Lucky Robin's Personal Finance Blog

So from the last paycheck these are the bills paid:

$500.00 AMEX
__45.63 House Insurance
__84.72 Car Insurance
__39.53 Life Insurance DH
__32.70 Life Insuance Me
_153.00 Storage
__41.16 Security System
_267.40 Dental
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1163.14
+180.00 Medical (out of medical savings, not paycheck)
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1343.14 Total money out

I also $4.37 to the coin jar.

The house insurance has gone up from $41.25 to $45.63 a month. That's a difference of $4.38 a month. DH's life insurance also went up from $37.80 to 39.53. His birthday is this month and it bumps up a bit every six months since it's term insurance which gets a bit more expensive the older you get. That's a difference of $1.73 a month. Storage went down $2.

When we go to talk to the insurance agent about landlord's insurance later this month I need to ask him about the surcharge showing up on our stuff. We weren't supposed to be charged $5 a month for doing monthly payments if they took it directly out of our bank account, but now we are. So if they are going to do that the same as if they were billing in the mail each month, we will switch back to paying in a lump sum. We won't be able to do that until January, because we'll have to save up, but I don't like that being changed on us after 5 years. If they remove it (and they'd do it retroactively, too) then we'll leave it on auto-pay.

I've got the August budget set up and ready to go for Friday's payday, so it'll just be a question of sitting down and writing out the checks or making the online payments.

Today I added up all of our out of pocket medical expenses for the year so far and we've hit $7,371.89. I know we have at least $2500 more in out of pocket medical expenses to go this year, $1500 on treatment for DS alone, and another $1125 that will go to another doctor.

We all need to have our eyes checked and get new lenses before the year is up and DD wants to try contacts this year. We still owe $300 on DH's dental work which we will finish paying off in September.

I still need to get oral surgery to fix my two oldest molars, but am waiting until after DH's dental work is paid off. I would like to do it right before Christmas break so that I wouldn't have to worry about homeschooling DS while zoned on painkillers. But I may not be able to wait that long if they start to hurt too much more.

Either way our HSA is maxed out and we'll be able to deduct the full amount allowed on our income taxes this year. I just need to have DH run the money through.

We got caught out in a surprise thunderstorm today. It brought with it about an inch of rain according to the rain gauge. It was nice not to have to water today and the rain barrels will have collected plenty from this hour of heavy rain.

The weather is supposed to go back to being sunny tomorrow but with more tolerable temps in the low and mid 70's.

I saw color on one of the paste tomatoes today, it's turning yellow. I was going to pick the brandywine tomato today, but didn't want to go out with everything still so wet.

I haven't gotten the second half of my garden photos taken yet. I was going to do that this afternoon, but even after it stopped raining the sky was dark so no good light for picture taking. But I thought I'd share some of the flower photos that I took the other day. These ones usually always have a lot of bees on them, and are great for drawing pollinators into the food garden.

So my two $5 gift cards for Amazon.com from Swagbucks that I cashed out on the 31st showed up today in my email a few minutes ago. I promptly transferred the codes into my account at Amazon and it is nice to see that little balance of $10 there. Then I turned around and cashed in more points for 2 more $5 gift cards. That will leave me with a balance of 101 points in my Swagbucks account, so just another 349 to go for another gift card.

I don't put a lot of effort into swagging. I do the daily poll and the 2 point vids and have the search bar and every website I go to I enter into the search bar instead of going directly to the website. And I use the search bar for actual searching, too, usually to look up recipes or for local food sources and local homesteading blogs.

I spend less than 5 minutes a day actively doing anything and I end up with around 30 points a day. On occassion I'll have the SBTV bar going on the side if I think about it. It's not a huge amount, but it does add up.

I'm saving my gift cards towards a Mac Book for my daughter. She wants a good computer before she goes to college. We'll probably buy it between her junior and senior years of high school, so I have a little over a year to save up for it as well as earn gift cards towards it. Maybe I'll end up with $100 in gift cards by the time I'm ready to buy. That would be a nice little discount.

I had a tough time today, but I am very determined to make it though the full two weeks without eating out. I really came close because I felt sick today. There was a huge weather swing down to 66 degrees after several days in the 80's and that always makes a difference in how I feel. I woke up with pressure in my ear and a scratchy throat and a headache. I just did not want to cook a third meal tonight. Fortunately I have a teenage daughter who was very helpful and dinner came together without a trip to a restaurant.

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We went to the food co-op and picked up a few vegetables and they had organic apricots still and since it is supposed to be cool tomorrow I thought I'd go ahead and make jam. If I am going to be doing it anyway, I might as well make another batch of apricot jam, too. Even if I still don't feel well tomorrow, I can't pass up a cooler day. I am going to go to bed early tonight and hopefully the extra sleep will help.

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I finished off the last of the boughten eggs two days ago, and we are now on to eating just what our chickens provide. I wish the ducks would start laying. There are two males and two females. They are trying to *ahem* procreate quite a bit, so I would hope some eggs would show up soon as they are clearly at maturity now. Maybe it takes them longer than chickens to start laying.

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I picked up my son's immunization records from the medical records department of the group my son's pediatrician is in. The virtual school needs them for some unknown reason. I had called about them on Friday morning, but it took them until this morning to have them ready. I liked it better when the records were in the same building as the doctor's office. Things take longer the bigger the group gets.

We have a meeting with the head of admin for the school system in a couple of weeks about what happened to my son the last week of school with the bully who gave him a concussion. I still think we'll be homeschooling, though, even if there is a positive outcome unless DS has an abrupt about face on what he wants to do.

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We also went to the library. DS had 13 holds come in. The entire series of something, but they are fast reads. I turned in the 3 books I was done with as I am trying to not keep a stack of read ones sitting around just waiting to pay fines. The library is only free so long as things don't get overdue.

Not much else going on. I should do a financial post tomorrow. Oh, I added $2.14 to the coin jar. Don't think I remembered to say that the other day.

I have some things that I need to use up during the early part of the week so am planning my meals for that accordingly. I accidentally made two loaves of bread instead of one yesterday (was on autopilot and forgot to switch recipes). I've planned to use up meat that is in the freezer and not purchase any new meat this week. I am also going to roast a whole chicken tomorrow for lunches this week.

