General Snark

You all have heard me wax poetic in the past about Walmart.  And while I don’t want to imply that those feelings are cooling (except I think they totally are), I’ve felt a lot less love in recent months.  

At the end of the day, we shop at Walmart because it’s CHEAP there.  I would love to shop at Smith’s or Safeway or (God bless it) Whole Foods.  That would be my idea of grocery heaven.  Shoot, way back in the day before Reno had a Walmart Supercenter, I used to do all our shopping at Safeway and it was mighty fine.  Shoot, they have a Starbucks right there in the store, complete with a handy cupholder right there on the shopping cart!  I loved shopping at Safeway.  But, the fact of the matter is that we save SO MUCH more money by shopping at Walmart.  And it seems like anymore that saving money isn’t just a jolly whim, but a dire necessesity.  

Now, I’m a firm believer that all Walmarts are not created equal.  Why, just here in the Reno/Sparks area alone, there are four Walmart Supercenters and one of those I try not to ever step foot in unless it’s an absolute emergency.  It’s just too damned crowded.  And the clientele, for lack of a better word, is a touch on the shady side.  (There’s also a regular Walmart that I won’t even look twice at as we drive by.  It’s very existence chills me to the bones.)  My Walmart of choice is located in the neighborhood we used to live in up in Northwest Reno.  It’s maintained fairly well, is kept fairly clean and is fairly well organized.  And, on average, the people there are fairly normal.  You know, for a Walmart. 

There’s also one clear out in the boonies of Sparks and another one waaaaay south of town.  Ironically enough, all three of these Walmarts are located extremely close to all three Kohl’s in town.  Hmm.  Interesting.  Anyhow, I generally try to pick the less ghetto of Walmarts to do my shopping at.  But there is something about the average person who shops at a Walmart.  They have no freakin’ concept of BEING IN SOMEONE’S WAY.  For the record, my husband is rather poor at this too.  He’s frustrating to grocery shop with anyhow, what with the poring over labels and per-unit prices.  But he also leaves his cart right in the middle of the aisle.  And since we each have to have our own cart these days (the joys of three kids), it’s kind of difficult for me to move it for him.  But I try and I make sure that Harry isn’t standing out in the middle of the “traffic path”, picking his lip and staring into space as usual.  Because I wouldn’t want anyone to think I was a selfish douche.  You know, like everyone ELSE that shops at Walmart. 

Honestly, I would love to be able to shop somewhere else.  Shoot, if we had a Super Target here in town I would be there in a HEARTBEAT.  It’s all about saving money though.  And Walmart saves us a LOT of money.  At the end of the day, I just can’t ignore that.  Still, someone needs to remind me to not try going to Walmart on a Sunday afternoon.  Because that’s just asking for it.

I was reading a post over at Lost a Sock yesterday where she talked about how warm she liked to keep their house.  And, I swear to you, my jaw about hit the floor.   There are actually lots of people, apparently, who keep their thermostats at 74 degrees.  Or higher!  I think I would probably burst into spontaneous flame if we had our thermostat set at that for more than about, oh, 30 minutes.  

And I realized that there are people who are just plain intolerant to cold.  Much like I am intolerant to heat.  I hate hate hate being hot.  HATE IT.  I have an actual adverse physical reaction to being too warm.  Seriously!  The worst is getting into a car on a sunny but slightly cool day and it’s already warm in the car from the sun coming through the windows but then they turn the heater on?  ZOMG.  My skin crawls and I feel an overwhelming urge to PANT, I kid you not.  I cannot stand being warm.  Why I don’t just migrate to the Arctic Circle, I have no idea.  

We are misers around these parts and have been long before the current financial crisis ever hit.  I guess it’s just lucky that I like to be on the cool side anyhow.  During the winter, we have our thermostat set to 62 or so during the day.  I bump it up if I need to, like when we get a storm and it’s cooler outside than usual.  Generally, the house keeps it’s heat pretty well since the majority of the windows face the south side of the house and if the sun is shining, that goes a long way to keeping the place warm.  The thermostat goes up to 68 for a couple hours first thing in the morning to warm up the house and then again in the evening.  At night, we set it back to 58.  Because if there’s one thing I hate, it’s when the heater runs while I’m sleeping.  Even unconsciously, while I’m sleeping, I will toss and turn and wake up and sweat.  It’s awful. 

I generally wear my fleecy pajamas, slippers and a cozy robe during the day.  Sometimes I put a blanket on my lap when I’m watching TV.  The little kids too wear fleecy, cozy jammies during the winter months and when we dress for the cold, well, it works in the house too.  We’re not the sorts to wear shorts and t-shirts during the winter months.  If it’s 30 degrees outside, I figure I should be wearing a sweater.  It’s not worth the heating bill just to be able to wear a t-shirt when at home.  

I like it cold when I sleep so I can wear cozy pajamas and snuggle under a down comforter and flannel sheets.  The boys both wear cozy pajamas and snuggle under a pile of covers.  They haven’t complained about it and both have their favorite blankets.  I always make sure Evie is wearing warm pajamas and even then she gets tucked under a double-width fleece blanket.  Her room, like ours, faces the north side of the house so it’s cooler than the rest of the house.  As such, we’ve put a space heater in her room and we ran it last night to great success.  She stayed warm and cozy all night long.  I’ve already mentioned that I like it cool when I sleep and we even have the ceiling fan running on low in our room at night so that things don’t get too stagnant.  

