Okay, I'm finally getting the bills posted that I paid off Friday's paycheck.

$910.37 Medical Mortgage
$124.00 Water/Sewer (2 months)
$100.00 MBNA MC
$ 90.00 Road Assessment Fee (Year)
$ 41.82 Phone (Home)
$185.50 Car Insurance (3 months)
$ 20.00 Rose's School Lunch Account
$ 67.42 SFBC
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1539.11 Total Bills

We had a gorgeous sunny day today. Almost all of the snow has melted, it is down to maybe 1 inch to 1/2 inch in places. It would have been a great day for hanging laundry if I hadn't already spread it over the drying racks to dry inside last night. Oh, well.

Today was a no spend day. I did a load of dishes and vacuumed the living room. Then I wrote for 6 pages.

I wrote 8 pages last night and 2 the night before, if I remember correctly. It might have been 3. I need to go back and count everything up again, I've lost track. I think its in the 170's. I now have 8 chapters written in order and then a ton of out of order "scenes" that will get worked in as I go. Some of the "scenes" are 1 or 2 pages and some are closer to 10. I never could completely write something in order, always get flash forwards, as I call them.

The more I write, the more I am thinking this may need to break down into four books, one per year that covers the story. Otherwise its going to be way too long. I don't want to be Harry Turtledove or J.K. Rowling and cause carpal tunnel syndrome to my readers from holding heavy books if my books ever do end up getting published.

Still no news on the PTR payments. I think I am going to quit them all. Now that I am writing so much I'd rather use that time on it. Much more productive and a possible much larger payoff in the end.

I guess I got the posting bug today. Anyhow, today is technically a no spend day, even though I am writing out bills, I won't mail them until tomorrow. Did not go anywhere, did not spend anything. I'll post later on what bills I paid and how much.

I have been cooking a potroast in the crock pot today, just seasoned with Lawry's seasoned salt. Just now I added some cut up baby red potatoes, carrots, a parsnip, a turnip, and some acorn squash chunks and will let it cook an hour or so longer, checking for tenderness to see if they are done after an hour or so. I love slow cooked beef with winter vegetables. Yummy. And there is plenty extra for freezing for future use.

I went to check up on my payment from TinklyCash and I am 441st in line waiting to receive payment. Well, that doesn't sound good. I have not received a note from them that payment will be delayed, so I am kind of surprised that there is such a huge backlog, usually if they are late they are very good about sending stuff out.

They have always paid in the past, even though it took 3 weeks one time, they told us why beforehand. Usually they paid the next day. I hate to give up on them, so I think I will wait a bit longer and see if I at least move up the list at all.

I know there was an earthquake in the islands where this is based, they sent that note out beginning of January that it had messed with some undersea cables or something that interferred with online banking, so I'm more likely to give them more of a chance.

Well, I have a feeling that Dayslook is a non-legitimate PTR. On my first cash out, they are several days late on payment already. Oh, they sent out a notice saying they were waiting on payment from someone else before they did payouts themselves, but its been quite some time now, a couple of weeks, so I will eliminate them from use. They are right up there with SeekBizs, non-payers.

I am sorry to say this but I have to withdraw my recommendation of ReadRevenue as a good PTR site. They claim payment within 48 hours and for all of 2006 they made payments promptly and I never had a problem with them. But they have paid out nothing since December. I've cashed out twice with them, hoping the first time was a glitch.

The first time was on January 13, 2007 and despite 8 emails that I have sent starting within 5 days of the missing payment, I have had absolutely no response from them. I cashed out again 0n February 21. Today is the 26th. Well past the 48 hours they post on their website that they will pay to paypal by. It should have come on Friday.

I did some research and from what I can find online, no one else has received payment from this company since December. So don't waste your time on it anymore if you had signed up because I said it was legitimate. It no longer is.

It snowed most of last night, then when the sun came up it started melting right away. It got up to 51 degrees and now as the sun is heading down it is raining ice, so I am sure as soon as the temp drops in the dark it will snow again all night, and melt again all day tomorrow. We are left with a crusty 2 inches at the moment.

I picked up the kids and the laundry from Mom's. She was so great to do it all. Well, not all, I've been doing the towels at home and hanging them on the drying racks. I do look forward to my new dryer when I get around to being able to get it. I will still line dry and rack dry to a certain extent even after. But I want the option of using my dryer in a case where someone's coat gets soaked but not dirty or same with shoes.

I am feeling a little better, I got some serious sleep Friday, didn't do that great last night, but Friday helped so much it didn't matter too much. I made the kids clean up the living room, they had trashed it royally before going to Mom's for the weekend, so I saved it for them to clean! Hey, they need to earn their allowances.

I am almost caught up on dishes. I have half a load in the sink still, and am currently washing a load and did another one this morning. I really let that slide while sick, only washing when we ran out of something. I did rinse everything so it didn't stink or mold, though. So it was mostly a question of just running everything through.

