We don’t do a LOT of socializing and play dates, but we accept 2-3 birthday invitations a year from JB’s classmates. In some, the whole class is invited for a big bash at some place that caters to kids, which is probably at least a few hundred dollars, and for some, it’s just a family affair with a small group of classmates but still far fancier than any birthday party that we’ve had for ourselves in the past ten years.
Either way, they’ve got JB thinking about all the kids that ze wants to invite to zir party. Um … what party? We weren’t planning on doing any real parties for a while, our house still isn’t in any shape for that kind of entertaining. The indoors is simply too small to have more than 7 adults and 2 kids at one time, comfortably.
One day, the yard might be perhaps, but zir birthday is also not in September in those few weeks of the year that may be reliably counted on for warm weather and thus suitable for an outdoor / backyard fun thing. If it were, we’d reserve a BBQ at the local parks and let the kids run wild for not too much money there. But it’s not. I’m pondering what kind of compromise would make sense for a fun birthday that doesn’t cost $300 and a quarter of my brain. It’s not around the corner but if I don’t think now, nothing will happen by the time zir birthday arrives. I know me.
I’m always in favor of tacos again but then again, when am I not in favor of tacos?
We are living in particularly stressful times. 2018 is even worse than 2017. GRAND.
I knew things wouldn’t be easy as we got older but as I told a friend, I never fathomed that we could be spending our middle years (ish) fighting the rise of fascism in America.
And even if we weren’t, living as a responsible adult and parent means that stress is a natural part of our lives. We have to have healthy coping mechanisms, and we have to be able to reset to neutral or happy, or we’ll never make it.
Here are a few things I do.
All things in moderation. I have a sweet tooth but the myriad of carbohydrates that would normally take care of it are now out of bounds. Now I rely on a package of Immaculate brand gluten free cookies, bought on sale. I used to think of this as cheating but that was unenlightened me. A lot of the time, I only want a couple of cookies. Mixing up a full batch is just too much trouble, but pulling out two cookies? Perfect. Which leads me to….
3 cookies. 2 for now and 1 for later. I’ve developed a little ritual of baking 3 cookies from my break apart cookies pack once a week when things are particularly tough. Two get eaten with lunch on that day, and the other one is for the next day.
I left off the weekly updates after the first six weeks of the trial but I’m going to keep on with a few monthly reports for posterity and discussion.
Meal winners
Rice pasta with ground turkey, marinara sauce, topped with mozzarella. Broccoli on the side.
Coconut rice and baked tilapia
Chicken and tofu masala, coconut rice. Palak paneer and lamb curry from a box on the side.
White corn tortilla quesadillas – ALL HAIL white corn tortillas! Soft like flour tortillas but none of the gluten.
Turkey and cheese enchiladas for dinner. The sauce packet says to make four, I made 15. It stretched!
Gluten free three cheese pizza crust topped with fresh red bell peppers, sweet Vidalia onions, 1/3 lbs of sweet Italian sausage. And of course sauce (from a jar this time) and shredded mozzarella (bought in bulk from Costco). Pretty darn good!
CPK’s cauliflower crust pizza, though not at all economical, was pretty good too.
Grilled pork loin chops, pan fried cauliflower with a touch of salt, garlic mashed potatoes.
Cottage pie with sour cream mashed potatoes, and mozzarella on top
Meal losers
Nothing this time! Those horrible snickerdoodles are finally done and gone though. Thank goodness. The Trader Joe’s snickerdoodles are a little bit better but still not really winners for my palate. The Trader Joe’s fake Oreos are even worse than the snickerdoodles by a small margin.
Micro-income 1. I complained to Comcast about their scheduling maintenance during the work day but not bothering to warn us about it, and they credited my account on request. For 2 cents. Wow.
Micro-income 2. I don’t do much with MTurk now but occasionally they’ll email me to do the odd survey. $0.50. 😀
I first heard of this money management tool called HoneyMoney from J. Money some while ago and it described a system that’s very similar to what I put together for ourselves.
It’s awesome that someone out there’s thinking along the same lines and providing this as a service for people who don’t want to have to re-invent the budgeting wheel. I signed up for a free 30-day trial of this service to see how close it comes to meeting my personal needfs and to share with you in case you’ve been looking for something like this. Let’s dive in…
STEP ONE: Entering accounts
This is all manual! I love that. My current system is all manual. I don’t want to link my accounts to any site for importing. Once upon a time, I loved Yodlee, and then it got old and crochety. I moved to Mint. That worked for a hot minute and then it stopped being useful.
It’s prone to connection errors. It’s prone to getting confused about the data. It keeps giving me “I can’t connect to MAKIN’ YOU BATTY account, please try logging in again to confirm your credentials.”
It’s all a waste of my time! Plus with all the data breaches, I don’t want any other institutions to have access to my account log ins anymore. I’m over it. Out with the account monitoring, in with the manual inputs!
This week is all about avoiding cross contamination: cooking in separate pans, using different utensils and plates where we would normally share to cut down on dishes.
I’m not a fan of the extra dishes to wash but I’m also trying to make the most of this trial and we do have a dishwasher so we can handle it.
As I mentioned to Linda, we’re doing more substitutions now than we may later in part because we’re trying to preserve some of our easy go-to recipes but I can see that changing over time as I learn new recipes and adjust them to our lifestyle and time constraints. I adore rice myself and grew up eating it for every meal so I have no issues going to a mostly-rice based diet but the family is going to need a bit of time to adjust with me. (more…)
I let PiC pick my new phone because he wasn’t really picking for me – he was picking his future phone. I have to learn to use whatever phones we get first so that I can troubleshoot them because I am IT, and I don’t much care about which phones we use as long as they’re functional and not Apple, now. (I refuse to give Apple any more money on principle. I find their confession to throttling older phones, and their excuse, to be fishy. Also, I HATE iTunes and iCloud and all the proprietary, frustrating as all get out software, and Apple ID, with a hot fiery passion and never want to have to see it again. Ever.)
Then again, since he inherits my now “old” phone which has quite a lot of use left in it, I’m destined to spend a few more years with them.
He was debating the Google Pixel and the Samsung Galaxy, and I decided in favor of the Pixel 2 since I would like the option to go to Project Fi in the future to save on monthly costs. We’re still getting service from T-Mobile but we’re paying more than I want to for cell service.
I don’t like buying new phones but it was originally to give us some flexibility as to our phone plans earlier on. Now, while I’m happy to sell our old phones, I am doubtful about buying used/refurbished – what if we get a lemon? Transferring phones is already a colossal PITA buying new, is buying used another layer of risk? Maybe no more than it is with a car which we DO believe in buying used.
I need to hunt down a verified reliable source for refurbished phones for the future. This time we simply didn’t have the luxury of waiting because his phone suddenly made the acquaintance of a large rock with extreme force and prejudice. Actual chunks of the screen were falling out when he got home from that run. Given the choice, I’d prefer that he temporarily lost it again but clearly the choice wasn’t mine.
Quick review: The phone is fine, though too big for my hands, but I HATE the Android WordPress app. It’s so bad that I’ve stopped blogging on it so that’s going to seriously slow down or cut into my blogging.
I left off the weekly updates after the 
On Money
Week 5