I've been way too loose with the pocketbook so far this month, especially considering I have some large bills coming up (medical expenses.) Fast food, junkfood, Trader Joe's, Goodwill, WalMart, Family Dollar .... Over the course of the past few days I've spent at least $150. Ugh.

Trader Joe's, GoodWill and Walmart are at least shopping trips which were mostly necessary. I think part of what spurred the fast food visits was being really tired of what I had in my house (and my pantry was starting to get pretty empty ..) So I bought some ready made dishes at Trader Joe's, and a few at Walmart. Hopefully that'll curb my inclination to get something out instead of from home.

At Walmart they were having a big clearance sale on all sorts of stuff - an asst manager was there and if there was something you wanted, you made an offer and if he ok'd it, you got it. I bought an ice scraper (more heavy duty than my other one) for .50, a long handled snow brush for $1 (something I'd really wished I had this winter a number of times), and a mandolin for $13 (had a $50 one on my Amazon wishlist for at least 6 months ...) They didn't have a potato masher (something I've been looking for, but not wanting to pay $8 for!)

I also bought a few things for something that the bus company I work for does in partnership with the local women's shelter - called "Stuff the Bus" - about $8 worth of items (paper towels, hairbrushes, etc)

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Wonder of wonders, my brother actually called me today! (We'd set up a time for him to call Saturday night ... which of course didn't happen.) He's talked to mom and told her about our plans, and also told her that he'd try to get the 3 of us on the phone either Monday or Wednesday night. He's also said he has another weekend free - one in June - so I told him I'd really prefer the June weekend over the May one.

So ... we'll see ... Is this really going to happen? At least there's some movement forward - and now mom knows ... (Of course she called me after talking to him and never let on that he'd told her - she was going on and on about wanting the 3 of us to get together sometime, and I was being all non-committal. The turkette!)

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So much for my weight loss ... along with the spendiness the last week or so, there's also been a lot of junkfood consumption. 3 lbs found their way back. Sigh.

So my goal is for the remainder of April - no more fast food purchases and only 1 serving size worth of candy/junk on a regularly scheduled grocery trip.

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I did get in 3 exercise sessions this week. 2 x walking on the track at the gym (today I actually did a bit of walk/jogging) and a 4 mile walk with some ladies from church yesterday.

The indoor lap app I'd found was worthless. (tried it today) So hopefully I can find another app I used to use on my other phone - it won't count laps, but it does the timing thing (run 30 seconds, walk 90 seconds, etc.) and estimates distance. (I think it was called iTreadmill)

On that walk one of the ladies who runs Women's Ministries and knows I've been a librarian, asked me if I'd be interested in being the Women's Ministries librarian. I told her that sounded like something I'd be interested in doing.

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Oh, at Goodwill I bought 4 t-shirts. With exercising at the gym, I realized I needed some oversized short-sleeved t-shirts to work out in. Spent $7.47 on the 4 shirts ($3.99 for one, then $1 each for the others.)

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Got $25 PP from Swagbucks today.