April 9th of 2006 I started this blog in pretty dire straits. I had no savings, massive debt due to medical expenses, a mortgage, and credit card debt, also mostly due to the medical issues.

In the last nine years my husband and I have paid off the mortgage, paid off our van loan, and paid off all of the credit cards. The only money we owe now is the 0% loan we took out from my mother to pay off the hospital. I call that my medical mortgage, because that is what it feels like. We owe her $49,500 and once that is paid off we will have no more debt until we buy a new house. I am hoping to save enough up for that so as to not have a massive mortgage.

We have saved almost $15,000 in an Emergency Fund. When we started we were only banking $10 a week and whatever money I managed to save in the coin jar. After a few years I was able to add monthly $100 payments. When we started, a lot of people thought it was silly to save such small amounts, but they have added up big time. If $10 is all you have to save, then save it. If $1 is all you have to save, still save it. It may seem like nothing now, but take my word for it. In 9 years you could be sitting on several thousand dollars if you keep at it.

We have come a long, long way, and it has been a tough, tough road at times. So many people told us to just declare bankruptcy, but I didn't want to. That isn't how I was raised. Bankruptcy is a last resort, for people in desperate situations. We were always able to meet our bills even if things were quite tight for a long, long time. We probably could have easily qualified, but I didn't want to take that way out. It didn't feel right for us.

So instead we just put our heads down, dug in, and worked hard to get the debt paid off and bring down the evil empire that had held us under its sway for so long. We had a few setbacks along the way with me having to have 2 more surgeries and having to pay for those instead of putting a lot on old debt, but we made it through that. Things are going pretty well. Not enough to really loosen the purse strings as we still have to save for that down payment and pay back Mom. But enough that I feel like we are breathing deep again.

I have got to start opening my mail earlier in the day. Yesterday I received 3 checks for the dentist from the insurance company. The insurance company pretends that it can't send the check directly to the dentist because he is not in network, which apparently means that the postal service won't take a check there or some such nonsense. And they write the checks so they have to be signed by both the dentist and whichever one of us is on it as well, which is fun when it is DH and he is in Alaska, and now that DD is 18 hers have to be signed by her.

They try to make it difficult so we will use one of their dentists. They have 3 dentists in our area all who work at a stupid strip mall dentistry. Um, no thanks. I will stick with my dentist and not play multiple dentists every time they change the list. So anyway, three checks came, one for me, one for DH, and one for DD. But I didn't open the mail until after the dentist's office had closed and by some universal law no dentist is ever open on Fridays, so that can't be taken care of until Monday.

And then I didn't open today's mail until 7 which is when the drive-thru at our credit union closes, but if I had, I would have been able to deposit the safe driver's rebate check I just got from the car insurance company into the Emergency Fund. Oh, I know it can wait until Monday, I just like to get those things in and earning interest as soon as possible. And I like seeing my EF amount go up. It's sort of like seeing credit card debt go down or a mortgage go down, but since I don't have that anymore, I just have the EF to watch go up. Not that I'm complaining about that, mind you, just, oh, I don't even know. There really isn't a point to this entry other than I need to open the mail earlier in the day when I can still do something about it.

I swear I am an organized person most of the time. I think. Right now I'm so out of it I could be deluding myself. It has been a very tiring day. And I'm cranky. And I'm tired of sick children. And I could really use a maid and a cook and a farm hand this week. I think I'm coming down with something. I guess six weeks is all I get to be free of illness this year. *sighs* Sorry to be such a grump.

I have got to start opening my mail earlier in the day. Yesterday I received 3 checks for the dentist from the insurance company. The insurance company pretends that it can't send the check directly to the dentist because he is not in network, which apparently means that the postal service won't take a check there or some such nonsense. And they write the checks so they have to be signed by both the dentist and whichever one of us is on it as well, which is fun when it is DH and he is in Alaska, and now that DD is 18 hers have to be signed by her.

They try to make it difficult so we will use one of their dentists. They have 3 dentists in our area all who work at a stupid strip mall dentistry. Um, no thanks. I will stick with my dentist and not play multiple dentists every time they change the list. So anyway, three checks came, one for me, one for DH, and one for DD. But I didn't open the mail until after the dentist's office had closed and by some universal law no dentist is ever open on Fridays, so that can't be taken care of until Monday.

And then I didn't open today's mail until 7 which is when the drive-thru at our credit union closes, but if I had, I would have been able to deposit the save driver's rebate check I just got from the car insurance company into the Emergency Fund. Oh, I know it can wait until Monday, I just like to get those things in and earning interest as soon as possible. And I like seeing my EF amount go up. It's sort of like seeing credit card debt go down or a mortgage go down, but since I don't have that anymore, I just have the EF to watch go up. Not that I'm complaining about that, mind you, just, oh, I don't even know. There really isn't a point to this entry other than I need to open the mail earlier in the day when I can still do something about it.

I swear I am an organized person most of the time. I think. Right now I'm so out of it I could be deluding myself. It has been a very tiring day. And I'm cranky. And I'm tired of sick children. And I could really use a maid and a cook and a farm hand this week. I think I'm coming down with something. I guess six weeks is all I get to be free of illness this year. *sighs* Sorry to be such a grump.

Twenty years ago today I married the love of my life and my best friend. Today we celebrate two decades. I have always believed we would make it. So has DH. We are as much in love today as we ever were and our marriage is strong. Now onwards towards 50 years!

I have two glorious signs of spring today. This is one of the flowering cherry trees blooming in the high school parking lot:



and this is in my gutter garden with garlic coming up:



Today is my 45th birthday. It is also the birthday of Abraham Lincoln. I have always loved that I share a birthday with one of the greatest presidents this country has ever had.

It will be a low key day here. I haven't even decided if I am going to make a cake or not. I am doing so well on my diet I am concerned what suddenly adding sweets back in might do to it. I like having lost those 15 pounds.

I think I will go and pick up some steaks at Trader Joe's, though, instead of sticking to the meal plan. I wasn't thinking about my birthday when I made it out. I think a nice rare ribeye would more than make up for no cake.

I've been thinking a lot about what I've accomplished this year and what I want to accomplish next year. The last couple of years have been pretty big for us in paying down debt and this year was, too.

Milestones hit in 2014:

--Paying off the Mortgage

--Hitting the halfway mark on paying off the loan to Mom

--Paying down the van loan far enough that we owe less on it than it is worth

--Hitting $10K on the Emergency Fund. It wasn't there for long, but it was there, and it will be again by the end of this year so I count that as a win.

