Listy McListerson

Summertime, summertime, sum-sum-summertime....today kicks off day 1 of summer vacation for the Jolly Rogers.  Hooray! Megan is a bit cranky that there is no school until August, but she will live.  Marina has a cough, and is taking the better part of ten minutes to go get a Kleenex like I told her, but that's just Marina.  And Melanie, after waking up and screaming at 6:30 a.m., is--God bless her--back asleep and staying that way for the time being.

I was thinking this weekend about goals.  I am a goal-oriented person.  I want to see it on a piece of paper, listed out with steps, and happily cross out each step as it's completed.  I feel the accomplishment that way.  Plus, I just like making lists.  I don't know why.  But they make me happy.  (Confession: I frequently re-write lists so they look nice also).  But back to the goals.  I didn't want to just surf through the summer doing nothing, and I didn't want my whole summer to be taken up with jam.  So, here are my tentative umbrella goals for the summer.

Goal 1) Work on the grocery budget.  More specifically, work on staying WITHIN the grocery budget.  This is something that I have difficulty with.  To be completely honest, I suck at it, and I'm convinced that when my husband hears me say I'm going grocery shopping, his knee-jerk reaction is to pop a handful of Tums.  I have been reading various articles all over this great world wide web of ours, and it seems like a lot of people have a lot of ideas.  I have attempted to glean the best of these (10 points for correct use of the word "glean"!) and combine them to make a plan that fits me and my family life.

     Point A) Menu plan the ever-living crap out of our week.  I'm already pretty good at dinners, but it never occurred to me to plan breakfasts, lunches, and snacks as well.  I'm going to have the kids help me, hoping that if they help me decide what we're going to eat for the week, they will be happier about eating it.
     Point B) Grocery shop weekly, not bi-weekly.  The spending can get out of control when I'm trying to think over everything we could possibly need for the next 14 days in one sitting.
     Point C) Make better use of the food I already have in the house before buying more.
     Point D) Shop for the short term, not the long term.  I'm a big "see a sale, stock up" kind of girl, and this contributes in a major way to my perpetual overspending.  My new rule of thumb is going to be some variation of "if we won't eat all of this in three weeks, don't buy it."  I am hoping this will, in turn, help create some much-needed pantry space as I won't continually be trying to shove Costco sized packages of things into a too-small space.

Goal 2) Refinish some furniture!  Not just random pieces, mind you, but I have a small list of things that I want to strip/pain, fix, etc.  Today, I'll be making a list (see! another list! oh happy day) of the various house projects I'm hoping to tackle this summer.  I'll post it for you tomorrow, and then we can share together in the joy of me crossing them off.

Goal 3) All the other random projects/sewing/organizing that have been rattling around in my brain  (Do you sense another list coming??  It's almost more than I can handle).  In no way do I think I will actually accomplish all of them in a three month period of time, but it will be nice to see them all delineated (another 10 points!) so I have an idea of things that I can/want to do.  Sometimes, there's just too many ideas (darn you Pinterest) ping-ponging around in my brain for me to sort out and actually pare down to see what I am going to do next.

Goal 4) Get my kids to adjust to the new meal planning regime before school starts.  They don't like change, especially not change that eliminates their morning routine of taking fifteen minutes to decide what they want for breakfast.  (Although, in my defense, I did let them have jello as part of their balanced breakfast today...of course, now that I think of it, using the fact that I did that as proof of my awesome parenting may backfire.  Hmm).  Also, I am hoping that this gets some more varied foods in their diets.  Man (or Megan) cannot live on corn-dogs alone.

So, there's my summer in a nutshell.  Now imagine me prancing happily to find a pen and my favorite yellow steno pad to make a dozen lists.