Or both.  I guess it could be because BlogHer is so close and I want my front page to be full of awesome! writing! when people I meet there visit.  Or it could be that it's Monday. Or that I'm between jobs and the most profound thing I've done all day was combining a manufacturer coupon with a store coupon, thus getting two, count 'em, two dollars off my baby wipes.  I should probably just go to the kitchen and bake something. 

I did manage to drag poor Marcus and Dean to Target, where I bought the most amazing control-top pantyhose I've ever owned and scored some beach toys for 48 cents. (It should be noted that I will probably ruin the pantyhose the first time I try to put them on and should, therefore, have bought two pairs.  Alas.) Then we came home and entertained ourselves by presenting Dean with a big bowl of spaghetti for lunch and watching him slurp noodles. (It's the little things, folks.)  I'd like to be able to report that we've been outside frolicking in the warm summer breeze, but A) there's no breeze in Alabama in July and B) it's hot, y'all.  Every Sunday, I wake up and wonder if there would be a good day that week to hit the zoo.  Then I go outside to get the paper and I have a heat stroke and decide that if it's this hot at 6:30am, there's no way any of us will survive a trip to the zoo unless we can go at midnight. (Unfortunately, they're not open then.)

We find different things to busy ourselves with indoors.  Sometimes it's family Play-Doh tournaments, other times it's me reading cookbooks and suggesting I make fun new desserts, only to have Marcus say, "I'd rather just have the chocolate thing." (the chocolate thing being this)  Sometimes we throw Dean into the bathtub to "swim" because he refuses to go into his blow-up pool on the deck. "Nope.  Hot," he whispers when we ask if he wants to go swimming outside.  Our library doesn't do story time in the summer, which seems very silly to me. I mean, wouldn't that be the ideal time to do story time?  When the little darlings aren't in school and need intellectual stimulation in the form of literacy-building activities???     ??  Dean and I did take a free Kindermusik class a couple of weeks ago. Aside from the fact that they spell music with a K (SUCH a pet-peeve of mine), it was ok.  Unfortunately, it was JUST ok.  We mistakenly got put into the 6 months to 2 years class when I think Dean would have liked the 2-4 year old class a lot better.  He had a pretty good time, but a lot of the exercises were just not active enough to hold his attention.  If they do another free demo day, we'll go and try again, but I definitely want us to TRY again before we commit to 6 class sessions at nearly $10 a pop.  I wish we had a Gymboree around here...

Dean will be going back to Mother's Day Out this year. We've got him signed up for Monday, Wednesday and Friday. He had such a great time last year and blossomed so much with the extra (and different) attention.  I think it's good for him to have a break from me and I think the structure this provides is excellent.  He's on a schedule that works well, he gets lots of social interaction and, probably most importantly, they are just better at arts and crafts than I am. He brought home some super-cute creations last year that I'd look at and go, "Man. I have a Master of Fine Arts degree and there's no way I could have thought to do that."  The Mother's Day "let's make a baby food jar into a lady bug" project was our favorite with the "Christmas wreath made entirely out of your child's handprints" coming in a close second.  Here at home, a craft project usually consists of Dean making monkeys with his rubber stamps until he gets bored and does a face-plant onto the ink pad. (You should see his nose-print art, though.)

This is going to be a weird week, I can already tell.  Next Wednesday is Marcus's 40th birthday, then Thursday I leave for BlogHer (ohmigaaaaaaaaaaaaah), Marcus's show opens and we get one week closer to back-to-school.  Maybe we'll try to squeeze in that trip to the zoo.  Or maybe we'll just be weenies and go to the movies. If I were a bettin' girl, I'd put money on the movies.

Mine All Mine

I don't get much time to myself.  On the weekends, instead of going out shopping alone, I'd rather have Marcus and Dean tag along.  I'm also pretty fond of hanging out with them at home.  Since we don't really have a huge cash reserve for babysitters, most of our weekends are spent at home, just the three of us, usually playing in our tent.  I get a few hours a day during nap time and after Dean goes to bed, but those are often filled with household chores, grading, writing and planning. 

One of my goals for the coming year is to carve out more "me" time.  Because I don't get time to myself very often, I forget how exhilarating it can be.  Today I left work right after my class.  Marcus and I grabbed a quick lunch, then I dropped him off to teach his afternoon class.  I had 2 hours before time to pick up Dean, so I headed to Target.  I don't even remember the last time I went to Target alone. (Maybe NEVER since we've lived here!)  I took the entire 2 hours, browsing through the Dollar Spot, checking out toddler clothes, testing toys (translation: Standing in the middle of the aisle playing "Lean On Me" on a keyboard shaped like a cat's head), enjoying the Christmas displays and comparing coffee prices. It may seem like a silly, maybe even boring way to spend some free time, but I can't tell you how  I feel refreshed now.  I didn't have to worry whether or not Dean was about to have a screaming meltdown or get annoyed when Marcus wandered off. (He's bad to wander off in stores.)

2009 has FLOWN by.  A lot of my friends who had children when Dean was born told me that time turns onto warp speed when you have a child.  They weren't kidding.  In the past week, Dean's started trying to speak in sentences (and by sentences, I mean "hi, Mama" and "Daddy's choo choo" aka the lawnmower), hit a growth spurt (will we finally be out of 12 month pants???) and has really started to become a little boy.  Marcus and I are looking forward to what the coming months will bring.

As we start preparing to welcome a new year and I start preparing to turn 33, Marcus and I are setting some long-term goals both individually and as a couple.  Several of my blog friends have done dream lists recently and I've started working on one, too.  Some of the things that made my list surprised me while others have been there all my life.  I'm looking forward to tackling some of them in the next year or two and continuing to work toward others.

We are staying home for Thanksgiving this year.  My turkey breast is thawing in the fridge as we speak and we'll head out tomorrow morning to shop for all the trimmings.  I'm looking forward to having no set schedule, watching football and hanging out with my boys. And maybe, just maybe, I'll sneak in a little Jen time. If I do? You'd better believe it's going to involve a pumpkin spice latte.