I love coupons

Growing up in the U.S., I loved Sunday mornings. My mom or I would always make something delicious for breakfast. Usually pancakes, waffles, french toast, something like that. Sometimes with bacon. Oh how I love bacon with maple syrup. Aussies, you don’t know what you’re missing! And the Sunday paper was delivered to out paper box, attached to the post of our mailbox across the street.

The Sunday paper was by far the best paper. There was an entire section of comics/cartoons, whatever you want to call them. We called them “the funnies.” My favorite part though, were the ads.

I loved going through brochure after brochure of shiny supermarket, department store, etc. adverts. Over in the U.S., they aren’t just advertising which products are on special, they actually have coupons in them with little dashed lines for you to cut around. I didn’t care if the particular product wasn’t something that I liked myself. It was the hunt that thrilled me. Any coupon I found that any member of my family might possibly like, I would cut out and give to my mom or stick to the fridge.

I still do that when I visit. I still find it extremely entertaining. I still get all fuzzy and excited when I find a really good coupon.

I like it when the ads come in the mail over here too. Except our ads don’t have coupons. They just let us know what’s on special. There is a “No junk mail” sticker stuck to the row of mailboxes at the front of our apartment building. It’s been there since before we moved in.  Needless to say, I no longer get my precious ads in the mailbox. Sigh (and sorry, but I don’t think the ads are “junk!”) Lucky for me Grandma saves hers for me to peruse. If there are a lot of good specials at one supermarket, I’ll go to that one. Sometimes I’ll go to more than one supermarket just to get a bargain. Fine, and because we live in a 2 bedroom apartment and I will go insane if I don’t get out every day. Sometimes twice a day.

But I still like coupons. Even online ones.

If you live in Australia, here is a website that offers free coupons: http://www.couponcodes.com.au/

Or you can get online discounts.

*This was a sponsored post. I have received money in exchange for writing this post. Gotta earn money somehow….

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Copyright 2012 Sheri Thomson

Flashback Friday: Who’s laughing now?

I was about 11 years old. My friend, let’s just call her P (to save her from total embarrassment), was about 9.

We had just eaten lunch. Or dinner. Maybe a snack. I’m not sure, it was a long time ago!

One of us didn’t eat our chicken. Most likely me, since at that stage, I was probably the fussiest, pickiest, most annoying eater on the face of the planet, surviving pretty much only on turkey hot dogs (preferably cold), cheese pizza, macaroni and cheese, breakfast stuff (i.e. pancakes…), and of course, my personal favourite, deserts.  I certainly didn’t eat chicken, unless it was all mushed up and stuffed inside a deep fried nugget and branded by McDonalds.  That kind of “chicken,” I loved.

We went out to the balcony at the back of the house.  No sense in wasting the chicken, might as well give it to the dog.  One of us threw it over the railing.

Plop.

It somehow managed to land in the only bucket full of water in the entire vicinity of the balcony.  It’s not like we were looking where we were throwing, we just threw things and called it good.  Just a little toss off the side and the dog would come a runnin’.

We didn’t even know there was a bucket of water beneath the balcony.  We were not expecting that noise!

Being easily entertained juveniles, we thought the chicken plop noise in the bucket was the funniest thing ever.  We looked at each other in unison, breaking out into uncontrollable laughter while trying to peek over the railing to see the bucketed chicken.

We couldn’t stop laughing.  We stood on the balcony in hysterics for quite a while.

But then P stopped laughing.  She had this look on her face.  This oh-my-gosh-what-just-happened, no-way-I-did-not-just-do-that, horrified sort of look.

I looked down.  She was in a puddle.  Her not-so-awesome-but-were-very-in-style-at-that-time stretch pants now sported a giant wet patch.

I laughed harder.  The fact the chicken going plop in a bucket of water made P laugh so hard she peed her pants was absolutely hysterical to me.

Until I realised that those weren’t her pants at all.  No, she was wearing my pants.  She peed my pants.

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Flashback Friday: 10 years of Aaron and Sheri <3

What?  It’s not Friday?  Yeah, yeah, I know, but tomorrow is Good Friday, so it feels like Friday today.  Plus, today marks 10

Aaron and Me after 1 year together

years since Aaron and I became a couple.  Can’t really write about that tomorrow now could I?

My palms were all clammy.  My armpits were sweating.  I was hot, but cold at the same time.  My hands were shaking like an old lady. I probably looked like I was having some sort of fit.  I wasn’t.  I was just nervous.  I was going to the beach with Lauren, my host sister.  And Aaron.  Other people were going too, but they were in different cars.   I’d only met him briefly, a couple of times before, and I’m pretty sure no words actually escaped my mouth either time.  But I had a crush on him.

