Lucky Robin's Personal Finance Blog

It's been a while since I've posted a meal plan and even longer since I've made one.  Some weeks have been so last minute lately and others so much easier to grab takeout, but we are on a firm no take out meals agenda for the next two weeks and I need to not have that last minute case of what do I make?  So here we go:

Monday:  Tacos (hard shells, lettuce, tomato, homemade seasoning, ground sirloin) and fresh pineapple

Tuesday:  Meatloaf, mashed potatoes, green beans, grapes

Wednesday:  BBQ chicken legs, fried potatoes, broccoli, bananas

Thursday:  Cheese Ravioli with meat sauce bake, salad, apples

Friday:  Rotisserie chicken, baked potatoes, Normandy vegetables

Saturday:  Creamy chicken tacquitos (soft toritillas, cream cheese, salsa verde, scallions, cumin, chili powder, onion powder, garlic powder), salad, fresh pineapple

Sunday:  Baked potato soup (bacon, potatoes, scallions, whole milk, butter, GF flour, salt, pepper, sour cream, extra sharp cheddar), salad, apples

I should have known that freezer availability was too good to be true.  It won't be delivered until January 12th now instead of December 8th.  How do you make that big an error in your scheduling?  Obviously they didn't actually have the freezer in stock.  But it is still available much earlier than anywhere else, so I will deal.  It's not like I have much choice and at least I will end up with one before I really need it, which is summer, when I plan to buy a beef.  I think Mom was more disappointed than I was.

We worked on outdoor Christmas lights some this weekend.  We've been trying to get the solar panels angled right for the bush net lights for days.  As of Saturday night we have four out of the five getting a proper charge that allows the lights to be lit until midnight or so when the battery runs out.  The fifth bush is actually pampas grass so it really is hard to get the solar panel to stay in place.  Last night I had the idea to get a tall garden stake and clip the solar panel to that, so tonight we shall see how well it does.

Yesterday we put up the elk, which is taller than me by several inches, and then the Christmas ornament which is about 3 feet tall.  Those were from last year.  This year we purchased a Victorian lamp post from Costco.  They had it last year and I wanted it then so I said if they had it again this year I would buy it.  So the guys put that together last night while I sat in the car with the heat on and the lights shining so they could see.  It is almost as tall as I am.  Then we got that one set up in the yard and we cabled everything together and then cabled the elk to the porch.

We had Christmas stuff stolen many years ago and ever since then we cable it all together and secure the end of the cable.  It makes it really hard for people to do a snatch and grab.  These things are not cheap.  The longer they would have to stand in the front yard trying to get stuff apart, the bigger likelihood they have of being caught in the act or heard from my son's bedroom window, and the more likely they are to move on.

So the goal for today is to put the blanket lights on the deck rails and get the angel, the santa, the season's greetings rope light sign, the Cardinal, and the reindeer attached to the porch columns and the porch swing, and the sign goes in the yard.  I'd really rather have a Merry Christmas sign, but after the original one was stolen I could only every find a Season's Greetings one.  And possibly the row of candy canes.  The icicle lights for the house and porch roof will be the last things to go up and that might have to wait for the weekend or at least Friday.  DH tends to finish his 40 hours by around 3 p.m. Friday and we really need some daylight to put those up in.

One day I hope to find a really nice rope light Nativity.  They had one about 15 years ago and the following 5 years that I really liked, but couldn't afford at the time.  It was extensive, not just Mary and Joseph and baby Jesus in the manger, but it had a camel, the wise men, and a palm tree, too.  And possibly a sheep and donkey.  Now that we can afford it, I haven't been able to find one.  They did have a really nice rocking horse at Costco that I might get next year if they have it again.  At least if I can't find something else I like better.

I am almost caught up on dishes.  I've been running behind all week.  I have one more load to do and then I can give the sink a good scrubbing.  I made two pots of beef stew this weekend.  Everyone was just like "can we have stew again" so I was like why not?  I made a big enough batch the second night that there were enough leftovers for DD for tonight, so I can make tacos for the rest of us.  She gets heartburn very easily these days, so she never wants to eat tacos or chili or things like that.

We are going to try to get the tree up this week as well.  That is fairly straightforward as we have one of the new artificial kind that sort of just fold up and are pre-lit.  We got it last year and it was so easy and it looked nice, too.  And we don't have to deal with pine needles and watering a tree and a tree that is too bushy for the space we have for it.

I am waiting on only two Christmas presents to be delivered and those are supposed to come on the 15th.  Then I shouldn't have to worry about anything else to do with Christmas except wrapping.  And the two gifts coming on the 15th are really too big to be wrapped, so those will just get bows put on them.

I got my Mom a set of four Oneida salad forks.  Her salad forks have been disappearing for a while now, and she's been complaining about not being able to find them, so hopefully this will help for a while, until she manages to lose these ones, too.  She likes to eat with them instead of dinner forks.  I don't know how she loses them.  She only ever eats at the table or her tv tray in front the television set.  There are not a lot of places they can go.  I have a feeling she probably let them go down the garbage disposal, got them banged up, threw them out and just forgot.  She has done that with spoons before.  Anyway, it feels like the perfect gift for her, even though technically we aren't supposed to exchange gifts anymore, I always still get her something.

It's only been 6 days since I did a retirement update, but I just wanted to share that it broke $40,000.  It's a difference of $563.77, but that was enough to put it over with a few hundred dollars to spare, bringing the new total to $40,412.53.  None of that rise was contributions.  Our next contribution will be on the 11th, but won't hit the account until the following Monday.  Hopefully I can get the side bar to update properly.  It's been more hit than miss, but it still misses on occasion.

I finally saved up enough to buy a new upright freezer and then I finally found one I liked that was available, so my new 20 cu. ft freezer will be arriving next week. And for $25 extra they will move the old freezer to a different location for us so we don't even have to do that part ourselves. Well worth it since where we want it involves two steps.

