Bastards and Jerks

You know, every time I snip a negative person out of my life I feel a pound lighter. In those terms, I am anorexic now.

Sincerely, I feel like I live my life pretty honestly and make compromises and exceptions and allowances for other people when need be. I try to be understanding and loving and sincerely try to withhold my judgement of others. But as I get older I am less of a pushover. I am more interested in caring for my family and living my life than I am to pandering to the needs of financial or emotional leaches. I am really tired of being taken advantage of. I have spent too much of my life allowing people to take advantage of me because it was easier than fighting for what I believed to be right and true.

I have to say, today I feel two pounds lighter. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

And I'd like to formally apologize to my husband for being such a magnet for crazy. I really know how to pick em'.

splurge

I'm not a department store brand sorta lady. I mean, I LOVE fancy brands, but my wallet credit makes me a GAP and Banana Republic (sale) girl. For a special occasion I shop my local Anne Taylor (loft). Sadly, I spend a pathetic amount of my free time scrolling through page after page on the Nordstrom website while filling my shopping cart with thousands of dollars of clothes that I will never be able to afford.

Today I splurged a splurge that I can not believe I did. It turns my stomach. I spent $100 on a pair of jeans, which is something that I've never done before.

But Jay and I are going out together on a date next weekend and I want to feel like a cowgirl prin-cess. We went shopping today, not sure of what we'd find and I fell in love with the fit of these jeans. Not only were they a size that I thought I couldn't wear, but they're incredibly flattering and comfortable. Let's face it, good jeans are hard to come by.

Unfortunately, the process of falling in love with these Free People jeans has lead me down an earth shattering path and into a universe called wee people. Good Jesus John, I may need to have another baby just to dress her in these!

As a matter of fact, I love the Free People clothing in general. I deeply wish to own this top.

Cancelled the Party

For obvious reasons we have to cancel Lila's fifth birthday party at our house.

I feel so sorry for her. My poor daughter is robbed of her birthday party for one reason or another each year. This year we celebrated her birthday while in Florida. It's on August 25th. We had a family party with my mom, dad, Lila's Great Grandmother and Great Grandfather. I promised her that after we returned home to Philadelphia and we were settled into our new home that we could have a big, Halloween birthday party that we'd invite all of her new, kindergarten school friends to. As soon as we got home I designed and ordered cute birthday invitations and sent them into her teacher to go in each child's folder on the first week of school.

Then we found out about the bed bugs.

We've held off on canceling the party because a.) Lila talks about it every day. And b.) I'd hate to have cancelled it and then have no bed bugs and no reason not to have it on October 30th.

But, really, we should be bb free for a long time before allowing families into our home. It's not fair to risk passing this to someone else.

This doesn't make my daughters heart any less broken.

So, here's what we're doing. We booked a little Build-A-Bear party at a mall in New Jersey. We invited five of Lila's close friends to the party (I honestly wish that we could invite more friends, but it gets very expensive very quickly). Each child will go to the party and be able to make their own bear, while celebrating Lila as a guest of honor. Then, we'll find a little pizzeria outside of the mall and everyone can get a bite to eat together.

And that's that.

It's not perfect, but it's something.

I was looking at my husband yesterday and saw how beat up and downtrodden he seemed. Life has been very hard for us for quite awhile now. Between Jay's health problem, bed bugs, financial suicide and Bunny's broken arm and general anxiety issues... it has taken a toll on our family. I'm worried about us.

Groceries

So, the thing about me is that I love food.

I love to eat. I love to grocery shop. I love to cook. I love to bake. I love to prep. I love to feed.

I just love everything about food.

Here's something that you may not know about me, (though it's possible that I may have mentioned it before). I, Anna Holler, might just be the world's most savvy grocery shopper EVER. I mean, I don't want to toot my own horn, but I suspect that I could make a career out of the skill, THE TALENT that I have for buying food. Grocery shopping is the only kind of shopping that I enjoy. I could (and often DO) do it for hours and am sincerely a little bit sad when it's over and that I only get to do this once every two weeks.

