At a loss for words...

...and I just don't know what to write about! I'm just doing my best to try and keep up with everything and nothing exciting is going on.

I was going to take a picture of the disaster area that is my kitchen. There are dirty dishes everywhere, and I mean EVERYWHERE!! I was going to show you that I am not perfect, no where near it! HA! But, my camera batteries are dead and I don't have any charged to put in it, so I can't even do that.

I am getting things done now, just slowly. Very slowly. I spent the last two days doing laundry (over 2 weeks worth!), hemming pants, mending things and going through a very large pile of unread magazines. If you'll notice, that was mostly done from the couch :) I have two more days off and I'm hoping to get the kitchen caught up and the office cleaned up. Those are my not-so-lofty goals.

Though I do have much more energy now than I did in the first trimester, I'm still dragging. I'm not falling asleep at 8:30 to sleep for 11 hours, but I don't have the energy to be up on my feet all day quite yet. Needless to say, this is not how I thought pregnancy would be for me. But, I love it nonetheless!

Food and meal planning has definitely been an area of slippage for me. Big time. Most mornings I'm eating cereal. Eggs just still aren't sitting right with me first thing. And cereal is quick, easy and delicious. I craved it big time for a while in the beginning. I know it's not the best nutritionally, but the way I see it, it's better than not eating, and right now those are pretty much my choices! We've been eating out quite a bit more than I would like to. And it's mostly just because I don't have the energy to think about dinner, and that I'm hungry, now! I'm hoping these few days off work will allow me to catch up a bit more with the house so that I feel like I can use the kitchen and think clearly in there. A cluttered kitchen makes for a cluttered mind in this house. I'm not going so far as to make a meal plan this week, but I at least know what's in the freezer now :)

Adding to the difficulty is that Hubby is working nights. He leaves before I get home most days when I'm working, usually by 5pm and gets home when I'm getting up for work. Which means the only cooking I'm doing for him is occasionally packing his lunch (he's actually been doing it himself, which amazes me!) or leaving leftovers for him. Coming home in the dark to an empty house and cooking is just not appealing, especially when I know it's just going to make more dishes to wash!

As you may have noticed, dear readers, I'm in a bit of a funk. I'm working my out of it, I hope. Tuesday is my next appointment. They should be doing an ultrasound. I'm hoping that seeing our little one will motivate me to get off my butt and do something!

Oh, and Merry Christmas :)

Strike That, Reverse It!

So, what's the only thing worse than planning leftovers that don't get left over? Anyone, anyone? How about planning those leftovers on a pot roast in the freezer that turns out to be soup bones! Ugh. And there's no way I can promise my Hubby and his friend pot roast and potatoes as he walks out the door for to have him come home to...nothing in the crockpot! What's a girl to do?

Pic courtesy of Flickr Photo Commons, from the Library of Virginia

Well, I am very thankful that there is a Kroger in town. At 6:30am I threw on some yoga pants and put my hair in a ponytail and went grocery shopping. I found a beef brisket on Manager's special for 6.66. That'll do. Dinner was saved. Not my most proud moment though. They at it up, and even saved me some. I asked how it was and they said it was a little dry. I'm not sure how something with that much fat cooked in red wine and chicken stock all day in a slow cooker can be dry, but whatever. I didn't think it was dry!

But, alas, there is not enough left for bbq beef for 6 people. So, I still have to rethink that. And I'm pretty sure my idea of chicken stirfry tonight will not be looked positively by the rest of my household (that's just Hubby...the animals don't really care what I make for dinner. Though I'm pretty sure Tex just hopes I drop some of whatever it is!).

We've got lots of ground beef in the fridge, I'll probably do something with that. Or maybe the cauliflower soup and ham that's been in the freezer for a few months now. Soup doesn't usually sound good when it's 90+ outside and so humid it may or may not be drizzling. But, right now I'm drinking tea, so you never know!

Menu Monday & Our Eating Habits

It's that time again already, I can't believe it! Last week flew by for me, and so did the weekend unfortunately.

Monday - spaghetti with homemade meat sauce. (I am trying Dreamfields pasta tonight, only 5 carbs per serving. I'm not exactly sure how they do it, but I'm willing to try it!)

