Oh, My Aching Back!

So the P90X has been on hold this week. I don't know what the hell I did to my back, but it's been hurting like a sonuvabitch. It's my lower back, right where my spine meets my pelvis. I haven't even been able to go get it checked out because we don't have health insurance right now. I've been shopping around, but we just can't afford it right now, even with all the cash I've been saving on groceries lately (another receipt coming soon - just haven't taken a pic of it yet).

My MIL, Nurse Mommy, has apparently been having similar issues. She, however, has been able to see a chiropractor about it. She's instructed me to put ice on it and do stretches. The stretch she recommended:

Sit in one chair with one leg propped on another chair of equal height, leg stretched out in front of you. Lean over as far as you can and hold it for 10 seconds. Repeat for other leg.

It's starting to feel better, but I don't want to push it. I've just been able to stop taking the anti-inflammatories that the Bastard had gotten for his knee back before my layoff in the days of health insurance. He was prescribed 60 pills. I think he took 1.

I also suspect I have the flu. It's been going around my office and everyone looked pretty green at the department meeting. I left right after to work from home, feeling green myself.

This week = FAIL.

Grocery Shopping - Ur Doin it Right!

Dude. It is amazing how much money you can save if you actually use coupons and look at the circular ads before you shop. I almost cut this bill in half! Granted, we didn't have to buy much this week, but that's mostly due to the fact that I was able to buy two 3-lb bags of frozen chicken tenderloins for $1.69/lb last week!

I have a Kroger card, so I get coupons in the mail from them, plus I use online coupons from Shortcuts.com and Cellfire.com. I've also used a few on Kroger's website, but their selection of online coupons has really sucked lately. I've also printed coupons off of Coupons.com which usually has a pretty good selection.

Anyone looking to save money on groceries, though, should check out the circulars first and foremost. Check the store's website - Kroger, for example, has their weekly specials online. If you look at that first and plan your weekly menu around what you already have and can buy on sale, I guarantee you'll save money. That's how I found that chicken on sale - I checked the ad!

So I weighed myself this morning...

We've been slackers. I will admit this. We haven't done more than a couple DVDs per week for the last month. We have, however, been watching our diet. Maybe not exactly as Tony Horton suggests, but we have been watching fat and calories, and using the deep-fryer a LOT less. I've also been checking the nutritional information on the back of my frozen meals that I take to work for lunch, which is something I never used to do. My lunch shopping strategy relied solely on the price tag. While I still take that into account, it's no longer the only factor.

So what was the result? 141, baby!! And I've even had a few Girl Scout cookies in the past month! This brings the weight loss from (our half-assed attempt at) P90X to 7 lbs, and total weight loss overall since we started working out to 14 lbs! I can feel it, too. My pants fit better and my tummy looks better in tighter shirts.

Still more work to be done, though. I'm not quite to the bikini tummy. But I am getting close, and I'm damn proud of it.

Product Review Time! Tilex Mold & Mildew

Yeah, I know, this is totally unlike me to post product reviews, but I hatehateHATE cleaning the bathroom. This just happened to be my mission for the day.

I'm a lazy bitch. I will admit this freely. I do not clean as much as I should. In fact, the Bastard is the one who does most of the cleaning in the house. However, stuff like laundry and bathroom shit usually falls to me. I'm ok with this, because he's a bit of a freak when it comes to dusting and kitchen cleanliness, and if there are 2 things I hate worse than cleaning the bathroom, it's dusting and cleaning the kitchen. Don't know why, it's just how I am.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand. I've decided to start doing a product review thing every know and then because I don't fall in love with products very often. My friend, the SuperJew just happened to recommend this one, so big props to her. She had told me that, upon moving into a house with her previous roommate, she found her bathroom to be a total disgusting mess. So she decided to try Tilex Mold & Mildew, as that's what she needed to get rid of the most.

And it worked. Beautifully.

So one day when I was over at her new (roommate-free) apartment, she relayed this story to me. So, I picked up a bottle on our next grocery trip, and there it sat, unused for quite a while under the bathroom sink. Today, I went to finally clean the bathroom and, upon removing the corner basket from the tub, found a mildewy mess. ICK.

I did exactly what SuperJew told me to do: I sprayed down the corner (probably more than I needed to) and left the room, making sure to turn on the fan. OMG, the fumes are horrendous! I changed the sheets on the bed, threw a load of laundry in the washer, and by the time I returned to the bathroom, the corner was almost completely bare! It was awesome! Despite what SuperJew had told me, I thought that there would at least be some scrubbing, but no, I just had to wipe down the corner and rinse it off!

I immediately wrote a letter to Tilex. Seriously. I really hardly ever do this, but it seemed like the thing to do at the time. The Tilex people will probably think I'm a psychopath getting all excited about fucking mildew remover, but I was just so excited about not having to scrub my bathtub!

So thank you, SuperJew, for the recommendation! And just in case you were wondering, no, Tilex is not paying me anything. I have probably the least-read blog in history. However, if they do want to pay me for endorsing them, they're more than welcome to!

~The RedHead