There is a fire in the grate, pushing out heat, the cats are sitting on various horizonal spaces, the dogs are in their spots, Lucky is in the bedroom, Judy is on her loveseat, and Cueball is on his "nest" which is the christmas tree box with cushions and blankets and his Lion blanky. It is cold outside but inside the Britty household everyone is warm and safe and sleeping. And that is how it should be.

Ingredients: one baking chicken, home made almond, sage and onion stuffing. Method: decide on Sunday morning that dinner that night is going to be baked chicken. Remove large roasting hen from freezer, drop it on floor and realize that is the consistency of a hockey puck and think "this is not going to thaw on its own" do breakfast dishes and then fill the sink with cold water and sink chicken (still in its plastic covering) in the water. Leave it alone for several hours. Go back, and poke it, realize that it is thawing at the rate of a glacier a decade. Remove plastic wrap. Smack away cat who has got extremely interested in chicken in sink scenario. Go back several hours later and drain water. Attempt to remove giblet package and realize that the arctic ice floe has nothing on the giblet package inside of the chicken. Poke giblet package with end of a wooden spoon. Wait. Get extremely annoyed at chicken. Run large amounts of hot water into cavity of chicken in an effort to dislodge giblet package, stab with wooden spoon. Wait. Continue to stab with wooden spoon, eventually dislodge giblet package and remove, run water inside of chicken to remove any remaining ice. Leave in sink in water. Go to home office to answer phone. Return to kitchen and attempt to wrestle chicken away from cat who has managed to drag chicken half way out of sink with a claw and a tooth. Go to bathroom and apply bandaids to seriously clawed hands. Return to kitchen and grab chicken from kitteh. Stuff now cleaned and nicely stuffed with water chicken with almond, sage and onion stuffing, attempt lamely to close up openings of chicken with toothpicks. Stuff chicken onto rottisserie thingy and turn on. Remove chicken from rotisserie thingy cause the leg is flapping about like a French footballer and is hitting the red hot thingy. Stab the leg with a turkey stabby thingy to attempt to keep it attached to the chicken. Repeat, repeat, repeat, until every single appendage of the chicken is tied up so tight with embroidery thread (cause no one in the US sells butchers twine for gawds sake) that it looks like a christmas tree. Rotisserie thingy for 60 minutes. Rest for 30 minutes. Carve, serve with mashed potatoes, gravy and mashed carrots. Enjoy.

Our family budget was always tight to begin with, we are no barons after all, however in recent months with all of the new prescription medications that my DH is now on (despite our excellent health insurance) his prescriptions are now costing us upwards of $250.00 a month. This cuts into every other aspect of our lives. Add to this that I resolved to get out of debt as soon as possible (facing an almost insurmountable mountain of medical co-pays and deductibles) I have become serious about cutting back on my grocery bills. While it may be old fashioned and some what passe I have now become an avid coupon user. However, where before one used to have to buy the Sunday newspaper and clip the coupons in the inserts (and as such is a pathetic exercise in my vicinity as there is usually one single insert in my paper and the coupons inside would not save me the cost of the newspaper) with the wonders of the internet we now have coupons.com, smartsource and redplum where you can print coupons online and of course the greatest resource e-bay. There are an enterprising bunch of folks who do nothing but clip coupons for a living. They buy no doubt tons of copies of the paper, then clip all the coupons and offer the cost of their time for sale on e-bay. They do not sell the coupons, they sell the cost of their time and effort. As such I have found it to be an invaluable resource. The trick is to combine your local grocery store's in-store sales with a really good coupon, and to have those coupons in bulk. Case in point, for the princely sum of $1.00 plus 44 cents shipping I bought a lot of 20 coupons for $3.00 off centrum vitamins (the brand my husband takes). Normally a 100 count bottle is $11.99 at my local grocery store (Food Lion), my coupons arrived just in time for an in-store sale where the same 100 count bottles were $6.99, not only that but on several packs (I had to shuffle through all of them on the shelf) there was an on pack coupon for $2.00 off. So in-store savings $5.00, on pack coupon $2.00, my e-bay coupon $3.00, final cost $1.99. I bought four packs (of course checking the expiration dates) thereby not only instantly saving myself $40.00 over the course of the next 400 days (one a day) but getting four packs of the vitamins for less than the cost of one at regular price. Seeing as the latest expiration date I found was October 2011, I shall buy two more packs with my remaining coupons and then give away the coupons I do not use to my neighbor. With my DH's current low fat, low cal etc., diet he eats lean cuisine, weight watchers items for lunch. (More of breakfast later). I got 20 $3.00 off 10 weight watchers smart ones items for $1.00 plus postage off e-bay. This week my store has had the very same smart ones on sale for buy one get one free (in other words instead of $3.78 each they are now $1.89 each so $18.90 for ten) I found one package with a $4.00 off ten coupon on it. So ten x $3.78 = $37.80 became ten x $1.89 = $18.90 (store) savings, which with the $4.00 coupon became $14.90, which with my e-bay coupon became $11.90 or $1.19 each. I defy anyone to buy lunch for $1.19 anywhere. Ditto breakfast. My DH eats a Jimmy Dean d-lites bowl for breakfast every work morning (with a whole wheat bagel). They normally cost me $3.00 each. I got 30 coupons off e-bay for $1.00 plus shipping for .55 cents off each. This week again they were on sale at my grocery store for 2 for $5.00. I bought every one they had in the freezer section which ended up being twenty. So again lets review. 20 x $3.00 = $60.00. With the instore savings that $60.00 goes down to $50.00, with my e-bay coupons (bought for $1.00 remember) that goes down to $39.00 or $1.95 a piece. Again, it is a very cheap breakfast. The joy of e-bay coupon buying is that you can be very specific as to your purchases, you only buy the coupons you need, and generally you will make back your initial purchase price on your first purchase and will have coupons left over to share with neighbors (a nice thing to do). I am saving a boat load of money every time I go to the grocery store and am impressing those in line behind me. On Saturday my bill came to $177.00, (quick tip, do not hand over your store loyalty card until the register has totalled up, it is more satisfying that way) after I handed over my MVP card the total came down by $30+, the guy in line behind me said "that is impressive how much money you saved" the cashier said "you ain't seen nothing yet" as she started to swipe the coupons. Final bill $117.00, and thanks to my last several shopping trips I do not have to buy vitamins for the best part of two years, toilet paper for at least six months, food for DH for at least a month, dog food for a month (dry dog food for two months), laundry detergent for a couple of months. I urge you to go to coupon mom.com (she has valuable links to free online coupons) and e-bay to help out the enterprising folks who have an entire cottage industry of clipping and providing you with coupons. I am eagerly awaiting my next batch, I "purchased" four $10.00 off coupons for Iams cat food. Right now my local store has a sale for $13.99 a 7lb bag. After the mail comes tomorrow I am going to be the proud owner for four bags of Iams cat food at the ridiculously low price of $3.99 a pop. Go see the nice peeps clipping coupons at e-bay. You will be glad you did. Coupon mom reckons she has saved $80,000.00 over the course of the past 16 years. That is alot of money and not only will you be saving yourself a great deal of money, you are helping some enterprising person make a living. It is a win-win situation and cannot be beat. If you don't believe me here is a final example, my DH takes a couple of 12 packs of caffeine free diet coke to school with him each week, they normally cost me about $4.59 each. Today I scored 10 coupons for a free coke 12 pack for the princely sum of $9.00 plus postage. 10 x $4.59 = $45.90, my cost? $9.44. Please try and convince me that it would not be worth your time that would be spent surfing the web anyway. How often can you make $36.00 a minute?