Tuesday - crockpot greek chicken. (We did get to do this last week because we ended up going out on Friday for a birthday.) If I have time, we'll also have some roasted asparagus with this. But, we may be going to a movie with friends, so I might not get a chance!

Wednesday - crockpot Pot Roast with turnips

Thursday - chicken & broccoli stirfry

Friday - dinner at our neighbors

Saturday - leftovers

Sunday - homemade pizza (I've made one on a l0w-carb tortilla. It's not the same, but it works! Hubby doesn't care for tortillas, especially if they're wheat, aka "poison", so I'll make a real crust for him.)

For more Monday Menus, visit orgjunkie.com!

In case anyone is wondering about our other meals, it's really simple!

For breakfast nearly every day I have a sausage, egg and cheese scramble. I freeze the sausage into portion sizes so in the morning I just pull a puck out, defrost it for a few seconds and scramble it all up!

Hubby gets a sausage and cheese biscuit in the mornings. I've been buying a big pack of Jimmy Dean premade sandwiches from Sams for convenience. I feel bad about it, but he asks for them. Recently, however, he's been asking me to take the egg off b/c he doesn't really like the texture of the egg. So, I've decided to make our own. Each Sunday I will make up some sausage patties and some biscuits. Then in the morning I will just warm them up and add a slice of cheese! Perfect.

Lunch for me is usually leftovers or some kind of salad with seasoned meat. I like to make up a big batch of taco meat on the weekend and then just eat off it during the week.

Lunch for Hubby makes me cringe to think about. He eats out of the machine at work now. I hate it! But he says he doesn't have anywhere to put a lunch if he takes it and doesn't always have time to eat. On days when he doesn't have time, he just comes home and fixes himself a sandwich or something. I try to keep sandwich fixings around so he can. He likes deli meat and chips. For all that I try to make things from scratch and keep things healthy and whole foods, my husband loves processed foods. Little Debbie snacks, pringles and deli ham. It kills me. I am trying little-by-little to convert him.

My friends have often said "just don't buy it. If it's not there, he can't help but eat the good stuff." Wouldn't that be nice? My husband instead will stop at the gas station in the morning and get fast food on his way home. Or, he will just not eat. Most people will say that he's a grown man and let him do what he wants. The problem is that my husband has an ulcer. Not eating is not good for him. He doesn't care most of the time, but as his wife, I feel that I've done him wrong by not providing food for him that he likes and will be good for him. So I'm taking baby steps.

Wow, that was a much longer post than I intended! Sorry!

A little political

I usually don't delve into politics here, but this does a little.

I was listening to NPR yesterday and there was someone on there speaking about the healthcare debate. Dr. Atul Gawande equated what needs to happen to healthcare to now what happened with food last century. You can read a transcript or listen to the interview here, so I won't go into it too much.

However, his premise was basically that at the turn of last century, food prices were very high and about 40% of Americans' incomes went to food. As a result, the government tried to lower food costs through various methods and succeeded.

And now we're dealing with healthcare costs on a similar level. He believes the government needs to fix healthcare in the same way, with various small steps rather than one big overhaul. And I'm not necessarily disagreeing with that. My concern is that we don't address really what the change in food production did.

Food can be very cheap in the U.S. now, but is the cheap food really worth the money we pay for it? We changed the way food was produced and got rid of the "inefficient" lower-yield small farmers and eventually went to mega farms reliant on pesticides and fertilizers. Is this really a better way to produce the food for the nation? I don't think so.

Also, is there possibly some correlation between us being able to get cheap food that is less nourishing and more crap-filled (and yes, I'm sure that's a technical term) and our nation being less healthy and having higher healthcare costs? The healthcare and insurance systems are way out of whack, I'm not denying that, but we as a nation are a lot less healthy in general than we were a century ago. We might live longer, but we are much more reliant on meds to keep us going than we were then.

I believe there is a correlation, a big one. I don't have facts and figures to back it up, this is just my opinion. I think this is something that is gravely overlooked and this interview I think really brought it to the forefront, even if inadvertently.

Any thought?

Adventures in Aging

This weekend was pretty much a wash for me when it comes to gardening. My sisters Emily and Megan, a set of twins, turned 18 this past week and graduated yesterday. Saturday was their huge party and yesterday was the graduation ceremony. It was a lot of fun and I'm pretty tired from all the fun!