Monday--
Spaghetti with homemade sauce (need to use up an onion)
Meatballs (the pork and hamburger ones as I need to use up some parsley and I've got some fresh basil and oregano from the garden that is ready)
Garlic toast
Cantaloupe (needs to be eaten ASAP)

Tuesday--
Meatball sandwiches using leftover meatballs and leftover sauce
Cole slaw
Last of the cherries, plus fresh blueberries

Wednesday--
Homemade pizza with pepperoni, crumbled leftover meatballs if there are any left, the last of the yellow bell pepper, and onion
Cole slaw

Thursday--
Club sandwiches (with my brandywine tomato!) or toasted ham and cheese according to preference
Homemade french fries
The first kohlrabi from the garden
Berries

Friday--
Bacon cheeseburgers
Corn on the cob
Nectarines
Salad

Saturday--
Chicken and broccoli stir-fry
Leftover fruit
Homemade peanut butter cookies

Sunday--
Pot roast
Potatoes and gravy
Green beans
Drop biscuits with homemade jam

One of the workmen broached the subject today that he would like to rent the old house for $1000 a month. I know he's got steady and gainful employment and he's one of these people that can basically do anything when it comes to home repair.

But it's landlording and all I ever hear about that are horror stories. I've been researching and so far what I've found is that you need to:

1. Get all the basic info from the prosepective tennant to run checks.
--most recent address
--social security number
--date of birth
--list of previous landlords and phone numbers
--references
2. Check the local clerk of courts criminal and civil database
3. Check the state department of corrections database
4. Run a credit check
5. Veryify income (check stubs or bank statement)

It would cost us approximately $162 a month to continue paying HoA dues out there and to keep the security system monitoring device on and to get landlord's insurance.

The renter would take over paying the power, water/sewer, electricity, propane and phone bills and pay for any other utilities they needed or wanted like garbage pickup, internet, or cable. Taking over those utilities would save us $278 a month.

By having renters in there, if all went well, we would have $1116 a month coming in as opposed to letting it just sit there. But that's assuming all goes well. Also they might want to least to buy.

I still would need to look into the tax implications as well.

Plus, I just don't know. I don't want to have to deal with things if stuff goes wrong. DH is gone too much and I don't want to be running out there in the middle of the night if a pipe bursts or whatever.

Does anyone have any good experiences with renting a house? Or is it always just a bad idea? There would be no pets, no children, and no smoking in the home.

I am just really worried that it's not going to sell in this market. But at the same time, we won't know until we try to sell it.

So the workmen have been out at the house all weekend. How they can work in this weather I do not know. Yesterday they took down the rotting, wooden carport. The roof was totally caving in. They took down the fence, too, which was mostly down anyway, but they got it all stacked and ready to be hauled away. Today a man is coming to haul it away. He uses it for winter heating. Since it was neither weather treated or painted wood, it is safe to do so. He is also taking away all of the many boxes of kindling that didn't go when we gave away the bulk of the stacked wood. He will also be taking all the beams from when we tore down the green house a few years ago.

They are cutting all of the tree branches that overhang the house, getting rid of the old chest freezer that weighs 20,000 pounds (or something ridiculous), hauling away a bunch of old concrete, and ripping out some rhodies that were planted too close to the house.

Then next weekend (I think) they will be pressure washing the house and repairing a small area of the siding, putting up new gutters, taking the window in to have the inside pane of glass repaired, landscaping and whatnot.

I'm not sure when they will start painting. The inside can be done at any time. The outside will have to dry for several days after they pressure wash it. August is our dryest month so it should get done by the end of the month. I hope.

After they are done painting we will have someone in to decide whether the living room and play room rugs are salvagable. All of the bedroom rugs are, but there is some arts and crafts paint and other things that kids inevitably stain carpets with on the two main areas. We are thinking we may just replace the play room floor, which is really a dining room, with lineoleum that looks like tile, and then just do the living room rug. The other possibility is to put in a wooden flooring. Costco sells a fairly inexpensive one in two different shades (a light or a dark) and since it is going in a house we are selling, it doesn't have to be the color I would want, it can be just a fairly nice color. I would want a honey blond if I had to live with it, but other light colors would be good in that house, too.

Mom says she will pay for it all and we can pay her back when we sell it. I told her she's speculating that we will actually get enough from fixing it up to pay her back. We still have to cover the just under $17K mortgage payoff and the realtor fee. With the market the way it is out there anything can happen. One house that was 1200 square feet, 3 bed, 1 bath sold for $83,000, and a 1400 2 bed, 2 bath for $98,000, and one that was 1600, 4 bed, 2 bath sold for $35,000. Although that one was a foreclosure and I have a feeling it was trashed.

There's a house for sale down the block for $179,000 and I think those people are just dreaming. There is another one for sale for $28,000. I just do not know what our house will bring. It's assessed at $97,000 (used to be $110,000). We paid $65,000 for it and I would be more than happy to just get that. That would pay off the mortgage, the realtor, Mom, and give us some money left for a downpayment. The lot is worth $35,000. If we even got that it would pay off the mortgage, Mom, and the realtor, leave us with abour $10K and stop us leaking all the money that a second house requires you to spend even if there was nothing left for a downpayment.

I don't know. I hate the uncertainty of the future sometimes. Speaking of uncertainty...well, not really, as DH has been assurred by everyone that his job is safe, they fired a bunch of people where DH works and will not be replacing them this year, that means instead of the 2 jobs he is currently working (because they never rehired people after the last round of firing), he and his alternate get to take on the responsibility of 3 positions (one above his paygrade and one below it). No raise to go with the increased responsibility, and he's day rate so no overtime either) though he may be required to work extra weeks. The money would be nice, but having his home time cut down to a week instead of two will be hard, particularly while homeschooling my son.

He did say there were other companies up there hiring for what he does so if things get bad he does have options, but right now he loves his company and his work and he's totally not the type to jump ship unless he's being threatened with unemployment. He was with the last company just shy of 15 years and would still be with them if they hadn't lost the big contracts. They should be rehiring those positions next year when things ramp up again.

You know how I thought I didn't have any more raspberries to pick? I decided to double check the overgrown canes just to be sure and underneath everything I found more berries. A gallon more. I guess it's a good thing I looked. Then I picked a little less than 2.5 gallons of blueberries.



My first brandywine tomoato is almost ripe. I think maybe by Monday it'll be ready for picking.



I've never grown brandywine before and everything I've ever read says they'll never get ripe here. But this one did and there are a few more darkening and there are lots of green ones, so maybe this is just the year for it. It's been hot almost every day of July and so far all of August, so it could just be this is a tomato year. I certainly hope so.

My paste tomatoes are coming along nicely, sizing up, if not showing any color but green yet.



I am very hopeful that I will be able to get at least two canner loads of tomato sauce from my own garden. I will have to buy some from one of the organic farms here to get my year supply, but at least some of them will be from my own hard work.

