Crafty Cat Woman

August is a great "first day" month. Kids have their first day of school, students have their first day of college classes, and sometimes adults have their first day of training at a new job! Payton has been working far too many years at a factory, because that's the place in town that paid - in money but not in time or stress or basically anything happy aside from making friends. He loves people, so they made working there tolerable.  But then one night while standing in a taco bar line, a friend seemingly randomly said "I wish I could hire you." This friend is a manager at a local doctor's office.  After a few jokes, the conversation went from " that'd be nice " to " hmm, what if we actually do it?! " Fast forward a month or so.... and HE GOT THE JOB, and just started on Tuesday. (also, he graciously gave the last employer a three-weeks-notice because let's face it, they just lost one of their best employees because they d...

Hi. You might be thinking that you are reading Amanda's blog about her free Kroger stuff. Today, however, we have a guest blogger: me. This episode of “Doing Stuff with Free Things” is brought to you by Payton, Amanda's husband, and by the letter “fire.” The suggested recipes that came with our Kroger Promotion package included a pizza. A barbeque pizza. That's fine and all, but there's a boss little pizza place in town that sometimes serves loaded baked potato pizzas which will make your heart grow three sizes larger, and I just had a hankerin’ for one. The problem is, they only serve it one day a week, and you have to be The Flash or a Russian spy to be able to time it just right so that you can get one before they're gone. And I am neither. Neither. Pay attention, NSA. New problem: that pizza includes absolutely none of the free barbeque-in-a-bourbon-bottle that we got from the Kroger propaganda machine. But, have you ever been to a barbeque pla...

I've always enjoyed being outside.  Camping was always a cheap way to spend a week of vacation over the summer, or spring or fall break.  Then grownup job life happened.  We've got the grownup bills so I had to get the grownup job.  Said grownup job has some mean hours.  The company tries to give incentive by reimbursing a gym membership, but I found that it doesn't help me much when that job keeps me working too late to get to the gym before they close...  So we started looking for a place in town that we could go to for walks.  I can't run due to a neck injury, and in fact that injury limits just about most physical activity I can do.  So being "fit" stopped being something I could do and I'm just dealing with that new part of life.  I've gained weight, and I'm actually finally starting to "look like" the family I was born into.  Most days, if we had a choice, this is what we'd be doing after a long day at work:   ...