Megan is on the left and Emily is on the right. I can't believe they're all grown up!
Seeing them and all the other little siblings of my friends graduate this past weekend
really made me feel older. I'm really a grown up now. It's kinda scary!
CONGRATULATIONS EMILY & MEGAN. I AM SO PROUD OF YOU!!

I managed a few minutes of weeding this weekend, but that's about it. God provided plenty of water for us so I didn't even have to do that!

I did have a bit of a setback at work last week though. Friday, when I went to collect the coffee grounds from all three buckets, I found one bucket was empty and another had been vandalized. Someone wrote "YUK" on the lid. Very mature, right? I guess last Friday there was a sticky note that said "disgusting" and the week before that an email went out.

I'm not going to go into why I think these people are crazy. I honestly feel bad that they've become so far removed from nature that they think collecting coffee grounds in a bucket to take to my compost pile is more disgusting that throwing them in the garbage headed for the landfill. Personally, I think it's kinda gross sticking my hand in the garbage and feeling the moist heat come up off it from the grounds. I guess it's a good thing I didn't try and make it a true compost bucket! I'll just keep my little on at my desk and keep quiet about that.

However, my boss has decided we need to embark on a PR campaign for composting. I have been tasked with finding the most disgusting landfill picture I can find and all the gross statistics to go along with it.

Wish me luck and please pass along any info you can. I'll keep fighting the good fight and trying to rise above the 3rd grade politics, now that I am a verified grown-up :)
Happy Monday!

Adventures in flooding

Just to start, I want to say how lucky I am. My house is essentially on the top of a hill, or as much of a hill as we have in Swanton, OH, and this morning my yard was almost dry. My sidewalk was dry enough that I took old bread out to the birds in my slippers. My basement is a little damp with a small trickle going to the drain, but that's about it. And I'm very thankful. The park down the street, at the bottom of our little hill, is a lake. The baseball diamond is flooded completely. And this isn't the first time it's happened. The golf course in town is completely under water.

We here in NW Ohio have had almost 6 inches of rain in the last 3-4 days. Paired with all the water left from things thawing, we're completely flooded. It's days like today when you can really tell that this land used to be a swamp. It still wants to be a swamp, and it would be if we'd let it.

The baseball diamond, you can see the dugouts half submerged.

The golf course. There's a green just on the other side of those front trees.

More of the golf course, from the other side.

This is not a ditch. This is someone's yard.
Almost every yard off of the main roads on my way to work have spots like this.

Sorry for the blurry photos, but I took them while I was driving and didn't really "look" at what I was taking. I'm just glad I haven't put any dirt out in my garden area yet, it would just be a muddy mess! It's stopped raining today, but got really cold with 40 mph winds all day. Woohoo!

Arrggh!

God, please make Monday over. Amen.

I've given up my snooze button for Lent, and let me tell you it has been a struggle already. I'll keep praying it'll get better. For now, I just want to go to bed.

But before I do, I had one final happy thought to share. I bought some A&W root beer for Hubby at the store today. A 12 pack of cans was on sale at 3 for $11. Not much of a sale, I know, but the boxes had $1 off coupons stuck on the end. Okay, I figured that would be good. I just put the pop in the stinking fridge and the stinking lady at the stinky grocery store forgot to take the stinking sticker off!! So now I'll take they yogurt back and get my $1.

I have put an email into Stonyfield (thanks Sara) to see if they can tell me it was a printing error, but now that I have the coupon issue as well, I think I'll just head over there tomorrow during lunch or maybe after work.

Good night.

Menu Monday, and then some!

Just a warning, this might be a long post :) And, I know I'm late. It's been quite a long day. This morning a broke a glass while doing dishes, and it's gone downhill from there.

But, enough boring stuff. On with the menu:

Monday - Beef and noodles with broccoli and carrots (my own creation, recipe tomorrow)
Tuesday - Smoked Sausage Soup
Wednesday - Chicken Stew (still using chicken out of the freezer from my crock pot chicken!)
Thursday - Red Lentil Curry (Hubby won't be home for dinner, so I'm experimenting with this myself first)
Friday - Dinner at Nathan and Kira's
Saturday - White Chicken Chili? (I never know what the day may bring, so I may just throw this in the crockpot in the morning and if we eat it, we do, if we don't, it'll be for lunch).
Sunday - BBQ chicken pizza

If you want to see more of Menu Monday, look here for hundreds more!


