Alright, lest we all forget why we are here...

I signed up for Toys R Us news quite awhile ago, since all nieces and nephews, and now THEIR little ones, seem to be registered at the place! Come a ways since I grew up!

In todays mail, a toys r us baby sale, with 56 coupons, $250, for baby and toys.

Personally, I have little use for $250 in baby coupons. My niece has stopped having them, and my nephew has not yet started; at 16, I hope he waits awhile.

So, while I'm not going to type out ALL the coupons (hey, even Flash gets to take a HOLIDAY!), if you need them, let me know.

Here in the states, tomorrow we celebrate independence day. Ironically, we celebrate independence from one of our closets allies. Unexpected? Perhaps.

Most good things in life, especially on the financial front, come not from great expectations, but from becoming independent from our expectations.

Me...I was expected to die young, from a pulmonary problem. 25 would be old. I was expected to marry a minister, teach piano, and lead a quiet life in a small town. I was expected to be a good wife, a better mother, and an even better daughter.

At all the above, I've failed. Miserably. Beyond miserably, I'm afraid.

I overcame the medical problem when I was 16. Oops.

The other expectations didn't change. I taught piano from age 12, I modeled throughout my teens, I worked as a pianist, as a CNA, all bringing home money to support my family before I was 18. I went to a local college while taking care of my mom and her businesses. Not easy to find a minister to marry, so the family planned for me to attend Oral Roberts university.

Only that didn't happen. Mom had some problems, I continued at a California university, staying at home, working 3 jobs. Caring for Mom and her businesses, being the good daughter. Expected to move out after graduation, get some trivial degree while I found that minister, got married, and got making babies!

Ooops, failed to meet that expectation too. Instead, I fell in love with a laser jock, a rocket scientist headed to grad school, and we were engaged within a week.

FAILURE.

But wait...what I *didn't* expect...



[*]Happily married for 25 years

[*]Ph.D. in medical research

[*]Discovering the cure for a disease

[*]Helping develop the original MRI technology (NMRi)

[*]Becoming a professor

[*]Becoming a senior scientist in an IT company, destined to fail, but which grew to purchase several companies, and be purchased itself by a Fortune 500.

[*]Traveling around the world as an "internationally recognized expert", with my company being paid $4000 a day for my time.

[*]Being whisked and relocated across country, taking a low level technical position, supporting my husbands reassignment.

[*]Rising to become a female SVP in a Fortune 500 company.

[*]Growing from poverty to wealth in 5 years of hard work and focus...while DH and DS fought unexpected cancers.

[*]Being assaulted, and retiring at 40.

[*]leading a Board of Directors for a non-profit organization, that finally succeeded, supporting hundreds of abused children

By my "expectations", total failure.

By my family's "expectations", beyond total failure.

But by going with the flow, and accepting the unexpected as an expected part of life, taking advantage of opportunities as they were presented, and learning to define my success as it comes, I feel okay about myself

Oh, yeah, and a few others seem to believe I'm a success too. Don't disillusion them!

Seriously, the greatest gift you can give yourself in reaching for financial independence, is to become independent of expectations. Go with the flow. You never know where it will take you.

Happy Independence Day!

I spoke briefly with my Mom yesterday, while DH was working on the software issue. She said simply, oh, meant to tell you on your birthday, Dad has lung cancer, will spend the next 6 months in agony before he passes. And I got my hair done...

I actually hung up. I've never done that before. But, Dad was doing better, on the mind, Mom is out of rehab after her broken hip, and I did not expect this devastation tossed carelessly among other trivial news of the day.

I want to be supportive, loving, caring, helpful. But I feel like I'm living through "daddy's dying, who'se got the will?" (okay, so I never saw the movie, but it sounds like it fits).

My Dad has wanted to move into a senior condo, where the door widths allow walkers and the bathrooms accomodate the handicaps that come with age. Mom has a walker now too, with her recovering broken hip. They need full time care.

Yet when I try to intervene, tell them to sell the house and take care of themselves NOW with whatever money they have or receive from the sale, I'm told I'm money hungry, since my sister wants the house. It seems backwards, and yet there it is.

It has been a shocker of a year. DH, coming from wealth and all the family issues that accompany it, has always described the emotions of family finances. Since I grew up poor, there were simply no finances to have emotions over. Or at least fight over, there were plenty of emotions about not having any "stuff" to fight over!

Families and finances are such a tough mix. I love my family to bits. I get letters from my brother reminding me I'm only a half sister, which a year ago was news to me, and all of us! I've always been the one supporting the families financially, we even pay for my sister's internet! We pay for their clothes, their books, their rent when needed. My sister has no heat in her house, which I can't fix, but I sent her fleece robes and thick electric blankets.

Oddly enough, when my DH and I were married, with 400 guests attending, my mother insisted my sister receive a good portion of my gifts for herself. A set of bath towels, which I replaced for her last year. She can buy her own, but she won't. She can pay for her own internet, but she won't.

And so, in the end, it still all comes down to money. And emotions. Everything that ever occurred, or didn't occur, in a lifetime of family ties, somehow becomes entwined in finances, money, inheritence, and painful emotions.

It's been a sad day. Good, in that I have an incredible DH, and loads of friends, but still, such sadness. In a time where I simply want to GRIEVE for my father, instead I am sorting out financial issues of OTHER PEOPLE. It's insane.

It's family finances.

In general, I don't keep an ISO list, since I look for deals of the moment. But, a few things always are on my wish list:

8th continent soy milk
Coffeemate, liquid
yogurt
Activia
Sargento cheese
Sorrento ricotta
produce
Birds Eye frozen
WTs, exp. meat/produce/cheese, no wine purchase

Forms
Rebates, TMFs

Coffee - Seattle Best, Peets, Starbucks, Newman's Own etc.

Lean Cuisine
Healthy Choice
DiGiornio Pizza

Newman's Own products
Ken's salad dressing
Uncle Ben's
Lawry's Marinades
organic

EAS products
Zone bars, not snack packs
Slim Fast, any
Ensure
Boost
Propel
Gatorade
Diet Coke

Biotene
Pantene Restoratives
Aveda
Oral B Advantage cross action
floss

Armstrong Floor cleaner
Pledge dusters
windex microfiber clothes
Brawny and Bounty products
Cottonelle, no SS
Holloway House

Cheerfree
Downy
Bounce
Febreze fabric refresher
Oust spray
Dawn Direct Foam
Dishwasher, gel packs

organic


Almost any good coupons for my train members!

no printables or expires in general; a few exceptions on printables at one store, so ask.

Are you a member of the Kashi Club? If so, today's mail probably brought 5 - 10 $1.50 on ANY Kashi Item, and 1 - 2 FREE PRODUCT Kashi coupons. Mine did! They expire 8/31, and as much as I enjoy Kashi, DH reminds me we are fully stocked...so to the "have list" they will go!

For all of you looking for great organic and natural product coupons, I was going to remind to you to go to