It's amazing how things seem to sort themselves out. I really need to learn to relax a bit more. This whole faith and testing thing is a real challenge for me.
The short version is that the worries I had in my last post seem to have sorted themselves out, somewhat.
Hubby received a FREE iPod Touch from one of his suppliers, because a customer had returned it, complaining because it had a scratch on it. A scratch people. We looked, and looked....and saw a minute little one on the back that we had to SEARCH for. Anyway.
Hubby goes off to work a couple of days ago. One of his clients says, totally out of the blue, not knowing that hubby even owns one, that his son is looking for an iPod Touch, but hasn't managed to save up enough to buy new, and if Hubby knew of anyone wanting to sell theirs, his son would like to buy it.
Hubby sold his iPod Touch today. He hadn't really been impressed with it in the week or so that he owned it anyway. And so we got $200.
Oh yes, and the work van's troubles magically disappeared. So now we have $200 in a fund, put away for a later date when we have a bit more to add to it, so if the trouble resurfaces, we can get it fixed.
And I rummaged around the living room and dug up a few small things to sell and posted them for sale on a group on my computer. Not even 5 minutes after I posted one thing, someone already responded that they want to buy it. So it looks like there will at least be a few things I can sell around the house that will bring in bits and pieces to add to our Emergency fund and all.My problem is that I form an emotional attachment to pretty much everything. But give me time, and I'll have sold so much stuff that the kids will be afraid they are next. (That's a joke)
Oh, and hubby will be heading out of town for another big job, so that will add to the fund, too. A little bit, anyway.
So there you have it. The plan is working, God is honouring our efforts, and things just keep trucking along. :)
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Testing...
Lately, I wrote a post in regards to tithing and trust. At the time, things seemed to have a definite answer, a "yes, this is the right thing" feeling, as things seemed to suddenly click into place financially, things suddenly were looking up...
And then the true testing came. And still is here, with teeth. I wish I could see into the future, and into the "why's" of it all. It hit so hard this morning that I hit my knees at the edge of my bed, ground my face into the covers, and cried, and prayed. I don't do so well with testing. I fail miserably when it comes to hard times. Anybody who has known me for any length of time knows that.
I wrote the blog about my van and its flat-tire-turned-nightmare-of-broken-brake-parts and such. And I wrote that it was all working out fine and dandy, it was a big ouch, but hey, everything is A-OKAY.
Nope.
Hubby called this morning to say that his work van is making funny noises and the steering wheel shakes as he drives. Now I know next to nothing about cars, but I DO know that is bad. Very, very bad. And we don't have the money to fix it. At all. And with the two kids and the nature of his job and the schedule he and I and the kids hold, one car just isn't going to do it. But we can't afford to fix whatever horrible thing is wrong with his van. Which means we will HAVE to be down to one van until we can afford to fix the work van. Which means we will be at each other's throats because we are going to both need the van at the same times and it's just going to be miserable because life never works on our schedule we're going to need the other to have the van home at certain times and it's just not going to happen. Oh yes, and now he will be out of town for a day and a half in a few days, leaving me with NO car and two kids...
It's a little stressful.
I know it's a test. I know God is testing to see how seriously we mean to stick to the whole tithing and trusting thing. And I DON'T LIKE IT!!!!!! It would be so easy to just use the tithe, fix the van, and move on. But we won't. We can't. We shouldn't.
I just wish it didn't feel so much like we were being kicked down, and the second we started to get up, repeatedly getting kicked in the head. It really does feel like that. We just start seeing the sunshine and get booted in the gut. Again.
I know hubby won't admit to it, but we are in trouble. We really are. Last month, we pared things down to the minimum. this next month, we've had to pare the minimum down even more...we don't have anything going aside for the kids' summer activities, no summer vacation, no clothes. Nothing. Our menu for the month is going to leave our cupboards looking pretty bare by the end of the month, and they'd better like toast and pancakes this month. And now the van.
Would you believe that as I knelt there this morning, the thought actually went through my mind about how much we could get if we SOLD the bed? I think it is coming to that...hopefully there are people out there who will be willing to buy everything I can get my hands on in the house that we could sell. I suppose it's ONE way to keep the house clean...sell all the contents. Ha ha.
Here's hoping we make it through this testing and reach the other side of this dark tunnel soon. I'll keep you posted. Wish me luck and send lots of prayers.
And then the true testing came. And still is here, with teeth. I wish I could see into the future, and into the "why's" of it all. It hit so hard this morning that I hit my knees at the edge of my bed, ground my face into the covers, and cried, and prayed. I don't do so well with testing. I fail miserably when it comes to hard times. Anybody who has known me for any length of time knows that.
I wrote the blog about my van and its flat-tire-turned-nightmare-of-broken-brake-parts and such. And I wrote that it was all working out fine and dandy, it was a big ouch, but hey, everything is A-OKAY.
Nope.
Hubby called this morning to say that his work van is making funny noises and the steering wheel shakes as he drives. Now I know next to nothing about cars, but I DO know that is bad. Very, very bad. And we don't have the money to fix it. At all. And with the two kids and the nature of his job and the schedule he and I and the kids hold, one car just isn't going to do it. But we can't afford to fix whatever horrible thing is wrong with his van. Which means we will HAVE to be down to one van until we can afford to fix the work van. Which means we will be at each other's throats because we are going to both need the van at the same times and it's just going to be miserable because life never works on our schedule we're going to need the other to have the van home at certain times and it's just not going to happen. Oh yes, and now he will be out of town for a day and a half in a few days, leaving me with NO car and two kids...
It's a little stressful.
I know it's a test. I know God is testing to see how seriously we mean to stick to the whole tithing and trusting thing. And I DON'T LIKE IT!!!!!! It would be so easy to just use the tithe, fix the van, and move on. But we won't. We can't. We shouldn't.
I just wish it didn't feel so much like we were being kicked down, and the second we started to get up, repeatedly getting kicked in the head. It really does feel like that. We just start seeing the sunshine and get booted in the gut. Again.
I know hubby won't admit to it, but we are in trouble. We really are. Last month, we pared things down to the minimum. this next month, we've had to pare the minimum down even more...we don't have anything going aside for the kids' summer activities, no summer vacation, no clothes. Nothing. Our menu for the month is going to leave our cupboards looking pretty bare by the end of the month, and they'd better like toast and pancakes this month. And now the van.
Would you believe that as I knelt there this morning, the thought actually went through my mind about how much we could get if we SOLD the bed? I think it is coming to that...hopefully there are people out there who will be willing to buy everything I can get my hands on in the house that we could sell. I suppose it's ONE way to keep the house clean...sell all the contents. Ha ha.
Here's hoping we make it through this testing and reach the other side of this dark tunnel soon. I'll keep you posted. Wish me luck and send lots of prayers.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
You say po-tay-to, I say po-tah-to
Okay. Another round of potato recipes.
My favourite thing to do is to make stuffed potatoes. Cheap, easy, and filling.
Take the size of potato you figure you will be wanting to eat as a meal. You aren't going to want a small one this time, because you need to be able to cut the top off and get the insides out.
So...pick your potato, poke it a couple times with a fork. Put it in the oven at 400F (yes, you heard me right) for between 1 and 2 hours, depending on how crispy of a skin you like. Take it out and (wearing your oven mitts), slice off a thin slice from the top. Scoop the insides into a bowl, and then do one of two things:
If you are picky about the beauty of your meal, mix the scooped out potato with a bit of margarine, spoon it back in, and add toppings.
If you are not picky, mix the potato with margarine and all the fixings you plan to use, then spoon it back in.
I will give you my favourite stuffed potato recipe, but you can create your own. I have a cookbook called Stuffed Spuds in my cupboard...I recommend looking it up if you want more exotic versions than what I make. I will type up a few of the more fun ones another day, ones kids would like.
But as I was saying, my favourite stuffed potato...taco stuffed potatoes.
You need: salsa, sour cream, taco beef, cheese (lettuce and tomato if you want).
As I said before, once you have the scooped up potato mixed with margarine, you can either pile all the above on top,and enjoy, or if you are like me, mix the potato with the salsa,sour cream, taco beef, and cheese, and then put it back in the shell, and top with diced fresh tomato (or I suppose you could even mix that in), and if desired, lettuce.
One I tried recently was a stuffed potato that was essentially scalloped potato with cheese. Cook the potato, scoop it out, mix it with sauteed onions, garlic, and margarine, put it back in, sprinkle (or bury) with cheese, put it back in the oven until the cheese looks as brown as you like it. Enjoy. Or I suppose even mix the cheese in with the potato and then put back in the oven for 15- 20 minutes.
Just a side note: My potatoes are almost gone already! I will have to order more this week. A good sign is that when I mentioned this to my family, they did NOT groan and beg me to stop with the potatoes. They seem to be enjoying this as much as I am.
My favourite thing to do is to make stuffed potatoes. Cheap, easy, and filling.
Take the size of potato you figure you will be wanting to eat as a meal. You aren't going to want a small one this time, because you need to be able to cut the top off and get the insides out.
So...pick your potato, poke it a couple times with a fork. Put it in the oven at 400F (yes, you heard me right) for between 1 and 2 hours, depending on how crispy of a skin you like. Take it out and (wearing your oven mitts), slice off a thin slice from the top. Scoop the insides into a bowl, and then do one of two things:
If you are picky about the beauty of your meal, mix the scooped out potato with a bit of margarine, spoon it back in, and add toppings.
If you are not picky, mix the potato with margarine and all the fixings you plan to use, then spoon it back in.
I will give you my favourite stuffed potato recipe, but you can create your own. I have a cookbook called Stuffed Spuds in my cupboard...I recommend looking it up if you want more exotic versions than what I make. I will type up a few of the more fun ones another day, ones kids would like.
But as I was saying, my favourite stuffed potato...taco stuffed potatoes.
You need: salsa, sour cream, taco beef, cheese (lettuce and tomato if you want).
As I said before, once you have the scooped up potato mixed with margarine, you can either pile all the above on top,and enjoy, or if you are like me, mix the potato with the salsa,sour cream, taco beef, and cheese, and then put it back in the shell, and top with diced fresh tomato (or I suppose you could even mix that in), and if desired, lettuce.
One I tried recently was a stuffed potato that was essentially scalloped potato with cheese. Cook the potato, scoop it out, mix it with sauteed onions, garlic, and margarine, put it back in, sprinkle (or bury) with cheese, put it back in the oven until the cheese looks as brown as you like it. Enjoy. Or I suppose even mix the cheese in with the potato and then put back in the oven for 15- 20 minutes.
Just a side note: My potatoes are almost gone already! I will have to order more this week. A good sign is that when I mentioned this to my family, they did NOT groan and beg me to stop with the potatoes. They seem to be enjoying this as much as I am.
Friday, March 20, 2009
Budget stretcher
I guess my blog is going to be a bit about recipes for awhile. That's okay. :) I love to cook. :)
I just had to take a break from the potato thought, and have something different for you today...
Yesterday I made soup. I made a whole STOCK POT of soup. It was a lot of fun. Actually, it took me two days. Wednesday, I rummaged through my freezer for the big Ziplocs full of bones. This soup very definitely was a kitchen sink variety. Into the stock pot went a ham bone, some T-bones, and a turkey carcass. I covered it all with water, nearly to the top of the pot (not too high or it will boil over), and boiled the living daylights out of them, for a couple of hours. Then I turned off the heat, let it sit for a little bit until it wasn't going to burn a hole in everything it touched, put a piece of foam (thick padding) in the deep freeze, and put the pot on top (so it wouldn't thaw things underneath), and left it in there overnight. Yesterday morning, I took it out, scooped out the frozen fat, brought the remainder to a boil (yes there was some fat left in it), and added spices, 3 onions, some leftover green onions, garlic, 6 carrots, a big sweet potato, a medium turnip (rutabaga?), and 8 breakfast sausages, cooked and chopped up. We had some for supper last night, and it was AMAZING...and if you think about it, really, really cheap...