This weekend 's little romp outside really made me want to start growing stuff! Unfortunately it is still VERY cold here and, although we missed the big snow today, I'm not sure there won't be more for us before it's over. Hopefully I'll get some seeds started in the basement under lights this week.

This big red guy prompted a little walk around the property yesterday. I tried to get a good picture of him and his two friends (another cardinal and a blue jay) through the window, but there's something that has been sprayed on it that messed with a coating, I don't know what, but it won't come off and it's screwed up the view out my kitchen window. So Kira and took a walk outside. I think we scared the birds away quickly, but I managed to almost get a picture of him!


And, not only are my strawberry leaves green, but I've got bulbs coming up! These were bulbs I thought were dead and gone. We have animals that like to eat bulbs around here, and nothing came back last year, and I didn't think these would either. I didn't mind planting strawberries around this light post because of that. Now I'll have to transplant these guys! We also saw some crocus sprouting and a few other small things. Hopefully the cold again today won't do any damage to them.


And just to end this wonderful day of mine, I got home to find this. I managed to get to the grocery during lunch today and pick up what we needed, which included some yogurt for me and for Hubby's morning smoothies. I got home and was putting the groceries away when I just happened to notice this. The date on the yogurt says Mar 05 07. TWO YEARS ago this yogurt expired. Now, I'm hoping this was just a stamping issue, but I'm not taking my chances. And though I'm not one to try and spread things, I think others need to watch for this in my area. So, I will tell you I purchased this at the Kroger on King and Sylvania and it is Stonyfield whole milk plain yogurt. Please just look for me. Thanks.

Here's to a better day tomorrow.

A great day!

Since I rambled here about how much I despise Sallie Mae, I feel the need to share my experience yesterday with CitiBank.

I have a credit card with Citi and, if you look back to see, I have a balance of over $7,000 on that card. It is one we are working to pay off. And the current interest rate was at 28.99%.

Well, yesterday I got two phone calls from them. I missed the first because I was in the shower, but got the second on my way home from work. The most pleasant person in the world answered the phone the make sure I was aware that I overlooked an extra $13 on my payment and to inform me that I was currently past due. I apologized and said I didn't realize my payment had gone up. We make an automatic payment of $250, so I didn't notice that the amount due had changed to $263. I inquired as to why it changed. He said something about "changes to the agreement" to which I replied, "oh, they upped the interest rate again, great."

He then informed me I could opt out if I wanted to, but I would have to cancel the card at the end of it's current cycle. I didn't have to pay it off, but I could no longer use it. This is a card I got myself and have had for a few years. It has a nice rewards plan and I'd like to keep it after I pay it off for emergencies and things like hotels and online payments, which I told him. I also said it would be nice to keep it without an interest rate of 30%.

To which he promptly said well, if you make your payment today to bring the account current I can give you an APR of 8.49%. WHAT? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Of course! And I made a beeline for the computer as soon as I got home and paid another $50. Plus, today at work we got a $100 safety bonus (before taxes) for going three years without a lost-time injury, so it's paid for too!

I couldn't believe it. I barely even asked to lower it and he did, just like that. Just because I whined a little. There's a lesson here folks, just ask. I was especially surprised when I heard on the news this morning that Citi is being helped out by the government. They're in bad shape and they still slashed my interest rate. Thank you Citi for a very different customer service experience than what I am used to. I thanked the gentleman and explained that I was impressed and really appreciated his helpfulness. What a day.

We also installed a new toilet in our upstairs bathroom. No more pink toilet, now it's just the tub, sink and walls. We went from a 5 gallon ancient beast to a new 1.6 gal Cadet3 from American Standard. With and elongated bowl and 16.5" height, just for Hubby!

The evening wasn't all rosy though. I managed to drop one of the flange bolts down the drain and had to make an emergency run to get a new bolt and a water supply line (we knew that would have to happen but were prepared to wait until today). I can't believe I'm going to say this, but thank God for Walmart. The only place to get plumbing supplies at 10pm. I didn't get a picture, but I will soon. It makes the whole room look better.