A hole in your heart? The loss of Nelson is affecting me more than I ever thought it would. He was such a constant part of my life, he was there every waking moment, pushing his fuzzy slobbery face into my life every second he existed. I miss him. This may sound strange but I miss his smell, Nelson, not to put too fine a point on it, constantly stank, I mean he was the nastiest smelling cat that I have ever met, you would approach him to give him a kiss and the smell would almost repel you, but he was so precious, he loved unconditionally, he trusted without fear or favor, and he never asked for anything more than to be loved, to be fed, and to be skritched every now and again. He was without a doubt the sorriest excuse for a cat that ever lived but he was my baby, and I adored him. I cannot imagine life without him, I am constantly looking for him now, when I go to the kitchen in the morning, when I am making dinner in the evening, and he is not there. I know he lived 12 years longer than he should have, I know that, but I am utterly devastated that he is gone. I still have his grandma (Lari) and his mum (Alpha) but the loss of Nelson has stabbed my soul like you would not believe. The sad part is I knew it was coming, like I said he was always a sickly cat, I knew he was not going to follow his grandma and his mum into old age, I just was not willing to lose him at 12. It is not fair. Nothing is fair. In a fair world Nelson would still be with me and I would still be screwing up my nose when I leant down to kiss him. It is perhaps our hell when we pile such love into an animal that will never outlive us.

At some point yesterday my darling, one-eyed, slobbery, gentle, charming, dreadlocked boy Nelson went to sleep on the futon in the guest bedroom and decided not to wake up. He was 12. He did not come in for dinner last night which was unusual for him, and then when he was not there on the kitchen counter to greet me this morning (where he always was, mewing and asking for kisses and scritches) I knew something was wrong. I climbed the stairs to the guest room and found him on the futon. I called his name and he didn't move, and then I noticed that there was no steady rise and fall of his chest as he breathed. I stroked his head and he was quite cold, and still and I noticed that his one good eye was open. Tears welled up in my eyes as I watched him but I realized that he had gone quietly, and to be honest probably 11 years later than he should have.

He was always a sickly kitten and grew to be a sickly cat. He did a terrible job of grooming himself, basically just slobbering all over his fur and turning it into matted clumps. I used to have to shave off the clumps on a regular basis to allow fresh fur to grow back but just as soon as the new gleaming black coat would grow Nelson would once again slobber all over it. With only one eye he had depth perception problems so he was continually jumping from one place to another and misjudging the distance. There would be a clattering of objects as he missed his mark and Nelson would wander away cooly as if to say "well whoever did that it certainly wasn't me".

He never met a cupboard he didn't love and I would frequently go to the cupboard where I store my tea bags only to find him fast asleep on the box. If occasionally he found a cupboard occupied by something else he would simply shove it out of the way, which is why I often found cans of soup on my countertop and Nelson self-righteously sleeping in their place.



I have no doubt that across the rainbow bridge where he now resides he has already found the kitchen and is probably sleeping in one of the cupboards.

I will miss him, I am crying as I type this, and no doubt tomorrow morning when he is not there in the kitchen to greet me, I will cry again. I grieve not for him, for his was a wonderful life for a cat, I grieve for me. Good night my scruffy, snuffly boy. I love you.