We have also made great strides towards becoming self-sufficient, though we still have a long way to go. What happened this year:

--Expanding the farm to four types of livestock as well as building the housing for those animals

--Butchering chickens, turkeys, and ducks for our own consumption (joining the rabbits we have been doing previously), so we almost never have to purchase meat (just the occasional beef and pork)

Joining a Bartering and Sales group within the local farm community, within which I have been able to sell rabbit breeding stock, rabbit livers for dog food, duck eggs, and barter for raw goat's milk cheddar and chevre, natural homemade salves, and beef

Found a processing facility that is WSDA approved AND nearby so if we want to move into meat sales next year, we can

Grew a marginally successful organic garden that netted 80 pounds of potatoes, 20 pounds of tomatoes, 8 quarts of green beans, 2 quarts of yellow beans, excessive amounts of lettuce, kale, and leeks, 15 bunches of green onions, enough parsley (still drying) for a year, 12 heads of broccoli, 5 heads of cauliflower, 1 pound of chard 1 dozen kohlrabi, 10 pounds of cucumbers, 30 pounds of zucchini, 35 pounds of sweet meat squash, 5 gallons of blueberries, 10 quarts of raspberries, 3 gallons of blackberries, enough apples for 80 pints of applesauce and 22 quarts of pie apples, and 10 pounds of Italian plums. This provided nicely for us and our animals.

All in all, the year has been a lot more successful than it has felt at times. I think we can be very happy with what we have accomplished.

I am trying to keep a positive attitude right now, but I do feel like I am being overwhelmed somewhat. With them taking so much more out of DH's paycheck for medical now, I kind of feel like we are back to living paycheck to paycheck. I know we aren't really, but the only things I feel like I am able to plan ahead for anymore are property taxes, upcoming propane costs, and dues. Besides those and the EF, I haven't been able to fund any of my funds.

I like having an Appliance Fund, a Christmas Fund, a Computer Fund, and such that I send money to each month. Now I can't do that. And I can't do a college fund, either. My daughter has decided she is going to work for 2 years after high school and save everything for college. At this point, we can't contribute. I'm not even sure college is right for her anyway. She's not really cut out for it.

Every year for the past 3, things seem to have gotten tighter and tighter, despite paying more and more things off. Taxes went up and took $500 of take home pay away from us, just as we paid off the credit cards. When we paid off the mortgage this year, it finally felt like we were going to have breathing room, but we don't. The increased medical, the increased plane fare, and the increased storage fees basically replaced the mortgage.

I know this won't last forever. We have less than 3 years left on the van loan. It's gotten down enough that we are only paying about $70 in interest each month and the majority of the payment is going to principal. I love our van and I still think it was a good decision to buy it, but I don't think we will ever buy a new vehicle again. And we'll not finance one again, either.

We have 4 years and 9 months left on what we owe to Mom. That's the big thing. If we didn't have to pay that $1000 each month things would not be tight. Or they'd be tight by choice because we'd be saving part of it and funneling the rest to retirement.

If our house sells it will make some differences. We won't have to be paying electricity, phone, water/sewer, security, HoA dues, property tax, and house insurance. We can save that money until we are ready to buy a house. Which at this rate won't be until we pay off the van.

DH hasn't gotten a raise in over 3 years. Which, no one has, but this year is a new contract and they are supposed to be doing raises. The new contract was signed a while back. The new medical is being deducted, but so far no one has received raises and it has been months. I am starting to think the company is going back on its word. Each year, with more money being taken out or going to taxes or going to increased plane fare, it is like taking a pay cut.

I know we have enough. DH's income is excellent. We are in a lot better shape than so many people. But I want to get ahead, not just tread water. It feels like we sacrifice and sacrifice to pay off all this stupid medical debt and our house and still have nothing to show for it. Which is stupid, because we do. We've taken trips and we've got decent things. We have a paid for home. But it still doesn't feel like it. I just want to be free of it all. Free of all debt. Every single scrap of it. And with enough money in the bank that I don't ever have to worry about it again. I don't know. Maybe that's a fantasy. But it's how I feel.

Well, thanks for listening now. I feel better getting it all out and I think I can stop feeling sorry for myself for a while now.

I can't believe that my youngest son turned 14 years old today.



He is 5 foot 10, starting to get a mustache, and his voice has more or less settled. He has shown some real maturity in the last six months. It amazes me when I think where he was just last summer, short, chubby, cracking voice, no body hair. Now he is tall, slender, steady, needing to learn how to shave pretty soon, and a nice baritone.

For his present he got a WiiU. We made him pay the first $210 out of his savings, though, and covered the remaining $100 plus the rest of the tax. He has been saving most of his allowance for half a year, most of his can money (he collects aluminum cans around the neighborhood from people who save them for him and takes them to the recycling center for cash), and even part of his rabbit money (he generally gets 33% of rabbit sales unless I need it for feed money).

He spent almost nothing on anything else during those six months. I am proud of how hard he worked to save the money. He is getting a really good work ethic. He still wants to start an egg business when we move, too.

We have been throwing around getting ducklings this year, but I'm not sure if we are going to. We got mom to okay it, but then at the last minute she said, "But I don't want any of those upright ducks." Well, that is what I wanted to get, Indian runner ducks. I'm not going to buy the ducks, pay for the feed, build a house for them, and then not get the good laying ducks that I wanted just because she thinks they look stupid. I'd rather not get them at all and wait until we move so I can get what I want. If I'm paying for them, I should get to choose.

Sometimes I really do not understand how my mother's brain works. But whatever. It's her property. Basically she wants ducks and wants the ones she wants, but doesn't want to take care of them or pay for them. I wish our house would sell. I am so tired of her random edicts. We pay enough to live here, but whatever. I love my mother, but man, she is the one person on this planet who can drive me right up a wall.

I'm participating in a pantry challenge right now on my other blog. Everything I make for the rest of this month (except milk) is to either come from our pantry/freezer stores or from what we grow or raise on the homestead. I'm not buying anything but milk and that is from a local farm. It's been interesting to figure out what my meals will be.

To be honest it is not all that different from my usual way of living, just without any eating out. But I can't just go to the store if I want something. I need to make do with what I have on hand. If I run out of onions or potatoes I can't just go pick up more, I have to break into my dehydrated ones. If I run out of bread I can't just pick up a loaf, I have to bake it. If I run out of garlic I have to use powdered.

If I am craving fresh greens, I need to make do with the herbs growing on my kitchen windowsill and try to jolly my lettuce starts into growing a little faster. I do have 3 cabbages and 10 pounds of carrots stored, so it's not like I won't have anything fresh veggie like. I do have some frozen veggies, too. But it does limit my choices a bit and make me stick to my inventory. But we've been needing to eat down the freezer for a while now, so it works.

The new rabbits are adapting well. Wildfire has gotten very friendly and Cinnabun and Sienna are becoming less skittish. We bred 3 pairs of bunnies on the 8th, Piper and Wildfire, Serenity and Leo, and Lola and Starbuck, so around the 6th to 8th of April we will have litters again. I am hoping for some reds out of Piper's litter.

We slaughtered seven kits for the freezer yesterday. Again, most of these will end up ground. We are really making a good dent in our meat bill, even subtracting out the costs of feed, though it is still not the easiest part of farming.

