And I am at work. On my lunch break of course...wouldn't want to waste company time.

It is a slow night tonight. Only 10 patients and they are all sleeping well. I am antsy about all the money I have spent recently but as long as I stay on track it should be alright.

I'm looking forward to my 3 days off. There is so much I want to do around the house. Of course there is no appt. to get to this week...I seem to only schedule those when I'm nearly comatose from sleep deprivation.

M. is headed to Chicago on Thursday and Friday. I'm going to miss him. I have finally gotten used to him being at home and now I don't want him to leave! Irony.
Just last week he was driving me crazy.

I have come up with a list of some things I need to get in the near future. These aren't exactly needs or wants...they exist somewhere in the nether regions I guess.

1. 2 bras (for myself)
2. 3 pair underwear
3. New queen sheet set for my bed.
4. 4 new bed pillows. (one for each member of the family. And then I will throw away 4 older ones.)
5. New pair of jeans (I have one pair that are way too big.)

Those are my top five for now. Of course I could name more things but these items are venturing closer to the needs list at the moment. Maybe each week I will get one item that way it won't seem like I am spending so much!

Well, I had blogged previously that I was going to gain 500.00 in credit card debt this month because my husband is ordering new tires for his truck.

It's not going to happen! The tires are still getting ordered but we plan on paying in cash by delaying the order until the 19th. Big huge relief. Still don't like spending almost a grand on tires but it's not an extravagance we can easily forgo.

My smallest cat, Nadine, knocked over the christmas tree last night. Broke 3 ornaments and the lights are all sloppy. Very upset with her. She is half siamese and is not the most loving girl in the world. Our most wild cat.

My spending througout the end of January is going to be tight and I will have to be extremely disciplined. This was a mega-expensive month for us. DH realizes this thankfully. We need to emphasize it to the kids even more though.

I have no idea what to make for supper tonight. Gotta go and think of something tasty.

Sunday turned into a minor spending frenzy. M. spent 21.00 at Buffalo Wild Wings watching the Browns get beat. E. spent 8.00 watching Twilight and C. spent 12.00 on a birthday present for her friend. Together, DH and I spent 85.00 at Best Buy and 55.00 at Lowes. The good news is our Christmas shopping is all done except for the Wii fit DH is ordering off Ebay tomorrow morning and a 25.00 Forever 21 order of Cami's, 2 scarves and shirt for C., E. and my cousin.

Then I have to wrap everything. I also have to put together my grandpa's present. I spent about 8.00 on a photo album for him and I am filling it with pics of all of us...all his grandkids and great-grandkids. All 5 of us!

Tomorrow is Monday and it is my "short week" at work. I work Monday and Tuesday and then I'm off for 3 days straight. My house is a mess so I am hoping to clean a lot this week.

Currently watching Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Pretty good.

oh! I forgot to add, Paid for Christmas 2008 ALL IN CASH. First time ever.

Total spent: $1,354

This does not represent true frugal living...I realize this. However, I have probably averaged spending between 3k and 4k on Christmas for the last several years. One of the major reasons my credit card debt is around 21k. It sickens me that I did this but I did. This is a good thing for me. Always room for improvement but I am happy with the results.

How long until doing an activity daily does it become a habit?

I have been increasing my "frugal factor" and watching my money/planning since the end of October when I started this blog. While I am nowhere near my ultimate goal of living frugally and my debt is still out of control, I wonder if my behaviors are changing?

Here is a quick rundown of my new behaviors:

1. I have gotten in the habit of using cash for all purchases.
Someday, perhaps I will be able to use my credit cards responsibly, but while they have these horribly high balances I know I can't use them. *(Emergency this month is necessitating utilizing appx. 500.00 on credit BUT I have gone through my bills and this will get paid off in January.)

2. I have organized my pantry/cupboards/refrigerator and they have stayed organized!
This is something of a miracle.

3. Together with my family, we have been planning out all our meals and the closest we come to "eating out" is frozen pizza from Walmart. (we love digiorno with the cheese in the crust)

4. I have my family involved in this process. Especially my husband. I feel like we are collaborators on this venture to rid ourselves of debt. He has been doing so awesome. He is even giving up his dream tires for his truck so we can save money.