Saving the Earth

By boss left this little book on my desk yesterday. She wants me to go through it and use some of it's wonderful insights to create a green column in our newsletter, which I am currently working on. Great, I'd love to! But does anyone see what's wrong with this picture?


If you guess hypocrisy, you guessed right! The book entitled "100 Ways to Save the Planet Without Leaving Work" comes in an excessive paper envelope. At least its heavy paper and can be recycled. And it's printed in China. Yea, let's save the planet one backwards step at a time folks! Sometimes the world just makes my head hurt.

On a much happier and lighter note, Craigslist provided me with a wonderful gift yesterday. I purchased 3 boxes of various sized canning jars with lids and a canner for $25. Wonderful. Now I can finally store my beans in something and buy them in bulk! I can also start moving away from all my plastic containers. I will still try to pick a bunch up at garage sales, but this should tide me over for now :)

A battle rages

For all my frugality and loving of the planet, I do have some major downfalls. As a designer, I naturally love color and texture and design. I like it when things match and coordinate, and things that don't bother me greatly.

Before I was in the real world, I was known to have changed my underwear to coordinate with my workout clothes if what I wore the rest of the day was different. I have since moved on from that part of my life and I'm now lucky if what I wear to workout in is even clean, that is if I get to workout at all.

The reason I bring this up is that I have a dilemma: my coffee pot



My coffee pot was not used much until recently. As a move to be more natural and more frugal, my husband and I decided he would stop drinking a Monster (or two) a day and switch to homemade coffee in his wonderful stainless steel thermos. This has saved us about $35/month and I'm sure it is much better for him as well.

Consequently, the coffee pot that used to hide in the cupboard most of the time until weekends or sometimes when we had guests, now practically lives on the counter. This poses two problems. One: I don't really have room for it to live there permanently, I just don't. And two: IT'S WHITE!! I have all stainless steel and black appliances with stone and wood floor and cabinets and a black marble-looking laminate countertop. With a white coffee pot. Even my coffee grinder is stainless. The only other white appliances I have are the electric can opener (which I never use, only Hubby and only occasionally) and my KitchenAid (which at least has a stainless bowl).

Stainless frig, grinder, blender, etc. with the
coffee pot that sticks out like a sore thumb!

We even have a stainless microwave!

My stainless steel stove and range hood.

This bothers me to no end. I hate looking at it. Problem is it works just fine. It's no thrills: put coffee and water in, plug in and turn on, pour coffee, unplug and turn off. Simple, easy. No clock, no timer, nothing. I love it for it's functionality. But I hate that it's white.

The frugal and eco part of me is preventing me from replacing it with something that will match my decor. But the designer part of me is dying slowly inside. I try and clean it up and put it away every night, just to pull it out the next morning, but seriously folks, that's hard to do. I don't need a new one, it works fine. I shouldn't buy something made on the other side of the world with non-recycleable plastic parts and get rid of the same. I shouldn't and I won't, but it hurts.

For now, I'm getting by with treating it not so nicely - secretly hoping it will die on us soon. Oh the struggles of my life :)

PS, for anyone who feels pity, my birthday is early April and I promise to freecycle any still-working appliance I replace :)

More on dishwashing

I've continued my crusade into the world of washing dishes to gather more information. Last night's discussion with my husband as well as this that I got in my inbox today prompted me to post about it again.



Last night, I got home about 7pm, made dinner and sat down to work on my laptop in the kitchen. Hubby had basketball practice from 6-9pm, so didn't get home until almost 10pm. He called on his way home and I let him know he was the winner of the wonderful opportunity to do the dishes, yeah!! I was tired, cold and busy working. He didn't argue, which was nice. But I guess I get what I ask for.