The bones were free because they would have been garbage otherwise, the spices were maybe $0.10 worth, if that, onions...say $0.50, based on what a small net of them costs, green onions...$0.25, garlic...$0.10, carrots...$1.00, Sweet potato...$2.50, turnip..$2.25, sausages...$1.50.
I may be off a little on these, but not by much, so....for $8.20, I made about 9 meals worth..as in 36 servings. Not bad! About $0.91 a meal. About $0.23/person per meal.
Okay, here's my potato plug....if you need a soup to be even more filling and hearty, add potato and MASH it, or add mashed potatoes! It will thicken your soup and fill you up and make you all nice and warm inside, and happily thinking of all the money you've saved...make your own bread and serve that, and for the whopping total of MAYBE $0.30/person, you've made a filling meal! Need dessert? Apple crisp! That should cost about $2.50 to make. A drink, you say? Make your own hot cocoa...$2.00 for 4 servings. Okay, so now you have soup, bread, hot cocoa, and apple crisp. You have fed a family of 4 for $5.70. You can't even get a meal for ONE for that price at a restaurant!
Now do you know why I don't eat at restaurants much anymore? Seriously. Over the past two months, we have taken our favourite dishes from restaurants, and figured out how to make them at home. I'll give you some examples:
Red Lobster shrimp linguini...made it for about $10, or $2.50/person
The Keg T-bone steak,mushrooms,loaded baked potatoes-made it for about $25, or $6.25/ea
Chilis Nachos Grande...made it for about $12, or $4 each
Lee's :Pork and broccoli,fried rice, and chow mein for about $10 or $2.50/person
Tony Roma's Ribs: made that for about $20, or $5 each
Amazing, isn't it???? You just don't realize how much you spend in a restaurant, over and above what it would cost to make it at home!
Traveling?
I will be away next month for 4 days, and was told that restaurant food was very expensive where I am going? So? I am staying in a hotel with no promise of a fridge. So?
I am taking a cooler. I have planned out what I will eat (while away, I will have 3 breakfasts, 4 morning snacks, 4 lunches, 3 afternoon snacks, and 3 suppers), and you know what? Based on taking a cooler, which I can refill with ice from the hotel ice machines anytime I need to, I can eat VERY well....and it's going to cost me about $60 to do it. That's total...as in $15 a DAY....and I'll likely have leftovers.
So there you go. If you are driving, this works really well, because if you get hungry, you just stop and pull something out of the cooler or bag of dry stuff. If you are flying, see if you can get one of those styrofoam ones at your destination, maybe, and go to a grocery store THERE. It's amazing how easy it is to cut corners, when you need to and want to.
I also like to can things...so far, just jams, jellies, juices, pickles, and fruit....but that's another day's story. :)
I just had to take a break from the potato thought, and have something different for you today...
Yesterday I made soup. I made a whole STOCK POT of soup. It was a lot of fun. Actually, it took me two days. Wednesday, I rummaged through my freezer for the big Ziplocs full of bones. This soup very definitely was a kitchen sink variety. Into the stock pot went a ham bone, some T-bones, and a turkey carcass. I covered it all with water, nearly to the top of the pot (not too high or it will boil over), and boiled the living daylights out of them, for a couple of hours. Then I turned off the heat, let it sit for a little bit until it wasn't going to burn a hole in everything it touched, put a piece of foam (thick padding) in the deep freeze, and put the pot on top (so it wouldn't thaw things underneath), and left it in there overnight. Yesterday morning, I took it out, scooped out the frozen fat, brought the remainder to a boil (yes there was some fat left in it), and added spices, 3 onions, some leftover green onions, garlic, 6 carrots, a big sweet potato, a medium turnip (rutabaga?), and 8 breakfast sausages, cooked and chopped up. We had some for supper last night, and it was AMAZING...and if you think about it, really, really cheap...
The bones were free because they would have been garbage otherwise, the spices were maybe $0.10 worth, if that, onions...say $0.50, based on what a small net of them costs, green onions...$0.25, garlic...$0.10, carrots...$1.00, Sweet potato...$2.50, turnip..$2.25, sausages...$1.50.
I may be off a little on these, but not by much, so....for $8.20, I made about 9 meals worth..as in 36 servings. Not bad! About $0.91 a meal. About $0.23/person per meal.
Okay, here's my potato plug....if you need a soup to be even more filling and hearty, add potato and MASH it, or add mashed potatoes! It will thicken your soup and fill you up and make you all nice and warm inside, and happily thinking of all the money you've saved...make your own bread and serve that, and for the whopping total of MAYBE $0.30/person, you've made a filling meal! Need dessert? Apple crisp! That should cost about $2.50 to make. A drink, you say? Make your own hot cocoa...$2.00 for 4 servings. Okay, so now you have soup, bread, hot cocoa, and apple crisp. You have fed a family of 4 for $5.70. You can't even get a meal for ONE for that price at a restaurant!
Now do you know why I don't eat at restaurants much anymore? Seriously. Over the past two months, we have taken our favourite dishes from restaurants, and figured out how to make them at home. I'll give you some examples:
Red Lobster shrimp linguini...made it for about $10, or $2.50/person
The Keg T-bone steak,mushrooms,loaded baked potatoes-made it for about $25, or $6.25/ea
Chilis Nachos Grande...made it for about $12, or $4 each
Lee's :Pork and broccoli,fried rice, and chow mein for about $10 or $2.50/person
Tony Roma's Ribs: made that for about $20, or $5 each
Amazing, isn't it???? You just don't realize how much you spend in a restaurant, over and above what it would cost to make it at home!
Traveling?
I will be away next month for 4 days, and was told that restaurant food was very expensive where I am going? So? I am staying in a hotel with no promise of a fridge. So?
I am taking a cooler. I have planned out what I will eat (while away, I will have 3 breakfasts, 4 morning snacks, 4 lunches, 3 afternoon snacks, and 3 suppers), and you know what? Based on taking a cooler, which I can refill with ice from the hotel ice machines anytime I need to, I can eat VERY well....and it's going to cost me about $60 to do it. That's total...as in $15 a DAY....and I'll likely have leftovers.
So there you go. If you are driving, this works really well, because if you get hungry, you just stop and pull something out of the cooler or bag of dry stuff. If you are flying, see if you can get one of those styrofoam ones at your destination, maybe, and go to a grocery store THERE. It's amazing how easy it is to cut corners, when you need to and want to.
I also like to can things...so far, just jams, jellies, juices, pickles, and fruit....but that's another day's story. :)
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Potato Recipe Time
Somebody requested that I post a few potato recipes...
I'll start with one or two, as I don't have my handy dandy recipe book in front of me.
The neatest thing I've found lately (in terms of recipes) is a lady called Clara. You can find her on YouTube. She has a few clips (she is 94 or something like that, by the way) in which she demonstrates how her mother used to cook when she (Clara) was a child, back in the Depression. Let me just say everything has to do with potato and onion, for the most part. :)
The first recipe we tried of hers was called Poor Man's Dinner. Take as much potato as you think your family will eat (it's surprising how little it takes, actually). Peel and cut into small cubes. Heat a pan with a bit of oil in it. Toss in the potato, do the same with an onion. Fry them up. Cut up some hot dogs, stir it in until things are nice and golden and hot. Add salt to taste. Enjoy. I put ketchup on mine. Like hash browns with meat, I guess.
My 75 pound bag of potatoes is RED potatoes, very juicy, too, so I'm not entirely sure how recipes work/taste with other types of potato. Keep that in mind.
Fries. If you have a deep fryer, fries are always good. Take your potato and cut it into strips. Keep the peel on, or not. I don't peel mine. Take a bowl of water and stir in a bit of sugar. Put cut potatoes in the bowl and swish them around, or leave them in there while the deep fryer is heating. Put them in the basket, but don't pile them too high. Lower the basket and cook 10 minutes. At the end, you will have the most delicious fries EVER.
Potato slices. Made this one up a log time ago. Nothing fancy in this one. Works best if you have a baking stone, but if you are willing to hover, a baking sheet works, too. Slice your potato into thin slices (not TOO thin, but not thick). Arrange on the stone, sprinkle with whatever seasonings you like best. Bake at 350F for about 20 minutes. If on a baking sheet, turn about halfway through so you don't burn one side black. :) Good for dipping.
I will bring more recipes later, heartier, more complicated ones. I promise. :)
Enjoy these if you wish.
I'll start with one or two, as I don't have my handy dandy recipe book in front of me.
The neatest thing I've found lately (in terms of recipes) is a lady called Clara. You can find her on YouTube. She has a few clips (she is 94 or something like that, by the way) in which she demonstrates how her mother used to cook when she (Clara) was a child, back in the Depression. Let me just say everything has to do with potato and onion, for the most part. :)
The first recipe we tried of hers was called Poor Man's Dinner. Take as much potato as you think your family will eat (it's surprising how little it takes, actually). Peel and cut into small cubes. Heat a pan with a bit of oil in it. Toss in the potato, do the same with an onion. Fry them up. Cut up some hot dogs, stir it in until things are nice and golden and hot. Add salt to taste. Enjoy. I put ketchup on mine. Like hash browns with meat, I guess.
My 75 pound bag of potatoes is RED potatoes, very juicy, too, so I'm not entirely sure how recipes work/taste with other types of potato. Keep that in mind.
Fries. If you have a deep fryer, fries are always good. Take your potato and cut it into strips. Keep the peel on, or not. I don't peel mine. Take a bowl of water and stir in a bit of sugar. Put cut potatoes in the bowl and swish them around, or leave them in there while the deep fryer is heating. Put them in the basket, but don't pile them too high. Lower the basket and cook 10 minutes. At the end, you will have the most delicious fries EVER.
Potato slices. Made this one up a log time ago. Nothing fancy in this one. Works best if you have a baking stone, but if you are willing to hover, a baking sheet works, too. Slice your potato into thin slices (not TOO thin, but not thick). Arrange on the stone, sprinkle with whatever seasonings you like best. Bake at 350F for about 20 minutes. If on a baking sheet, turn about halfway through so you don't burn one side black. :) Good for dipping.
I will bring more recipes later, heartier, more complicated ones. I promise. :)
Enjoy these if you wish.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Ode to Daughter
LOL...I intended, when I signed in last, to post something, and totally got off course and into the money post. :)
Daughter has a skill. I can totally see her using this as a career someday....if she wants to, that is. She loves doing this, and her teacher has even said we should sign her up for classes. Which, in regards to the last post, we simply do not have the money to do right now.
But someday we will, because I think she has real talent, and I'll show you why I say this...she did this in about 15 minutes, while at her brother's soccer game on the weekend:
She is just recently turned 8, by the way.
Proud Mommy moment. :)
Daughter has a skill. I can totally see her using this as a career someday....if she wants to, that is. She loves doing this, and her teacher has even said we should sign her up for classes. Which, in regards to the last post, we simply do not have the money to do right now.
But someday we will, because I think she has real talent, and I'll show you why I say this...she did this in about 15 minutes, while at her brother's soccer game on the weekend:
She is just recently turned 8, by the way.
Proud Mommy moment. :)
Money, Money, Money....must be funny
Yeah. I'd like some. :)
Remember that last post, where we had our budget down to a fine science? Well, life happens. With teeth. It does have a semi-happy ending, I suppose, but I have to admit that I will be very happy in a few years, when I am back at work, the house stays clean, the kids are both off at school, and hubby is making multi-millions. Ha ha ha. Okay, I'll settle for us being back on two steady-ish incomes without the need for child care.