I have two sowings of broccoli. The one I planted first is smaller than the one I planted second. They are on opposite sides of the house. The bigger ones get the morning sun and the smaller ones get the sun from about 1 p.m. until sundown. They are different types of broccoli so that may make a difference, too.

Older plants:



Younger plants:



The cauliflower, which I still have to tie a few of them off to blanch, is doing well:



The biggest of the kohlrabi that I hope to start eating in a few more days:



The patty pan summer squash is starting to get fruit:



The hubbard squash is taking over its area. This is one plant.



The hubbard squash grows really well here. Most of the winter squashes do not like it here even though they are supposed to. The chickens will eat most of the hubbard squash. We will take a chunk of each one as we open it, but it is really hard to get through all of one before it starts to go bad and I do not want to can it. They love having the winter treat of hubbard squash and particularly like the seeds.

One of my yellow zucchini plants needs to be moved. It is not liking it's location at all. I think I can still save it if I put it in a better spot. It's been a tough one from the start, a rescue plant, but even with all the care I've given it, it may not make it. And it is hard to kill zucchini.

And finally the chard:



It is beautiful. This was planted for the chickens, but we are going to try cooking some for ourselves. I've never eaten it before. Growing up, pretty much the only vegetables Mom made were green beans, potatoes, pickles and corn. If we were having guests we would also have a plate of carrots, celery, radishes, and olives. Oh, and I would take peanut butter and celery in lunch to school. I have branched way out as an adult, eating all kinds of vegetables, but some things I have balked at. Chard and kale are two of those things. This year I have sworn I would try them. Kale I liked. Chard I will try soon. Since they are both so easy to grow here, pretty much fool proof, it would be great if I liked them both.

No photos of the corn, apples, Italian prunes, blackberries (which need to be picked tomorrow), green beans or bunching onions. My camera battery was starting to die. I will probably post those tomorrow, along with some of the flowers so you will know that it isn't just about veggies, but also the beauty that attracts pollinators, too.

Even though I tend to keep an eagle eye on the fridge and know what's in there pretty much to the teaspoon, sometimes food does get wasted. Usually, but not always, this is the fault of my youngest child who likes to put his leftovers in the fridge and then shove them to the back, even though I have a policy on where leftovers go, which is up front and visible at all times.

With all of the fruit I have been harvesting this week I have not kept as sharp an eye on things and when I cleaned the fridge last night I had to throw out, courtesy of my son:

1/2 bowl of homemade organic chicken noodle soup
1 cup of leftover spaghetti
About a one inch by 4 inch strip of pork chop from the organic, sustainable farm (I would have eaten this had I known!)
2 tbsp of leftover hamburger (from the same farm) that went with the cup of spaghetti
8 ounces of organic milk

Courtesy of my daughter:
1 quart size baggy with broccoli and cauliflower that she said she was going to eat

Courtesy of myself (you didn't think I was completely innocent in this, did you?):
1/2 can of the really good, meat only chili

And of course, DH is in Alaska and even if he was home, he eats leftovers left and right. There's almost never anything that is his fault, unless you count that he didn't get to other people's leftovers fast enough, and I don't! LOL Actually, I think the last thing we threw out that was his fault was because he left it out of the fridge, not because he left it in there for too long.

So all in all, not the best week for not wasting food, we lost about $8 worth. Everything went into the compost bin or to the chickens. The meat smelled off, not spoiled so I let the chickens eat it. I'll keep a better eye on it all this week, blueberries or no blueberries. (Ha, of course there will be blueberries...all...week...long).

Well, I better go check on the chickens. Someone either just laid an egg or had a heart attack. My guess is one of the newbies laid her first egg and wants the whole world to know.

It hit 81 degrees today. There is a nice breeze though, so the only place it really felt like 81 degrees was inside my car and that was with the sun shade up. Fortunately the car's AC cools it off in about 2 minutes. Having open windows and fans going is enough to cool the house right now. I am glad. We don't tend to have AC in this part of the country except in our cars. But I would totally want to use it on a day like today.

We went swimming today (and my super thick, long hair, which usually takes four hours to dry is almost dry an hour later). Although it was a little crowded, the lap lane was empty, so I got my 26 laps in. The pool had one of those really screechy toddlers in it. You know the type that have discovered they can scream and it echoes like crazy in places like indoor pools or churches or McDonald's playland? And the parents have given up trying to even shut them up when they do it? Yeah, love that. Glad I was underwater for most of it. The lifeguard did finally tell the dad that if he couldn't make the kid stop they'd have to get out of the pool. That seemed to shut the kid right up. Wish she'd said something sooner!

I'm picking more berries tonight as soon as it cools off a bit more and the bushes are in shade. I cut my first broccoli today. It was the one that was accidentally in with the cauliflower and way ahead of any of the other broccoli. And I finally finished transplanting the rest of the everbearing strawberries. They now live in pots on the deck where the chickens cannot eat them and the rabbits will not come. I still need to get the last of the cabbage starts in the dirt. These are supposed to be good for overwintering. We'll see.

Day 8 of the No Eating Out Challenge went just fine. No temptation today at all despite going swimming. How is everyone else doing on the No Eating Out Challenge? Anyone else still going with me for the second week? Anyone else want to join in for the second week?

I spent $90 today at my appointment and then $14.43 at the grocery store. I also gave the kids their weekly allowances ($7 and $12 respectively). DS also got paid for mowing my mother's lawn. He got in two mows last month instead of 4 because he was still recovering from the concussion early on, but she pays him $5 per mow so he got $10 and was happy. He's saving up for some kind of fancy new game machine. He also, the little stinker, won a free Kindle in a drawing at the chiropractor. Of course I don't want to buy him anything to go on it so he'll have to use his own money for that, too.

He asked me if he could have the gutters when they took them off the house and put on new ones. I laughed because I knew what he was thinking. Aluminum! He already has his aluminum can business, but he figures the gutters can get him a tidy sum when he takes in the cans next time. I said he could have them.

DS will be helping me with the transplanting. He's such a help in the garden, hoeing and watering and digging. And carrying heavy stuff. He is getting so strong now. You should see the muscles on this kid. He's starting to get six pack abs at 12! And his biceps are pretty impressive when he makes a muscle. Where did my baby boy go?

Well, not really, but it feels like it. I picked a lot of berries today and I still have one and a half trees left. I know berries grow on bushes, but you haven't seen the size of these ones. Most definitely trees! I packed up several quarts for the freezer and then a quart bag full to take to my friend tomorrow and she will also get an 8 ounce container of blueberry jam.

