Day 13 – Almost There!

The Pizza Hut car was on our street twice today. I longingly wished for a pizza… Buying one is out of the question. Although we're not spending any money, we could scrounge up the ingredients for the pizza dough, but the pizza sauce would have to be half a can of no-salt tomato paste. That's about all we have. And about 3 tablespoons' worth of a chunk of cheddar cheese. Could toss some greens on top. Or some black radishes. But no pepperoni, no green peppers, no mushrooms. Doesn't sound too appealing. And so we will wait until next week.

But we ate well tonight. We ate the last of our frozen chicken, two boneless breasts dredged in flour, non-iodized salt, paprika and ground black pepper, sautéed in canola oil. Everyone but me also had freshly shredded parmesan cheese on top since we still have a hunk left. I baked last week's gift of brussel sprouts spritzed with olive oil, and salt and pepper. Again, the others had parmesan cheese melted on top. My husband even decided to mix up some biscuits (from scratch) which they enjoyed (but alas, no butter for me, so no biscuits).

Due to arrival of international leaders for the G-20 Economic Summit in DC, it took my husband a frightening 2 hours and 15 minutes to get home from work yesterday, as compared to his typical 35-minute drive. That wasted quite a bit of gas in our Beetle, I was really disappointed to see when I was driving it today. So we'll have to stick with my car tomorrow if we want to make it through the day without getting gas yet a-gain.

My cell phone hasn't been able to hold a charge on the battery for several weeks, so finally we looked up our plan, and saw I am eligible for a new phone. My husband, who is a great lover of new technology, asked me which model I wanted. I replied that I would take the best one that's free. He asserted that no such phone exists. In the end, I don't even see a point in getting a "nice" phone. I just want something that will get good reception, and can be hands-free. As much as I might like a Crackberry, I probably don't need that addiction to add to my current list of weaknesses. We'll decide before Monday which free phone I'll get. We also looked at my fees for text messages. I pay about $10/month now, and I can probably get and send as many messages or more by getting a $5/month plan. That's $60 saved for the year, which is certainly some sort of family splurge – maybe one nice dinner for the family at a restaurant. Or maybe that's money for one week's grocery bill ;) We plan to review our plans in more detail to see if there's more fat to trim. My husband has a pretty extensive plan for his phone, but most of that is reimbursed since he uses his phone so much for work. Still, we want to review this, because telecommunications is one area where Americans tend to spend a lot, and often way more than they intend to. Intentional, not accidental spending, is one of our new goals.

We're getting intentional. Deliberate. Cutting coupons. Making a 2-week menu plan. Checking out what's on sale at our local stores. Determined to spend way less than two weeks ago. Researching the cheapest prices for the items we want to have in our basement bodega. We're getting ready. We're almost there!