An Overtime Funded Wal-Mart Prep

 

This past Friday was pay day and I had a little bit of overtime on that check.  I decided to put it to good use and use it to round out our prepper pantry with some additional items I felt would be really nice to have on hand.  Saturday morning the youngest and I headed off to make it happen.  But first we stopped into the grocery outlet store just to see what they might have at rock bottom prices. We didn't get a lot of things there, but I was able to add some more black beans (99¢ each), a package of lentils (99¢), a container of dried oregano (99¢) and two containers of mayonnaise ($1.49 each).  I had also added another tomato powder to my last Amazon order a couple weeks ago.

 

At Wal-Mart (I had a list) I picked up two more jugs of lamp oil, two gallons of white distilled vinegar, 1 large bottles of isopropyl alcohol, a large bottle of hydrogen peroxide, four cans of fruit, two cans of sauerkraut, and some canned meats.

 

I also added black beans, lentils & chopped pecans

I've been trying to add more meats to the prepper pantry the past couple of months.  A four pack of canned chicken ($7.68), three cans of roast beef ($2.47 each) and a six pack of vienna sausages ($3.16) seemed like a good idea.  Yes, we really do like those little sausages.  I have a good stock of tuna already and I've been replacing it as we use it so I didn't purchase anymore of that.

 

I am very pleased to add canned meats to my freeze dried supply

I have home canned meats as well as soups and sauces with meat.  A nice variety of meat options is a good idea as well as having beans and lentils on hand to use in place of or to extend those meats.  I like to add beans to stretch taco meat or bulk up a soup or casserole.  Lentils are nice for a tasty meatless soup or stew.

 

Last Week's Thrifty Moves

 

Sunday was quietly spent at home doing laundry, a little bit of housework, yogurt making and cooking.  I watched some television and did quite a bit of writing too.  We had nice sunny weather for the most part and out every window I could see the trees with all their leaves changing colors.  I love days like that.  It was absolutely perfect.

 

I had a crazy busy workweek and before I knew it Friday was here.  TGIF!!!  Yes, there is still drama and yes more people have tendered their resignation.  With the latest OSHA vaccine mandate that came down on Thursday I fully expect to see a lot more resignations handed in as a great number of my fellow employees have a very strong opinion about being forced to do something they don't want to do.  This could get a touch ugly. I don't even know what to make of it all right now.  One thing I do know is I have no plans to get swept up in all the upset and mayhem.

 

Lemon pepper chicken, baked potato & a green salad

Saturday morning the youngest and I ran a couple errands, stopped by for a quick visit with friends and then home to do a big rake up and tidy of our front yard.  We also tidied up the garage and organized all the cat food and chicken feed we bought that morning.  Everything looks neat and tidy and as far as our animals are concerned we are pretty much winter ready.

 

Homemade yogurt with sliced strawberries

THINGS WE ATE LAST WEEK:  Leftovers from the week before, lemon pepper chicken, tacos, hamburgers & fries.

 

THINGS I CLEANED IN 15 MINUTES OR LESS: 

Laundry Room & Half Bathroom - Vacuumed & mopped floors.  Daily swish & swipe. 

Kitchen & Dining Room - Tidied up the inside of the refrigerator, vacuumed & mopped floors.  Daily swish & swipe. 

Bedrooms & Main Bathroom - Cleaned mirror, cleaned mirrored closet doors, vacuumed & dusted.  Daily swish & swipe. 

Other - One large load of laundry.  Vacuumed & dusted living room, hallway & mopped both entryways.

 

I batch cooked some black beans for the freezer

THINGS I DID TO SAVE A SMALL BUNDLE OF $$:  We are only using our fireplace and one infrared heater (which doesn't come on very often right now) to take the morning chill off and keep our home comfortable.  I washed a Ziploc bag out to reuse.  I gave our kitchen scraps and some pan drippings to the chickens.  We ate our leftovers and had no food waste last week.