So tell me this: Are we crazy?  I promise, if you ever came to visit we would bump up the heat for you.  But in the meantime, we sure do enjoy the comparatively small heating bills!  What do you keep your thermostat at?  And aren’t electronic thermostats just THE BOMB?  Makes life SO much simpler. 

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In other, completely unrelated news, I have a new review up over on ye olde review blogge.  PBN saw fit enough to send my nine year old a Wii game to review and I think it’s safe to say that he thought it was the coolest thing to ever come in our mail EVER.  What can I say?  The boy likes video games.  So yeah.  Go check it out.

I’m rather lonely. 

If not for my husband and kids, I would be entirely lonely.  So I guess it could be (a lot) worse.  But the fact of the matter is that I don’t have a lot of “girl time” to enjoy.  Well, it’s not the “time” I’m lacking so much as the “girl”.   I have no friends.  Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, guess I’ll go eat worms. 

And I think the longer that I don’t have friends and the more I am holed up here in my home, clacking away on my laptop, the more anti-social I’m becoming.  I have always been shy and introverted, but that never seemed to get in the way of making new friends.  So I don’t think I’m a total loser, you know?  Or at least, I didn’t used to be.  Maybe I am now.  Lah-HOO-ser!!

Ahem. 

I tried and a couple years ago, I thought I had finally hit the jackpot.  I had some friends that lived nearby that I loved to hang out with.  Our families loved to hang out too.  Kile enjoyed them, Harry enjoyed their son, etc and so forth.  It was like the answer to my prayers.  

Then… things went downhill.  I still to this day can’t put my finger on exactly what it was.  Was it me?  Perhaps they didn’t enjoy me as much as I did them.  Which, of course, stings.  It makes you step back and question yourself.  So it’s easy to see why, after a few failures on the social front, that we tend to keep to ourselves more and more.  

It’s safer that way.  Simpler.  Easier.  I love to take shortcuts, especially if they make my life simpler and easier.  And withdrawing from society is so simple and so easy.  And so safe.  If you don’t put yourself out there, you can’t be disappointed.  You can’t get your feelings hurt.  You don’t expose yourself to rejection.  You feel lonely, but if you try hard enough and long enough you can get used to it.  And you can even get to where you don’t even really notice it so much anymore.  Lonely becomes the New Normal.  

Maybe Reno is the problem?  It wasn’t so hard to make friends in college, but since being out on our own, it’s been so much harder.  Are people here just not that friendly?  Would it be easier if we lived somewhere else?  Would another neighborhood be better or would we need an entirely different part of the country?  

Why am I even thinking about this in the first place?? 

Who knows.  I just wonder, from time to time, what my life would be like if I had some good friends to hang out with fairly regularly.  I’m sure Kile would appreciate it, because then I wouldn’t be hassling him to come see “Twilight” with me this weekend.

Aren’t Saturday mornings a wonderful thing?  Sure, they’d be a heck of a lot more wonderful if I had a few minutes strung together where I wasn’t solely in charge of one or more runts, but I’ll take what I can get.  And a lazy morning in my pajamas and watching Harry test out some Wii games (he loves them, of course) is about as good as I can ask for.  I exist on the promise of child-free Saturdays at some point in my future.  Shoot, even a shower would be something.  But… whatever. 

Date night went pretty darned good last night.  The Salmon roast was pretty much the epitome of FABULOUS.  It was stuffed with crab meat and shrimp and OMG.  SO GOOD.  Kile also made PW’s butternut squash puree just to see what it was like and that was like a little taste of heaven, I tell ya.  He also made impromtu dinner rolls out of Pillsbury pizza dough and they turned out REALLY good.  Who knew?  Topped off with some broccoli florets, the dinner was pretty much perfect.  Very rich but very yummy and satisfying.  

After dinner, we cuddled on the couch and watched “Sleepless in Seattle”.  It had been a while since I’d seen that one (in fact, we have it on VHS, if that tells you anything).  We drank some of this icewine we got a couple weeks ago.  There was just enough for a glass for each of us and it wasn’t exactly cheap to begin with.  But OMG, it was so good.  If you ever have a chance to try icewine and like dessert wines (they’re rather sweet), DO IT.  Properly chilled, this stuff is heaven in a glass.  

Sure, getting to leave the house without the kids would be awesome but for now it’s just not going to happen.  Someday.  (”Someday” has become my mantra of sorts lately.)

Speaking of “someday”, I STILL don’t have my thyroid meds.  It’s a long and stupid story but basically my doctor’s office SUCKS.  I tried hunting down an endocrinologist this week but after much rigamarole and being told to call different doctors because of COURSE this one doesn’t take new patients, I found out that in order to make an appointment I need to fax my diagnosis in.  WTF?  What does that even MEAN?  So… I gave up.  Health is entirely overrated, if you ask me.   So my current doctor sucks and I can’t get a new one so I’m not holding out a whole lot of hope for getting my medicine anytime soon.  

THANKS A LOT, MEDICAL ESTABLISHMENT.  Ya’ll are officially on My List.  

(My List is getting rather crowded these days.)

Well shoot.  Just thinking about that whole kerfluffle has made me feel all ornery and now I’m not so much feeling relaxed as I am stabby and angstful.  And now Harry has cheesed me off with another one of his overreactions and he woke up Evie and so my lovely morning has been shattered (yet again).  SIGH.  I have a headache. 

How about you?