I think I am starting to get back into the swing of blogging again. I'm by no means back to the daily thing, but I'm moving along at a few entries a week, and today, well, this'll be my second entry.

In the last seven days we have made some major purchases for the house, the most expensive of which was a dresser for my daughter. We went the solid wood route and got her a very nice mission style dresser of solid maple. It is put together with joinery and not nails and is very, very solid. It should last her the rest of her life and is a real quality piece of furniture. Considering the plywood and cardboard things that are on the market these days and last about a year or two if you're lucky, and still cost about $250 a pop for one of any size, I feel like we did good for our five foot tall four foot wide dresser.

It was on sale for their 75th anniversary so the original price of $699 was marked down to $499. We paid the $50 delivery fee, plus tax and that brought it to $595. We decided to go with delivery fee because it included them setting it up in her bedroom, not just dropping it at the door, and also because we would have had to borrow a truck that only gets 12 mpg and by the time we spent the gas for the 50 mile round trip and hurt our backs bringing this heavy piece of furniture in the house, it would pretty much have been a wash. Why have the hassle when for the same amount of money you get easy? It was delivered two days after we bought it.

We'd like to get one for our son in a few years when he stops being so destructive to property in the way only adventurous little boys can be. "Hey, Mom, what do you mean I can't stand inside a dresser drawer and jump up and down?" kind of destructive.

We made two other purchases for the household, a new microwave and a new toaster, for $128 altogether. We don't need a fancy microwave as all we do in it is defrost or heat things up, or cook the occassional batch of hamburger for spaghetti. The only thing I insisted on was a number pad and not something that cooks in increments of 1 minute, ten minutes and 1 hour. I hate pressing the ten button 3 times for 30 minutes. It's just one of my things. Other than that, it was good.

The reason we bought a toaster, too was because our old microwave was a toast-n-wave, that is it had a built in toaster. I really liked that whole thing except for the fact that you couldn't use the toaster feature and the microwave feature at the same time. Which was annoying, because I like to be cooking my bacon or sausage in the microwave while doing my toast and cooking eggs on the stove all at the same time. It's called multi-tasking and I couldn't quite do it right with that machine.

Well, a couple of weeks ago I noticed that it was taking twice as long as normal for meat to defrost in there, and then it was taking longer to cook a can of soup than normal, and then that the toast was not getting as dark on setting four as it used to and if you wanted it that dark you had to put it on setting nine. Then sometimes it would stop rotating, or it would turn on the light without turning on the power, or it would start up in the middle of the evening when no one was in the kitchen. So we decided to replace it. I'm happy with what we got and it is all working quite well. The wattage is a little higher than the old one so I'm having to adapt a bit. Things that took 2 minutes before take 1:40 now, that sort of thing.

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Today was my first full day of homeschooling on my own. DH flew back to work last night and so it's just me and the kids for the next 16 days. I think it went a lot smoother. My son and my husband butt heads too easily, so even when he is home to help, from now on I'll be fully in charge of my son's schooling and DH can just help with our daughter's.

I think we're going to settle down into a nice routine now. I just wish the books would hurry up and come. There's only so much we can do with the online classes until the books arrive and that could take up to three weeks they said. There are quite a few hidden costs, too. They keep saying you just use things you commonly find around the household for science and art, but I'm sorry, I don't commonly keep modeling clay, straws, toothpicks, construction paper, brads or paper plates in my house. *sighs* I was expecting the costs of printer paper, ink, pencils, notebooks, paper and all that. These little nickel and dime things are going to drive me nuts though.

So, it's been a little over two months since I last posted an entry. Things have really changed so much for us in that time period. DH was given yet another raise of $50 per day with the new contract. This puts our income at a level I never thought I'd see while we were still in our 30's.

The raise did not go into effect until this month, so we won't hit $117,000 for a yearly income this year, but that's what it'll be next year. I cannot even fathom this amount of money. I know there is a huge chunk of that going for taxes, but our liveable income has gone up so far in the last 8 months it's almost ridiculous.

The first thing we did was raise our 401K by 1%. I'd like to do more but we have to buy a new car and until I know what the payments will be I don't want to do anything more.

If all goes well, by the end of the week we will be the proud new owners of a fully loaded 2006 Ford Escape Hybrid with 21,000 miles on it. We have $2000 for a down payment and will be financing the rest.

I'm currently using my mother's car because I'm afraid to drive mine. Especially after an $805 car repair to my '92 Crown Vic that still didn't fix it all the way, I'm not putting anymore money into that car. And Blazer needs the transmission fixed and I just don't want to spend that kind of money on a '96.

We've made some large purchases so far this year. The first was a new couch that seats six and came with an ottoman for $1387.94 which included delivery. The old one has been moved into the playroom which never had one before and is horribly broken down and offers no support at all. It took us several months to save up for that.

Then last month we bought a new TV with my husband's yearly safety bonus. We spent a lot of money on that, but I figure it's a long-term investment for us since we don't go to movies or out to do anything much (besides eat) entertainmentwise. We just watch movies from Netflix. So we got a big screen HD plasma from Costco and it's fabulous. 50 inches. $1300.07.

Our entire tax return of just over $3600 went to pay down debt, which we still have far too much of. I'm currently working on making up a new budget to reflect the new income.

We will qualify for the entire tax refund coming out in May for two adults filing jointly with two children and when that check comes it's going straight into the emergency fund.

I really wish we had not gotten so far into debt in the past. I know that it was mostly medical debt but when I think that we'd have over $2000 a month from this point on now that wasn't allocated to something if we didn't have debt, it would be amazing. That's $24,000 of net income that could be going into retirement and stocks and vacation planning. Oh, how I wish.

I'm going to try to keep this blog going better now. I need to stay on top of the budget now with the new numbers and a new payment that will be coming into the mix. Other things, our 401K is still above $50,000 and our mortgage is almost down to $30,000, so progress is being made. Always a good thing.