He did the dishes alright. He filled the sink almost to the brim with water and then turned on the faucet to rinse EVERY SINGLE ITEM. I am not a rinser. We use Seventh Generation dish soap that is non-toxic and not overly bubbly like most standard dish soaps, so I'm not worried about us ingesting the occasional bubble. Our drying rack sits over our second sink, so when I'm all done, I take the sprayer and rinse the whole mess quickly. I also only fill the sink half way, if that. And then he stopped and let all the water out with the pan and skillet left from dinner unwashed. There's no more room in the dish-drainer. He's done. Which means I had to run another sink of water to finish those and a few others that were left undone. I also washed what I dirtied for breakfast, the crockpot and lunches, but would have left those for tonight otherwise. More wasting of water.

Here's some of the article:

Though it doesn't much resemble what's in my own sink, the face-off was based on washing eight six-piece place settings and six serving dishes. If you put all that in your dishwasher, you'd wash the whole kit and caboodle with an average of just six gallons of water. Four if you have an Energy Star machine. That's how efficient dishwashers are, and since it's hot water that's a lot of energy and CO2 emissions saved, too.

The typical faucet, on the other hand, flows at about two gallons per minute, which doesn't give you much time to rinse those 54 items and still beat your dishwasher. In fact, you'd have just 4.4 seconds of running water to rinse each piece (and that assumes you're washing with a soapy sponge instead of a basin of sudsy water). Which means that unless you can be pathologically miserly with your tap water, a dishwasher is the way to go.

In my world, I think I actually use less water to wash than a dishwasher would, especially since we would have a hard time filling it up most days, and I'd still need my pots and pans cleaned daily. I have to believe this, or it will eat me up inside. I'll venture to guess I don't put more than two gallons in the sink to do dishes. Add any rinsing I may do before or after washing, and I think I'd be pushing to use 4 gallons of water. Do I wash 54 items? Probably not, but like I said, I don't think I'd fill the washing machine up completely either.

But what do I do about my man who likes to leave the water practically running while he does the dishes, and by the way, gets it EVERYWHERE!?

I made a couple comments to him while he was washing last night, and probably got him mad, but it needs to be addressed. He said he doesn't care about the earth and tree-hugging and that garbage and doesn't like tasting soap with his food. I'm pretty sure he's making up the part about tasting soap...I never have and don't think there's even much of an opportunity to do so. I kindly reminded him that we also pay for our water, both what we use and what we put in the sewer, so it wasting money as well as water. No response.

What's a woman to do? Never ask for help with the dishes? Try and change a man who doesn't share some of the same beliefs? I've managed to get him to turn the water off while he's brushing his teeth most of the time. I guess it's a step. But this issue just bothers me so much!

Showing my green: garbage (and ferret poo)

Yesterday was garbage day. After going through the house and collecting everything, including emptying the vacuum, we had two half-full bags of garbage. One is from the kitchen and had other cans collected into it (bathrooms, etc) and the other if from the ferrets room. The bags are Seventh Generation and made of recycled materials. For the little cans I use either plastic grocery bags (though I don't have many any more) or biobags. Most of our "trash" is recycled.

Many people would say two half-full bags of garbage isn't bad for two people over a week's time. I know when I head to work on Mondays, I see a lot more garbage piled up outside of the other houses. I make a conscious effort to purchase items with minimal or recyclable packaging, and we don't use disposable items for the most part (though I still haven't found a viable replacement for freezer bags :( I'm okay with one bag of garbage.

However, that second bag bothers me. We throw away a bag of newspaper, recycled newspaper "litter", unbleached paper towels and ferret "droppings" for the most part. The occasional pop can from Hubby or food bag will enter in, but for the most part it's entirely compostable if I wanted it to be.

So added to my list of things I want to do is composting the ferrets poo. I found such a beast here, but I don't want to pay $100 for something I can make myself. I was already considering a worm compost bin for the basement for the winter months, but maybe I'll have two, or just the poo compost bin inside and continue to trudge outside for the veggies.



In my research on the subject, I've learned that it's important to keep the two compost materials separate, as the poo can contaminate the veggies. I don't understand it all, but I trust my sources and will be adhering to this rule. Ferrets are carnivores, even more so than dogs or cats, so their poo has absolutely no veggie content. The poo of herbivores like rabbits, guinea pigs and the like can usually be composted without the assistance of worms or anything, it's basically already compost itself! But meaty poo or that of an omnivore may need some help. I don't think I could convince Hubby* of just keeping a pile of ferret poo around all the time waiting for it to compost. But if I worked on keeping it contained and promised the worms would work quickly, I think I may be able to get away with it.