 

Even our apple cores go to the chickens

THINGS I DID TO EARN EXTRA $$:  I worked some overtime and sold two dozen eggs to a friend.

 

We did some more prepping
Check back tomorrow to hear more about that!

How was your thrifty week?

 

I Am Becoming My Grandmothers

 

There are days when I think about my grandmothers and I giggle.  I loved these women so much, miss them daily and think about them often.  The way they continue to influence my daily life, even today, blows me away sometimes.  My mother's mother and I were pen pals since I was very young in the fifth grade.  As I became an adult she would send me recipes and share her days with me.  When we could visit in person we talked a lot about homemaking and thrift.  We had a lot in common that way.

 

My dad's mom and I were extremely close, best friends.  She claimed we were besties from the day I was born.  I never doubted that.  She and I talked about nearly everything that was going on in our worlds.  She loved to laugh and we did it often.  We visited each other often and talked every Sunday on the phone as well as swapped cards and letters between visits.  She also shared with me a lot of her homemaking and dollar stretching tips.  I learned a lot from these women.

 

The other day I got the giggles.  When my paternal grandmother passed away in 1999 and we were cleaning out her home to get it ready to sell I had found her stash of toilet paper, light bulbs and all of the plastic shopping bags she had squirreled away.  As I was tucking my recent toilet paper purchase away in the linen closet I immediately thought of this and realized I am becoming her!  Oh my goodness, not too long ago I told myself to stop buying light bulbs and since the pandemic started last year I've amassed quite a collection of grocery bags.

 

Well I won't be buying anymore TP or light bulbs for awhile and I gathered up a gob of those extra shopping bags and put them in the recycling bin at the grocery store last weekend.  There are so many things that they did and taught me that I find myself doing on a daily basis.  Pretty funny how those apples don't fall too far from the tree.

 

A $30 Bonus Prep

 

Most of my prepping in 2021 has been done using any extra cash I may happen to have on hand.  In October I found myself with an extra $30 I could use to add to our prepper pantry.  I went to a couple of different stores and came up with a nice selection of items that were on sale and at a really good price.  At Albertson's I picked up two packages of toilet paper for $3.95 each, four cans of tomatoes for 59¢ each, 5 cake mixes and 5 brownie mixes for 99¢ each and another package of the sanitizing wipes for FREE.  At Dollar Tree I picked up a bottle of bleach, 4 cartons of chicken broth and 4 more of the dehydrated hash browns.  You can get an eight pack of these hash browns at Costco for even less, however since I don't have a Costco card the dollar store or Wal-Mart is my best bet.

 

Baking mixes are good to have on hand.  A sweet treat once in awhile is nice and I tend to bake goodies to take into work fairly regularly.  A pan of brownies, some cupcakes or a quick batch of cake mix cookies is a nice way to make a quick little gift for someone too.  Not a bad haul for $30.  What have you prepped lately?

 

Baja Tacos

 

I recently purchased a seven pound pork roast.  I sliced half of it into pork chops and the rest of it with the bone was placed in my slow cooker on low overnight.  In the morning I removed the meat and strained the juices that were left.  The next day I removed the layer of fat from the juices and gave it to the chickens.  What remained went into a freezer container to use later in a recipe.  The roast was very tender and shredded easily with a fork.  I put the shredded pork into two cup freezer containers to make quick and easy meals with.  One of those meals ended up as some really amazing tacos.

 

Baja Tacos 

2 cups cooked, shredded pork

1 small can diced chiles

1 tsp ground cumin

1 Tbs minced garlic

Salt & pepper, to taste

 

In a skillet heat the pork with the chiles and seasonings.  Serve with tortillas, shredded lettuce, cheese and sour cream.

 

It is that easy and boy are these ever flavorful and delicious.  I used corn tortillas but you could also do flour.  Some black beans are nice.  This would be wonderful on top of a salad too.  Oh my goodness, give these a try and let me know what you think.  We absolutely love them.

