Random Life News

I haven't been able to post as much as I'd like mostly because things are super busy around here, but also becasue my life is more boring than normal at the moment. I have been having a lot of extra work hours because of vacations. Good because of the extra money, bad because I'd like to get more than 5 hours of sleep once in a while. At least it's a holiday weekend coming up.

After a much too long sabbatical, I'm following Weight Watchers again. That's taking some getting used to, but mostly I feel good because I'm eating less junk. Much easier to avoid the vending machine when your choice may use up half of your point allotment for the day. Brent finally hit 50 lbs. lost too - I'm so proud of him!

I was going to write a whole post devoted to how I tried Diet Coke Plus - the new Coke beverage with vitamins. But I can pretty much sum it up in two sentences. It did not taste like Coke or Diet Coke. It gave me a headache and kind of made me ill. As much as a Coke addict I am, I was ashamed to throw half the bottle away, but it was really that bad.

Hmm, what else is new? I am making Pad Thai for dinner tonight. Did I link to the recipe here before? Even if I didn't, it's so yummy, it bears a repeat - so here it is - Pad Thai for Beginners via Chez Pim

Last week was my mom's birthday - happy birthday a little late, mom! Her birthday gift has not arrived yet. I have been very bad ordering online lately. I don't think her mother's day gift has arrived yet either. And I apologize in advance to Lincoln, because I have a feeling his birthday gift will be late also - but I don't think he'll notice much :)

Since I have nothing interesting to say - I'll link to some interesting blog posts I have enjoyed lately

- My problem with prayer via Internet Monk

- Grace is as dangerous as ever via Internet Monk

- Thoughts that come when immediate gratification is gone via No Impact Man

Stillness (on being a Stay at Home Mom) via Close to Home

And a comic about how to be environmentally friendly the easy way - here

What's goin' on

Hope you all had a happy Easter. We went to my parent's house and Brent's parents came too. It was a good day.

I have been stalking our homestudy guy and finally got us an appointment with him. We'll be meeting in our home 1.5 weeks from now. I'm not sure how many times we have to meet, but hopefully we can get them over with ASAP. He seems like a nice guy, although a little hard to get in contact with. But he just started at that job, and I think we're his first adoption homestudy clients.

A has been gone for over a week - much longer than that it seems. We finally took his car seat out of the car and finished cleaning his room. I still have to pick up the half dozen smiley stickers that are ground into the carpet, but that will have to wait.

That's it for new news. The only other thing thats taking up my time is trying to figure out financing for the adoption. We almost have it covered - through loans and such, but that doesn't stop me from trying to squeeze blood out of every penny that comes into this house. Every $5 we save is a Fedex ground shipment. Every $10 is an apostille request. Every $100 is a night's stay in Moscow. Every dollar that we don't have to borrow later is an acomplishment.

Blood Draw take two

I forgot to update that when I went for my re-blood draw at the clinic, they had me lie down and all that so I wouldn't get sick again and all that.
But she was in and done so fast that I didn't even notice! It went great! I pointed out all the places the nurse guy tried to draw and she called him a few not so nice names.
I'm never going anywhere else for a blood draw again.

Diagnosis

I feel better finally. I took off of work on Thursday because I still felt so sick. But Friday I was fine again.

Our car is also fine. Apparantly some valve got frozen open and it flooded the engine. Ask Brent if you really want to know, because I have no idea what was wrong. But it's back and running great again.

So everything is happy in the Homer home once again. :)

What a craptacular day!

I have to complain, so you have to listen.

This morning, at the bank, the car battery died. It had died on Sunday evening but then we jumped it and thought it was fine. Then I got out of the bank and it wouldn't start. Yech. So I called Brent and he brought his work's van over and jumped it. We immediately drove to the battery place and got it replaced.