In any case...
On Friday I ended up with a major flat tire, as in, the kind where the car goes bumpitybumpitybumpity, you pull over to look at the flat tire, and find it halfway off the rim flat. And my tire iron would not work to remove the partially stripped lugnuts. So I had to walk home, get Hubby's, walk back, and use his to get it off and then get the spare on. Saturday, we got an appointment for new tires. An ouch, but do-able, as we had just built up a $1000 emergency fund, and the tires were going to be about $600. No big problem, we'd just have to rebuild the emergency fund. Right?
No.
They get the van up on the hoists, saying it'll be done in about an hour. Call us about 30 minutes later. Brake drum is shot, brake fluid all over EVERYTHING, not safe, spare is worn down to the core. Okay. Has to be done. Fine. We'll figure something out. While trying to replace the drum, the brake line snaps. Woo-hoo.
So over $1300 later I have my van back. Bye bye emergency fund hellooooo paycheck advance.
This sounds like a bad ending, but it isn't...we had the emergency fund, which is more than we would have been able to say in the recent past, and we will rebuild it, it will just take time...and in our budget, we CAN reduce our payments on a few things to recoup that extra money we technically didn't have. And as we keep on watching our pennies and sticking to our budget as closely as we can, slowly we will get things paid off. Most things will be paid off in about 2 years. The mortgage should be paid off in about 8 years. And then we will be totally, utterly, absolutely debt free. How's that for a concept? I like it.
As Dave Ramsey says (one of my Hubby's favourite authors/radio guys right now) "Right now we will live like nobody else so that someday we can live like nobody else". Get it? :)
And you know what one of the best things about our plan has been? NOTHING has been added to the debt. We paid cash from our income tax return for the new fridge when the old one died, cash for the broken furnace repair, cash for the furnace and vent cleaners, cash for the car repairs (or debit or cheque, but the cash was there, no floating cheques or credit cards or whatever). Nice. As in no interest fees, no waiting for things to appear on a bill.
And I rock with cooking cheaply. 75 pound bag of potatoes from a local farmer =$15
Do you have any IDEA how many potatoes that is, and how many fabulously delicious, filling, satisfying dishes can be made with 75 POUNDS of potatoes? :) Add that to 20kg of flour, farm fresh eggs, and discount meat, you can feed a family for next to nothing. :) Ask me for ideas if you need some...I'm having fun. :)
Remember that last post, where we had our budget down to a fine science? Well, life happens. With teeth. It does have a semi-happy ending, I suppose, but I have to admit that I will be very happy in a few years, when I am back at work, the house stays clean, the kids are both off at school, and hubby is making multi-millions. Ha ha ha. Okay, I'll settle for us being back on two steady-ish incomes without the need for child care.
In any case...
On Friday I ended up with a major flat tire, as in, the kind where the car goes bumpitybumpitybumpity, you pull over to look at the flat tire, and find it halfway off the rim flat. And my tire iron would not work to remove the partially stripped lugnuts. So I had to walk home, get Hubby's, walk back, and use his to get it off and then get the spare on. Saturday, we got an appointment for new tires. An ouch, but do-able, as we had just built up a $1000 emergency fund, and the tires were going to be about $600. No big problem, we'd just have to rebuild the emergency fund. Right?
No.
They get the van up on the hoists, saying it'll be done in about an hour. Call us about 30 minutes later. Brake drum is shot, brake fluid all over EVERYTHING, not safe, spare is worn down to the core. Okay. Has to be done. Fine. We'll figure something out. While trying to replace the drum, the brake line snaps. Woo-hoo.
So over $1300 later I have my van back. Bye bye emergency fund hellooooo paycheck advance.
This sounds like a bad ending, but it isn't...we had the emergency fund, which is more than we would have been able to say in the recent past, and we will rebuild it, it will just take time...and in our budget, we CAN reduce our payments on a few things to recoup that extra money we technically didn't have. And as we keep on watching our pennies and sticking to our budget as closely as we can, slowly we will get things paid off. Most things will be paid off in about 2 years. The mortgage should be paid off in about 8 years. And then we will be totally, utterly, absolutely debt free. How's that for a concept? I like it.
As Dave Ramsey says (one of my Hubby's favourite authors/radio guys right now) "Right now we will live like nobody else so that someday we can live like nobody else". Get it? :)
And you know what one of the best things about our plan has been? NOTHING has been added to the debt. We paid cash from our income tax return for the new fridge when the old one died, cash for the broken furnace repair, cash for the furnace and vent cleaners, cash for the car repairs (or debit or cheque, but the cash was there, no floating cheques or credit cards or whatever). Nice. As in no interest fees, no waiting for things to appear on a bill.
And I rock with cooking cheaply. 75 pound bag of potatoes from a local farmer =$15
Do you have any IDEA how many potatoes that is, and how many fabulously delicious, filling, satisfying dishes can be made with 75 POUNDS of potatoes? :) Add that to 20kg of flour, farm fresh eggs, and discount meat, you can feed a family for next to nothing. :) Ask me for ideas if you need some...I'm having fun. :)
Friday, February 27, 2009
Budgets and all that fun stuff
Recently, Hubby and I sat down to figure out our budget. We have been tweaking this sucker every month for the last little while, in the effort to get it to fit our means, our needs, and possibly some desires, too. Lots of fun when you have money, not so much when it's a tight month.
It's amazing how much a little error can cause the blocks of your budget to come tumbling down around your ears. That is the time when a sense of humour, a huge sense of humility, and some creative thinking come into play. For example, our budget for next month. We, of course, base it on the money we have at hand, to determine what we can afford, assuming, of course, that the amount of income does not change a whole lot. Last night, we happily sat down and tweaked the budget so that we had everything the way we needed/wanted it to be, and based on what we THOUGHT we had made, we even had enough to reconnect our satellite. Let me just say I am thankful we have been without that for the past year, so the true withdrawal pangs are gone. And I am extremely thankful we had not yet told the kids about getting the satellite back.
Because, you see, we discovered this morning that we had miscalculated the income from delivering flyers by, oh, about $200. A month. The problem, with this, in case it's not obvious, is that we had accounted for every penny of this $200/month. Scramble, scramble, grumble, whimper, scribble, scribble. How on earth can we do what we said we would do when we are short by that amount every month?
I must admit, I lost my faith for a short time. I panicked. I griped and whined and wanted to cry. I got stressed and even had a few chest pains, at which point, of course, I took a bunch of deep breaths, tried to relax, and prayed a bit. And sat down with the budget to play with it.
The big thing that I felt was important was that, for once, we were going to start the habit of tithing. We had not been doing that, and both felt it was important. So when I was playing with it, I really didn't want to mess with that, despite the fact that reducing our giving would solve everything. I initially reduced it to 5%, but didn't feel right about that. So I fiddled, and I think I have come up with a budget that will still work, AND will allow us to truly tithe.
Oh, it won't be easy. It does involve a lot of careful thought with purchases and a bit of personal sacrifice. Definitely a leap of faith. It can be done, though it won't be "comfortable", and maybe, just maybe, we will be blessed in the end for tithing. I can hope, anyway. If we can make it to the end of the year and have "enough" to cover all the expenses we have, and to start the new year on a good foot, I think it will be worth it.
It's amazing how much a little error can cause the blocks of your budget to come tumbling down around your ears. That is the time when a sense of humour, a huge sense of humility, and some creative thinking come into play. For example, our budget for next month. We, of course, base it on the money we have at hand, to determine what we can afford, assuming, of course, that the amount of income does not change a whole lot. Last night, we happily sat down and tweaked the budget so that we had everything the way we needed/wanted it to be, and based on what we THOUGHT we had made, we even had enough to reconnect our satellite. Let me just say I am thankful we have been without that for the past year, so the true withdrawal pangs are gone. And I am extremely thankful we had not yet told the kids about getting the satellite back.
Because, you see, we discovered this morning that we had miscalculated the income from delivering flyers by, oh, about $200. A month. The problem, with this, in case it's not obvious, is that we had accounted for every penny of this $200/month. Scramble, scramble, grumble, whimper, scribble, scribble. How on earth can we do what we said we would do when we are short by that amount every month?
I must admit, I lost my faith for a short time. I panicked. I griped and whined and wanted to cry. I got stressed and even had a few chest pains, at which point, of course, I took a bunch of deep breaths, tried to relax, and prayed a bit. And sat down with the budget to play with it.
The big thing that I felt was important was that, for once, we were going to start the habit of tithing. We had not been doing that, and both felt it was important. So when I was playing with it, I really didn't want to mess with that, despite the fact that reducing our giving would solve everything. I initially reduced it to 5%, but didn't feel right about that. So I fiddled, and I think I have come up with a budget that will still work, AND will allow us to truly tithe.
Oh, it won't be easy. It does involve a lot of careful thought with purchases and a bit of personal sacrifice. Definitely a leap of faith. It can be done, though it won't be "comfortable", and maybe, just maybe, we will be blessed in the end for tithing. I can hope, anyway. If we can make it to the end of the year and have "enough" to cover all the expenses we have, and to start the new year on a good foot, I think it will be worth it.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Checking In
I know, I know, it's been pretty much a month since I last posted. This, according to a friend of mine, is bad blog etiquette, that to have a successful blog, you must write consistently and frequently. Boo. Life marches on, especially with two children, and blogs don't get written.
Son is talking really well, so that pretty much everyone can understand him. I find it harder to understand him sometimes, but I think that's because my Mommy brain is so used to translating his old, mumble-jumble nasal speech into English that now that he is speaking plain, clear English, my brain doesn't know how to process it anymore. If I really focus hard and listen properly, I can see what everyone else means. He DOES talk much, much clearer.
He is getting so tall. His Daddy accidentally put Daughter's sweat pants on Son this morning, and didn't even realize until I watched Son trotting around, clinging onto the legs for all he was worth so they would neither fall down nor drag too much. I think they were maybe 3 inches too long. Considering he is 3 1/2 years younger than his sister, this suggests he will be a tall one. :) No real surprise there, just didn't think he'd be getting such a head start on it just yet.
Daughter just had a birthday this past weekend. That was quite the experience. Three giggly, screamy, silly, computer savvy girls roaring around my house for 3 hours, eating burgers, nachos, chocolate cheesecake, drinking pop...signing up for ePets and that sort of thing. Teaching Hubby just how much he really did need to put on parental controls and keep an eye on them. Then one went home, the others put on their pj's and climbed into bed for a sleepover. An hour later, we were on the phone to have the girl's Dad come pick her up. Old enough to be too smart for her own good, but not yet old enough to survive a night without roaring homesickness.
I am now in the process of what FlyLady would call a Fling Boogie. This means that as I am cleaning the house, I am also trying to get rid of as much STUFF as possible. We agreed to pay the kids a dollar a pound for toys they decided to get rid of. Son made $4 as he was not too motivated, Daughter made $20. She plans to buy a Webkin with it. Not a bad tradeoff...a big box of toys goes out, one stuffed animal comes in.
I am just starting with mine, but I think once I have managed to scour the entire house and have either sold or given away boxes and boxes of STUFF, I will feel tons better, and definitely will have an easier time getting organized and keeping things clean. So goes the theory anyway.
