she's here

so on wednesday, my due date, i wrote a little prematurely that there was going to be no baby that day. i think i wrote that post about 7 am. and at 1:30 pm, my water broke. at 4 pm i started having contractions. and at 12:30 am on thursday morning, our baby daughter, verity pearl flanders was born. wow. here she is:



we got to the birth center at about 6:30 pm and my midwife lisa gave me some unfortunate news- no i was not as far along as i thought and no, i was not gonna have the baby in the next hour. she suggested we go walk around and get something to eat. so we went and walked through a nice neighborhood close to the birth center. it must have looked hilarious to people to see a very pregnant women having contractions on the sidewalk in front of your house. not to mention all the joggers that passed by us and a nine year old boy on a skateboard who i must have terrified. i mean, i was really having contractions. i threw up in front of someone's house. good thing we don't live in that neighborhood. then we went to food lion to get some snacks. had a few contractions in there. again, must have looked hilarious to people shopping in the store. i felt like i was about to die. but little did i know it was just the beginning.

we got back and a couple hours later, lisa checked me again and said i was complete and whenever i felt like pushing i should push. YES. this was music to my ears. and i felt like pushing. i pushed for about 2 hours. which felt like an extremely long time. with the help of mark, the most encouraging and amazing husband i know, and three excellent midwives, and god's grace and strength, i delivered her at 12:35 am thursday morning without any pain medication or epidural. it was thrilling.

today

so today is a big day. it's our 3 year anniversary. and also, i am due today. although i am pretty sure there is not going to be any baby action today. pearl seems to be taking her time. so we will probably go out to dinner at mama ricotta's to celebrate 3 yrs of marriage and i will order a salad and an entree AND a dessert and people will ask me, "when are you due?" and i'll say, "today," and they'll give me a wide-eyed look like, "wow, shouldn't you be at home in bed waiting for that baby to pop out?" i've been getting that look for the past week. people are so funny. as if being really pregnant means you shouldn't go to parties or to the grocery store.

i will also probably go to harris teeter today. twice. i mean it's super doubles week, and if i miss out today, i might lose my chance.

when i call people (i.e. my mom) i've started opening the conversation with, "hi, don't worry i'm not in labor." last week i called mark at work and he was with a customer but he answered and said, "are you okay?" and i was like, "yeah, i'm fine, you don't have to answer your phone when you're busy, i can leave a message." and he says, "uh, denise, you're 9 months pregnant. i have to answer my phone."

so any day now people, any day.

my husband's quirks

i figured now's as good a time as any for updating you on some of mark's quirks.

whenever he does laundry he sorts like items together even if they don't actually go together. for example, towels. there are bath towels and kitchen towels. he puts them all together, and whichever there are more of, that's where he puts them away. so i frequently find our bath towels and washcloths in one of our kitchen drawers. and i find our kitchen towels in our linen closet with our bath towels. i have learned to be okay with this.

so he also puts all white socks together. mine AND his. everytime i go to my sock drawer and can't find my white socks, i remember, oh right, he puts all the white socks in his drawer. i cannot figure out why he does this.

he is a man of extremes. for example, somewhat recently he decided he wanted to eat healthier. i said, okay, and made some recommendations, such as not eating two bowls of ice cream every day, not ordering chicken alfredo when he's out to lunch, etc. he said, "no, i need something harder than that." so he decided to go vegetarian and went and bought a bunch of vegetables to start making "vegetable smoothies." i consider myself a healthy eater, but his "smoothies" were disgusting. they looked like puke. (by the way, this phase lasted about 2 weeks.)

another extremes example - last night he thought he was starting to get sick, had a stuffy nose, etc. I recommended nyquil. He was like, no, I'll just eat some garlic cloves. So he ate three garlic cloves. PLAIN. that was his remedy.

he surprised me the other day though at his attention to detail in one case. i recently ran out of my usual shampoo, and bought a different kind (pantene pro-v) that i used to buy all the time. literally, the first day i used it, he says to me, "did you change shampoos? you're hair smells like what it used to smell like when you lived at the fountain." and yes, he was correct. after one day of the shampoo he could remember that the last time he smelled it was FOUR years ago.

how to shop at CVS

so i have gotten completely sucked in to the world of saving money. maybe i have been influenced by my money-saving husband. i'll let you know when i come up with my own business idea; then i'll REALLY be mark flanders' wife.

anyway, i want to tell you how to shop at CVS because some of you have expressed interest. basically, you can shop at CVS for all of your household items and toiletries and get most of them for FREE or extremely discounted.

here's how it works:

CVS has a loyalty card, like a VIC card at Harris Teeter. It's called an Extra Care card. Go into CVS and get one. You have to scan your EC card when you shop.

Every week CVS puts various items on sale and offers Extra Care Bucks (ECB) back when you buy them. for example, this week, Oral B toothbrushes are on sale for $4 and when you buy one, you get $4 in ECB. This is basically store credit that prints out at the bottom of your receipt. You can then use the ECB to buy whatever you want, even another Oral B toothbrush to get you more ECB.

So you walk into CVS, pay $4 for a toothbrush. Get a receipt for 4 ECB. Walk back and get another toothbrush, use your 4 ECB to pay for it and then ANOTHER 4 ECB will print out at the bottom of your receipt.

So the idea is to combine coupons and ECBS to make things free.

