We ended up buying the first bed we looked at. Isn't it funny how that happens sometimes? But after seven furniture stores, there just wasn't one that we liked better. So yesterday we went back to the first store and laid on the bed again for 15-20 minutes, giving it a good, solid test drive.

We ended up spending $1890.15 for a new King mattress, box springs, and a Hollywood frame (at cost). Delivery was added free as well as hauling away the mattress and box springs. We got the iComfort Insight by Serta. It's like Tempurpedic (TM), but less expensive and to my back, more comfortable. DH liked it best, too.

We got it in flat, but you can get it with an adjustable frame that goes up and down like a hospital bed and also vibrates. The frame would have cost an additional $2600 plus tax. But you can buy the frame seperately, so we are thinking in a year or so about maybe doing that. Just not until we are out of credit card debt. We needed the bed now, not the luxury part of it.

We ended up paying cash (which knocked $200 off the price we were given). But it means I will only be sending $3100 to debt repayment instead of $5000. Still, I really couldn't see financing a bed right now. It's being delivered in a couple of hours. I am really looking forward to sleeping on it tonight. It relieves so much of the pressue on my back and hip.

I had physical therapy yesterday and it ended up making it hurt worse afterwards. It always does, just in the hip, not in the knee. I see the physician's assistant today about all the pain in my hip the PT has been causing. I am hoping they will take x-rays because it's just so bad. If it is just muscular, I guess it's time that will heal it, but if it is something more than that, I want it taken care of.

DH and I went to some more mattress stores today and it is looking like the first store is still the least expensive so far. The other local store had a bed for twice as much as the the first one. Exact same bed. We did go to JR's, which is where we bought our wonderful sectional four years ago. They had a Beautyrest that was a combination of coils and memory foam that would do if we didn't like the other bed so much. And the guy (actual store owner) was willing to give us $300 off, as well as eat the sales tax and give us free delivery and mattress recycling. It was a really good offer, but in the end it's $400 more for a mattress that is five times better, so...worth the difference to me.

We still have three stores to check, but are leaning heavily in the direction of the first store. Especially since they have two kings in stock of the type we want so we can basically pick it up and go, not have to order it and wait a couple of weeks.

I really doubt Macy's Furniture is going to be cheaper. And the two out in Ferndale are notoriously expensive so unless they are having some kind of blow out sale, it's probably going to be the first store. Plus, the first store had the nicest and most attentive salesman. Good customer service counts for an awful lot in this day and age.

I saw some pretty purple sofas at two of the stores. It got me to thinking. Our sectional is lovely, with it's deep chocolate, light brown, and burgandy pillows, but we might like to update it by trading out the burgandy for purple. So we will be pricing pillows in a couple of months to see what's out there. Or, hmm...I could sew some slip covers in purple if I could find the right fabric. I've done pillowcases and cloth diapers. Slip covers can't be too difficult, right? It's just a straight hem.

DH and I started bed shopping today. I have a feeling it is going to be pretty slow going for me as I can only walk so much without my hip catching on fire. But we started at one of the long-standing family run companies in town and were taken care of by a nice young Indian man (from India, not Native American). I made sure we got his business card because when we come back to buy, he's the one who put the time in and we want to make sure he'll be there to get the commission.

I was hoping to get more out of this mattress, but it has pot holes in it and they are messing up the way we sleep. Also one of the coils came through the fabric and I've scraped my leg on it more than once.

So now the question becomes, where do we get the money for it? We could buy it outright with $1850 from DH's bonus money and dropping debt pay back to $3150. I could take it from my meager emergency fund. I could take it from the money allocated for the HSA. Or we could buy it 12 months/ same as cash for $155 a month. A nice, no interest way to pay for something that is quickly becoming a necessity.

The one we like so far, when I laid down on it, all the painful spots on my body went away. My hip suddenly didn't hurt, my knee, my elbow, my low back were all good until I stood up again. Chris felt it, too. We both really like it. It'll cost around $1850 with tax. It was not the most expensive one in the shop, and there were some doozies.

