A little of everything... update

I want to say hi and welcome to those that have subscribed for mail updates. Hi! And welcome. Thank you for subscribing. I hope you enjoy your stay with me, however long that may be.

Also, I wanted to thank everyone for their recent comments and apologize for not responding. My brain has been a little broken lately. Thanks, and sorry.

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I was digging a recipe out of my inbox on Wednesday when I noticed an email from my mother... only it was routed from my web site. I opened it and found the following words in big blue letters: EXCUSE ME!!! When was "daughter" dropped from your job description?

Come to find out, I've been a daughter for much longer than I've been a wife and mother, so I've changed my occupation on the about me:the basics page to include "daughter". While I was doing that, I made a few other changes, all of which are listed on the updates page.

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Speaking of my mother, a few posts back I said that she had laughed at me for feeding my family beans and hoe cakes for dinner one night. That should be clarified a bit more. She didn't laugh at me, but she did tease me. Normally her good-natured teasing doesn't bother me, and at the time even that teasing didn't. When I said she was laughing at me, I was in a severely bad mood and even the air around me was rubbing me wrong.

Mom did tease, and I did laugh with her, even though she was dreaming about her granddaughter (my daughter) being a malnourished stick body with a big balloon head (something I laughed at my mother for, by the way).

Also, it should be noted that even though my mother teased me about said meal, after she saw the picture of my dinner plate from that night (shown below), she wanted some. She didn't want to cook it, she just wanted me to fix her some.

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Project:movie clearance is progressing right along. In the past few days I've tossed four tapes. It's really funny to pop a tape into the vcr and have the video from one show and the audio from another show play simultaneously. It really is. Two of the tapes that went away were old television episodes. The rest had the movies The Hidden, (most of) Iron Eagle II, (a very badly decayed) Campus Man and Next of Kin.

Only Next of Kin is on the keeper list, though The Hidden was very... very... tempting.

No other cleaning has really been accomplished in the past few days. I've been utterly useless. Today is the last day I'm supposed to use the medicated eye drops, and Tuesday I should be able to wear my contacts again. Tuesday can not get here soon enough for me.

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I did most of the grocery shopping yesterday, and I can say now that I'll undoubtedly go over budget this pay period. On the plus side, my freezer is fully restocked (or will be by Saturday afternoon), so neither I nor A. are complaining.

My only concern is restocking for this year's hurricane season. Though there's very little that I have on hand that I can't cook on a grill (which we need to get, husband) should the power go out, I am a little concerned about what to take (food wise) should we have to evacuate. That's something I'll have to work on in coming days, I suppose.

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Yesterday while grocery shopping, I took the canvas grocery bags. Usually I forget them, but yesterday I remembered to take them. I was so proud of myself.

The "I'm doing good" feeling was short-lived, though. Two of the four stores I went to loaded up the groceries in plastic bags THEN put the loaded plastic bags INTO the canvas bags. Even after I pointed out that the whole reason behind bringing my own bags was to avoid the need for the plastic bags, they insisted on doing it that way. One of the baggers told me that it was store policy for all groceries to be bagged in store bags, even if customers had brought their own. Needless to say, I was a little shocked and a lot disbelieving. I've got a phone call into the day manager for that particular store, but he's yet to return my call.

Money... (and stuff)

It's a very strange experience to be barely out of bed when I check the bank balance to verify a paycheck deposit, open my budget spread sheet, groggily blink at everything and realize that I've done such a good job on setting up the household finances that all I have to do is verify payments, update the balances on my spread sheets, and decide where the surplus goes. The experience becomes even more strange when I realize that the numbers are going up.

The emergency fund is growing.

The slush savings is growing.

Even the ING savings is growing.

And there's still money left over after all the regular monthly expenses for this half of the month are accounted for.