Here is what my trip to CVS this week looked like:

I started with 7 ECB from the previous week.
Transaction #1
I bought:
(1) Oral B Cross Action toothbrush $4
(2) Pantene Shampoo and Conditioner $3.49 ea
Coupons I used:
-.75/1 Oral B Cross Action PG 2/21
-$3/2 Pantene Products PG 3/07
-$7 ECB
Total Due: $1.21
Get Back $6 ECB ($4 from Oral B, $2 from Pantene)

Transaction #2
I bought:
(1) Gillette Fusion Razor $8.99
(1) Tide Detergent $5.97
(1) Tide Stain Release $3.99
Coupons I used:
-$4 off Gillette PG 2/07
-$1 off Tide PG 2/07
- $3.99 (free Tide stain release when you buy Tide detergent)
-$6 ECB
Total Due: $3.96
Get Back: $5 ECB ($4 from razor, $1 from Tide)

Transaction #3:
I bought:
(2) Pantene shampoo and Conditioner $3.49 ea
(1) Dawn dish soap $0.99
Coupons I used:
-$3/2 Pantene Products PG 3/07
-$5 ECB
Total Due: $0.56
Get Back: $2 ECB (from Pantene)

After tax the amount I spent was about $6.50 and I ended up w/ 2 ECBs to use next week.
Value of the items: $37.92
That is about 80% off.

AND here's the really good part: I am still learning how to do this, so it will get even better. I want to get to the point where I don't pay for anything. I am learning how to do this through Jenny, the lady who writes www.southernsavers.com and she notes on her website that in the Spring 2008, her Current CVS savings was – $757.89. Total spent in cash for Spring 2008 - $15.68. I mean, are you kidding me?

Go to her CVS-ing guide here: http://www.southernsavers.com/getting-started-guides/how-to-cvs/.

get your groceries 70% off

here's how:

super double coupons at harris teeter. they are my new favorite thing/addiction. normally ht doubles coupons up to .99 but this week, during "super doubles" they double coupons up to 1.98. Thus, if you have a coupon for 1.98 off of something, you actually have a coupon for 3.96 off of something. i know.

let me share what i walked away from harris teeter with on wednesday:

soft scrub cleaner (free)

soft scrub extra strength cleaner (.99)

2 cans planters mixed nuts (2.50 ea)

quaker oats (.45)

smart start cereal (.09)

2 glade plug-ins (both free)

diced tomatoes 28oz (.99)

suave lotion (1.14)

2 suave deodorants (both free)

italian sausage (2.95)

4 bunches of asparagus (2.50 total)

3 bell peppers (1.25 total)

bag of spinach (1.99)

16oz mushrooms (1.49)

whole grain bread (1.85)

borden cheese singles (.19)

6 dannon yogurts (.33 each)

2 johnsonville summer sausage (1.27 each)

the retail value of all of this was $96.28. and i paid....drumroll please...$25.96. if you have not taken up coupon-ing, please, i beg you- join me. (see www.southernsavers.com for how to do it.)

later on in the week i also got these items completely FREE: aquafresh toothpaste, 2 wholy guacamoles, 16oz sour cream and 2 bottles hot sauce. and 3 lbs of ground chicken for 50 cents.

EVOO for 50 cents

yesterday i bought this bottle of extra virgin olive oil at harris teeter for fifty cents. i thought i'd share how, so you can do it too. it is regularly $7.15 at harris teeter, but this week it was the e-vic item. (e-vic is a weekly email from HT telling you what the basically secret item is that's on sale for e-vic members. it's not advertised in the store. if you're not signed up, go to harristeeter.com and sign up.) so for e-vic members it's on sale for $1.99 this week. sunday's paper had a red plum coupon insert w/ a coupon for 75 cents off. HT doubles coupons, so whala- grand total was 51 cents exactly.

the e-vic sale ends today though, so you'd have to go today to get the deal. also, if you're not signed up for e-vic, once you sign up, you won't get the e-vic discount until next week's item.

thanks to my dear friend amy savage who introduced me to the new world of "coupon-ing." :-)

24 weeks

some updates. every time i tell someone i am 20-something weeks along, they say, "oh, you must be feeling great then! this is like the honeymoon period of pregnancy." false. that is not exactly how i'd describe it. basically the only thing i'm comfortable in is stretch pants and a sweatshirt. so i pretty much wear yoga pants and a hoodie whenever i'm not at work. i'm hungry all the time, so i carry various snacks with me at all times (grapefruit, almonds, yogurt). but i'm kind of going back to being nauseated by some things again. last night we had fajitas and half way through, i had to give mine to mark and eat cereal for dinner before i lost it. i'm pretty tired a lot of the time. and i have trouble concentrating on people talking to me for long periods of time. i can normally carry on a several-hour long conversation, but lately, i start to zone out after someone's been talking to me for like fifteen minutes. it's not that i don't want to pay attention to what they're saying, i just can't. mark probably appreciates this actually because he doesn't have to talk as much for me to be satisfied :-)

to report some funny things he's said lately:

mark: what are we doing for the superbowl?

me: going to brian and lauren's party, remember?

mark: oh yeah, when is it? saturday?

me: nope. it's sunday, just like all the other superbowls for the last fifty years

mark: please don't tell anyone i said that. 

mark: are we eating lunch with them?

me: yeah, i'm pretty sure we are

mark: well, should we prepare for the ulterior?

me: do you mean 'alternative'?

(this is actually from a while ago, but i laugh about it almost every day)

mark: (coldplay's viva la vida comes on the radio) i love this song. i just wish i knew what it was about.

aaron ohare: oh, it's about this guy who used to be like a king or someone really important, but then he lost everything. and now he's saying he sweeping the streets he used to own. 

mark: oh, cool. did you read about that online or something?

aaron: no, i just listened to the lyrics.