We are going to look around some more, this is not the only family owned furniture store in our county. We might even look in at the franchises, though I prefer to spend the money with the locals. Still if it's less expensive enough, I'll consider the franchises.

Anything over $2000 right now is out of our price range. By my calculations we have three family run furniture stores to check out before we look at Macy's Furniture, JR Furniture, and Sleep Country, USA. It's going to be a long day looking as just the one trip wore me out something fierce.

They said it could take up to 8 weeks to fix my computer as there are three things wrong with it (and it might require the screen being replaced and parts being ordered from Japan, yikes). I'm not going to go that long without a computer or the internet. So, I've been putting money aside again in a laptop fund and we used it to buy a cheapie. It's a bit more than a Netbook, but it's an off brand so it was quite inexpensive. It has a great keyboard though, so I can keep up with my book writing and short stories, as well as this blog, my diet support group and online tracking software, and all the financial spreadsheets.

I downloaded Open Office. I'm not going to buy another MS Office program and the one I had can only be installed on one computer, and hopefully can actually be reinstalled on that one. But at least Open Office works for my writing and my financial spreadsheets, so yay.

The laptop cost $379 plus $33.35 in tax. It wiped out my laptop fund again, but I will start adding to it again next month. It came with a six month free trial run of Kaspersky anti-virus and I installed my free malware program as well.

DH and I are considering dropping the gym membership. With my knee the way it is, I have a hard time even swimming right now and he's in an off exercise phase. Maybe we can pick it up again after my knee heals from the next surgery, but for now it seems like a waste of money. We aren't on a contract anymore so no cancelling fee. Our other option is to opt out for three months. We'll figure it out.

Okay, this might be my last post for a while. I am taking my computer in to be fixed and I don't know how long it is going to take. Or how willing DH or DS will be to give up their laptop or netbook respectively to let me go online a bit. It's almost worth getting another netbook at this point, as one or the other machine is always a problem and it would be nice to have a cheap spare for backup.

Before I take it in though, I did all the payday financial stuff. I sent $2900 to ING. Of that money $1770.09 is to be set aside for first of December bills. $129.91 goes to the Emergency Fund. $1000 goes to January/HSA money fund.

January/HSA fund money is now at $4483. The goal I've set for that is $6000 so another $1517 to hit that goal. I should be able to do that by the end of the year with no problem.

I added the $129.91 to the EF and also took the coin jar money (added $3 more yesterday) which is $34 and deposited it into CU#2, the Safety Net.

$2134.31 EF at ING
$+671.53 Safety Net at CU#2
---------------
$2805.04 Total EF

I swept past my goal of hitting $2750 by the end of the month and am well on my way toward my goal of $3000 by year's end.

Next week's paycheck will be more than enough to get through the two following weeks with no pay and hopefully half of it will go into the January/HSA money, but I'm not relying on it. It is the small check so usually only between $800 and $1200 depending on if they are taking out medical that week or not. They shouldn't be, but sometimes they take out weird things.

DH said that bonuses will be mailed out after the 15 of December, so we could have it within a week of that. We still have no idea how much it will be, though. And I still kind of half believe it's a fairytale. Oh, well. If it comes it will be a nice surprise.

All right, I'm off to get the computer fixed and stop by the court house to get my temporary disabled parking pass renewed. I can't believe it has been six months already. The doctor has okayed it for another six months. Then maybe by the time it's up, my knee will have completely healed and I won't need it anymore.

Yesterday I purchased a registry cleaner/fixer thing as it was what was recommended for a problem I keep having, namely IE9 freezing up every few hours and crashing my laptop, then when I rebooted it would tell me operating system not found or give me the blue screen of death. It found and fixed 187 system errors and the laptop has not crashed since, so I am relatively hopeful that this problem is now solved. It was getting quite ridiculous. It cost $29.95 but is well worth it, I think.

I did some other computer maintenance that needed to be done, like degragging, Vaio updates of drivers, running my weekly scan with MalWare Bytes software (found nothing) and then double checking that the new security pack from Windows actually installed (it hadn't, so I did it manually). Everything is running so much faster now. Hopefully that will end some of my computer frustration.