Then, around noon a guy was supposed to come around and take my blood for life insurance application. He was late so I was getting very cranky and hungry (had to fast for the blood draw). He finally got there a half hour late and I told him he had better be good at what he does because my veins kind of suck. First try, no go. Second try, no go. Third try, finally got it - but it was going so slow, he said. Like barely anything at all. I started to feel a little light headed (no big deal - it happens almost every time I bleed for whatever reason). Next thing I know, Brent and this nurse guy were yelling at me and I was staring at the celieng. Yeah, I fainted. I asked if he had gotten enough and he showed me his little vial with about 3 drops in it. So now I have to make an appointment to have the clinic do it all over again. Sigh.

So, thankfully I had really nothing else to do that afternoon, and I was feeling kind of sick from the fainting episode, so I settled in for a long nap and afternoon of relaxation. Ha! Right! Brent calls a few hours later - he was bringing a friend home and the engine light went on in the car and it went into 'limp home' mode (when all the extra stuff shuts down and the car just puts all its power into getting you back home). I called the car place and they said they'd take it Friday, but Brent wanted to take it and leave it there tonight. So he picked me up and we went to my MIL's house to borrow her car and take our car to the shop.

Now I am sitting home while Brent is at church - still feel kind of sick, and sad that it's Wednesday because Brent won't be home until after I'm asleep.

What a sucky, sucky day.

Wahoooooo!!!!

Back in February of 2004, Brent and I got a business loan for Brent's video editing business. It was for $25,000.

In March of this year, we had $12,500 left and I joined the NCN Network with a goal to finish paying it off by the end of the year.

Today, Brent and I went to the bank and paid the last bit off.

We have no business debt left.

I am so happy I am bouncing off the walls!

Wahoo!!!

My poor kitty baby

But right now he is locked in our bathroom. :( He's had two bladder infections before, but this one we caught right away when he made a big red puddle in the middle of the kitchen.
The vet gave us some meds that it takes both Brent and I to give to him and I'm keeping him locked in the bathroom because our other kitty smells the sickness and is hissing and crying every time we let kitty #1 out.
I'll let him out later when I'm home to supervise, but I'm afraid if I have to go anywhere, then it's back to the bathroom for him.

I just can't bare to hear my poor kitty baby cry. :(

Expensive cars and scary macaroni

Today Brent and I got to pick up our car - just under $500. Luckily we had it and didn't have to charge it. It was nice to have the car back too. Brent and I raced to it in the parking lot to see who got to drive it home and who got to drive Brent's mom car that we were borrowing. Thanks, by the way Margaret - you're a lifesaver!

Then tonight I was multitasking with the finest - I pulled up a recipe on the laptop, then I was cooking it and chatting with my Brother-in-law at the same time. And talking with my mom on the phone. I'm awesome! :)
We invited my parents over for homemade macaroni and cheese, but my dad was afraid of the healthy-ness of it. No better way to ruin good mac then to add cauliflower! But they were going to bring me yummy leftover stuffing but now they're not. Booo.

The mac was good though - here's the recipe.

I hate cars

Yup, it's true. I would love to live in a city where I could depend totally on public transportation and never drive again. Josh, want some new neighbors?

Our car blew up last week. Well it didn't really blow up, but it is in the shop. Brent and I got out of the movies last Friday and started up the car to a very loud squeaking noise and smoke coming from under the hood. We jumped out and popped the hood. One of the belts had disintegrated or something and wrecked the tensioner or something. So we called a friend to pick us up and called a tow the next morning.
Since we have a weird foreign car, they didn't have the part and it's still there, waiting. Hopefully Monday it will be done. Hopefully it will be less than $500 to fix. Boo.
Brent't parents conveniently are out of town at the moment, so we have their car to use until we get ours back.

So do cars make us more independent, or more dependent?

A blessing and a curse

So the past few weeks I have been working all kinds of weird hours - kind of a swing shift type thing, but sometimes I don't even know what shift I am working from day to day. Right now (3:30 AM) I'm here at my desk and I didn't know I was going to have to work 3rd shift until 10AM yesterday morning. Short notice, indeed.

However, more hours mean more money, and also more vacation for next year (since I'm part time, my vacation is figured out by how many hours I worked the last year - or something like that).

I dislike it very much anyway, as I kind of run on autopilot when I am working full-time whatever odd shift. I'm used to having a whole day to get all my things done and be productive, and cutting that in half with extra work hours just messes up my whole system - not to mention the fact that trying to sleep all weird hours makes me very crabby.

