UGH

Before Lily was born I used to plan the budget and meals etc. I am good at it. Correction, WAS good at it. I just found out that, after 4 years, that part of my brain has rebelled against me. I don't know, maybe it got tired of being neglected? Or maybe it withered away? I am hoping that stored somewhere deep in it's recesses are the memories of how to crunch numbers and whip up awesome, healthy, tasty meals without having to win the lottery first.

And holy cow have prices of things skyrocketed!!!!!! Grocery shopping has become an exercise in "cross your fingers and hope you have enough". But there are things I will not scrimp on. Namely MEAT. I won't buy the grocery store meats, and especially not the budget cuts because I can't eat them. They will just go to waste. And I refuse to feed Lily anything but natural, local meats if at ALL possible. If that means I have to do without shampoo, so be it :)

But I am having the most trouble planning a simple weekly menu. We have become so dependent on take out since the increased demands Lily has placed on my energy and time that I am a disgrace to SAHMs everywhere! I can cook. Just barely. I would love to cook like many of my mommy friends...3 course meals, all from scratch, including dessert, without breaking a sweat! But I am just not at that place. That place actually scares me.

So here I sit, blogging instead of doing what needs to be done. Like somehow i am going to have an epiphany and the menu will just magically create itself through me. Hopefully it will get easier with time. I hope! I do not want to spend the rest of my mommy years stressing over what to make, how to make it, and saying "oh crap, I'm missing an ingredient AGAIN!"....

Any tips from my pitifully few friends who feel sorry for me and stop in here every now and then?

Randomness

Nothing really interesting to blog about. So this post will most likely come out as scrambled as my thoughts. Mmmmmm, scrambled eggs. I miss eggs. Ever since we found out Lily was allergic I found it easier to just not have them in the house. But, now there are a dozen organic eggs sitting on the top shelf of my fridge calling out to me..... quietly though, so Lily doesn't hear. Actually, it's more like a whisper. But a whisper that is making me want to haul out the pan and cook them, consequences be damned! Is it wrong to wish hubby would get Lily out of the house so i could eat eggs?

Oh, here's another totally random event. And the reason hubby is no longer allowed on the library website! Just like everything he does, overkill is involved. Serious overkill. I love to read. I especially love to find books I am interested in and then put them on hold at the library and just be able to pick them up. I am not an "oh, let's browse the millions of books on the shelf and kill and entire afternoon" kind of girl. I don't have the patience for it. Not to mention the sore neck from trying to read the spines sideways.

So, hubby did me a favor. He decided to put some on hold for me. Well, now I have an entire cloth grocery bag filled to overflowing with novels that are all due back in 3 weeks. I think he got over 20 at one time. It makes a good door stop.

It's almost Lily's 4th birthday! Bad mama.... I don't have any presents for her yet! Worse, I am not even sure WHAT to get her. She is so not the girly girl dress like a princess and feed and care for her dollies kind of kid. In fact, at this moment she is playing video games with daddy and blowing things up and destroying bad guys. She is not happy unless there is mayhem all around here. I don't think Toys R Us carries mayhem.

Time to plan another trip to the zoo as well. It's really boring, not a good zoo by any stretch of the imagination, but she likes it. Or, rather, she likes telling us where to go, what to look at, and what not to do. NOW. But, it gets us all out of the house with a minimum of collateral damage. One day we would love to visit the calgary zoo. I was there on a field trip once. They had pandas. It was cool. But there is no way in hot hell that I will confine myself in a car with her for over 3 hours any time soon. She would go nuts, therefore I would go nuts. And then there is the whole hotel room issues. I bet we'd get kicked out. I have no desire to sleep on a street corner. Or in our car. Well, maybe I'd sleep in the car, as long as I was alone. Maybe it would be peaceful? I long for a peaceful sleep. It's has been probably two years since she has slept through the night with any regularity. I am tired. I feel like changing all of my clocks in the house just so I can FEEL normal. No more "what the heck, it's only 3am" frustrations. If the clock said 9am it would be easier to handle.