I have selected the last of Serenity's does to grow up to breeding age. She has great confirmation and does not have the bend at the tip of her ears that I am trying to breed out of my rabbits. Since she will be here long term, we have named her Serena. She has a great personality and has never bitten or scratched.

I may keep one of Andromeda's boys, too. There is one without the bending ear tips as well, and he would be good to breed with Serena when he gets old enough. He has a great, friendly personality and a generally happy demeanor.

I sold another doe this week, Serena's sister, actually, for $20, so that will help offset feed. I've now made a total of $95 selling rabbit breeding stock, though my son did get a cut of that.

While I probably won't keep Serena long term or the buck I will breed her with, I will eventually sell them as proven breeders, I would like to keep a doe or a buck out of one of her litters.

5 of the kits get to grow out a little longer, including the buck I might keep. That leaves us down to 17 in our rabbitry at the moment. We haven't had so few in such a long time. Feed costs this month will be much lower.

I am still researching aquaponics, but may end up putting it off for another year. We will put up a greenhouse, though, this year. I am also researching goats, further. I am debating breeds at this point. I'm still leaning toward kinder, but I'm also looking into dairy sheep as an alternative.

We need to make a decision on ducklings soon. They either need to be ordered from a hatchery or we can go to the feed store this week and get potluck choices. I'd like to get some for future egg-laying. The chickens are getting old for layers and are so very noisy. I swear hens are louder than roosters sometimes. Some of the duck breeds are very quiet. They just murmur or hiss. Some are noisy, so you have to be careful you know which are which before buying them.

I still need to do my payday report for the last two weeks. I've been putting it off, because I've had a pretty bad headache and doing math stuff and analytical stuff just makes it worse.

So I had another person come by tonight to buy a 9 week old rabbit buck kit for $15 as he had a litter of straight does and needs a buck for them when they get old enough. I put a blurb up on a local Facebook group yesterday and 2 hours later had been contacted by this person, and then last night another person made an appointment to come by on Saturday to look at them. The second person is interested in one or two, but was planning to look at some other rabbits, too. I don't know if she will buy or not, but if she does it is another $15 to $30 depending on one or two.

I am also going to look for a group who does raw meat diets for their pets and advertise there.

Between my sale last week of $60, and this coming one of $15, I'll have made $75 in less than a week. If I get 2 more youngsters sold, that will be $105. My New Zealand Reds that I am buying on the 1st will total $95. I like the idea that I could possibly pay for my new rabbits by sales of kits. Ignoring the fact that I am paying my son 1/3 of the rabbit profits because he does a huge amount of work when it comes to them and that I already have the money for the purchase budgeted. Most future money will go to pay for feed.

I also put up an advertisement for a breeding trio for $60 of some really sweet, friendly kits. If they sell, that'll be a nice boost. I ought to put up a thing on the bulletin board at the feed store, too, on Friday when I go to pick up more black oil sunflower seeds.

If I ever end up making enough money to pay for feed completely by selling rabbits, any profits will go into the Aquaponics Fund, followed by the Farm Fund. I'd have to sell at least $260 worth of rabbits every 2 months to pay for feed. That would be $180 for feed minus my son's percentage.

My son wants to start his own egg business when we move so he'll be saving some of his rabbit money for start up costs. I'll buy the brooder and incubator and egg fridge since I will want them for ducks and quail and meat chickens anyway, but he will pay for the laying chicks, feed, bedding, and egg cartons for his own business and I will collect a percentage of his profits because I know I will be helping him and also to cover the cost of constructing their housing if it isn't pre-existing. Probably 1/2 to start and when he's paid his portion drop it down to 20%. And if we don't get much in way of egg sales we can feed excess eggs to the pigs.

Back to the rabbits, I am thinking of selling Lola as well. I would like to have one more litter with her and pick out her biggest doe kit to keep. I haven't made my final decision. She is a good mother, but she is very standoffish, doesn't like to be taken out of her cage, which makes cleaning it difficult, and doesn't want it cleaned when she's in it even to the point of just removing soiled hay is upsetting to her.

Lola also isn't at weight for breed standard, so unless she gains just over half a pound (9 oz) she can't be put on a pedigree. She may do so. I know that Piper and Phoebe put on a little weight in their second year. She only turned one last week, four days after my birthday.

I don't know if she will ever reach breed standard though. She was a runt who we grew out an extra month and then we figured we'd see how she'd do if we grew her up a while longer, and the others were biggest of their litters. 3 months ago she only weighed 9 pounds, so I am hoping this break from having kits and the higher protein feed while I am improving her condition will put that extra bit of weight on her she needs.

We start breeding again the first week of March, but Lola will not be bred until mid-April. That gives her almost two months to gain those nine ounces.

DD is wanting to have a hand in the Aquaponics, in caring for the vegetables and maintaining a vegetable stand. I'm not so sure she wants to make it be her own business, but work more on a percentage basis. Even if she did want it to be her own business, I wouldn't, because it's my baby at this point and when we first start we will be providing the needs for our family first, our animals second, and only selling any surplus. I don't think there will likely be much the first year we do it. We will keep any fish we raise for our own use, too.

I think DH is going to have to build our aquaponics set up though. And the hoop house for it. The one full set up I really wanted to get, but the shipping adds almost $2500 to the cost, which was already pushing $5000. So, no, that is not going to happen. But I have found some pretty simple systems and I think that with a 150 gallon stock tank, a few water tubs, a water pump, an air stone, some plumbing bits, and some crushed rock, we could set up some media beds easy for way less money. Like $600 to $700 for a system that would grow half as much as the $5000 system. Even if I sprang for the special clay pebbles it'd still come in around $1200 or so.

I am looking at blue gill perch or trout for the fish because they tolerate our weather better and it is easier to get fingerlings in this area of those types. I'd like to do a relatively small system to start with maybe four grow beds and then expand from there. No point in building a really big system while we are still living here. Ultimately I'd like a 300 gallon stock tank for the fish and 128 square feet of growing space in the media beds. And then I'd like to build a second system after a year or two of growing. But 64 square feet is a good enough place to start. We might even just start with 32 square feet. We can always add on.

I would like to get a couple of solar panels and marine batteries to run the pump and power any additional lighting needed. I think I can use LED's so it would not take as much power. So that would be an additional expense. I know I can get a marine battery for $130 or so and a solar panel with mounting brackets and all the right bits for around $700.

Another thing I was thinking about was maybe not just growing fish for us, but growing minnows or guppies or something for the ducks we are going to get to eat. I'm not sure though. From what I remember guppies are filthy fish and they might overpower an aquaponics system with their waste. I am still very much in research mode here. But I do want to do something this spring, even if it is just a system with ornamental goldfish in it.

Please cross your fingers, toes, arms, legs, eyes, etc. for us that this person is serious about buying our house. They are looking for financing, so I certainly hope so. Couldn't hurt to throw a few prayers out there for us, too. This has been such a long process and I am so ready to be done with it. I know it could be even longer, but I can't help but have a wild hope that this will be it and we can finally get on with our lives and start seriously looking for our farm.