The ridiculous heat we had yesterday (86 degrees) is gone. It's resting at 73 with a nice breeze today. The sky is overcast, but not the type that makes you think it's going to rain, just the type that makes it be not quite so bright outside.

The kids went for a walk to return the two DVD's we rented from the DVD Express box and some library books. Our local grocery store has a public library turn in box in it. It's kind of wonderful. They pick up on Wednesdays and Saturdays and backdate anything to the time of their last pickup, so it's not overdue just because you turned it in elsewhere.

DS's alarm clock is malfunctioning so we went to get him a new one and it doesn't work. Or it doesn't fully work. It doesn't light up one of the digits. So say it is 12:35, the three is missing. It's just not there. Weird. So I will be taking it back, but not today. Maybe tomorrow.

I also bought a small salad spinner. I was being lazy about eating the veggies I need to eat, because if I didn't prepare it ahead of time I wouldn't eat them. But if I did prepare it ahead of time they would get soggy in the Ziploc baggy (paper towel included) and start to go off. With the spinner I can keep it nice and crisp and have it prepared ahead of time.

I have hit the 11 pounds lost mark since starting this diet and 37 pounds since my surgery. I am going to swim laps today in a little while.

Oh, yeah, I also bought a garlic press. I am tired of peeling it and mincing it and this just makes it so much easier. Both of these gadgets will make meal planning so much easier because I will stick more closely to what I plan to make, and that makes a lot of difference.

My Teflon® coated 16 inch skillet is getting scratched up and the lining is wearing off badly. I have decided not to buy anymore of this type of pan in the future. I've got a set of hard andonized pots and pans, which I love but were very expensive gifts, but nothing near so big as my skillet. I saw some ceramic lined pans that are big enough, but I have never used ceramic cookware. Anyone have any experience with it? Is it good? Does it cook evenly? Does the lining scratch? Is it easy to clean?

I'm just wondering if I should muddle through with the scratched pan and save up for a big andonized skillet I can buy online or if the ceramic is worth buying for far less money?

I use this pan for a lot of stuff, my spaghetti sauce recipe, noodle dinners, stew, enchilada sauce, chili, etc., so not replacing it is not an option, though I can hold out a while longer.

Tonight the house was too hot to turn on the oven or the range so instead I decided it was leftover night. There were some leftover chicken legs, some leftover tuna fish, and some leftover pulled pork. We all chose one and ate it cold. We also had cucumbers and watermelon and milk. Very simple and no adding to the major heatwave going on right now.

Tomorrow starts my diet and I will be using my new baby George grill. It was $19.99 plus tax. That won't heat up the house much, fortunately. I am roasting a whole chicken tomorrow, hot day or not so I can have a bunch of cooked protein on hand. Or maybe I'll put it in the crock pot and set it on the back porch.

As I've mentioned we had a ridiculously cool summer while everyone else was going through a heatwave. Now when summer is almost gone we finally get hot days in the low 80's. It's scheduled to be around that for the next ten days or so. I think we are in for an Indian Summer. We will definitely be using the pool as much as possible.

I forgot to mention that I added $1.55 in coins to the coin jar yesterday from DH cleaning out his wallet. Today I added $3.73 from my purse. I didn't make it over to the CU yet to deposit the money into the safety net. I forgot both yesterday and today. I will try to remember to make the deposit tomorrow after I take DS to school.

DS's desktop overheated and so he turned it off and now it won't turn back on. It's about 3 years old. This is a very frustrating time to have this happen. Since he's going to miss a week of school recovering from having his tonsils out, he was (if he was feeling up to it) going to be able to do his math and reading online to keep up a little bit. All the websites and passwords and stuff were saved on his computer. I know I can get them again, but it's just going to be time consuming and it'll mean he has to share with his sister who is not the sharingest person when it comes to computer time. Next week is going to be fun. *sighs* I wish we could buy him a new one, but that is not in the cards with all the medical bills we are going to be paying.