I have picked up one less than frugal habit this last year. I buy the jumbo aluminum foil from Costco and I use it to line my baking sheets. Then I don't have to clean my baking sheets. It is a bit wasteful environmentally but saves me time and I'm not trying to scrub burnt on cheese or sauce or whatever off the sheets. The foil does not end up being recycleable as it is not cleanable.

The kids have gone off down the road to play with some other kids so I am going to do some writing. I did 3 pages this morning before I picked up the kids. I'm really in the zone now. That puts me at 158. Go me!

It was a no spend day. I didn't leave the house. I wrote 30 pages. Talked to DH on the phone for an hour. Got some rather good salary news but until it is signed on the dotted line I won't really allow myself to believe it.

If, if, if everything that he is currently being told is true, we aren't going to have to worry about money the same way again.

Obviously we will have to worry about it to some extent as in, where does this go and what to do with that. But...our debt problems will begin to vanish rapidly and we'll be out of credit card debt faster than I'd ever dreamed.

Oh, I want to shout it from the rooftops, but I'm afraid that if I do, it will disappear. So I am being quietly optimistic without 100% believability. It is the same company after all is said and done.

I woke up to six inches of snow this morning after two gloriously beautiful days of 50 degree weather. Waiting for the bus this morning made us all look like we'd been frosted it was coming down so hard, those ginormous fluffy flakes the size of a quarter if you know the type. It was beautiful but I thought we were done. I guess I can thank my lucky stars that we didn't get feet like other people across the country have had to deal with.

It started melting around noon, dropping huge loads onto the roof from the cedar trees. It was down to about 3 inches when I left to take the kids in to spend the weekend with my parents and my sister's youngest boy. (And if you heard a shout of joy around 6:00 PST tonight, that would have been me leaving my parent's house free and clear.

I love my children dearly but I was very much ready to love them at someone else's house for a bit. Two weeks of the flu with cranky kids followed by a 4 day holiday weekend and me not getting enough sleep the last two nights, does not make for good family harmony. If I had to hear "She's on my couch cushion!" "No, he's on my couch cushion!" one more time I think I may have gone mental. Especially since the middle couch cushion between them is supposed to remain empty to prevent such arguments from happening in the first place, but someone always wants to put their feet up.

I don't have to pick them up until Sunday noontime so I will have lots of time to write tomorrow. That I am looking forward to. I did some serious pondering on the drive home and figured some more stuff out plotwise, so I am quite happy with it.

I did my shopping after letting the kids off, major monthly grocery shop plus a WalMart shop as I needed OTC meds, including the type you have to sign in blood for at the pharmacy (Sudafed, Children's Motrin Cold) to replace what was used up during the flu. I also got motor oil, goldfish crackers, nasal spray, a new drying rack, and a new George grill. Kind of an eclectic lot. But I didn't have any impulse buys at WalMart and I can't often say that. I will need to do a Freddy's run for organic milk when I pick up the kids but then we should be set for a fair bit.

I wrote 3 pages last night, which puts me at 125, just over 1/3 of the way to my yearly goal. Yay, me.

I also bought some food from the Schwan's guy today and used $20 for gas.

Yesterday was the day of the auto deposit of $10 to savings. Today I transferred it to checking and then it sent it off to ING. The new total in ING will be $326.53.

I also cashed out $5 at TinklyCash last night, which should show up by Monday latest. They tend to pay within 24 hours but weekends can be iffy.

My George Foreman grill died an early death about 10 days ago. I use this thing constantly and hadn't even had this upgrade for a year. Something shorted out while I was cooking, I think there was a power surge. I checked the fuse box but it was fine, I tried other outlets, but no go. It is officially dead.

I think this is what has been leading me to not cook, well aside from the flu, because it makes it so much easier to make meat quickly. Not having one is causing me to spend money on less healthy convenience foods.

Well, tomorrow is payday and I think I am going to buy a new one. I probably could have with the amounts I've spent on convenience this week. At least there will be 2.5 hours of overtime on this check, which should cover it. I'm just glad they are not as expensive as they used to be.

I spent $11.64 buying a family size can of beef stew, a family size can of chicken noodle soup, and a normal size can of chili. From the gas station. I definitely need my grill back. I'm too lazy or too tired to cook consistently without it, even though I know how quite well.

I wrote 12 pages last night, which puts me at 121. Two pages to go to be 1/3 of the way to my goal of 365 pages written this year. I'm doing pretty good, writing every day at this point, when the most I was hoping for when I set this goal was a couple of hours a week.

In the past I always just wrote when the mood hit me, it was more of a hobby, just something I did. I'm trying to treat it more like a part time job. I still enjoy it of course, but I'm making sure I put the time in and I think that is really important to achieving my ends.

Working on this book is giving me ideas about the one that I finished a year or two ago but was unhappy about something and unable to figure it out at the time. I think when I finish this one, I can go back to the other one and fix it. Because I'm putting the time in daily, making the habit become second nature, it is so much easier to see gaps and fix them.

Boomeyer asked what it was about and all I can say at this point is that its a coming of age story that follows the lives of 4 girls keenly affected by the death of one of their friends and how it shapes the people they become over the next four years.