Wheelin' and Dealin'

I recently began clipping coupons from the newspaper. I had never done so before in my adult life, for several reasons. Many years ago, my husband and I had subscribed to the newspaper and it created a lot of paper clutter in our house. (My husband constantly tells me there isn't a piece of paper around that I don't love. I seem to have a slight problem with paper hoarding. Piles are always accumulating on various flat surfaces around our home.) We couldn't stand it, so we canceled the subscription. Additionally, I had always imagined that scanning the paper for coupons would be way too time consuming. Plus, seeing as I am organizationally challenged when it comes to paper, I figured I could never put any coupons I had clipped into any sort of accessible system for use when I would go shopping.

However, after hearing from two of my girlfriends about how crazy I was by missing out on all sorts of money-saving opportunities by using coupons, I decided to resubscribe to the newspaper and join the ranks of the Coupon Clippers.

If I was crazy before I began clipping coupons, I've certainly inched up the lunacy scale since I've been clipping crazed. Now, I can hardly wait for the Sunday paper every week. And once Sunday arrives, I'm the first one out of bed and running out the door to fetch the newspaper from our driveway. (My husband and I have been talking about getting a dog recently, but he says with my fetching skills and enthusiasm for the task - who needs one?!) Once I'm back inside, I sit down and clip away, Edward Scissorhands-style.

I think I've saved a fairly decent amount of money over the past two months through using coupons. But now that I'm on board with coupons, I'm looking for something more - perhaps internet sites advertising money-saving deals, etc. I've looked into a few, but I haven't really found any that advertise too many things that I actually use. Perhaps that's a common problem.

With the economy in its current state, everyone is looking to save money these days. So, my question is, what do you do to save money on your purchases? Coupons? Internet sites? If so, which ones?

When is a Negative a Positive?

Ok...my delusions of grandeur are going away. I finally figured out why I think I am skinner than I really am; I could never feel it. I was so out of shape that I couldn't feel the difference between fat and muscle. Now, I have been working out all year and I have been able to develop some muscle. Great! I feel better and stronger everyday however, there are a couple drawbacks: The scale isn't moving and now, I can feel how fat I really am. Yuck!

It's kind of motivating though...the self-repulsion. I start to think...maybe I can skip my workout today. Then, I get up and "watch it wiggle, see it jiggle" (remember that Jello commercial?). That's when I think, "Oh no. You had better get your fat butt up and work off that Jello!!"

As a recent therapy graduate , I understand that the negative self-talk is not the greatest for my emotional well-being however, can it be used to achieve greater physical results? I mean, when is a negative a positive?

Belinda's...errr...Brenda's Dream

This is the reigning queen of our garden, a rose called Belinda's Dream. She is certainly worthy of both her royal status and name, wouldn't you agree? Truthfully, I never used to like pink roses all that much, just thought they were way too foo-foo and fluffy. I guess I can honestly say that I don't really like much that is pink, roses or anything else for that matter. Pink represents to me everything about women that is soft and, I guess from my perspective, weak. (No offense to anyone out there who likes pink; this is just my opinion which is probably worth diddly squat in the general scheme of things.)

My mind changed about pink roses in the blink of an eye when I saw that first bursting, luscious bloom on our rose bush that my husband and I worked so hard to plant. It was just gorgeous and the fact that it was growing in our garden (a place where I tend to kill things off on a regular basis with seemingly little effort - but perhaps that is the core of the problem) made it even more spectacular. I also gained a new respect for pink roses and the color pink the first time I attempted to trim that nasty Belinda. She is a thorny warrior just waiting to pierce anyone who decides to mess with her. Soft and weak, Belinda is certainly not.

What's kind of funny about the name of our rose bush is that I am often mistaken for Belinda. For some reason, the name "Brenda" is difficult for surprisingly many people to understand, and instead they hear "Belinda." I can't tell you how many times I've been called Belinda over the course of my lifetime. And I always hated the name. Thought it sounded silly. Who the heck puts a "Be-" on "Linda"?? How does that make any sort of sense?

So, both the color pink and the name Belinda have really grown on me (please excuse the garden pun) since I've been in ownership of the awesome Belinda's Dream and seen it flourish in our backyard (once again, without me doing much of anything to help it along, and it hasn't died!).

I wish all gardening were that easy. Gardening and I have a love/hate relationship. I love to see plants that I've put into the ground grow and bloom, but I hate the work that is involved. In fact, I hate all aspects of gardening: the dirt, the bugs, and the physical labor. Yes, I am a total girly-girl.

I guess you could say that it is my dream to one day enjoy gardening and be good at it. The fact that I don't do either of those things is quite an embarrassment for me, because both my parents and my husband's parents are avid gardeners who all have beautiful yards and gardens that are painstakingly taken care of and loved. My husband and I pale considerably in comparison.