This is what I am seeing right now when I close my eyes:



I still think I would have a lot more berries in the freezer right now if it weren't for the demands of this bunch:



The tub there is what we used for a brooder when they were babies. The plan is to dig a hole and sink it as a pond for the ducks. Right now they use an old, plastic turtle sandbox for their mini-ponds. Both the lid and the bottom are filled with water. Recycling.

This is Ecru and PipSqueak. Pipsqueak (along with Half-pint) was the runt, but you can see she is now bigger than the Leghorn. She's a black australorpe.



We are not sure, but we think Ecru (whose twin is named Eggshell) might be a rooster. We are hoping not since we can't have roosters in town. Personally, I think Pipsqueak might be a rooster, but they don't have combs yet and though they are loud they aren't exactly crowing yet.

Over here, Half-pint (black australorpe) and Henrietta (auracana) are napping in the sun after eating their fill of berries and finishing their dirt baths.



We are getting little eggs in brownish pink and white which means that one of the Leghorns (Eggshell or Ecru) is laying (the white ones) and one of the golden sex linked (the pinkish one) is laying. Not sure if it's Curious or Georgie.

Today we had four eggs (2 littles and 2 bigs). Queen is hiding her nest again, but I'm sure she's laying somewhere. She's not broody, she just doesn't like to give them up. In another week or two everyone should be laying. Then it won't be just chickens and blueberries coming out my ears, but eggs, too. As it is, we are no longer having to purchase eggs for this household, so yay. One more thing we can supply for ourselves and take out of the grocery budget.

Oh, I almost forgot! Silver will pose for blueberries now. She's our silver lace wing wyandotte and she's always been shyest. Not if there are blueberries at stake, though.

Since I got my interest at ING, I added it to the Freezer Fund. It was a whopping 90 cents, bringing the Freezer Fund to $410.58. I'm almost to the halfway point. Still a firm believer in every little bit helping, but I sure wish that little bit was interest earned at a higher rate. I miss 4%. Heck, I miss the 7% of my childhood. I don't know if we'll ever get those rates back, but I doubt it. It sure would have been nice to earn $4 for that amount like I would have just a few years ago. Oh, well. It is what it is, and it's 90 cents more than I had last month.

I found some money while cleaning today. 26 cents. Into the coin jar it went. I also found 40 cents in the car and 2 pennies at the grocery store yesterday. If I find 22 more cents this month, which is possible, it will match what I earned last month in interest. Hmm, Baselle, I really see why you're always looking for coins on the sidewalk.

So here's what's coming out of last Friday's paycheck. Today is the no paycheck Friday so last week's paycheck, which is the little one with only 2 days on it, plus whatever I saved from the week before has to stretch over 2 weeks.

$500.00 to AMEX
_376.84 to mortgage
_155.00 to storage (working on getting this down)
__37.61 Life Insurance DH
__32.70 Life Insurance Me
__41.25 House Insurance
__84.42 Car Insurance
__41.16 Security System
__31.00 Power
_100.00 half year HoA dues
_100.00 property tax savings
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$1499.98

I also have $75 in cash for groceries for the next week. We shouldn't need to buy more than milk and a few canning lids this week. Though I am very tempted to get another 3 pounds of apricots to put up.

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Yesterday I paid a 50 cent fine at the library. It was for a book I couldn't check out again as it had a hold on it and I wanted to finish it. It was also a new book so they only give you 2 weeks instead of 3 weeks. Since it was the last one in the stack I got to, that's how it turned out.

I came home with a new stack of libarary books yesterday and promptly put them in the order of books to get through first so that wouldn't happen again. I'm starting with Still Life with Chickens and Second Helpings. I can't read just one book at a time, usually.

I love the library. So many books to read for free, at least unless you get a fine for overdue. And that's entirely on the borrower and can be totally avoided.

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The weather has broken, it's a nice 60 degrees today, so I am going to process jam this afternoon if I am not too tired right after I go out and pick some more blueberries.

I talked to DH tonight for a good while and while he's been assured that his job is safe, there are going to be some other people losing theirs up at work. It means that he may be taking on more responsibility as those jobs don't get refilled. It also means that he may have to work extra days or extra weeks. Extra days or weeks mean extra income, but at the same time, it means more time away from the family. I doubt there will be any raise with this responsibility. He's already practically doing two jobs, so a third one added in...well, I hope it's not too much stress for him.

Having made the decision to homeschool our son this next school year, having DH around less to help out when he's home, or keep me sane, means it'll be that much harder. Of course, I'll only be homeschooling one of my kids this time and he's a way better reader now than he was the last time we homeschooled, so maybe it'll go okay. I know since he's had treatment for his forward head posture, he tends to be a stinker only one day out of seven instead of the other way around. That may make all the difference in the world this time around.

DS has decided he wants to go with WAVA again after all, so everything will be free after all. I would have chosen a few more exciting things, but he says he really, really wants to do WAVA. He liked it before a lot. And it does keep him in the state school system. Though I really, really want to know why they think they need immunization records for a virtual school? He will not be around other children on a daily basis.

We are trying to get a hold of a lady on Craig's List who gives music lessons for $15/30 minutes. DS has decided he does not want to even do just orchestra through the school system, since the principal sometimes comes in and sits and watches the class. This man has fallen so far in my son's estimation that he doesn't want to take a class he loves because of the risk that that man will stop by once a month to view it as he did during sixth grade. I really wish there was a way that I could impress on that principal all the damage he is responsible for doing to my child.

Since the principal has been unwilling to communicate at all since all of the medical evidence (including x-rays) came in supporting our child being pretty severely injured at school, we can't even talk to him about it, or try to help restore any kind of trust there. He's just...well, they say bullying starts at the top. I know he bullied us when we went in. I think maybe he's so used to having his own way he has forgotten how to bend. Too bad that in the process of becoming so unyielding, he's broken a student's faith that he would be safe at school.

...because I picked so many blueberries today that they turned that way. And honestly, but for the 3 gallons of blueberries in the freezer, you would not be able to tell by looking at the bushes. It's like there is a berry multiplying monster out there somewhere. The gardener's soap is getting most of it off, but it won't be fully gone until I wash my hair tomorrow. Of course it will then come back when I pick more tomorrow.

I made chicken broth overnight in the crockpot last night with my stock scraps, a few fresh veggies, and some wings. I now have this in the freezer:



I would have done them all in pint jars but I ran out of wide mouth lids. I need to buy some more lids tomorrow. I have a coupon for $1 off two boxes of any size canning lids. See, I do use coupons, just generally not for food. I want to pick up the twist on BPA-free plastic lids that work on canning jars, too. Because those will work fine in the freezer and won't take unused lids out of service. The only place I can find them, though, is Amazon, so I will have to wait until I can make an order there. I wish I could find them in real life.

