Monday--
Belgian Waffles with strawberries
Bacon and eggs
Salad

Tuesday--
Fried rabbit
Baked potatoes
Broccoli/cauliflower

Wednesday--
Baked potato soup (bacon is the protein)
Fresh baked bread
Red cabbage and spinach salad

Thursday--
Pulled pork in choice of buns or tortillas
Applesauce
Coleslaw

Friday--
Homemade pizza with pepperoni, homemade sausage, onions, and bell pepper strips
Broccoli/cauliflower

Saturday--
Spaghetti and Meatballs
Coleslaw
Canned pears

Sunday--
Beef chuck roast
Mashed potatoes and gravy
Green beans
Drop biscuits with choice of jams

Today was payday. I am mostly paying ahead on October bills, since we had so many paydays in September and because of the way the October paydays will fall. I had also set aside most of the money to pay the big doctor bill you'll see listed below. I am not actually making the car payment yet as the statement hasn't arrived, but I did set the money aside for it for our usual payment.

For some reason today while I was paying the bills and recording things into the budget I had the song "Pop Goes the Weasel," going through my head. Particularly the line that goes, "That's the way the money goes, pop goes the weasel." Which admittedly is better than the song that has been in my head all week. Which is this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SJvKDAF8Xk, but I'm warning you that you probably should not watch it because it is weird and kind of addictive and it will run through your head over and over again and that way madness lies. Then again, why should I be the only one with it stuck in my head?

Anyway, here is the list of what went out today:

$1000.00 Loan Payback to Mom
__400.00 Utilities to Mom
___90.00 Physical Therapy
__300.00 Beef/Pork/Chicken from the ranch Money
__100.00 Cash for Week
___40.00 Allowances
___45.30 Life Insurance DH
___41.88 Life Insurance Me
___69.86 Car Insurance
___47.17 Old House Insurance
___41.16 Old House Security System
__168.00 Storage
__923.54 Medical
__322.75 AMEX
___72.00 Water/sewer Old House (Holding Tank)
___35.20 Emergency Fund
__800.00 Car Payment Money (Holding Tank)
------------
$4496.86 Total Money Out (or set aside)

I still have $250 out of this paycheck in checking. I am waiting for the power bill for the old house to come, but that will only be around $30 to $35. I will have to get a few prescriptions renewed tomorrow. I also need to do a little bit of grocery shopping, mostly for produce. Other than that and a field trip fee on Monday for DS's homeschool program, I don't see any other money going out.

Yesterday as the weekly deposit of $10 to savings, which always goes to the EF. I forgot about it, though, and so I transferred $35.20 to the EF to meet my Septembers goal of $7300, when all I really needed to do was transfer $25.20. Oh, well, so I passed the goal a bit.

The new balance of the EF is $7310.

The goal for October was going to be $7500, but now is $7510.

We dispatched four of our meat rabbits today. From a live weight of 22 pounds, 11.7 ounces, we got 11 pounds, 6.3 ounces of rabbit meat and 12.3 ounces of livers, for a total of 12 pounds, 2.6 oz of food. They ate about $7 worth of feed, $1 worth of hay, and $4 worth of vegetables over their life, so it comes out to about $1 per pound. We could get a smidge more if we saved the hearts and kidneys, too, but we don't. They go to the wildlife center along with the heads and other offal.

I'd say the rabbits are paying for themselves and we are ending up with lots of good, low-fat, lean white meat in the freezer at a price that just can't be beat by anything but the cheapest chicken hindquarters and you can bet those chickens never saw daylight.

Phoebe gave birth this morning, another large litter with 8 healthy kits. We'll have a break from kindling for a while, as the next two rabbits to give birth are only one week pregnant, so have three weeks and four days to go. In another couple of months we should be able to have rabbit twice a week if we so desire.

I am going to can some rabbit meat this week and some rabbit broth for making soup later this winter, or possibly canning carrot, potato, celery, bits of meat, and onion right in the broth and can it as soup. I would also like to make up some rabbit nuggets for the freezer. And maybe some rabbit stir-fry kits, too.