But another good thing that is coming out of this craziness is that I'm letting go of my perfectionism and actually becoming more organized.

I'm a little neurotic about cleaning - I'll admit it. If the house isn't close to spic and span, I am stressed. I feel overwhelmed and can not relax until all things are picked up and put away. When I work off shifts, I get depressed and don't want to clean. Then I get stressed because the house is not clean. That makes me more depressed and less likely to clean the house. It gets into a very bad cycle until the next 'normal' day (who knows when that is) comes around and I spend the whole day playing catch-up and am completely exhausted.

So last week I defined a 'clean house' in a very basic list of things that I had to accomplish every day to not go crazy. I can't skip any item and I can't go out of order. If I do just these things, I can consider it a 'productive day'.

The very good news is that this week, which has been really off the wall with my work schedule, is also the least stressed I've felt in a while. I'm sleeping okay (no matter when that is), the house is relatively clean at all times, and Tracy is a happy camper. So even though I am sitting at my desk at 4 AM and not snuggling in bed like I want to be, I can be happy about the fact that I can go home and not have a glaring mess staring at me and stressing me out.

Substitute Worship Leader for Rent

This past weekend, I got the awesome opportunity to lead worship at a sister church to ours. They were in need of a team every week for October, so they called up our worship pastor and asked if we could send someone to help them out. Yesterday it was me, two singers, and a really great team of instrumentalists. Seriously, I could have never done it without them. I don't know much about how the musical stuff goes - I just sing along - so all the transitions and repeats and stuff were all up to Dave the Awesome Pianist. It was fun. :)

I might get to lead next weekend too, but I don't know for sure yet. If I'm not leading, I am for sure singing back up, so I'm looking forward to that too.

Last Thursday, we all practiced, and afterward I was so nervous about the weekend, that I was sick to my stomach. I almost went home, but we had practice for our church's worship team, so I stayed. I'm glad I did. The rest of the singers prayed for us, and the Worship Pastor gave a little speech about how it was his vision for our church to be helping other churches that may not have the same resources that we do (meaning volunteers or technology or information, etc). After all that, my nervousness went away completely. I've been singing in front of church since I was a kid, and never been not nervous, but this Sunday I wasn't at all. It was fun to go to a completely different church, and worship with completely different people, but the same songs and the same God. It was cool. I would totally do it again.

The ebb and flow of blogging

So as you can see I have not been posting much lately. I had all these excuses about how I was working longer hours and busy with church and whatever, but really I just don't have much to say. :shrug:

I think I had this idea that I was going to write all these cool insightful posts all about money issues, and environmental stuff, and all these people would read my blog and it would be so awesome. But honestly I don't care enough to put the effort in.

I guess I could abandon it, but I don't want to that either. So I think I'm going to just write whatever the heck I want and not worry about if it fits into some made-up topical constraints.

There will probably be a lot more meaningless fodder and rambling about what I did today or yesterday or whatever, but isn't that what a blog is for anyway. :)

Mini-rant

I would like to say that it is a gorgeous day outside - the sun is shining - the breezes are blowing. But, our lawn is being chemicalized, and it smells so bad that I have to shut all the windows. This makes me very sad.

I would also like to clarify that it was never my choice to chemicalize our lawn, but we rent and sometimes we have to do what the landlord says....

Put your day on a diet

What does your Time Diet look like?

I saw this little article on Lifehacker.com, and it really got me thinking… I feel like I'm busy all the time, but I also feel like I'm bored a lot. So maybe my Time Diet is full of a bunch of non-nutritional things....

So, what junk food can I remove from my Time Diet?
- Go to my Bookmarks bar and delete a message board that I am no longer a member but still read way too much
- Delete some of my RSS feeds and podcasts
- Don't watch every single Netflix that comes through our door - pick and choose the ones I really want to watch - currently Brent watches them all after I go to bed and I feel compelled to watch them in the afternoon when I should be doing other stuff.

And what health food can I add to my Time Diet?
- Clean my office daily
- Read my Bible and pray more (like, more than almost never)

What about you?