Yesterday DH and I dropped the kids off with MIL and then went to Costco to buy the kids their new mattresses. That came to $303.50. I had budgeted $302 for it, but I think I must have added up the tax wrong or its gone up another .01 percent. Still, it was a good price for two twin mattresses and the kids are very happy with them. They slept very well last night.

Since we had FIL's truck we took a big load of stuff to our storage unit, which is starting to get quite full. Next time DH comes home we'll do some sorting and rearranging in there, but since he's only home for a few days this hitch we're not going to do it now.

Afterwards we went back to MIL's house and our neices were there playing with our kids. We hung out for quite a while so DH had a chance to visit with his mom. His dad was at work.

My SIL showed up with her new boyfriend a few hours later to pick up her girls. I haven't met him before, even though its been a couple months now. He seems like a very good person, he's kind and respectful to her and her daughters and my first intinct was to trust him. He's head over heels for SIL.

Now with her almost ex-H my first instinct was to run as far and as fast away from him as I could get and never ever leave my kids alone with him. I was proved right there. So I am very happy for her. She deserves this second chance after shaking off that abusive, child molesting felon.

I see a huge difference in her daughters as well. They are blossoming into two very different children. And its a very nice thing to see.

Yesterday I got one of those $100 Tempurpedic pillows...for free. My mother had bought it a couple of months ago, slept on it for a couple weeks and decided she didn't like it. For whatever reason she didn't try to take it back, like she did the bed when she decided she didn't like it. I've used it a couple times when I took a nap at her house when I wasn't feeling well and I liked it.

Anyway, she offered it to me. Last night I slept on it and had what was probably the best sleep of my life. Combined with the new mattress, I may never have serious back, neck or hip aches again.

I have been wanting one of those pillows because I have just never found a regular pillow that I really liked. But I really didn't want to shell out $100 when that money could go to so much better use elsewhere.

I am a happy camper. My insomnia is almost completely gone now.

My next agenda in the bed department is to replace the children's mattresses. Neither one of them has ever had a new mattress. Their mattresses are garage sale finds that had been used but kept in plastic. Neither mattress is that comfortable (in my opinion) just to sit on.

Costco has some really nice twin mattresses for $139 (boxsprings are extra). I don't need boxsprings since Tobias has a Captain's bed that used to be his Daddy's and Rose's boxspring is in good shape. With tax it should come to $302. So we will get those with part of the extra money from DH working extra weeks.

We visited a few mattress stores today and finally ended up at the one we bought our mattress from last time. We found one that we both really liked that we had seen at other stores selling for much less. The salesman started out with one price, which was quite good really, about $400 less than the lowest price of the same one anywhere else. The highest price we saw on this bed was $2599.

We didn't say anything when he made the offer, just looked at each other for awhile. Apparently he didn't like the silence because he then offered it with no tax, that they would pay the sales tax. We continued to be quiet and just look at each other and he knocked another $50 off the price. Then we accepted the offer. And since we are picking it up ourselves tomorrow we saved the $100 delivery fee. I think we did quite well. Total cost of the mattress was $1229 and we both were comfortable on it, which almost never happens.

It is a Simmons Beautyrest, and the type is the kind they use in the Westin hotels. Very nice. I think it helps we shopped at the end of the month and they were bringing in the new models and needed to clear out the 2007's.

I wish the first 11 days of my blog hadn't gone missing for the last several months. I think they are well and truly lost. I don't think I can make a bigger pest of myself about it, I've inquired three or four times, but nothing has ever come of it. So I must consider them gone, absorbed into the void of cyberspace as if they were an email sent from Yahoo.

This is kind of a bummer for me, as April 9th is coming tomorrow and I had wanted to go back to my first entry and see how far I'd come in the past year. Disappointing, but I'll get over it, I know.

I think I finally have my blog colors the way I want them. I had to play around for about an hour until I settled on what I like. Well, what I really liked was a combination of really bright blues and really bright pinky purple, but put them together and they were really quite garish, so no. I toned it down a good bit and I think its a nice combination now and shouldn't make anyone want to put their eyes out on seeing it. I mean, anymore than one normally does on reading my entries.

What I am really doing here is procrastinating and taking a bit of a break from the house. But it keeps calling me, literally as the buzzer on the dryer has gone off three times now. So back to it, I suppose.

I certainly gave our new dryer a run for its money today. I think I did six loads but it might have been seven. I even got everything folded up or put away, or had the kids put away their stuff. Rose's room is now clean and its going to stay that way.

I hope my power bill doesn't take a ginormous leap this month. At least the dryer is more energy efficient than the last one.

Dinner tonight was from the freezer/pantry. I am gradually getting my stockpile whittled down. A lot of the frozen stuff is at that 3 month stage where it won't be very appealing in a few more days. So two very thick chuck steaks that I cooked like roasts in the oven, some pan-fried potatoes sprinkled with herbs, salt and pepper, that had probably seen better days but weren't squidgy yet, some frozen broccoli with paprika/mustard cheese sauce and some bananas that needed to be eaten today or made into banana bread tomorrow. But everything tasted fab. You would not know it was clean out the freezer/pantry day.

I am getting better and better at managing my food usage for my family. I hope to get down to less than 10% of wasted food. I'd say I'm running about 20% right now.

Spent $422.65 on a new dryer today. The dryer itself was only $299 (on clearance, marked down from $459). The rest is 8.4% sales tax, delivery (we live in the boonies) and installation fee, and removal fee for the old dryer. I did not get the 5 year maintenance plan. It does have a one year warranty. It will fit very nicely in the alloted space as it is 1.5 inches less wide, but it also has a greater capacity, which will make doing comforters much easier.

It is very pretty. It is white, but the control panel across the top is stainless steel. It does not have a ton of bells and whistles, which I am happy about. I just want to be able to dry my clothes on a few different heat settings, not compute the answer to the meaning of life, the universe, and everything (42!).

We decided to use part of DH's bonus check now to pay for it, and then repay the $422.65 to savings out of the income tax return. I know my mother was going to loan us the money until we got our tax return back, but I just feel better doing it this way. He's pretty much decided to wait until he has the new job under his belt for a few months before signing up for more schooling anyway. Tax return should come sometime in the next couple of weeks, definitely before month's end.

