Freaky Frugalite

I’m joining the brigade of homeschooling moms who are praying for Robin at Heart of Wisdom blog. I have no idea who this woman is; I found her blog via Entrecards a few days ago. She’s an author and a homeschooling mother of eleven children. She’s been plagued with various health problems, including anemia. Serious complications have sent Robin to the hospital in critical condition, and a friend is posting to her blog right now.

I’m concerned because the medication Robin is on is making her very depressed and she has lost her will to live. I have been on heavy medication (for back pain) and I know how this crap can really mess up your thinking. The doctors don’t seem to know what is causing her condition, either. Please pray for Robin, for a speedy and supernatural recovery. Those kids need prayers, too.

I don’t know what it is, I’m just sitting at my computer, bawling. I hate it when moms have health problems. We try to be so strong for everyone and it’s heart wrenching when things come crashing down like this. My son just came over to give me a hug.

Hey guess what I found? It may be a little too late for Mother’s Day, I don’t know. But it’s still nice. Wind chimes! I spotted these hummingbird wind chimes. I think they are gorgeous! There’s a beautiful collection of wind chimes and loads of other luxury home decor items at the website Upside Living. The stuff is so beautiful.

My grandmother collected wind chimes. She had them all hanging from the ceiling in her “davenport” room (the old-fashioned word for her enclosed porch). After she died, her kids got most of the nice ones. I did get a few smaller, tin ones. I have fond memories of sitting in her “davenport” and watching those chimes spin. Sometimes I would stand up on the arm of her couch and shake one or two to get it to tinkle. (All when she wasn’t looking, of course). I have one of her chimes on my porch and it is the sweetest sound to hear when the wind blows. I just love chimes. I’ve found that the important thing is to get a good quality chime, or else it will rust through. The copper ones are best, from what I hear. This hummingbird one is professionally tuned!

Upside Living has other things that I would think are perfect for Mom or Grandmother. Better hurry, though! But even if it doesn’t come in time, you can always do what we do (I am notorious for ordering gifts too late): I print out a photo of the item I am buying and put it in a nice card, and I blame the postal service for its tardiness! How’s that for ingenuity?

Talking about my daughter was she was a baby made me want to sort through my photos of them. We were a poor, young family back then, and I didn’t take as many photos as I wish I had. Video camcorders were outta-this-world, crazy, crazy expensive, so we don’t have the kids on video. I really regret that. We did, however, get them to Olan Mills for photos from time to time. Here’s my favorite of the two girls when they were little.

Aren’t they adorable!?

That’s probably the best studio portrait I own of any of the kids. I was never too fond of Olan Mills, but they did offer good deals back then. I’m glad we went with them. Those photos are precious. We went through a “poor” period after having the boys, so I don’t have any nice photos with them.

Maybe I’m subconsciously going through the photos because it’s almost Mother’s Day? I haven’t been through them in a long time, lol!

Being a mom has been the biggest blessing to me. I have four incredible kids, wow. When I think about it too much, it chokes me up!

Sheesh. I’m getting all sentimental and Mother’s Day is still three days away….

When my daughter (child #2) was a baby, she was colicky and restless. How I remember staying up nights with that baby! We joke about it now, but it was during her infanthood that I started drinking coffee (before I’d been a tea drinker). I needed the caffeine to keep me going, because that baby slept for only 3 or 4 hours in any one stretch of time, up until she was about eight months old. It was, lol, a “nightmare.” But she was the cutest little baby so I couldn’t have possibly been mad at her. It’s just one of those things that’s part of being a mother.

I’d read back then that, to encourage restless babies to sleep longer and better, it helps to have a fan running or a tape recorder running all night. Here in Upstate NY where winters are bone-chilling cold, and especially in my drafty apartment, I couldn’t run a fan. And the tape recorder kept everyone else up. We settled on an old radio tuned into static, for the white noise. Unfortunately, sometimes the dial would slip or the radio transmission would change, and we’d hear the faintest strains of Ozzy Osbourne at night…

We’ve moved to a house in town, and holy cow this town is noisy. It used to be a quiet little town, but an ice cream stand opened up down the street and a gas station enlarged it’s business. And the car dealership down the road now deals in motorcycles. It’s really a pain. And I’m being very polite when I say that…

So we started our little “white noise” routine at night again. We have been using a little air filter. I don’t know if it was conditioning from those early years, but my daughter sleeps better with noise in the background, after all these years. And we no longer hear those deafening motorcycle mufflers at 2am.

But guess what?! Our air filter sometimes picks up and emits radio signals. Maybe it is trucks with CBs driving by?! I don’t know. But I swear at night I sometimes hear men’s voices. It gives me the heebie-jeebies.

I just saw this website for White Noise Machine and guess what– they actually MAKE little machines for creating white noise. And all these years I’d been using the stupid radio and the expensive air filter! I’d much rather have a machine dedicated to white noise, to avoid those “slips” in transmissions where we pick up interference and start hearing the strains of “Stairway to Heaven” on FM. :S

P.S. The White Noise Machines also block snoring spouses. LOL! I won’t go into that; that’s content for a whole ‘nother post!

I read this amazing story at Tidbits of Tammy. The exact same thing happened to me, but I thought I had somehow forgotten how much my gas tank could hold. This now makes me very suspicious:

This is a true story, so read it carefully!

April 24, 2008, I stopped at a Kangaroo BP gas station, located at 1325 Main Street, Cartersville,GA. My truck’s gas gauge was on 1/4 of a tank. I use the mid-grade,which was priced at $3.71 per gallon. When my tank is at this point, it takes somewhere around 14 gallon’s to fill it up. When the pump showed 14 gallons had been pumped I began to slow it down, then to my surprise it went to 15, then 16. I even looked under my truck to see if it was being spilled. It was not. Then it showed 17 gallons had been pumped. It stopped at almost 18 gallons. This was very strange to me,since my truck has only an 18 gallon tank. I went on my way a little confused, then on the evening news I heard a report that 1 out of 4 gas stations had calibrated their pumps to show more gas had been pumped than a person actually got.

Holy cow! This is CRIMINAL! See, I have a minivan, and the manual says it holds 13-14 gallons of gas. However, there have been occasions where my van slurped up much more than that. At the time, I thought it strange, but I figured I must have misread the manual (we have had six minivans over our lifetime). Maybe I am still in the wrong, because I lost the manual and can’t check. However, I’m going to be paying attention more frequently to how many gallons go in the tank! Here’s more from Tammy:

Here is how to check a pump to see if you are getting the right amount: Whichever grade you are using, put EXACTLY 10 GALLONS in your tank, then look at the dollar amount, if the dollar amount is not EXACTLY 10 times the price of the fuel you have chosen,then the pumps are rigged. In my case as I said the mid-grade was $3.71 9/10 per gallon, my dollar amount for 10 gallons should have been $37.19.

I’m also going to refrain from those attendant-served gas stations. One time we were swindled by a teenager when he charged our card more than our gas cost. My husband decided not to press the issue (although I was ready to throw the kid in jail, because I just KNEW he was swindling other motorists).

Anyway, pay attention at the pump! Gas is expensive enough with the government tax crooks and the oil exec crooks stealing from us!