A few weeks ago, though, my guy and I completely redid our front yard landscaping (which was very pathetic looking, let me tell ya') in the course of a weekend. I had wanted to do so for a while but could never convince Kurt (who I think hates yard work even more than I do) to help me, and I knew I couldn't do all of the digging and planting by myself. Finally, after much harassment on my part for, oh, I'd say YEARS, he agreed. I think what did the trick is that I threatened to hire a professional landscape company to come out and do it at the cost of $2,000. This may sound outrageous to you (and it did to us too), but professional landscaping is the norm in Texas. Practically no one here does their own mowing or gardening. With both of us being from the Midwest, we find it an odd phenomenon. Neither of us has stooped to that low in 11 years of living here in our house. Coming from hearty German stock on both sides, we just could never bring ourselves to do it; Germans love to garden, our parents are gardeners, and we knew we should be too. So, we cheated a bit. I had a landscaping company come to our house, make us a landscaping plan, and then we went out and bought all of the plants and planted them ourselves. It was a ton of work, but we did it at a cost of a few hundred dollars instead of two thousand.

Now, after a couple of weeks, some of the plants are starting to grow and bloom, and our front yard actually looks quite nice. In fact, our yard looks so welcoming and pleasant, it's a dream come true...Brenda's Dream.

The Best Thing Ever!!

I told my husband that my transmission was broken. After I picked him off the floor, I told him it was my transmission and not the car. I change gears all day long (wife, mommy, caregiver, blogger, home chef, friend, etc, etc, etc.). I have a problem slowly down from hyperdrive back into first gear. In other words, I have Relaxation Deficiency Sydrome or RDS:-)

The one thing that really helps me with RDS is taking baths. When we remodeled our bathrooms last year, I rallied hard for a whirlpool tub. Alas, it was not to meant to be. Other than being cost prohibitive, my mom would not be able to get in and out of high walls of this type of tub. So, we didn't put one in. I had one of those mats that blows air around and that was a good enough substitute until, it broke. Then, my RDS came back with a vengance.

Wednesday, my RDS got so bad, my husband (unbeknownst to me) bought me a new mat and OH. MY. GOSH! It is heaven right here on earth!. Not only does it blow bubbles in my water but they are warm bubbles! It was in there an hour last night before the water got too cold. It also has a neck AND foot massager AND a remote control!! Shut up! I may never leave the house again!

RDS is not a real disorder but if it were, I highly recommend this device. Unless you are lucky enough to have your own whirlpool tub, it is the best thing ever!!

Miles Away From Family

This past Easter weekend, my parents came to visit me and my family here in Houston. They still live in Wisconsin, where I lived for the first 27 years of my life. Now that I'm 38, I've lived far away from them for over 10 years, but time has not lessened the degree to which I miss being physically close to them.

I came to Houston after meeting my husband in grad school. He lived in Houston at the time and I was in Milwaukee. We dated long distance for a year, became engaged, and then I came here to be with him after getting hitched. Someone had to make the move. Because he had had several more years invested in his career (and hence retirement account) than I did, we decided it would make more sense for me to embrace the southern lifestyle.

I was enthusiastically on board for the move. My many years in Wisconsin had made me a bit restless, and I was never a fan of Wisconsin winters which seem to go on for an eternity before spring finally kicks in.

So many good things have come from leaving my comfort zone. As a young woman who was pampered by loving, doting parents all of my life, I needed the swift kick in the rear end that living on the other side of the country provided. I had never realized how much I had depended on my parents for so many things, how spoiled I had been, and how I had come to assume that their immediate help would always be there if and whenever I needed it.

Leaving that was both the hardest and best thing I've ever done. I've been independent, self sufficient, and productive in every aspect of my life: as a teacher, a student, a wife, a mother, and a friend. While here in Texas, I have accomplished so much. I've worked harder as a teacher than I ever have. Marrying my husband, who is also a German teacher, has had a huge impact on my career. We've both learned a lot from each other and have become better educators as a result. I had started my master's degree a few years before getting married and completed it here in Texas. My husband had completed his same degree through the same program shortly before we were married. His guidance and advice through my final coursework and thesis were indispensable. He also provided me with the emotional support I needed to follow through with my studies and get the job done. With a master's in hand, I've had a world of choices open up to me. It allowed me to stop teaching full time and stay at home with my son after he was born four years ago. I was able to find another part time job teaching a couple of evenings a week at a local community college (which requires a master's degree). It's supplemented our income just enough to keep us going, and my son can spend evenings that I am at work having fun with his Papa at home.

Being a mother to my son has not always been easy for me. It's been a heckuva lot of hard work that oftentimes overwhelms me. Lately it's been easier and I've enjoyed it much more. When my son was 3, we found out he has a diary allergy. It was such a relief to get an answer to so many questions that we had about his behavior and a few troubling health issues. My son had cried a lot as an infant and then became a difficult child as a toddler who was often very moody and even beligerent. He also suffered from chronic constipation which made both him and us miserable. It took us a while to figure out that all of that was not normal and that he needed to undergo some tests. Making his diet dairy-free has turned everything around for my son who is now a pleasant and fun-loving four year old. And the changes that we've made are something that I'm very proud of, because all of the hard work that has gone into helping my son cope with his allergies has been a success story that is mine and mine alone.