I can't wait to get out of here, yet at the same time I worry about Mom when we're gone. She fell yesterday but didn't bother to tell me until today. She hurt the knee she had replaced and its shaken her up a lot. Eldest Sister will still live nearby Mom and maybe even move in with her, so someone will be around, but Eldest Sister is kind of...self-involved about 70% of the time, so it may not be the best fit. I know Middle Sister will not do a thing to help. She never has. Self-absorbed would be an understatement for her.

We lost our oldest chicken today. Well, she died. She's not actually lost. That implies finding is possible. This was the last one from the first flock we raised. She was half pet/half livestock, so it was a little sad. But she'd been going downhill so I know it was for the best, poor girl.

Not much else going on. I screwed up my own knee again. Well, it is swollen and making me limp, but I don't know what I actually did, because there isn't one thing I can point to.

I also started a diet today. Well, I guess it was yesterday since it is after midnight now. DH bought a new scale and I didn't like the number on it at all. So back to eating better. Also I am off caffeine and have been for a week so that will help with all the water I had been retaining. I am basically confining high carbs to one meal a day and those carbs will be either fruit or veggies. Bread will be limited to twice a week. Other meals will be low carb veggies and protein. This is what works for me.

We cancelled our gym membership so I can't go swimming for exercise. I'm not sure what I'll do, but with my knee I can't do much, so the focus will have to be more on the food end of things. I am thinking about maybe going back to Curves when I get my strength back. It worked well for me. Our health insurance allows for us to get a discount at Curves. Hey, one good benefit from the world's worst medical insurance. Who'd a thunk it?

It was good to see a payday again after 4 weeks without one. It is interesting to see how we live off of savings during that time period though. It makes me wonder how many of the people that DH works with make it through. Do they save up ahead of time or do they let some bills slide until the income comes in again? Not everyone gets a Christmas bonus to help things along, and some are quite small in comparison to what DH gets.

I got a cold during this last week from the weather swings and having to be outside when it was freezing. Our night time and morning temps were below freezing, but our daytime temps were at 50 and it was gorgeous. But having to go out in it when it was freezing twice a day has done a number on me. I know they claim that you can't catch a cold from being in the cold, but I think it certainly does help any virus that might be around invade your system.

This is the best cold I've had in ages, though. My immune system actually seems to be fighting it. I guess now that I'm no longer being beaten down by food poisoning my body has a chance. Though I still feel the effects of all those months, each week away is a little better than the one before.

On the other hand, I used the cold as an excuse to get pizza and deli food from the store and blew through most of the money I'd hoped to save to throw extra at the mortgage. Oh, well. I am still going to try to send extra to it.

So, on to the payday stuff.

$1000.00 to Mom
__100.00 to Emergency Fund
__125.oo Half Year HOA Dues (Old House)
__100.00 Property Tax Fund
__100.00 Aquaponics Fund
___90.00 Physical Therapy
__434.61 Propane (Old House)
___74.40 Dental
____8.58 Sleep Doctor
___40.00 Allowances
__100.00 Cash for Week
___95.00 January Money Fund
-------------
$2267.59 Total Out

I had $200 in my propane fund, but I decided to leave it there since I could cash flow the propane bill. We will have one more really large one before we turn the heat off in the old house from the end of April through October. The danger of freezing the pipes won't pass until then. This tank should last until the end of March or so.

Next week I'll have a larger than normal AMEX bill of $350.09. This is because we used the card to buy a Food Saver from Costco and not just gas. It is making a big difference in our frozen meat already.

I found out that we do have orthodontia covered. They will pay 50% up to $1500. DH is looking into which doctors in our area are in network. I don't mind doing that for an unestablished doctor/patient relationship. I just don't like being told that my doctor for years isn't covered. I'd go to the one my daughter went to but he is retired. I'm hoping his partner is in network, because it is really close by.

We are going to use part of our income tax refund to pay for fixing my teeth. Part of it will go into the Aquaponics Fund, part of it will go into the Emergency Fund, part of it will go into the College Fund, part to the Moving Fund, part to the Medical/Dental Fund (which is not funded at the moment) and I want to go out with DH to a really nice steakhouse sans kids with a little bit of it. I know DH needs a new stylus for his Boogie Board. And I want a Victorio Food Mill for processing tomatoes this summer.

We should be able to get our income tax done the first week of February and get it sent off right away. I have all of the interest info, we are now just waiting for the property tax slip (though we know the amount) and the slips from DH's work (again, we know the amount).

I feel like we are finally getting on solid ground. We started so far under water and then when we got our heads above, it was like slogging through mud flats when the tide is going out. Then it seemed like an endless progression of rocky beach. Now it feels like we've finally reached the sun-warmed sand. We're not quite ready to plop down and sun ourselves, but we can at least see the beach towels, you know?

...when you are too sick to go anywhere. Oh, man, has this been a bad fall for me. I don't think I've been well for more than a week at a time. This is just me whining so feel free to ignore. Right now I'm about ready to claw out my throat. I have been drinking a lot of orange pekoe Ceylon tea with raw honey and also something called Throat Coat by Traditional Medicinals, but they only help temporarily. I've even stooped as low as taking Fisherman's Friend, which tastes foul, but helps some.

I am also sick to death of soup, but don't have much choice between my throat and my stomach. When what goes down must come back up again, soup is the easiest road to follow. Ugh. I just want to be well. It would help if I could stay warm. You'd think with such a high fever that wouldn't be a problem, but we are going through a major cold spell. And I have to be out in it twice a day to care for the animals.

At least I have my canned food. It makes it easy to put food on the table for the kids. Last night I made tacos with some of my canned hamburger. I added a half cup of my taco seasoning to a pint of hamburger, added a bit of water and nuked it for 3 minutes. No fuss, very little mess, and everyone was happy.

Tonight is canned salmon and canned green beans with microwave baked potatoes. It doesn't get much easier than that. I might even be able to manage some of the salmon as it is soft. Not too much though. It's too expensive a fish to waste on my stomach right now. I will probably mostly just eat my home canned broth. That seems to stay down. It's when I add noodles and veg that I run into problems.

DH left for Alaska Tuesday night so I can't even have him take over rabbit duty.

Oh, well, at least, like I said, I'm not spending any money.

Back when we had television service, I used to be addicted to watching cooking shows. I could sit on the couch and lose five hours and all I'd have to show for it is a knit hat or scarf or a few baskets of folded laundry.

I broke that addiction when we got rid of cable and didn't really even think about if for a years. Recently I have discovered little cooking shows on youtube. Fortunately the addictive quality of letting the afternoon disappear is long gone. And when you only have a ten or 15 minute snippet with no commercials you can fit them in just about anywhere. I watch them when doing the bills or trying to hit the daily goal on Swagbucks or folding laundry.

Recently I've come across two that have given me some great recipe ideas and are pretty money-saving. Sicily's post about her crockpot cookbook brought the one to my mind.