That means I'll need to dig up some potatoes and get some organic carrots from the farmer's market or the no spray garden in town. I doubt anyone has grown celery here, it is kind of hit or miss in our zone, but I can get it from the store if needs must be. Organic though. It sucks up pesticides just like carrots.

It would be great to have enough soups done up to get through winter and spring, but that may not be possible yet.

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The repair around the skylights and the final application of stuff to make the floors look like shiny wood instead of dull wood, will get put on this weekend. We just need to find out how long it takes for the shiny stuff to dry. Then we'll go in with the realtor and see where things stand.

I feel like I've been such a major drama llama lately, but finally something really great happened. The rain stopped early this a.m. so the roofer was able to go out and look at the roof at the old house. And it turns out that it was a very small thing with the flashing that likely got knocked loose when the roof was pressure washed, so instead of just an estimate he said he could do the fix right then. It would take like a half an hour. Total cost to repair roof? $151!

So now the little bit of damage that was done to the inside ceiling can be repaired and we should be able to put the house on the market next weekend! Please cross your fingers for us (or pray) that nothing else goes wrong. This whole house ordeal may finally be over.

I had guesstimated on Friday when I paid the mortgage that the balance would be around $8937.89, but it was actually $8931.90. That's $5.99 less, not the $1 or $2 I thought I'd be off by. Nice. Just that much less left to pay the thing off.

The roofer is most likely going out on Thursday at that is the only day it is not supposed to rain this week. If it doesn't rain tomorrow though he will give a call and have Mom meet him out there. I've got too much going on this week between homeschooling, DH coming home, running R around, and having to do a meat rabbit slaughter on the one sunny day we have.

On top of that I start Piper's litter weaning on Thursday as they will be 8 weeks old, so I'll have to figure out who are the two biggest and take them away to start the process. AND Phoebe is due to kindle her second litter on Thursday and with all the going in and out of the rabbit shed I'll be doing, she may not get the privacy she will want. I am anxious if the big first litter will be the norm. Since all the other rabbits seem stuck on six kits, it would be nice if she'd kindle 9 again.

And I found a 13 acre spread that I desperately want to go see because it is absolutely perfect for our farming wants. We would easily be able to expand the rabbitry. We could have our flock of chickens, our ducks, our geese, our quail, pigs, goats, and a guard alpaca or two to free range with the chickens. Not all of once of course, but over time.

I should not even be looking at farms until our house sells and we can't put it on the market until the roof is repaired. That ranch will probably be long gone by the time we are ready to buy. But I fell in love with it just from the photos. And it is in our price range.

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

I went down and talked to the people who issue my homeowner's policy about the roof and it would be covered if we decide to make a claim. We have a $500 deductible, which I knew. I was a little worried about it, because since the house is vacant, we had to have a different policy than if we were living in it. One that didn't insure contents since there weren't any, etc., but still insured the building/structures. And there are always exclusions. But we did, in fact, take out the right policy when we moved, so it will cover this water/wind damage. So it is a big relief to know that is an option.

After that an appointment was made for later this week to have a roofer/repairer come and give an estimate. He will be able to track down where the actual damage is and follow the line of the leak. He's been in business 20 years and comes highly recommended. He is one of the few that will make repairs. A lot of roofers won't do that anymore, they will just roof.

And once we have the estimate I can decide whether it is enough to bother with a claim or to just eat it. I really don't want to trash the emergency fund. But I don't want sky high insurance rates in the future either. Right now we get a huge discount for never having submitted a claim on house or car insurance in 15 years/20 years.

I think my break point will be $2000. If it is much more than that we will submit a claim and deal with the insurance consequences. I can handle losing that much from the EF and still feel secure. And if we do a claim, it will be much easier to come up with the $500 deductible.

I forgot to ask if we pay first and then get reimbursed by insurance or if we have the roofer send the bill to the insurance and they pay it. I guess I'll have to do that once we get the estimate.

Right now I am just going to hope and pray this is a repair job and not a full roof job. I'd much prefer it to be a fast and easy fix. We really wanted to get the house on the market when DH comes home this time. Who knows now if that will happen? Depends on how fast it can be done, I guess.