Leaving my friends in Wisconsin was almost as traumatic as leaving my family. I miss (and will always miss) their regular presence in my life and mine in theirs. Making friends here in Houston took forever; I almost thought it would never happen. And heaven knows, for most of us women out there, we all need our girlfriends, right?! After seven years here I still had not even one single good friend. And it certainly wasn't for a lack of trying. But all of that changed after my son was born. Slowly but surely, I've met other moms who have children the same age as my son. And it's been delightful to welcome other women into my life again. I've met some incredible women here, and they enrich my life on a daily basis. I've learned a lot from them about adult friendships as grown women.

After a visit with my parents, I like to take stock of all of the wonderful ways Texas has made its mark on me. It helps me deal with the sadness I inevitably feel whenever I say goodbye to my mom and dad at the airport. There are so many ways that I do miss them. For me as a woman, the relationship I have with my own parents is still crucially important. I love them dearly and always will. I deperately wish that we could see one another whenever our hearts desire, that the distance between us were limited to minutes instead of days in a car. I know that they feel the same way about us, especially concerning their only grandchild whom they love passionately.

It's not easy living so far away from loved ones, but we manage the best that we can. Luckily, good things come from change, too, and I cherish the changes that Texas has brought about in me.

Virtual Great American Bake Sale

Even though traditional roles are changing, women still are the ones who are primarily responsible for nourishing the family. We plan the meals, we buy the food, we prepare the food and we serve the food. For some of us, this is a joy and for others it is just a chore. But for those mothers without income, it is a heartbreaking impossibility. Here is where we can put down the weapons of the "Mommy Wars" and help a fellow mother feed her family.

Cooking During Stolen Moments is hosting a Virtual Bake Sale today! They are a selling an ebook filled with recipes from the Virtual Great American Bake Sale participants (I am one of them!!). The books are now available for a donation of your choosing and all of the proceeds will go to Share Our Strength. So stop by and help to stop hunger today!!

Melanoma revisited

Some of you may remember that I posted about melanoma a couple of weeks ago. It is a disease that weighs heavily on my mind often. I have about on average one mole burned off or cut out of my skin every year. Recently, I just had my 25th mole removed. So far, I've been very lucky. All of my biopsies have come back completely normal.

My brother wasn't so lucky. When he was 27, he was diagnosed with stage three melanoma (there are only four stages). My family and I are very grateful that he was able to win his battle with skin cancer and is now a healthy 34 year old.

My brother and I both had tanned and burned a lot when we were younger, and each of us had one blistering burn before the age of 18. We didn't know at the time that even just one blistering burn as a child increases your chances of having melanoma as an adult by 50%.

In today's Houston Chronicle, I was dismayed to read an article about skin cancer and British women. It seems that melanoma is now the most common cancer in young British women. In England, the agency, Cancer Research United Kingdom, reports that melanoma has overtaken cervical cancer as the most common cancer afflicting women in their 20s.

The article goes on to say that these recent research results are particularly distressing, because rates of skin cancer are usually the highest in individuals over 75, not people in their 20s. Researchers there believe that melanoma will become the fourth most common cancer for both genders by the year 2024.

Not surprisingly, experts believe the rising trend in skin cancer cases is due to the use of tanning salons. And here is an amazing statistic that I didn't know: the intensity of UV rays in some tanning beds can be more than 10 times stronger than the midday sun. Scary.

When I was in my late teens, I remember many of my friends and other girls I knew flocking to tanning salons. I went a few times myself but didn't go as frequently as many other girls my age; I just never had the patience to lie there in those beds; plus my tendency toward claustrophobia didn't help either. I also hated the thought of resting my skin in the same spot as countless other females did mostly naked. (I am an anti-germ weirdo!) I'm thankful now that I had such an aversion to tanning salons.

There are so many aspects of our health that we can control, but all too often we are too lazy or just irresponsible and don't take simple measures to ensure healthy aging. With what we've discovered about skin cancer over the last decade or so, we now know that there are a few simple measures to avoiding melanoma: avoid too much sun exposure (especially midday sun), use sunscreen with an SPF of at least 15, and stay away from tanning salons.

Growing Up with a Hoarding Mom

Recently, the Today Show aired a show about excessive hoarding which caught my attention. It piqued my interest because my mom suffers from this disorder. I wrote about how we are dealing with it as a family on Happy to be at Home however, I wanted to explore the topic here as how it has affected me as a woman.

Growing up with a wounded parent is never easy. Her abanondment gave me a job from birth: to take care of her. So, that meant, she didn't take care of me. I never felt like I had a net, a soft place to fall or a place for advice. She was too wrapped up in her own pain to be there for me.

This isn't a story of woe. I wouldn't be the person I am today if she were a healthy woman. It's just magnified since she lives with us now and some of the anger and bitterness is still here. I don't know that it will ever go away but what made it easier was realizing that she really is mentally ill. It's almost like there was a reason for this maddness she made us live in and live with.