Spending Money

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Tuesday Shoesday and Buying Multiples

Tuesday Shoesday is a thing, right?

Okay, do you remember when I waxed lyrical about these orthotic flip flops awhile back? (We can all thank Jen for the recommendation. Jen has the best recommendations.) (I am eventually going to buy a sous vide because of her, I know it.) (Oh my gosh, I should not have looked up the sous vide because it is hugely on sale.)

HEY. Let’s get it together, Suzanne. It is Tuesday SHOESday, not Tuesday SousVide-day because that would be ridiculous. We are talking about SHOES. Magical orthotic flip flops that I bought in August.

The thing is, I LOVE THE FLIP FLOPS. I wear them all the time. They have supplanted my sneakers as my inside-the-house shoes. And maybe this is obvious, but it is hugely preferable to slide on a pair of flip flops than to have to put on socks and then untie and tie sneakers, which is what I have been doing for YEARS since I developed plantar fasciitis. (And, despite acupuncture and foot stretching and horrifically painful shots – yes, multiple shots – at the podiatrist’s office, I feel like Wearing Shoes In The House is the thing that finally kicked my plantar fasciitis to the curb.) 

I have just realized this is kind of a meandering, ridiculous excuse for a blog post, so feel free to pop back in next time if you’re bored. I am going to continue typing, such is the dearth of viable blog post topics occurring to me lately, but that doesn’t mean you need to continue reading.

This is going to sound like a non-sequitur: like many bloggers, I participate in the Amazon affiliate program, which basically means I get a few pennies if someone clicks on an Amazon link on my blog and then goes on to buy something. Anyway, Amazon has noted my intense affection for the magical flip flops and keeps recommending that I link to them on my blog. This repeated prodding has had two – well, now three – results: 1. I get annoyed that my computer is paying such minute attention to everything I do and say which makes me feel recalcitrant and want to stubbornly NOT do what Amazon is wheedling me to do, and 2. I keep seeing these flip flops and how reasonably priced they are ($33!!!!!), and now 3. I am buying A THIRD PAIR.

You may or may not remember me mentioning that I like these flip flops so much that I bought a second pair – an outdoor pair, which has become my go-to flippy floppy. The thing is, I somehow bought the wrong size in the second pair. Gourd help me, I thought I accidentally bought a size 9, because that’s in the realm of possibility; I normally wear a size 8.5, but I size up in sneakers because that’s apparently what you have to do. Turns out I did not buy a size 9 or even a size 9.5; no, I bought a size 11. What? Why? How? And why did I ever think they fit even remotely well?!? (They are such comfy flip flops I did not even notice they were nearly three sizes too big.) 

Anyway, when a guest came over this weekend, a guest who also has Foot Issues, I had her try them on and they fit and she loves them. So now SHE has a pair and I need a new pair to wear outdoors. (Yes, our weather is – currently – still mild enough that I am wearing flip flops. I realize this cannot last.) And now I am buying a third pair. I don’t think this is how the affiliate thing is supposed to work; I’m not supposed to be influenced into buying things for myself. But, whatever. I love the shoes, I want the shoes, I own multiples of the shoes.

It’s not weird to like something so much that you buy multiples of that thing. It’s not. You do it, right? 

I have multiples of so many things. There’s this one white T-shirt from Madewell. Do I have four? I think I have four. I have two pairs of these dressier but also orthotic sandals (black and “Cuban sand”) and have worn them for more than a year and still love them. I have four or five pairs of black high-rise Salutation leggings from Athleta, and just bought a pair in navy; I wear leggings pretty much every day. I have at least three pairs of these skinny jeans, none of which fit, but which could, at some unknown point in the future. I must have a supply of these gel pens on hand at all times, not that I even handwrite things all that often, and they have a disturbing tendency to disappear. (Perhaps they are hanging out with the spoons?)

Hmm. This is beginning to sound a little pathological and I have only just scratched the surface. But I swear it’s LOGICAL and SMART.  Especially if you can buy several of something on a good sale. See? I am SAVING MONEY.