They are delivering it tomorrow. I was surprised they could do it that fast when we just bought it today, but tomorrow is their day for delivering to this section of the county. See, that's why there is Lucky in my name. Things like this have a way of working out for us. DH will be home and I won't have to worry about letting a stranger into the house by myself. I know they are bonded, but I would just as soon not take that chance, you know?

Today has just gone by very slowly. It is a no spend day, which is always good. DH let me sleep in so I didn't eat breakfast. Lunch was cheap and easy, homemade 100% whole wheat and egg spaghetti noodles, sauce, and cheap ground beef from a 98 cents a pound sale (first one in ages that was that low). We have a tub of garlic butter in the fridge so we use it on toast to make our own garlic bread. Added a salad of lettuce, cukes, and kohlrabi. Yummy, yummy. I love my pasta maker.

Dinner is very light tonight after that heavy of a lunch. Just canned tuna, a hard boiled egg, mayo mixed together and stuffed in celery. Repeat 3 times for four people.

Tomorrow while the kids are at school we are going to go look at dryers. I won't do it with them, they'd drive me crazy when I was trying to read the info on each machine. They are both going through an annoyance phase. As in lets see what we can do to annoy each other the most so that Mom and Dad get mad. Hope it passes soon. Oh, and Rose has picked up the lovely habit of rolling her eyes. I'm considering charging her 25 cents from her allowance each time she does it.

Not much going on. Kind of a boring day.

I feel much better today, it is amazing what a decent amount of sleep can do for your attitude and your whole general outlook on life.

It's been a busy morning. We mailed off the boots from our second auction, picked up the kids from an overnight with their grandma, and picked up some medication.

Our total in paypal after fees was $9.86, which I transferred to the CU this morning.

I'm going to try to get the dance shoes listed this weekend so we can get moving on those. I have 8 pairs of ballet shoes and 5 pairs of taps and a bunch of mismatched shoes so I know there are some more around the house somewhere. Probably in Rose's room. I also found a pair of those Fisher Price skates that you put on over your kid's tennis shoes. Might be able to get a few dollars for those on e-bay. I'll have to check and see if those sell or not. Otherwise they'll go in the garage sale pile.

We need to get the outdoor play equipment cleaned up and listed on Craig's list. We managed to get the freezer off the porch last night and aired it out over night. DH is going to Kaboom it (multi-purpose cleaner) and then we may bleach clean it as well. Then we will list it on Craig's list for $50.

It is a 33 year old Montgomery Ward freezer. It has some cosmetic damage, but still works great. It's a bit of an energy hog, our power bill dropped $10 a month since we unplugged it. But for someone who doesn't have one, $50 will still be a good bargain for them, I think.

We also have a big old chest freezer that we bought at a garage sale 7 years ago that I think we can get $100 for. It's been outside so its dirty on the outside, but we can put that in our ad. DH might try to Kaboom it, too. If we can only get $50 for it, that would still be fine.

I'm looking around trying to figure out other things that we don't need that we can sell. I want to declutter this house and make as much off it as I can. It is giving me the feeling much like I had when I first started adding money to the EF last year. Finding more and more ways to do it so I can build savings up again. I feel so much more secure having money I can draw on in need.

Oh, I read over the pages I wrote on my night of sleep deprivation and they are good, I'm starting to think I do my best writing when I'm sleep deprived. It used to be when I was on a sugar high, but without much sugar these days I don't get that anymore. I wrote 3 more pages last night before I went to sleep so I am up to 39 pages for the year. Only 326 more to go to reach my goal.

I used DH as a sounding board last night and he can often make suggestions to get me around a block on a throughline, or send me off in a new direction with some random comment. I was having difficulty with the development of a certain character and now I've got her all figured out. She was not a character I could just leave out, she was too important to the plot, I knew who she was and where she needed to end up but not how to get her there and now I do. So yay for me and DH, too. Big breakthrough. Next week when the kids are in school I should really be able to start pounding out some pages.

Mom talked to me last night and she is going to pay for me to go to carnio-sacral therapy for six weeks. Her idea, and she says it has helped her a lot. I'm hoping it will help with some of the ongoing health issues in my life. I'm willing to try anything at this point, nothing has worked in the standard medical field. As much as I love my doctor and think he is a great man, I have mostly given up on Mainstream Medical. I have no faith in the AMA. I know there are good individual doctors out there who want to heal, but I've come to the conclusion that for the most part they want to medicate you, not heal you. Medication keeps you coming back, healing you keeps you and your dollars away.

I'm jaded here, I know, but I've been in the medical system since I was twelve years old and I ended up diagnosing myself with my original condition based on my own research and than forcing the doctor I was seeing at the time to test me for it and I was right. I have had to be forcibly proactive with my health for all of my adult life, to keep insisting that there was more going on than they believed and I have always been right to keep pushing even when called a hypochondriac to my face. So you can understand why I am jaded here.

Okay, this entry started about something and totally turned into something else about 3 times along the way. Oh, well, that's me when I get going. It's time to leave for basketball so I'll wrap it up for now.

Today is a no spend day. I got a call this morning reminding me of a follow-up physical therapy appointment for tomorrow, so I decided to try to do my shopping before the 1:15 appointment instead of maing an extra trip to town. I have to go in again on Friday so if I don't get it all done before the appointment, that is okay.

I put up some more Christmas lights today and did some basic housekeeping chores. I've been thinking a lot about goals for next year, but until I know what DH's raise is going to be, which I won't know unitl January, I'm kind of unable to plan well. I don't like that. Still there is no help for it.

The most frugal thing I did today was cook a potroast and chicken at the same time in the oven. I have enough meat for the rest of the week and will just have to add veggies and potatoes each day. I have enough leftover veggies and potatoes from today that I won't have to make any tomorrow. And plenty of chicken gravy. I will save the beef drippings to make beef gravy later this week.

