Free cereal and missing time

I used to do the whole coupon thing, where you cut out a bunch of coupons and wait for things to go on sale, and then you get some stuff for free or almost free. At the checkout you pay twenty bucks for stuff that originally would have cost a hundred dollars, so you saved eighty dollars. Not really, cause I would never pay a hundred dollars for that stuff, but I liked the way it sounds.

At some point I decided to quit doing that and try to eat better. The saving money thing and the eating better thing don't always work together. Like, if you are at the pizza buffet, once you've already paid to get in, you might as well get your money's worth and eat lots of pizza, but eating a lot of pizza isn't good for you. Or, you might be trying to eat lean stuff like turkey, but eating hamburgers is cheaper. Or, you might get a good deal on after-holiday candy, but it would be better for you to eat fruit instead.

So I got out of the habit of clipping coupons, so that the coupons wouldn't influence my decision making at the grocery store. And it worked for a time, and I lost about twenty pounds. I have put them back on now, but I didn't get back into the coupon thing. I still use them once in a while, but I don't spend a lot of time doing it, and I'm not as organized anymore.

Once I found a display of Christmas Crunch. That's like Captain Crunch, except that it is green and red. It was about a week after Christmas, and they had a big end cap display of the stuff, and it was on clearance for $0.99. I had a dollar off coupon and another coupon for $0.75. So I got one box for free, and the other one for $0.25. I bought some other stuff and took my stuff to the car. The Christmas Crunch said it had a surprise inside, so I opened the box right there in the car to see what it was. Inside the box, but not inside the bag, was some gum and some candy and a dollar off coupon.

Great. So I got the dollar coupon out of the other box, and I went back inside the store and got two more free boxes of cereal. And then I took those to the car, opened those boxes, took out the coupons, and went back inside the store for two more free boxes of cereal.

After several trips back inside the store, I had collected one box of cereal that for $0.25 and fifteen boxes that were free. And then I was told that I couldn't have anymore cereal, and if that was all that I wanted could I please just leave the store.

So that was odd, cause it was a week after Christmas, and the stuff was on clearance. Clearance. That's means that they are trying to get rid of the stuff. So I don't know what the problem was, but I left anyway.

I do the remember back when then once in a while and buy kids cereal, but mainly I just eat it when we're at a motel. Until a while back when there was the Kellogg's Star Trek promotion, and I bought a lot of their cereal, and most of it was stuff like Corn Pops.

We ran out of Corn Pops. We're not quite out of cereal, but most of the sugary stuff is gone.

I saw in one of my grocery adds that Captain Crunch and some other cereal was on sale for five boxes for eight dollars. And, there was a three dollar off coupon if you bought five boxes of cereal, making the cereal a dollar each. Cool. I'll go get some.

I wasn't going to buy all kid cereal. There was some stuff that's better for you that I like, and it was on sale too. But I did have to have at least a couple of boxes of Captain Crunch.

Also, I had these rain checks for cheap chicken. A ten pound bag of leg quarters was $3.90, so I got two of them. And then I got eggs, which unfortunately were not on sale, but we still needed some eggs anyway, and they were like a dollar fifty. And then I got five boxes of cereal, some of which is good for you, but two boxes were kid cereal. And I was going to buy this stuff, get forty dollars cash back, and immediately go back home and do some work. I must have gone to the store at about ten in the morning. It took longer than I though because they are doing work in the store, and some of the stuff is moved around at took longer to find than usual. But still, I don't think I was there that long.

At the checkout I'm talking to the cashier and having a pleasant enough time, and the cashier mentions that some of the cereal rang up at forty cents. And then the coupon still worked. So this stuff that I thought I had spent fifteen something on only cost ten something. I was pretty happy about that.

I got so distracted that I forgot to get my forty dollars, and I had been charged for it on the receipt. I was still in the parking lot. I went back in to get my forty dollars. The cashier looked at my receipt and gave me my forty dollars. I thought it was going to be a big hassle and we would have to call a manager and have him count the register and all that, but no, she just apologized and gave me my money.

Since I was still there, I thought I might as well get some more of that cereal, and I had another coupon. So I got one box of the Captain Crunch and four boxes of the other stuff, and it came to $3.20, and then with the coupon I only had to pay twenty cents.

Now I am debating on how greedy I should be, and if I should go back and try to get more cereal. I have a feeling that not all of the cereal will be marked down like that, probably just boxes with a certain date, and they might not have anymore anyway. Still, with the money problems we are having, I think I might as well try. If they have more I could get ten more boxes of cereal for forty cents.

Anyway, I went home and had to deal with twenty pounds of chicken. I hadn't planned on doing it right away, but the chicken is usually frozen and needs a few days to thaw out. This stuff wasn't frozen, and I knew if I didn't deal with right then I would forget and the stuff would spoil. So I cut up the whole thing and separated the legs from the thighs and then cooked half of the chicken and picked the meat off of the bones, and put the other half of the chicken in plastic bags.
And then it was four o'clock.

How is it four o'clock? All I had done since nine that morning was watch Fringe and Bones and maybe one episode of Stargate, go to the grocery store, and deal with this chicken.

Does it really take all day to do that? Especially since most of that TV watching was done while I was waiting for the chicken to cook or to cool down so I could put it away.

So while I had a good day and got a lot done and saved money and all of that, I didn't get anything done that I had originally planned to do. I washed a few dishes (which I then had to wash again after dealing with the chicken), and sorted through maybe two boxes of books, and that was all. I didn't run any other errands or anything. After four I talked to a friend for a bit, but after that it was time to fix dinner, and then the day was pretty much over. I watched Smallville and Glee, and then fell asleep while attempting to watch some British thing.

Anyway, that means that I will have to get a few more things done today before I go hang out with my friends. I should go to the bookstore and go somewhere to get a phone card. And before I do any of that I'll have to do some laundry.

Not that any of that is a problem, just in my mind I pictured doing most of that yesterday, and I can't quite figure out why I didn't have time to do it. Just one minute it was time for lunch, and then I was doing some more work, and then it was four o'clock.

Now that I think about it, I didn't even have a bath.

That's okay. I'll have a bath now.