That means the one we have in the laundry room can be moved up to the main kitchen so Mom doesn't have to go down and back up the steps every time she wants something from the freezer and my nephew won't wake me up at 2 a.m. rummaging around in the freezer for ice cream since that freezer is on the opposite side of the wall where the head of my bed is. That one is Mom's anyway, but I was using two shelves in it. Now my nephew and my sister will be able to have those two shelves for their food.

I will be so excited to have this new freezer, because I want to do freezer meals, casseroles, and homemade TV dinners and freeze the kind of soups or stews you can't can because they include gluten free flour or dairy, as well as get a beef next year. This freezer will free up room in the chest freezer for that beef. And I will have more room to freeze zucchini. Having a freezer bank of meals goes far towards not eating out when I am exhausted and saves us a lot of money in the long run.

I am already planning on making meatloaves, lasagnas, ravioli bakes, enchilada casseroles, tauqitos, chicken Alfredo, Taco Farfalle, Chicken Mac and Cheese, and bags of chicken shwarma meat, chicken fajita meat, fajita peppers and onions, and jerk chicken all ready to be dumped in the Instant Pot. All of the pastas will be brown rice pasta. Oh, and I plan to brown up some beef, some seasoned for spaghetti, some seasoned for tacos, for really lazy days. Also I want to do baked potato soup and beef stew for the freezer as well.

I can do all that with food I have on hand and will get going after the new freezer has been plugged in for 24 hours. I will likely start by cooking a triple batch of whatever I am making for dinner a coulpe of times a week, one for dinner and two for the freezer. I find that is the best way to do it without letting it get overwhelming. If I can build up to 30 dinner meals in the freezer plus some individual meals for DD and DS when they don't want to eat what DH and I want to eat, it will have my so far ahead of the game and my life will just get instantly easier when I don't feel like cooking.

Yesterday Mom and I did a bunch of canning.  I did the peeling and chopping while she ran the canner.  I did 20 pounds of potatoes and then the carrots were 12 pounds.  I ended up with 14 quarts of Yukon gold potatoes and 23 pints of carrots.  This is a good time of year to do both as the deer carrots are available readily and cheap and of course the potatoes tend to be on sale through the holidays.  So it is definitley eating sale priced (or home grown) food all year when I can do this.  It saves us money in the long run.

I was sore and exhausted today and slept in until eleven and then just stayed in bed until 3.  Once I finally dragged myself out of bed I was still sore, but semi-functional.  It'll probably be a week before I can anything else, but they sure do look pretty on the shelf.  And it is peace of mind, beause it means we won't have to venture into stores at all for the next few months if things get really, really bad again.  We might, especially if there is a really good sale, but we don't have to.

This evening we went to look at freezers at Lowe's but the one they said they had online they did not have in the store.  Of course you had to go to the store to buy it, you couldn't just get it online, it was an in store only sale.  We will check another place tomorrow night, an actual local appliance store.  I have $900 saved and if I have to borrow a couple hundred from the propane grill envelope, I will.  It's not like we'll be making that purchase before spring, probably anyway.

We did stock up on some OTC medicines and I bought a new cane, but that came out of the medical fund.  We also picked up a prescription.

Then when we came home I washed up all the jars of food I canned yesterday to take off any sticky residue.  Sometimes the jars will siphon during the canning process and you don't want to put them in storage that way.  DS dried all the jars as I washed them and that was a great help.  Then I labelled them all and he put them away for me.  So most of the day was unproductive, but not all of it.  I'm sure I will feel more functional tomorrow.

One of the things I've noticed this year since paying off our debt is that I have gotten a little too free-spending.  Or maybe it just seems that way.  Well, I know it is with eating out, though we've cracked back down on that, but I am wondering about whether or not I truly am on other things.

Maybe it is just because we went so long without replacing things and upgrading things that now that we have the money, I am just getting what I put off getting.  I've replaced all of my pans, gotten an electric citrus juicer, bought clothes and shoes, and of course all the mattresses and I'm about to buy a freezer that I've been saving for and have the money for a propane grill so when we are ready to get it we can.  I mean, I budget for, and save for these things and I limit what I get in any one month, but lately it seems like we are having packages arrive daily.

I know some of that is Christmas gifts coming and some of it is gluten free food I can't get locally and vitamins and whatnot, but I can't help but feel like it is out of control.  Only I don't think it is.  I just think it is allowing us to get things after not for so many years while we tackled the debt.  Maybe I just feel guilty for spending, period.  Is this a thing that happens once you are debt free?  Is it just because I have loosened the purse strings?

Replacement mode does seem to be winding down now.  I will be saving for a new knife set, though, and then new pots and then we should be good for a long while, I think.  They are pricier than I've had before, but the pots are made in America and the knives are made in Germany, and they are higher quality.

The thing is, I still want to build the Emergency Fund to three month's salary and eventually to six and maybe even eventually to a year after that.  I feel like I can't do that while I am in replacement mode.  I am adding some, but I feel like I could be doing so much more.  I do plan on buckling down in January and making consistent deposits to the EF.  And we do plan on raising our retirement contributions in January as well.

I guess we will be moving on from this soon, but the feelings behind so much spending have been building up.  It probably is quite normal.  I just want to rein it back in for 2021.  The focus really needs to come back and move into that gazelle intense phase again.  That seemed easier to do when we were paying down debt than it is to just save.  I have to get over that.