The plumbing in my mother's house decided to blow up last night. And Mom being Mom (i.e. cheapest woman on the planet at the moment) didn't want to pay for it to be fixed. It would be one thing if the money wasn't there, but the money is there and I'm sorry, but seriously, we need to be able to flush the toilet (and use the dishwasher and wash clothes), so yeah, things do need to drain out through the pipes. We did eventually convince her to get someone out.

Turns out the problem is between the house and the road. So someone else (i.e. someone cheaper) is coming out tomorrow to locate exactly where and then dig and fix (hopefully.)

At least DH, DD, DS and I can go to the health club to shower. And I have lots of paper plates, cups, bowls, and plasticware. And we can go wash clothes at DH's parents' house if it comes down to it. So we are putting as little impact on the pipes as possible.

Not much to report today. I spent $2 to rent two movies out of one of those vending machine boxes in the grocery store that rent movies. Tron Legacy and Skyline. Watched the first one with the kids and will watch the second one on my own (not sure that it won't have too much violence or swearing for them to see it).

We went to the health club and swam today. The pool was very crowded, surprisingly. A lot of really little kids, but it did thin out enough by 4:30 for me to get fifteen laps in. DS swam alongside me and managed to do thirteen laps. He's a good little swimmer.

I also spent $15 on paper plates, bowls, plasticware and plastic cups. The basement flooded and the hot water tank for the end of the house with the dishwasher in it had the pilot light put out by the water. Until it goes down it can't be relit. It'll probably take a couple days to pump it all out, and since I am not wanting to wash dishes by hand in my end of the house I decided to waste the $15.

So all in all, $17 spent today, none of it what I would call necessary spending, but it will make my life easier.

I am getting so frustrated with my blog entries disappearing into cyberspace. This will be my fourth attempt. I made two last night and one this morning before giving up and banging my head against the wall. But I am writing this one in Word and will try to copy it into the box and hopefully this time it will work.

I’ve got new numbers after all of last week’s payments finally posted to their accounts after the holiday.

$20895.77 New amount owed to BoA VISA.
$4342.92 New amount owed to BoA MC
----------------
$25,238.69 Total still owed to the Evil Empire

This is only a small change of $322.95, despite paying $1500 between the two. The VISA (which is an air miles reward card) has over $400 of interest each month because the balance is so high. DH spends about $1000 each month on that card for travel expenses to and from work (airline ticket, hotel overnight, food), so most of that payment is used up between interest and travel. However the $1000 payment I will be making tomorrow will more or less all go towards principle so after it posts we will see actual progress there.

The mortgage is down to $21,778.32 after the last payment posted and the car loan is down to $16,236.70.

My computer pretty much completely died on me. Or maybe it’s more like it went into a coma. It’s still alive but doesn’t respond to any outside stimuli. I was able to get off all my documents, videos and music before it did that, but not all of my pictures. I have copies of all the family photos and vacation photos on my portable hard drive and DH has them on his computer, too. But all of my fandom photos and icons that weren’t saved in other places are still on there, along with all my favorite wallpapers for the desktop. It’s not the end of the world, but I still hate to lose them. I am hoping DH can manage to get them off for me by taking out the hard drive and using a portable hard drive adapter to transfer it off.

Anyway, so even though I hadn’t saved up the full replacement cost of a new computer I bought one yesterday anyway. It was almost like the one I had been planning on, but it has a number keypad and was $81 less. It’s black, but I can get a skin for it if I get tired of black for just a little bit of money. Anyway, they had 18 months same as cash and I qualified for it based on household income even though I don’t have my own outside the house job.

Regardless I am going to continue adding to my computer fund. When the first payment is due I will subtract it from the fund and continue saving money towards it. That way I can earn my paltry 1% interest. I will do that until I have the full payoff amount saved and then just pay the rest of it off well before the 18 months no interest are up. And yes, I will be sure to check my statements each month and make sure they aren’t playing games with the minimum amount owed, like others have caught them doing. I’ll pay over that amount anyway each month. To that end I added $9 to the laptop fund and 46 cents to the coin jar.

