No purchases today. My next real challenge as far as the Compact goes will be my mom’s birthday, this weekend. I don’t know if I could buy something used for my mom, or anybody for that matter. My preference would be for the two of us to go out to eat or to get a pedicure. I assume that purchasing services is OK under the Compact, although it wouldn’t be too frugal. I’m going to have to put some thought into this. Maybe I can come up with a fun activity that honors the spirit of frugality. Too bad she’s not into the great outdoors. The other problem is finding someone to watch my kids while she and I hang out. My husband remains crazy busy with work. This is where I’ll be tempted to just go on Amazon or use 1-800-Flowers.

Today the kids and I had more adventures in the attic. I am most definitely going to end up on Hoarders someday. I was thinking all the same things that those people say on the show, as I picked things up and put them back down. “Well, there’s nothing wrong with these six decrepid old humidifiers. I just need to disinfect all their various parts and go to six different websites to figure out how to get new filters for them!” And the Christmas gift tags I just bought? All 200 of them? I have another hundred up there, in the form of a million mostly blank sheets with one or two lonely tag islands on each. So apparently I was unknowingly crazy for a long time, but even now that I recognize that I’m crazy, I STILL can’t throw the tags away.

Maybe I will give my mom tags for her birthday. That’s what you call killing two birds with one big crazy stone.

In other news, I tried to make a healthier version of chicken cutlets (baked not fried) for dinner but they came out kind of weird because I couldn’t put the oven up to 450 degrees as the recipe called for because it was smoking at that temp. Yes, the oven is still burning up maple syrup and butter from that ill-fated oozy bread last week. Confession: I have never cleaned my oven. I still remember how weird it would smell when my mom would do it back in the day and that puts me off. Anyway, my older son still liked the chicken, which was nice. As opposed to the beef stew I made last week, which he said looked like cat food (true).