Oh yes. I am back in the saddle, so to speak, in terms of Wii Fit. I also have the Jillian Michaels Ultimate Workout for Wii and am starting back on my program. I NEED to RUN....I can't explain it, it's just this URGE to JOG! So in the spirit of also getting back in shape and back into jogging without reinjuring myself, I am starting slow. Yesterday I jogged 20 minutes on Wii Fit. Today I will do 30 minutes of Jillian. Tomorrow back to Wii Fit and so on. For 4 weeks. Then I will up the times slightly, gradually getting myself up to a level when I will not only be in better shape in general, but might even be able to sign myself up for the Fun Run again this spring. Maybe the 5Km again, maybe the 10KM, we'll see how it looks closer to that time.
Son is talking really well, so that pretty much everyone can understand him. I find it harder to understand him sometimes, but I think that's because my Mommy brain is so used to translating his old, mumble-jumble nasal speech into English that now that he is speaking plain, clear English, my brain doesn't know how to process it anymore. If I really focus hard and listen properly, I can see what everyone else means. He DOES talk much, much clearer.
He is getting so tall. His Daddy accidentally put Daughter's sweat pants on Son this morning, and didn't even realize until I watched Son trotting around, clinging onto the legs for all he was worth so they would neither fall down nor drag too much. I think they were maybe 3 inches too long. Considering he is 3 1/2 years younger than his sister, this suggests he will be a tall one. :) No real surprise there, just didn't think he'd be getting such a head start on it just yet.
Daughter just had a birthday this past weekend. That was quite the experience. Three giggly, screamy, silly, computer savvy girls roaring around my house for 3 hours, eating burgers, nachos, chocolate cheesecake, drinking pop...signing up for ePets and that sort of thing. Teaching Hubby just how much he really did need to put on parental controls and keep an eye on them. Then one went home, the others put on their pj's and climbed into bed for a sleepover. An hour later, we were on the phone to have the girl's Dad come pick her up. Old enough to be too smart for her own good, but not yet old enough to survive a night without roaring homesickness.
I am now in the process of what FlyLady would call a Fling Boogie. This means that as I am cleaning the house, I am also trying to get rid of as much STUFF as possible. We agreed to pay the kids a dollar a pound for toys they decided to get rid of. Son made $4 as he was not too motivated, Daughter made $20. She plans to buy a Webkin with it. Not a bad tradeoff...a big box of toys goes out, one stuffed animal comes in.
I am just starting with mine, but I think once I have managed to scour the entire house and have either sold or given away boxes and boxes of STUFF, I will feel tons better, and definitely will have an easier time getting organized and keeping things clean. So goes the theory anyway.
Oh yes. I am back in the saddle, so to speak, in terms of Wii Fit. I also have the Jillian Michaels Ultimate Workout for Wii and am starting back on my program. I NEED to RUN....I can't explain it, it's just this URGE to JOG! So in the spirit of also getting back in shape and back into jogging without reinjuring myself, I am starting slow. Yesterday I jogged 20 minutes on Wii Fit. Today I will do 30 minutes of Jillian. Tomorrow back to Wii Fit and so on. For 4 weeks. Then I will up the times slightly, gradually getting myself up to a level when I will not only be in better shape in general, but might even be able to sign myself up for the Fun Run again this spring. Maybe the 5Km again, maybe the 10KM, we'll see how it looks closer to that time.
Thursday, January 1, 2009
Adventures in Motherhood
Since my last post, life as a Mommy has been....interesting, to say the least. I am happy to say that for the most part, I think things are going to settle down now in 2009. Happy New Year, by the way!
Daughter had the unfortunate luck to catch the chicken pox just 2 days before Christmas Break. That meant she had to miss a fun day with her class at an indoor amusement place, a reward they had won for selling a lot in a fundraiser, and the next day of school, which would have been her class Christmas party. She was understandably crushed when she was told she would have to miss these, plus the evening performance of her school Christmas pageant. Her disappointment was nothing compared to her discomfort over the next few days. She ended up with a bad case of them. We were dotting her with calamine lotion, and counting them as we went. The first day produced somewhere around 200. When she woke up the next morning, we counted 1015, and that was not including the ones all through her hair, inside her mouth, and in places nobody is supposed to look or touch but herself. We stopped counting after that because it would have been easier to just get a big paintbrush and paint her pink with the stuff, but I would venture a guess that she probably made it up to 1500 before she started to scab. Poor thing was wild with itchiness in every conceivable part of her body. She was spoiled rotten during that time when she was quarantined (about 4 days), and couldn't really enjoy it much. he took a lot of baths in an effort to do SOMETHING for her...baking soda baths, oatmeal baths, a combination of the two bath, an epsom salt bath. She looks much better now with just the occasional scab here and there.
This ties in with Son very tightly. Just a few weeks before that,I received a phone call saying he had a surgery date. I believe I wrote about that in a previous blog post. If not, the following pre-surgery interview phone call was quite funny....very definitely a form written for anybody and everybody, and it gave me quite a chuckle as the nurse on the phone rattled off the questions, without really thinking about their relevancy. Everything from "Is he potty trained" to "does he have any problems with drug abuse", "does he smoke", etc. Oh, yes, Ma'am, my 4 year old is a smokin', drinkin', ladies' man! :)
So anyway, his surgery date was a mere 13 days away when Daughter broke out in spots. He was whisked away in the dark, as soon as we saw the spots on Daughter, on a 2 hour car ride, to stay with his grandparents for 4 and a bit days, in the wild hope that he would not get the chicken pox, since that would take him off the surgery list and put him back on the waiting list for a year or more. We waited and watched with baited breath, hoping an praying that nary a spot would emerge.
We made it. On December 30, 2008, at 2PM, Son had surgery to repair a submucous cleft. The night before, I had rummaged through the internet, looking for any and all info on the procedure, recovery info, anything, and ended up in tears as I realized what my son was going to be going through. But I also knew it was necessary. I was brave for my little guy. He went bouncing into that hospital, all happy and proud of himself, announcing to everybody that he was having surgery today to fix his throat and that he was going to have a really sore throat after, but he was going to talk better. We had done what we could to explain it all to him so that he understood what was happening and what to expect....but there's only so much a 4 year old can grasp.
We had to be at the hospital at 11AM....3 hours before the actual surgery. That was one boring 3 hour wait. He was shown to a little room, changed into his hospital jammies, I was asked a few questions, and we waited....and waited...they did not provide him with toys or anything. Luckily I had brought a few for the overnight stay....unfortunately, the long wait meant he was done reading and playing with everything long before he even had the surgery, so needed new stuff for afterwards.
At about 4PM, the surgeon came out and told me the surgery had gone wonderfully, and told me what to expect and how to feed him and all that sort of stuff. And then walked off, leaving me wondering where I could find my son, and when I could see him. About 10 minutes later, I managed to catch a nurse who was able to direct me to the appropriate floor and room number, so I went there, and got settled...and waited....and waited. Husband, Daughter, and my In-Laws showed up at the room....still no Son. Finally somewhere around 5, I guess, he was rolled in, eyes wide with pain and druggedness. Poor guy had bloody drool leaking out of the corner of his mouth, the inside of which was so swollen his lips did not close. He had quite a miserable night, wavering from painful awakeness to drugged and snoring sleep. Poor guy had the nurses coming in every 20 minutes to check his vitals or give him more medicine, so it was a very disjointed night. We were reading Thomas the Tank Engine stories at midnight, and playing with cars in the middle of the night. At least the room was kind of a neat place to be...we had our own room with a sliding glass door. There was a sink, a closet for his clothes and my jacket and stuff, a big armchair that was once a recliner, but now did not recline, the hospital bed with buttons to electrically adjust him to a sitting or reclining position, a bathroom with a huge bathtub in it, and a really cool window platform...like a window seat, but big enough to sleep on...about the size of a double bed, but in the shape of the bay window. Very cool. Our longest stretch of disjointed sleep with him being relatively calm was in the middle of the night when he had been crying because he wanted me to sleep in his bed with him, and the nurses, bless them, shifted things around to move him out of the hospital bed and onto the window shelf so we could lie together under the blankets....no small feat with all his tubes from the IV and the splints on his arms to keep him from sticking his fingers in his mouth. The IV machine had to be plugged into the plug in the bathroom and wired over to the bed. That resulted in us not being able to fully close our bathroom door if anybody except him had to use it, but the nurses were discreet and there was the ever-present curtain by the bed that we just pulled closed when we went in there, both as a signal and as a deterrent to the roving eye of anybody passing by the room at those moments. (The wall facing the hallway, with the sliding door, was glass) He settled down a bit after they did that for him, and we had the fun of looking back at all the pigeons peeking back in at us at the window in the morning.
My heart broke a million times that night. Every time the nurses came in, they tried to get him to drink. They had those medicine syringes that only hold maybe a teaspoon of water at a time, and would put that in his mouth...most of the time he would only get a drop of it down, the rest of it spilling out of his mouth, and when he DID manage to swallow, it was with such a grimace of pain that it made you want to promise he'd never have to do it again. After they made him swallow twice in a row, he'd make a sound that was him TRYING to say "OWWWW". :( They kept telling him that the water would make him feel better. After about the tenth time, after they had left, he looked at me, started to cry, and said as best he could "the water ISN'T helping!". I wanted to just sweep him into my arms and rock him and make him feel better....but all I could do for him at that time was to stroke his hair and face. I felt so helpless.
The surgeon came in at about 7:30 in the morning to see how he was doing. Compared to the night, he was doing a bit better. The doctor asked if he wanted breakfast, to which Son promptly replied "Ice cream and Jello". And that is what he got. The surgeon had brought that one on himself....before the surgery, he came in to talk to us, and told Son that after his surgery that these were what he would be able to eat, meaning that he would be in no shape for, say, cheeseburgers. Here we discovered the true challenge of the day after the repair of a submucous cleft. Ice cream in a little cup and jello in a little bowl, most kids could polish those off in about 5 minutes. Combined. It took him about half an hour to get the little ice cream cup down (about 1/4 cup worth), even once it was ice cream soup. The jello he worked at for about an hour, and never did finish it. He ate about 1/3 cup of jello, I think. If that. The surgeon said if he could drink enough, he could go home later that day. The poor kid ended up with a tray that looked like a line of shots by lunchtime. He had been accumulating them, trying desperately to drink sips from one or the other. By about 1PM, he had a bowl of soup, a bowl of pudding, another cup of ice cream, a glass of chocolate milk, a glass of peach juice, a carton of orange juice, and a carton of white milk sitting in front of him, and a look of bewildered desperation on his face. He finally decided he'd rather not go home. LOL. I don't blame him. I guess he thought he'd have to swallow all of those, and then go home and sit in bed with nothing to do.
The nurse came in and asked him to point to the two he liked best. He pointed to the pudding and the ice cream. She told him if he could finish those, then he could go home. When I told him he could sit or lie on the couch and watch movies or play Wii, he decided that might be worth the effort. So at about 2PM, the ice cream and pudding were gone, he'd managed about 1/4 of the glass of chocolate milk, was freshly drugged and we changed him, packed him and his stuff, and brought him home.
I have to backtrack just for a minute. I must tell you that out children's ward nurses are wonderful. They spoiled him like crazy. When he was first wheeled in, he was given a Christmas bag of presents. That bag had 3 little teddy bears, a plush gopher with a toque and scarf, a Giant Tiger slinky, and a toy carpenter tool set. A little later, the night staff came in, and brought him a gorgeous toy car, about 20cm in length, probably a '70's model, which had doors that opened, a trunk that opened, and a hood that opened to reveal a detailed engine. For a guy who loves toy cars, this was a great surprise.