The quart jars of stock I will use for actual soup making, but the pint ones I will use for cooking rice in, or for recipes that call for broth. I would have pressure canned them, but it is too hot to heat the house up. But the freezer works, too.

This fall I intend to make several batches of broth and pressure can them. I plan to make some that have only low-carb ingredients in them, garlic, green onions, celery and parsley, as well as some regular ones. Then I can make some low-carb chicken soups, too.

DS and I planted more kohlrabi and lettuce. Tomorrow we will plant cabbage and transplant some more everbearing strawberries.

I really need to sit down and do a budget post. I used to be so good at those and I don't think I've done them in a couple of months now. I mean, yeah, it's great talking about how much I save on planting, eating, and putting up my own food, but this blog has been widely unbalanced lately on the other financial aspects of my life, mostly because they are on autopilot. I need to try and fix that.

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We went swimming today (I did 26 laps) and I really did not want to make dinner tonight. I am always so hungry right after swimming. Well, I didn't make dinner, but I didn't eat out either. We all warmed up leftovers and ate fruit and I opened a can of green beans. I didn't stick to my meal plan, but this was still a pretty good option. And the pork chops can wait until tomorrow, the pizza can be bumped to Saturday, and I'll skip the sandwiches originally planned.

I'm getting a little overwhelmed by trying to keep up with the fruit production right now. I picked a gallon of raspberries and 2 gallons of blueberries today. Actually, I probably picked at least another gallon of blueberries, but that went to the greedy chickens. I swear for every two handfuls I put in the bag I was throwing one to the chickens. With 12 chickens eating them it was a lot. I don't mind sharing, I just wish they could pick, too!

They are getting very friendly, coming right up to me and demanding berries. Some will even tap me on the foot with their beaks if they think it has been too long since I've dropped some berries for them, cheeky little birdies. I really should take out my camera when I pick because they get so close and I could get some great shots.

Anyway, I estimate I picked about $50 worth of berries today, not counting what I fed to the chickens. Everything is in the freezer. It's too hot in the house to process right now and picking is done either before eleven in the morning or after seven in the evening, when it is cool enough to do the work.

My biggest brandywine tomato is moving from orange to red now. It looks so good. I harvested a quart of green beans today, but I think that patch of beans is just about spent. Maybe another handful left that needs to size up a bit. I need to poke a few more seeds into the ground. There might be just enough time left to get a late harvest.

I have two kohlrabi the size of tennis balls and 2 about the size of golf balls. I think the two bigger ones should be ready in about a week. I am really looking forward to them as there is nothing like kohlrabi fresh from the garden. Some of the smaller ones are starting to swell now.

I'm not sure what's going to happen with the cauliflower. It got hot at the wrong time. I am going to tie the leaves over the small heads tomorrow, at least on the ones that the slugs have not eaten the leaves too far down on, to see if they will blanch. Cauliflower is not one of my favored veggies. I will eat it, but I only ever make it because DH and the kids like it, so if it doesn't survive, eh... The broccoli is coming along nicely though.

I harvested the last of the old lettuce today and pulled the plants. The chickens were happy to get those, too, the greedy guts.

The garden has paid for itself about three times over now, plus paid for all the canning supplies and sugar I have bought this summer. I am happy about that. I will be even happier when I start picking tomatoes.

I am thinking about getting some sweet corn to put up at the end of August. We did plant some, but just enough for fresh eating. I just need to decide between freezing or canning if I buy some. I would freeze if I had the freezer by then, but I don't know if I will. So it may be canning by default. It would be nice to buy local corn when it is 10/$10. I guess it will depend on how well my tomatoes do, because if they don't do well, I will spend my grocery money on organic tomatoes to put up.

I can at least buy good canned corn from TJ's at a decent price all year around, but I can't do that for tomatoes. And also, with the corn being killed in the middle of the nation from drought, there may be a higher demand for Washington state corn and I might not be able to get it so cheap, either. Well, a year without much corn won't kill me, if it comes to that. Now a year without potatoes, that would be hard. But those are growing in our garden just fine. I may not even have to buy potatoes at all from September to May if they are as productive as they look like they are going to be.

I don't think we are anywhere near being able to provide all of our produce needs for the year this year, but we'll have grown a good enough hunk of it to take a major bite out our grocery budget, which will make it easier to save up for the protein in bulk from sustainable sources. I would love to get my grocery budget down to $400 a month if averaged over the year, even if it means buying a large portion of it up front.

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I redeemed two $5 amazon gift cards from swagbucks today and will do the same tomorrow. I wish I had done it yesterday, so I could have gotten 4 this month. Oh, well. Live and learn.

I have saved up enough Swagbucks to cash in for 4 $5 gift cards to Amazon. Can someone explain the process of redeeming them a little before I go do it? I've heard something about daily limits on how much you can redeem. Do they send you the gift cards in the mail or do they give you a gift card link in email?

And then I've heard about gift card numbers getting stolen so you need to put them in your amazon account right away so that doesn't happen. But I've never had to do that, so how does that work exactly? Is there a specific place you go in your account? I don't want to use them yet, I want to save them up. Also, how long do these gift cards last once you have them in your amazon account? I'd like to save them up for at least a year.

I ended up having to swap today's dinner with tomorrow's. The bread was starting to mold. How DH and DS did not notice this at breakfast or lunch I do not know, but I noticed it, so out it went to the compost bin. There were only six slices left, the perfect amount for dinner sandwiches for me and the kids (DH is on his way back to Alaska), but sadly it had to go. I think maybe the heat is making it not last as long as it did when it was cooler.

So we had spaghetti with plain tomato sauce and hamburger (I didn't feel like taking the time to do meatballs or my special sauce) and fresh berries from the yard. No garlic toast because of no good bread. I didn't even make a vegetable, but no one was complaining. We like simple spaghetti even if we like fancy spaghetti more. Part of my brain was saying just go out to eat. I wish that would go away, but it does crop up a lot when I am tired, which I am really tired today. Fortunately I had my challenge to fall back on and made it through day four of no eating out just fine.

I will make a loaf of bread in the morning and we will have our sandwiches for dinner tomorrow. I ended up buying a yellow bell pepper today when I picked up a gallon of milk, instead of a green one. They had no organic green ones and the red ones were not very uniformly ripe. The yellow ones were perfect. So I will have yellow bell pepper slices on my sandwich tomorrow and later this week on my pizza.

