My surgery this morning went really well. I'm not in any pain and its been six hours since I took pain meds, so yay! I like this minimally invasive stuff soooooo much better than the "gut you like a fish and then staplegun you shut" type of surgery.

I can't drive until tomorrow but I should be able to resume most normal activities by Sunday, like cooking, dishes, laundry, and even pulling weeds if I get motivated. But only easy to pull weeds. Anything tougher than a dandelion can stay in, like burdock root. No lawn mowing or weed whacking though. Which is why I got that done the last three days. I should be able to do those by next weekend, though.

I did get my red cabbage, cauliflower, and broccoli planted in the brassica bed (which I rotate each year) and my French Crisp leaf lettuce planted in a ten gallon tub yesterday afternoon. I still have peas, kohlrabi, summer squash and green beans to plant. I need to find some cucumber starts and some well grown tomato plants. Though I don't know why I bother with tomatoes...they are cheap here and don't like mountain growing seasons.

My asparagus is showing, the most advanced is about 4 inches above the surface so should be ready to cut by Monday or Tuesday. My cherry bushes have bloomed, my strawberries are just starting to flower and I've got a bunch of new raspberry canes coming up where I transplanted them to last year. Also, I have a bunch in the original position that I think I will try to move to the better location. If they do, its no big deal as the other ones are thriving and will take over the new area soon enough.

Today is a spend day. I had to get a broad spectrum antibiotic, $10, that should have been called in last night with the pain pills but wasn't. Last night's med was also $10, plus I had to renew my potassium prescription at $10, too. Glad it wasn't $40 like my BP med earlier this week!

Oh, the doc was able to do the surgery with a sedative and local anesthetic instead of putting me under general anesthetic. I was still asleep. I don't like not being under local if I'm awake, but thankfully I was out cold. That will be much cheaper, not only in the cost of the drug but in the cost of the time the anesthesiologist had to sit with me. Not as long in the recovery area either as I woke up much faster.

That about wraps it up for me for today.

April's interest for my ING account was $2.07.

I transferred $30 to that account today. That brings the total in there up to $42.58.

I borrowed $600 out of that account for an emergency car repair that will be going back in next Friday, so the true amount in there should be $642.58 and will mean interest will take a hit this month but that is okay. I needed the car repair to be done. And that is what an EF is for, anyway.

I was "cleaning" the junk drawer today and found $1.77 in change. Which was mostly dimes and pennies. You'd think I would have found more than one nickle, but no. So no rolling nickles today, but I had found enough dimes and pennies to complete rolls on those, so I will deposit the $5.50 into my vacation fund tomorrow.

Yesterday I picked up some veggie starts for the garden.

$ 1.25 6 pack red cabbage starts
1.25 6 pack broccoli starts
1.25 6 pack cauliflower starts
1.25 6 pack green leaf lettuce starts
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$ 5.00

$ 2.50 for 8 yellow summer squash starts
1.25 for one tri-color sage start
1.25 for one golden sage start
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$ 5.00

Total spent on veggie starts: $10.00. I estimate harvesting at least $100.00 worth of vegetables from this $10 investment.

I also bought a package of kohlrabi seeds for $0.99 and found my packs of Kentucky Blue and Blue Lake green pole beans and hope to get them planted today.

I have some weeding to do first. Yesterday was nice and sunny that after my dentist appointment, I managed to mow the front roadside ditches and a small strip behind the horseshoe flowerbed, which is technically part of the greenway that the development is supposed to maintain but they never do. Since it was dandelions in bloom, I mowed them down to keep them from going to seed directly into the backside of that flower bed. That filled up my mower bag and wore me out. It also topped off the compost bin, so I am going to have to start the second bin going today, which means moving all the gardening stuff I've been storing in there out of it and finding another home for it.

I will mow more this afternoon. Probably inside the horseshoe flowerbed and maybe a wide circle around the umbrella clothesline. The wind was really strong yesterday but everything would have ended up with dandelion pollen on it if I had hung anything to dry on the line.

