Let me start by saying that I know there are people much worse off than what I am considering "my worst Thanksgiving". I am very lucky to have
most of a roof over my head (I'll get to that in a minute) and to have my two awesome cats, and to have my boyfriend. However, today is really testing my thankfulness.
It started early this morning, like just before 5:00AM when we were awoken by a huge crash. Last night with the snow we got to learn just how horrifying the sounds of a mobile home are in a wet, heavy snow storm. I mean, these sounds cause me to jump every freaking time. It's crazy! I have been in metal roofed indoor riding arenas that are less scary than this. Every time it sounded like the roof was caving in! Well, my fear ended up being justified....back to the pre-5AM crash. I didn't think much of it, other than the fact my heart was racing and I couldn't get back to sleep. He got up and checked the living room and picked up the trash can the poor startled kitties knocked over. As I couldn't sleep I figured I'd check on the kitties. I looked all over the house for them, and when I went to look in the spare bedroom at the other end of the house, boom, there it was. A tree branch sticking through the ceiling about 4ish feet into the room.
Not cool. I tell my boyfriend about it and he starts making phone calls, insurance company, trailer park owner, fire department, roofers. Well, of course it's a holiday so you can't get anyone to come out. The fire department said no as it wasn't an emergency and they had been busy all night. The park owner said no because of the fact the insurance adjuster needed to see it first (which guess who don't work on holidays?). I took a boatload of photographs, inside, outside, in the dark, in the daylight. I want to make sure to document all the damage. I even took a screen shot of his phone trying to call different roofers. Looks like we are stuck for the time being with a tree stabbing our poor house. Fail. On top of that it's above freezing out so now the snow can melt right into our spare room.
I am thankful it was our spare room and no kitties were hurt (other than the trauma of the crash...Hobo is still in hiding more time than he is not, poor baby; I think he was in the room when it came through as that is where his favorite bed is).
The next fun experience of this Thanksgiving was while we were standing outside discussing what to do next. See the pic with the stairs? Yeah, guess where we were standing when we heard the crack of the branch breaking? Yup, right at the bottom of those stairs! Luckily we took a few steps backwards and avoided any injury besides a blast of snow on my poor laptop. (Luckily no damage). Scary. So at this point, I am scared of trees....not good as we are literally surrounded by them. Wish us luck in convincing the park manager to remove them, maybe the insurance company will help us with that part....
I decide that while he is clearing the snow from the driveway, I would participate in what has become my Thanksgiving morning tradition, getting a cup of coffee and the newspaper with all the Black Friday ads. I usually sit and enjoy my coffee while perusing the deals. Nope. I did get the coffee, but the newspapers had not been delivered to the store yet. They were due at 3:30am, it was after 7am when I went to the store. Fail.
I return home and decide to see what online sales were live. I had my cart all ready for Walmart with the items I wanted to order. Of course they had already sold out of the two main items I wanted (an air compressor and a camoflauge hoodie). Fail. Guess I should have gone online when I couldn't sleep at 5am. Maybe I'll get lucky tomorrow and be able to buy in person. I did have success at Best Buy even though I didn't plan on buying anything there, got a great deal on a Kinda HD Fire Tablet, Case, and screen protector. As I spend so much time at work, I decided an inexpensive tablet would be nice to throw in my bag to keep me entertained. Target was also an online success, got the 2 movies, a sweater dress, and the blanket I had wanted. Yay, maybe my day was turning around.
Nope. I start feeling like crap. My neck hurts, dizzy/nauseous, sleepy. My boyfriend decides to stop by his work to see about plowing. I was originally going to go with him but as I felt awful I figured riding around in the plow truck would suck. 3 hours later, he's still not back and I'm thinking I should figure out how to start dinner...so much for a 5:00 dinner time. Oh well, it's just the 2 of us and the cats which is my favorite way to spend the holidays.
I feel a little better so I head back out the store to see if they have the newspaper in. Victory! I grab my copy. I decided to go for the more local paper. Bad choice. They didn't have the one ad I really wanted (Walgreens), and there were like 3 copies of other ads. I'll stick with the Union Leader from now on. I never had that issue. Disappointing.
I started finishing up my Black Friday list. I double check the coupon/rewards policy for Walgreens. There goes my deals. They make you wait to redeem the rewards from buying certain items. Well, I don't wanna! Oh well, if today is any indicator, I'm sure none of my deal scenarios will work as they will be sold out of whatever it is I have on my list.
So yeah, this is my worst Thanksgiving I can remember. And I was really hoping our first Thanksgiving would be a nice, special, fun, together sort of day.
Today is traditionally considered Black Friday, a wondrous day of best price of the year sales. Recently, stores have started their sales as early as Wednesday and most big stores start their sale on Thanksgiving. I am "old fashioned" as far as in store shopping....Friday is the day. I got up at 5:30am to start my shopping spree.
Me being me, I had bookmarked a wonderful site called bfads.net which had leaked ads. I created a spreadsheet of all the deals I was interested in, I collected coupons, I made a "day of" checklist; I was prepared; and boy did it pay off!! Combining sales and coupons I saved $352.41, an average savings of 49% at 8 stores including Walmart and Target. The majority of my purchases were very boring; household supplies at CVS, Rite Aid, and Walgreens. But the savings in that area were massive....an average of 62%, my best transaction was 84% at CVS! Very exciting to watch the numbers drop. We now have a year supply of laundry detergent, plenty of toilet paper, and plenty of paper towels! Luckily my bf was able to finish building the shelf in our laundry room cabinet this morning so I had a place to store all this stuff.
As far as the fun stuff, that was limited this year due to a lack of fundage, but I still managed to get some nice things at an average of 38%. Much of that was purchased online Thursday as many sales went live. The best part was being able to get exactly what I wanted while avoiding crowds and traffic.