The first one is Linda's Pantry and what I really like about it is she does a lot of make ahead freezer crockpot meals. This is where you get all of the main stuff done when you have time, like chopping the meat and browning it, chopping the vegetables, measuring out your spices, adding any stock or sauces. She uses two gallon size baggies, one inside the other, and uses her canning funnel to fill the inner bag, then puts a card with instructions on it between the inside bag and the outside bag. The outside bag is reusable. Then she puts it in the freezer. Often it is for her husband to make when she is away, all he has to do is follow the instructions, dump stuff in the crockpot, and have an easy home cooked meal.

So I am making up lists of the recipes I think we will eat from her videos, but substituting with regular spices. She sells some stuff that she uses and promotes it in each vid, but it's a soft sell. I just ignore that part since we have to be very careful with our spices, herbs, and mixtures due to DS's allergies and my own. They have to be completely clean. Anyway, I am very much enjoying those and think I will save both time and money by making some of these meals up when I feel good to have on hand when I don't.

The other one I have been watching is Our Half Acre Homestead. They do a lot of things with meat and produce they grow themselves. It's more down home and rustic than the other one, but I love it for that quality. She makes simple, easy meals with their home butchered pork, goat, and chickens. She explains things in very simple terms so that even beginner cooks can get the hang of it. And best of all she gives me ideas on what I can do with my own home raised meats. Anything that makes my life easier is welcome.

So my credit score went up at Experian. It is now 799. Boy it is hard to break 800. I think this is in response to the car loan dropping below a certain amount and the mortgage going under $10K in the last couple of months. Everything is in great shape on there, nothing that shouldn't be is on there and everything that should be is. This all bodes very well for when we buy our next house. That is assuming the old one sells.

I have a doctor's appointment for tomorrow to find out if that is what it is. It could just be a sinus infection gone really wrong. Hopefully it has not gone into walking pneumonia.

I wrote a really cranky post this morning, but deleted it. It was mostly about giant ads being obtrusive on websites *cough* SA *cough* lately. And also a top ten reasons why I hate top ten articles or lists in general. Yes, the irony of that is not lost on me.

There is not too much going on in the financial area for me. Spent $53 on prescriptions on Monday and $41 on takeaway.

We are force nursing one of the rabbit kits which takes up a lot of time. Basically you hold the doe rabbit confined and put the kit on her to nurse. He was not thriving and was starving. He is doing better now, but is still half the size of his siblings. I think he will do okay now that he has learned how to nurse.

I think the sucking reflex was not very strong in him, but that has improved. We are doing it twice a day and will likely do so for another week. He is starting to fill out and is gaining strength. He was kind of grey when we found him on day 3 and 1/4 the size of his siblings, but now is a healthy pink and white and his fur has started to get shiny. I've weighed him a couple times to make sure he is gaining. He is. His legs finally started filling out. Now I think he is going to make it.

We tried to bottle feed so we could monitor intake and because Piper really doesn't like being held in place, and he would have none of it, but he is happy to nurse. He's nine days old now and I think the worst of it is behind him. It has still been very stressful for me worrying though and I've had to spend too much time out in the cold, which is making the bronchitis or whatever worse. Not much I can do about that. It takes two people, one to hold Piper and one to hold the kit in place.

Hopefully the doctor will give me some medicine tomorrow that can kick this to the curb. What I really need is cough medicine, hopefully the good stuff with hydrocodone in it, so I won't be up all night coughing my lungs up.

I haven't written much the past couple of days, because every time I've started a post it has been so whiney and complainy that I thought better of it. I've got a cold which is halfway between exhaustion and misery. If it were complete misery I'd just stay in bed and not do anything other than rabbit care, but it's not. It's just enough to make me grumpy and tired and wish I could breathe better, but not enough to keep me from doing things like laundry or dishes or canning the last of the apples into applesauce.

I am trying to take it somewhat easy, but I do have to breed two pairs of rabbits today. I have two litters due on Monday. If each doe has at least six kits we will have a population of 40 rabbits. Six are due to be processed in about a week and a half, though.

There hasn't been anything to do financially and won't be until payday on Friday. I will then have bills to pay and I need to buy canning jars as well so we can put up the next batch of rabbits and make some more rabbit broth to can as well. It is so good. It tastes way better than chicken soup. I can't even believe how much better.

Paydays will be different now that DH is going up on Tuesdays and coming home on Wednesdays. We'll be moving to a 5 day check, a 7 day check, a 3 day check, and no check cycle, instead of a 6 day, 7 day, 3 day check, and no check cycle. It will still be the same amount of money, just assigned to different weeks. I'll need to adjust my budget accordingly, but the stuff that will be adjusted is all short term savings stuff that can come out of any paycheck and not bills.

DH says he will be bringing home a couple days worth of work. That should at least pay for one of the extra tickets he bought. He bought 3 so he could get the Thanksgiving and Christmas time trips taken care of before they doubled or tripled in price.

DH says there is a possibility of raises next year when the new contract is negotiated. I hope so. Insurance and taxes both went up this year, to the tune of about $800 less in the month than last year. And insurance will likely go up again right before the Affordable Care Act comes into play. We've been managing well, but only because we paid off all that credit card debt. Plane tickets were also about $100 more each month, so that's about $1200 more we weren't spending in 2012, also.

We are still managing to save for both the long-term (Emergency Fund, Hawaii 2018 Fund) and the short-term (Christmas Fund, College Fund, Computer Fund, etc.), but it would be easier if college weren't looming in the fall. The community college is still $7000 a year between tuition and books, and this is with DD living at home. WWU would be $10,000 a year, but I'm not sure she has the GPA to get in there.

Her grades are screwed because of how sick she has been and she had too many absences, so unless she aces the ACT or the SAT it's likely community college for her to get her grades up. She is smart enough to do well, and she is a good test taker. At least in college she won't have classes every day and can have some down time to recover if she gets sick.

Hopefully she can get a job this coming summer. The fast food places and some of the diners are hiring again and DH and I still have an in with the owner of the restaurant we worked at when we were in college, so we can probably pull a few strings if needed. We would have done it last summer, but no one was hiring then and DD was focused on volunteering. She has no work experience at all, so strings will likely need to be pulled.

DH told me he will have four unpaid weeks off at Christmas, so I really need to start shoveling money over to the January Fund. Which means most of the short-term savings will stop for now, except the property tax fund, the moving fund, and the dues fund. Those must go on. But I can put a hold on the computer fund, the Christmas fund, the appliance fund, and the college fund for Oct/Nov/Dec, which will be $1500 to add to the January Fund. Plus the $100 a month I was already saving.

I know that he will get a bonus at Christmas, but I don't know how much it will be. It's never been less than 5% of yearly income, but we want to save that money for college, not use it to live on.

I went over 3,000,000 hits this week. Thanks to everyone who has spent so much time reading this blog over the years.