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Six for Sunday

Have you been affected by the hurricane? I hope you and your loved ones are safe and sound. 

It’s a dreary, wet day and I think my family and I might curl up in front of some Stranger Things this afternoon instead of doing anything productive. Before we do that, here are some random bullets.

  • Tropical Weather < Fall Weather: The hurricane has furnished my part of the country with days of rain and humidity. While I’m a huge fan of (occasional) gloomy, rainy fall days, I am not enjoying the sticky damp. I’m assuming this is how it feels to live inside a rain forest, based purely on visiting Rain Forest exhibits at the zoo. No thank you. Humidity and I do not get along. I have not bothered to dry or style my hair in a week. I tame the mass of wavy frizz with water, then wrangle it into a ponytail or bun and hope for the best. I use Aveda Smooth Infusion cream on my hair every time I wash it, and it smells good, but who honestly knows if it helps keep the frizz down. I mean, I for one am not willing to face the humidity without it, but there might be a better option out there?
  • Fall Colors: Despite the faux-Florida weather we’ve been having, the leaves are beginning to change. I especially love the trees that are steadily green except for a patch or two of vibrant yellow or orange – like there are a few flamboyant trendsetters who cannot wait a second longer to don their autumn regalia. Because the weather has been so temperate, flowers continue to bloom. In fact, a few of my neighbors’ hydrangeas seem to be flourishing. I love seeing bright pink flowers against a backdrop of red and orange foliage. It’s weird but beautiful.
  • Spoons Update: Surely you have been waiting on tenterhooks for me to follow up on the spoons situation. Here it is: Filled with confidence from your comments, I approached my husband with the bold suggestion that we replace our flatware. He was all for it. (Aside from the spoons issue, he hates our knives.) So we started researching replacement sets and immediately hit two walls. First, we agreed that we would want to touch and hold any flatware before we buy it, and second, my goodness, flatware sets are PRICEY.  Because we continue to have New House expenses, I am reluctant to drop $600 on a set of flatware we love. So what I did was buy a $10 set of six spoons from Target, on a whim. They are perfect. Now we have plenty of spoons, and a source of inexpensive spoons should any of them disappear. My husband likes them so much we added a set of Target knives to the mix as well. 
  • Dwarf Spruces: Well, I guess I am really in Mundane Updates mode! If you’ll recall, the last time I talked to you about my dwarf spruces, one had died. My only recourse was to find a replacement, but all the replacement spruces were… what is a tactful way to say this… more robust than my surviving spruce. I found it surprisingly difficult to ascertain this at the garden center, and only discovered it once I returned home, spruce in tow. Fortunately, the good people at the garden center took pity on me and allowed me to exchange my new spruce for a smaller one. They are still unbalanced, size wise, but less so. So far, the new guy seems to be staying alive. 
  • Ghost Update: As long as I’m updating you on things, I might as well give you the status of the ghost situation. I went back to the garden center where I’d seen the ghosts of my heart; they were both gone. Sigh. I had some found time one morning last week (I took my kid to the dentist, ran into a friend who was taking her kid to the same dentist, and said friend took both kids to school, freeing up a glorious half hour of driving time for me.), so I made a little tour of Michael’s, Target, and the dollar store to see what kinds of ghosts I could rustle up. The first thing I have to tell you is that all the stores are already selling Christmas décor, which I understand from a retail perspective but which is BONKERS to me from an it-is-not-yet-October perspective. The second thing I have to tell you is that the fall décor was limited, due to making room for Christmas stuff. Fortunately, Michael’s and Target had a decent selection of Halloween stuff, and I walked away from Michael’s with two ghosts. Target had quite a few ghosty options, and I came home with a stand-up ghost (or I could hang it somewhere; it has a little twine loop at the top), and with several pictures of outdoor ghost options for my husband to consider. Target also had some tiny orange battery operated twinkle lights that I can add to my dwarf spruces on the porch. As you can see, my found half-hour was well-spent and my purchases are quite satisfying. 
I do realize that I was originally on the hunt for OUTDOOR ghosties, and these are all ghosts of the indoor variety. OH WELL.
  • Fall Décor: While I feel pretty set, now, on Halloween décor, I do wish I had more in the way of generic fall decorations. (Apparently I have been making this same wish since at least 2016.) I would love to be able to have something to bridge the gap between Halloween and Thanksgiving. Not that I have any super specific ideas about what I’m looking for. Maybe some pumpkin throw pillows? Oooh, these autumn trees are so pretty! But… I have a pair of white light-up trees, on a recommendation from Swistle, and I like them; but now I’m wondering if I need two separate sets of light-up trees. Jenny’s post about 100 pumpkins has me convinced that I could probably make do with real pumpkins and squash as my sole decorations. I really wanted to find some white craft pumpkins that Carla and I could decorate a la the dipping technique we have used before. But I could not find what I was picturing ANYWHERE. (The pumpkins at Michael’s were cream, not white.) Even Amazon has low white-craft-pumpkin supply, and I am reluctant to buy anything from Temu. This grouping of seven pumpkins has promise… but do I really want to spend $18 on seven pumpkins? I like these pumpkins, too, but again… a bit pricey, no? I am still on the fence, pumpkin-wuse. Crate and Barrel does have quite a collection of white ceramic turkeys – which I resisted mightily a few weeks ago (say it with me, friends: I will not spend $60 on a white ceramic turkey.) – but perhaps I will have to revisit them. 
Yes, I see the white pumpkins… but I don’t like these pumpkins as much as I love the turkeys. But would I prefer one giant turkey or a flock of tiny turkeys to use at each place setting? I am not buying a turkey.

