I really didn't want to buy a new phone, but the back started coming off my current phone because the battery was bulging.  The only thing holding it together was the phone case.  It was still usable, but not exactly safe.  This is the second Motorola phone I've had of this design that has done this.  My husband has never had this problem with this exact problem, but I play games on my phone a lot more so mine is on a lot more than his so probably gets a lot hotter.

I decided I would upgrade one step higher, but that was sold out with my provider, so I decided to just get a cheap Samsung phone instead since those were in stock.  And I do mean cheap.  I got an AS16 5G for $199 plus tax.  It arrived yesterday, but I am still trying to get Ting to transfer the phone number.  It is a new SD card so it is taking awhile.  My old SD card is very old, not 5G so I didn't want to use it.  It would have made turnaround time 3 hours, but I wanted the upgrade.

I don't use my phone for very much.  I play one game, call, text, rarely go online unless I have free wifi, take photos that don't stay on my phone, and do some occasional videos, but for the most part I have a nice handheld video camera for that or a regular camera that take excellent videos.  So I really don't need something expensive.

Ting did offer a Samsung phone for $399 that had more bells and whistles and a couple of Apple phones, an 11 and a 15, but I did not want to shell out that much for something I do not want to end up attached to by the nose.  Simple is good for me.  It keeps me unaddicted for the most part.  I still like to play my one game, though, while I watch YouTube.

It's a nice little phone.  I'll have to see if I can find some free wall papers, though.  The ones that come with it are kind of lame and I haven't taken any spring photos yet that I like enough to put on as a background.  And maybe some ring tones.  There is one that I find tolerable, but most are just annoying.  I don't want to pay for any, though.  I'm too cheap for that.

Hopefully the number transfer will come through today so we can take the old phone to the recycling center.  I'd rather not have a phone in that kind of condition in the house any longer than necessary.

The money came out of the Electronics Fund, but is tagged as the Laptop Fund because I haven't figured out how to change the tag names now that it is for more than just Laptops.  It doesn't have a line item on the budget right now.  I took some of it out of the electronics envelope and some of it out of the household envelope, so it was covered.

I haven't really been adding to the electronics envelope as I wasn't expecting my phone to do this.  I'll probably start something back up again soon.  Registration renewal tabs are coming up for both the truck (end of May) and the van (beginning of June) and we need to purchase 3 combo fishing licenses that allow for ocean and fresh water fishing as well as shellfish harvesting and seaside foraging (plants).  So I may not put that in the budget until July.  Life has to life first.

I figured I better get this up here before the new payday hits on Friday.  I did have it all ready to go, but then Windows did an update and then I had it ready to go again when I accidentally closed the chrome window and it was gone when I brought all my tabs back up again.  I know I should just write it in a Word document, but I don't, because Co-pilot gets in my way all the time and I haven't figured out how to shut it off yet or if I even can.  I hate Co-pilot.  I hate the default being saving everything to the cloud and having to fight to save things on the actual laptop as default because contrary to popular belief, the internet does not exist everywhere.

Anyway, here is what went out on payday:

$368.39 Tithe

$600.00 Utilities

$400.00 Grocery Envelope

$500.00 Medical Fund

$_75.00 Household Envelope

$_75.00 Garbage Temporary Fund

$200.00 Car Insurance Fund

$270.00 Spending Money and Caretaking Money

$104.00 Best Buy Citi 24 months same as cash

$160.00 2 weeks Personal Trainer for DS

$887.95 Citi Card

$__7.60 Emergency Fund

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$3647.94 Total Money Out

Emergency Fund savings is abysmal, but anything is better than nothing.

So on Sunday I did send my husband in to take advantage of the last day of that meat sale and we got both the tri tip and the chuck shoulder roll.  For an 18 pound tri tip and a 25 pound chuck shoulder roll, both black angus, we spent $194.98.  The amounts are rounded, but it is very close.  I haven't cut up the chuck shoulder roll yet as its use or freeze by date is further out, but my son and I spent tonight (Thursday, it'll be Friday by the time this posts) cutting up the tri tip.

