The Periphery of the Mind

The bad:

The washing machine broke. We're looking at upgrading, and with a kid (or is it kids?) on the way, we'll probably want something bigger. Still, we're talking about a $500-$600 purchase in short order. And if we get a bigger washer, we'll probably want a bigger dryer ASAP, but we intend to run the existing dryer "into the ground" first. I was waiting for a big financial bomb dropping, and this was it.

Tweety's wing isn't doing so well, and Maryanne's taking him to the vet. There's another $30-$200. And that's assuming he'll actually get better. But she's using her maternity leave fund to cover it, so that's not going to cost us or anything. (We've put a moratorium on getting any future pets until we get rid of two existing ones, and the canaries count as one and the fish count as one. We got Tweety to replace Terra the parrotlet, and we're not doing that again.)

I had an allergic reaction at the in-laws' yesterday so bad my eyeball was swelling. It's gone down, but it's still sore and slightly swollen at the bottom. If it isn't better by the end of the day... I guess we'll put my doctor's visit on the credit card since.

We spent about... $320 on credit cards yesterday, on top of another $140 from checking, before all of this happened.

The good(ish) news:

We finally got some nice matching plates and bowls and saucers and mugs at Wal-Mart. 3 sets of 4 of each, for about $115. Now we can get rid of all of our mismatched random plates and bowls and saucers and mugs. They're very pretty, and we're calling it our early anniversary present to each other.

I picked up three shirts yesterday at Target for $60. They were nice, and Maryanne's been begging me to get more shirts. It's pretty hard for me to find shirts I like in my size, and she seemed to think they looked nice.

We got some new shoes yesterday. I needed something for the winter as the soles on my old ones were worn out, and she needed new shoes as hers were completely worn. $80ish for both.

I got a leather blazer. $325, but it was on sale at the Rogers' Kohls for $189.99. But all they had in my size were damaged, so we went to Fayetteville to see what they had, and they had a blazer I liked, but it wasn't on sale. So I took it back to the Customer Service desk to see if they'd price match the store in Rogers, and not only wouldn't they, but they got Rogers to stop the sale too. Seems there was a screw-up or some such in Rogers, and they weren't supposed to be on sale. So we went home and I checked online and found the blazers for sale still, for $189.99, in the color and size I wanted. And with free shipping! But I still had to pay sales tax of 6%. On the upside, there was a 30% coupon code I found at www.retailmenot.com, so that when all was said and done I got a $325 brown leather blazer for $145. I could have gotten a slightly better deal come Black Friday, but now I have a light jacket for October and Novemeber that we're calling my early anniversay present (Maryanne's was a new adjustable easel). And I've been looking for such a jacket for at least three years now.

So we're out around a grand this weekend, but I don't really see anything too frivolous that we bought. Nothing we absolutely needed, but nothing that was a bad expenditure of money either. Shirts? Shoes? A nice jacket? Dinnerware? A washing machine? Still, I hate to know where all our extra money is going for the next few months.

Labels: weekend recap