...just how much money I can save when I go shopping at Trader Joe's. I walked out of there with 4 bags of groceries (large canvas totes), 2 bags of chips, and a gallon of milk for less than $95. The same stuff at the regular grocery store would have cost me twice that.

It's been a long time since I have gone there simply because the parking situation is atrocious. But at 7:30 tonight it crossed my mind that the parking lot should have some spaces at that time and I really wanted to get some canned corn. They have the best tasting canned corn, hands down. It tastes fresh and sweet and it is canned in BPA free cans. I got 20 cans. I would have gotten more, but I wanted to leave some on the shelf for others. Corn is one of the things that is very labor intensive to home can so I don't bother.

I was excited to see they now have both a Funyun and a Dorito replacement. We can't eat the originals because of allergies to about 5 ingredients in each. The onion ones were better than the originals and the nacho cheese ones were the closest thing I've found. DS was a happy camper.

Shredded cabbage had gone up in price. It used to be a $1.29 for a 16 oz bag and now it is a 10 oz bag for the same price. I know I should always shred my own cabbage, then it is .39 a pound, but I do get tempted by these bags because it makes it so fast and easy to make coleslaw. I mean, it takes all of 5 minutes to shred up a cabbage. LOL I try not to be that lazy often. But the big box of not Cheerio's is still $1.99 a pound so you win some, you lose some.

I picked up a pound of frozen bell pepper strips (yellow, red, orange, and green) for $1.69. Single bell peppers are running $2 right now. So I will have my strips for pizzas and can dice them smaller for omelets. It should last a few months.

I feel like I have been spending money right and left this week, but our stock of so much had been used up. My cupboards were not bare, but they were getting there. I still have to do a Costco run, ugh. Just a few things from there that I can't get good prices on elsewhere, like butter, the right kind of tomato sauce, and the type of toilet paper that my son is not allergic to.

We also need to buy rabbit feed. I am thinking about getting 250 pounds this time. That is five bags and will cost $93.50 with tax. I wish tax wasn't on animal feed. We don't have tax on people food in this state, and since it is food, you'd think they'd give it a pass, but no. We have 3.5 litters growing out at present and those guys eat. Feed costs are worth it in the amount of meat we get out of it, but I am tired of going to the store so often for it, so hopefully this will be enough for a month.

On the 19th Sweetie Belle and Serenity will be old enough to be bred and then we'll have five does in various stages of pregnancy or raising litters. Wonder how much feed they will go through then? We are at the point where we are eating rabbit almost once a week now, but there is no surplus to build up our freezer stock with (or to be canned). Since I don't want to have litters born during the coldest months of January and February, I will do my last breeding in early November and not breed again until mid-February. So I want to have enough meat put up to get through those months of no production.

Although Andromeda will be old enough to be bred in December I will not breed her until mid-February. A first time mother does not need to have her first litter in the freezing cold. I have been fortunate with both Phoebe and Lola on their first litters. First time rabbit mothers can often lose their entire first litter. I'd like to keep that track record up.

The big box store guys were able to access both my hard drive and my desktop, so they are copying all of my files off it to a portable hard drive. So by Sunday I should have all of my spreadsheets, photos, music files, and documents back. Then they will shoot it off to Seattle for repairs. If they can fix it in Seattle they will ship it direct to my home. If they can't, then the big box store will give me a voucher to purchase a new one.

I really hope they can fix it. I really like the keyboard and with the amount of writing I do, a keyboard that is easy to type on is one of the most important things I look for in a laptop. Since I didn't bust the screen this time, it should be cheaper to fix it than to replace it. And I want my Windows 7, though I am grudgingly getting used to Windows 8, but I still don't like it.

Lola had her first litter of kits on Thursday, six healthy, strong ones. She is far more protective of them than Phoebe or Piper are of theirs. She takes bribing with a carrot and some subterfuge on our part to get a look at them, but we mostly will just leave her be since she is so protective until they are older. I'm not very hands on until they are ten days to two weeks old anyway, but I do have to check to make sure none have died every so often.

Our current rabbit count is at 33, with 4 litters being raised. We will be sending 5 to freezer camp this weekend and then we'll be down to 28 rabbits and 3 litters (9 weeks old, 4 weeks old, and 2 days old).

We bred Phoebe on Sunday and she will be due on the 26th of September. At the rate we are going we will likely be processing a litter every 4 weeks. I want to get to the point where we have enough in the freezer to eat it once a week and have some leftover to can.

Serenity, Sweetie Belle, and Starbuck will all be old enough to breed on the 19th, so we will breed Piper to Starbuck when she's ready in a little less than 4 weeks. And we will breed Serenity and Sweetie Belle to Leo. Andromeda won't be old enough to breed until December, but I likely won't breed her until February so she has her kits in March when it is not as cold. I really don't want kits being born in January or February as it can be bitter then.

It is nice to see all the work and money I have put into raising these rabbits starting to come to fruition. A couple more litters processed and they will be paying for themselves.

Is anyone else getting pop up ads on the side of their blogs? I am trying to determine if this is something new to the site or if I just picked up a malware somewhere that just isn't being picked up by my different protection software. It could be the latter as my default search engine was changed this morning and I had to delete the AVG search. UGH.

I am about 2/3 of the way through the book Walden on Wheels. Not sure of the guy's mental state at this point, and am super annoyed at the overuse of the F-word and other certain body part references that are really unnecessary to the narrative, but all in all a pretty good read. The book is supposed to be about a guy who lives in his van while going to graduate school, but it takes more than the first half of the book to get to that point. But it is very interesting so far anyway.

It took longer than usual for the mortgage to hit this time because I mailed it. Only a couple of days, though. I had too much going on at the time to swing by there and wanted to make sure it arrived on time. So the new mortgage total is $11,264.80. $10K is getting closer and closer. Only $54.59 went to interest. I can't wait until it drops below $50 a month.

I sent for and received another Swagbucks cashout of a $5 Amazon gift card. I now have $150 in Amazon gift cards earmarked for Christmas. I also have $200 cash saved for Christmas, so a total of $350 so far. Not too shabby.

We built more rabbit tractors and now have enough for every rabbit to be outside on nice days unless they are more than three weeks pregnant or nursing young kits, in which case they will not leave the rabbit shed, until the kits are 4 weeks old.

Phoebe's litter is still doing great. They are five days old, fur is coming in, and they are nursing well. We can't tell which bunny was born on the wire, they all look healthy and strong.

We spent $169 on fireworks. This is the last year that it is legal to let them off within the city limits, although we did sign a petition to reverse the city council's arbitrary decision that they made with no input from the people of the city. We probably didn't need to spend any of it, considering what our neighbors let off, including multiple aerial fireworks that were already illegal as of this year in the city limits. After watching what they set off we moved to the end of the driveway and watched the fireworks over the bay from the city. Then we let off our fountains and went to bed. This is the first year I didn't hear fireworks after midnight.

