Woohoo! School's Out! and Other Random Thoughts

This past week has been fairly eventful.

The "new journey" that didn't happen. Our anniversary. The visit with my husband's mom. Drying some red onions. (Onions take a long time to dry.)

OH! and one more thing! My son turned in his last assignment for his high school diploma. We should find out what his final grade is sometime this week. Then they send his diploma and he is officially a high school graduate. And it's about time. They saved English for last, which is his least favorite subject. After helping him, I see why. What a bunch of useless crap for the average person. After days on end of reading and writing about things that will never matter in his life, I can see why he wanted so much help. I love to read and write, he doesn't. Even at that, I found it taxing. Hallelujah! It's done.

Now, he can go enlist in the Marines. Right? Ummmm. No. He went round and round about joining the Marines. Or maybe the Army. Well, maybe the Marines. Or maybe the Army. He doesn't have the diploma in hand to physically sign the line yet, so I think it is still up in the air. For now, however, it is the Army. He says that he can get better career offers and more advancement and money if he goes with the Army. He is young and money talks loud, so I am thinking that might be his final decision.

Since we are not buying the camper, we now have more decisions to make ourselves. We do not have enough for a down payment that we find acceptable, so buying land right this minute, so to speak, is something that we feel is not a good choice. If we had found the right camper, the campground would have been a good choice. For now, we are staying where we are and saving until we figure out what the right move is. Who knows? By the time we figure out the right move, we may have what we want for a down payment. We are not keen on staying here, but are not willing to take the wrong path. The right path will present itself when we are ready and looking for it.

In the meantime, I have ordered more seed for our fall garden. We are getting some peas, greens, lettuces, broccoli, cauliflower, radishes, turnips. We also have seeds already purchased for beets, spinach, Austrian peas. We finally received our order for onions and garlic. We paid my son to move a garden bed as he is looking to earn a bit of money while he is waiting and we won't just give it to him. Since we are now not moving, we will be planting this week. We will be eating good. :)

Speaking of eating good, for our anniversary, we had smoked pork chops, baked potato and salad with home made blue cheese dressing. Which, by the way, was better than IHOP.

My son is off to take his driver's test this morning. Since he is 18, I do not have to take him. His aunt and uncle picked him up this morning to run him down there and take the test. He learned to drive at 14 and has been studying for the written exam for months, so I have complete faith in him that when I see him this evening after work, he will officially be a driver. Then he plans on going to his dad's house as they found a little truck that he wants to buy. I will be glad for him to have his license as I am getting a bit tired of him needing a ride all the time. Which I really don't do that often, it will just be nice to not need to anymore. I guess until he joins the Marines/Army, I will be trying to find odd jobs for him to do for gas money now.

It has been raining off and on for several days now here. Too bad I didn't get the garden bed moved sooner and all the seeds planted. The rain would have been great for the new plantings. The thunder shirt that we got for our dog has been great. It also seems to help to get him outside when it's raining since he won't normally go out then. Maybe because the rain gets on the shirt and not directly landing on him.

Too bad I have to work today. With the rain, it would be a good day to stay inside and get some stuff done. Oh well, more money to put into the savings bucket. Or pay my son for whatever work I can find.

So how did your week go?

P.S. Supper tonight is navy bean soup with smoked ham.
P.P.S. I am thankful that my son is finally done with his school and that he is following through with the plans that he has been making all year.

Monthly Maintenance and Rambling

This is our maintenance week. The first week of every month we specify as our week to make sure things get done.

We clean our guns(we both have our carry permits), we run down the generator and recharge it, we clean the filters on the air conditioners, ad nauseam.

One of the things I do is run some vinegar through the coffee pot. It stinks but does clean it out. We clean the filters on the air conditioners. We clean the fan blades and the motors. I wash rugs and blankets that sit on the back of chairs. We take this week to make sure that everything that needs regular attention gets it. We have found that if we set a specific week aside for maintenance, it actually happens.

We (meaning my husband) found the part for the mower. If we can find a bit of time that is drier, we (meaning my husband) will mow, hopefully tomorrow. Or just in the morning, wet or not.

As a random aside, it took my son all of one day to fall out of his pattern of getting up in the morning. He is back to his staying up late, playing video games and watching you tube all night(I do not provide the internet that allows him to do this any more. He downloads stuff when he is at dad's house, so he doesn't need it when he is home) He swears he has goals, but just can't seem to stick with them. As seems to be typical for a millennial, he thinks things should be handed to him without work. He has a short amount of time before he has to figure it out and go somewhere. It may be the Marines if he can figure out a few things, or flat on his face, because he doesn't get to just stay here forever.  I hope he can figure it out since I don't want him to wind up a failure, but I can't fix everything for him. He has to grow up at some point.

We finally got our gazebo put up. It said it could be put up in 30 minutes. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
It took us a couple of hours. It wasn't really hard, it was just that the directions left a lot to be desired. Now that it is up, we are glad for that and are looking forward to being able to spend some time outside in an enclosed space and try to avoid some mosquitos. And flies. And other creepy crawlies.