We ended up with 18 bags of steaks, some with 1 10 to 12 oz, and some with two 5 or 6 oz depending on if they were for one of the guys or for me and my daughter both, 3 servings of beef stir-fry in a 5 oz portion and half a gallon Ziploc bag full of odd pieces of meat and fat for grinding hamburger.  We will save that in the freezer until we have done the chuck roll.  We may save it even longer until we have done a lot more meat.  We may not have enough to bother getting the grinder out and dirty.  It's a lot of work to clean it.

I'm not sure if I will do a full tri tip again.  While it is a nice looking chunk of meat, having it switch grains in an area that is hidden almost completely by fat can make it hard to deal with and the fat on one side is really hard fat and the other is hard to hold onto, there is like nothing to it.  The knives dull really fast with that kind of fat and my husband had sharpened all of my knives well before I started.  I think maybe a top sirloin cap might be better for steaks the next time it goes on sale, though then I'd have to worry about lymph nodes and yuck.

Brisket is on sale right now for $3.99.  I think it is the surplus from St. Patrick's Day coming out of the freezers.  I am thinking on it for canning.  I don't like brisket for eating directly as a roast.  Well, cut up into many roasts and frozen and then made individually, but when cut up as stew meat and canned it comes out beautifully and it would be 80 cents a pound less than even the chuck shoulder roll was.  I will have to consider it.

I am glad I waited on the tomatoes, though, because they are on an even better sale this week, 10 cents less a pound, and it is warm enough now at night to let any that are not ready ripen in the garage and not have to worry about fruit flies hatching out from them in the house.  So I should be able to crockpot some tomato sauce over the weekend while my son and I are busy working in the garden assembling new garden beds.

Unfortunately, my husband will not be joining us, but for a god reason.  There is serious overtime the next three days.  Has hardly been any all year or for maybe six or seven months.  Figures it will be when the weather finally clears up and is sunny on a weekend.  But we can really make use of the money towards that stupid bathroom repair.  We are supposed to have the new person's quote for it sometime in the nest few days.  I was hoping it would be this week, but it is looking like it might get pushed to next week.  I know he is really busy trying to finish a project so it was just that, a hope.  Even with a quote, we still just might be another year of saving away anyway.  He came last Friday and that was his second time looking at the space.

The hope is DH can get in 20 hours of OT tomorrow, Saturday and Sunday.  He's got homemade tv dinners to choose from and says he is planning on the meatloaf/mashed potatoes/corn/normandy veggies one for dinner and the chicken fettucine Alfredo with broccoli one for lunch and he keeps a loaf of bread and peanutbutter in his office and some butter and jelly in the fridge at work so he can have a snack.  He has a bag of frozen homemade breakfast burritos or breakfast sandwiches that he replaces as he uses them in the work freezer, too.  He never has to go buy something at one of the nearby fast food places as long as he keeps the dates up to date on his food.  He used to go buy food a lot, so we did everything we could to hedge against that so he would stop buying so much food on take out.  Since he will be there from 8 a.m. until probably 8 p.m., maybe even 10 p.m., he will likely need it all.

This morning I made a plan to keep my ADHD brain organized for the rest of the week.  I probably should have gone through next week, too, but I will leave that for Sunday evening, because then the stress of the weekend will be over.  Yes, I stress more on weekends than I do on weekdays, because my weekends are unstructured compared to my weekdays.

So as for my meal plan, I did make one.  I also made a plan for what else we are doing.  But meal plan first to save our food budget from going to places it should not go.  I am using up leftovers and foods that are close to expiring or needing to be used before they would no longer be usable.  My food management has been off this week.

Tonight was gluten free pizza.  I used leftover bits and bobs I had in the freezer.  I had some leftover onions from the chicken schwarma, I had some ham and green pepper dices that I had cut up for omelets earlier this week, and the ever present uncured pepperoni slices which were getting close to needing to be used up and I don't play with uncured meats, and we had some shredded Muenster cheese, which melts as well as mozzarella, which we do have, but I didn't feel like shredding.  So I used up some leftovers.  I love not wasting food.  I added salads and a can of pineapple on the side as it was a week from expiring.  I don't usually pay attention to expiration dates on canned food, but pineapple can eventually eat its way out of the can due to the acidity.  Pineapple doesn't play games.

