Friday Report

A little Friday humor for you.

Well, my dears, we have some very good news: my mom is in remission! No lymphoma cells in her bone marrow, no lymphoma cells anywhere.

Basically, my mom kicked cancer's butt.

Now, lymphomas are infamous for coming back, and my mom has to stay cancer-free for two years before she's considered cured. Still, you have to admit this is excellent news. Thank you for all your prayers during the last six months. They helped.

So that's a nice way to start off a Friday report, isn't it? In other nice news, it turns out that Jack, who has been living in Jack World for a long, long time, oblivious to the more practical aspects of life, is starting to pay attention.

Yesterday, for instance, I forgot to get the boys' lunches out of the fridge in the morning and put them next to their backpacks. I never forget to do this, although from time to time I almost forget, but I always catch myself and remember. Anyhoo, yesterday I forgot, and I didn't remember until 9 a.m. I was about to sit down to work, so I wasn't happy that I was going to have to drive the boys' lunches to their schools and drop them off with the school secretaries, which meant I was going to have to comb my hair and dab on some makeup and make myself presentable. Sigh.

But lo and behold, when I went to the fridge, the lunches weren't there! Had I put them in the pantry overnight by mistake? Nope. Not in the pantry, not in the mud room, not anywhere. The lunches had disappeared!

I emailed Will's homeroom teacher and asked if she'd check with him, and she emailed back ten minutes later to say Will's lunch was in his cubby and described what was in it (yogurt, grapes, goldfish) to ascertain if it was in fact today's lunch, which it was. I texted Jack, and he, too, had his lunch on the premises. So how did it get there?

The Man tried to convince me (gaslight me, more like it) that I had in fact put out the lunches and just forgotten. Not that he'd witnessed me doing so, but that had to be what had happened. It must be such a part of my routine, that I'd done it without noticing. No, I insisted, I'd remember. I would, too. But maybe I was going crazy! Maybe I was finally starting menopause. What else would explain it?

Well, what explains it is this: Jack is always last to the car, and when he went to grab his lunch, it wasn't where it usually is, so--get this--he went to the kitchen and looked for it in the fridge. Which is where it was, of course, nestled next to Will's lunch. So--get this--he grabbed his lunch AND Will's lunch. Both of them! He didn't get in the car and say, "Mom, where's my lunch?" and he didn't just grab his own lunch. Without any kind of fuss, he got his lunch AND his brother's lunch and he came out to the car and put his brother's lunch next his brother's back pack.

How do I know this? When I picked up Will, I said, "Will, how did you get your lunch today? and he answered, "Jack brought it out to the car for me."

Reader, I nearly fainted. I suppose the amount of pride I felt that my fourteen-year-old son can get his own lunch from the refrigerator and deduce that his eleven-year-old brother might also enjoy lunch today should be considered sad and pathetic, but there you have it. I am a proud mama. I am glowing with pride.

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Frugality news: As discussed in my last post (and affirmed in the comments), a lot of frugality advice is not useful to the semi-frugal. But Jody led me to a blog that I think is very useful indeed. It's called Living Well, Spending Less, and I like it a lot. The writer's number one piece of advice on how to slash your grocery bill is to stock up on your frequently purchased items when they go on sale (which, she says, happens every 6-8 weeks). This is something I do sporadically, but not systematically. As it just so happens, my store is having a big two for one sale this week, and I stocked up big time.

To take advantage of this, one of my weekend projects is to take inventory of my freezer,  deep freeze, and pantry, so that I know what I have and what I need. I'd like to get to the point where there's a week at least every two months (maybe every month) where all I have to get at the store is milk and juice.

So the question for you this weekend: How long could you go without going grocery shopping? A week? Two weeks? Twenty-four hours? Do tell!