I also weeded the front foot down the length of my 32 foot roadside flowerbed. I still have to get at the back three feet of it, though. I would have done more but there's a creeping thorny vine in it that snuck over from the neighbor's yard and I have to find what I did with my garden gloves before I even attempt that. But it looks presentable from the road and that counts for a lot.

I really have to wash my car, too. If it gets warm enough I will try to get it done today. I want it done before my surgery on Friday. It is so dirty it is ridiculous.

Yesterday I deposited:

$10.00 in quarters
5.00 in dimes
1.50 in pennies
1.00 Sacajawea gold coin
5.00 check from Your2Cents survey payment
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$22.50

This went into the vacation fund.

$286.00 Beginning Balance
22.50 New Deposit
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$308.50 New Balance

Just $390.50 to go by the last week of July.

I counted my coins today and I just need 3 nickles and 3 dimes to make rolls, so that will probably turn up between now and when I go by that CU next. If I remember right there is a dime on the dryer. If I looked around a bit I could probably find it what is needed in the kitchen or living room. But not feeling quite that motivated.

After the most recent payment on the medical debt, my balance there is now down to $146,531.04. Sometimes I don't ever think I will make much of a dent in this, but it is going down. I am grateful it is at 5.75 percent and not 18 or some other awful higher number. Steps are being made. Now just over $200 a month is going onto principal and just a little over $700 is going to interest. When I started paying this down it was closer to $50 a month to principal.

It is a slow process but it is nice to see that finally a bit of progress is being made this year. It will happen. It is just taking time.

My last mortgage payment has posted to my account leaving me with a balance of $34,290.94 left to pay it off. That leaves me with just under 9 years and 11 months of payments to go.

So I'm sitting here with this empty little box that needs to be filled with typewritten letters and I think I've forgotten how to blog. I take a week off and suddenly I'm at a loss for words. Well, writing that is at least a start.

I had a fabulous time on my vacation and the really great thing is that I spent less than I budgeted for it. My roommate for the trip is an excellent deal finder and was finding cut rates right up until about a couple days before I left. So four days in the suite at the one hotel came to $249 for my half and three days in the second hotel came to $149, also for a suite.

Airplane tickets were free of course, through DH's miles, and since I was in first class there was a free meal on the plane on the way there. It was a good one, so I ate it and only had to buy dinner the first night.

It was $189 for the five day park hopper for Disneyland and California Adventure and I spent $48 for four hours at the Glen Ivy Spa and $29.95 to go on the Queen Mary with the historical tour, the World War II tour, and the ghosts and legends tour, which were all guided tours. So that comes to $664.95.

I came back home with $150 on souveniers for me, my kids, and my DH. I spent about $300 on food and bottled water. That puts me at a total of $1114. I came home with $286 and various amounts of coin.

So that $286 becomes the seed money for our new vacation fund. We are going to Victoria, B.C. Canada at the end of July. We are staying in my parent's travel company's condo up there as my folks needed to use their points or lose them, they reserved it for us. They have given points to both my sisters and my niece and figured it was our turn this year. They are joining us for two days, but its a three bedroom condo with a pullout couch so it should accommadate everyone just fine.

So anyway, that part will be free and we will just need to save the money for the ferry ride there and back, for food (which will partly come from the grocery budget for that month anyway, one meal out a day for each of us, and admissions into places we want to visit, like Butchart Gardens, The Butterfly Garden, and The Center of the Universe. I'm thinking we can probably get away with around $700 since we can bring a lot of our own food over the border. I will have to get a list on what is currently allowed and what isn't, aside from apples which I don't think have been allowed in my lifetime.

Hmm...guess I haven't forgotten how to blog after all.

I got home safe from my vacation. I had a really great time and didn't spend all the money I had budgeted for the trip. I will write more in the morning. I really enjoyed my trip, but it is great to be in my own bed tonight. I sure missed reading the blogs for a week, but I think a week without computer access or even turning on the hotel TV at all was great.