After filling his prescriptions (poor guy has 4 meds to take), we took him home and planted him on the couch where he watched a movie, ate jello, and fell fast asleep for a few hours. He woke up sad and sore. We managed to keep him relatively occupied to get his mind off the pain between drinks and medication, but he was still really sore. He got to bed around 10PM, and slept until 9:15 this morning. He was supposed to get some pain meds in the middle of the night, but there was no way we were going to wake him out of a deep sleep, back to the world of pain, just to give him that and to have him not be able to get back to sleep. We gave him a whistle to blow if he woke up in pain, and he blew that this morning, when I was just outside his room, so he got his meds right away, and seems to be doing okay, though he was sore and very sad until the pain meds kicked in. Now he's going to have baby food for breakfast. We were told he can move up to mashed potatoes in a week, if he's up to it, so in the meantime, I have an abundance of cream soups, pudding, ice cream, jello, and things like that....and a new blender to create more.
My parents talked to him on the phone last night and said that, even with the swelling and all, they can already hear a difference in his quality of speech. This is great....hopefully when the swelling goes down (we were told this could take 10 weeks), his speech will still be as good as what they hear. I can't tell the difference yet, being the Mommy, but I'm sure I'll be able to tell later whether what I hear is from the swelling or from the repair. And in 3 months, we go back to speech therapy....if he needs it. You never know. He may just do the speech adjustments on his own.
Daughter had the unfortunate luck to catch the chicken pox just 2 days before Christmas Break. That meant she had to miss a fun day with her class at an indoor amusement place, a reward they had won for selling a lot in a fundraiser, and the next day of school, which would have been her class Christmas party. She was understandably crushed when she was told she would have to miss these, plus the evening performance of her school Christmas pageant. Her disappointment was nothing compared to her discomfort over the next few days. She ended up with a bad case of them. We were dotting her with calamine lotion, and counting them as we went. The first day produced somewhere around 200. When she woke up the next morning, we counted 1015, and that was not including the ones all through her hair, inside her mouth, and in places nobody is supposed to look or touch but herself. We stopped counting after that because it would have been easier to just get a big paintbrush and paint her pink with the stuff, but I would venture a guess that she probably made it up to 1500 before she started to scab. Poor thing was wild with itchiness in every conceivable part of her body. She was spoiled rotten during that time when she was quarantined (about 4 days), and couldn't really enjoy it much. he took a lot of baths in an effort to do SOMETHING for her...baking soda baths, oatmeal baths, a combination of the two bath, an epsom salt bath. She looks much better now with just the occasional scab here and there.
This ties in with Son very tightly. Just a few weeks before that,I received a phone call saying he had a surgery date. I believe I wrote about that in a previous blog post. If not, the following pre-surgery interview phone call was quite funny....very definitely a form written for anybody and everybody, and it gave me quite a chuckle as the nurse on the phone rattled off the questions, without really thinking about their relevancy. Everything from "Is he potty trained" to "does he have any problems with drug abuse", "does he smoke", etc. Oh, yes, Ma'am, my 4 year old is a smokin', drinkin', ladies' man! :)
So anyway, his surgery date was a mere 13 days away when Daughter broke out in spots. He was whisked away in the dark, as soon as we saw the spots on Daughter, on a 2 hour car ride, to stay with his grandparents for 4 and a bit days, in the wild hope that he would not get the chicken pox, since that would take him off the surgery list and put him back on the waiting list for a year or more. We waited and watched with baited breath, hoping an praying that nary a spot would emerge.
We made it. On December 30, 2008, at 2PM, Son had surgery to repair a submucous cleft. The night before, I had rummaged through the internet, looking for any and all info on the procedure, recovery info, anything, and ended up in tears as I realized what my son was going to be going through. But I also knew it was necessary. I was brave for my little guy. He went bouncing into that hospital, all happy and proud of himself, announcing to everybody that he was having surgery today to fix his throat and that he was going to have a really sore throat after, but he was going to talk better. We had done what we could to explain it all to him so that he understood what was happening and what to expect....but there's only so much a 4 year old can grasp.
We had to be at the hospital at 11AM....3 hours before the actual surgery. That was one boring 3 hour wait. He was shown to a little room, changed into his hospital jammies, I was asked a few questions, and we waited....and waited...they did not provide him with toys or anything. Luckily I had brought a few for the overnight stay....unfortunately, the long wait meant he was done reading and playing with everything long before he even had the surgery, so needed new stuff for afterwards.
At about 4PM, the surgeon came out and told me the surgery had gone wonderfully, and told me what to expect and how to feed him and all that sort of stuff. And then walked off, leaving me wondering where I could find my son, and when I could see him. About 10 minutes later, I managed to catch a nurse who was able to direct me to the appropriate floor and room number, so I went there, and got settled...and waited....and waited. Husband, Daughter, and my In-Laws showed up at the room....still no Son. Finally somewhere around 5, I guess, he was rolled in, eyes wide with pain and druggedness. Poor guy had bloody drool leaking out of the corner of his mouth, the inside of which was so swollen his lips did not close. He had quite a miserable night, wavering from painful awakeness to drugged and snoring sleep. Poor guy had the nurses coming in every 20 minutes to check his vitals or give him more medicine, so it was a very disjointed night. We were reading Thomas the Tank Engine stories at midnight, and playing with cars in the middle of the night. At least the room was kind of a neat place to be...we had our own room with a sliding glass door. There was a sink, a closet for his clothes and my jacket and stuff, a big armchair that was once a recliner, but now did not recline, the hospital bed with buttons to electrically adjust him to a sitting or reclining position, a bathroom with a huge bathtub in it, and a really cool window platform...like a window seat, but big enough to sleep on...about the size of a double bed, but in the shape of the bay window. Very cool. Our longest stretch of disjointed sleep with him being relatively calm was in the middle of the night when he had been crying because he wanted me to sleep in his bed with him, and the nurses, bless them, shifted things around to move him out of the hospital bed and onto the window shelf so we could lie together under the blankets....no small feat with all his tubes from the IV and the splints on his arms to keep him from sticking his fingers in his mouth. The IV machine had to be plugged into the plug in the bathroom and wired over to the bed. That resulted in us not being able to fully close our bathroom door if anybody except him had to use it, but the nurses were discreet and there was the ever-present curtain by the bed that we just pulled closed when we went in there, both as a signal and as a deterrent to the roving eye of anybody passing by the room at those moments. (The wall facing the hallway, with the sliding door, was glass) He settled down a bit after they did that for him, and we had the fun of looking back at all the pigeons peeking back in at us at the window in the morning.
My heart broke a million times that night. Every time the nurses came in, they tried to get him to drink. They had those medicine syringes that only hold maybe a teaspoon of water at a time, and would put that in his mouth...most of the time he would only get a drop of it down, the rest of it spilling out of his mouth, and when he DID manage to swallow, it was with such a grimace of pain that it made you want to promise he'd never have to do it again. After they made him swallow twice in a row, he'd make a sound that was him TRYING to say "OWWWW". :( They kept telling him that the water would make him feel better. After about the tenth time, after they had left, he looked at me, started to cry, and said as best he could "the water ISN'T helping!". I wanted to just sweep him into my arms and rock him and make him feel better....but all I could do for him at that time was to stroke his hair and face. I felt so helpless.
The surgeon came in at about 7:30 in the morning to see how he was doing. Compared to the night, he was doing a bit better. The doctor asked if he wanted breakfast, to which Son promptly replied "Ice cream and Jello". And that is what he got. The surgeon had brought that one on himself....before the surgery, he came in to talk to us, and told Son that after his surgery that these were what he would be able to eat, meaning that he would be in no shape for, say, cheeseburgers. Here we discovered the true challenge of the day after the repair of a submucous cleft. Ice cream in a little cup and jello in a little bowl, most kids could polish those off in about 5 minutes. Combined. It took him about half an hour to get the little ice cream cup down (about 1/4 cup worth), even once it was ice cream soup. The jello he worked at for about an hour, and never did finish it. He ate about 1/3 cup of jello, I think. If that. The surgeon said if he could drink enough, he could go home later that day. The poor kid ended up with a tray that looked like a line of shots by lunchtime. He had been accumulating them, trying desperately to drink sips from one or the other. By about 1PM, he had a bowl of soup, a bowl of pudding, another cup of ice cream, a glass of chocolate milk, a glass of peach juice, a carton of orange juice, and a carton of white milk sitting in front of him, and a look of bewildered desperation on his face. He finally decided he'd rather not go home. LOL. I don't blame him. I guess he thought he'd have to swallow all of those, and then go home and sit in bed with nothing to do.
The nurse came in and asked him to point to the two he liked best. He pointed to the pudding and the ice cream. She told him if he could finish those, then he could go home. When I told him he could sit or lie on the couch and watch movies or play Wii, he decided that might be worth the effort. So at about 2PM, the ice cream and pudding were gone, he'd managed about 1/4 of the glass of chocolate milk, was freshly drugged and we changed him, packed him and his stuff, and brought him home.
I have to backtrack just for a minute. I must tell you that out children's ward nurses are wonderful. They spoiled him like crazy. When he was first wheeled in, he was given a Christmas bag of presents. That bag had 3 little teddy bears, a plush gopher with a toque and scarf, a Giant Tiger slinky, and a toy carpenter tool set. A little later, the night staff came in, and brought him a gorgeous toy car, about 20cm in length, probably a '70's model, which had doors that opened, a trunk that opened, and a hood that opened to reveal a detailed engine. For a guy who loves toy cars, this was a great surprise.
After filling his prescriptions (poor guy has 4 meds to take), we took him home and planted him on the couch where he watched a movie, ate jello, and fell fast asleep for a few hours. He woke up sad and sore. We managed to keep him relatively occupied to get his mind off the pain between drinks and medication, but he was still really sore. He got to bed around 10PM, and slept until 9:15 this morning. He was supposed to get some pain meds in the middle of the night, but there was no way we were going to wake him out of a deep sleep, back to the world of pain, just to give him that and to have him not be able to get back to sleep. We gave him a whistle to blow if he woke up in pain, and he blew that this morning, when I was just outside his room, so he got his meds right away, and seems to be doing okay, though he was sore and very sad until the pain meds kicked in. Now he's going to have baby food for breakfast. We were told he can move up to mashed potatoes in a week, if he's up to it, so in the meantime, I have an abundance of cream soups, pudding, ice cream, jello, and things like that....and a new blender to create more.
My parents talked to him on the phone last night and said that, even with the swelling and all, they can already hear a difference in his quality of speech. This is great....hopefully when the swelling goes down (we were told this could take 10 weeks), his speech will still be as good as what they hear. I can't tell the difference yet, being the Mommy, but I'm sure I'll be able to tell later whether what I hear is from the swelling or from the repair. And in 3 months, we go back to speech therapy....if he needs it. You never know. He may just do the speech adjustments on his own.
Monday, December 15, 2008
Hard phone call
I hate calling people on the phone. Correction....I hate calling people I do not know super, extra well on the phone. I am good with family and best friends. Can talk for hours on the phone with several of my best friends (and yes, I do have several, and it is possible to consider them all "best"). But if I have to call, say, Purolator to pick up a package, or a guest to see if they will be coming back to Chorus, or anything like that, I freeze up. My mind turns to oatmeal, and trying to accomplish the call is a real struggle to not look like a blithering idiot. Most times I fail miserably, stuttering or not making myself clear or forgetting important things or whatever.
Keeping that in mind, you will understand what a difficult time I had this morning. Add to my usual phone call woes the extra stress of...having to file a report with Child Protection Services. Something happened in my neighbourhood, and according to their website, if you do not report something, they can fine your butt right off your body, and put the rest of you in jail until you are moldy. So I did. It was hard, it was scary, it was humiliating to have such trouble making my report over the phone and trying to remember everything they needed to know. I think I finally managed to answer all the questions to their satisfaction, and I hope they do the best for the parties involved. And I hope I never, ever again have to make a phone call of that type. And not just because of my stress level. I'm not that shallow. I hope no child in my neighbourhood has to go through this anymore either.
