A Brisket, A Basket

This morning began about 4 a.m. with Timmy insistently “mmfff, meow, mmrfff” in my ear, walking up and down my body, and occasionally leaping on me as if I’m a trampoline. He’s become a bit of an annoyance since Hannah Joy died and he took over as Lord of the Bed.

A year or so ago EJ bought a device to automatically turn on a lamp at the thrift store. We set it up so it turns on a lamp in the living room just before 4 a.m. when EJ gets up to get ready for work; I always get up with him and usually go back to bed for a bit more sleep when he leaves. The automatic light is handy because we don’t have to stumble sleepily in the dark, with a risk of tripping over cats, to turn on a light. I think Timmy has learned that I feed him (and the other cats) when the light turns on so he starts nagging me to get up. It’s fine(ish) on the days EJ has to go to work, but on his days off we want to sleep in and Timmy’s insistence that I get up is annoying. This morning after his 4 a.m. antics, I stumbled out of bed and he and Clara (who doesn’t nag) immediately ran for the door. As soon as they were out, I shut the door and went back to bed for another hour.

After I won the trust of Harvey, the feral cat we adopted last November, EJ started feeding the outside cats on his days off to befriend him as well. It’s been slow because Harvey is very skittish. But this morning EJ had great success: For the first time Harvey let him give him lots of lovings. With the weather warmer (sort of), we’ve opened the pet door and Harvey has been going outside–and back into the garage.

A month ago, after discussing the pros and cons of Sam’s Club vs Costco, we bought a membership in the former. Costco is actually much closer and more convenient to get to, but Sam’s Club had the edge because it has brisket. We had been buying brisket at Meijers, but we haven’t been able to find it there for several months. Why do we buy brisket? Probably not for the reason you are thinking. Years ago, I started noticing that the fat left in the pan after frying ground beef had become a pukey green-yellow color rather than the normal color it has always been before. I don’t know why it wasn’t the normal color. It was a sickly color and turned my stomach. So a few years ago, we decided to buy brisket so EJ could grind it into ground beef himself. He also renders the fat into tallow, which we use for cooking. Tallow is healthier than cooking oils. When EJ told his young co-worker from Louisiana what we did, his face turned white with horror because brisket is a delicacy especially in the south. But the meat makes a good ground beef, is cheaper than ground beef, and the fat is the right color.

When we told a friend we had bought a membership, he said (with a note of disapproval), “I hate big box stores. Too many people and too easy to overspend.” He likes Dollar General, which we hate so…shrug. We agree that the big stores can be very people-y but everyone has different preferences and needs and we never shopped there until we needed a source for brisket. Overspending is not a problem for us because we keep pretty closely to our tight budget–and we are finding that many items are actually cheaper there. Because gas is expensive right now and Sam’s Club is far enough away to be inconvenient, we decided to only go once a month–on the first paycheck of each month because we have fewer bills that week and a little more money to spend.

FYI: We’d LOVE to buy grass-fed beef and produce from local farmers, but right now we can’t afford it. Maybe some day…until then, we do the best we can with what we can do. As EJ often says: A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow.

Today was Sam’s Club Shopping Day. Also, we had other stores we had to stop at which were just a few miles from Sam’s. We did our morning chores and left home before 8 a.m. We ended up having to go far out of our way because some of the roads had been washed out during April’s flooding and were closed. But the drive was scenic and we enjoyed it, even though we weren’t actually conserving gas.

We spent about 5 minutes at Menards getting camper tape for EJ to use when he puts the topper back on the truck. We love browsing through home improvement stores, just for fun, but we focused: In and out was our goal. Then we spent about 5 minutes buying yarn at Michaels. We’ve only shopped there a couple times–I really miss Joanne Fabrics, which was my favorite craft store and much closer to home, but it went out of business in town a few years ago. I was tempted to browse through the store, but we focused: In and out was our goal.

Then on to Sam’s Club. We decided to use the “Scan and Go” feature on our phone app, which allows us to scan the items in our cart ourselves and to pay without ever having to go through the checkout line. Last night we watched a You Tube video on how to do it so we wouldn’t look like we had only been to Sam’s once before and had never used Scan and Go. It was easy, although we must have looked like we were new at it because the woman from Customer Service who had helped us buy our Membership during our first visit to the store (we had her cracking up with laughter at the time) came over to ask us if we were ok. She helped us with our final steps–and then we were done.

Our final stop was back at our usual Meijers. We picked up fresh produce and pizza supplies there. Those items are better than at Sam’s Club. After we finished shopping at Meijers and were back at the truck, EJ put the bags of groceries around and on me because there was no room in the back seat, which was filled with Sam’s Club items–along with the spare tire, which is usually in the bed of the truck but we don’t yet have the topper on the truck.

When we finally got home, we unloaded the truck and put everything away. We were exhausted so we had a quick lunch of crackers/peanut butter and yogurt/blueberries and then we took naps. When I woke up I looked out the window and saw Richard VI, our rooster, was outside the fence so we hurried out to encourage him to go back inside. I went around the outside of the fence one way and EJ the other. I herded Richard toward EJ and he held the gate open for the rooster to go through. This is the third time in the last couple of weeks that Richard has gone AWOL. We aren’t sure how he’s getting out.