I think I'll go ahead and cook up all the chicken sausage tonight so that I can just reheat it in the microwave for breakfasts through the week. I like the whole reheat and eat thing. It makes my life much easier and I tend to waste less food that way.

I've almost got the freezer completely cleaned out. Garbage went out this morning so I have an empty can again. I have one full shelf of stuff to throw out still and one partial shelf where everything is frozen to it. I'll probably have to turn the freezer off and pull it out in the morning. I need to turn it off to get all the ice out anyway, then wash it down and unplug it.

I think I can switch with Mom as soon as DH comes home and we will have the smaller one that is actually ours and she can have her old pain in the butt bigger one with a door that doesn't latch right ancient ugly freezer back.

I'm not sure if I will use the one I am getting back from her or not. The half size chest freezer and the one in our fridge seems to be doing the job fine now that we are not buying processed foods. TV dinners, 3 kinds of ice cream, frozen pizza and other easy boxed fast food takes up a lot more room then meat, chicken, fish, vegetables and fruit. But I might be able to sell it. Or maybe we will keep it outside by the shed and use it for over flow or if we get a quarter of a beef or something. I'm not sure yet.

I wonder if our electric bill will go down once we get rid of the one freezer and don't plug in another? Well, this won't be the month to tell with the Christmas lights and all.

Yep, you got that right, revisited. I cannot believe this happened again. DH is the culprit, he was the last person in there on Monday. Of course with the holidays and everything, I didn't even go into the laundry room until today and guess what? The freezer door was wide open. We lost everything. This makes me so mad (not at DH, just that it happened) as the stuff actually made it through the power failure and there had to be over $500 worth of frozen food in there, maybe $600.

I filled up the garbage can, though I haven't hopped inside and done the garbage dance yet to smoosh it down and fit more in. I still could probably fill the can again. This means an extra can has to be put out this month. At least. Which means an extra pickup charge on the garbage bill. I'd gotten down to putting a can out every 3 weeks instead of every 2 and now I'll have to put out at least 2 in a row. Sigh.

I'm ready to get rid of this freezer. The door doesn't always fasten right. It belongs to my mother and it is older than I am. She wants it back and is going to give us our freezer back. We traded a couple years ago because she wanted to downsize and had a chest freezer as backup. Well, the chest freezer died, so we figured we'd trade back. Not sure I want any upright again at this point. But I certainly don't want the old menace, so as soon as I can get it all cleaned out she can have it.

Our freezer quit working in a quite spectacular fashion. Combine this with the door being left open a couple inches and it was not a pretty site that greeted me. Since it is older than I am by a few years, I guess I'm surprised it lasted this long.

There is no fix to it, it won't turn on anymore and there were sparks involved and a rather obnoxious noise when it quit. So we had a nice 2 inch layer of water/ice cream/stickiness of unknown origin to deal with on the laundry room floor. Okay, well it is mostly cleaned up now, though there is still a high level of stickiness. But I am soaking that up with wet towels and hopefully by morning it will just wipe up. One can hope.

We probably lost about $300 worth of food since we had a lot of beef, chicken, and fish and shellfish in it. Very little was salvageable. Pretty much just the butter and some bricks of cheese and frozen berries that were in the back behind everything else and were still frozen solid.

Well, today was payday and we did have the $65 that we normally used for the cable bill when we still had cable that was going to go into savings and I was ahead on the house insurance payment, so the extra money I was sending there I combined with the old cable money and we bought a half size chest freezer at Sears for $189 with tax. At least the door to this one can't be left open. Well, it could, but people would notice.

Fortunately it only took the freezer 4 hours to get cold. We did a big Costco run today, $145, and were able to cage freezer space from a neighbor until it was cold, but we would have just used our ice chests if we couldn't have.

Obviously savings did not get as big a boost today as planned, but I did put in the $50 I owed it, so it is now at $779.85, so I have passed my goal of $750 and am on my way to my next goal of $1000. Just $221.15 to go. I'm a little irritated when I think it should be $844.85, but for the freezer debacle and then I'd only have $155.15 to go. I need to look on the bright side and consider that at least I had the money available to replace the freezer without putting it on a credit card. That is always a blessing.

This purachase wouldn't be quite so bad if it wasn't for the fact that DH's birthday is on the 30th and he wants a weight bench. Well, that will have to wait until next month. My mother's birthday is on the 28th and I have to figure out what I will do for that. I have to drive DH to the airport that same day. My sister and her family will be at my mom's for dinner so we will make it back in time to go there, also.

Today I also stopped at a farm stand and spent $10 on fresh fruit and some sweet corn.

Bills paid were the power bill, internet bill, propane tank rental bill, and phone bill. I also have to pay the mortgage out of this paycheck and the medical mortgage, but haven't made it into those banks yet. Will probably do so on Monday.

Also spent $55 to get a new tire for my ten-speed and had them put it on the wheel. It is made for bumpy roads or it would have been $15 cheaper for the tire. We have very bumpy roads out here, so felt the expense was justified. DH will put the wheel back on my bike in the morning and he has already put on the new, cushy gel seat and then he has to put the new pedals on his bike and we need to finish teaching Tobias how to ride without the training wheels, he's about five minutes from it so should be good by the end of the day tomorrow. Then we can start riding again, this time as a family.

Samples in the mail today were Degree anti-perspirant, biore face wash (2) and pore strip (1), and miessences body wash. I just sent for that last one this week, so it came super fast.

Paid fines at the library today (not my fines, DH, the kids, which is DH's responsibility as well, and one lost book of T's) and picked up my hold, which is a book on CD as the library didn't have the book at all. It is The Automatic Millionaire. Should be interesting.

I have to write a balance transfer check out and mail it off tomorrow. It will pay off the Chase card and then everything will be combined onto the other card, so we will be down to just two credit cards with balances on them. This one is at 6.99% until April. Two payments will be a lot easier to manage and keep track of.

I think that pretty much covers everything that we did today.

