My personal mountain

Usually when people talk about their personal mountain, it's in reference to a huge personal hardship they've had to overcome. Mine's isn't quite as existential. Mine is my debt.

This isn't something I usually talk about in real numbers with people. It's rather embarrassing really. I'm sure my husband would freak if he knew I was sharing. But I'm pretty sure this is for the best. I need to. If I share, it's real and I can be proud of my accomplishments when I've conquered this mountain. This debt mounted for two reasons I believe. 1) We went from renting to owning, which increased our monthly housing expenses by over $550, double, and didn't really change our spending habits. This doesn't even take into account the increase in other costs, like utilities, household items and the appliances we purchased. 2) Then, gas prices went through the roof and, though our spending habits did change slowly, we couldn't afford everything. With over $500 a month on gasoline alone, we were using credit cards for groceries and gas and bills got paid late. Now that gas prices are a little more reasonable, we're okay. We've also changed our health insurance plans, saving us a few hundred dollars a month. And now we've got a plan.

Other things have happened recently to set us back, like my car getting hit with MAJOR damage twice in two months (not my fault and no one was hurt...except the deer, thankfully) and a few surprise medical bills that amounted to over $1000. Oh yeah, and my husband's truck, which we still owe almost six grand on, keeps needing repairs for a few hundred bucks a pop! We're working towards paying it off. It will be slow, but I'm sure we can do it. And posting it here every month we keep us accountable, in check with the reality of it.

The recent budgetary discussion I had with my husband in regards to the basement issues was a very positive experience for us as a couple I believe. We BOTH realized how much we were in debt and we BOTH realized we had to do something about it. And we are. We've set up a plan and we're working on it. We will be reviewing everything together every month and working to the goal together.

So here it is:

• CitiBank: $7,126.39
• WAMU: $5,686.77
• Amex: $1,873.55
• 5/3 MC: $9,123.85
• BofA: $840.07
• 5/3 VISA: $189.65
• Kohls: $150.75
• PayPal: $161.15 (business related do to delinquent payments)

Grand Total: $25,152.18

And this doesn't include our cars, my student loans (more on that later) or our house. The good news is that the 5/3 MC and Amex are both the result of balance transfers and therefore have very low interest rates. The bad news in Citi, WAMU and BofA have all defaulted to the maximum 28.99%. As bad as it sounds, I will be looking for a way to tranfer those balances to a lower rate card. I don't want to open a new account, but that interest rate is just going to kill us! Hopefully we'll be able to see progress soon.

It's cold

I have a couple posts waiting, but I need to get the pics first.

Meanwhile...it's cold here! This morning it was hovering right around 0, and is supposed to reach a high of maybe 10 today, woohoo! Today will probably be the warmest of the next 5 days. Plus we'll be adding 3 more inches of snow today (to the foot we got this weekend) as well as four more by the end of the weekend. Spectacular.

So what does a budding gardener do? I'm reading more, of course, and starting to plan my garden. This weeks book is Root Cellaring. It was published in 1979, so it's a little dated in some aspects, but promises to be very informative for store veggies for next Winter. It's keeping me focused and hopeful!

Menu Monday

Today I am going to start putting my weekly menus up here as well, in hopes that it will help me continue to make a weekly menu! Hopefully this spring I can start adding in some fresh from MY garden veggies and herbs!

Monday (1/12): Veggie & chicken curry with couscous
Tuesday: Chicken Scallopini
Wednesday: Chicken parmasean
Thursday: Smoked Sausage with potatoes and asparagus
Friday: Pot Roast
Saturday: NA (we'll be out of town at a baby shower)
Sunday: hamburger gravy with mashed potatoes and broccoli

maybe someday I'll take pictures and post recipes for some of the yummier dishes!

Set back or motivation?

Yesterday we had a wonderful rep from Everdry come to look at our basement. When we purchased our house almost 2 1/2 years ago, the owners disclosed that there was a bit of dampness that would occur on the stairs leading to the basement only after a very heavy rain. We said, okay, it's a very old house (at least 125 years), that's understandable. The steps that lead down are actually all cement and used to be outside, leading off of a back porch.

However, since we've owned the house, we've more than just a little dampness and it doesn't take a torrential rain for it to occur. My Dad and I thought we had it figured out, all stemming from the fact that was used to be the porch foundation, was now part of our basement wall. He estimated we could remedy the situation, for only a few hundred dollars and about a weekend. Awesome.

Christmas comes and we want to get our tree out. Pull out the box (no one judge about the artificial tree, there's a story and it will come later), and the whole bottom is rotted out. This is on the complete other side of the basement from where we thought we had it figured out.

Now, normally this isn't a problem that would creep up on a person, but the people who lived here before us did a pretty decent job finishing the basement, even though is was a cellar at one point. The walls are all insulated, built out and covered with very nice wood paneling. There is indoor/outdoor carpet glued down on all the floors. And for all intensive purposes, it's a fairly nice, though tiny, basement. This prevents us from seeing any dampness that is behind those well-insulated walls.

