A beautiful day

And I had to waste half of it taking exams. Yuck!

It's about 50 degrees today, beautiful blue sky. I even opened a window or two. There won't be many more days like today this year, so even though I have lots of housework to catch up on I wanted to enjoy the weather.

School is going pretty okay for both Fidget and me. Nothing too over the top, just mundane day to day crap.

The last couple weekends that the boys were here we canned apples. They LOVED it and had a blast! We had to promise we'd do it again next fall--if only they knew!! We plan on having a garden next year, so if that works out we'll be canning a lot more than apples!

Last Sunday the boys carved pumpkins. Even #1 at 13 enjoyed himself. We have a white pumpkin--I had never seen a white pumpkin before. Is that some new crossbreed or something, or have I just been in the dark?

My One Money Advice

I've been tagged by Dawn over at Frugal for Life

Apparently I'm supposed to come up with one piece of financial advice...Hmm...

I would say, "Spend less than you make."

This means that credit should be used as only a last resort for a large purchase (such as a house) or in an emergency...a true emergency. No, needing a pair of blue heels doesn't qualify.

When Fidget changed jobs (about 8 months ago), we watched her paychecks for a couple of months. We traded in a vehicle for one that got better gas mileage, did some home improvement stuff, and basically re-did our whole budget. It worked very well with her new income. Except that her new income was falsely inflated by overtime which was caused by trainings and such. And we didn't take that into account. ARGH!

We are now left with a $1500/month gap between what we thought our income would be and what it actually is. If we had maximized the "spend less than you make" wisdom, we wouldn't be living paycheck to paycheck right now. Well...and if we hadn't racked up about $5000 in credit card debt. DOH!

In the past, I have used my credit cards pretty much every month: but I paid off the balance in full each month. So this whole ball of credit card debt is new to me.

Yep, I would definitely say "spend less than you make".

I can't believe it's been almost a month...

since I updated the blog. Things have been crazy nuts here.

Fidget's dad is now in the stem cell collection part of an autologous bone marrow transplant. The actual transplant is scheduled for December.

I dropped my poetry class (which was a horrible, terrible disappointment) and picked up an Independent Study--which has been taking me hours a day.

I'm still fighting with our NEW internet provider about all the outages. I'm ready to go back to dial-up. At least that was reliable. Slow, yes. But reliable.

The boys are all good, except #1's grades. But then his dad doesn't seem to think that grades are all that important...it's sports that count, don't ya know? Jesus...don't even get me started.

I'm reading like a mad woman, trying to stay caught up in all my classes. I can't remember a semester where I had so many damned tests. At least one a week in one class or another.

The dogs need a haircut, but since the last "rat" incident I'm putting it off. That and I don't know how to "trim" their hair and the average temperature has been in the upper 40s, lower 50s, and I don't want them to freeze. I did buy them jackets last year, but Fidget thinks they're ridiculous. ;-)

That pretty much ties up all the odds and ends.