The new mattresses came on Friday.  We ended up going with the regular Purple mattresses.  It has made a tremendous difference for all of us.  I haven't woken up with stiff shoulders since.  They are still a little sore, but I can move them easily enough and raise them over my head without pain.  Also the side of my thigh that I lay on the most is no longer going numb or getting what I like to call fire ants.  It is beyond pins and needles because it burns.  And finally, the muscle I pulled on the right side of my back is no longer awful.  It still twinges a bit when I reach for things and I have to be careful, but just sitting doesn't hurt anymore.  The chiropractor will be back from his vacation tomorrow, so hopefully a good adjustment will finish the job.

I did have to order a set of boxsprings, though.  I got some steel ones off Amazon and they shoud be here by Sunday.  Otherwise, with just the platform, I am down so low I am having trouble standing up, because my knees go above my hips just sitting on the bed.  And because of my wrists and fingers I have trouble pushing or pulling myself up from that low.  I guess that is the difference between an 8 inch mattress and a 16 inch mattress, though.  The box springs is 7 inches so I'll almost be at the same height again with it, but that extra inch will not be missed because it was just a tiny bit too high before.

I am also getting more restful sleep for the past 3 nights according to my fitbit.  I definitely don't feel like I am tossing and turning anymore and am getting 8 hours at least at a stretch.  I will update on all of these things again when I have been sleeping on it for a month, but since I am already feeling so much better, I have to say I think these mattresses were well worth the money.  Everyone else is very happy, too.  All told, we spent $4300 on four mattresses, mattress covers, five pillows (and these we've had longer a week longer and are amazing), the box springs and sheet sets for all the beds.  That was with the special sale they were on, too, for early black Friday.  They have a ten year warranty.

It's a lot firmer than I am used to, but maybe that has been part of the problem all along.  I felt I needed softer mattresses because of all the aches and pains, but maybe they were causing many of those aches and pains.  It is nice to not have a wallow in the bed anymore, too.  I think softer mattresses are more prone to wallows forming after a couple years.

It was a lot to shell out, but if it means I don't hurt constantly all day long, just intermittently, it would have been worht it at full price.

Since 11/20/20 the retirement account has gone up $929.03, $220 of which was contributions.

$28,777.01 401K

+11,071.78 IRA

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

$39,848.76 Total Retirement (minus company stock)

$151.24 to go to hit $40K.  I hope things continue to climb so we can make up some more of the lack of progress that there was due to the Covid lockdowns earlier in the year.  And I hope the new lockdowns don't make it all tank again.

$318.59 Tithe

_400.00 Grocery Envelope

_300.00 Medical Fund

__75.00 Household Envelope

__71.99 Life Insurance DH

__60.46 Life Insurance Me

_100.00 Car Maintenance Envelope

_120.00 Allowances

_100.00 Emergency Fund

1600.00 Mattress Fund

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

$3146.04 Total Money Out

$8639.84 Balance Forward

+_100.00 Amount Added

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

$8739.84 New Balance

It was a long day, but I am glad it is done.  Thanksgiving went pretty well despite Mom's early day sniping.  She actually behaved quite well during dinner and was verbally thankful for all my efforts.  The gluten free stuffing was so good.  I was worried, I'm always worried when I try something new, but it worked and everyone loved it, including my Mom and sister.  And the from scratch gluten free gravy came out really, really well.

I've taken all the turkey off the bones, and have gallon bag of white meat, one half gallon bag of dark meat, and one bag of bones to make stock with.  I have two large takeout soup containers full of gravy and one full of pan drippings for making more gravy.  I have enough mashed potatoes and stuffing for two more dinners for the whole family or several individual homemade tv dinners.  All the corn got eaten and only a small amount of green beans were left.

Tomorrow we will have leftovers as is and then I think I will make turkey taquitos, turkey enchiladas, turkey soup, and leftover turkey tater tot casserole on Saturday.  Some of those will go in the freezer for future meals.

MIL didn't end up making it in.  She didn't sleep well and decided she just wanted to stay home and rest.  That's mostly what I wanted to do today, too.  I got the stay at home part.  But the food was sooo good.  I have really learned to make gluten free yummy after a year of effort.  It was worth it, but I don't think I even want to move tomorrow.  We'll see if I even can.

I think I forgot to mention, I completed my Christmas ordering yesterday.  It is nice to have that done.  Now to hope everything actually arrives on time.

I finally had a moment to sit down and breathe.  It's been a crazy couple of days with doctor appointments and trying to get the house in order.  Well, half order, half chaos.  Yesterday I made desert and the really cool thing was I made my own pumpkin puree from a sugar pie pumpkin.  I just put the whole pumpkin in the Instant Pot, set it for 12 minutes, did a natural release for 5, and then a manual release.

The pumpkin was so tender I was able to cut it with a butter knife and then very easily scrape out the strings and seeds.  So much easier than trying to do it the traditional way.  I put the pumpkin in the blender with a half cup of water and pureed it to the perfect consistency.  It was nice to have that option as I haven't been able to find canned pumpkin in months due to the shortage.  I ended up with enough for my desert and enough to put in the freezer for Christmas to do it again and then my daughter ate the last 1/2 cup.

I used Snickerdoodle gluten free cereal (Safeway store brand) to replace the graham cracker crust for my pumpkin cheesecake bars and they came out beautifully.  They taste really good, too.

Also last night and baked a loaf of gluten free bread and then combined that with a store bought loaf and tore those up to have ready to make the stuffing this morning.  I got that done first thing and into the bird.  It got into the oven around 1:00 p.m.  Should be done by five.  I finally got about 8 pounds of Yukon gold potatoes peeled, cut up, and in the Instant Pot.  I love making them there.  It is so much easier than boiling them on the stove and having to babysit them.  The mash very easily, too, much easier than just boiled.  They should be ready by the time the turkey comes out and I make the gluten free gravy.