My click thru payment of $10 was deposited into paypal this A.M. and I shifted it to my CU, so it should show by at least Wednesday. So that is 2 so far that have actually paid out. I'm about to hit a payout again on the first one that paid out.

Anyway, that will bring my long term savings up to $467.34. Then its just $33 more to hit my second goal of $500. Really excited about that.

I had to wipe out my freezer account though. Well, its not wiped out, it still has $27 in it, but sadly it was at $227, which was almost half of what I needed, so that's not great. But it was for a hospital bill that had managed to slip through the cracks, so I wanted to pay it off right away. It isn't part of the $150,000 we owe the hospital, somehow it got missed. But it was only $200, so I just wanted it gone.

At least the $150,000 isn't that much anymore, but it amazes me just how much goes to interest. I should check on that again and see exactly how much is left. At least it is at 6 percent and not at the 18 the hospital normally charges. Of course, they are using my parent's house as collateral, so they aren't really going to lose in this whole mess. And the house is mine anyway, if I want it.

Okay, I got off track. Anyhow, savings is going up slowly but surely. Oh, and I got another penny for my people just giving away money tally, the clerk at the convenience store didn't want to give me 4 pennies so she gave me a nickle. So that makes $1.81 since I started keeping track in April.

My freezer money savings account had dividends deposited today. 11 cents, whopee. But still. Anyway, it brings the total in that account to $227.25.

Paypal payment has not showed up in my bank account yet and I checked and they haven't put dividends in yet on that savings account. Should be, but isn't. Oh, they might have been closed today, so maybe I'll see it on Wednesday.

DH flew out tonight so I won't see him again for 16 days. Well, at least we got the pool up and the kids won't be pestering me to do it on my own.

Tomorrow I am going to make a list of phone calls that I need to make on Wednesday. I've decided to cancel the newspaper and just buy one on Tuesday for the grocery ads. I have to check first to see if they post them online. If they do, I won't worry about it at all. Mom will save the Sunday ads and coupon inserts for me.

Today was my electronic transfer of $10 to my long term savings account, bringing my total up to $444.34. I am hoping to add $20 tomorrow (payday) so I can meet my June goal of $60 added above the weekly automatic $10.

I counted out the money in my change jar and then rolled coins. I have $18 in rolled coin to deposit into the freezer money account. I'd like to add an extra $5 to that, also. $209.14 + $18.00 will bring it up to $227.14 + $5.00 will bring it up to $232.14. We are buying fireworks tomorrow so that is why I can't guarantee the extra $5 or even the extra $20.

As for the fireworks, I recieved a coupon in the mail where I can get several different fireworks as BOGO free so we will use that. Last year we spent $150 on fireworks, and I'd like to get just as many but hopefully for $75 or so. Every 4th we buy fireworks and take them out to my sister's house. They get a bunch, too. Then my DH (if he's home and not in Alaska, he'll miss it this year), my BIL and the oldest of their boys lights them off.

Her oldest boy has moved to Arizona 3 weeks ago so he will miss it, too. But he's 20 (graduated with his A.A. through Running Start at 18 and is taking a correspondence course to get his B.A., currently, after living a year in Arizona he will apply for one of the universities as a local, much cheaper, and his correspondence credits will transfer as it is one based in Arizona and he checked).

So only BIL will be lighting them off this year. And this may be the last year we do this at all. BIL recently got a new job (after 20 years at the last one) down South that pays a lot more and has benefits and education reimbursement, so they are looking for a house in the Everett to Lynnwood area. They have to sell their house in this county, too. BIL is staying with relatives and comes home on weekends and he gets holidays off, also, which he did not get before.

We don't go to the fireworks shows anymore. The last one we went to had so many rude, drunk, stupid people I just hate subjecting my kids to that. Truthfully, the rude, stupid people bothered me more than the drunk ones. The one that really got me was rude, stupid, and drunk. This younger woman (maybe 21, old enough to know better, anyway) who lit up a cigarette in the bathroom line (about 50 people long and she was with friends who could have held her place while she stepped away from people), and stuck it in my then five year old son's face. It came within an inch of his eye before I knocked her hand away and it fell out of her hand. Then she got all indignant, "Hey that's my cigarette, (expletive)!" And I said "And that was my child's eye you just stuck it in and my child's ears you just swore in front of. If I hadn't knocked it away, you'd have been looking at paying some serious medical bills. My child's vision is more important than your addiction."

Well, she grumbled on for a bit, still swearing and making a jerk of herself, while her friends were trying to shut her up) until one of the plainclothes policemen who was in line a few people back and was working the event told her he could arrest her for disorderly conduct, public obscenity, and quite possibly underage drinking. And someone else in the line said, "Too bad you can't arrest her for being an idiot!"

Well, she got all huffy, stomped off into the woods while lighting another cigarette (it hadn't rained in about six weeks at that point and we had a burn ban on because everything was tinder dry, so not the smartest place to light up) and went to the bathroom in plain sight of everyone, though I think she thought the foot high shrub gave her privacy. Maybe if she's actually been all the way behind it. Well, the officer didn't and she got arrested for public indecency or something (same as the flasher law).

Anyway, that just really turned me off the whole thing, plus they were charging $20 to get in. I didn't mind when it was a $10 donation for carload or even $15, but now if I wanted to I could go to the one in Bellingham for free, its not worth it. Plus, it may have gone up again.

Okay, tangent.

So, I also want to buy another flat of berries and a couple buckets of cherries tomorrow from the farm stands, so we'll see.

I added $40 today to my long term savings account, bringing my total up to $370.52. I am still looking for the check I misplaced from Send Earnings, which is also earmarked for that account and is $49 and some odd cents. I also received my 4th Shell gas card from MyPoints today.

I added $27.95 to my freezer money account, bringing the total of it up to $209.14.

I received my first box of checks for the new checking account and my first debit card ever that goes with it, along with my pin. I had everything shipped to the CU because it is safer than having it shipped here. We have kids that like to fool with the mailboxes out here and I have found anything from a chewed up nerf football to a paper plate with a pizza crust folded up in it in my mailbox before. So far no mail has turned up missing, but still.

