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Home > Archive: September, 2016

Archive for September, 2016

Finally Unemployment Arrived and a Job Hunt Update

September 21st, 2016 at 05:48 pm

DH finally got paid by unemployment, he's been unemployed for a month now. They pay 2 weeks worth at a time, so he got $788, or $394 a week. 4 weeks of this should cover our monthly insurance premium with enough left over to cover our prescriptions. That will make our Emergency Fund stretch a lot further. I do wish he was getting WA state unemployment instead of AK state unemployment as that is $600 something a month. Oh, well, this still helps so much.

So far for September I have used $3000 from our Emergency Fund, bringing it down to $17,000. I will end up using at least another $1400 this month. Right around $520 will go to pay for our 6 month car insurance premium due on the 28th (though we are looking at other insurance, we are not really seeing much savings). $90 will go to physical therapy. $392.12 will go for the autopays that come due the first week of October. $400 goes to Mom to pay the utilities for October. And the rest will be for groceries. So maybe some of that will count towards October money, but it still has to be in the account by the end of September.

DH submitted his resume to the local refinery owned by the English on Friday and got an email yesterday saying it has been reviewed and passed on to the next stage of consideration. They are going to be hiring in the next 3 to 4 months for numerous jobs DH will qualify for. Hopefully he will get something there. It would be even better than a job in the next county over.

We have not heard anything from the mollusk refinery in the next county that will presumably be hiring in the next 3 months yet, other than that they will be using the placement company DH is signed up wtih, but there aren't any official rumblings so that's to be expected.

DH still has not heard back from the school he signed up with to pursue his BS in Electrical Engineering, though the money has been charged to the card. How long does it take to review transcripts anyway? It shouldn't take a month. I'll need to prod him to follow up with them again.

Not much is going on here otherwise. Some canning of tomatoes and some freezing of peppers. We lost Firefly, but she was getting old. One of the chickens is recovering from an injury. One of the other chickens swatted her off the roost and she fell 4 feet onto her wing and leg. She couldn't walk for a couple of days, but is standing now. We have her in a cage so the others won't pick on her. Chickens can be really mean to their wounded. We keep her in the garage at night, but leave her outside where the other chickens can socialize with her during the day. If they forget about her, reintroduction later will be brutal, so they need to see each other every day.

That's about it, I guess.

My Very Wordy List

September 18th, 2016 at 05:32 am

1. My husband and I have been married for 21 years, but have been together (next week) for 26 years. We should have met long before we did. We were often in the same places at the same time (same berry field working as youngsters, junior achievement one door down from each other, Sunday School (big group of teens in a huge church that met altogether and was then separated by class and we were one grade apart), numerous things like that. We kept being put in each others' paths, but did not meet until we both worked at the same restaurant chain and he transferred to my store.

2. I never discuss politics, religion, or major issues on my Facebook page because people are crazy with their opinions and I'd like to keep my friends and family. Except for prayer requests when stuff gets really bad. Only exception.

3. I have 2 children, a girl and a boy, but we originally planned to have 4. Life didn't work out that way and by the time my youngest was 3, it was definitely for the best.

4. We started raising our own fruit, vegetables, and meat animals due to my son's massive allergies to food additives, preservatives, colorings, and artificial sweeteners. It changed our lives.

5. We are a one car (van) family and that van is paid for.

6. I am a massive Doctor Who Fan. To the point where I wrote fanfiction for several years. I am also a huge Labyrinth fan even 30 years later, but I did not get involved in the fandom, other than the time suck that is watching fanvids on youtube.

7. I love to read, but for many years I barely did. This year I have really gotten back into it again. I have probably read more in the last 6 months than I did in the last 6 years. My favorite things to read are epic military fiction with a strong female captain (think Kylara Vatta or Heris Serrano or Esmay Suiza) or flat out romance novels.

8. I dislike historical dramas on TV, but love historical fiction. I don't get it either.

9. On rare occasions I have had violently accurate intuition. For example the time I'd been driving behind a hay truck on the freeway and felt a sudden need to get out of the lane. I moved over and one of the cords securing the load snapped and hay bales fell off the truck into the space I would have been in. Or the time when DH and I were dating and were (ahem) parked and I was overwhelmed by the irrational urge to leave right then and DH listened to me and we got out of there. I found out the next morning that someone was murdered 10 minutes later who had been walking to her car parked in the same area. Within a few feet of where we'd been parked. Or a time when I chose to take a different route than my usual one because I got a weird feeling of dread as I approached one intersection and would have been involved in a multi-car pile-up where several people were badly hurt and 2 people died if I'd gone the usual way. I'd say about once every 5 or 6 years something like this happens. It scares the crap out of me every time. But I always listen to that feeling.

10. I love to cook, but I hate to clean up the kitchen. I have created dozens of my own recipes in the last 25 years.

11. I hate it when people say "It's only" in reference to money. It's only 3 cents or it's only a dollar or it's only 5 bucks. And then complain how they have no money and they can't save anything. It's just as important to mind the pennies as it is to mind the $100's.

12. I love bubblegum pop music. I love almost all forms of music, but bubblegum pop is always fun and floaty and puts me in a good mood.