So this leads to me calling Everydry, a wonderful guy coming out and showing us that we basically have dampness creeping in from everywhere and two different kinds of mold starting. Spectacular. And if we say yes today, we can get a $2,000 discount and have it only cost us a little over $11,000! If we can't do it now, the estimate stands at about $13,500. We just can't do that right now. So, we're waiting until next year, when we hope our financial situation is a little more breathable.

Positives are: We know what's going on, my husband's on board with me with this AND financially, which is truly a miracle I think, and we know how much we need to save and to not store anything important down there.

But what about my garden? They'll need to dig a trench all the way around the outside of the house, right through where I hope to be planting? Growing our own veggies and more will help with the money portion, but I'm worried. With Square Foot Gardening, you supposedly only need 6" of dirt and can create boxes with bottoms that can be moved around. This wasn't my original plan (having bottoms, anyway) but it might have to be. Oh well.

We'll just keep praying nothing drastic happends between now and then!

Scouting for Land

I'm planning on using the New Square Foot Garden method of gardening, because I have very little open space and because I know or dirt isn't all that great. I'm guessing most of it is nasty backfill (our backyard is mostly made of of a filled in pool).

So, in looking for space, I have just about two options.

This is my first choice. A lovely bit of wasted space between our house and the alley that is our driveway. This area is all held up by a retaining wall along the alley and is currently covered in what was I'm sure, very expensive, river rock. I'm hoping with a little reorganization, this will make a perfect space for about two 4'x4' plots for me to start with. We're hoping to relocate most of the stone and put something else down that's a little more comfortable on the feet and knees, or at least I am.

I think my hubby's a little excited about this because he gets to rip out some overgrown shrubs we have and move the rock over there. I think he's wanted to do that since we bought the house a few years ago.



This area is another option. I personally think our yard is a bit over-landscaped. I don't necessarily want to rip anything out, but all the beds along the fences and the house are, once again, filled with rock and very few plants. So I can build 2'x4' beds in these spaces okay I think. That might wait until at least next season though. I don't want to jump in too far and over do it.

But for now, all I can do is dream. We're supposed to get about 8" of snow this weekend, so I get a lovely reminder that I can't do anything outside yet. Next is diagramming and seed planning. Woohoo!

I'm It...

Sara at Hostage Negotiation tagged me to post my fourth photo from my fourth folder. Since I'm at work and almost all of the photos here are of garbage cans, I did you a favor and used my facebook photos.


This, I believe, is the top of my friend Jen Musbach's head. We're at the Lodge Bar in Columbus, the night after this year's OSU v. UM game. It was a lot of fun!

I don't know who to tag because no one but Sara reads this...I guess I'll tag Monica. She might get directed here at some point. Happy Friday!

In preparation

I have been reading up on gardening, etc. I love research and usually fully research something before I make a move, so I'm on my third book and I've got at least two more to go, if not three.

I also got some old pallets from work to use to build my beds. Now if I don't go through with it I'll have a pile of old pallets that my hubby while complain about. I'm in, totally. And I can't wait. I'll start planning soon, and hopefully have more pictures along with it!



Here's another from last year, hope you can see this one TresNinos! I don't know why you couldn't before. Maybe I'll send my mom over and see if she can :)

So...I suck

Since I haven't done this blog thing at all, I'm taking a new direction with it. I want to garden, for many reasons, and think I have finally discovered how I might get that done on my tiny, over-landscaped little plot of land. I will attempt to chronicle that journey here. Let's hope it works. For a journalism major, you'd think I'd find writing a little easier. Unfortunately my over-scheduling gene takes precedent in my life.

To make this work, I've taken on this challenge.


I've made a few resolutions stemming from this idea:

1. Anyone who knows me knows that I'm a bit of a picky eater. So I have vowed to try and expand my food varieties. I have already successfully incorporated asparagus and broccoli (covered in cheese or sauce) into my diet and, as of this week, have consumed green beans, barley, red beans and lentils without my body completely rejecting them...good start I think. I'm hoping that if I grow my own veggies, I'll feel too guilty to not eat them!
2. I also want to expand on my limited knowledge of preserving food. Having my own food to preserve will make it easier.
3. With a garden comes an assortment of lovely things, including compost. I want to successfully expand on my poor little compost pile. I don't tend mine at all, and it shows. So this year I want to maintain my compost pile and use it successfully to grow food!
4. Another by-product of gardening is a lower food bill. My resolution for this is along the lines of lowering bills, paying down debt and saving more. Our finances aren't exactly in the greatest shape right now, as are most of the country I'm sure, and I hope this will help.
5. Take more pictures to share! I have a very good point and shoot camera that takes wonderful pictures, especially outside, so now I'd like to share my visual world a little more with everyone. Here's a sneak peak of our pond...it's just gorgeous I think! I've also got some lovely flowers and unintentional mushrooms. So a good start I think!

So there it is. We'll see how this goes :)

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About Walgreens

I've delayed my jump into Walgreens shopping. I've been working 20 extra hours a week on a couple of extra projects for work (don't worry, they're paying me) and haven't even done laundry in two weeks.

When I'm done though, I'm there. And the store on this side of town isn't open yet :)