My 4th Shell gas card from MyPoints arrived today. So I now have a total of $50 in gas cards and $20 in Bed Bath and Beyond cards.

With today's auto deposit into savings of $10, my new long term account total is $330.52. I have not gotten around to opening an ING account. I have been waiting for the checks to come in on my new checking account first. They have finally arrived and I will pick them up tomorrow, which is payday. The CU said it didn't have the routing number until the checks came. I don't know if that is true or not, but I certainly didn't have it until they came.

I'm so far behind in so many things right now, due to my back being wonky. But it is finally feeling better so I am getting caught up. Or starting to. Yesterday I was able to tackle about a third of the weeds in the garden. Six kitchen garbage bags full, which my neighbor hauled to the green drop off in town. It takes garden waste and composts it ($2 a truckload, neighbor was going anyway) at very high temperatures and then uses the compost in the parks and gardens and roadside plantings throughout the city.

Last year was the first year they had to charge for it, but its still a great way to get rid of stuff for cheap and know that it is going to be used to good purpose. Normally I will compost it myself but this stuff had seed heads and tap roots and an annoying pernicious local fern that can propagate itself from the smallest piece of root left over, and my compost pile does not get hot enough to kill off the seed heads, I am a slow composter (or a lazy one) and only turn my pile a couple times a year. It still turns out okay, just takes longer.

I am also getting caught up on dishes again. I could not stand for long at the sink without putting strain on the tweaked muscles and as it was the kids had to put stuff in the bottom for me and hand stuff up to me when it was time to empty the dishwasher. Now I can do it myself. We've been eating a lot of the stockpile of TV dinners so that I didn't get overwhelmed with new dirty dishes while tackling the old.

Yesterday I made the decision that I could not wait any longer for it to stop raining so I used my dryer for what couldn't fit on the two shower curtain rods in the bathrooms. Still have so much to do. 3 weeks with a bad back and DH in Alaska for all but 5 days of it, does not a tidy household make. And he will not be back for another 6 to 8 days. Sigh. Its a good job and it pays well, but sometimes I hate it.

Not much else going on. Tomorrow is payday, so I will deposit at least $10 into the freezer account and mabye $20 or $30 into long term savings, we'll see after I pay that set of bills.

I'm going to wait until the absolute last minute before I pay the homeowner's association dues, which is due the last day of July. It looks like the association is going to fall apart, the golf course was sold awhile ago and they've closed the pool due to the roof falling in and mold, so there seems no further purpose to paying dues. They don't maintain the greenways or the roads like they are supposed to and I don't want them to go belly-up with my half year dues in their account. So I will play it by ear.

We still want to refinance the house so we will probably pay the dues anyway if they haven't fallen apart, because if we don't they can put on lien on our property. Can't refinance with a lien. Plus we have always kept current with our dues, though it seems no one else has. Probably why the pool problem hasn't been fixed. Whatever happens, happens. I'll have the money set aside whatever the course.

I got my first payment from Vindale for their market research surveys! $50. Whoopee. We had to open another checking/debit account so we could transfer it from my new paypal account, since DH already has our regular checking account hooked up to his paypal account. I was planning on it anyway, as this new one is hooked to the savings account our long-term savings is in. When the checks come in I can write my first check to open my new online account with the good interest rate. So it will be a week before the routing information comes through so I can actually move it from paypal to my checking, and then to my savings until I set up the online one.

But when it does come through it means my long-term savings will be at $310.52. Not bad.

I also deposited the $17.11 into my freezer money account bringing it up to $181.19.

I have also been issued a check from another company that should arrive in the mail sometime in the next week. It is just under $50, that will be added to long-term savings.

In my quest to find extra income sources, I am currently reading the book, "The Mom's Guide to Earning and Saving Thousands on the Internet." It is interesting. I found out about 3/4 of this information on my own or through others from this site, but it gave me 1/4 of the book more information to investigate further that I had not discovered on my own. I am not quite finished with it, but I am done with the earning part, now its going into the shopping, rebates, and couponing part.

Today's electronic funds transfer of $10 brought my long-term savings account up to $260.52. I still have $20 set aside to add into that account next time I make it that CU. I just haven't done it, yet. Tomorrow is payday, so hopefully I will get it in then. I also still have $17.11 set aside to add to the freezer money account, also.

Today was payday.

Paid:
$1000 to mortgage
$300 to Chase Visa
$40 fee for soccer camp for Rose
$20.50 to Lowe's (used my gift card of $10 off a $25 purchase) to buy 2 caladiums and a canna
$9.98 for 2 gallons of organic milk

Have set aside:
$20 for long-term savings
$17.11 for freezer money account (this was the amount left over in the checkbook from the previous paycheck)
I will deposit those on Tuesday as I didn't make it into town in time to do that today.

I met my first savings goal today. My electronic funds transfer added ten dollars to my savings account, bringing long-term savings up to $250.52. Tomorrow is payday so I will add in some more, probably just ten or fifteen, but I am excited that I am 25% of the way to $1000. This seemed so far away when I started the ten dollar a week thing, adding whatever else I could as I went. I will also add a bit to the freezer money account, maybe 20, tomorrow. I'll see after I do the bills and pay the mortgage.

I did put the rolled coin in my purse last night and an extra roll of quarters that I had accumulated in the 2 weeks I had been forgetting to take the coin in and deposit it. So the total deposit was $25.50, bringing the account up to $164.08. There must have been a smidge of interest dumped in at some point, also. I don't keep up on this account much because up until April, it didn't have much in it, is only a savings account, so the money is either there or not, seldom going in or out. Well, it is still seldom going out, but its going in with a bit more frequency now.

My son had his last rehearsal before the recital today, well except for dress rehearsal, so I ran to the CU during that time. My daughter didn't go to school today or I would have taken in the cans. I just didn't want to drag her around too much. Both because she isn't feeling well and because I still don't feel well, either.