Tomorrow for dinner I am making the last chuck roast in the freezer and the last four red potatoes and a quart of my homegrown home canned green beans.  I sugared up the second container of strawberries I bought, because they were starting to get old and sugaring helps preserve them a few more days, and we will have some of them for dinner.

Sunday's dinner will be turkey chorizo chili and gluten free cornbread with the rest of those sugared strawberries.  I will be putting corn in the chili instead of beans and lots of actual peppers, 2 poblanos, 1 jalapeño, 8 Anaheims, and one organge, one red, and one yellow bell pepper, all roasted, so there will be plenty of veggies, then stewed in the crockpot for most of the day.  It is going to be so yummy.  The chorizo has been in the freezer for six months and even though it is vacuum sealed it should be getting used up.  I had been waiting until I could get more, it has been out of stock every time I hit WinCo, but they still have a spot for it, so I just keep hitting wrong.  Still, I want the chili, so I'm going to make it.  Plus, all but the sweet peppers either need to get used or dehydrated before they go bad.  They are getting wrinkly.  The corn is frozen, so it is fine.

Saturday's plan is working in the garden.  First up is clearing the path between where the garden bed three is and where garden bed row four will be.  Garden beds one, two, and three are each one long raised bed that is 22 feet long.  Row four will be either two or three separate raised beds, depending on the configurations I want them to be in.  I don't remember what they were, but I know I could either make them four feet wide, three feet wide, two feet wide or one foot wide and the length would depend on how wide I made them.  I think I was prevaricating between 3 feet wide and 2 feet wide.

My cinderblocks beds have 32 inches of growing space, but are four feet across from edge to edge and it is hard on my back to reach from the edge to the center.  So I don't want to do the 4 feet wide configuration.  I know if I do the wider the bed, the more I will try to force into the space, so my thinking on making it two feet wide I won't try to squeeze extra plants in, like I will if there is three feet of space.  It is a bad habit of mine and I think if I only have two feet and not 32 inches, it will nip that in the bud.  It won't make as good a use of ground space because I will still need enough space between rows for a wheel chair to go down in the future, but I also need to have it be reachable from a wheelchair, so there is that.

So the big hope is clear the path, take up the black plastic, rototill the path and the segment where the next row will go and where the next path will go, rototill, rake flat, cover with ag fabric and if there is time, build the row of raised beds.  It sounds more daunting than it is.  Our rototiller is super easy to the point where I can handle it.  It goes through the ground like it is soft butter and turns on a dime.  The garden beds take about an hour to assemble with two people, with a third person helping to hold the beds pieces, it goes together even faster.  If it wasn't going to rain on Sunday we could try to get it down in two days, but it will rain Sunday through Wednesday and we are running out of time before the growing season starts.

On Sunday I will go through my seeds and see what I will be planting this year.  I will buy a lot of my starts, but some things I will grow straight from seed in the ground.  I need to get my sweet potato slips started within the next two weeks.  I will be growing them in a raised bed in a small green house  that we are making.  From what we have been told by everyone around here that grows them, the mail order companies send them too late for our growing season, which has changed significantly from a decade ago.  We have much hotter springs and summers with longer, warmer fall seasons, but we don't get sent slips until July.  We could be planting mid-June in a greenhouse and those two extra weeks make a difference in the north.

I can start lettuces, radishes, and green onions next week and green beans and peas as well as brassicas the week after that.  There is a lot to do to prepare, so I need to get my garden notebook out and start figuring out my plans.  I need to harvest and put up as much food as possible, because I have no idea what the next year is going to bring.  If I can take buying food out of the equation as much as possible, then that is what I am going to do.

I told myself I would be posting more frequently in April than I did in March and here it is already April 3rd and I have done nothing, so I decided that I should get back into more of my old habits.  I did my payday report last week and now I need to get back into my tracking my groceries.  This will be from a store trip on April 1st.  I bought mostly organic produce, but my goodness it was not that much higher than conventional.  We're talking .25 to .50 difference in almost every case.

In looking over my receipt, I noticed that my cashier overcharged me, too.  He rang up both my sweet onions and my yellow onions as sweet onions.  I even told him when he tried to weigh them all at the same time that they weren't the same type of onion.  I saw him take them off the computer and I watched him weigh one bag and then went back to talking to my husband figuring he had it, but apparently not.  I'll have to go back to the store and talk to customer service.