 

 

What I Now Know

 

I left Boise at 5:00 in the morning on Saturday October 2 to travel to Rochester, Minnesota.  I had appointments set up beginning Tuesday October 5th until whenever they got done with me.  I drove to Gillette, Wyoming and spent the night at a Motel 6 (with a 5 star rating).  A very basic hotel with a comfortable bed.  The next morning I was up early with hot coffee in hand and back on the road.  I arrived in Rochester at 6:00 Sunday evening.  I gave myself an extra travel day and I was glad I did because it was a long drive and I was exhausted.  I rested all day Monday and then Tuesday morning at 6:45 I was at the Mayo Clinic waiting to be seen for my first appointment.

 

I was thoroughly examined and tested from the top of my head to the tips of my toes.  They collected 10 vials of blood and a cup of urine, CT scanned and MRI'd me, slapped on some monitors, asked a gajillion questions and practically had me doing everything but stand on my head.  I asked a ton of questions myself, expressed my own concerns and laid it all out on the table.  After twelve days of that we came up with some answers.

 

MRI

I have Fibromuscular Dysplagia (FMD) and I'm lucky enough to be on the end of the spectrum where it causes problems.  FMD mainly affects your arteries making them thin and weak in some areas and rigid in others causing them to bulge and often times tear or dissect.  I have extensive FMD in my carotid and vertebral arteries with signs of tearing and a flap of torn tissue in my left carotid that would correlate with a possible aneurysm, my colossal nosebleed event at work one year ago.  Because I did not receive the proper medical care and testing at the time it cannot be absolutely confirmed, but it is likely.  With FMD carotid aneurysms can include a significant nosebleed.  I have mild FMD in my celiac and left renal artery.  In a nutshell, as one doctor put it, I have been blessed with really crummy plumbing.

 

The waiting areas are amazing
They have volunteers that come in and play these pianos

The Mayo Clinic does not believe I have Lupus.  Although I do have four of the markers that would lead to a diagnosis of Lupus (apparently four is all you need to be diagnosed as having Lupus) with further testing they are more inclined to believe I simply have a hyperactive immune system, but for me to have both Lupus and FMD would be exceedingly rare.  Not impossible, but very unlikely.  I am completely fine with that idea.  I do not need to have Lupus.

 

CT

I do have a PatentForamen Ovale (PFO) defect in the left chamber of my heart, which is not causing any issues and will not require surgery.  The PFO is not believed to have caused my stroke at age 19, but rather the FMD was likely the culprit although that cannot be completely confirmed.  I've also had three additional very small strokes in my lifetime since then as is seen on my brain MRI, but they appear to be quite old.  There is no evidence of anything new.  Will I have another stroke?  They cannot tell me that.

 

FYI - I have abs just like this

I also have Paroxysmal Supraventricular Tachycardia(PSVT) which came on not long after the big nosebleed and is likely related to the FMD although it could also be a completely separate issue altogether.  Every so often my heart just takes off racing and my resting heart rate is over 100 and sometimes gets up to 200 beats per minute.  Along with that my heart will frequently will skip a beat, Premature Ventricular Contraction (PVC), however they feel this is relatively benign and told me not to worry about that.  I can tell you it definitely does feel weird.

 

Echocardiogram

I have evidence of three myocardial infarctions on the MRI and I still have myocarditis which appears unchanged from the MRI that was done in April.  A viral panel done while I was in the hospital came back negative which negates the initial diagnosis of viral myocarditis.  So what caused the myocarditis and my three cardiac events?  And.  Will the myocarditis get better?