The nice thing about planning out my meals for the week is that I can switch them around in a pinch when something goes wrong, like moldy bread.

I think I may can blueberry jelly tomorrow. I have to pick the bushes tomorrow morning before the birds (not our chickens, but wild birds) get them. They are loaded and they are too much of a temptation to the sparrows and chickadees if left too long.

Today I picked some blackberries. I am working towards filling up another gallon size baggy in the freezer. So far there is just today's pint. There are still a lot of red and green berries on the canes so I know they will get there eventually, but it may be a week or two before I have enough to make more blackberry jam. By then I am hoping that the Himaylayan blackberries that grow wild behind my chiropractor's office (and don't get sprayed) will be ripe and ready to pick.

Other than picking a few berries it was a pretty lazy day. I just didn't have the gumption to do anything much. I hope I'm not coming down with a cold. My throat was a tinge scratchy this morning and yesterday morning, but got better as the day progressed. It could just be allergies. It's been about 12 weeks since I've had a bad cold and I'd just as soon keep up that record since I had such a horrific fall and winter with illness after illness.

I did spend a lot of time going over the absentee voter's ballot. We have a lot of folks this time I knew nothing about so I researched them to figure out who to vote for. I also put together a documentation packet to send higher up the school's food chain. We are still getting the runaround by the lower level administration in regards to my son's concussion that another student gave him second to last day of school, so we went higher up. Don't know if it'll do us any good at all, but I'd like to at least know we are being heard.

Financially, I added $2.65 to the coin jar. Not really a money day otherwise.

I hate nights where I have insomnia. Or at least "not tired enough to fall asleep until it's really late-ia." We spent a good portion of today out at the house determining what we wanted to keep and what was going to be hauled to the dump of the stuff in the yard and shed. We locked up what we are going to keep and everything left is going to be junked. It's probably 4 pick up loads worth of stuff that will never be usable, like the 2 extremely heavy bags of solid concrete that got rained on. They used to be powder. Or the patio table umbrella that somehow managed to grow an entire layer of something green and fuzzy.

We ended up basically keeping very little. I'm not sure how we ever accumulated so much useless stuff. Having lived in 1000 square feet for the last two and a half years has given me a lot of irritation at our formerly cluttered life. And I am not looking forward to going through the stuff in storage, though that will be our next step, because the smaller the unit we can get into the less we will have to pay.

The guy who wants our car is going to put in $1000 worth of labor in fixing up the old house for it. We will buy the primer, but they have a bunch of leftover paint from other jobs that their boss just gives away after a house is done and that will be free. They already have all the equipment. They will tape and mud and fix some small holes (nail holes, when we changed out the thermostat and put it at the other end of the house) and paint the inside and when that is done we will have the carpets cleaned. The one guy says he has seen carpets in worse shape than ours come back great with professional cleaning so we're hoping we won't have to replace the rugs.

They are also going to take all of the junk we sorted out today to the dump and get the yard ready for sale. He's got a guy who wants to tear down the carport, which is falling down, for free, so he can have the wood. He'll also take all of the greenhouse demolition wood and the broken fencing away.

They want to paint the outside of the house, too, again with free paint from other jobs and they will spray it as they have that equipment.

The other guy is getting estimates on the broken window pane repair and on how much it will cost to replace the four doors and one door frame that need replacing. And also where we can get replacement sliding doors for the closets and how much.

And they want to do all the yard work needed to fix it up. They know we can't pay a lot because of my son's medical bills right now, but it sounds like as long as we pay for the supplies they can't provide, any additional labor costs can wait until the house is sold. I know the head guy is doing this because he really likes my mother, but I don't want to get too far beholden on a house we may not make much from at all.

I really would like to get moving on this and get it on the market, but I want to pay as we go, too, which may not be possible at a quick rate. But I think just getting the house painted is a step in the right direction.

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As for steps in a different direction, two of the houses that we have had our eyes on for a while both had substantial price drops. The one house, which is pretty much perfect except for the location (which is not a bad location, it's in our chosen school district, it just is not where exactly I want to be) dropped it's price today to $200,000. Which would be a really nice mortgage to have for a house with it's square footage and yard. The only thing I don't like is that I have noticed the neighbors are creeping their stuff.

They are parking one of their brokendown cars partially on that property and their junk is also creeping over. The house has been empty for a while and I don't really want to have neighbors who start taking over bits and pieces when you aren't looking. Plus there was so much clutter in their garage and the yard seemed trashed. All the other yards in the area seem fine, but I don't want bad neighbors. I've had them once and I will not knowingly buy a home next to them.

The other one which is a block outside our desired neighborhood and is only outside it because it is across from the freeway and the noise is loud, was $330,000 when it was taken off the market after a year several months ago, and it came back on the market at $300,000. It is a perfect house for us in a better area. Handicapped accessible, handicapped bathroom shower, a large yard for gardening, a big garage/shop. You can't really hear the freeway from the back yard and it's pretty quiet from inside the house, but it is very loud in the front. All of the bedrooms are in the back though and we've lived with road noise when we lived in the country next to a highway. But I still think it's going to drop more.

If our house had sold and we had the downpayment in hand we'd make an offer. It would be closer to $225,000 to start with, going up to $250,000. I can't say with the road noise it is ever going to sell for more than $275,000. Considering how long they've been trying to unload it, it's just been vastly overpriced. It's also on a dead end, not easy to give directions to, and behind a crematorium/funeral home so it can't sell like the same house picked up and moved to another location and they have to accept that. Once they do I think the price will fall again. When it does, I hope we can take advantage of it.

I told DH today though that I really want to have at least $30,000 in the emergency fund before we start saving for a downpayment. I don't want to go without it.

He said there might be a possibility of him working an extra week. They had fired two people in documentation (they were alternates) and have not rehired replacements even though it's been months and he's sort of been doing both his regular job and the job of the person who is gone. And the second job is falling behind because he has his hands full with his own job. So he may see an extra week of work. Which financially would be great. It would give us enough to pay off the last $1500 of DS's medical bills and still leave us with some money for the house renovations. But I remember how hard 3 weeks on were on everyone including him. And that was 3 on/3 off, not 3 on/1 off. Yes, the money might be nice, but we would muddle by without it to the new year when everything will get easy again. At least I hope so.