*For some insight into the tango Hubby and I are in regarding our lifestyle, I will explain a little. I am a get down and dirty kind of girl. I don't mind dirt, and love getting things done. My mom loves to tell how I once mucked out a chicken coop in July barefoot. Seriously though, those boots are completely stifling and there was no way I was going to do it with them on. Feet are easy to clean too! Bottom line, I don't mind getting dirty and doing what it takes to get things done. Hubby, on the other hand, for all his grunting, bearded manliness, likes things clean. He thinks dirt is gross, and poo even more so (I just can't wait until he has to change diapers!). He makes faces and whiny noises when he has to clean ferret poo, or if he has to clean gunk out of the pond. If something isn't straight-forward and easy, he gets easily frustrated and doesn't even want to bother (especially if it wasn't his idea) so I have to pick my battles sometimes. Which is hard for me since I'm the type to always want to do something, tackle a project and find a better way to make things happen.

I'm a problem solver, even if there isn't an obvious problem, and Hubby prefers the status quo. When we were house shopping, I wanted an old farmhouse that needed work and with some land. Something we could make our own and where we'd have room to be. I came to learn that although he said he was okay with that, he was not. When we walked into the house we now own, he wanted to make an offer after only seeing the laundry room and the kitchen. It was finished, mostly redone, move-in condition, on less than a quarter acre, and all completely landscaped to within an centimeter of its life. He loved it. We bought it. Now he says he wants to die there, never to move again. It's our first house, I'm 26 and he's 30, we have no children, and he's convinced we'll stay in the 1300 square foot house in Swanton forever.

I'm doing my best to make it what I want...but it's definitely not what I had in mind. At least it gives me a problem to solve :)

I am not my hair

I have long hair. I have had long hair for most of my life. I don't use much product in it at all, and only use a hair dryer when it's below 20F and I need to keep it from freezing in the morning. Then I only use it to dry a little, as it takes a full 20-30 minutes to get my hair even remotely close to "dry". My thick, healthy, long hair has always been part of my identity.

Starting in college, however, I started chopping it off about once every sixteen months to donate it. When I say chop it off, I mean 10-12 inches, leaving my hair about shoulder length. The first time I cried. The last time I convinced a friend to do it with me!


This picture is after the last time, June '07. After this cut I also discovered that my hair can be curly if it isn't weighed down by many inches of hair.

Doing the math, it's now been 19 months since my last cut, and I'm feeling the itch. It's long, it's full of static and since it hasn't been over 30 degrees since like before Christmas, it's getting a little damaged. It NEEDS to be cut!

I usually donate to Wigs for Kids or Locks of Love, but this year my friend and I will be donating to Pantene's Beautiful Lengths. I stopped using Pantene regularly a couple of years ago, but I think they'll still take my hair. So if you want to join in, let us know! It takes 6 ponytails to make a wig, and you only have to donate 8" of hair to this one (others are 12" or 10").

Short hair is definitely greener and more frugal. It takes less water and shampoo/conditioner to take care of your hair when it's short. It also takes less time to dry. And, we'll be helping women who need it. This comes from Pantene's Beautiful Lengths website:

Hair loss can strike an especially crippling blow to women fighting cancer. In fact, a recent study revealed that nearly 60 percent of women consider hair loss the most dreaded side effect they face when undergoing chemotherapy. Eight percent of these women are at risk of avoiding potentially life-saving treatment. Real-hair wigs can cost as much as $1200 and are often only partially covered by health insurance.

Donating your hair is a heartfelt and life-changing act of women's cancer and breast cancer support.

Our plan is to get our hair cut mid-April this year. Almost 2 full years from the last time, but I will survive :) Probably by the time I get it cut, I will have to be running with my hair down like a horse because it's too heavy for a ponytail, but it won't be the first time. Who's with me?

Gifts from the mailman

I use that title because my little sisters used to think the UPS guy brought them Christmas presents every year.

Yesterday the mailman delivered a very special treat, my Heirloom Seed Catalog! This is from Baker Creek and they do have seeds online as well. I just get so much more from a printed catalog...not the greenest option, but I guarantee this will be loved, used and recycled when I'm done :)



I spent my lunch hour today perusing all of the very interesting things and will be sharing it with my mother this weekend. I hope to have the garden planned out by next weekend. I will share when I'm done.