Someone set off fireworks on Saturday night and my poor puppy freaked out. There hasn't been any since then, but not holding my breath that there won't be any tonight. I am hoping that with time we can get him over the loud noise fear.

Another thing that we try to do every week is plan our meals. It makes it much easier to plan buying groceries and using the food that we have that is fresh. Less waste means less money wasted. And less money wasted means more money saved.

For me, more money saved means we get to where we want to go. I have wanted a "simpler" lifestyle since I was a kid. My husband was the same. It's not that we don't want to work, we just want to work for ourselves on our own land. Also, we want to spend our time together. I know that there are folks out there who actually enjoy spending time together and folks who don't. We are one of those couples that enjoys being together.

Last night for supper we had sirloin steaks (broiled - I am so glad for my broiler pan), beans and greens for my husband and I and green beans for my picky eater kid.

What sort of thing(s) do you look at to ensure maintenance of the things you need to take care of? How often do you change filters? Clean filters? Just in general check the maintenance and status of the stuff you own? Would you check those items more than once a month? What sort of things do you do weekly or monthly?

P.S. Supper tonight is roasted chicken and mashed potatoes.

P.P.S. Today I am thankful for air conditioning since it was so hot and muggy out today.

What did you do?

Ok. The weekend is over. It's back to the grind for everyone. Well, most everyone.

So, did you get anything done? Did you get some chores done? Shopping? Did you pick up a few extra items at the store?

We did pick up a few things at the store this weekend. We found some mushrooms on clearance at the grocery store so we bought what they had. Even better was the fact that they were organic. The price we paid for three containers of organic mushrooms was the same as one of just regular mushrooms. So we got what they had. I will dehydrate them today.

We also bought our tree for Christmas. Not what you consider getting prepared? Well keeping life as normal and comfortable as you can is also part of it. Just because you realize that you need to start getting prepared does not mean that you stop living life and be afraid of everything. That is part of being mentally prepared.

We bought more water this weekend. I cannot stress how important water is to stock up on. I have potable and non-potable water stored. Even if it's not the end of the world, water is still valuable to have on hand. We have twice now needed to shut the water off to our house while doing repairs and having this water was great.

We also did a little bit of research on pressure canners. I would absolutely love to have and All American Canner. With the price though, I cannot see that happening any time soon. I learned this weekend that the Presto Canner is safe to use on a glass top stove. That is what we have, and being able to use the Presto now is wonderful. I was worried that we would have to buy a propane burner in order to start pressure canning. Now I won't have to. And at around $70, it is definitely more in my price range.

My husband made chili yesterday. We make a big pot and usually have plenty for leftovers and to stick in the freezer for later.

We made our meal plan for the week based on the sales that we found at the grocery store.

In general, it was a rather slow, laid back weekend. We got out and enjoyed the weather as we all know 70 degrees in December will not last.

So, tell me, what did you do this weekend?

What Did You Do?

So, did you do anything this weekend to prepare? No, I hear you saying...

Well, did you go to the grocery store? Did you buy exactly what you need for the next seven or so days until you go back? Or did you buy a few more items than you needed? If so, then you prepared some.

Well, did you do yard work, house work, etc. to "Prepare" for winter? Then you prepared some.

Well, did you get out and hike or camp or do any physical activity? Then you prepared some.

We went to the grocery store and stocked up on some sale items. It is that time of year that there are some really good sales with Thanksgiving and Christmas coming up. This is the time of year to catch those loss leaders and really stock up. Don't know what a loss leader is? Look at the front of your local grocery store ad. See that really good, don't want to pass it up, deal? Like turkey for 60 cents a pound? That is a loss leader. See that ad for butter for $1.99? That is a loss leader. The store will lose money if all you do is come in and buy that particular item. What they are counting on is for you to come in and buy that "super" sale item and lots of other stuff along with it. Then they make their profit.

What would be ideal, is having enough stock in your kitchen to only shop sales and loss leaders. Are we there yet? Heck no. But to me, that is a goal worth having. To buy only when I want to! That is my kind of shopping. The more I save, the more I have. Or can have.

The more I can have, the more prepared I can be. If I save money each time I go to the grocery store, by buying the items I normally use that are on sale, the better off I can be. If I buy an item on sale, butter for example which I use a lot of, then I should buy it every time it goes on sale. Especially when it is a loss leader. Then I can put it up and have it for future times when it is not on sale. If you buy items that you normally use when they are on sale, why not buy a couple of more?  Each time you do that, you are adding to your stock. That makes you more prepared.

We also dehydrated some carrots and some cherry tomatoes that we bought. We chopped more wood for the fireplace. We bought some kerosene for the heaters. We made sure that we were caught up on laundry. We made a trip to Walmart (uggg I do not like Walmart) for the things that we couldn't get at other stores (at least for as cheaply as we could there). All this for life's uncertainties.

So, tell me, what did you do to prepare?