Keeping that in mind, you will understand what a difficult time I had this morning. Add to my usual phone call woes the extra stress of...having to file a report with Child Protection Services. Something happened in my neighbourhood, and according to their website, if you do not report something, they can fine your butt right off your body, and put the rest of you in jail until you are moldy. So I did. It was hard, it was scary, it was humiliating to have such trouble making my report over the phone and trying to remember everything they needed to know. I think I finally managed to answer all the questions to their satisfaction, and I hope they do the best for the parties involved. And I hope I never, ever again have to make a phone call of that type. And not just because of my stress level. I'm not that shallow. I hope no child in my neighbourhood has to go through this anymore either.
Monday, October 27, 2008
NaNoWriMo, rainbow laces, and other such stuff
Okay, it's time for me to write in my blog again, not so much because anybody is really waiting for it, but more because my brain is getting backlogged with all the little split-second "gee, I should write in my blog about that" thoughts.
So here goes. This will be somewhat disjointed as, as well you can see in the title, I have thoughts on many different topics.
First of all...if you are in the something like 48% of Canadians who did NOT vote in the election on October 14th...SHAME ON YOU! I was embarrassed to call myself a Canadian, with all of you who have the right, the PRIVILEGE, the duty of making a decision for who should be in charge of running this country of ours. I voted. I knew I would not be in the province on the day of the election, so I made SURE that I presented myself at the advance polls, hopping along on my CRUTCHES with two children in tow! I know of one friend from high school who is doing missions in Niger who made the effort to have a ballot MAILED to her, so SHE could put in her vote. To all of you who did not vote...no complaining. At all. Not a single word, grumble, gripe, or whine. You chose not to vote, you chose to deal with the results. By choosing not to make a choice, you made a choice. Deal with it. Don't like it? Next time, vote, and get all your other friends to vote...THEN if you don't like the results, you can complain.
My ankle, by the way, is getting better...at a snail's pace, but better. As long as I have the brace on, I'm good. Can walk, run if necessary (Shhh...don't get on my case, Hubby...I said if necessary), and more or less ignore the ankle. Take off the brace and we're talking a pretty stiff ache going on.
Since I don't have a cast but rather this white brace with laces you could rope a steer with, I decided to spice it up a little bit, after 5 weeks of white. So I went to the dollar store. They had 4 pairs of rainbow laces for $1. To be precise, they had 4 pairs of laces for $1. The sets were all one design (with varying colours) of rainbow stripes, or dots, or hearts, or a hot pink on white checkered pattern, or camouflage. And being the person I am, I went straight for the rainbow ones. Took two full sets of laces (and could have used 2 1/2 sets if I wanted to have the exact length) to replace the long white one. Should be fun to go out in public. :)
Now as far as NaNoWriMo goes, another friend (Brad) and my Dad indirectly reminded me that this was coming up. This is what got my Dad (Robert Scott) into writing what became the draft of his first book of the three he's got either published or coming out thus far (Advertising Murder [out April 2007], Lost Youth [out September 2008], and Murder Express [coming Christmas Eve 2008]). I have been dabbling in writing for years now, since I started university, and made a ton of notes, and even started typing stuff up....and then started having kids, and things just got busy and it sat and sat and sat. Now, in the same spirit of my friend, I do not have time to write for 2-3 hours a day, but at the same time, I'd really like to get my story out of my notebook and onto paper. It's an autobiography in fiction form (as in, an autobiography told within a fictional setting)...if I can get it done, maybe I can get it published somewhere. Who knows?
Hubby has discovered that his health is not what it used to be...I guess I just cook too well. He has a bit of a beach ball and has discovered his job of mostly sitting at computer desks or behind the wheel of his van leaves him...well...breathless...after a simple walk in the wind. So he asked me today what I thought of an idea of his. I quit doing papers back in May because of the lack of sleep and the severe hatred of being out in the cold in the dead of winter. He has decided HE would like to do papers in the mornings, both for the exercise and for the extra $200 or whatever that he would get from doing a regular route...he stays up late anyway and doesn't mind the cold (I DID, after all, find him up in the NWT), so he'll be fine in the cold and will just switch his habits around a bit to go to bed at a decent hour and get up early instead. Guess who is going to be stuck with being his sub when he is sick, but hey...I guess I can handle doing one route, once in awhile. And the money will help us pay for Christmas and birthday gifts, and slowly beat off the debts, too. And if he keeps it up, he'll burn off the beach ball, get great leg muscles, and together we'll work on getting healthier and end up looking like supermodels. Ha ha ha ha. Okay, we'll get healthier and look better. Good enough.
There's probably another zillion thoughts back in my head somewhere, but they aren't coming yet. I think this is enough for now anyway. :)
So here goes. This will be somewhat disjointed as, as well you can see in the title, I have thoughts on many different topics.
First of all...if you are in the something like 48% of Canadians who did NOT vote in the election on October 14th...SHAME ON YOU! I was embarrassed to call myself a Canadian, with all of you who have the right, the PRIVILEGE, the duty of making a decision for who should be in charge of running this country of ours. I voted. I knew I would not be in the province on the day of the election, so I made SURE that I presented myself at the advance polls, hopping along on my CRUTCHES with two children in tow! I know of one friend from high school who is doing missions in Niger who made the effort to have a ballot MAILED to her, so SHE could put in her vote. To all of you who did not vote...no complaining. At all. Not a single word, grumble, gripe, or whine. You chose not to vote, you chose to deal with the results. By choosing not to make a choice, you made a choice. Deal with it. Don't like it? Next time, vote, and get all your other friends to vote...THEN if you don't like the results, you can complain.
My ankle, by the way, is getting better...at a snail's pace, but better. As long as I have the brace on, I'm good. Can walk, run if necessary (Shhh...don't get on my case, Hubby...I said if necessary), and more or less ignore the ankle. Take off the brace and we're talking a pretty stiff ache going on.
Since I don't have a cast but rather this white brace with laces you could rope a steer with, I decided to spice it up a little bit, after 5 weeks of white. So I went to the dollar store. They had 4 pairs of rainbow laces for $1. To be precise, they had 4 pairs of laces for $1. The sets were all one design (with varying colours) of rainbow stripes, or dots, or hearts, or a hot pink on white checkered pattern, or camouflage. And being the person I am, I went straight for the rainbow ones. Took two full sets of laces (and could have used 2 1/2 sets if I wanted to have the exact length) to replace the long white one. Should be fun to go out in public. :)
Now as far as NaNoWriMo goes, another friend (Brad) and my Dad indirectly reminded me that this was coming up. This is what got my Dad (Robert Scott) into writing what became the draft of his first book of the three he's got either published or coming out thus far (Advertising Murder [out April 2007], Lost Youth [out September 2008], and Murder Express [coming Christmas Eve 2008]). I have been dabbling in writing for years now, since I started university, and made a ton of notes, and even started typing stuff up....and then started having kids, and things just got busy and it sat and sat and sat. Now, in the same spirit of my friend, I do not have time to write for 2-3 hours a day, but at the same time, I'd really like to get my story out of my notebook and onto paper. It's an autobiography in fiction form (as in, an autobiography told within a fictional setting)...if I can get it done, maybe I can get it published somewhere. Who knows?
Hubby has discovered that his health is not what it used to be...I guess I just cook too well. He has a bit of a beach ball and has discovered his job of mostly sitting at computer desks or behind the wheel of his van leaves him...well...breathless...after a simple walk in the wind. So he asked me today what I thought of an idea of his. I quit doing papers back in May because of the lack of sleep and the severe hatred of being out in the cold in the dead of winter. He has decided HE would like to do papers in the mornings, both for the exercise and for the extra $200 or whatever that he would get from doing a regular route...he stays up late anyway and doesn't mind the cold (I DID, after all, find him up in the NWT), so he'll be fine in the cold and will just switch his habits around a bit to go to bed at a decent hour and get up early instead. Guess who is going to be stuck with being his sub when he is sick, but hey...I guess I can handle doing one route, once in awhile. And the money will help us pay for Christmas and birthday gifts, and slowly beat off the debts, too. And if he keeps it up, he'll burn off the beach ball, get great leg muscles, and together we'll work on getting healthier and end up looking like supermodels. Ha ha ha ha. Okay, we'll get healthier and look better. Good enough.
There's probably another zillion thoughts back in my head somewhere, but they aren't coming yet. I think this is enough for now anyway. :)
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Slowly but surely
I am recovering. It took a week on the couch, and about another week with crutches, but I am limping along now. My ankle will be firmly laced into my brace for another 6 weeks yet, but I'm getting there.
Now if I could just learn not to overdo things. The day I got up and didn't need my crutches (two days ago), I was off like a shot, trying to clean and shop and everything. I was back on one crutch by afternoon and on the couch by evening. Yesterday I just tried to do the flight of the bumblebee for cleaning....and was out of commission, but no crutches, by about 1PM. Today, again, roared around cleaning my kitchen and meandering the mall with Hubby while Son was in preschool...now I am in pain. A lot of pain. So I think I will take myself back to the couch for a bit, then make supper and take daughter off to Brownies, then relax. I was going to bake something, but I think I'll wait until tomorrow. I don't want to have to go back on the crutches.
Jogging on the WiiFit will have to wait. MOST things on the WiiFit will have to wait. First I guess I'll focus on going grocery shopping without coming home exhausted and in pain. That would be good.
Now if I could just learn not to overdo things. The day I got up and didn't need my crutches (two days ago), I was off like a shot, trying to clean and shop and everything. I was back on one crutch by afternoon and on the couch by evening. Yesterday I just tried to do the flight of the bumblebee for cleaning....and was out of commission, but no crutches, by about 1PM. Today, again, roared around cleaning my kitchen and meandering the mall with Hubby while Son was in preschool...now I am in pain. A lot of pain. So I think I will take myself back to the couch for a bit, then make supper and take daughter off to Brownies, then relax. I was going to bake something, but I think I'll wait until tomorrow. I don't want to have to go back on the crutches.
Jogging on the WiiFit will have to wait. MOST things on the WiiFit will have to wait. First I guess I'll focus on going grocery shopping without coming home exhausted and in pain. That would be good.
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Plans Derailed
My plan to train with my Wii Fit has been put on hold. Hopefully temporarily, possibly more long-term. I was stupid. I admit it. It's all my fault. But it still hurts.
I was jogging, as you know, an hour a night. I was giving it all I had, in an attempt to break my previous night's distances, as always. I was doing it, each night, in bare feet (shhhh....no telling me off)...on a hard floor (I said don't tell me off!). I got this pain in my ankle. Not a big one, kind of like when you feel you have to crack a joint and it's not quite going. So I ignored it. It was a bit worse the next day, maybe even over a few days, I'm not sure how long I was doing this to myself....I just jogged through the pain with the thought that whatever doesn't kill me makes me stronger. But then I woke up Tuesday morning. And tried to get out of bed. And discovered I was in a lot of pain. So I wrapped it in a tensor and parked myself in an armchair and took things mostly easy. By evening I was in terrible pain. Wednesday I started to get concerned. By the time I went to bed Wednesday night, I could barely walk. Thursday I broke down and went to see a doctor....possibly a stress fracture, but that won't show up on an xray for up to 4 weeks, so the real sympathetic doctor (yeah right) after manipulating my foot in ways that had me envisioning methods of recreating his face (You know, rip his toes off and shove them in his ears....), tells me to go home and wrap it in a tensor and come back in a week or more. By Thursday night, I could barely limp I was in so much pain.
