Dog tired

I’m exhausted.

Unfortunately, I say things to myself such as, “I’m only 26, I should be full of life and energy!”

And I probably should, except that by saying the above to myself, I’m not taking steps to be vibrant and bouncy and full of energy.

I haven’t pulled an “all-nighter” in years. When I go out with friends and we stay out past 1 a.m., I know the next day is going to be a waste because I’m going to be exhausted. If I stay out until 4 a.m., the next 2 days will be spent recovering.

Not that this prevents me from going out and staying out. But I don’t do it every Friday and Saturday night. Once every few months when the groove strikes.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I need to make a couple of changes to my life here. Anything to keep me from feeling exhausted all the damned time.

None of this is unusual or frightening - as one gets older, one’s needs change. And then your body kind of nudges you a bit here and there when things start getting out of whack.

Ah, but how to implement these changes? Going to bed earlier is much easier said than done -especially when you have multiple factors such as work, the dude upstairs being loud as hell, anxiety, and/or the internet in general having so many shiny things to look at.

“Eating healthy” is another challenge. I do my best to cook a lot of my own food simply because I don’t want to eat all of those preservatives and such. That and I like cooking. I like taking bits and pieces from here and there and Poof! I’ve made something out of nothing. And it’s nice to know that what I’m eating is closer to natural than what I could get out of a box. And it REALLY cuts down on the sodium intake. Not that I’m watching that, but it’s always nice to avoid it.

And that brings me to mention my latest project - saving money at the grocery store. I found a website - thegrocerygame.com - that looks as if it can significantly bring down the cost of groceries. The basic premise is that it gets you to use coupons on items that are already on sale. There’s more to it than that, but I feel the website can explain it better than I can. It takes a few weeks of coupon clipping to really get rolling, but I gave it a go yesterday and did a little shopping.

3 of my items would have cost $15.13 at regular price. But due to sales and then additional coupons, I paid $5.49. Kind of awesome for a first go. This next round should be more interesting.

I should mention the service isn’t free - after the trial period, it’s about $10 for a 6 week subscription (if you subscribe to only one store), so that averages out to $1.25 a week.

Honestly, I’m a little excited about it. I’ll keep posting about it.

Also, I need a spice rack. I have enough spices that keeping them on a shelf is a pain in the ass ‘cause I can’t see what I have.

I would like a wall-mounted spice rack, definitely. But now the question is, do I get a rack that fits all of my odd-shaped bottles, or do I buy one of those nifty racks that comes with a bajillion empty bottles so everybody looks uniform? I’m leaning towards everybody looking uniform, because I can’t think of anything more cluttery-looking than 8 different companies’ labels competing with one another visually above my kitchen sink.

Or I can go real “Harry Potter” with it, get glass bottles, but then all the labels would be in calligraphy and I’d give them the old world names (where possible. I don’t cook with lavender, but one if it’s names was “Eye of Newt.” Mullien, another spice I do not cook with, is also know as “Graveyard Dirt.”) That could be a hella fun project.