And while I'm making that I can heat up a quart of our home grown, home canned green beans and a can of corn.  I don't get super fancy anymore with Thanksgiving.  We've streamlined.  We don't do rolls when we already have bread stuffing.  We don't do sweet potatoes and mashed potatoes.  We don't do cranberry sauce.  We don't do ham.  I make one desert, cheesecake bars, not 4 kinds of pie (pumpkin, chocolate cream, key lime, and blueberry) and two types of fudge, and no fruit plate just little oranges, and no veggie plate.  It's just too much when I have no help except DH.  And no one seems to miss all the extra effort.

In about a half an hour I'll need to get back to it, but right now it is nice to just sit and relax for this little while.

We sent the last two rabbits off to a new home today and are now animal free for the first time in a decade.  I'm not sure this place qualifies as a homestead anymore, just a huge garden now.  But whatever, it is nice to no longer be tied down.  We can take a family vacation again if we so desire without one person having to stay home to care for the animals.  It is a nice sense of freedom and one less stress to deal with.  And less stress is good in a house with seven people in it.

My mom is making noises about having chickens again, but if she does they will totally be her responsibility.  We aren't having anything to do with it.  I'd really rather not have them as they tear up the yard and take away from the garden space and their feed attracts rats.  I think my mom forgets that.  I also think she forgets what she is and isn't capable of anymore, but again, she'll have to relearn that the hard way.  And people will always take laying chickens off your hands.

It'll be nice not to have those feed costs anymore.  Although they had narrowed significantly with only two rabbits, now they will be totally gone and I can remove from the budget.  We were spending maybe $35 in a three month period, so it wasn't a ton, but that is still $140 a year that can now go somewhere else.

We ordered our new mattresses directly from Purple since they were having early black Friday sales.  Not sure when they will ship, but they'll get here when they get here.  Can't be soon enough, though, with the way my fibromyalgia has been lately.  We also went ahead and got the pillow/sheets bundle, because you get quite a discount with those if you buy a mattress.  Since the mattresses do not take those huge deep pocket sheets that seem to be all you can find anymore, I felt that ones that actually were guaranteed to fit properly were the way to go.  We had been planning for everyone to get new pillows for Christmas as well.

MIL gave us some money to go towards the mattresses and that combined with the $1000 I saved was enough to cover it all, so once these three arrive, all four of us will have new mattresses.  DS got his a while back.  I'm glad MIL gave us the money or it would have taken a long while to save up enough for all of us.  I would have only been able to get one now.

I do need to start ordering Christmas gifts.  DD and DS are each getting a new comforter and a waterpik for Christmas.  I need to figure out what to get MIL.  I know what I am getting my Mom, a 4 piece setting of salad forks, because she's lost several over the years and it is her preferred fork to eat with.  DH and I are putting our money for ourselves towards a propane grill.  DH also put his birthday money towards this and I will put mine in in February.  We are also going to put in the money his mother gives us for Christmas.  That should give us a total of $1200 after my birthday.  More if I put my birthday money from MIL in.

I have no idea if that will be enough for what I want, but I think it should.  We want a big enough grill that we can cook enough for a family of four on it at once and not in turns.  I also want a burner and a side table, storage underneath, and a place to attach a smoker in the future if we chose to do so.  If it is not enough, then we will just have to save longer.  And if it is more than enough than it will go into another savings goal.

I like to cook outside in the spring and summer and early fall, but only having a charcoal grill can make it a lot harder.  They take a long time to get going and then you have to babysit them while they die out.  Propane is on and off, just like that.  While I do prefer charcoal for taste, it is just so inconvenient.  We'll probably use it for burgers and hotdogs, but for serious meals like steak, zucchini, onions, and corn on the cob, propane will be the way to go to get it done quickly.  If the object is to just not heat up the house when it is hot, this is the best solution.

I will be ordering some LED net Christmas lights.  I want to do five different colors for our five bushes in front of the house.  They are more expensive than regular, but they last longer, the bulbs don't tend to blow, and they are prettier, brighter colors.  We bought some last year for the deck and they just looked so much better than the old kind.  I think Christmas will be subdued for a lot of people because of Covid lockdowns, so I want to be a cheery spot in the neighborhood for people to enjoy as they drive by.

I took my frozen turkey out of the fridge to thaw yesterday.  It is 25 pounds so it needs this long to be thawed by Thursday.  I wasn't really sure if I was even going to do Thanksgiving this year, but the prednisone the rheumatologist put me on really seems to be helping.  I hope I can make a gluten free stuffing that tastes as good as the regular stuffing I usually make.  It will be disappointing if I can't.  I will be working on my bread recipe over the next couple days.  I'm close to getting a perfect bread machine gluten free loaf, so there is hope.

The retirement accounts have done really well the last eleven days.  They have gone up by $1,093.40 in that time.  There was one contribution of $220.  The rest is profit.  It has been a good couple of weeks.  I don't know how long this will last, but I hope it continues and we can recover some of the losses from standing still for most of the year.  Stupid pandemic.  So the new total is $38,919. 36.  $40K is getting close.

Sorry, the column line breaks are going to be obnoxious on this one since there is no way to take them out.  The website is annoying me to no end today, especially since they have somehow disabled my AdSense on here and didn't care to respond to me when I asked them about it.  I bring in a lot of traffic to this site, look at my hit count, and now I'm not even getting my tiny fraction of ad revenue from it.  I really want a viable alternative to here, but I hate the idea of having to build my base up all over again from scratch.  I've built it since 2006 and I've worked pretty hard at it.

$318.49 Tithe

_500.00 Utilities

_400.00 Grocery Envelope

_300.00 Medical Fund

__75.00 Household Envelope

_115.17 Internet

__82.82 Garbage

_200.00 Car Insurance Fund (Includes catch up amount)

_261.50 Car Insurance (Policy change with third driver)

_100.00 Spending Money Adults

_120.00 Allowances Kids

_200.00 Christmas/Gift Fund

_100.00 Clothing Fund

_436.00 Emergency Fund

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

$3172.98 Total Money Out

There was not much many left in the grocery envelope this time around as I bought a lot of food for canning, but there was some to add to the freezer envelope.  We will get there bit by bit.