I am going to try to do a few easier meals this week, I think. It's supposed to be hot all week and long and involved food is not something I really want to get into. I will use the crock pot at least twice. Oh, speaking of using the crock pot, I made up the applesauce and DH pronounced it very delicious. this is what I did:

5 apples, peeled, cored and segmented into eighths (I think they were pink lady or cameo, which are the only type I buy other than honeycrisp usually and they weren't honeycrisp)
1 1/4 cup water
1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp cinnamon

Put all ingredients in the crockpot on high for 6 hours. It was supposed to be 3 to 4 but I forgot about it. No harm done though. It made 2 12 ounce jars and one 8 ounce jar (or 3 half pints total, if I had been able to find more 8 ounce jars). Process in a water bath canner for 20 minutes to make it shelf stable. It is nice to have those apples out of my fridge produce drawer.

Anyway, planned dinners for the week:

Monday--
Club sandwiches
Homemade french fries from home grown potatoes
Cantaloupe
Cole slaw

Tuesday--
Spaghetti with homemade sauce
Meatballs
Homemade garlic toast
Salad

Wednesday--
Meatball sandwiches made with leftover meatballs, leftover sauce, and leftover garlic toast
Leftover cole slaw
Berries

Thursday--
Pork chops
Fried potatoes
Green beans
Berries

Friday--
Homemade pizza (made with leftover spaghetti sauce) and whatever toppings we have on hand, probably green peppers, onions, Canadian bacon and uncured pepperoni
Cantaloupe

Saturday--
Toasted ham and cheese sandwiches
Homemade chicken noodle soup (from a chicken roasted for lunches and then crock potted to make stock and then soup)
Cole slaw
Homemade french fries

Sunday--
Beef chuck roast made in the crockpot with carrots and potatoes
Green beans
Drop biscuits with homemade jam

At least it's day 3 for me. It's probably day 2 for everyone else since I started the day I announced it. Anyway, I've done good so far, but today I was really tempted. I didn't give in to it, but I had a really strong urge to get half a Subway foot long club sandwich on their 9-grain honey oat bread. So I think I'm going to build a sandwich night into my meal plan this week.

One of the things I discovered about sub sandwiches is that I like them with cucumbers and green peppers on them. I discovered this at an open house that was serving Subway sandwiches this way, and ever since it's like I can't get enough of them. So I think tomorrow will be sandwich night. The only thing I'll need to buy will be a green pepper.

I have been wanting some simpler meals on these hot days, and I have plenty of excellent homemade bread so I think it will be a good idea for early in the week. Probably for tomorrow. Since tomorrow is airport day that does tend to make things easier. Otherwise DH ends up eating at the airport and the kids and I don't end up eating until 8 at night and that is no fun.

I didn't put a pot roast in again for Sunday dinner. I don't know what is up with me forgetting, but oh, well. It can sit in the freezer a while longer. I am making pizza for dinner instead. I've got the dough started in the bread machine. We have leftover homemade sausage, uncured pepperoni, and onions.

I have some leftover homemade spaghetti sauce that is enough to top the pizza and plenty of cheese. I will be using the cheese that is getting a little hard first. It will melt just fine but is a little weird for eating straight. I was going to use leftover meatballs from the spaghetti earlier in the week, but my new meatball recipe was so well-received the last of the meatballs were devoured yesterday. I will definitely be making those again.

I am thinking about making up a batch of applesauce in the crock pot. There are five apples that have been sitting in my fridge for a while and I am tired of them taking up space. I can do a small batch and water bath can them in half-pint jars. I won't even have to get out the big canner to do that, just do them in a large pot. Then they will not be taking up room in my fridge.

This morning was nice and cool and the perfect morning for making jam without heating the house up terribly. I used my new food mill on the apricots and the blackberries, but the blueberries just went into the blender.

The results of my 3 hours of labor.



I ended up with six half pints of apricot jam, a value of $48 (organic jam has gone up, I priced it last week), minus the cost of sugar and apricots, so a net value of $40.

I did 4 pints of blackberry jam for a value of $56. The blackberries were free, so the cost of the sugar was $2. So a net value of $54.

Last I did 8 half pints of blueberry jelly. Again the berries were free from the yard so it was the cost of the sugar, $2. So $64 minus $2, a net value of $62.

Altogether I spent $12 on ingredients and profited $158 by putting up this jam and jelly today. I will likely do at least one more batch of blackberry jam, one more batch of raspberry jam, and one more batch of blueberry jelly this summer and any other berries will be frozen. I think I'll have enough jam for the year. I may actually already have enough jam for the year, but some will be gifts.

And another look at my expanded stash. We have used up one jar of strawberry and are in the process of eating a second and also on the first jar of apricot jam, but there are two more rows added as well.



I can't wait until I can fill a shelf full of tomato products. Another month and a half for that.

Today I made homemade salsa. It turned out really well. I did the usual thing that I do when I want to make something that I either haven't made in a really long time or have never made before. I looked at a bunch of recipes on the internet and then made up my own. I don't think I could follow a cooking recipe line for line if you paid me. Baking, yes. That's a whole other animal, but not cooking.

Anyway, I started with the juice from one lime and threw it in the blender.



And diced half a yellow onion and 2 really enormous cloves of garlic (probably 4 smaller cloves would do from a non-mutant head).



I chopped up about a cup's worth of fresh cilantro.



And then diced 2 jalapeno peppers.



I took about 1/8 tsp of the seeds from the peppers and discarded the rest. You can use them all or more than I did, but I was trying to make a salsa my kids would eat.

I took 2 cans of organic diced tomatoes including the juice and added it to everything else in the blender.



I didn't want to pay the prices for off season organic tomatoes at the store, but I imagine about 2 pounds of tomatoes would substitute for the 2 cans.

I added in 1 tsp of freshly ground sea salt and 1 tsp of freshly ground pepper and blended the whole mess on low, level 4, for about 20 seconds because I wanted to keep some chunkiness to it. Now is the time to taste it and adjust your salt, pepper, and jalapeno seeds to taste.

And the tasty end result:



This made a little over a quart of salsa. Next time I will cut the recipe in half and just make around a pint, but I will definitely make it again. It's worth it in freshness, flavor, and I saved about $2 over the cost of buying the same amount of jarred salsa. That cost will drop once my own tomatoes are ripe.

I'm doing a no eating out challenge for the next two weeks. Does anyone want to join me? Our day in Seattle really knocked me for a loop physically. I ended up with a stomach ache for a day afterwards and that was just from two meals out that day. Plus it made my weight bounce up and it took until today for it to be back down to what it was the morning we went to Seattle. Yuck.

So no money will be spent on eating out for the next 14 days. And I will stick to my meal plans except for maybe rotating days depending on tiredness. If I'm exhausted it's easier to do toasted ham and cheese sandwiches, canned veggies, and homemade fries than it is to do chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, and fresh cooked veggies.

