Mommin' It Up!

March 6, 2010March 6, 2010

A Blogger Walks Into A Drugstore…

Ok, three drugstores. One of them multiple times. It is possible that I went a little overboard on the couponing this week. But as I now have enough of my faaavorite paper towels (Viva, they are the Rolls Royce of paper towels, thank you Walgreens for the great deal on those this week!) to last me for a couple months and enough laundry detergent for about the next year (at the rate I do laundry – hey I am saving it up for when my new Frigidaire washer & dryer arrive in May!) maybe I will take this week off. 🙂 Here are a few of the things I got!

Stop #1 CVS: My friend Jen and I went in, since I am her coupon guru and she is my apprentice. It was lots of fun, we made friends with the new manager at my fave store, and I got some sweet deals!

Huggies box diapers $19.99
2 Excedrin $2.50 each
CVS pain relief $2
SoftSoap body wash $4.99
Total = $31.98

Coupons:
CVS $5/$30 email coupon
$2 Huggies printable coupon
$4 off Huggies big box diapers CVS CRT
Two $2 off Excedrin printable coupons
$3/2 Excedrin CVS email coupon
$.75 cents off SoftSoap printable coupon
$1 off any body wash CVS CRT
total = $14.23
I paid with 12-ish extra care buck and paid $2.63 cash including tax, and got back 8 ECB, 4 for the diapers and 4 for the body wash. YAY!!!

Next stop, Rite Aid! I am recently love, love loving Rite Aid. They have great printable coupons available through their Video Values program where you watch short commercials and get to print high-value coupons. SCORE!

2 Suave shampoo/conditioner $1.99 each
2 Carefree pantiliners .99 each
2 Nivea lip balm .99 each
Tampax $2.99 each
Satin care shave gel $1.99
Listerine pocketpaks $3.99
Garnier styler $2.99 (one of my fave hair products, I have been waiting for a sale for forever!)
$19.90

Coupons:
Rite Aid $3/$15 printable coupon
$1/2 Suave manu coupon
$2 off Carefree Rite Aid video values coupon
$1/2 Carefree manu coupon
$1 off Garnier Rite Aid video values coupon
$1 off Garnier manu coupon
$1 off Tampax manu coupon
50 cents off Listerine manu coupon
99 cents (BOGO free) Nivea lip balm coupon

Total = $8.41 – paid in cash and I will get $6 single check rebate, 1 for the Suave, 1 for the Tampax, 3 for the Listerine and 1 for the Gillette shave gel. 🙂

Finally, WALGREENS. Now I will tell you that Walgreens is my THIRD-favorite drugstore. However I was in there about 80 bajillion times this week because they had some sweet deals I could not pass up. And I CAN BE BOUGHT. I do the coupon shopping for my BFF Luanne (because she is coupon challenged, and I LOVE her) and I went in a couple times to load her family up on toilet paper, paper towels (VIVA!!), laundry detergent, Kleenex, and feminine care products (she has two daughters, they need their own Fort Kotex) and I did a few transactions for myself as well (Viva, Kleenex, laundry detergent, clearance diapers, lots of free plus overage Tylenol PM!) Here’s a couple examples:

2 Purex BOGO free, $5.99
6 Kleenex, BOGO free $2.19 (for two)
total = $12.56
coupons:
BOGO Free Purex – $5.99
two 50 cents off 3 Kleenex – $1
total = $5.57 and I got back 3 register rewards for buying the Kleenex, yippee!

Then, much to my frugal delight, I made a magical discovery in the baby aisle at Walgreens. They had some sizes of Walgreens brand jumbo pack diapers clearanced to $2.29. YES, I SAID $2.29 FOR A JUMBO PACK!! I about died of nerdy happiness. I got SIX packs as I have some peeps to get baby gifts for. I used several register rewards I had accumulated through the weeks and paid less than $5 total out of pocket. WHEEEE!! Oh, and I got two more bottles of Purex, (pictured with the kleenex above), WHAT UP!? Somebody give me a high five!

Ok, that’s all for me this week. From Fort Kotex and the Viva Palace, I bid you happy couponing!

Wanna see some more sweet deals?? Check out the round-up at Shopping SUperstars at the Thrifty Mama’s place!

March 5, 2010

A Little Less Crazy, A Lot More Bald

If you’re not still to scared from the unbridled anger Emily released a few days ago in her rant about birth control pills, allow me to add a wee update about my journey with these things.

As you may remember, I started taking them a year ago, hoping to balance out my super-crazy hormones, which were causing headaches, acne, and (in my opinion) sleeping problems.