$858.00 Beginning Balance

+_29.00 Amount Added

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

$887.00 New Balance

$8203.84 Beginning Balance

+_436.00 Amount Added

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

$8639.84 New Balance

I really hate the fact that I can't take line breaks out, even if I do it in Word first and transfer it.  At first we could.  It makes the column of numbers take up way too much space this way and it looks stupid.  Anyway, it feels nice to be able to start building this fund up again.

Yesterday I canned 14 more quarts of potatoes (and I mislabled them with today's date, but what are you going to do?  I washed up the jars and tops today so they won't be sticky in storage.  They didn't feel sticky, but I don't take any chances.  I have enough of my garden potatoes left to do 7 more quarts and that will also fill my potato shelf.  Then I will start on carrots and parsnips.  I am switching to the single decker canner instead of the double decker, since I will be doing smaller loads from here on out.

DD went to the eye doctor today and the bulging optic nerves have stopped bulging so much.  She lost 20 pounds in six weeks, so we are thinking the water retention was what the issue was, because she had ballooned up because of it, and she is out of the danger zone now, but she is to follow up after a while just to be on the safe side.

No more doctor appointments until Monday when we will go down to Virginia Mason to meet the new endocrinologist and then spend the night and go to the liver specialist on Tuesday.  I am glad my nephew, my sister, and my son will all be here with Mom, though.

We are trying to sell the last two rabbits we have, but Facebook hates animal sales and censors posts on them.  You have to be very careful how you word things.  Even if you don't say a price they automatically throw out animal photos to be checked.  It's a farm group.  Farm sales should be allowed.  It is no way, shape, or form like a puppy mill, but that's how they treat it.  I hate their censorship.  I wish MeWe would take off, but I don't think it is going to.

I am going to look into Rumble as an alternative to Youtube as well.  Every time the algorithm starts working for me, they change it, and my channel just gets kicked back down.  It makes it hardly worth the effort, especially in the off season.

Tonight for dinner I made beef stew with celery, onions, and potatoes, with gluten free flour for the gravy.  I was out of carrots.  And had two yellow kiwis.  Those things are amazing.  I like them way more than green kiwis and I like those a lot.

We haven't spent any money for the last few days, but I will be tomorrow morning when I buy the carrots and parsnips.  I need 8 pounds of carrots and 8 pounds of parsnips.  Then on Friday when it is payday I will buy some more to do.  I haven't gone to the store since before the election so I have no idea what the shelves look like.  I won't be able to can much at all next week as I will be wiped by our trip to Seattle I am sure.  The season is winding down for me anyway, unless there is a terrific meat sale of some sort. 

I went to see my rheumatologist on Thursday while I was in the middle of one my worst RA/Fibromyalgia flares I've had yet.  She decided to try me on prednisone long-term in conjunction with the embrel and hydroxychloroquine I already take.  I started it Friday morning and by the time I took the second dose Saturday my swelling and pain had already started to go down.  By this morning my hands felt almost normal.  They still tremble, but they are so much more functional and the pain has reduced tremendously.  I haven't seen my fingers this small in a few years.

She's started me on 10 mg for two weeks and then I can move up to 20 mg.  I will be seeing her again on the 23rd and we will go from there.  I really hope this is the answer.  I feel so much better in my body right now, it's like it isn't even mine.  The flare is definitely over.

As for making changes to my diet, I have stuck to portion sizes for the last 3 days and I am off the caffeine again.  I have been making sure that I drink 3 of my waterbottles a day.  My waterbottle holds 32 ounces.  I would like to get to 4 of them a day now that water is the only liquid I am drinking.

Today I am making a new step of controlling my high carbs to one meal a day, and then from there I will work towards only have 60 grams of high carbs a day.  Right now my plan is one fruit serving and one higher glycemic carb vegetable serving with my protein and low glycemic carb vegetables at dinner.  Tonight's plan is chicken sausage with bell peppers and onions and some fresh pineapple.  The onions and pineapple being higher glycemic and the peppers being lower.  Breakfast was 2 eggs and half a cucumber and lunch was thinly sliced leftover pork (4 oz) over a bed of lettuce.

I feel a lot better now that I am eating better again, too.  Caffeine really drags me down and makes me retain a lot of water and I can always feel the difference between being on it and being off of it.  I also feel the difference when I eat too many carbs or too many grain based carbs.  I will be going back to eating gluten free 100% of the time, too.  I won't be eating any gluten free bread for at least a week, though.  Just fruits, vegetables, and protein until things are firmly under control.

It is weird paying so much attention to portion sizes.  I don't think I really realized before just how skewed my perception was of portion sizes.  Now that I am measuring and weighing my food, it shows how off I was.  I am trying to do a 1600 calorie diet and being more careful is helpful to that.  I don't want to do anything more drastic than that.  I don't need superfast weight loss, just weight loss.

I am using my fitbit app to track both food and water.  Not really worrying about steps at the moment, but maybe in a week or so I can be more mindful of those as well.  Incremental changes are more important to me than trying to do everything at once and then failing.

Our retirement has gone up  from $36,810.93 on 10/10/20 to $37,826.36, a difference of $1012.43.  Only $440 of that was contributions, so we've made a profit of $572.43 in 4 weeks, during one of the most unsettled periods of our nation's history.  I wish his work was contributing the to the 401K.  I hate that they had to quit in July due to Covid in order to stay afloat.  We would be further ahead.  I will be glad when this awful year is over and I hope and pray with all I am that next year will be better and the promised vaccine will be successful and actually here.

