Schedules and me

I need one plain and simple. Me without a schedule is a one way ticket to depression city. I am not mocking depression; I am serious. If I don't have a schedule I get weird and off. Working full time, as hard and as challenging as it was, gave me a schedule. It was sometimes crazy, but it is what I need. If I am as lucky to work full time in the fall (we don't know quite yet) I need to get my meals in order because we ate way too much take out this year. It was really bad, and it has negatively affected my waist line.

What I need,want, and will have is a schedule for the summer. It will include working on the house every day to declutter and clean. It should include exercise and eating well to get into better shape. There is no excuse right now not to be able to make a healthy dinner. I have the time. There will be play time with the kids, which will include swimming in our town pool. Seeing friends I haven't seen in months and reading for enjoyment, which I had little time to do this year and really missed. It would be good to add spend some time with my spouse alone without children. Also my final schedule idea is to write something every day. Even if it is to just to recap my schedule.

Summer time..........

Here we are. It's summer time. This is my first summer that I am not working (outside of my house). I have always worked during the summer since we became parents. The first summer was a summer school program, followed by summer number two that included the same program and waitressing on the weekend. That was a really grouchy summer. Every summer since I did my same old waitressing gig. It wasn't full time, but I always had to figure out the cookouts and parties that we were invited to because that was when I worked. Also if you ever worked nights you probably know that "I have to work tonight mantra" that haunts you during the day when you know you have to go to work.

Since I went back to teaching this past year we decided it would be nice to not work during the summer. Parenting is plenty of work, so it isn't like I am sitting under a cabana all day. We have some house projects planned and a mini vacation to take. Yes, we are both off over the summer. I won't get into the "teachers get a lot of time off" comments that people make. We do have some great family time that I really appreciate, but it isn't why either one of us went into teaching. It also wasn't supposed to be part of this post so I will get one with it.

My six year old is enrolled in a few weeks of summer camp. It takes place right behind one of our town pools. Our town has fantastic activities that are really inexpensive. For the first time this year I bought summer swim passes for the family for our town pool. I had my four year old in the pool with me and in the distance we can see my six year old playing at camp. She looked so happy. My four year old was splashing around the pool showing me how he can jog in the water. Seriously he loved jogging in the water. His beaming face and bright blue eyes looked so happy just swimming with his mom. It reminded me how much we love our children. How we would do anything for them. Going back to work full time this year was a huge transition. My days were so busy that I did not worry much about my kids, but now that it is summer I realize how much I missed them and know how much I love them. Thank you summer time for giving me this time with my children. I will not take you for granted.

Pantry challenge here I come

Yes, February for us will be an eat from the pantry and freezer sort of month. I am going to try to use as much as possible and not get too much take out. Last month we spent sort of a lot on take out. Now that I am working full time it is really hard to get dinner on the table. Yeah, whatever, I was sort of lazy before that too. Anyway, the point is that I want to save money, and we spend tons on groceries. It is just a way of life. However, I think that anyone can cut back. It isn't really even my opinion. There are many people that have blogs and books showing us that we don't have to spend millions on groceries. Now there are must haves and we have them. We need fresh fruit and we need it weekly. Milk is also a staple in our house. Bread is pretty popular too. I was making my own bread over vacation and might be able to do that in February, but right now I am buying bread. I find the best price I can on the most natural bread. So here is my pledge to myself. Make an inventory of what I have and try to plan some meals. This weekend I will get our essentials and anything that is really well priced. Dinner will be strictly what we have in the freezer or pantry. This should be fun.

Death is the hard part about life

Recently I attended a memorial service for my aunt's brother. He died suddenly this weekend leaving behind his parents, three teenagers, and four siblings. Watching family members struggling with emotions and trying to cope with such a loss is heartbreaking. How do you tell someone you are sorry that their son is gone? As my sister said the other day "there are no words". There are no words that can take away the grief and pain that comes when we lose someone we love so much. There are many things we think of when someone dies. What is there after death? Is there anything? I envy people that have total faith that there is something after this life. Those that know that dying is like being born again. I want to have that kind of faith, but truthfully I worry that there is nothing. It scares me that one day you are gone and that is it. All that is left is loved ones left to share your memories, but you will never talk again, or wake up again, or make another cup of coffee.

Besides thinking about our own inevitable death, we worry about losing others. The hardest part last night was watching his parents. It goes beyond anything I could ever imagine. Ten years ago this month I lost my best friend. She was thirty. It was the most devastating time in my life. At that time I had not had children yet, but still I knew that no matter how painful it was to lose her, my pain could never compare to that of her parents or only sister. For years I thought of her and them every single day. I cried a lot for many years after she died. I still think of her daily. She floats in and out of my head. I hear songs on the radio that we listened to in college and I convince myself it is her way of saying hello. Maybe that is my way of hoping that there is something after this. Something that speaks to me through a radio playing songs that we listened to repeatedly like college girls do. Dancing in a beat up Malibu, smoking cigarettes and singing off key, playing the same songs again and again. Those songs speak to me when I hear them. They come through in my car and I feel like my friend is there saying hello, or I miss you, or it is okay to move on. It is so hard to move on when you lose someone. In the past ten years since my friend has been gone I bought a house, got married, and had two kids. My life is nothing like it was. I often feel guilty about moving on. Guilty that I am here and she is gone. Guilty that I have a family and she could not. Sad when I snuggle my face against my own children, knowing how much I love them and can't imagine anything ever happening. Knowing that I will be gone someday, but my children will go on, the world will go on and maybe I can come back and say hi through a song.