Weight Watchers is making me unhealthy

Or at least it's making me forget my hard and fast rules of not eating anything processed or unnatural.

Right now I'm drinking a Diet Pepsi. Yeah, that's right, a DIET PEPSI. Icky. But I only have one point left for the day and I haven't eaten dinner yet. (Dinner will be 2 point Boca Chili frozen dinner) And I'm starving and I know that the soda will fill me up for a while. I'm ashamed. This stuff tastes disgusting and it's poison in a can. But I'm drinking it. And I know it's really just my fault because I forgot to order skim milk in my mocha (extra three points) and caved when I saw the egg-free and dairy-free cookie (extra four points). How annoying. And just to clarify, I'm at work so it's not like I have a fridge full of yummy and healthy vegetables at my reach. If I did I wouldn't be crabbing right now. :P

So I really didn't join Weigh Watchers. Brent did, and I figured since he had to be the obsessive point-counter, I might as well too. So I follow the program but don't go to the meetings (the frugal way haha). I really should lose weight, even though I still think I'm pretty healthy the way I am.

So now I'm apparantly making myself more healthy by drinking poison in a can and eating chemically processed fake foods. Whatever.

Get outta town!

I'm posting from Dallas, TX the next two weeks - on a business trip. So I thought I would have a travel theme while I’m away. If you're planning on going on a vacation or trip ever again for the rest of your life, stay tuned, and I will have some Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise tips for you!

Completely off topic

I'm still around. The concert went awesome - amazing, and so much fun. Afterward I think we all keeled over frome exhaustion, but I loved it all. I can not wait to hear the final CD.

So that was Saturday. Sunday Brent and I both crashed. And Monday we both crashed even more, with some tidings of some Very Bad News. This is not the kind of bad news like your car insurance went up or the grocery store doesn't stock your favorite cereal anymore. This is more like the Very Bad News that will change your whole outlook on life and every decision you will make. (Don't worry, no one's sick or dying.)

I had this whole long post that I was going to write about how I wasn't going to lose my faith in God (I'm not, btw) or lose focus on our other goals in life, but right now I'm just sad and don't feel like writing. Sorry. I know I haven't been posting much at all lately, but forgive me for taking a little more time off.

Tracy

Not much to say lately

I haven't been around much lately, but that doesn't mean I think of you all often. :) Things have just been really busy around our house.

We're having an appreciation cookout for Brent's church volunteers this weekend, and I'm trying to make it a zero-waste event (means nothing to throw away - all reusable or recyclable stuff). Plus I'm a little obsessive about homemade food, so I'm making the hard rolls for the brats, and Brent and I are brewing rootbeer to drink. And I have to clean up the lawn so it looks nicer than it does now. Whew!

The day after the party (what was I thinking) we are going out of town for half the week just to get away and relax, so packing and planning needs to be done.

This is coming on top of all the normal-every day obligations.

Not that I don't have time to write, because I usually write during my work break. Just I can't think of anything to say. Any suggestions?

A little cleaning goes a long way

I'm deep cleaning our house right now. Just a little at a time - an hour or so a day, not even weekends. I started behind the back door by the cat area and then moved into the kitchen - scrubbing every stain and going through all our junk and deciding if we even use or need it any more. I've only gotten halfway through the kitchen, and it has made such a difference. Just looking at the clean stove and shelves has made it so much easier to keep the whole house clean. I don't want to clutter the area up with new stuff so I automatically put everything away. My housecleaning time is cut in half every day because of this. I knew that decluttering would make our house feel cleaner and lighter, but I had no idea that it would make such a difference. It might take me a month or two to work through the whole house, but it will be worth it.

Whew - back to normal

Took a little break from writing for a few days there. Between extra work hours, church stuff, losing sleep, Brent's birthday, a new video game and a new knitting project, I am exhausted.

Don't you just hate it when you are super busy and yet you get nothing done?

Today I am back to my normal work hours and a long to do list - which includes cleaning the house which I have neglected for almost a week now! That's torturous to me!