As you remember from last week, I wasn’t good with boys.  I’d never had a boyfriend.  I’d only been on one (awful) date in my entire life, and that was over a year before.

We were all sitting on the beach when all of our friends made up lame excuses to bolt, leaving just Aaron and me sitting there, rather awkwardly.  I guess they figured it was time for us to actually speak to each other.  I hope I didn’t smell.  I’m a nervous sweater….

“Look, we have matching scars!”  Aaron exclaimed as he pointed to the scar on his hip and then the one on mine.  He must have been checking me out.  I didn’t even notice his scar before he pointed it out.  Boys….  I could hear my friends giggling from not far away.  I guess Aaron was as bad with girls as I was with boys.  (Now that you’re curious, we have both had bone taken from our hips to put elsewhere, mine to fill the tumor in my leg, Aaron to fuse bone with a titanium plate after breaking his neck only a few months before we met.  Yeah, he’s lucky he can walk and talk.  Thank God for that!).

We somehow, in between all the I-suck-with-the-opposite-sex awkwardness, managed to talk a little.  We established that neither of us had ever had a boyfriend/girlfriend, and were both obviously shy in that department.  I think that’s when people started filtering back to save us from ourselves and my profuse sweating.

The next week, Lauren invited her boyfriend (who was Aaron’s best friend), over to play video games.  “Can you tell him to bring Aaron?”  I asked her shyly as my face turned an embarrassing shade of red.  Never the less, he came.  We didn’t really speak much, but I enjoyed being in his presence, sweating and saying awkward things at the wrong time.

That weekend, my friend had her 17th birthday party.  Somehow, there was alcohol there.  The legal age is 18 here, and I would just like to point out that I was in fact 18 at the time (only just, but that is not the point).

We started playing a drinking game with a deck of cards.  Each card meant something different, one allowing the person who drew it to make a rule that every time someone said a certain word or phrase, someone, a couple of people, or everyone would have to do something.  Anything goes, it was their rule to make.

Aaron and I the night we started going out (when I had to sit on his lap)

Everyone banded together to finally get the two obviously-like-each-other-but-are-painfully-retarded-with-the-opposite-sex people to finally get something going.  It started innocent enough.  Someone made a rule that I had to sit on Aaron’s lap.  I’d had quite a few shots by this point, in our playing-card drinking game, so I was feeling way less shy and much more confident.  I swayed on over and sat on that lovely lap, sweating like a pig (whatever, I know pigs don’t sweat, just roll with it), face bright red.

Then someone made the rule that every time anyone said the word ____ (can’t remember actual word), Aaron would have to kiss me on the cheek.   I, of course, didn’t know if he was doing it only because he had to, or because he actually liked it.  Everyone else could clearly see we liked each other, but as I said, we were both opposite-sex retarded.  Everyone took much pleasure in shouting ___  so I got lots of cheek kisses.

After a while, they upped the ante.  Someone made a rule that we would now have to kiss on the lips whenever anyone said ___.  We started out with the extremely quick, embarrassing, peck then quickly look in the opposite direction.  After a while, the little lip kisses started to linger.  Did I mention that was both of our first kisses?

When the game finished, we sat on the couch.  “Will you go out with me?” Aaron asked.   In our day, that meant being boyfriend/girlfriend.  I said yes of course.  But Aaron was drunk.  Drunker than me by that stage.  What if he didn’t remember asking me out by the next day?  What if I called him the next day or later and he was like ‘WTF?  I’m not going out with you!’  

No problem.  I had a video camera.  And an idea.

“Ask me again.”  I demanded.

I turned on the camera.  He asked me again.

“Why are you recording this?”  He asked, bewildered.

“Now, if you don’t remember tomorrow, I have proof.”

Oh how I wanted to post that footage here, but it’s unfortunately on old school VHS.  I don’t even have a VHS player, much less something to convert it into digital format, so, no video.  Sorry 😦

We somehow got back to Lauren’s house (where I was staying as an exchange student) and spent the rest of the night making out.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

Happy 10 years Aaron, I love you!!!!!!!!!

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There’s paint on my pants

“You’ll regret putting those posters on the wall someday when you have to clean all the blu-tack off and paint the wall!” Grandma told The Jess back in the day when she was a tween, plastering posters of ugly band members on her wall.  And ceiling.

“No I won’t!  I’ll fix it I promise!”

10(ish) years later:

“Um…we need some paint.”

The sales girl with the green fringe looked at us, unimpressed.

“We need some of this colour *holds up paint swatch* and some of this colour, and then this one for the trim.”

Everyone was looking at us.  Maybe we were ordering wrong.  Or maybe it was the fact that we were both wearing cute little sundresses in Bunnings.  Ok, it was probably because we clearly had no idea about painting.

