Sunday total

I feel like I have a rather grim total for this week: $108.45. Ouch. The worst part is, it's all from one receipt (Safeway) and at the bottom it says, "Items = 23". How is it possible to spend that much money on 23 food items?! It doesn't seem like much, but several of them were quite expensive: cheeses (ricotta, mozzarella, and parmesan) for the lasagna. Apples. Organic apple juice. I also bought lots of butter (and more today for the upcoming week's groceries; I count Sunday-Saturday, rather than Monday-Sunday) because of the cookie give-away at work. At $4/lb., it's quite pricey. If I spring for the organic stuff (which I sometimes do) it's over $5/lb. Oh food, why do you have to be so expensive?
Shane and I ran quite a few errands today, most of them for Christmas shopping. We got each other's gifts, and since we're terrible at keeping secrets from each other we gave them early. I got Shane some stuff from the Comic Shop (don't ask, I'm ashamed :) and he and a few friends pitched in together to get me a Nook! I'm very much looking forward to filling it with books, because I know there are a lot of free ones out there. Pretty much any book which is old enough to have had the copyright lapse, for instance, can be found for free. So many, many classics will be downloaded and read by me. I can also use ListenAlaska on it, which is the Alaska state library program for ebooks. I'm so excited! I know there are some good ones out there. When asked for our input about what books to request and order for it, I suggested books about gardening in Alaska. They had a couple of books about gardening, but none for Alaska specifically and as I've already found out, gardening advice that's geared toward the lower 48 doesn't really work here.
I should also be able to find plenty of novels, which will be fantastic. Some books I want to own just because I know I'll read them over and over (I'm re-reading "Little Women" for at least the 4th time right now) or loan to friends, but some I know I'll just read once and be done with them. Those would be best to borrow and read on my Nook.
Reading "Little Women" is making me want to knit socks. In nearly every chapter there's a reference to the girls knitting socks, either for themselves or for the war effort. And I could use some new socks.... That's a task for over the Christmas break, however. I'm too darn busy until then, and I'm very behind on my reading.
As for gardening, I spoke with L the other day about pitching in together to order seeds. She tried to grow peas this year but it turned out the variety she got was merely ornamental. So the moose had a lovely snack, but the people got nothing. Since I've already identified two varieties of heritage peas I wanted to try out ("Alaska" and "Early Frosty"), and I know they come in packs of at least 100 seeds, I asked if she'd want to split it with me. We'll see if we can get some more people to pitch in. For home use, we don't need nearly that many seeds!
Since it's nearly the turning of the year, I'm once again starting to get excited for gardening. I'm planning where I want to put things in the yard and I have my whole huge list of seeds to order. This year will hopefully be a big year for gardening for me. If I get all of the varieties of seeds I've identified, it would be over $100! (At $1.25-$2.00 per packet of seeds.) So you can see why I'm anxious to get others to pitch in. I've got everything from lettuces and spinach to peas, beans, and squashes. I'll have potatoes, of course. Now the only thing left to do is to figure out where everything will go, although I have a few ideas. This year I'm going to start prepping the garden space while the snow is still melting, when it's rather softer because of all the wet. Hopefully that will save me a bunch of backbreaking weeding later in the summer!
Anyway, the other gift we handed out today was to J&L. We got them a couple of gift certificates, one to SilverGulch for dinner and the other to the movie theater along with an offer to babysit so that they can spend some quality time together. So much better than more Stuff, don't you think? L was very excited. They were supposed to go on a date this past week, but J got caught up in a project and it never happened. Now she has leverage to drag him out of the house, which will be just as good for him as it is for her. :)