I haven't used the yellow onions yet so I can go back with them and have them redo it.  I don't know which ones were heavier so having them to weigh will be better than just guessing.  It is the difference of about $2 or $3.  Why do I care when I'm willing to spend extra on organic produce if I lose $2 or $3?  Because I am willing to spend money on better food, but I am not willing to lose money on it.

I am trying out a new type of ketchup for me because the type we've been getting for years has been tasting too sweet to me for the past few months and I wanted to see if I can find one that isn't as sweet, so that is why there are two ketchups listed.  The price on the bell peppers hurt, but they are on the dirty dozen list and the conventional were almost the same price.

Anyway here goes:

$4.49 Bob's Red Mill Gluetne Free Cornbread Mix

$7.79 Krusteaz Gluten Free Brownie Mix (upcoming birthday)

$9.98 2 bottles of O Organics 32 ounce Ketchups

$6.59 1 24 oz bottle of Annie's Homegrown Ketchup

$5.69 1 32 oz container of Zoi plain Greek yogurt

$11.98 2 bags Seattle International Greek Pitas

$2.00 1 organic orange bell pepper

$2.00 1 organic yellow bell pepper

$5.00 5 cucumbers

$23.98 4 pounds of organic strawberries (first from Cali)

$7.97 3.2 pound purple cabbage (was cheaper than conventional)

$3.69 1 lb garden salad kit

$6.99 1 lb Ceasar salad kit

$3.29 Fresh organic dill (cheaper than conventional)

$7.49 Litehouse Thousand Island Dressing (ouch)

$3.29 Garlic Butter Croutons

$2.03 1 large organic red onion (ouch)

$3.42 .68 lb of organic celery

$6.07 Onions sweet or yellow, who knows

$9.36 Onions, also who knows

$0.40 bag fee

$9.98 2 packs of Crockpot Liners

$0.93 9% Sales tax for non-food items

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$143.61 Total Spending

-_10.38 Non-grocery spending

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$133.23 Total Grocery Spending

So, of my $400 biweekly grocery budget I have $266.77 left to spend.  Tomorrow marks the one week period, with one more week to go until payday. so I have well more than half to get through until next week.  I may go to the restaurant supply store and get a boneless beef tri-tip.  They are approximately15 pounds on sale for $4.59/lb so it would come to $68.85 or thereabouts.  My meat slicer could make some nice half inch steaks out of that.

I think in the future I might just pick up a gallon of the Litehouse Thousand Island Dressing when we run out at that store, too.  It seems like a lot, but DH goes through dressing really, really fast and I try to have a salad every day at this time of year.  The price would work out to $5 per one of the bottles we bought in the list above.  But could we get through it before it spoiled.  That's the real question.

They also have Roma tomatoes on for $24.99 for a box that is 25 pounds.  I could get two boxes and make some pasta sauce and can it.  And it will be so much easier now that I have my electric canner and don't have to use the stove up in the big kitchen.  I can can at night after Mom's gone to bed and not worry about disturbing her.  She's hard of hearing during the day, but at night she can hear every little thing.  Some things never change.

They have Angus boneless beef chuck roll on this week, 23 pounds for $4.79/lb which would be $110.17.  I am down to one chuck roast, and that is the lowest price they go down to, usually it is $5.49 on sale, so this is the best sale price.  Let's see,  if I add those up it would be $229.  Hmm...that is close and I still have to buy bottled water to replace the preps we used up when they shut down the water for 24 hours to do sewer repairs, but that would still come in under what I have left and I don't have to buy anything else, we have enough produce to get through the week for sure.

I've been slacking off on the meal planning, but I have been cooking.  I made a delicious chicken schwarma for dinner last night with tzatziki sauce using the sweet yellow onions in the schwarma, and he yogurt, a cucumber, and the dill in the sauce and the pita to wrap it in and some of the red cabbage to top it with.  And some corn on the cob from an earlier shopping trip.  We had leftovers tonight because I made a ton.  Sneaky me, didn't want to cook tonight.

I should really figure out what I want to make for the rest of the week, though and for next week, too.  I have the energy to cook and I'm well so I need to get my brain super focused and use it to my advantage.  Not let it be lazy and wander off into the attention deficit part of my ADHD.