Happy Thoughts

It's almost midnight and I'm at work. Booo. I have to work an 8 hour third shift every other weekend, so here I am. Since that is kind of depressing, I will share some happy things that happened to me this week.

1. My birthday (did I mention that enough?)
2. My anniversary
3. I looked at my garden and saw that the garlic that I planted last fall is sprouting. That was really cool. I usually don't plant things from seed, so it was really fun seeing the tiny green shoots. I think they were garlic anyway - I hope they weren't weeds....
4. I made homemade bagels. Man, those were yummy! I think that will be a regular thing in our house now. They were far better than store bought.
5. The temperature reached over 40 degrees. Is spring starting?
6. I am learning to knit! So far I am still in practice mode. I did one 20x30 of garter stitch and I'm working on a 20x30 of stockinette stitch

That's all I can think of for now. Work sucks.

Happy Anniversary!

Today is Brent and my fourth wedding anniversary.

March 23, 2002 was the best day of my life. I never thought I could be so happy. But somehow, every day is better than the last.

I love you Brent!

Podcasting saved my life

Here's my housekeeping tip of the day.
I hate cleaning the house, but it's something we all must do. If I just have it on my list for the day, it doesn't get done. But when got my iPod for Christmas, I decided to listen to my favorite podcasts only when I'm cleaning the house. I'll see how much needs to be done, and pick a podcast of suitable length, and go to work. I just got done listening to the No Credit Needed Podcast - it was 30 minutes long - and I finished the laundry, dishes, wrapped a present, changed the fan filter, balanced my checkbook, and picked up the living room and bathroom - all without a second thought.

It's pretty much the same as setting a timer and cleaning for only a set amount of time, but with a podcast you have a disctraction and the time goes much faster. Plus if you pick the podcasts you really really like, you're less likely to put it off for hours or days at a time.

Back to normal

Hope everyone had a great Christmas! iDid! ;)

I had to work two nights third shift and now I have vacation until Friday. No big plans yet for Saturday/Sunday - just regular church, so we can't really go out of town or anything.

Well I thought I had a lot to say, but I guess I don't.

Yeah, I'm still around

Despite the rumors you may have heard, I did not get murdered by a rampaging turkey out to avenge his brother's Thanksgiving death.

Our holiday was great. Brent had to work a little, but it was still nice and relaxing to have an extra day of weekend. We spent Thanksgiving at my parent's house, and Brent's parents came too. After dinner we went to the movies and to bed at a pretty early hour. Compeletely uneventful, which is just the way I like it.

I'm done with all my family Christmas shopping. Yay!!! We really only have to get for our friends now, but we're making homemade food gifts, so we can't do that until closer to the holiday.

Now it's back to work and normal routine. But at least there is only four more weeks until another vacation. :)

What's that white crap coming from the sky?

We had our first snow last night. Booooo. I hate winter. It was also very windy, and a good reminder of all the drafty holes I have to cover before it gets even colder. There was a breeze coming through one of the light switches, and I'm unsure how I'm going to fix that, but I guess I will figure out something.

Life in General

This week has been productive so far. The weather has been super nice, so I've been trying to catch up on the laundry while I can stil hang it outside. And I'm finally getting around to finishing up my garden for the year. I just have to add the compost and plant the garlic, then I'm done until the spring.

Yesterday we were able to put a huge payment toward the business debt. It felt really good to put a big downward line on my graph. Brent's business is going to slow down some now, so it may be the last big payment for a while. But we're still putting all of my income towards the loan, which amounts to almost double what our regular monthly payments are.

I restructured our budget a little - now by week. What we had been doing before is not paying attention to the weekly spendings, only the monthly spendings. Then by the time each check came, we were close to over extending ourselves. So I got a piece of paper and figured out all the regular weekly stuff we have to buy and subtracted it from our weekly income. It looked like this:
Income
- tithe
- car payment
- groceries
- gas money
- allowance
- bill budget
- Sunday eating out
= $30

So after all the stuff we need, we have $30 left for the week on whatever else comes up (this week was cat food). I thought that was a fair amount, and now I feel a little more in control of things.

I suppose I should get back to work......