I would love to have some support on this challenge and I know there are a couple of people who are struggling with not eating out right now, so come and join me and we'll cheer each other along.

I emptied my purse and DH's wallet of ones and change today and added $17.59 to the coin jar.

I updated my July budget spreadsheet and created my August spreadsheet. I entered in all of the medical spending for the month so far into the HSA tracking spreadsheet. Ouch.

I have a deposit of $48 ready to go into the Freezer Fund tomorrow from my coin jar savings. The Freezer Fund is currently at $409.68 so that will bring it to $457.68.

I did not make jam. It was too hot, even in the morning. I will see about making it tomorrow. I bought a food mill for $70. It has three different plates and is a high rated one. I think one and a half batches of jam will cover that. I am looking forward to not having to peel apricots. And having the seeds out of the blackberries or raspberries.

My English cucumbers finally have blossoms on them and my brandywine tomatoes are starting to turn a very pale shade of yellowy/orange.

So after our lovely day off yesterday, and it really was great despite the traffic mess, today it was back to routine after a good sleep in.

Today I baked bread:



These are by far my best loaves since I started baking bread again. A lot of the time they do not end up so nicely rounded on top, but I've been letting them do their second rise a bit longer and it seems to be helping with that. No more fallen (but still tasty) loaves.

My pepper plants are doing amazing. It's July and look at the size of this one already:



There are six fruits on this plant of decent size, though this is the biggest and there are tons more blossoms. I have never successfully grown bell peppers so I am thrilled at how well they are doing. It helps that most of the month has been pretty hot with only a few days of cooler temps.

I picked green beans today. I filled half a quart baggy. I don't think I will get much more off these plants, maybe the same again. They didn't get into the ground soon enough and sadly have stopped blossoming. But I've got more beans coming in a different area of the garden so that is okay. And at least the other bean plants are fixing nitrogen into the soil.

I filled a gallon size baggy with lettuce leaves and picked another pint of blackberries and two pints of blueberries. I need to pick raspberries badly. I think there is at least a gallon of berries in need of picking. I hope to get to them tomorrow. Of course I need to pick more blueberries, too, but there is only so much time in a day and I had a lot of laundry to do today and had an appointment that took me two hours, so didn't spend too much time outside.

The squash plants are coming along well, except for one, which I may need to move. The tomatoes are looking very nice and hopefully the weather will continue and I will get the harvest I am hoping for later this summer. Broccoli and cauliflower are coming along nicely and there is some gorgeous kohlrabi that might be ready in about a week. Looking forward to that a lot.

Tomorrow I am planning on making jam. I am making apricot jam, blackberry jam, and blueberry jam. I just hope it isn't too hot in the morning to do it. I won't do it during the heat of the day and if tomorrow is anything like tonight, doing it in the evening isn't an option either. We need to keep the house as cool as possible without air conditioning.

We went to the Pacific Science Center to see the King Tut exhibit yesterday. It was fantastic and we had a great time...until we tried to leave. Seattle traffic was nasty on the way out. I was not pleased that Obama was in Bellevue. It screwed up being able to get back out of the city. I have never seen Seattle traffic this snarled before. It took 25 minutes to go .4 of a mile! And then another 15 minutes to go 3 blocks. And with all the one way streets, you can't get there from here, even with GPS.

I thought we'd never get out. Since we had bought our tickets well in advance of Obama scheduling his trip here, all it did was make me cranky. And I would have been just as cranky if it had been Romney screwing with traffic. I am an equal opportunity grump.

Also what is up with all those dedicated bus lanes? Can't they be dedicated bus lanes and carpool lanes? We had 5 people in the car. That's practically a bus! LOL No, I know, public transportation is big in Seattle and the buses need to stay as on time as possible. But...it's not like half the city stays out of them, anyway. They would go in them illegally and then try to shove into the lane that it was legal for cars to be in. Made me even more grumpy, because we were driving properly and they were cheating and people were letting them in anyway. When it takes six light changes to get across an intersection because only one car at a time can make it because of all the irresponsible scofflaws, it irritates me. DH even honked his horn once. DH never honks his horn.

And don't get me started on the crazy, jay-walking pedestrians who were trying to commit suicide by car. Or the motorcyclists who think they belong in the bicycle lanes. I may never complain about the crazy drivers, cyclists, pedestrians, and bikers in my city again. I think next time we may just take the train. Save ourselves a lot of annoyance and not have to deal with the crazy people.

We ended up spending $200 of our vacation money, well within the allotted amount for the day. I even came home with some money. It goes back in the vacation fund so we will have it for our trip to the Point Defiance Zoo in Tacoma next month. Hopefully there will be no political visitors at that time! Because if there is one thing that gets to me more than Seattle traffic, it is Tacoma traffic!

I know some of you on here homeschool. Does anyone know of a good 7nth grade pre-algebra math program other than Saxon? I like Saxon to a certain extent, but it is very repetitive and my son kind of balks at that. Preferrably one that does not cost an arm and a leg.

Also a grammar and writing program? I would like something that is very engaging. I've pretty much found what I will use for all the other subjects, but I'm waffling with whether or not I want to go with the Saxon program there. Again, if it's not too pricy that would be good. I have found a good free spelling program I am going to go with and it will double as vocabulary.

I'd prefer them to be secular or if they are religious based programs to be non-preachy and non-denominational. I don't want to have to pay extra attention to the curriculum to keep out things that don't quite match up with our religious beliefs.

I have found the history and science programs we are going to use so now it's just a matter of nailing down the other two.

So here's my meal plan for the week. Tuesday will be in Seattle. We are taking lunch in a cooler, but will have dinner out at the center house. Or whatever they are calling it nowadays. The money comes out of our saved vacation fund money.

Monday--
Fried chicken
Coleslaw
Corn on the cob
Nectarines

Tuesday--
Meal out (probably some kind of Asian stir-fry for me so I can be sure of veggies and who knows what for everyone else)

Wednesday--
Pork chops
Steamed new potatoes
Yellow summer squash/broccoli/cauliflower medley
Black cherries

Thursday--
Spaghetti
Meatballs (new recipe with ground pork and ground beef)
Fresh blueberries, blackberries and raspberries from the garden
Leftover cole slaw

Friday--
Homemade pizza topped with sausage (from the food co-op), bacon (from the farm), uncured pepperoni, onions, and green peppers
Salad from the garden

Saturday--
Bacon cheeseburgers
Homemade french fries
Leftover yellow summer squash/broccoli/cauliflower
Fresh berries from the garden and/or leftover cherries

Sunday--
Beef pot roast
Mashed potatoes and gravy
Green beans
Drop biscuits with homemade jam