What’s new with you this weekend? How do you keep your hair frizz-free? What kind of fall décor do you have in your house?

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Saturday Randomosity: Oh By the Way We Went on Vacation Edition

Oh hi! It’s the weekend and it’s AUGUST. The second weekend in August, in fact, even though that seems impossible on multiple levels. We just got back from vacation and are not fully adjusted back into Real Life. Let’s have some randomosity, shall we?

  • Perhaps you recall that Carla accompanied me on a recent grocery store trip. My policy is to pretty much say “yes” if she points out a food she wants to try, although I reserve the right to limit the number of sweet things I let her put into the cart. I kept close track of the things she actually ate from that trip. 
    • Extra Sharp Cheddar Cheese: I am pretty sure this is still unopened. But that’s because we left town for a week. She did eat most of a giant block of cheddar that was in my mother’s fridge, though.
    • Demi Baguette: Carla ate half of this baguette in the car and the other half for dinner. 
    • Chobani Flip Cookie Dough Yogurt: She ate all but one before we left on vacation.
    • Watermelon: I kept reminding her it was in the fridge and she kept saying she would eat it and then… it went bad. SIGH.
    • Fully Cooked Bacon: I think she ate four slices immediately and then forgot about it.
    • Black Seedless Table Grapes: She ate some of these, but not all of them. I consider this a half win. Next time, I will take my grocery store at their word that we can take a smaller portion out of the grapes bag and buy that instead of an entire huge molds-before-we-can-get-to-it amount.
    • Crepes: She has been eating these pretty regularly, both before and after our trip! She put sliced strawberries in the first one, then moved on to Nutella. (I tried one, too; I found a recipe for a lemony yogurt spread to put inside and it was so awful I couldn’t finish it. The crepe was good though.)
    • Golden Berries: I washed the whole carton of these little guys and ended up eating a few. They had a texture I don’t love, but the sour-sweet flavor was enjoyable enough to override it. Carla ate ZERO. This may be my fault, though; when I ate the first one, I mentioned it was sour, and then she kept asking me if they were as sour as WarHeads. She LIKES WarHeads, so I don’t really know why “sour” would have been a deterrent, but maybe she doesn’t like sour fruit?
    • Raw Slivered Almonds: This container remains unopened in the cupboard.
    • Wax Beans: Carla ate about half of these before we left. Next time, I am going to buy fewer than AN ENTIRE PACKAGE.
    • Ham: Carla ate the entire quarter pound of ham!  
    • Protein+ Spaghetti Noodles: Carla has made several pots of spaghetti noodles.
    • Wholly Guacamole: We still have a whole package left, and I ate at least half of the other package myself. 
    • Cookie: Not eaten on account of walnuts.  
  • Our vacation was lovely and relaxing. We had a mix of rainy days, during which we stayed inside and did things like read and watch movies, and sunny days, during which we went swimming and boating and hiking. On our last hike, Carla managed to attract a dog. This is much more surprising than it sounds, considering the nearest neighbor lives about a mile away in the middle of a very isolated and remote forest. Leave it to Carla to find a dog wherever she goes! The other highlight of our trip, for her at least, was a bird that fell down the chimney into the wood stove. The four of us had to team up to remove the bird (who was sooty but flew away, seemingly unharmed) and Carla thought it was The Best Thing Ever. 
