Laid-Back Kind of Friday

An important lesson I've learned about grocery shopping -- I spend nearly five times more money on food when I have a car to carry my groceries home for me.

Seriously. Five times!

Panniers can only carry so much, so I have to be very careful about what I buy. And since I don't want to have to make more than two or three trips to the store during the week, I plan out my meals and buy just the items to prepare what I've planned.

A car makes it possible to buy much more. A ridiculous amount that sets me up for spending way more than I want,. A lot of the food then sits in the fridge or on the counter and spoils. And all my meal planning flies right out the window. 

So, while it was nice of Lovely Beautiful Daughter to loan me her car for a few hours, I think I'll stick with using the bike and panniers for grocery shopping. I about fainted when I saw the total for my groceries (and granted $40 of the total went to the new 3 quart pot I had to buy since I burned my only other pot to the point of no return -- that's what happens when you put rice on to cook, go outside to water plants, start talking to the neighbor, and generally forget about the rice until Ado is scratching at the door trying to get your attention that something is burning in the kitchen -- yes, this scared the bejeezers out of me -- right on the cusp of bursting into flames -- but all turned out okay. Thankfully!).

Speaking of Ado . . . he's had some kind of intestinal upset. I'll spare you the details but will say his potty moments have been quite disgusting. I thought a piece of chicken I fed him the other night might have been the culprit, and I thought he was on the mend the day before yesterday, but last evening he was back to the nasty, disgusting bodily excretion. So I took him to the vet today (yes, I had to borrow Lovely Beautiful Daughter's car for this, and I realized just how much I despise driving, especially now with the university students back). The vet found . . . wait for it . . . nothing. Ado has gained eight pounds, though, since I put him on the new diet. For now, he's on antibiotics and a probiotic to see if his intestinal track gets back to normal.

I finally bought a thirty-day bus pass. While I can use my school ID to ride the bus for free, I thought I really should buy a pass if I want to use the bus to go other places besides work. It just didn't seem right to use my ID if I wasn't actually going out to campus. I haven't used my new pass yet. Maybe tomorrow. I'm thinking it could be kind of fun to jump on a random bus and see where it takes me, changing to another bus downtown, then another bus at the transit center. Maybe. We'll see.

Trying to hide behind the oregano.

Right now there's a chipmunk sitting in my planter of herbs, making a chirping sound. Just sitting there. I see it a lot since the planter is right beneath the bird feeder and lots of seeds end up falling into it. The chipmunk has a smorgasbord all day every day, complete with parsley, oregano, and basil.