Ear Tubes Surgery - strip from the waist up!

I forgot to mention that I did have the tubes put in my ears last Thursday and I survived (and I even did some thrift shopping afterwards). I went to the part of the hospital for outpatient surgery and was led to a little room by a nurse and was told to strip from the waist up and to put a gown on. And I'm thinking, what the heck??? Is the Doc gonna throw in a complimentary breast exam? So a few minutes later a different nurse came in and I questioned the reason behind the bra removal and she told me to put it back on. And if that isn't bizarre enough, I wore my glasses thru the whole procedure. Heck, even when I get my hair cut I'm told to remove my eyeglasses, but surgery on your ear drums - it's ok to leave them on. LOL!

My ears felt a little funny the rest of the day, but now just a few days later, they feel fine. I just can't go underwater, scubadive (which is fine since I hate scubadiving), and be careful about getting water in them when I shower. And now that tubes are piercing my eardrums, I cannot "pop" my eardrums anymore. I go back on Friday for a check-up, (and probably a hearing test) so it will be interesting to see how the results compare. I know one thing is much better - the "crackling" sound I often had inside my ears is gone which is nice.

More Cheap Yardsale Liquor and Yardsale Food

Well actually I think it would be considered Moving Sale Liquor. Went to a pretty big indoor moving sale today - the seller happened to be someone I remembered from working at the nuke plant (she worked there the same time I did). She was selling food 5 for $1 since she had to really reduce the amount of weight for the moving company. Here's a pic of some of my buys, there's more but it all didn't make it into the pic. I got (free) two gallons of deck stain and deck protector. She also gave me that bottle of Smirnoff Vodka for free too. The Bacardi was $1.50. She was pulling things out of her cabinets left and right, but that was all the liquor she had. The deck stain will come in handy since I need to re-stain Jacob's swingset.

Another gift for my mom - Meditations for Miserable People

At a moving sale today, I bought this book for my mom, it was .25

Ok, before you all tell me what horrible daughter I am, let me tell you a little story. A few years ago my parents went on some senior citizen bus trip to somewhere (most likely a casino). They were all given a blank name tag and told to write their name on it with an adjective describing themselves. Example: Jolly Joe, Sassy Sue, Lucky Louie and so on. What does my mom put? Mean Mary.

One of my buys from last week - Russian Matryoshka Nesting Doll

I guess I forgot to post about what I bought last week at the yardsales. For $1 I got a set of Russian Matryoshka nesting dolls (you unscrew it and inside is another doll, then unscrew that one there is another one and so on). Not sure if they are from Russia but they definitely were not made in China. Will be a gift for my mom at Christmas. I think she'll like it since she is 100% Ukrainian and it's a pretty Matryoshka with a cat, not your run of the mill bland looking doll.



Another memorable buy was a big STACK of pink Depression glass plates and bowls and 4 old pink swirl Fire-King cups and saucers, all for $10.

We had a big thunderstorm tonight, I hope it doesn't dissuade anyone from having their yardsale tomorrow.

I think I may be able to do some thrift shopping tomorrow

Tomorrow I may have some time to do some thrift shopping at Vintage Value. But first I have to deal with a little appointment at the hospital to have a medical procedure done. ACKKK - I hope really its nothing and I'll be in prime condition to do some thrift shopping afterwards. I'm having tubes put in my ears. It's normally a procedure that kids have done rather than adults.

Went out on the boat again last week and took this pic.

Remember the supposed squirrel proof birdfeeder I bought?

I bought a "squirrel proof" birdfeeder a few weeks ago for $2 at a yardsale. Thought I would share some pics on how much the squirrels love it. They eat - without disturbing the lever that hides the seed - then leave.

eBay clutter! Oh the Horror!

I was looking at some pics I took earlier this year and found this one. Aye yi yi. I really need to start selling again on eBay. I am happy to report my desk area DOES look better now, I have a real computer chair (bought new) and my new fancy big flat screen monitor.

Yardsale Bargains from Saturday

I had a good morning yardsaling yesterday and then after I went to Smile thrift (boy have I been missing that place since it's been a whole two weeks since I've been able to go), JC Penney's for their clearance sale and then did some grocery shopping. I left the house at 7:30am and didn't get home 'til about 1pm. It was nice to have some "me" time.

My yardsale buys:

.10 each - 26 CDs, various artists. This is twice this summer that I found a seller who was selling CDs for only .10 each. I sold a lot for $1 at my mom's garagesale the other week. I bought more than half of what they had - left the ones where the CD was missing (I pulled the case for them, was heavily scratched, was a totally obscure artist).