Oh, well, I'll get them in one of these days. I loaned $5 to my neighbor for gas. I don't know if I'll ever see it again, but I did it anyway.

I also bought a big container of egg flower soup at the one MSG-free Chinese restaurant in the county. This is my major comfort food when sick. There is enough for six meals and it cost $5.24. This and Mrs. Grass should get me through this cold.

Didn't spend on anything else.

Today was a humid 73, which is in a lot of ways worse than a dry 87, but no kind of day could have made me not be a little cranky today. Woke up with a sore throat. Not the kind that makes you want to scream every time you swallow, but the kind that is there all the time, kind of in the background, but it still hurts, just not the type of hurt you can't function with. What we call a "summer" cold, onset with weird weather swings. Even ibuprofen didn't dull it down, but fortunately ice cream and popsicles did help freeze it out. I hope it is better tomorrow.

We had two big thunderstorms tonight. One came through at 8 p.m. and dumped so much water on us that it was coming over the sides of the gutters as well as down the downspouts. I ended up taking photos with the digital camera because DH doesn't believe me when I say water goes between the house and the gutter as well as over the free-standing side of the gutter. He's never home when it happens! Digital camera has the ability to record small bits of live action, too. Now maybe I can get him to put up the new gutters I have been whining for for 2 years. He has a Home Depot gift card he got from work as some kind of thank you for something, so it won't even cost anything, the card will more than cover it. I think he just wants to buy a miter saw, but honestly, we don't need a miter saw. We can borrow one from his Dad. He isn't even a tool guy, but sometimes he wants what he wants. I suppose we all do. But the freak storms are fading the paint on the side of the house and so the gutters are a need.

The other storm came through at ten. This one went through in about ten minutes instead of a half hour like the first one. The thunder wasn't as loud, either. Didn't see lightning with either one.

Did spend some unnecessasary money today, but less than $20. I was feeling too lousy to cook so for lunch we drove up to Lynden. We got food from the dollar menu from McD's (with enough for dinner, too) and ice cream from DQ and I took a different route home than we drove there, so we had a lot of nice scenery to look at. We also went by a gas station that was at $3.16 a gallon so we filled up there, so that cost $45, but that is a planned gas expense that I would have paid out tomorrow anyway. That is 3 cents cheaper than the cheapest one in Bellingham. Going for the drive helped us all with the stir crazies, too.

In the afternoon we cleaned out my son's room and took out a bunch of toys he has grown out of which we will either garage sale or freecycle, depends on how much work I feel like doing. Today's attitude would say just chuck it on freecycle, but I sure wouldn't mind getting a little cash out of it. Or I suppose I could list it on almostfree, might actually get a bit better than garage sale prices for it then.

Some time in the evening my son's friend R came over for about an hour and a half, so they were happily occupied for a bit so I could catch up on my emails and keep my crankiness to myself.

Not much else happened tonight, other than watching a series finale of my favorite show, that really should have been 2 hours long instead of one. It deserved that, but I at least enjoyed the hour they did have. If this show were still on next year I'd have a heck of a time giving up cable next month.

Tomorrow my son has his last class before the recital and maybe if I go put the rolled coin in my purse right now, I'll actually take it to town with me and deposit it in the freezer money account. Here's hoping.

Today was payday and I didn't have as much time as I normally do since I started off the morning with that massage. She even gave me an extra 20 minutes over the hour (free) because we were having such a good conversation that she lost track of time and realized when the hour was up she hadn't gotten done all that she wanted. Gotta love that. She said I was in pretty bad shape and should probably come in again next week. I'll see how this plays out first.

I went to the CU that I keep my freezer money account in and made a $25 deposit, bringing that up to $138.58, must have earned some interest on that odd change. I had already paid back the money that I'd borrowed for gas the one week. I still managed to not only forget to grab the aluminum cans to cash in, but the rolled coin as well. I swear, I don't think straight in the mornings. I'll have to take them out to the car the night before I go in next.

Then I went to the CU that has my long-term savings and deposited the $10 that I had set aside previously and an additional $15, total deposit of $25. That account is up to $240.52, so all I need is $15 more and I can open an ING account. I have to leave $5 in the account to keep it open.

After that I went to the cheap gas station, since it is near the CU and topped off the tank. It was at $3.19 as compared to $3.29 everywhere else in the county. Gas costs more here than it does in Seattle. It's because of all the border traffic, we get a lot of Canadian shoppers, so they up the cost to sell to us. It annoys me, because the refinery is in our county so shipping costs are virtually nothing and yet they squeeze us. But that is a rant for another day.

Then went grocery shopping at Fred Meyer. They had beef ribs on sale for .98/lb and Alaska king crab for $6.99/lb, so I got some to freeze. I know I'm not supposed to be buying meat right now, but all we have left in the freezer is chicken, beef steaks, and some seafood. We do like a little more variety. Did not buy any produce but did get milk as they had the Organic Valley milk on for $4.29/gallon, which is over $1 off, so I got two.

I had been hoping to get to Costco today but ran out of time and had to get back for the bus. Of course, I'd been hoping to get there in that sort of I really don't want to go there but need to go there type way. But I always overspend there. I've done better the last few times I've gone and I only need 3 things when I do go, but still the temptations there can be overwhelming.

I'll think about going tomorrow. Rose is going to an all day birthday party/barbecue at one of her best friend's houses tomorrow so it would be a good day for just me and Tobias to go in. Rose always hates that she can't have the samples because she has so many food allergies it isn't worth it for her to try their samples. But they always look so good to her. I can take them or leave them, and usually leave them. My son, however, can make it into lunch time. He'll eat anything, my little bottomless pit. I don't know where he puts it, that kid has a racing metabolism.

Power bill came. Those extra hot steamy showers my son was having when he was so ill and couldn't breathe gave us a hit. But it was still lower than before we started conserving. The next one should be lower again. I'm thinking about getting a water heater timer and we will be getting a water heater blanket as soon as DH comes home this time. We want to keep that power bill down as low as we can.