I shopped again

Today I spent $109.00 at the store. I felt like I got a lot for my money. The only nonfood items totaled $5.00 (paper towels and trash bags). I had done a tentative meal plan, but when I got home was feeling so tired. Working all week is crazy. Each day flies by as I get out with the kids, drop them both off, get to work. My day is over quickly, and I need quick meals to throw together when I get home.

I bought a package of chicken and a large package of ground beef. I had elaborate plans that included freezing meatballs and meatloaf. I decided I deserved a bit of relaxing watching mindless television. I managed to pull together a skillet chicken pot pie that bakes in the oven with biscuits on it. It has fresh veggies and no canned gravy. It is a rich, but delicious dish all ready for me to get home Monday, make some biscuits and throw it in the oven. Monday is done. My large package of ground beef became a large pan of cooked ground beef. I froze two freezer bags of cooked ground beef for quick throw together dinners and turned the rest into chili. Some we are going to eat when I finish this post; I was able to freeze half of the chili. Freezing half a meal is good, not only because I can get another meal out of it, but we also eat less because I haven't put it all out.

We will see what the week brings

Count down to savings

My goal for us as a family for 2013 is to save as much as possible. Since I do the majority of the grocery shopping I feel like I have a lot of potential to contribute. This savings will go towards some home improvement projects (like painting) that will really improve the feel of the house. It also feels really good to pay for something with cash instead of credit.

Taking the time to make a quick and easy meal and not order take out will make a giant difference too. Last night I made a quick frittata with ingredients I had on hand. I defrosted some frozen biscuits to go with it and there was dinner. I need to make the most of what I have. Groceries are pricey, but I know I buy too much and make too many impulse buys.

Money

I decided to write about money. I haven't written in two months because I started a new job and have been a tad bit busy. This past week has been great since it is Christmas vacation week. We have had a week to chill with the kids, which overall has been great. Our chilling area is small, but we are lucky just the same.

Wednesday will be the start of work again and we will all go our separate ways each day until dinner time. More about dinner time later. I do want to discuss it, but I will talk about money first.

How important is money? Money is a funny thing. For years I dwelled on the amount of debt we had. We had it for various reasons. We both came into our marriage with varying degrees of it. When we were both working full time we thought nothing of credit card payments. The paychecks kept coming. Never did I envision that I might actually stay home for awhile once we had children. Being a teacher I was lucky enough that I was able to stay home for the remainder of the year after number one was born. The plan was to go back to work the following fall. Once I made those first few phone calls and we found out what the cost of day care was we were shocked. Seriously shocked. That was when I had my " I will just waitress at night idea". And that is what I did for five years and through my second pregnancy. It worked. No, it was not glamorous, and I gave up a lot of weekends, but it did work. However, that did not begin until she was almost one. We had saved some money to help when I was home, but it disappeared quickly. Some months we paid one credit card with another. Things broke that had to be fixed (oil tank) that we did not have the money for. Yes, we were ill prepared like many people are.

In the time we have been married we have both lost some loved ones that were generous enough to leave us money. There is a lot of sadness when someone dies and leaves you money. My husband was left money that got us out of debt. It seemed like a miracle. We went back and forth trying to figure out the best thing to do with the money before we paid the debt off. At some point we need a bigger house. We pondered putting the money towards renovations or saving it, but in the end getting rid of the debt felt really good. We are in a very tiny house, but believe me you sleep better when the debt is gone.

Since getting rid of the debt we have had to replace both cars. So yes, now we have two car payments. It stinks, but they aren't credit cards, so I feel better about them. If we still had that debt and two car payments we would be in a heap of trouble. We just received some more money. My uncle, who lost his life at 59 to skin cancer left all his money to his nieces and nephews. He was special needs and worked low paying jobs his entire life. Knowing how hard he worked, how much he loved life, and how he much he thought of all of us breaks my heart. Being given the gift of this money makes me want to be as frugal as I can be to work towards our goal of a slightly bigger house. Yes, only slightly bigger. I don' think I need an over sized colonial. I don't want it anymore. After living in about 850 square feet for eight years I think a 1600 square foot house would be fine. Except I can't dwell on a bigger house anymore. It is a waste of my time. My life is going on right in front of me. I have a perfect family in a cozy house. We have all we need. We may want a bigger house and we may have it some day, but right now this is where we are and I want to be happy where I am.

In comparing ourselves to other people we want more than we need. From talking with neighbors, we know our house was owned by the same couple for over fifty years. They raised three boys in these four rooms. It doesn't seem possible that someone could live here for fifty years and not build an addition. Once upon a time people lived within their means. We over buy, and over mortgage, and over spend. Does a bigger house make you any happier? I think it is just more to clean.