“Do you need acrylic paint?”

“Um….”  Judging by the look The Jess was giving me, she had no idea either.

“Well the trim is shiny, but the walls aren’t.”  We’re so helpful and knowledgable.  “Where do we find painting stuff?”

Quizzical look from Green Fringe.

“Rollers and um…whatever else we’ll need.  Do we use rollers?”

$220 (of The Jess’ money.  It was her room, her walls, her damage, her promise) later, we had everything we needed.

This weekend:

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“You need to put something on the floor to protect it.”

“Grandma, I bought something for it, stop fussing!”

“Have you got all of the rollers and brushes and things you’ll need?”  Grandma means well, but seems to need constant reassurance that you are not going to accidentally kill yourself and/or anyone else/the house/the car/anything really.

“Grandma!  Go away, it’s all under control.”  The Jess was on a mission to prove that contrary to family belief, she is actually an adult.

*Gagging noise (how do you spell that?)* “Ew, this blue tack remover stuff is disgusting.  It’s getting in my mouth!” I said to The Jess.

“Maybe you should stand under it when I spray.” Good point.  But it didn’t remove the icky taste in my mouth.  It was kind of like how your mouth feels after you eat one of those cough drops that make your mouth a little numb.

The painting wasn’t so bad, but cleaning all the walls pretty much sucked.  The Jess sure knows how to ruin walls.  Not that I’m one to talk.  When I was an annoying tween, I put my ribbons (from equestrian events) all over my bedroom walls.  Not

My room growing up. This was before all of the photos on the closet started to overlap. Yeah, I know, I was still in my awkward phase....

with Blu-tack, as would have probably been smarter.  No, I used push pins.  Hundreds of them (I have hundreds of ribbons).  When we first moved into the brand new house (after living in a mobile home, ok, trailer, until I was in 4th grade.  Yes, I am trailer trash), I was specifically told “Don’t put anything on your walls!”  I listened for a while, but the white walls were just so boring.  My room needed a bit of Sheri-fying.  I started slow, one push pin on one side of the wall, another on the other side, a piece of fishing line in between, with some of my best ribbons hung on the line.  This little decoration didn’t get much of a reaction, so I put another line up.  Then another.  Then I found the fishing line arrangement all too hard and started using push pins for each individual ribbon.  It wasn’t long before every square inch of my wall was covered with ribbons (and hundreds or push pin holes).  There was no room left on my walls, so I put all of my photos on my closet doors.  I didn’t have any blu-tack, so I used brace wax (as in, wax that you put in your braces so they don’t cut up your mouth).  It seemed like a good idea at the time, but now that my photos have all been removed from my closet door, it’s not such a pretty sight.  With my closet door and walls completely covered, I started on my bedroom door.  I was a little bit naughty as an annoying teenager and used to take funny stickers off of anything and everything.  Yes, steal them.  My favorite was the “Doo Doo Only” sticker from a dumpster like bin at the fairgrounds that was for, well, doo doo.  My bedroom door became my canvas for my unusual sticker collection.

Ok, that was a bit of a tangent, but point of the story is, like The Jess, I too made that promise to my parents: “Don’t worry, I will fix the walls and doors!”  But now I live in a different country, so 10 years later, they are still waiting.  At least The Jess actually came through on her promise.  Plus her walls weren’t half as bad as mine.

“What kind of paint did you use?”  Grandma was fussing again.

“Um….”  I think we’ve established that The Jess and I really had no idea, we just used what Green Fringe gave us as per our request (“it has to be anti-mold, and washable”).

“The rollers are soaking in turps, if it’s water based paint, you don’t soak them in turps.”  I don’t know how Grandma knows things, but she does.

“Um….”  Jess started looking at the can.

“It’s acrylic.  No, it’s oil based.  No, it’s water based.  I don’t know!”

“It says you can wash unused paint down the drain, does that mean it’s water based?”  Seemed logical to me.

“Ummm…”

“See if you can wash it off your hands easily, if you can, then it’s water based.”  Grandma’s fountain of knowledge poured out again.

“I think it’s water based.  No, it’s oil based.  No, it’s water based.”  Yeah, we’re awesome.

It was water based  But if water based paint can be washed with water, then how can you wash the wall if, say, a cheeky little monkey called Hannah draws on it?  I’m skeptical.

We’re not finished yet (I will post some after photos when we are), we still have to do the ceiling and trim/molding (whatever it’s called), but it’s looking quite nice.  Next time, I will make sure I don’t pull out a wedgie (my butt likes to eat my underwear, what can I say?) when I have paint on my hands, and I will wash paint out of my hair before it dries.  You learn something new every day….