Once I know how next year is going to play out in the paycheck department, I can decide whether or not to increase our contributions.  Our portion of medical will be going up around $250 a month pre-tax.  I don't know what that will shake out to until we get our first full January paycheck.  The plan was to bump it up to 7% in January and then if that seemed doable, work our way up to 10% by adding 1% at a time and seeing how that shakes out.  Of course, if the tax cuts are revoked, then that will be moot as well, because we will lose another $250 a paycheck due to that.

If things get better next year at DH's work, and I'm not sure they will with Biden's vendetta against the oil industry, but if they do and DH gets the raise that should have gone with his promotion and we get their contributions back, we should be able to handle 10% no problem.  But if ifs and buts were candy and nuts, this would not be a worry.  At least they have the biodiseal conversion contract at one of the oil refineries.

I know we have to step up our game somehow or other with retirement.  It helps that mom has told us we are going to inherit the $650,000 house since we are the only ones who have helped her all these years (as long as we give my sisters $100,000 each that we can pay them interest free over time for their smaller portions of the inheritance), we will never have to worry about a place to live.

Although we would probably eventually sell this place and move away from the city, possibly the state, we would easily be able to buy a house outright with the profits elsewhere.  We are looking at Montana because DH's work has a branch there that he works with now, and they have asked in the past about moving there.  We just can't currently afford it.  I would like to retire in a lower cost of living area that is less politically rabid to one side.  Somewhere a little more centrist to slightly conservative, so more pro gun, has better water rights, and is anti-big gov.  Montana is my favorite other state that I have ever visited and even though the winters are colder, the summers are amazing.

All this limbo makes me feel crazy.

Yesterday I canned 14 quarts of potatoes, which is 2 lbs per jar.  I peeled 29 pounds of potatoes.  I always do an extra pound because you lose about a pound to peels.  My hands were very sore afterwards, but are doing surprisingly well this morning.  That makes the total jars of potatoes canned so far 21.  I think I've got at least enough to do 14 more jars, possibly 21, but we'll have to see.  There are lots of little ones that are too small to peel and will work better as roasted or fried.

I took DS to the doctor this afternoon and they finally gave him antibiotics for his sinus infection.  Hopefully he will start to improve now.  They should have given them to him the last week of September when he went in the first time, but his dad took him because I was too sick and his dad does not know how to advocate for him or tell the doctor's what they need to hear to get antibiotics.  We know when we have sinus infections around here, they happen too often, but sometimes on call doctors don't know the history, so I have to be forceful in advocating.

I finished my course of antibiotics yesterday and I am glad to be done with it.  I had to take the liquid form because the pills have red dye in them and I am allergic to red dye.  But the liquid has artificial sweetner and it was awful.  I don't react well to artificial sweeteners, but at least they don't intefere with my breathing or give me hives or cause migraines.  Lesser of two evils, especially since I can't take penicillin and the Z-pack didn't work.  I don't feel 100% better, but I do feel functional at a higher level than I've been.  If I could just shake the cough I would be happy.

I am taking the day off from doing any work and just giving my body a chance to recover from all the canning work I've done in the last few days.  Tomorrow I have an appointment with the rheumatologist and I am going to see if we can try a different medication.  I don't think mine are working anymore.  If she prescribes it with an anti-nausea med, I might be able to take one of the others I tried before that made me sick.

I am preparing to start on a new eating plan tomorrow.  I am going to work on weight loss again.  I am prepping the vegetables today so it will be easier for me to just get up and grab the proper food in the right portions.  All of the junk food is out of the house and I'm not going to bring in any more for the next two weeks.  And I'm going to go off gluten again, hopefully permanently.  My focus will be primarily on controlling my carbs to 60 grams, eating more seafood (twice a week at least), keeping my vegetable intake up, and cutting out gluten for good.  Also, I'll be cutting out sugar, but I will allow a small amount of honey while breaking the sugar addiction so the withdrawal isn't too bad.

Well, all of the ballots in my family have been registered as received by local officials.  Ain't the internet grand?  Right now 3 out of 4 have been marked as signatures verified.  DS didn't get his in until Saturday night and the rest of us got them in on Wednesday, so that is probably why.

We have done all the grocery shopping we are going to do and now are prepared to hunker down for the week and/or month.  I am hoping nothing bad happens, that people accept the results of the election with dignity and grace, but since that didn't happen last time, I have little faith it will happen this time.  Hopefully it will just be tantrums again and not rioting, but the last several months with the riots springing up constantly, I again, just have little faith.

The downtown businesses are prepared to board up and will be armed on election day and the week following.  I don't know if it will come here, but someone blew up a mailbox about 8 or 9 blocks away the other night so hard it ended up in four pieces, one of which landed on the roof of the home.  I believe the mailbox was at the street and not on the house like many here are, but don't tend to be on that street since the houses are set so far back.  I can't verify it through a news source, but the rumor on the neighborhood blog is they had a political sign in their yard.  I really wish the reservation would stop selling dynamite to people who are not part of the tribe.  It's really getting to be an issue.

I just want this week to be over.  It's like sitting on the edge of my seat all the time and waiting for the country to explode or not explode.  We are as prepared as we can be with the resources that we have.

I did get 14 quart jars of chicken canned and we will grind the rest of it tonight for the freezer. I still haven't gotten the garlic planted.  My body is killing me from cutting up all the meat.  I hate rheumatoid arthritis and fibromyalgia.  It takes days to recover from things like this that are so simple for other people.

DH and I have started planning next year's garden.  We want to build a large rectangular raised bed garden with enclosed fence.  Two foot wide raised beds will horseshoe around the inside of the fencing and then the side with the door in it will have a sitting bench on one side of the door and a potting bench on the other with a sink I can hook a hose up to for rinsing vegetables and watering plant starts.  Then in the middle section will be one long raised bed that you can walk all the way around.  We will also fence over the top to keep out racoons and squirrels.  That will protect everything but the strawberries from the deer and rabbits, too.

