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Archive for July, 2011

A Treasured Day to Myself and Homemade BBQ Chicken Wings

July 3rd, 2011 at 02:50 am

Days alone are few and far between when you are a stay at home mother and school is out for the summer, but today I am having one and I am loving every minute of it. My queasy stomach seems to have settled down for the most part and it's a gorgeous, sunny but nicely breezy day.

One of my five nephews turned 17 today and so my mother took my kids down south to see him. His two older brothers are also there (one lives in Arizona, the other has been off with the Job Core), and of course the youngest is there, too, as well as a couple of my brother-in-laws nieces. It is a full house and so I elected to stay home. It's hard for me to travel too much these days, and certainly not in a vehicle as uncomfortable as my mother's car, and when I do, I usually need ice for my leg and to be able to elevate it for a few hours once we reach our destination and that is not really an option at my sister's house.

I have spent most of the day alternating between writing and reading Little Brother by Cory Doctorow (which has been amazing so far). YA fiction is one of my guilty pleasures and this one is a definite winner. I'm going to have my daughter read it when I am done.

I did send along $20 in case they stopped for food along the way. That probably breaks my no eating out challenge, but I don't like my mom spending her own money on the kids when she's on a fixed income. She may do it anyway and I could very well end up with that $20 back.

I bought fireworks today. I went slightly over budget at $104, but got a lot of the buy one get one free types to take advantage. I need to buy a new long lighter as well.

I had a serious craving for barbecued chicken wings and I debated Little Caesar's or Boston's but I really didn't want to go out or spend the money and I had some frozen chicken wings sections in the freezer and a nice sweet barbecue sauce in the fridge. So I thawed out six wing parts while I looked up recipes on line to find out how long to deep fry them for because I didn't want to bake them for an hour.

I made up a coating of cornmeal, sweet Hungarian paprika, sea salt, fresh ground pepper, and oregano and very lightly breaded the wings by shaking them in a Ziploc baggy and then deep fried them 12 minutes, turning every 3 minutes. It was about an inch of canola oil on medium high heat. Then I took them out and coated all but one of them with my barbecue sauce, as I wanted to see how it tasted plain as well (yum).

They tasted very good, but I think I need to knock the cook time down to ten minutes on the flat pieces with two bones. The pieces that look like little chicken legs were fine. I will definitely make these again, especially seeing as it was a ten pound bag of chicken wings. I will try to be more patient and bake them in the oven as it is much healthier.

Payday--Bills Paid (Long)

July 2nd, 2011 at 06:24 am

Well, today was payday and I did some major debt repayment as well as taking care of quite a few of the regular bills. The MC's are all paid off again and the VISA is firmly under $20,000. I feel completely back in control again, both with the credit cards and with the no eating out. Day 4 on that challenge is going well.

I went to the grocery store and picked up a few items. One of them was gnocchi. One of the things my son really misses about going out to eat is going to olive garden and getting chicken and gnocchi soup so I got him a package of gnocchi and a box of organic free range chicken broth. We still have a couple of leftover pieces of chicken so tomorrow I will make him some chicken and gnocchi soup. My chicken soup is almost gone so I don't mind making another soup so soon.

Okay, so bills paid are below:

$1457.40 BoA credit cards
__500.00 Amex
__300.00 Mom's utilities
__100.00 Emergency Fund at ING
___16.70 Electric Bill Old House
___37.61 DH Life Insurance
___32.20 Me Life Insurance
___41.00 Old House Insurance
___83.98 Car Insurance
___39.37 Security System Old House
__155.00 Storage
__375.86 Old House Mortgage
__200.00 Cash
__100.00 groceries
__193.20 Dentist
__106.94 Medical


Car insurance has gone down with the Sienna by $11.63 a month or $69.78 for a six month term.

Of the cash $90 is to pay for physical therapy on Tuesday and $100 is for fireworks. Not sure what that extra $10 is for but it will likely end up in the coin jar. I have $62 left in checking if I need to buy milk or anything else this week, but since I already went grocery shopping I don't think I'll need anything besides milk. Maybe some hot dog buns if we decide to have a cookout on Monday and I am too lazy to bake some myself.

Bills left this month (other than the first new car payment) are pretty minor. There is just phone for the old house, internet, and garbage for the current house. Everything else is paid. That leaves almost $3000. So the majority of the next paycheck and the one after that will go to pay first week of August bills, to savings for upcoming medical, and to pay for our little trip around the Olympic Peninsula before we go to Virginia Mason for my surgery.

I am trying to make the gas left in the Sienna last until Wednesday when DH gets home. I have about 1/8th of a tank, but only have 3 minor driving excursions between now and when DH comes home. I sort of hate pumping gas with a passion. Well, it's more waiting in the long gas lines at Costco, but close enough. There is half a tank in the Crown Victoria so if I need to use that car one day instead I will.



Coin Jar and Emergency Fund Updates

July 2nd, 2011 at 03:32 am

I put 28 cents into the coin jar today. I also added the interest from my ING account to the Emergency Fund, which was $1.02.

$1245.47 Starting EF
+___1.02 Interest added
---------------
$1246.49 New balance

Then I sent $100 to ING for the EF

$1246.49 Starting EF
+_100.00 Amount Added
-----------------
$1346.49 New EF Balance

$1500 (my next goal) here I come.

Sometimes Funerals are Extra Complicated

July 2nd, 2011 at 02:30 am

This week has just really seemed to drag on for me. I miss school. It really makes the days go faster. I've had some kind of stomach thing going on for two days running and I wish it would go away. I made a big pot of chicken soup because at least it's as easy coming back up as it is going down and it's a cheap thing to not feel too bad about losing.

This morning we went to the kids' great grandmother's funeral (DH's paternal grandmother). She died last Friday, so it was a closed casket thing. It wasn't too long, though it felt like it. I don't know, I always get squirmy at funerals, especially when the person wasn't particularly nice and everyone is saying all these sweet things about them.

This woman never accepted a single person who married into the family as no one was good enough (though this did not apply to the children born because they had her blood). I hated the way she treated my mother-in-law. She wasn't nice to me or my SIL's husband (now ex) either, and forget her accepting her granddaughter's wife.

She also took her daughter's side when her daughter's husband physically abused my son at a family picnic when he was little and got really mad at me (who wasn't even there) because my husband filed a police report. I'm sorry, but when you choke a four year old child around the neck and have to be peeled off it is not "playing" and he did so "mean it."

But I didn't particularly care what her opinion was about me and after her husband died (who was a wonderful man), I stopped visiting them and just sent DH and the kids). She treated my kids all right and that was enough for me.

Anyway, I only went to support my FIL and because the kids wanted to go. If DH had been home, it would have been for him, too. He loved his grandmother even if he hated her behavior, but quite frankly I think he was glad not to have to go. If he'd come home we would have lost $4000 between lost wages and a last minute airline ticket. We can't afford that with a surgery coming up and FIL was fine with him not going. We'll visit the gravesite when DH gets home.

We didn't go to the family thing afterwards, one because of my stomach, and two because without DH there it is too hard to be constantly vigilant that DH's nasty uncle doesn't get anywhere near my kids.

I guess funerals bring up a lot of emotions in me, too. Hopefully there won't be anymore for a long time.


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