Now, following are some things I want to change. Call this early musings on upcoming new year resolutions:

Have a designated place to put all my bills.
I am so bad about this. Half the time they stay in my bag and the other half they lay on the kitchen counter until I pay them. Need to fix this.

Organize my laundry.
This is something that is embarrassing but I am putting it out there. We live out of laundry baskets. The girls wear mismatching socks the majority of school days. They hunt for clean underwear daily. We need to get this under control NOW.

Get some kind of coupon organizing system. I may have to break down and buy something. I have coupons laying on the bottom of a side table in my living room. Yes, I have been using them but it looks a mess.

Clean my bedroom and finish ripping the carpet out of the walk in closet.
Organizing the laundry will solve a lot of this. The cats peed in our closet awhile back and despite cleaning the carpet with a cleaner at least 7 or 8 times it is still nasty and has a stain and it grosses me out!

So, that is all for now. I am slowly but surely working on a major list of 2009 goals and will post them soon.

Is that how the saying goes?

I took a step back today. Our credit card debt is going to increase by 500.00 this month. DH needs new tires for the truck and it is going to cost appx. 900.00. We can only gather about 400.00 in cash because we have Christmas and propane to buy. We will probably use all our Christmas money from our families to apply to this debt. We usually get around 200.00. sigh...just when you think you are getting ahead of things...

We thought perhaps we could last until January or February but the tires are nearly bald. I think I have mentioned before we live on the top of a hill and it is STEEP. Without this truck I cannot get to work and back home if it snows hard. I also cannot get the girls to and from school. Love my little Toyota but it's not great in the snow! Tonight it is snowing hard. First major snow this year for our area.

We bought our live tree today. Spent 58.00. I had budgeted 50.00 so went 8.00 over. Spent 2.50 and 1.00 on a few lights and hooks. The tree looks lovely. I will try to post some pics. later.

We used multicolored lights and red lights. It is a very tall tree and I know we have over 1,000 little lights on it! We took the small strand of white lights and wrapped it directly around the trunk so it looks like it is glowing from the inside. At least half our ornaments are homemade/homemade gifts. The rest I have collected throughout the years. I always visit pier one right after Christmas because they have such pretty sparkly ornaments marked way low.

Still have a few gifts to buy for E. C. is done! Her uggs arrived yesterday and her (free) IPOD is on its way. It is purple! I want one! We are "adopting" two animals from WWF. For 25.00 you get an adoption certificate, a pic of the animal and a stuffed animal. I think C. and E. will like that.

FIL and BIL are over tonight watching the Cavs game and eating vegan spaghetti, garlic bread and salad. MIL made homemade caramel corn and I have stuffed my face with it!

Have a nice weekend everybody.

Yesterday I had to be the "boss." I had to confront an employee who has been having job performance "issues." Not pleasant because I abhor playing the supervisor even though, technically, that is what I am.

Problem is, I would prefer everyone "like me." When I know someone is irritated with me I cannot stand it! But why?

This presents a major conflict with my job position. Working nights, I also have my own ward along with being building supervisor. We keep everything pretty low key but occassionally things come up that I have to address and I can hardly do it. I have no idea how to fix this. I don't want people to walk all over me yet I don't want to be the type of supervisor everyone dreads.

I just want to be liked. How is this money related? Well, I think this tendency bleeds into other aspects of my life. Like my children. I want them to be liked too. Hence the clothing and the grades and the sports. etc... I want them to always do the right thing so people will like them too.

Is this some kind of genetic defeciency? My grandmother is the same way but at the same time my mom is practically a hermit who could care less what people think of her. Maybe I am reacting to the way my mom raised me.

Maybe I need a counselor.

I just know yesterday was awful. Did I mention I also hate confrontation? Burying my head in the sand and pretending conflict and tension don't exist has always been another tendency of mine. This has exacerbated the horrid state of my finances. I used to be terrified to look at my credit card statements AND get my mail. So you know what I did? Nothing. I didn't get my mail and I didn't look at my statements until the mailbox door wouldn't shut and the phone kept ringing from bill collectors.

I have to get over this notion that life is like a happy cartoon. It's not. This is my dilemma I need to CONFRONT.

Thanks for listening to my ramblings.

I got paid today!

