How To Become a Desperate Housewife

Step 1: Coupons.

That's right: C.O.U.P.O.N.S.

Once upon a time, when we first moved to California and were living on an incredibly tiny budget with basically no money in the bank, I was a devoted coupon clipper. And we saved a lot of money. But it also took a LOT of time - both in the actual clipping of the coupons and in digging through them in the store to compare prices, etc., in order to get the best deals. Over time we gradually slipped out of the habit. Pete was out of school, we were both working, the budget had much more breathing room, and the bank account had a comfortable cushion. The pressure was off, and the work no longer seemed worth it.

But when Pete took his new job as a pastor and I quit my job to become a full-time stay-at-home-mom, we knew we were going to need to tighten the belt again, and I was determined to become the Coupon Queen. Plus! Apparently over the last few years coupon clipping has become a BIG DEAL. As in there are a million blogs devoted to it. As in people no longer just clip coupons, they have coupon binders and boxes. They comb through store sale fliers in order to combine the best possible prices with the biggest possible coupons - and they post these super deals on their blogs so that everyone else can do the same. They create coupon databases (coupon databases!!). They even play drugstore games where, through some complicated system that I've yet to fully grasp, they are able to purchase hundreds of dollars of merchandise for fifty cents and some Monopoly money.

Okay, that is a slight exaggeration. (Extreme, extreme emphasis on slight.)

The point is, I felt sure with all of these new amazing resources at my fingertips, I'd be saving gigantic chunks of change in no time. I also thought I'd be able to avoid spending so much time clipping coupons (which is good because I seem to have no time these days) AND avoid carrying big handfuls of coupons around in the store with me while squinting for ten minutes at the price tags on a single set of product brands. (This is also good because: all that I just said? It does not work when you have a toddler sitting in the front of your shopping cart. No, really believe me. I tell you no lies here. Also: extreme, extreme emphasis on sitting.)

ANYWAY... to get on with this long, drawn-out story... Monday night I sat down with my spiffy little weekly meal plan, my grocery list, my pile of store ads and coupons from the Sunday paper, and my lovely little computer with what is probably the mother of all coupon blogs front and center on the screen, and I dove in, certain that I was about to work some magic. An hour later I gave up and went to bed having found and clipped a total of TWO (that's right, 2!) useful coupons. One of those coupons was to be used in conjunction with a store sale, which turned out to be nonexistent when I visited the store the next day. So I walked out with my groceries having saved sixty cents.

Sixty cents. For over an hour of work.

I did a little better today. Another hour of work last night resulted in a savings of eight dollars today at Target. But still!

I'm going to hang in there and give this coupon-clipping/blog-reading/drugstore-game-playing a little more time to work out. But I'm feeling pretty doubtful about all of it at this moment. It's not that I don't believe in the methods. I'm sure that there are many people out there saving tons of money this way, but I also strongly suspect that at least a few of them are living entirely off of fruit snacks and sugar cereal and/or have enough toothpaste and hair care products to support a small city for the next five years.

Step 2: Throw a birthday party for toddlers.

My sister-in-law and I thought that we could save time and money (do you sense a theme here?) by throwing a combined birthday party for my just-turned-two daughter and her just-about-to-turn-three son.

We were wrong.

Also, if I never see the face of Elmo or Curious George again, I will die a happy person. Super Grover is hanging on to my affections by a thread.

Step 3: Be a little crazy to begin with.

It's been a week. Actually, it's been several weeks. I won't go into it because you all have weeks too. You know what I'm talking about.

But I am also my own particular brand of crazy, and there's a reason why Peter says I have a little Rabbit mixed in with all my Eeyoreness. Eeyorenicity?

Last night my accumulated stress from these last few weeks came out, as it often does, in my sleep. The cats woke me up for their nightly supper at what I suspect was about 3 am, and after that I tossed and turned in a semi-awake stew of anxious thoughts and mental to-do lists for awhile until apparently succumbing to some form of sleep. But then I started having nightmares. And I definitely mean that noun to be pluralized.

My first nightmares were all about spiders. Particularly spiders in my ears. (Katie! I will apparently never recover from your story.) Then those were replaced by your standard burglar/murderer nightmares involving physical harm to me and Eden. THEN I started dreaming about driving off the Poplar Street Bridge and crashing into the Mississippi over and over and over again. And every time that nightmare restarted I would try to think of a different way to escape my car and the churning muddy water and every time I would fail and the dream would end just as I began to drown.

Soooooooo......

Hmmm, yeah, I don't think there's any hope of bringing this post back from that last paragraph.

Here's to better weeks for all of us! May all your coupons be doubled and all your cupcakes come pre-decorated!

At least, try not to think about the spiders.

The In-between

So, how do you go about summing up the change from one life to another in a silly little blog post?

I would really like to know.

On June 28th, just a little over three weeks ago, I stood on Californian soil (or, you know, on the concrete with which it is covered) and looked at the spot on our living room floor where Eden took her first steps. I thought about bringing her home from the hospital to that apartment. About the corner where her bassinet used to stand by our bed. I remembered working on my master's degree at the table, typing papers and completing assignments in the early hours of many mornings. I remembered friends coming over to celebrate the completion of my degree and my first job as an official librarian. We decorated sugar cookies. And we were with the same friends in the same apartment at the same table when I carved my first pumpkin. I looked at the kitchen and recalled the night I chased Pudge around that room with a Kleenex box stuck on his head, carefully cradling a sleeping baby in one arm, knowing even then that it was one of those moments that would be very funny later. And I looked at the little bathroom that stood, tucked across the hall from our door and remembered sadness and fear and the grief that came with my first real loss. So many life-changing events and daily ordinariness all bundled up together in one little space.

Today I am sitting in another little apartment. It is new to me. I look out the window and see a beautiful tree, green leaves bobbing and swaying in the breeze. It is beautiful, and I'm thankful for it and glad to see it, glad to live next to it. But it is also new. The van that I drive Eden to and from the park in is new. The park is new. It has two huge play structures and swings and a bicycling/running path and a little lake with geese (!). But the grass turns swampy after storms and the humidity drives us indoors after too long. That weather - the thunderstorms and the humidity and the gorgeous clouds - is new to us. New enough, at any rate. The town is new. I've found Target and the grocery stores but nothing is where I expect it and a surprising number of brands are missing or unfamiliar. Peter's job is new and our church is new and the people are WONDERFUL, but they are still strangers. Certainly not enemies, but somehow, still, not quite friends. Not yet.

I daily see little to dislike and so much to love and yet I find myself wanting to shed all this "new" and instead pull on the old comfy familiarity of my old home and my friends-whom-I-can-call-friends and my routines and my life. If only I could figure out where it is in this new home with everything put away but still out of place.

A friend recently posted the following quote on her facebook account: "There is no growth without change, no change without loss, and no loss without pain."

I sit quietly and think about that.

Outside the leaves keeps dancing and the grass is so thick and green. It is new yet. But I am still thankful for it. So thankful for the new and the old, for the growth and the change, for having once found things that are good enough to hurt when you lose them and for knowing that there is still more goodness yet to be found, here, in this new place.

So Long, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, Good Night

To all our friends in California: we will miss you! Thank you so much for all that you have done for our family. We will never forget our time here.