We hope to have a house outside the city limits next year. The county is far less intrusive into your life than the city. But who knows if that will ever happen, since they are still not done fixing up our house. Middle of June, my eye. At this rate it won't be done until summer of next year. I just hope they get the new gutters on before the rainy season starts this fall.

Today is payday. I will do a payday post later when I have everything figured out.

I'm starting to think that insomnia is just part and parcel with being in your 40's. I wish it would stop. The C-pap machine has done nothing to improve my sleep. In fact, I think it makes it worse because it is so uncomfortable to wear I then can't fall asleep. I have such a mild form of apnea I don't think it much matters whether I use the machine or not. Sleep doctor has said as much, though he wants me to keep trying.

I think several months of trying is pretty much enough. I don't think it's going to get better. I've been through 3 different masks. I just can't sleep with stuff on my face or strapped around my head. Not for more than an hour or so and then I move and I wake up because it pulls at my hair or my skin or something.

We are almost done with homeschooling. I am so ready to be done. I just want an irresponsible summer. Well, you know, as irresponsible as you can be with children and livestock and a garden. LOL But it would be nice not to have to actually think for a while.

One of my major stressors removed itself last night. Turns out SIL was blowing things way out of proportion and MIL does not actually think DH should come to Wisconsin. And doesn't expect him to. So that releases us from having to suddenly come up with $2000. So I can go back to my original plans for upcoming monies and we don't have to worry about being so freaking tight with it for the next few months. And I won't feel pressured to take on more debt due to family obligations. And I can fund all the funds that I had planned to fund and keep all the funds that are in the funds in the funds. Yeah, that was probably not the best sentence, but I think you all can follow it.

Once homeschool is done on Friday I am going to work on getting us back to eating paleo-ish. Or at least very controlled carb-like. I have been so overwhelmed these last several weeks and I am feeling the bad diet choices in every cell in my body. It's very yucky feeling. I want to go back to feeling the way I did before. I actually even brought Cheetos in to the house this week. The food of death, destruction, and decay, not to mention massive allergies. This is how I get. I don't make good food choices when I am tired and stressed and overwhelmed.

And Kiki, I'm sorry if you thought I was snapping at you in my venting post comments. I didn't mean it that way. It was more of a why didn't I think of that I'm an idiot thought process going on in my head. Actually, everyone, I am slightly off my balance right now, so if I appear to grump at you at all, try not to take it to heart. I'm more grumping at life in general so it just comes out that way. I promise I will be one of the shiny happy people next week. Assuming I sleep sometime soon.

I still feel like I am recovering from the stomach virus I had last week. I don't feel sick anymore, just exhausted and bruised and not quite myself yet. And DD got sick again. I think I may have to take her to a gastroenterologist this summer.

The school counselor called today and left a message on my voice mail. Of course I didn't get it until it was too late to call back (I tried), but I have a feeling it is about DD's absences and that she may have lost her semester. To be honest, right now I could not care less. I can't send her to school vomiting or with the other end of that equation, it's against school rules. And I also can't send her to school with a fever over 100.

If she loses her semester she won't graduate with her class, but oh, well. She would have been graduating at 17 anyway. We've talked about this possibly happening since she got so badly ill first semester and then again this one, so it's not like she doesn't know it could happen.

DH gets home tonight so he can call the counselor back tomorrow and we can see what is going on, since she called him as well, but he was busy at the airport in Anchorage trying to get his bag checked since he's bringing home a PVC cutter and that can't go in carry on. He only had an hour between the puddle jumper landing and when he had to get on the big plane in which to do it.

I honestly think my daughter should just homeschool next year, but she doesn't want to be away from her friends. Well, she's away from them anyway with the amount of illness she's had this year. If she does have to repeat (due to absences, not grades, mind you), she does have friends in the class of 2015, too. She doesn't learn well in the school environment. There are too many kids goofing off and talking during class and she finds it hard to concentrate around them.

We'll see what it comes down to. It could just be the counselor expressing worry, but since she's never done that before with DD's absences in the past, I think I'm right in assuming this is where things are going. DD is not a good enough student to pull off being sick and getting all her work done at top grades like I did in high school when I had a bad health year and was hospitalized.

Whatever will be, will be. It's not like we can fix it now, anyway. Unless they have summer school.

Tomorrow is payday and I have $5 left in my wallet and $44.99 left in checking. The $5 will go into my EF envelope for later deposit and the $44.99 will be transferred directly to the Emergency Fund. I am trying to make it a habit to do this with all funds left at the end of each payday week. With that as a goal I have been finding that my urge to spend right up through the week has lessened. I really want to hit $5000 this month for the EF so I am trying hard

I have been doing pretty well with Swagbucks. The last 3 days I hit the daily goal, though I don't think I will today, being is it is at 100 and I'm at 13. I cashed out for one $5 Amazon gift card.

I relocated a $40 gift card for Safeway. DH's work gives one at Thanksgiving and one at Christmas. We used one in California, but had misplaced the other one. The nearest Safeway is 35 minutes away and majorly overpriced, but I am getting so fed up with the Haggen chain since they were bought out that I might actually venture up there.

Haggen used to be my favorite store, but it's really gone downhill since the remodel. Except the prices have gone uphill. And don't get me started on the stench coming from the fish counter. It was so bad on the Memorial Day weekend I decided I am never buying fish from them again.

We have six enormous lemon balm plants growing in the backyard (and some elsewhere) and rabbits can eat that so I am going to harvest some today to give to them. They can have up to two cups of fresh vegetation a day besides their pellets and hay. So far I have given them carrots and their tops, Swiss chard, raspberry leaves, radish tops and blackberry leaves. Lemon balm should be easier to pick then the other leaves (no thorns!) and of course are cheaper than carrots or chard. I am growing chard to give them, but its not got enough on it to harvest yet.

I think I'm having a relapse of the stomach virus I had last week. Either that or I ate something I am allergic to without knowing it. All I want to do is sleep. I am so tired. Definitely going to bed early tonight.

I got an alert from my credit monitoring service today. I have it because of a past incident with a stolen wallet. Anyway, my credit score has gone up six points to 793. According to the report we are using only 12 percent of our available credit and the national average is to use 16 percent. Ideally I'd like to be at 800 by the end of the year, but I'm not sure what it would take to do that. Probably paying the van loan down some.

I feel like we are really positioning ourselves well to buy a new house in the near future. I am still thinking along the lines of paying off our van loan if we get enough extra when our house sells. It would be one less thing to worry about and it would free up some money for upcoming college costs.

McDonald's has started hiring again. I think DD should throw her hat in the ring and try to get a summer job. She has plans to volunteer at the animal shelter but that is only 2 hours a week and you can go in at whatever time you want during their open hours. She could easily do both.

Today was a no spend day, though both kids tried to convince me to get takeaway, I still made the salmon, which they of course gobbled up like crazy. I feel a bit better today. 4 days of my own cooking is definitely helping though I still am having an allergic reaction to the apple blossoms.