I just hope the last few days of super heat from the sun that made us have several fans on full time isn't too expensive. At least the weather broke. We had a little rain today but mostly its been a humid, overcast 63 F. So not too much going on on the fan front. Still I shouldn't complain, at least we don't have to worry about A.C. around here. That can get really pricey.

The automatic deposit was made into long-term savings today, bringing it up to $215. I haven't gotten around to placing the last $10 left over from the previous pay cycle in, but I have it ready to go for when I go to town tomorrow.

I will also be adding some to the freezer money but won't know for sure how much until I do the budget tomorrow. Probably $25, though. I also have $15.50 in rolled coin and I still haven't taken in the aluminum cans, so hopefully I won't be so scatter-brained again that I forget. I mean they are in a big hamper on my front porch. It's mesh, see-through and I have to walk right past it to get out of the house. You would think it would not be so difficult for me to remember.

Tomorrow will be a busy day, I have a lot to do. My morning will be peaceful, though. I have a therapuetic massage scheduled, and I had thought about cancelling it and not paying the $45 for it, my back is really messed up from turning over the compost pile and it has aggravated the old injury, so I guess I'll just have to suffer along and go in, LOL.

DH called and he will be working an extra week, so that is 21 days straight, 14 hour days, anything over 8 hours a day is overtime pay and all of Memorial Day will be overtime pay, also. We'll be able to have a little breathing room, but not much as our CC&R half year dues coming up in July and I really hope the old home owner's association goes belly-up. I could do without the dues. I already maintain the utility easement between my house and the neighbor's house that they are supposed to maintain.

Actually, the new neighbors said they will help with that once they get a lawnmower and even borrowed my lawn mower and did the mowing of it and mowed their lawn last weekend, and today they gave me a one gallon gas container, filled up and borrowed the mower again and did the easement again. I think I am going to like them. And it sure beats an empty house (twice) or a domestic violence situation, which we have seen since we moved here.

Also have coming due half year car insurance towards the end of June and house insurance due the end of July. So like I said, some breathing room, but not much.

The usual $10 deposit was electronically transferred into my long-term savings account today, bringing me over the $200 mark. It now has a grand total of $205 in it. And I will add another $10 tomorrow as that is what is left that I hadn't spent after paying all the bills.

The new pay cycle begins tomorrow. It will be small, only 4.5 hours, but one car has 3/4 of a tank and the other has 8 gallons. That is enough to get me through the rest of this week and until next week's Friday. Soccer ends Saturday, so I will only be driving to town twice next week for dance classes. Well, three times, twice on Friday to do banking stuff and mortgage stuff. But we're good.

I am hoping to remember to take the aluminum cans in tomorrow and will add that to my freezer money.

I am going to be getting a check sometime between the 15th and the 30th of this month for doing product evaluations and one issued the first week of June, also from doing product evaluations and trial offers. Between the two of them there should be just slightly over $100 and that will start my new laptop savings account. We took my laptop in to have it looked out, but they can't even get a replacement fan for it.

It seems so wrong to me somehow that a laptop bought 4.5 years ago that is in otherwise perfect shape internally, and is held together pretty well, except for having added a bit of electrical tape because one of the things that covers the wires broke off and it made little sparks when I opened it (only, I say, LOL), can't be used anymore.

It's also a big annoyance because I have so many files that will have to be transferred. Oh, well. At least I didn't lose my files. And I am looking forward to getting that new laptop when I've got the money saved.

I didn't spend any money today. Did use gas to get to and from soccer practice for my son.

I found an old coin jar that went missing about 2 years ago and it had enough dimes and quarters to roll up one each, so I will have $15 more to add to the freezer money account. Cool. That will go in on Friday.

Deposited $11 worth of rolled coin to my freezer money account. Of course, I forgot the envelope with the bills in it at home. I took it out of my purse so I wasn't carrying it around and then forgot I didn't have it. Oh, well, it will keep until Friday when more banking stuff needs to be done.

I still need to take the aluminum cans in, but can do that Friday when I make my next trip to town. I just need to remember to do it.

Signed up for 3 trial offers today:
Great Fun for $1 for 30 days, $8 signup payment with a $20 gas card.
Buyer's Edge, free 30 days, $4 signup.
And Red Blossom, free 2 weeks, $17 signup.
Total $29.

I haven't had a chance to look through the freebies for yesterday or today yet. I have laundry hanging on the clothesline.

I took a good look at my dishwasher and it has 3 settings, heavy duty wash, normal wash, and short wash. Since I pre-rinse everything there is not reason for me to be doing the first two, so I am trying it on short wash. The dishes looked clean. I also have never used heat dry, and when it finishes the wash cycle I am turning it off. It would go for another ten minutes or so if I didn't and it basically does nothing since heat dry isn't on.

I don't know how much more we can decrease our electric bill, but I'd like to find out! Once I get that expense cut down as low as possible, than I'll pick a new thing to cut down on and see where that goes.

Today I paid the mortgage my parents took out on their house to pay my medical bills. It is $935 a month and I paid $1000. Then I went to the courthouse and paid the property tax, $364.69. I'm just glad I don't have to pay my parents property tax. Even with their senior exemption, its a few thousand dollars, ouch. One of the benefits of living in the boonies on a 1/3 of an acre piece of land.

I went to the grocery store and bought milk, tomato plants and tidal wave and easy wave petunias, a planned purchase. I didn't make it over to the credit union to deposit the freezer money, but I've put it in a sealed envelope so I have to tear it open to spend it. The extra step will make it easier to not just blindly grab it, I think. Also, I forgot to grab the aluminum cans this morning so didn't do that either. Well, maybe on Monday.

Filled up the car, at $3.05 per gallon, coming to $43, in an 18 gallon tank that had 3 to start with. Still an ouch. I've set aside an extra $10 to put into long-term savings, also.

I cashed out my first survey check, so that will be issued June 1 and will be $49.84. So cool, for just a few hours work. It's all good. Now I best get those tomato plants into the ground and hang some more laundry. It is 75 degrees right now and I can probably dry another load by tonight, maybe two.