A few weeks ago, Becca blogged about the atmosphere here in HP, TX.  And she’s 100% correct.  People are tired.  Some of me us consider the past 8 months a total waste of time, are tired of hearing complaints about it and would like to thank the Army for screwing with them on this level yet again.  Some people are a bit more settled – they have orders even and can make plans.  Others have had their assignment instructions changed twice already – Fort Campbell to Aberbeen Proving Grounds and now to Fort Lee, VA but at least they appear to finally know where they’re going.  They also know that they get to leave here for somewhere in early June.  And then, of course, there’s the AGR.

I have developed an extremely pissy attitude(okay, pissier attitude) and I’m not afraid to share it.  At this point in time, truthfully, we are 100% not sure about where we will be living six months from now.  We have assignment advice – which is meaningless at this time – sending us to Wichita, Kansas in late September.  It’s better than Harlingen, I’ll grant you, but I’ve been looking for jobs there and it is disheartening.  You know since I am not in school, I need a job.  Not financially but MENTALLY I need a job.  Plus if DiscoverIndies is ever to be a full-on go, I need a little traveling and spending money.  I’m lucky I have a husband who humors my whims in this area.    But the minute I find a job in Wichita, the AGR will send us someplace else.  Wichita also means someone’s going to points east in 2010.  Won’t that be great?  Sure.

Another thing contributing to my pissy attitude is sheer boredom.  We haven’t extended or received any social invitations in a few weeks and I am bored out of my skull.  So I am amusing myself slightly by cooking for the family as though we have actual friends.  Cool huh?  We indulged ourselves in a new gas grill and inaugurated it with a grilled turkey and a grilled ham on Easter Sunday.  The night before, our previous gas grill sealed its fate by having inadequate size to hold three cedar planks for salmon.  Plus it has hot spots and is four years old so it was due for replacement.  Were I a product reviewer, I would tell you that the new grill is phenomenal.  You can even add wood chips of your choice to enhance the flavor.  We used hickory with the turkey and ham and it was phenomenal.  I also highly recommend this as a ham glaze.  Don’t let the “hot pepper” scare you.  It’s not at all hot, just tangy, sweet and delicious.

Did I ever show you these?

Those’d be herbs in pots on the patio and real-live vegetables in containers in my backyard.  The herb pots contain your garden variety assortment of herbs and are doing quite well.  It’s nice to go out back and snip what I need for dinner plus the green breaks up the HP brown.  HP is very, very brown, dusty and windy.  For Sunday’s turkey, I snipped sage, thyme and rosemary.  I know.  Now you’re hungry and no, I don’t care.  If you want to eat my cooking, show up at my house.  It’s pretty simple.  Hell, invite me over!  I’ll cook.  Seriously.  I love cooking.  I even clean up my own messes.

Last a quick update on the 1 bag, 5 dinners thing I promised.  We’re two dinners in.  The shopping list did not fit in 1 bag, but probably would have fit into two and I did have to adjust the recipes and the shopping to feed five or six instead of four as applicable.  The shopping took less than 30 minutes (nice!) and the bill came to about $55.00.  The total was $65 but I had to buy some other stuff so I don’t think that’s too bad.  It doesn’t cover lunches or breakfast though so I’d estimate a weekly grocery bill in the $75 range with those included and closer to $100 per week if you go a little all-in like we have on the weekends.  Cedar plank grilled salmon isn’t cheap but it is totally worth it.

I’m getting really keyed up on being frugal to conserve money for Discover Indies and also to explore whether it is possible to be a frugal grocery shopper without stockpiling.  As an Army family, stockpiling doesn’t make sense because of how often we move and how little storage space military housing typically has.  We have a chest freezer and I do try to use it but we’re already in the stage where we need to start drawing that stash down.  Six months is a long time but some of those big bags of vegetables will take a long time to use up too!  Especially with summer and the welcome anschluss of fresh produce coming.

What suggestions do you have for living frugally without stockpiling?

Stay tuned tomorrow for a totally awesome (long overdue) kids post.