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Home > Archive: October, 2010

Archive for October, 2010

Not Been Blogging Much

October 6th, 2010 at 06:07 pm

Well, it seems like I rather suck at blogging anymore. I just tend to pop up from time to time now with an update and that's about it. So much has changed in the past year it's ridiculous. Things are slowly coming down debtwise. I am seeing real progress being made in some areas. There's still a lot of debt left though. And we had to pay for more surgery which added to our debt.

$ 94,400.00 left on medical debt
$ 23,139.75 left on the mortgage
$ 42,100.00 left on personal loan
$ 30,000.00 left on unsecured debt over 3 cards
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$189,639.75

Considering we started out at around $250,000 when I started this blog we've done well. We do also have around $23,000 left on our car loan.

All of our debt should be paid off in 6.5 years if we continue at this rate. If we sell our house, which may or may not happen any time soon, we could take a large chunk out of it. With the market the way it is I am not counting on it.

We are still living with my mother. She's taken a couple more falls so I really do not regret my decision to move into town and take care of her. She's still mostly self-sufficient, still has her mind, but she really needs someone to just be here for the bad times. I'm not sure we'll buy another house after the one we own right now sells until she's ready to go into assisted living or a nursing home and that's probably several years away. This house is huge and it just makes no sense to move away from her right now.

It's a good school district here. After two years of homeschooling I've got the kids enrolled in the public school system again. They are both thriving and getting good marks. My daughter is a freshman and well on her way to honor roll. Probably five A's and a B. They do weekly updates online and also every three weeks, so I can check it obsessively and make sure they aren't screwing her up.

Things are a little up in the air at DH's work. Contracts are up in December and they aren't being very forthcoming on whether his company is even going to get the subcontract from the main company this next year or not. We've had job security for 14.5 years and not having it anymore is a little unnerving. DH isn't as worried about it as I am. He's got feelers into several companies just in case and says he's gotten positive responses so hopefully if his company doesn't get the contract he'll simply be able to switch to the one that has it. It'll mean no medical insurance for a few months, but it'd be work and that's important with a debtload like ours.

I'd feel better if I could work. I'm pretty much disabled these days because of my knee and the pain I'm in all the time. I am working to strengthen it with swimming, but it's a slow road. The rest of me is getting fitter, but it's still very difficult to walk. Standing still is even harder. I can cook sitting down, but I don't think they'd let me do that in a restaurant.

I am doing what I can to cut back again. We were getting really lazy there for a while with eating out because it was hard for me to cook when I was in so much pain, but I've been teaching my daughter and between the two of us we are managing a lot more home-cooked meals.

Last night I made my special spaghetti sauce from 3 fresh roma tomatoes, 1 chopped onion, 2 tbsp minced garlic, 2 14.5 ounce cans tomato sauce, 2 6 ounce cans tomato paste, basil, oregano, thyme, salt and pepper to taste. Tomatoes and herbs came from the garden. The kids and I made parmesan breadsticks from scratch (dough made in the bread machine), and homemade spaghetti noodles in the pasta maker (had it for years, but have rarely used it). It was really good, better than a meal at The Olive Garden and cost about $8 altogether, as we all drank a glass of milk as well. It would have been about $50 for 3 of us if we'd gone out for that same meal.

Today I'll be making a beef potroast in the crockpot and microwave baked potatoes and green beans and tomorrow I'll be doing up a big pot of Texas style chili. There will be enough of that to freeze for several meals. I've got all the ingredients on hand and am focusing on cooking from the freezer and the pantry this month as much as possible. Chris comes home on Thursday and hopefully he'll be on board with this whole not eating out thing. He claims he likes my cooking best anyway, but we shall see.