Tuesday, December 30, 2014

Online grocery shopping...and not to be posh about it...

In my quest to optimize and efficientize my life in anticipation of doing it all I have discovered instacart.  While I will admit that I did secretly mock a girlfriend of mine years ago who used delivery groceries I will defend , slightly, my mean girlness.  She and her husband had two cars, lived less than 5 miles from work and the grocery store was within said space, they had no children and her husband was allowed to grocery shopping by himself. We have one car which I use to commute 40 miles each way to my job and although we also have no children, my husband is not allowed to shop unattended for more than say 5 items. He's a dear but give a weeks worth of shopping and he comes back with corn dogs, cookies, chips and dip, and gosh knows what else that was not on the list. That is not budget or tummy friendly.  
I digress, I have discovered delivered groceries and I think I am hooked.  Mind you it isn't one store, it is whole foods and Costco and the local co-op. This would be the majority of my Sunday and if you've been to Costco on a Sunday you understand my struggle.  So yes today while eating my lunch at work I shopped the app on my phone, bulk items, produce, you name it and choose the time of delivery. I was able to save money mostly because I loaded up my cart with 'ooo this' items and was able to edit it down where as if I was at the store I would have been like ugh I'm not going to put this or that back, its like 5 aisles away and I don't put things randomly on shelves, I hate those people.  This will also save me the sticker shock of me thinking I totally spent $50 max and getting to the register and feeling like an idiot when it's $90.  I will also admit I don't know all the exotic fruits and veggies and I feel more confident looking it up while online shopping...how to cut it, how to cook it, what is ripe?- on my phone than I do being one of those people who stand on the middle of the aisle on the phones. 
I am hoping this saves money, saves time, and saves wasted food.  I envision that in the future I will shopping online while the dog lays in the sun in the yard, I sip a cup of tea while a baby naps upstairs and I order my groceries online to be delivered and put away before the hypothetical baby awakes...Sounds glorious no?

Monday, December 29, 2014

and we begin again

A year and a half ago-roughly- my husband and I sold our house and moved cross country (again) so that he could enter back into the life of grad student.  An MBA called.  This was all well and good as we had no children, I had a supposedly transportable career, and our dogs had already done one cross country move.
So a year and a half into the MBA, with graduation on the horizon I find myself at a pivotal point in my life.  I feel as if I am staring down 30 like a barrel of a gun (hyperbole? yes.), I too have been accepted to business school two weeks after my husband and I have decided children wouldn't be terrible thing to happen at this point in our lives.  While these are all 'first-world' type problems, thinking of starting a family while in the midst of four years of student income living seems daunting but not impossible.
I still find it offensive when people are like 'well you can't have it all!'  Why not?  Why can't I clean my own house, bake my own bread, raise my own children, volunteer for causes I am passionate about and earn a portion of the household income?  I may be too naive to think I'm the one that will do it all but I wouldn't be me if I didn't try.
I hope to record my path here.  Whether anyone learns from it or it is just a sense of therapy this is how I want to track my voyage with possibly terrible grammar-no judgement.