It's just... weird... for me. I'm sure it'll normalize eventually. I guess I'm still adjusting from having the majority of A.'s paychecks sucked up by debt to having actual surplus and wiggle room in the budget each pay period. Weird as it may be, it makes me giddy to see the balances on the savings (all three accounts) rising. It means things are moving in the right direction. And I like it when things move in the right direction.

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Another short 'to do' list for today. Besides cleaning the bathroom, it's mostly laundry and finalizing the grocery shopping list. A. has my car today so I might do some cleaning around here while I wait for him to come home. He's supposed to be home "around lunch".

K. is spending the night with my mother tonight. They have a tentative date for a drive-in and a car picnic. K. has never been to a drive-in so it's bound to be an experience for her.

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I have decided that I'll be going to the doctor some time this year (which reminds me, note to self: add HSA account to the budget book this weekend) and as such, I've also decided that until that time I'll be keeping a sort of health diary. I'm tired of every doctor I've ever seen telling me that whatever I'm complaining about (from joint pain to exhaustion to infected sinuses) is just a result of my weight when I KNOW that it's not (basically because the complaints either came before the weight or, in the case of infected sinuses, not weight related at all). So what's going in this nifty little health diary of mine are the things the next doctor needs to know about me: my daily weight, how much sleep I get and when, what I eat and when, what exercises I do and when, and how I feel in general, both emotionally and physically. Tedious? Yes. Necessary? I'm beginning to think so. I can't go for the rest of my life avoiding doctors because they piss me off by not being able to see past my weight. Yes, I know I need to lose weight, but don't blame everything that's wrong on my weight.

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Website update! I ordered the space for my website the other day and everything is transferred over and looks to be in running condition. www.consecratedheart.com I am happy.

I think it's time for another cup of tea. I know it's time to be poking at the laundry.

website updates

Despite how tired I was last night, I was still up way later than I should have been. Part of that was K. not staying in bed (I kept feeling her peering over my shoulder from a few feet behind me as I worked) and part of that was the drive to finish the what I'd started.

What I started yesterday wasn't much in comparison to what I normally do. Mostly the endevours included some time figuring out how to use the URL forwarding option that came with my domain name when I registered it, adding another page to my current website, and adding a mail subscription option to this journal and the recipe/cooking side of this venture.

As far as I can tell, the URL forwarding is working. When I went to bed last night it wasn't, but this morning it's a beautiful thing. I guess it takes some time for the servers to update, and that's fine. I did a few tweaks to it this morning and will check on it later today. Once I get the forwarding all tweaked up, I'll post the domain name. For now I'll keep the site where it is with Halo and work on getting my own space later.

The new page that I added to the site last night was the photography page. It's really nothing more than some text and the flickr badge (which is also visible at the bottom of the sidebar on this journal), but I think that works well. I'm still toying with other ideas in the back of my mind.

I'm not sure which page I'll work on next, as I've done most of the easy pages already. Possibly the writing page, but I'm still hesitant to display samples of my writing or discuss works in progress and other ideas I have. I've had too many ideas (and even samples) blatantly stolen in the past. Every other page that needs to be done requires photos and far more coordination and planning than I can muster the time for at this point.

After I managed to figure out the subscription thing (wasn't hard, really) I was talking to a friend via IM and wondered if I could add the same sort of subscription email feed option to my website. I did. I'm not sure I like the way the feed works with a personal website, but for now it works. I'll look into other options later, especially if it turns out that I get more than a few subscribers.

The subscription email feed sign up box can be found to the right, near the top of the sidebar of both journals. On the website, it's at the bottom on the left. I'm using feedblitz for now, and using the free service at that. There are two reasons I opted for the free plan. Lack of funds and uncertainty. The lack of funds needs no explanation. The uncertainty, however, well, that's mostly about anyone noticing me and wanting to subscribe. I realize my journal is not the most exciting thing on the 'net, and I don't write here to be read by others as much as I write here for me.

That's it for now. The sun is shining and this quasi-geek girl needs to be anywhere but inside her apartment.