As for the strawberries, I want a hinged cage to go over those.  One that will lift up from either side so I can pick one side, then the other, easily, without having to take the whole cage off to do it.  Since it is an eight foot bed, taking the cage off is awkward for me to do on my own.  With hinges, half can rest on the other half and then be pulled back down into place with very little effort on my part.

As for the inground garden, I'd like to expand it enough to double our potato yield and mom wants to double our corn yield.  The green beans were just right this year, so that area is fine as is, just needs to be ammended and covered with a tarp for the winter.  I think we will probably plant corn on the far side of the house in the narrow area between the house and the fence and that will be Mom's project.  It gets a lot of sun there and should do just fine.  Personally, I wouldn't waste the ground growing corn again if it were just up to me.  We've grown it there before and the roots are shallow enough not to interfere with the French drain.

I will continue to grow my herbs in big containers, but next year it will be one type per container, except my big rosemary bush.  I want it in the ground as a permanent feature.  It is about 3 feet tall right now and quite tree-like.  And basil will get two big containers.  We have been self-sufficient on herbs that can be grown here for 3 years, but I can always use more basil, especially since it won't overwinter and the growing season for it is only 4 months.

I have been trying to sell the last two rabbits, both bucks, but winter is usually not a good time.  Most people don't want to feed animals through the winter and want to aquire them in the spring before breeding time begins in earnest.  They are quite beautiful so once people want them again, they should go quite quickly.

$7868.55 Balance Forward

+_335.29 Amount Added

$8203.84 New Balance  

$1796.16 to go to hit my next milestone of $10,000 saved. 

I got my Google AdSense payment this week and that, along with it being a third paycheck month for DH, brought our income around $300 higher this pay period.  Citi is so high because DS owes me some money for an order he made, which he will pay me later, but I wanted to pay it off before the due date hit so no interest.  When he pays me back I will put that money into the Emergency Fund.  Another reason Citi was so high was we got a lot of takeout due to my being sick.  Nearly every day for 2 weeks.  Ouch.  But I believe in tracking honestly so there you go.

$352.44 Tithe

_400.00 Grocery Envelope

__75.00 Household Envelope

__71.99 DH Life Insurance

__60.46 Me Life Insurance

_100.00 Adult Spending Money

_120.00 Kid Spending Money

_100.00 Gas Money

2203.29 Citi

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

3483.18 Total Money Out

There was $66.00 left in the grocery envelope from last payday so I transferred that to the freezer fund.  There wouldn't have been anything left if I'd been well enough to go to the store one more time on one of the meat sales, but I'm glad there was something to transfer just because we are getting close now on having enough money to purchase the freezer we want.  Next month I might actually be able to put it into the budget as a sinking fund amount, but not quite sure yet.  Either way, it is still building this way.

$792.00 Balance Forward

+_66.00 Leftover Grocery Money

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

$858.00 New Balance

I've been on antibiotics for five days and this morning I did not have to reach for the nasal spray first thing in the morning.  I'm still a little stuffy, but I can breathe without the assistance of Afrin and I can't remember the last time that happened.  I have a really puffy face from the prednisone, but I've only got to take it for two more days and then that will go away.  I'll be on the antibiotics a while longer, though.  I still feel a little disassociated from my body though, like that floaty, above your head feeling you sometimes get when you are sick.

I sent DH to Fred Meyer last night to get the $2.88/lb sirloin steaks.  I just didn't feel up to making it over there at all this week.  We made up one package for dinner and then we will grind up the other six tonight.  I'll start working on cutting it up when I'm done with this entry.

This week boneless, skinless chicken is on sale for $1.99 a pound, so I want to get 14 pounds for canning and another 14 pounds for grinding into burger.  I know I can get it cheaper skin on and bone in, but I don't have the stamina for that this week.  I like to have a mix of ground meats, especially for meatloaf and meatballs.  I plan to do some turkey when they go on sale here next month.  I can break down a whole chicken, so I reckon breaking down a whole turkey shouldn't be that different.

I'm also waiting for another .99/lb pork shoulder sale so I can grind it and make some homemade sausage.  It's been a while though.  The sale progression from week to week tends to be chuck roast at $3.99/lb followed by chuck roast at $2.99/lb, followed by sirloin steaks somewhere between $2.99 and $3.99/lb, followed by chicken legs and thighs at .99/lb and boneless skinless at $1.99/lb, then we get a couple weeks of pork sales.  It had been .99/lb for a long time, but mostly I am seeing $1.99 and $1.49, so that might be the new normal, but I am not sure I want to wait it out because I'd rather have it on hand before the election.  It is $1.99 this week, so I could do it.  Then we can just stay out of the stores until everything has settled down, if it settles down.

I'm starting my aerogarden going today.  I will buy produce the day before the election and then if things get dangerous, I will have lettuce growing by the time we run out of produce that isn't canned.  Plus with the chard, which will overwinter here, we won't have to worry about greens.  I know I sound paranoid, but my state has had rioting for months and I do think the election will be another trigger point.  We are hunkering down and staying as safe as we can during the month of November.

The lack of progress on the blogs is really starting to frustrate me.  I know it’s a platform change and that just makes everything drag out longer.  It looks like a better system when I can get into it.  At least one from this century anyway.