Lake time.
Front yard.
  • Carla and I have been getting into hair styling videos. I have never been Good At Hair. My hair has been pretty much the same style since high school. I can form a rudimentary braid, I can pull it back into a ponytail, I can stuff it into a claw clip. That’s really the extent of my hair styling abilities. So I’m always intrigued by videos on Instagram that show Super Easy Ways to Braid! I have saved a bunch of these videos but have not tried any of them. Carla tried a braid on me the other day. She decorated it with those little plastic rectangles you use to close a bread bag. Slay. 
  • Another recent purchase was a big hit, though. My daughter is always asking, “What does that mean?” when my husband and I use idioms, so I got her this book to explain what a bunch of common phrases and sayings mean and where they came from. She LOVES IT. Oooh – it looks like there’s a whole series of these books! Maybe I need to get her another one for Christmas or Hanukkah?
  • My “vegetable garden” is finally producing some vegetables. Tomatoes are starting to ripen, peas are podding, strawberries are somehow surviving the birds. I have only had ONE LONELY ZUCCHINI. Next year, I think I will plant multiple zucchini plants and only one cucumber. I don’t really LIKE cucumbers, and the two cucumber plants I planted have been prolific and weird. One of them produces round cucumbers. The little card that came with the plant has a picture of totally normal oblong cucumbers on it… so I’m not sure what I’ve done to produce globular cucumbers. I’m just letting it do its thing. 
Zucchini and a normal cucumber.
Why is it round and why is it yellow???
  • Speaking of plants behaving oddly… Do you remember a million years ago when I was complaining about the state of my front stoop? Well, I buying a couple of little evergreens that I LOVE. I bought them from the same garden center, on the same day. I planted them in identical pots, at the same time, with identical soil and fertilizer. I have watered them identically. And yet… one of them has done rather poorly. 
Tree on the left: thriving! Tree on the right: has given up on life.
  • I am thinking about starting a beef with our FedEx driver. Is that the correct way to say that? “Starting a beef”? Sounds more like prepping dinner than I intended, but oh well. We have a front door with a covered stoop and UPS and the mail person leave packages there. This is nice, because they are protected from the elements, plus we know that someone left a package there because we have a video doorbell that alerts us. The FedEx driver does not leave packages on the stoop. He leaves them by our garage, right out in the open. Which is why we did not know that a package my in laws had sent us – full of fun gifts and snacks from Europe – had been delivered until the next morning, when my husband went to work and found the box in a mess of candy wrappers. Some grateful raccoon mistook our package for its own, broke in, and ate every single edible thing within. 
  • Do you know a Cat Lady for Kamala? A friend of a friend created this coloring book and I am in the mood for a little giveaway. Let me know in the comments if you (or someone you know) are interested in having this coloring book, and I’ll choose a number at random and send a copy to the winner! 

That’s all I have for you today, Internet! I hope your weekend is off to a great start!