So yesterday I went out and took matters into my own hands. I have a stiff ankle brace on that laces more than skates, and rented myself a set of crutches. Now I have sore muscles I never had met before. My ankle still hurts a lot, and is very glad of the crutches. By the end of the evening, having been off it, I thought it was better, and that maybe it wasn't a fracture after all...until I got stupid and tried leaving the crutches alone. Took maybe a few steps, and it all came back, with teeth. This is NOT muscular. This is a pain I've never had before, and I've had weak ankles all my life, so know what muscle injury is like.
Today I am trying not to be a hero. I want to try putting pressure on the foot. I shouldn't. I've already done it a couple of times and am already in a lot of pain. Have to suck it up and stay on the crutches. Hopefully in about a week I can go back and they will be able to see something, so I can get the right treatment and get better.
My forced leisure time has meant a lot of sit-down games, so I have played Mario Party 8, Pinball, and Super Mario World (Thanks to WiiPoints)...and hubby was nice enough to buy me Super Paper Mario, which i have yet to try, but will likely do tonight.
And it means the house has not been getting the cleaning it needs, which has been bugging me, though I have been doing what I can in the form of cooking, loading and unloading the dishwasher, doing a bit of laundry, and sorting through boxes of "stuff" from my bedroom closet. Hubby put it all into perspective...at least our house looks nowhere even remotely close to THIS:
http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,24396021-5013110,00.html
And no matter how horrible I have been in the past with cleaning (because I was a total slob and am now reforming), it has never, EVER looked like that!
I was jogging, as you know, an hour a night. I was giving it all I had, in an attempt to break my previous night's distances, as always. I was doing it, each night, in bare feet (shhhh....no telling me off)...on a hard floor (I said don't tell me off!). I got this pain in my ankle. Not a big one, kind of like when you feel you have to crack a joint and it's not quite going. So I ignored it. It was a bit worse the next day, maybe even over a few days, I'm not sure how long I was doing this to myself....I just jogged through the pain with the thought that whatever doesn't kill me makes me stronger. But then I woke up Tuesday morning. And tried to get out of bed. And discovered I was in a lot of pain. So I wrapped it in a tensor and parked myself in an armchair and took things mostly easy. By evening I was in terrible pain. Wednesday I started to get concerned. By the time I went to bed Wednesday night, I could barely walk. Thursday I broke down and went to see a doctor....possibly a stress fracture, but that won't show up on an xray for up to 4 weeks, so the real sympathetic doctor (yeah right) after manipulating my foot in ways that had me envisioning methods of recreating his face (You know, rip his toes off and shove them in his ears....), tells me to go home and wrap it in a tensor and come back in a week or more. By Thursday night, I could barely limp I was in so much pain.
So yesterday I went out and took matters into my own hands. I have a stiff ankle brace on that laces more than skates, and rented myself a set of crutches. Now I have sore muscles I never had met before. My ankle still hurts a lot, and is very glad of the crutches. By the end of the evening, having been off it, I thought it was better, and that maybe it wasn't a fracture after all...until I got stupid and tried leaving the crutches alone. Took maybe a few steps, and it all came back, with teeth. This is NOT muscular. This is a pain I've never had before, and I've had weak ankles all my life, so know what muscle injury is like.
Today I am trying not to be a hero. I want to try putting pressure on the foot. I shouldn't. I've already done it a couple of times and am already in a lot of pain. Have to suck it up and stay on the crutches. Hopefully in about a week I can go back and they will be able to see something, so I can get the right treatment and get better.
My forced leisure time has meant a lot of sit-down games, so I have played Mario Party 8, Pinball, and Super Mario World (Thanks to WiiPoints)...and hubby was nice enough to buy me Super Paper Mario, which i have yet to try, but will likely do tonight.
And it means the house has not been getting the cleaning it needs, which has been bugging me, though I have been doing what I can in the form of cooking, loading and unloading the dishwasher, doing a bit of laundry, and sorting through boxes of "stuff" from my bedroom closet. Hubby put it all into perspective...at least our house looks nowhere even remotely close to THIS:
http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,24396021-5013110,00.html
And no matter how horrible I have been in the past with cleaning (because I was a total slob and am now reforming), it has never, EVER looked like that!
Thursday, September 18, 2008
The Little Mommy That Couldn't
Once upon a time, there was a little Mommy....well...not so little, if truth be told, but a Mommy nonetheless. This Mommy had many things to do, and, being a good-hearted Mommy, set out to do all these things.
This Mommy needed to get her Daughter up and off to school, eat breakfast, dress, check herself on the Wii Fit, return library items, pick something up from someone's house, buy a few grocery items, go to the bank to set up a new bank account for her Son, make lunch, can pears, cook a pumpkin, make pumpkin seeds and pumpkin pie, get 3 rooms of the upstairs clean,encourage her Son to clean his room,make supper, go to a Board meeting, take the Dog to the park, do dishes, and laundry, too!
The Mommy got off to a rough start, being tired due to a family member having a whopper of a night terror, but headed into the morning with high expectations of accomplishment.
She did fairly well, accomplishing most of what she had wanted for the morning...Daughter was sent off to school, the Mommy had done all the personal stuff (ate, dressed, stood on the Wii Fit). Two of the three rooms did get tidied, the library item did get returned in time, the item to be picked up as acquired, the bank account was created, and the grocery items were purchased (plus a few extras because the Mommy did not have very good willpower).
But things started to go obviously wrong. The Mommy was tired. Her lipomas were hurting very badly, with even her shirt aggravating them. Her back muscles were seizing and aching from a very old injury. And yet the Mommy persevered. Lunch became totally non-nutritious, being onion rings and potato wedges on sale at the grocery store, and a cup of coffee (milk for the Son), but lunch was at least served. The pears were canned, but much of the work was done sitting in a chair, and even then, the back muscles were screaming, and because of the chair back, so were the lipomas. But still she kept at it and canned 6 pint jars of pears plus a quart jar of juice. A load of laundry made its way through the washer and into the dryer. The dishwasher got emptied, refilled, and started. A stew for supper was simmering in the crock pot, too, after much peeling and chopping of vegetables. Son's room was cleaned and there was much rejoicing. But the Mommy was so tired and in so much pain that she simply had to quit.
The Mommy was concerned that the Daddy would think her a lazy bum because he was going to come home and find her plushed out with pillows in an attempt to get some comfort somehow, reading a book. The pumpkin did not get slaughtered for seeds and pie, the Dog did not get a trip to the park. It was 2:45PM and she would still have her meeting later, which she would attend.
But to be quite honest, when she really thought about it and considered her options and pain level, she decided that she really didn't care what the Daddy thought anymore, all she cared about was feeling better. So she went off to have a nice hot cup of coffee and to find a comfy spot, in the hopes of feeling better tomorrow.
The End
This Mommy needed to get her Daughter up and off to school, eat breakfast, dress, check herself on the Wii Fit, return library items, pick something up from someone's house, buy a few grocery items, go to the bank to set up a new bank account for her Son, make lunch, can pears, cook a pumpkin, make pumpkin seeds and pumpkin pie, get 3 rooms of the upstairs clean,encourage her Son to clean his room,make supper, go to a Board meeting, take the Dog to the park, do dishes, and laundry, too!
The Mommy got off to a rough start, being tired due to a family member having a whopper of a night terror, but headed into the morning with high expectations of accomplishment.
She did fairly well, accomplishing most of what she had wanted for the morning...Daughter was sent off to school, the Mommy had done all the personal stuff (ate, dressed, stood on the Wii Fit). Two of the three rooms did get tidied, the library item did get returned in time, the item to be picked up as acquired, the bank account was created, and the grocery items were purchased (plus a few extras because the Mommy did not have very good willpower).
But things started to go obviously wrong. The Mommy was tired. Her lipomas were hurting very badly, with even her shirt aggravating them. Her back muscles were seizing and aching from a very old injury. And yet the Mommy persevered. Lunch became totally non-nutritious, being onion rings and potato wedges on sale at the grocery store, and a cup of coffee (milk for the Son), but lunch was at least served. The pears were canned, but much of the work was done sitting in a chair, and even then, the back muscles were screaming, and because of the chair back, so were the lipomas. But still she kept at it and canned 6 pint jars of pears plus a quart jar of juice. A load of laundry made its way through the washer and into the dryer. The dishwasher got emptied, refilled, and started. A stew for supper was simmering in the crock pot, too, after much peeling and chopping of vegetables. Son's room was cleaned and there was much rejoicing. But the Mommy was so tired and in so much pain that she simply had to quit.
The Mommy was concerned that the Daddy would think her a lazy bum because he was going to come home and find her plushed out with pillows in an attempt to get some comfort somehow, reading a book. The pumpkin did not get slaughtered for seeds and pie, the Dog did not get a trip to the park. It was 2:45PM and she would still have her meeting later, which she would attend.
But to be quite honest, when she really thought about it and considered her options and pain level, she decided that she really didn't care what the Daddy thought anymore, all she cared about was feeling better. So she went off to have a nice hot cup of coffee and to find a comfy spot, in the hopes of feeling better tomorrow.
The End
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Chuggin' Along
Well, I've been hopping onto my Wii Fit faithfully for the past few days...it's been going well, too. I upped my running time to 1 hour, and have been bopping and sweating along each evening, improving slightly each time. There is no way the distance counter is correct, as last night I apparently jogged 10.504 Miles in an hour, and as Husband pointed out, that's just not going to happen. But it does make me feel good to watch the numbers click off like that. Even if I'm not anywhere close to REALLY running that far, that fast, at least I know I'm getting to be better at it, and I am getting my 1 hour of body whipping cardio each night....that's gotta count for something! I know I'm trimming down a little bit, anyway....I was wearing this one pair of shorts that was a little loose, the elastic was gone, but they still hung on via my hips. I wore them as part of my outfit each night...and two nights ago, as I jogged, they fell off! [blush] Thankfully I was behind closed curtain in the privacy of my own home. And to be honest, it was really, really, really funny....and a good feeling to know I'd trimmed down a tiny bit so that could happen. Hopefully I can stick with this through the winter so more good things can happen. :)
Sunday, September 7, 2008
A Challenge to myself
Okay. I have Wii Fit. A friend of mine thinks the Wii is a waste of time and space, that it should be avoided in trade for time outside. To a certain extent, I agree. But to another degree, while he is freezing his butt off in winter, trying to get a jog in, through the snow and ice, or traveling through same to get to an indoor track where he will have to fork out money, I will be in my nice warm living room, in PJs if I feel like it, doing my exercises and even jogging in place. I am much more motivated to do it if it means NOT going outside or to a different location....especially in the cold. Have I mentioned I hate to be cold?