They cured my acne but they made me batsh** crazy and depressed. So I tried another kind, and another kind, and then anti-depressants on top of that. Then another kind of anti-depressant after a few months. I had a sleep study which came back negative, increasing my suspicions that hormones are at the root of my sleeping problems.

Because my sleeping problems are the main issue at this point, I asked my doctor last month if she could test them. She said I would have to be off the birth control pill for at least 30 days before she could do that. So I stopped taking it. My next appointment is near the end of April and I wanted to make sure my hormones were good and natural by then.

And I feel about 90% less crazy. Even with the anti-depressant, I was having very low moods before my period, and times of anxiety. And this month, I have had none of that!! I am still taking the anti-depressant, but it is amazing how different I feel now that I have stopped taking the pill. A couple more months of this, and I may be able to stop taking my A-D.

(Of course if my giant ZITS come back, I may get depressed all over again.)

Also, since I stopped taking the pill, my hair is falling out like CRAZY, just like it did for a few months after I gave birth. Fortunately, I have tons of hair, so I am not too worried about it (I wish the gray ones would fall out! Or some of my excess eyebrow!) but I find that to be rather odd and just another sign that hormones are FRAPPING WEIRD and they do CRAZY things to us lady people. (Check back with me in a month. If the hair loss speeds up and my zits come back, I am gonna be really fugly, and really depressed!! Nothing cuter than a bald, acne-covered 32-year-old woman.)

So, I am a little less crazy, which feels awesome. And a lot more bald, which at this point, is still ok. And also, a little bit more hopeful that one day I’ll be back to me.

March 4, 2010

National Grammar Day: Earning my nerd status . . . again.

Hi, this is Emily. I bet you didn’t know today is a holiday – it’s National Grammar Day! The nerds of the world are excited. In honor of this blessed occasion, we’ve asked our friend and long-time reader Mary from Giving Up on Perfect to guest post about one of my favorite subjects, grammar. Thanks Mary! Happy National Grammar Day to the rest of you.

When I was in seventh grade, I drew the short straw when it came to English class. See, my middle school had two teachers who taught seventh-grade English. Mr. C was a bushy-haired, polyester-wearing hippie. Ms. B was a severe, frowning grammar dictator.

Everyone wanted to be in Mr. C’s class. Guess which class I was assigned to.

The rumors were true. Ms. B was mean. And demanding. And . . . a good teacher.

Yes, I admit it. I learned a lot in that seventh grade English class. For one, I learned how to recite all the pronouns. We had to memorize them, and really, what’s more fun for a 13-year-old than saying, “He, she, it” as fast as possible? (Try it. See how fun that is.)

For two, I learned to respect the English language. (I had to, or else I would have gotten an eighth hour.) I learned that proper grammar, along with our friends, punctuation and spelling (ah, yes, spelling), were important.

It was good timing, that class with its book reports and parts of speech and red pens, because my glory days were quickly coming to an end.

I’m talking about the days of the spelling bee, of course. Because it’s time to be honest: I’ve been a grammar nerd, a word nerd, a nerdy nerd for a really long time.

Based on this geeky history, which continued into high school with the academic team (Yeah. Go ahead and call it “nerd bowl.” You won’t be the first.), you probably won’t be surprised to learn that I am one of those. Those people who think you should use things like proper grammar and spell check, even in a blog post.

Especially in a blog post.

Today is National Grammar Day, and in honor of this most prestigious holiday (Why isn’t the bank closed, anyway?), I thought about sharing my favorite grammar tips with you. But then I sat down to write my tips, and I realized that so many others have said it before and said it better.

Instead, I’m going to share some fun grammar links with you. If you have even a tiny bit of the nerd in you, check out these sites:

• National Grammar Day: From tips to quizzes to podcasts (about grammar! Yay!), this site is full of grammar goodies.
• The Grammar Nazi Is In by Doritos for Dinner: I love this, and, as I mentioned, I couldn’t have said it better myself.
• The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks: Need I say more?
• The Grammar Blog says it’s been mocking poor grammar since 2007. I like that. I like the mocking. It’s good.

That’s all for today, class. Have a wonderful Grammar Day, and please, for the love of red pens and AP Stylebooks, use your spell check.

When she’s not proofreading ads, editing newsletter articles or writing perfectly punctuated press releases, Mary can be found at her blog, Giving Up on Perfect. And yes, she sees the irony in that blog name when compared to her obsession with all things grammar.

(oh hi, it’s Emily again. I just had to butt in and say how much I enjoyed this blog post, and how much I relate to it. I had a “Ms. B” as well, except mine was a “Mrs. R.” All of you Valley View people out there, say it with me now… am, is, are, was, were…)