 

In reviewing all of the Mayo Clinic's findings and a lengthy discussion with my cardiologist last week we have come to the conclusion that I have stress induced myocarditis.  There is no other etiology that would suggest otherwise.  At this point, where there has been no significant change, it is still possible the myocarditis will reverse itself, but it might not.  Am I at risk of another heart attack?  No one can answer that.  Maybe, maybe not.  I'm voting not.  As far as heart attacks go, this is the best case scenario as it does the least amount of damage, so I've got that going for me.  😊

 

With FMD the arteries are bumpy instead of smooth

Other than the FMD and my heart issues I am a very healthy post menopausal woman with no reason to expect that I would have a cardiac event, or three, and yet I did.  So what do I do now?  That is yet to be determined.  In the meantime I will take the medication prescribed (I am trying a new one) for the FMD and PSVT and carry on.  You are now officially up to date.  You now know what I know.  Hey, at least we know!

 

Thank you, thank you, thank you for all of your support.  Your prayers, your kindness, your love and good wishes have been the best medicine of all.  You wonderful people have made things so much better for me, I cannot tell you enough how much I truly appreciate each and every one of you.  I cannot imagine going through all of this without you all in my corner.  Thank you.

 

 

Last Week's Thrifty Moves

 

I had a lovely Sunday with time spent with my oldest daughter, which is hard to come by these days.  She works hard and is very busy with school as well as her job so her time is limited, but we managed to squeeze in a good visit with lots of girl talk and some good food.

 

It was another crazy work week and things have yet to settle down much.  Not unlike a lot of companies we are extremely short handed and now it feels like a mass exodus is taking place.  It's like rats fleeing a sinking ship right now, which means we will be even more shorthanded and our workloads will only be increasing.  Annual raises this year were disappointing at best and they just came out with our new insurance for 2022.  It's absolutely horrible and they are covering less next year for more money out of our pockets.  It's not a good thing.  After the two years we've just had we were expecting much better as far as pay and benefits, but it simply is not to be.  We are losing our hardest working long term employees at an alarming rate.  I can't blame anyone for wanting better.  The new insurance plan has me the most concerned.  It has cost me a bloody fortune the past two years and it is going to cost more next year.  Competitive wages and benefits is the name of the game right now as far as employee retention goes and unfortunately the top floor isn't willing to accept that.  I am completely baffled about this and I fear they are making a huge mistake by not listening to their employees.  As a result we've all pretty much got our feelers out.  One would be foolish not to.

 

By the time Friday rolled around I was completely beat.  My daughter and I both headed off to bed early and I slept in until 7:00 and she slept until 8:00.  By the time we both rallied and got ourselves dressed for the day we were ready to get busy and do something productive.  First thing we did was to go to Fred Meyer to pick up some loss leader items on sale and to transfer a couple of my prescriptions over to their pharmacy so I could get $50 in FREE groceries.  Yes please!

 

My daughter wanted a "new" coat for winter so we went to a couple of thrift stores until she found the one she wanted.  A black Croft & Barrow fully lined and washable coat with deep pockets in a classic style.  Now all of us have a winter coat that basically looks the same.  But they are good solid coats and I picked this one up for her for $19.99.  It is in like new condition and one very similar to this one retails for $120.  We got a good deal.

 

THINGS WE ATE LAST WEEK:  Teryaki chicken w/steamed rice, miso soup, Baja tacos & spanish rice, hot & sour soup w/potstickers, green salads.

 

THINGS I CLEANED IN 15 MINUTES OR LESS: 

Laundry Room & Half Bathroom - Vacuumed & spot mopped floors, washed rug.  Daily swish & swipe. 

Kitchen & Dining Room - Cleaned & reorganized inside of refrigerator, vacuumed & spot mopped floors.  Daily swish & swipe. 

Bedrooms & Main Bathroom - Washed rug.  Daily swish & swipe. 

Other - Two loads of laundry.  Vacuumed & dusted living room, hallway & both entryways.

 

THINGS I DID TO SAVE A SMALL BUNDLE OF $$:  I washed out four gallon size and one quart size Ziploc bags to reuse.  Downloaded digital coupons and only bought items on sale.

 

THINGS I DID TO EARN EXTRA $$:  Worked some overtime.

 

How was your thrifty week?