My challenge is this...one of the options is called "free run", in which I choose how long I plan to run (10-20-30 minutes), and as I go, it tells me how far it thinks I have run. I do have a certain level of reality in this head of mine....I am pretty sure that the numbers it is spitting out are probably pretty optimistic....but there is no real way to test this for sure. What I am planning on doing is working with this option daily through the fall and winter, until late spring, at which time (roughly end of May) I will sign myself up for the Regina Fun Run that I did this past spring. The distance (5km or 10Km), I will decide closer to the time. I will run said Fun Run, and see how much time it actually takes, and how good of shape I am in while doing so. This past spring, I ran the course in something like 39'22" for the 5Km. My goal is to bring this down considerably. Or at least to run it in less than 30 minutes, less than an hour for the 10Km. As the fall/winter progresses, I will keep you all updated on how the Wii Fit running is going. Today it said I ran 4.571 MILES (roughly 7.4 Km) in 30 minutes. For argument's sake, let's say I ran 4.571 Km instead. That is probably more accurate, but the Wii Fit number looks nicer. :)
My challenge is this...one of the options is called "free run", in which I choose how long I plan to run (10-20-30 minutes), and as I go, it tells me how far it thinks I have run. I do have a certain level of reality in this head of mine....I am pretty sure that the numbers it is spitting out are probably pretty optimistic....but there is no real way to test this for sure. What I am planning on doing is working with this option daily through the fall and winter, until late spring, at which time (roughly end of May) I will sign myself up for the Regina Fun Run that I did this past spring. The distance (5km or 10Km), I will decide closer to the time. I will run said Fun Run, and see how much time it actually takes, and how good of shape I am in while doing so. This past spring, I ran the course in something like 39'22" for the 5Km. My goal is to bring this down considerably. Or at least to run it in less than 30 minutes, less than an hour for the 10Km. As the fall/winter progresses, I will keep you all updated on how the Wii Fit running is going. Today it said I ran 4.571 MILES (roughly 7.4 Km) in 30 minutes. For argument's sake, let's say I ran 4.571 Km instead. That is probably more accurate, but the Wii Fit number looks nicer. :)
Friday, August 22, 2008
I love this time of year
Well....this time and on into the fall. I may not be a very good housewife, in terms of cleaning, but the one thing I can do is just that....CAN! I love this time of year because the crabapples are ready, and I can also get my mitts on some pretty cool produce.
Over the past two days, I have made 2 quarts of concentrated crabapple juice (that will make approximately 4-6 quarts when water is added to taste), 8 pints of applesauce, and 7 pints of crabapple jelly. I write in quarts and pints because that is how all my canning recipes go. If you want metric, which is how I usually run, that's 2 litres, 4-6 litres, 16 cups, and 14 cups.
That was made from approximately 28 cups of crabapples.
I managed, today, to purchase a case of peaches....54 fair sized ones for slightly less than $20. Sometime in the next few days, 42 of them will be turned into canned peaches. I am figuring on about 7 quarts (28 cups). I saved a dozen for just eating....3 each.
I have already this year made strawberry jam and saskatoon jam....we could probably live off of toast and jam at this point in time, as I also have, from last year or so, pumpkin jam....I had to dump out about 5 pints (10 cups) of pumpkin preserves because nobody was eating it, and quite honestly, I don't like it. The pumpkin JAM is yummy, though.
Once I get a new jug of vinegar, I will also be making pickled apples....now THOSE are yummy!!!! I first had those when I was a kid at either Ponderosa or Bonanza.
What I would really like is for someone to have a load of green tomatoes or even red tomatoes that they can't use, so I could make green tomato relish (with the green) or tomato butter (with the red). I looooooooove those with my meat or poultry! Yum!
Someday I will try making pickled onions again....they are amazing with homemade baked beans.
Now I'm making myself hungry! :)
Over the past two days, I have made 2 quarts of concentrated crabapple juice (that will make approximately 4-6 quarts when water is added to taste), 8 pints of applesauce, and 7 pints of crabapple jelly. I write in quarts and pints because that is how all my canning recipes go. If you want metric, which is how I usually run, that's 2 litres, 4-6 litres, 16 cups, and 14 cups.
That was made from approximately 28 cups of crabapples.
I managed, today, to purchase a case of peaches....54 fair sized ones for slightly less than $20. Sometime in the next few days, 42 of them will be turned into canned peaches. I am figuring on about 7 quarts (28 cups). I saved a dozen for just eating....3 each.
I have already this year made strawberry jam and saskatoon jam....we could probably live off of toast and jam at this point in time, as I also have, from last year or so, pumpkin jam....I had to dump out about 5 pints (10 cups) of pumpkin preserves because nobody was eating it, and quite honestly, I don't like it. The pumpkin JAM is yummy, though.
Once I get a new jug of vinegar, I will also be making pickled apples....now THOSE are yummy!!!! I first had those when I was a kid at either Ponderosa or Bonanza.
What I would really like is for someone to have a load of green tomatoes or even red tomatoes that they can't use, so I could make green tomato relish (with the green) or tomato butter (with the red). I looooooooove those with my meat or poultry! Yum!
Someday I will try making pickled onions again....they are amazing with homemade baked beans.
Now I'm making myself hungry! :)
Sunday, August 17, 2008
One of those days
I'm just saying....
It's been one of those. The moment my eyes creaked open, it was already starting. The kids were in the bathroom, yelling at a new toy, to see if they could scare it (it's a robot). The cats were meowing to be fed, the dog was waiting anxiously to be let out and then fed. Neither child had decided to concern themselves with these needs.
I crawl out of bed and dispatch them from the bathroom with orders to feed kitties and relieve dog of her distress. Cats get fed, dog is left waiting....and waiting. Until I finally realize my orders have not been carried out. I creep onto the WiiFit board to find that it still considers me a large blob of lard, more so than yesterday. Get dressed while listening to the beautiful sound of children bickering and screaming at me. Up I come, instruct them to eat breakfast and get dressed. We have 30 minutes until we need to be in the car. 10 minutes later, daughter is still in pj's and unfed, son is fed but not dressed. I yell at daughter. 60seconds later, daughter is in her room, unfed, undressed (well...in pj's), and playing with robot. I yell. "I forgot", she says. I storm out, she finally eats and gets dressed. 5 minutes to departure, son is not dressed, and is screaming in tears that he does not want to. Husband storms in, grabs clothes, undresses and redresses son in about 60 seconds flat. Out to the car we go. Everyone buckled in, I start the car, no problem. Start to back out....car stalls. Restart car, and she starts this horrible screaming noise. Will not turn off. Can take key out, and she is still doing it. Try turning the key forward more, car goes into hyperdrive, as far as engine noise goes....the noise you'd hear if you had the car in park and pressed the gas all the way to the floor.....but I don;t have my foot on the gas. Try pressing the brake, jiggling the key, everything....just this horrid noise that has half the neighbourhood starting out their curtains, cursing whoever is disturbing their peaceful Sunday morning. Finally, in desperation, I throw her in drive. She goes RRRRCLUNK and is dead as a doornail. That was pretty much the last straw for me. I fling open the car door, storm up to the front door, and scream as loud as I can "THEREYOUGOSHE'SDEADABSOLUTELYDEADNOTASOUNDNOTHING
(gasp)TOTALLYUTTERLYDEAD!!!!" My husband goes "Oh? What happened?" So I tell him, still in a near-tears fury. I think I could have uprooted a tree with my bare hands, I was so upset and furious.
So once again Bessie is dead. This time for good. No more tow trucks, no more trying to get her fixed. Gonna clear her out and make her a Kidney Car. They can deal with it. In the meantime, I am carless....but hopefully something will be at the auto auction on Saturday (nearly a week from now s-i-g-h), and we can get it super cheap.
I wanted to crawl back into bed, but hubby told me to just take the van and go to church anyway. So I did, and it was relatively okay there....got a gift card for our anniversary from secret sister, and found daughters lost jacket....then got home to discover that, despite the numerous times I have expressed that I will not accept such things in my house, the games that hubby claims are "not THAT bad" are really Dungeons and Dragons games. 9 years I have made it abundantly clear that these are not to be in my house. Neverwinter Nights, Diablo, and apparently Ultima, since he says they are all alike. I am furious. And he seems not to get it. I think he figures that if he keeps quiet, I will either forget or "get over it". He does that about a lot of things. I won't forget, I am NOT going to get over it, and for this, I am now going to be considered a horrible wench. Tough. I cook, clean, take care of the kids, and do a multitude of other things, plus extra things he calls me up to do. I have the right to have a say about the filth that enters my house. I don't allow pornography, why the heck would I allow demonic things?
It's been one of those. The moment my eyes creaked open, it was already starting. The kids were in the bathroom, yelling at a new toy, to see if they could scare it (it's a robot). The cats were meowing to be fed, the dog was waiting anxiously to be let out and then fed. Neither child had decided to concern themselves with these needs.
I crawl out of bed and dispatch them from the bathroom with orders to feed kitties and relieve dog of her distress. Cats get fed, dog is left waiting....and waiting. Until I finally realize my orders have not been carried out. I creep onto the WiiFit board to find that it still considers me a large blob of lard, more so than yesterday. Get dressed while listening to the beautiful sound of children bickering and screaming at me. Up I come, instruct them to eat breakfast and get dressed. We have 30 minutes until we need to be in the car. 10 minutes later, daughter is still in pj's and unfed, son is fed but not dressed. I yell at daughter. 60seconds later, daughter is in her room, unfed, undressed (well...in pj's), and playing with robot. I yell. "I forgot", she says. I storm out, she finally eats and gets dressed. 5 minutes to departure, son is not dressed, and is screaming in tears that he does not want to. Husband storms in, grabs clothes, undresses and redresses son in about 60 seconds flat. Out to the car we go. Everyone buckled in, I start the car, no problem. Start to back out....car stalls. Restart car, and she starts this horrible screaming noise. Will not turn off. Can take key out, and she is still doing it. Try turning the key forward more, car goes into hyperdrive, as far as engine noise goes....the noise you'd hear if you had the car in park and pressed the gas all the way to the floor.....but I don;t have my foot on the gas. Try pressing the brake, jiggling the key, everything....just this horrid noise that has half the neighbourhood starting out their curtains, cursing whoever is disturbing their peaceful Sunday morning. Finally, in desperation, I throw her in drive. She goes RRRRCLUNK and is dead as a doornail. That was pretty much the last straw for me. I fling open the car door, storm up to the front door, and scream as loud as I can "THEREYOUGOSHE'SDEADABSOLUTELYDEADNOTASOUNDNOTHING
(gasp)TOTALLYUTTERLYDEAD!!!!" My husband goes "Oh? What happened?" So I tell him, still in a near-tears fury. I think I could have uprooted a tree with my bare hands, I was so upset and furious.
So once again Bessie is dead. This time for good. No more tow trucks, no more trying to get her fixed. Gonna clear her out and make her a Kidney Car. They can deal with it. In the meantime, I am carless....but hopefully something will be at the auto auction on Saturday (nearly a week from now s-i-g-h), and we can get it super cheap.
I wanted to crawl back into bed, but hubby told me to just take the van and go to church anyway. So I did, and it was relatively okay there....got a gift card for our anniversary from secret sister, and found daughters lost jacket....then got home to discover that, despite the numerous times I have expressed that I will not accept such things in my house, the games that hubby claims are "not THAT bad" are really Dungeons and Dragons games. 9 years I have made it abundantly clear that these are not to be in my house. Neverwinter Nights, Diablo, and apparently Ultima, since he says they are all alike. I am furious. And he seems not to get it. I think he figures that if he keeps quiet, I will either forget or "get over it". He does that about a lot of things. I won't forget, I am NOT going to get over it, and for this, I am now going to be considered a horrible wench. Tough. I cook, clean, take care of the kids, and do a multitude of other things, plus extra things he calls me up to do. I have the right to have a say about the filth that enters my house. I don't allow pornography, why the heck would I allow demonic things?
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Too good to be true
Well, she lasted a day. Exactly 24 hours. Not a minute more. Husband just phoned to say Bessie does not start. Not a sound. Once again. And this time he is on the opposite end of town and I have no car to rescue him with, as his van is in getting tires replaced. She was a beautiful car, even despite the few rust spot, saggy wires, and grumbly disposition. But we just can't afford to keep fixing her. So for sale she goes, a mechanic special. Nuts. I am sorely disappointed. Hopefully we can find another nice, cheap rustbucket that will last a few more months at the auto auction. I can hope, anyway. If we look at it on a per month basis, we paid $125 a month for the use of Bessie (minus gas and oil)....good luck finding a car payment like that anywhere else!
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