The kids and I did a major clean out in the rabbit shed today. We spent 2 hours on it. We also did a complete spray out, bleach scrub, and heavy duty rinse of the cages for the six junior rabbits. They are eleven weeks old so no longer called kits.

The rabbits are doing well. The youngsters are growing like weeds. I have been able to determine that 3 are does, 2 are bucks, and one will kick me until the sun goes down before it lets me check. Well, that one will definitely be going to freezer camp. Would anyway, since I've already picked out the male and female I'm keeping from this litter. Phoebe is growing up and is 4 months old today. Leo is pretty laid back and doesn't do too much. Piper is pregnant and it shows in a slight rounding of her belly and a bit of a mischievous streak.

Tomorrow I will scrub down Piper's old cage and if Leo will let me pick him up I will try to scrub his cage, too. DS is going away overnight with my mother tomorrow to a decoy show to sell off the last of Dad's decoys (hopefully). He helps her run the table and earns part of the profit. The show is actually on Saturday, but they go down early Friday evening. So if I can't get Leo out of his cage, the scrubbing of his will wait until Sunday. I will also do Phoebe's cage on Sunday.

Piper's cage is clean and I won't be disturbing her anymore, other than to remove the droppings tray and spray it out daily, until after she's given birth and the kits are at least a week old. She's 22 days pregnant and is starting to make nests in her cage with straw and hay.



I won't put the nest box in until day 27, though. Rabbits gestation runs anywhere from 28 to 32 days and they don't recommend you put the nest box in until day 27 or the rabbit might decide it is a litter box and not a nest box.

I am getting excited. Although I was pretty sure she was pregnant from her behavior, palpating the abdomen, and her rounded belly, nest making proves it. I won't be such a nervous breeder next time, but since this is my first time I was worried it wouldn't take or something.

While my cat had kittens once when I was a child, we didn't see them until they were about 3 weeks old. I will be able to see the kits the day they are born or the next morning if they are born at night. It should be an interesting experience and hopefully nothing will go wrong.

In the vein of finding homes that are too expensive and that we can never have, and DH's pentient for showing them to me, I set out to find something with some serious bells and whistles that we could afford and show it to DH. Not super seriously or anything, just to make the point.

Well, I found a doozy in our price range, albeit it closer to the high end and with yearly taxes of $4700. I went down my checklist. 5 acres. One level. House in good repair. At least 1500 square feet (it's 2500). Outbuildings for storage and for rabbit housing and chicken housing. Garden area. Mature fruit trees. A private well. A shop. Room for DS's model train layouts. A pond. A wood stove for back up heat. A large and roomy kitchen (plus beautiful). Close to family (2 miles from sister-in-law and nieces, 5 miles to MIL and FIL, 15 minutes from Mom and town.) Good school district.

And then for the bells and whistles. An indoor swimming pool and hot tub. A glass and brick green house. And...a small hanger for a Cessna airplane, with a shared private landing strip with dues of 45 a year!

It's $374,500. With our planned down payment of $60,000, we'd still be walking away with a pretty big mortgage and monthly payment. And I don't actually want a super big mortgage with college in the picture soon. The cost to heat a pool would actually be less than heating a house if we istalled a heat pump to exchange air from the house to the pool and back, using the pool as a heat sink. And we could rent the hanger to someone with a small plane so get a bit of income on the side to help with the mortgae payment. I'm not seriously considering it, of course, but I thought it was fun to find something like this anyway.

We are too far away from buying a house yet to be serious about anything. Still just looking and dreaming.



I'd still be happier with the almost 20 acre place for $305,000.

I pretty much refused to leave the property yesterday, since DD stayed home from school and DS is homeschooled. I have a sinus infection that has been kicking me hard. I have antibiotics but they take a bit to start working. But anyway, not going anywhere ensured a no spend day. Today won't be one. I caved and grabbed a couple of hashbrowns from a fast food drive-thru as it was the only way I was getting breakfast. There was very little time between taking my daughter to school and caring for the life stock. I wanted to do a few things on the computer before my very early appointment with the sleep doctor. This should be fun considering I got zero sleep last night.

I am going to ask sleep doctor to double my sleep meds. I just cannot fall asleep with this darn C-PAP machine on unless I knock myself sidewise with sleeping pills. Right now I have to take 1 zolpidem, 75 mg of amytriptalline, 2 Benadryls and 2 (generic) Excedrin PM's to get to sleep at all. I'd rather just take 2 zolpidem and be down for the count. So hopefully he will agree to that or I am just done with the trying to use the C-PAP at all. My apnea is not that bad, certainly not life-threatening, but the treatment for it is not improving my insomnia at all. I was getting deeper and better sleep when I did sleep before. Now I feel like I'm running on empty all the time instead of just half of the time.

I think I could adapt to one or the other of the masks if I could just fall asleep on my side. I can't fall asleep on my back. I've never been able to, but that is the only way the masks fit on properly. If you try to sleep on your side it pushes partway off and then it doesn't work right. Makes me crazy.

If I can get 2 zolpidem, I think I'd be knocked out before I realized I was falling asleep on my back. And at least it is a cheap medicine. 30 pills costs like $2.45 or something. I wish I could get off all of it, but that's only ever going to happen if I can sleep regularly to begin with.

I will try to take a nap when I get back from the sleep doctor appointment, without the machine. I will sleep until two and go pick up DD and then do homeschool with DS. That's the nice thing about homeschool, if you don't sleep, you can take a nap and do lessons in the evening. DS won't mind. He has a new train layout he's putting together and Mom will be around all day.

I worked hard today. Let's just say if I never see rabbit manure again it will be too soon. Only of course I will be seeing it. But the garden will be well fertilized. Everything is now squeaky clean in the rabbit shed and in the chicken coop. I think I'd forgotten my body was capable of this much hard, physical work.

Today was a no spend day, which is easy to do if you never leave home. I am looking forward to Friday though. Payday cannot come soon enough, mostly because I need to go down to the ranch on Saturday and buy beef and pork. I still have a couple of chickens, but I am out of hamburger, chuck roasts and pork chops.

I really need to go to Trader Joe's as well and stock up on a few of their items. Particularly spaghetti, organic potatoes, Joe's O's, and their non-BPA lined canned corn. And their tomato sauce since our Costco has stopped carrying the S&W organic tomato sauce in the 15 ounce cans.

So definitely a lot of money will be coming out Friday for grocery shopping.

Not sure what is happening on the overtime front. They haven't been able to find DH a bed, so now he and his immediate boss are trying to get the okay for him to bring the work home to do on his days off. He'll get paid $25 less a day for it, but he won't be working 12 hour days, so it seems pretty win-win. Even though they are crying for the redlines to get done, there is molasses in the approval department. I just really hope it gets okayed.

I'm not all that keen on him having to work while here, but at the same time, the overtime would be so good for us financially right now. I guess right now we just live in limbo and wait and see. I have mentioned before, haven't I, that I don't do patience well?