$458.94 Beginning laptop fund balance
$+09.00 Amount added
-----------------
$467.94 Ending laptop fund balance

I am glad payday is tomorrow. I have $17 left in checking which I will add to the EF safety net tomorrow since I don’t need to buy anything today.

My laptop has about had it. I was hoping to wait until after April to get a new one, but now I'm not so sure it's going to make it. The last couple of times I've shut it down, it's taken numerous restarts to get it past the opening sign-in page. The desktop simply doesn't appear. All I get is the black screen of death. If it was a screen problem I wouldn't be getting the opening sign on screen. So it's got to be a glitch somewhere internally.

I am in the process of transferring everything important off it and onto my portable hard drive, but it is long and tedious work.

I know what computer I want to get next. It's a Sony Vaio. Of the laptops I've had before this one, it was the only one that never broke down. If it weren't so obsolete I could still be using it, but it's Windows 3.1 and has no CD/DVD drive and has very little memory, most of which was taken up by Office and IE. It also only has a phone modem in it and I don't think it even has a slot for plugging in a network card. Still, it was the best computer of any I've owned.

I did like the first Toshiba I had, but not the second, and I will never buy an HP laptop again (that's what this one is, but they are far better on desktops than laptops). The Sony Vaio that I want is $799.99 and with tax will come to $868. With the service contract, which I only ever buy for computers and failed to do last time in the mistaken thought it wasn't worth the money, will probably bring it to $1000 or a little over. I've kicked myself countless times for not getting it with all the problems I've had these last two years with the HP.

I've tried the keyboard out several times over the past few months and it's really comfortable and easy to type quickly on and the keys aren't annyoingly loud. That may seem like a silly thing to some of you, but I type about four hours a day most days and if it isn't a good fit under my fingers I will be miserable. It tends to be my first priority, finding a keyboard that works best for me and then out of those that do, finding one that fits all my other needs.

I am almost to the halfway mark of saving up that $1000. I really want to get there before this laptop fails me but I am afraid that won't happen. They do have 90 days same as cash and 18 months same as cash available though. I just hate to finance anything that isn't a car or a house. Even with 0% interest, it is the principle of the thing. Though I imagine I'd get over that pretty fast if this laptop dies completely before I'm ready to buy.

I added $23 to the laptop fund today and $0.36 to the coin jar.

$435.94 beginning laptop fund balance
$+23.00 amounted added
---------------
$458.94 ending laptop fund balance

I've managed to catch a cold on top of my kidney infection. It's that awful sort of full head, dripping nose, sore throat, don't want to do anything productive cold. So my meal planning kind of went out the window. We did not get takeaway though, no matter how sorely I was tempted. This makes...16 days I think with no eating out.

Instead I opened the cupboard doors and pulled out chili for the boys and beef stew for the girls. I don't like to do that sort of thing often. I'm not a big fan of processed foods but the chili was from Trader Joe's and the stew doesn't have additives or preservatives so in a pinch it'll do. That was about $7. I also ate ice cream twice today. Not something I normally do, but my throat hurt so much I just didn't care. It's $4 a quart and I ate half of it. Yikes. Oh, well. I hope I feel better tomorrow.

DH spent $25 on a plumber's snake today and used it to clean out the dryer hose. The dryer hasn't been drying properly in ages and after going through three cycles on high heat with one load he figured out it was jammed up. It's twenty feet from the dryer to the outside vent so he bought a 25 foot snake. He got out enough lint to make a cat with. Now it's drying nicely. One thing to look for when we buy a new house is a dryer connection on the outside wall of the house. It was so easy at our old house, you just reached in from the outside and pulled out anything that was there. This house was badly designed when it comes to accessing things.

The final interest payment on the loan posted today so it is officially paid off, unless they pull something like interest on the interest. Darn evil empire(BoA).

My meal plan for Wednesday is basically Joe's O's (like Cheerios, but organic and from TJ's) cereal for breakfast and whatever DH packs the kids for lunch and chicken noodle soup for dinner. I've got onions, carrots, celery, parsley, chicken broth, some leftover chicken, and noodles and they can just go in the crockpot and simmer away for four hours.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---------------------------------------

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not much going on. Kind of a boring day.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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