Just a 47-year-old mom of 2 in Northern California. My kids are Monkey Monkey(MM) and Drama Llama (DL). I am married to Monkey Hubby (MH). January 10
$4 Taco Bell Lunch
Dinner: leftovers
My go-to lunch in a pinch is generally in the $2 range, ordering off the dollar menus. (Is what I would order regardless).
Soda/treats are fine, but generally relegated to the grocery store (where the cost is significantly less). In this case, I ran out of soda (more bad planning) and so I just got some soda when I ran out for lunch. I did remember to ask for no ice. The hard part is remembering. The worst is paying $2 for a bucket of ice and a wee bit of a soda. 
I also only generally order soda from Taco Bell because their small sizes are actually small. In this case, I chose Taco Bell because it's the only place I know to get any decent food near my work. Most everywhere else has shut down (or should). I am sure there are hundreds of eateries, but the very few I frequent are all terrible and have generally gone out of business. I just use this as extra motivation not to eat out.
MH and I did a late night out last night. I remember doing this once before without a babysitter (probably even later at night) and DL(12) was kind of sad about it. It must have been more than 18 months ago, because I can't imagine doing that once he had his depression/anxiety issues last school year. Anyway, we told the kids we'd be home by 10:30 probably, and that they'd have to put themselves to bed. I think MM was very *shrugs* about this last time, and he is a "falls asleep when his head hits the pillow" type, so he was snoring by the time we got home at 10pm. DL was reading in bed, but was very *shrugs* about the whole thing. I suppose we are getting to a space where we can more seriously go out on a school night and whoop it up. Woohoo! For us, would be very rare. I am not a night owl at all.
We went to a special movie screening. We had planned to pay full price. The movie pass was not supposed to apply to this showing, but in the end they took it! I then thought we were going to pay $12.50 (for my ticket). I hadn't realized MH used up the movie gift card (for my ticket). So less spending than I thought. They were advertising all the classic movie special events they do and so on. I told MH, "We should go to some of those, if your ticket is free." He agreed.
January 10, Night Out
January 11th, 2018 at 02:20 pm
January 11th, 2018 at 04:00 pm 1515686437
You spoke so well about some eating places that either closed or should be. One restaurant here in town which is a franchise had a low health department score a couple of weeks ago that it was closed. I don't know how they fixed things to open up within 24 hours, but I know I won't be going there. Some friends wanted to go there last May and I was totally underwhelmed with the food. Apparently things had gotten worse since then. Some states make the restaurants post the health department scores at the front. Wish ours did. We have to wait until it is published in a weekly local paper. It used to be online with the health department, but they discontinued that, unfortunately.
January 11th, 2018 at 05:21 pm 1515691317
I wondered if you've [or MH] have seen 'The Post.' I'd like to see a critique. Since DH is a movie fan, would he offer any comments on recently viewed?
January 12th, 2018 at 12:21 am 1515716464
January 12th, 2018 at 04:06 am 1515730010
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January 12th, 2018 at 05:24 am 1515734670
January 15th, 2018 at 04:20 am 1515990008