I hate being broke
What I hate even more is NOT being broke except for the promised checks that haven’t arrived. Damn freelancing.
The Orkin guy (who was awfully cute, I must add) came by to spray per the termite inspection we had and as I suspected, we have no termites or carpenter ants. But he had to spray because our closing depended on it. As I handed him the check, thereby depleting our account, which is unaccustomed to all of these weird expenses (I-beams, bags of dirt to put around the foundation, spraying for bugs that aren’t there) I thought, “Well, if I scrounge around for some change we can buy eggs and have pancakes for the next couple of dinners.” Then I would have winked at him since he was so cute and all but thought better of it.
I’d say the budgeting is due to poor planning on our part except that you know, the check has purportedly been in the mail now for the past two weeks. Last I heard it was DEFINITELY leaving the bank on Saturday — cross my heart and hope to die. If that’s true, it should be here tomorrow, I guess. Brett gets paid on the 15th, I should get a regularly scheduled check on the 15th, too. The movers are coming on the 16th and we’ll lock the doors behind us here by Sunday night.
My gosh, I’m starting to get all weepy about leaving here. Good thing I keep slamming my hip into the (new) counter top to remind me of why I want to move so badly but still. This was our first house — nice little house. We brought Madison home here. This house has been good to us.
It’s actually kind of good that we’re scrambling a bit for money here at the end because it’s helping create hostile feelings for this house. (I know it’s not entirely the house’s fault but you gotta blame somebody and it’s easier if you can target inanimate objects since they don’t argue with you about their culpability. Besides which the house did trick us into putting in I-beams we don’t need and spraying for ants that don’t exist. I’d say our hostility is warranted.)
Once we move I’m going to start Once-a-month (or maybe twice-a-month) cooking and I’m convinced it’s going to CHANGE MY LIFE. Way more than that bossy Fly Lady. (I despise the Fly Lady and her relentless emails.) But once-a-month cooking will actually mean we can stop eating out so damn much thereby making up the difference in house payments AND the food tastes better. I’ve always coveted a small stand-alone freezer and now I shall finally have one! (I’d be rubbing my hands together greedily except I need them to type.) To take my mind off of the move, I’ve been reading cookbooks and fantasizing about having neat rows of plastic bags filled with homemade goodness all nicely marked with a Sharpie pen.
Picture it! Brett comes home from work — I’m tired, he’s tired. Who wants to cook? Not us! But no fear — the freezer is full! And in an hour we sit down to a delicious, nutritious and frugal meal! What bliss!
The other thing I want to do once we move is start using the family Parsha postings with Noah. I’ve been feeling like we could all use a little more Higher Power around here especially since Katrina. It’s interesting that events that make you question the presence of a loving God also make you want that presence so much more.
Just wanted to wish you all the best with the move. It’s such an exciting time, starting afresh in a new home!
PS. How is Noah handling the change?
I love the idea of Fly Lady and have gotten some good tips, but sweet JEEZUS all the email. My God.
Good luck with the move!
I will admit, the whole “shiny sink” thing completely turned me off Fly Lady. My sink will not stay smudge-free, let alone shiny, for more than about five seconds. If I kept it shiny, I’d be so tired I couldn’t do the rest of the cleaning!
Also, thanks for the cooking link. I’ve been wanting to try something like that for a while.
You are right.
Your house is the one to blame.
It can take the heavy burden, especially with the new I beams in place.
In my minds eye, I can see your paper cheque sprouting little wings and flying directly to you.
I can’t get organized enough, even with the best intentions, to make meals for a month. And when I’ve tried, we become very tired of tomato sauce.
I did find that on kraftfoods.com they have a FREE magazine called Food & Family. It has amazingly simple recipes. Plus, there’s like half a dozen different recipes with Mac N Cheese as the main ingredient, which we always have on hand and my son will eat.
Once a month cooking is not really once a month cooking -
1 week to pick out recipes
1 day to get grocery list together
1 day to shop for said groceries and storage stuff
1 day of actual cooking
1 day of actual packing.
It takes closer to a week, but if you do it right, you can usually cook for 6 weeks at a time.
I do this with my baking. I make double and triple batches and freeze either raw cake dough or mostly baked cakes. It helps during the high holidays and in the summer when I don’t want to turn on the oven.
I hate being broke, too. I am currently job hunting, torn between trying to do the freelance thing and get a regular paycheck. I freelanced before my daughter was born and it just used to drive me crazy waiting for the check that was supposed to arrive by the 1st, but never quite arrived until the 5th, the 6th, the 8th. I hope your check comes soon! I feel your pain.
there are a bunch of websites about this — one i’ve looked at is 30daygourmet.com
anybody used any specific sites with recipes that are good? i’ve just made stuff up, and never gone as far as cooking for a whole month. i’ve doubled and tripled recipes to freeze though.
i too covet the seperate freezer. need to figure out where to put it then maybe i’ll get one.
You know, when I read that you were resolving to do “once a month” cooking, I thought, “she’s resolving to cook at least once a month, how amazing, someone else who cooks as rarely as I do, and thinks it would be an improvement if she cooked once a month” But then, I realized that you meant cooking once a month, but preparing a whole month’s worth of food. Hmhpf.
I also understand the regret about leaving your first house. I had a very hard time letting go the first house we owned, though I’d moved away from our rental houses without a single regret. Now, I was 7 mo pregnant when we left, so hormones may have played an important role. And, I dont’ think it was “owning” the house that made the difference. The difference for me was that we brought our baby girl home to that house. Even now, I can picture here there, sitting at the counter in the kitchen, lying on the slimy futon in the office. I’ll say my attachment went so far that I refused to allow my husband to put it on the market for another 6 months, insisting on just holding on to it. Friends and family started joking about how I wanted a “souvenir” house to remember my daughter’s babyhood by!
bj
PS: We did sell the house, and yes, it was not altogether crazy to wait to sell, given the good real estate market, and our crazy schedules at the time.