The house is done. Yeah, really. Only...you knew there had to be an only, right? Well, as the workers were removing everything from the house and going through and doing the final checklist a storm moved in. And it moved in hard.

And the wind and the rain damaged the roof and water started leaking in around the skylights, but it is not the actual skylights that are leaking. So up went the head dude to see if he could patch the leak. Yes, in the storm. To no avail. The roof was fine last week when he was up there, but now it's not.

They took photos of the damage and covered the entire roof with two huge tarps. They also put stuff down to protect the flooring. And tomorrow I get to go see the insurance agent and see where to go from there. We may not file a claim at all, but we want to see if we need to have one of their people come out or just get a roofer to go out and figure stuff out and give us an estimate to take to them if we decide to file a claim.

We do have enough money in the EF to put on a new roof and certainly to just repair it if that is what needs to be done. I am not sure I want to file a claim and have our insurance be screwed for the next 10 years. I feel like insurance claims should be for catastrophic damage. Yet at the same time if there is coverage for this it might be worth doing. Ugh.

I really did not need this to happen. Though better it happened while the workers were still there, than after they were done and us not going out there until next weekend. We could have had damage to the new floors and not just to a small part of the ceiling in the skylight openings.

I was so looking forward to finally getting this thing on the market and without further expense, but it is not to be just yet.

Monday--
Pork Chops
Fried Potatoes
Green Beans

Tuesday--
Spaghetti and Meatballs
Garlic Bread
Salad

Wednesday--
Chicken Stir-fry
Pears

Thursday--
Fried Rabbit
Baked Potatoes
Green Beans

Friday--
Baked Potato Soup
Coleslaw

Saturday--
Leftovers

Sunday--
Beef Chuck Pot Roast
Mashed Potatoes and Gravy
Green Beans
Drop biscuits with choice of homemade jams

After making a larger than usual mortgage payment today, we are now under $9K! Estimated balance is $8937.89. It will likely be $1 or $2 less than that when it actually posts. I used last month's interest to calculate it and I paid it 3 days earlier this month so it will definitely be a bit less. Wasn't due until the 1st. I forgot to reorder checks while I was there making the payment, darn it. Got to remember to do that Monday.

I added $4.85 to the coin jar today.

Today is payday. Not a lot of bills went out today, but large amounts of money did.

$1500.00 BoA VISA
_1075.86 Mortgage payment
__100.00 Cash for the Week
___40.00 Allowances
__202.00 Medical
__100.00 Emergency Fund
-------------
$3017.86 Total Money Out

I am also setting aside $600 of this paycheck to go towards a medical bill that I won't be able to pay in full until next Friday. It is $923.54 and is the result of my medical insurance (worst) company (in the US) Premera "we suck eggs" Blue Cross trying to get out of paying for, oh, just about anything EVER. Not that I'm ticked off or anything.

And we haven't even got the hospital bill for DD's emergency middle of the night visit at the start of the month yet. I don't even want to think about what that will be. I never thought I'd see the day where I'd actually miss Aetna. Mind you, I only miss them a little bit, but still.

I went to the local CU we have a portion of our EF in to deposit the Allstate refund check, the school refund check, and the $11 in ones I had in the coin jar today. It was a total of $39.48. I also transferred $100 to my main EF at C1-360. So a total of $139.48 to the EF.

The CU messed up and put the $39.48 into the dormant checking account instead of the savings account. I specifically said savings and even gave the specific numbers for savings. Unfortunately they are in the middle of a remodel and name change and they had taken out the area where they keep the deposit slips so I couldn't fill one out. Since the savings and checking deposit slips are uniquely different colors it seldom happens that they put it in the wrong account, but without those slips they do. A lot. and I didn't think to double check it until I got home.

So I will have to call them on Monday and have them fix it. They are in the process of changing their internet stuff, too, or I'd just go in and transfer it myself.

Anyway:

$7125.32 Beginning EF Amount
__100.00 Deposit to Main EF
+__39.48 Deposit to Local EF
-------------
$7264.80 New EF Amount

I need to scrape up $35.20 more to hit my September EF goal. I think I can manage.