Recently, I turned to facebook to ask people how much money they spend on groceries each week. I found that the majority of people came within about $50 of what we spend. I was also pleasantly surprised by how many comments I received. It seems that a lot of people care about this. It's not just me!

We shop at two different places and buy all organic and mostly locally grown/organic food. We buy all of our produce and meat from the Reading Terminal Market and all of our dairy and general aisle foods from Whole Foods Market (which I would marry if it were socially acceptable and legal). I spend between $300 and $350 dollars every two weeks. The number depends on how many high priced extras that I need (things like dish washer detergent, soaps and household cleaners... which reminds me that I really need to begin making these things on my own again to keep my bills down)!

I think that this is a good place to add that I cook a few meals every day. I make decent breakfasts for my daughters each day. Generally I also do one big breakfast on the weekend. I buy at least 4 dozen eggs each time I shop (between breakfast eggs and baking eggs, I go through at least 2 dozen every week!!!! I realize that this seems impossible.) And I make big dinners each night. Lunch involves more assembling than cooking, but I do send Jay to work each day with a sandwich and snack. At times I'll also send the girls with a packed lunch, though they typically prefer to buy it at school.

The break up of my grocery bill looks like this:

$130 meat

$60 produce

$100-150 dairy and aisle foods (cereal, granola bars, pasta, pasta sauce, school snacks, sorta healthy "junk food," frozen foods).

I realize that I could spend a lot less money at the grocery store and still feed my family. I see articles like this one and know that I could technically spend $100 every two weeks and we could all eat. That said, I could also spend $800 every two weeks if we bought ALL of our groceries at Trader Joes or Whole Foods. I care a lot about things like avoiding HFCS and nitrates. I don't want to eat animals that were grown on shelves or lived their lives in misery under disgusting conditions. More importantly, I don't want to feed these things to my children. As it is, I have an organic, healthy diet on a grocery-chain budget.

I realize that not everyone has an organic farmers market or organic butcher at their finger tips, but I wonder what kind of other options there are. Also, outside of meat and dairy, I don't think that everything needs to be organic all the time. I feel more comfortable with organic food and I prefer it, but I will eat out from time to time and have something that isn't organic or healthy. All within moderation, I suppose!

Where do you shop? What do you buy? What do you spend?

Here's a little article that I found about ways to save money on groceries! Enjoy!!!!

recovering...

So, the bed bugs have hit us financially pretty hard.

As it was, we were just scraping by. I mean, we had food, shelter and our bills were getting paid... but we certainly weren't eating out every night or building our savings with all of our extra money. The bed bugs have really robbed us of everything. On top of our safety, peace of mind and furniture, we have also dug ourselves a hole of debt.

It looks like I need a job. With the craziness of exterminations and laundry (doing laundry in our home has become a full time/ 8 hour a day job), I will need to wait it out briefly. But, maybe by the end of next week I can start trying to find a job. Anything would help.

We're taking my engagment ring (the only expensive piece of jewelry that I own) to the pawn shop today in hopes that it will help cut down on our credit card bill. I doubt that they'll give us much for it... but, we'll see.

And we're considering filing for bankruptcy.

Both Jay and I feel so overwhelmed.

Also, we got a letter from our apartment managment company saying that we owe them about $4000 in charges. Pretty sure that they are going to sue us. We really need to take a step toward taking legal action against them. I HATE them. When I think about it I can't breathe.

Jay spent the evening last night watching the cleaning crew remove all of our old belongings for disposal. I can't believe that losing our stuff is hitting me so hard. I'm crying as I write it. I mean, it's JUST stuff. We'll get more stuff. It will be okay. I just feel stripped of everything.

Jay is working all the time in hopes of recovering from this a little bit.

Did I tell you that we are holding off on moving our things. We couldn't find anyone to help us. This strikes me as being so insane. Jay asked everyone he knows. No one would help. The only person who even offered was someone who we haven't been close with in years. I couldn't even find someone who was willing to babysit the girls while I helped Jay load the storage facility into a uhall. So, we'll have to hold off and go longer until we are able to find people to help. Honestly, I wasn't that comfortable bringing furniture into our house right now anyway. So, maybe it's for the best.