$5 new in package Grampa's Weeder garden week pulling tool. Their website is www.grampasweeder.com. Original price sticker says it was $19.99

$3 Dora sleeping bag (keep)
$2 pretty glass candy bowl (pic below)
$1 Green Glass (I think it's Vaseline glass or depression glass) canning jar with ceramic lid
$1 three compartment foldable laundry bin that pops up
.25 (for both) two Leap Frog small toys
$1 package of Burt's Bee sampler items
FREE - new in package inflatable snow tube
FREE - Boyd's Bear small pillow
$2 pair of Cabela's pants for me
$2 Tony Stewart Woman's blouse (resale)
.50 1994 Patrick Ewing Starting Lineup action figure in package

At JC Penney's I got Jacob two t-shirts on clearance for $1.97 and two Plug N Play 7 in 1 casino game thing for tv, Orginally $30 on clearance for $5.97. My husband's birthday is coming up and the other one I'll give to my casino-loving mom. But chances are I'll show her how to use on Christmas day, but then it will be too "electronically difficult" for her to do it on her own - even though there are probably two steps to do it. She has a simple VCR and we've written down instructions for her, but she rarely uses it since it's too confusing for her.

Woman's Day July 11 issue

I should have mentioned this earlier but I'm quoted (and my website) is mentioned in the current issue of Woman's Day that is one the newstands now - the date on it is the July 11 issue.

So if you are standing in line at the grocery store checkout, take a look at page 15. Not sure how much longer this issue will be sold before the next one is out.

My free Stargazer lillies

Back on September 19, 2005 I blogged about getting free bulbs from Brecks.com - I chose Stargazer lily bulbs - the squirrels ate most of the bulbs that I planted in the back yard, but the ones in the front yard came up nicely. Here's a pic I took earlier in the day:



I hope they multiply. But the funny thing is, when I was visiting my mom last week, she got ANOTHER Brecks catalog with no-strings-attached $25 coupon that she didn't want, so I'll end up ordering more bulbs for free - again!

Kohl's shopping bargains

I forgot to mention, I did do some "real" store shopping last week. I love the Kohl's near my mom's house. Last Friday they had late night hours till 11pm so I was able to do some shopping after I put my son to bed (my mom was still home so it wasn't like I left my son unattended). There is a Kohl's near the mall here in Maryland (the mall is 45 miles away so I don't go there very often). But still for some reason I don't like that Kohl's as much as the one near my mom. I've figured out why - the one that I like has high ceilings and everything is on one floor so it's easy to navigate. The one "near" me is two stories and has regular height ceilings. Plus when I go to the one near my mom, my husband isn't tagging along and rushing me.

Last week I spent about $25 at Kohl's and got: $7 Go Diego Go shirt (orig. $14) for Jacob, $1.99 each (orig. $4.99 ea) two nice dishtowels with embroidered lobsters on them, $7.50 double sided birdfeeder (orig. $29.99) and a patriotic bunting $5.99 (orig. $12) I did try on some clothes for me but since I only had about an hour to shop before it closed I didn't have time to really shop for clothes and still look at everything else.

back from upstate New York

I just got back from visiting my mom in upstate New York and going to my neice's graduation party. I'll post some pics later. Since I'm always telling my mom she needs to have a garage sale, I stuck my foot in my mouth and said I would have one during my stay this time. Boy do I really need a vacation (and a strong drink) now! It was a ton of work for one person (me!) to do. My mom is not much help when it comes to stuff like setting up tables, putting up signs, displaying things, you know all the stuff that needs to be done when having a garagesale. The tables that my mom has are ancient and must weigh 50 lbs each. Which I had to lug from one garage to the other. And then back when the sale was over. And of course all the stuff she wanted to sell was down in the cellar. And with all the rain, water was leaking into the cellar so I had like a mud pit I had to cross everytime I wanted to bring something upstairs.

Oh speaking of the rain, did you hear on the news about that section of highway in upstate NY that crumbled and 2 truckers died? I drove on that highway on Monday afternoon and the highway collapse happened on early Wednesday. How awful. I am really lucky I drove to NY on that Monday since I heard that on Tuesday that area got torrential rain all day. Today I drove home on the same highway and there was a detour because it will take months to reopen that stretch of Route 88. All the rivers and creeks in that area were a nasty brown color.

Well that's it for now, I have a lot of reading on my message board that I need to catch up on.