13. Instruments I have learned to play over the years with various degrees of success: violin, viola, mandolin, piano, organ, flute, harpsichord, and a few chords on the guitar (my hands are small, so guitar is hard for me). I want to learn the banjo. A lot.

14. I wrote my first novel in the 3rd grade. I love writing. Even more than reading. I am always working on something.

15. I desperately want to be good at drawing. I am mediocre. I can paint, though, in both acrylics and watercolors.

16. I have taught myself to loom knit, but not to needle knit. I want to learn both it and crocheting, but my brain and my hands don't want to communicate properly when it comes down to it. I have the dexterity due to playing instruments, but there is a serious disconnect when I try to knit on needles. Crocheting is not any better. I also want to learn to machine sew more than hems.

17. I love farming. I didn't think I would take to it anywhere as much as I did. Both the animals and the extensive gardening have added so much to my life.

18. My mother drives me crazy, but she is the best person I know. Aside from my husband, she is my best friend. She is the person who taught me to always keep going no matter what life throws at you.

19. My short-term memory has not recovered fully since my concussion when I broke my nose last year. I have to leave post it notes everywhere so I don't forget things I should remember. It is getting better, but it still is disconcerting, considering once upon a time I had an eidetic memory. I've had 3 concussions in my life. This one has been the hardest to bounce back from.

20. People always think I am a much more serious person than I actually am. My humor tends to be dry and sarcastic or punny and fast wit, but I don't generally let it out until I know people pretty well. Until then I am pretty reserved and quiet. Once I am comfortable, though, it all comes out.

Update--A Bright Spot

September 13th, 2016 at 08:24 pm

I haven't really posted this month, just the interest update at the start. I tweaked my back while the chiropractor was on vacation and that put me down for a few days. I finally went and spent the money to get a deep tissue massage and it was the right choice because I was functional again that evening and out of pain other than a few twinges here and there the next day.

Then I came down with something, but it didn't act like anything normal. I felt run down, exhausted, a little achy, and had been running a fever over 100 for 10 days. That's it. No other symptoms. I did get a spider bite and it had a massive rash with it, so perhaps its related to that. But it made me too tired to do much in the way of writing, especially since I was canning, dehydrating, and preserving food.

On the other hand, there is a major bright note. You all know how I have struggled with walking since a year after my knee surgery. I was doing so well that first year of recovery, even hiking, and then everything went downhill and I had severe pain in my knee when walking and it would swell up with fluid randomly and for no apparent reason. No one could explain it and MRI's didn't show anything new. Long walks were out of the question and if I went grocery shopping I could only go to one place before the pain got so bad I'd have to go lie down the rest of the day.

When the chiropractor got back from vacation, I asked him to do traction on my neck with this loop thing he has. It basically fastens around the hairline tightly and has a strap with a handle on it and he gently pulls to get some of the tightness out of the neck. Well, we had a miscommunication and after a few traction pulls, he did this adjustment on me he had never done before where he basically tried to yank my spinal column out of my body (that's what it felt like).

It felt like every single vertabrae from my tailbone to the top of neck moved into alignment. After the shock wore off and I could get up, I immediately felt something different in my hips, left knee and left ankle, which had been getting very bad over the summer. It took me a few steps for it to sink in that I wasn't limping for the first time since 2010.

I wasn't sure what to think, but I knew it wouldn't last. But it has. I walked around Costco the next day without pain or exhaustion afterwards. Every day I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. I kept thinking I should try going for a walk, but I was scared. I was without daily pain in those joints for the first time in 6 years. I didn't want to screw it up.

Well, to make a long story slightly longer, yesterday DH and I went out to Bellewood because the Tsaguru apples are ready. They are my favorite apple and have only a two week picking window. It's 30 cents a pound cheaper to pick them yourselves than to buy them already picked. I wanted 20 pounds, so we would save $6 by doing U-pick.

But all of the golf carts were out. They use golf carts to take you to the orchard if you don't want to walk. Well, frugalness won out and I decided I would try to walk it. They said if it was too much for me to walk back to call them and they'd page someone to get us. Of course the apples I wanted were at the farthest end of the orchard!

It was a fifteen minute walk to get there. We had to go past the corn maze and the massive pumpkin and sunflower field, and over a bridge that crossed a stream before we even saw the orchard. Then on to the far back corner. It did not take very long to pick, though we had to go several trees down the row because the near ones were picked clean. We filled our two ten pound bags in about 10 minutes and headed back.

I did start to feel it a little bit when we hit the bridge, but it was more being winded. I am used to doing water exercise and keeping my breathing even. This was a little harder. I did feel a bit of a strain from using muscles in ways I hadn't in a long time and I was really afraid I was going to pay for it today, but you know what? I'm not. My muscles and joints feel fine.

I walked for a total of 30 minutes. I walked. You have no idea what this means to me. I am going out for another walk today, just to make sure it is not a fluke. If I can start walking and not be in pain...I might truly have my old life back. I'm scared to believe its even a possibility, but...I have a little hope now. The skeptic in me says to be guarded as it may not last, but oh, I hope it does.

C1-360 Interest to Moving Fund

September 4th, 2016 at 09:12 pm

$356.65 Starting Balance
+_40.61 Interest Added
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$397.26 New Balance