Saved!

Yesterday, I had to go over to Clearfield to run a couple of errands, one of which entailed a visit to J.C. Penney's store there to pay on my card so they wouldn't nail me with a late charge of $29.00! I learned that is their standard mode of operation the hard way when I got tagged for making my payment late about 2-3 months ago. A hard way to learn something too that is, ya know!

Maya wasn't home from school yet when I started to get ready but I mentioned something to Mandy about maybe taking Maya with me and she was really excited to think I actually was volunteering to take the little girl with a kazillion questions along on my little jaunt.

Normally, when I ask Maya if she wants to go someplace with me, she's ready to roll in about two minutes flat and I just assumed she would respond that way yesterday. But, to my surprise -and to Mandy's consternation too, she said no, she didn't want to go as she wanted to stay home and "play" with Mommy. So Mandy and I were wracking our brains, trying to come up with a good reason for Maya to jump at and want to venture off with me to the "big city." (No, Clearfield is not a big city -far from it! Just me being a tad sarcastic.)

Well anyway, we did convince her to go by telling her when Gram was done with what she had to do there, I would take her and get her a surprise -probably something from the Dairy Queen there and in chocolate too. The kid is a bit of a sucker for chocolate-most-anything but especially if she thinks it might just be a chocolate milkshake!

So off we went and first stop on my list was the Penney's store where I wandered around back to the Women's clothing department.

Not that I am in dire need exactly of more clothing but gee, I sure could use -always, that i -some new tops that are loose fitting and capable of hiding a multitude of sins that seems to be an ever growing family of fat cells.

I was looking at the sale racks -naturally -since it is generally the only area where I do shop to begin with -but Maya was busy as all get out, pulling this top and that one off the racks to show me. She was actually handling the job quite well being pretty careful about getting the item with it still intact on the hanger and then, calling my attention to it with questions like "This one's pretty, Gram" or "Do you like this one?"

Of course, she has no concept of pricing and affordability issues so there she was showing me all the neat (and very pretty, I might add) items on the racks that were not part of any sale, much less a clearance sale -which is more my favored area.

The clincher though was when she showed me a really pretty item in a small but very colorful print (think oranges and yellows in tiny flowers), also this was pretty low cut too and most definitely was not any where near my size range. She was disappointed when I told her Gram doesn't need any dresses and besides that, what she was showing me wasn't a dress anyway, but rather, it was a very pretty, very sexy and very skimpy, night gown.

She kept asking me why I didn't want to get that item and even when I told her they didn't make it in a size to fit fat old grammies, she was still undeterred and kept insisting the yes, Grammie does need a new night gown. Finally, I told her that when it was my birthday, maybe she and her Mommie would come over and she could help Mommie pick out a nice nite gown then for Grammie. Hopefully, if that happens, they will do that in late September and the store will have nice, cute flannel nighties on sale -all in overly large sizes too that will suffice to cover and keep me nice and toasty warm during the winter months ahead.

I lucked out in my shopping though as I found a pair of bluejean shorts and had also found some tops to my liking as well -all on sale too! By my calculations, what I had decided on was probably going to run me close to $50 but I figured, what the heck! You only go round once in life and I may as well try to spruce up my wardrobe a tad if I could so up to the register we went.

There I got a really nice surprise as the clerk explained if I was purchasing these items with my card, I got to pick a scratch-off card and whatever percentage it said on it, I would get that percent off my chosen items as long as they weren't from the clearance racks. Well lucky for me, the shorts and two of the tops were on sale but not clearance sale things and the scratch off card I piecked gave me an added 15 percent discount so I ended up only splurging about $31 instead of the $48-50 I had anticipated. I really should have gone back and pick out two more tops in my size that I had found on sale too but I decided not to be quite that crazy with my big income, ya know!

We ventured from there up to Walmart where I procured a nice little gooseneck type lamp that works just perfect on the end table by my recliner -gives excellent light on my embroidery projects and will help save my eyesight for maybe another day or two anyway. I also got one of those little "flash" things you can stick in your computer and save all kinds of stuff to them Figured it might be an easy way for me to save larger files that I can't copy over to a cd.

From there, we had to go to the only grocery store in Clearfield (aside from the grocery department at Walmart) and pick up a couple items Mandy had seen that were on sale there this week -five pounds of sugar for $1.88 a bag and also, peaches at 88 cents a pound!

I bought a nice bag of peaches along with two of the five pound bags of sugar -would have bought a couple more but it was a restricted sale -two to a customer per day thing, ya know. Upon arriving home, Katie spied the bag of peaches and asked me if I had bought them for something specific -hint, hint, she was eyeing them up as a snack -and I told her yes, I planned to make a peach pie with them. So today, I figured if I didn't want to be accused of lying to her, I'd best be getting my fat fanny into gear and baking that peach pie I had mentioned yesterday.

I did that -had more than enough peaches left over but I had them peeled and then sliced them, put 'em in a nice heavy zip lock bag and popped the sliced peaches in the freezer so I can make another peach pie sometime down the line for a good treat. I was really happy with the way the pie turned out too considering, believe this or not, this was the first time I have ever made a peach pie! Why I never tried doing that before now is beyond me but sure was happy that it turned out as tasty as it did!

Today was the beginning day for the big event a little down river from where I live -the "100-Mile-Yard Sale" -which is one of Mandy's favorite summer events! Because Kurtis had me up last night -or rather, very early Friday morning for close to an hour, he was still sleeping very soundly when Mandy was getting ready to leave for this big yard sale so she decided against taking him along and he and I stayed home and enjoyed each other's company for about five hours while his mother traipsed all over the little byways and back roads between Shawville and Sinnemahoning!

For supper tonight, I splurged and bought cheese steak subs for us to dine on and in addition to that, I made myself a really nice and very good tossed salad using a bunch of the lovely and very crisp, fresh leaf lettuce procured from my nice little garden! Later this evening, I ventured down to check on the other stuff in the garden and was really pleased as punch to see that there are already at least 10-12 pea pods formed on those plants plus the bush beans are blooming like crazy too so I suppose it won't be long then before we can have some fresh buttered green beans with our evening meals now too!

Mandy was a little disappointed in her yard sale efforts over all but she still managed to find a couple good deals. One of those being a cover for the sofa she got about two weeks ago at another yard sale. She got this sofe which is in very good condition -actually it is a sofa bed thing -in a very nice color that coordinates very nicely with the two recliners we have -one, purchased at an auction last fall for $5.00 and the other, given to my son-in-law by a friend of his when he was clearing out items from his late mother's house! Lucky find there for sure. But the couch cover she came across today -originally from Pottery Barn -she picked up for a steal, for sure at $3.00! Can't beat that with a stick now can you?

This evening, the little guy -and his sister too -both went down for the count by 9 p.m. Ah, peace, bliss and QUIET!

Unfortunately that was a bit short-lived though as about 10 minutes after Mandy went up to bed around midnight, don't you just know, Kurtis woke up and was sobbing unconsolably. Nothing we offered to him would soothe him, calm him, much less do anything to convince him to lay back down and go back to sleep.

Until Mandy happened to think of this cd video she got the kids and which he paid a lot of attention to earlier this afternoon when she had popped it into the DVD player. So she put it in, hit play and presto magic, he sat down and was glued to the tv set.

So now, we have decided to put out a call for help and if anyone around has any more of the "J.J., the Little Jet Plane" dvds laying around, taking up space and if you'd like, I'll gladly bag up a big zip-lock bag of fresh lettuce for you to trade.

Sound good to you?

It has the ring of salvation to me!