And while I was taking that picture with Photobooth, I went looking back at some old photos from there, and it really made me miss summer. I look so tan and thin and happy here!



As much as my potato soup tasted good today for lunch, I miss fresh fruits and veggies and walking outside and warm weather. This morning on the news, the guys said we got a total of 10.8 inches of snow from this last storm. From 6pm Tuesday to 3pm Wednesday. Add that to the rest, and we're pretty close to the record, set during the BLIZZARD of '78. Ugh.

At least I have my seed catalog now to warm my heart a little.

Adventures in Driving

Today was going to be a post about my oven-fried chicken from last night. But the en-ending snow has taken precedent and I just had to share these pictures from this morning. Chicken will follow.

This was my car this morning, buried.
It took me 10 minutes to clean it off enough to drive.
Yes, the snow was above the bottom
of my doors and yes, the area
around the car was shoveled out before
the snow. It's still snowing now.

This is what the road looked like on my way to work.
I know there is a ditch on one side. One of the
deep country farm ditches...but which side?

And the view out my window.
Really motivating for the 45 minute drive
I had today (usally about 20 minutes).

Sallie Mae Update

I just got an email response to Sallie Mae. Looking back at what I sent, I'd only fix the typos, I'm not embarassed by any of it. But, I was interested in what they had to say. Here it is:

Thank you for your inquiry and for your business with Sallie Mae.

On behalf of Sallie Mae, please accept our sincere apology for any unprofessional service you received while speaking with one of our representatives. We intend to provide the highest level of service and regret that your experience with us failed to reflect that commitment. Thank you for making us aware of this situation.

Your account is current. Your SMART Consolidation Loans are next due for payment on January 23, 2009 in the amount of 83.96, and your private loan is due for payment on January 20, 2009, in the amount of $243.16.

How kind of them to let me know I still owed them money! I paid yesterday, and printed out my confirmation this time. I hate to do it, I hate it! But it's the only way I can prevent this from happening again I guess.

An apology should make me feel better, but it doesn't. I know they're not going to change a single thing. Other people will have to go through what I did. And, I still had to pay the late fees. I still hate them.

Why I hate Sallie Mae

This is a message I just sent to Sallie Mae customer service. I owe them over $40,000 and will be paying them over $300 a month for the next 18 years, just in time for the children I don't have yet to start thinking about college. I can't even talk more about it right now, but this explains a lot I think.

I just received ANOTHER phone call from the automated person who likes to put you on hold and you get to wait for a person. I waited for 5 minutes and then got hung up on. I called back and spoke to the RUDEST person I have ever encountered in a customer service situation. I have been harassed by phone calls and so has my husband. Why has all this happened?

They payments I schedule online less than a month ago didn't go through. So I was late. As soon as I realized this I went online to make the payments again, which I did and they cleared the bank. After speaking to very rude people from collections and one nicer person, I was assured that my account would be noted as paid and we wouldn't receive any additional calls.

We we have been, non-stop. Apparently I still owed 5.37 somehow, even though I made the same payment I usually make, the same payment I tried to make on 12/19, before anything was due and would've been more than what I owed. Less than six dollars you say I owed, and I'm still being harassed. Yesterday I went online again, made a $6.00 payment. Today I AM STILL GETTING RUDE PHONE CALLS!!

This is ridiculous. You are treating a good customer terribly. I made every attempt to make my payment on time and every attempt to rectify the situation and I'm still getting harassed by the rudest people employed in customer service. I can't do anything about the late fees you assessed, even though I did attempt to make my payments on time. You calling me a liar and being rude. What happened to the customer being right? I'm not even 30 days late and you've been rude to me, harassed myself and my husband, interrupted my work day, hung up on me and made me cry twice.

Consequently, I will tell everyone I know my story and will be doing everything within my power to transfer the money I owe you somewhere else. I will be contacting the local news organizations as well with this story to warn others that you will do everything to make a person's experience AFTER THEY OWE YOU MONEY the worst it can be.

You can consider me a very dissatisfied customer.