So, I added up the numbers and this is what we have harvested this year:

102 pounds of potatoes

5 pounds of bell peppers

5 pounds of Anaheim mild chile peppers

3 pounds of serrano chile peppers

6 pounds of Trident poblano peppers

2 pounds of jalapenos

12 pounds of radishes, plus their greens

3 pounds of carrots

64 ears of corn

104 pounds of green beans

6 bunches of celery

12 kohlrabi

12 broccoli heads

45 pounds of cucumbers

3 months’ worth of lettuce greens

2 cabbages

30 pounds of tomatoes

5 months’ worth of chard (still going strong)

10 pounds of beets, plus their greens

1 quart jar each of dried peppermint, spearmint, raspberry leaves, bee balm, calendula, and yarrow for tea

1 quart jar each of dried basil, oregano, sage, thyme, rosemary, parsley, and nasturtium buds (dried they taste peppery)

I will be drying and powdering some of the poblanos to make ancho powder and the serranos to make a substitute for cayenne powder.

Sirloin steaks are on sale this week for $2.88/lb.  Hopefully I can make it over to the store this week and get some.  I’d like to grind some for burger.  You can’t beat that price right now.  Don’t know if I will make it or not.  This sinus infection is still kicking my butt.  I did go and have a car appointment on the 23rd and the doctor I saw put me on prednisone and an antibiotic called cefdinir.  I had to get the liquid kind though, because the pill form is red #40 and red #28 and I really prefer not to have migraines, thank you.  It tastes like artificial sweetener, which I also try to avoid, but sometimes you have to pick your battles.  Since I can’t take penicillin without getting hives it is the lesser of two evils.  And the Z-pack didn’t work last time.

Mom canned 14 jars of beef for me and seven jars of potatoes, so even though I’ve been in and out of it, things are still moving in stocking up the pantry for the upcoming cold and flu/political upheaval season.  Time is running short and I want to be ready in time.

Oh, I forgot to mention, DS passed his driver’s test.  This makes my life so much easier.  His license should be here in a few days.

Things have been trucking along here in the days of a non-functional blog platform.  Mostly, I've been canning beef.  They had a massive sale on chuck roast, $2.99 a pound, at Fred Meyer on the last ad flyer and no limit.  I went in 3 times and ended up with a total of 34 roasts.  I did check with the meat guy and he said people just weren't stocking up and to take what I wanted because if it didn’t sell they’d grind it into hamburger.  I always made sure there were plenty left.  I will never clear a bin or shelf of anything except the particular type of chili DS likes.  It is hard to find so I grab it when I do.  I will be canning 14 jars today and putting the rest through the meat grinder for hamburger.  It is far cheaper at the roast price than at the burger price right now.

DH dug up the last of the potatoes.  It was a little over 4 pounds of baby reds.  So that is done.  I harvested all of the peppers and pulled them because I want to plant garlic in that bed, assuming I can find any to plant.  I’m checking the feed store today.  I cut off the side shoots on the broccoli and pulled them, too.  I still need to finish that bed and then we will be using it for strawberries.

I picked the dried out snow pea pods and harvested the seeds for next year.  With the way things are going seeds may sell out faster than they did this year because of the pandemic.  I’m saving bean seeds, too even though I still have a big packet left.  Thankfully, I’ve got quite a bit of corn seed.  And if I can’t get seed potatoes in the spring, I can do the organic grocery store potatoes again.  Maybe some of the ones I harvested will keep until March and I won’t have to worry about it.  I have tomato seeds and zucchini seeds and sweet meat squash seeds that I harvested a couple years ago.  And I have copra keeping onion seeds.  I am most concerned about finding an open pollinated carrot seed so I can start saving carrot seeds in the future, too.  There are a lot of seed packets in my bin of some older seeds so maybe some of those will germinate, too.  I’ll be starting a lot of my own seeds in the spring.  I’m going to do a full set up, no playing around this time.  It was hard to find all the starts I wanted last spring.  I need to be better prepared this time around.

I just want to be ready for whatever is going to be thrown at us next.  I really dread what the next three weeks are going to bring for this county.  If riots come to my city, I don’t know if we can protect ourselves.  We should be far enough away from Seattle, but we do have about 100 or so of that sort who like to cause trouble here downtown.  Mostly college students and university professors.  Usually armed citizens come out to deal with it and protect the shops, though, just as a presence that keeps things from getting out of hand, so who knows?  There’s three months to go after that before we see if things will even go back to some kind of normal.

Hopefully, it’ll just be bad for a week.  We have to go to Virginia Mason in Seattle two weeks post-election to the liver specialist to see if my daughter’s liver tumor has grown, although we should have the MRI results back in her patient portal sometime this week.  I still like things interpreted by a doctor.  The day before that she will be meeting with the new endocrinologist who specializes in adrenal insufficiency, so there will be an overnight down there which makes me even more nervous.  Most of the rioting has been going on a half mile away from the hospital, but that is not very far.  The talk is that they will riot no matter who is elected.  Fun times. /sarcasm  Remember the days when people accepted the results with dignity and grace?

This afternoon I have to take DD to the rheumatologist and remake the appointment I cancelled for myself because I was sick while we’re there.  I think I’ll just make mine a telemedicine visit, though.  This time of year I tend to get sick a lot.  I really need to make an appointment to get my eyes checked for new glasses, too so I can get them and some contacts.  I am sick of my glasses fogging up every time I put on a mask so I want contacts for the days I have to go out in public.

I made a very good loaf of gluten free bread last night, in the bread machine, using Jovial gluten free bread flour.  I tweaked it from the last time I made it and it was far less dense and the crust was amazing.  It was almost as big as regular sandwich bread.  I think with a bit more yeast, honey, and salt I can get it to be a fantastic loaf, but this one was enjoyable.  The one before was too dense for my liking.  I am getting this thing down.  And once I do I’m going to try to find a way to make a crispy crust gluten free pizza.  I can make a soft crust, but I want to get that crunch I like so much from the gluten pizzas.  I think this bread flour will help.  Jovial’s been in the business of gluten free since way before it came a thing and just belonged to celiacs.  They have the best pasta and I am looking forward to trying their pastry flour, too.

Well, I’ve wasted enough time on here, I best get back to real life for the day.

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