Grocery Shopping

Bill has been off pain meds since yesterday morning.  He doesn't like to be dependent on them and is hyper sensitive to forming an addiction, so he was highly motivated to stop taking them.  Today he started feeling the need to get out of the house.  It starts feeling like a prison when you are staring at the same four walls for too long.  So, we went on a short walk this morning, followed by a grocery shopping trip.

I will tell you now that Bill works in construction.  He operates heavy machinery.  I have no problem bragging to you that he is EXTREMELY GOOD at what he does.  I have watched him run backhoes and trackhoes at full speed mere inches from buildings (like our house),  it is amazing!  The machine becomes an extension of him and it seems like the whole thing just comes to life.

Because of the type of work he does, however, this injury is going to put him out of work for MANY weeks.  Possibly more than six weeks.

I wish I could say that we have followed sound financial advice and have a rainy day fund set up for just such an emergency.  That would be nice.

Unfortunately, we have nothing to fall back on during the time that Bill will be unable to work.  Of course, there are some options.  Hopefully, we can use his vacation pay.  He also has disability insurance.  The insurance won't kick in for six weeks, though, and I don't think there is enough vacation hours to cover the gap between now and when the insurance kicks in.

So, we tighten our belts and pray.

And now I am back to shopping.  You were starting to wonder if I had gotten the name of this post right, weren't you?

We just went for essentials.  Normally, our weekly shopping can run upwards of $200.00 thanks to the large appetites around here and the fact that we really never stick to a list or budget when it comes to food.  Today's trip came in at $100.00.  Not bad to be able to cut the food expenditures in half.

Still.

There was a time when $100 was a big grocery bill for us.  It used to be that $100 would overflow the cart.  I looked at those few measly grocery sacks and thought... REALLY?!?  That's all I get these days for my C note?

Remember when a gallon of milk was 89 cents?  Everything seems to cost a fortune these days.  Butter?  Holy cow!  So it does make me worry about the next several weeks.  What money we do have is going to need to stretch pretty far.

Please don't start trying to educate me in the intricacies of extreme couponing.  I have tried coupon shopping in the past and have found that it just doesn't work for us.  Or rather, it doesn't work for ME.  Most of the coupons are for items that we can't buy anyways.  Remember,  we have to read every label for gluten contamination?  Now try to use the coupons!  I am pretty sure we can manage without them.  After all, I lived for a year in college on nothing but rice and potatoes.  We can certainly get by.

Anyways, the morning's excursions wore Bill out and he ended up taking a nap when we got home.