Amount= 1562.32
300.00 more than usual thanks to working the holiday!
So far I have paid my credit card and a partial payment to the gas company that supplies our propane. I will sit down and pay the rest of the bills sometime tomorrow.

On my way to work now. Spent about 20.00 today to get into the basketball game, popcorn and a frozen pizza for supper.

Thursday evening! Gotta work tonight and Friday and then I am off for two nights. Slept in 3 hour shifts today...two of them. Had to wake up at noon and take girls to Orthodontist. I have got to STOP scheduling appointments during my 4 day night shift stretch!! I don't know what is wrong with me!

Good news is that I only owe Mr. Metal Mouth $660. That means come March we are looking at an extra 200.00 per month to add to the unholy credit cards.

I can't wait for tomorrow night...C's first game against my alma mater. Should be fun.

I get paid tomorrow but get my paystub tonight when I go to work. I am hoping it has the extra Thanksgiving money on it!

DH is making pancakes and omelets...using what we have in the house. I have 1/4 tank gas left and that should be plenty to make it through Monday morning.

On Saturday afternoon when I wake from my slumber we will fetch our Christmas tree and do the whole tradition of decorating and dragging up the big plastic boxes of decorations from the basement. We are not putting up outside lights this year...I'm too cheap and DH is too lazy. I don't know, maybe we will tape a string around our front door. That's plenty easy and I can't imagine too taxing to the electric bill.

I'm going to waste some propane and take an exceptionally long, deep, hot bath tonight. Soak...

Spent appx. 16.00 today on cell phone charger, water and granola bar.

Yay! My insurance finally paid a $147 medical bill that I thought I needed to pay in full today. $147 more than I planned this month is a nice little cushion. I am just going to leave it in checking because we have a lot of bills this month between Christmas and paying for propane.

I get paid on Friday and it should include my extra money for working Thanksgiving. I have all my bills organized for this month so all I have to do is hit enter (internet) or write a check and pop it in the mail. I pay most of my bills online nowadays.


E. just called and is begging me to drive almost an hour so she doesn't have to ride the bus home from cheerleading at the basketball game. I do not want to do this but because I'm a sucker and feel guilty missing her game I'm going to go.

For supper we are having sloppy joes. Last night we ended up eating what we had in the house so I didn't need to go to town to buy spaghetti noodles! I was proud of DH for not complaining. We ended up having grilled cheese and soup from a can.

I officially have 45.00 left for the week in cash.(DH received 20.00 belated birthday money that he graciously applied to the household.) I spent 3.98 at Walmart at 2am last night for a chicken ceaser salad...tasy but expensive. I have almost a full tank of gas but now with driving far today and gymnastics tomorrow I will have to fill up as soon as I get paid on Friday...(most likely) I was trying to stretch that gas to last through the coming weekend but I don't think that will happen now!

I am also challenging myself to use what we have in the house the rest of the week and use as little of the 45.00 as possible. Tonight's supper is planned and all we need to do is get through tomorrow. I'm thinking omelets and pancakes for tomorrow.

I had been getting frustrated lately because it always seems I struggle to stretch my dollars, but then I realized I have not touched a credit card since the first week of September. That is three months of using CASH. In the three months I have seen my stress fall, my stomach aches have been way less frequent and I am sleeping better at night. (Or the day in my crazy night shift existence) Do we still struggle with debt? Absolutely. But having a plan makes such a difference.

Putting aside any modesty and self depracation, I am so proud of myself. This blog has helped in so many ways. It keeps me accountable and is a great venting tool. Thanks for listening all.

I had to admit that the last week or two I have been extremely disorgnized. Not with my money but with my house/car/belongings.

But everything sort of blends together doesn't it?

Because I never bothered organizing my coupons last weekend, I never made a shopping list, so I never went shopping for food except in those little quick spend too much trips...with the kids.

Now, it is Tuesday and I don't get paid until Friday and I have appx. $25 left for the rest of the week. This would be NO BIG DEAL but the husband is home so that means full out meals like his mommy used to cook him. (Excuse the sarcasm) But seriously! The girls and I could last all week without buying more food and we would not go hungry. But God forbid we actually use what we have in the house!

I had to get that out.

We have one jar of spaghetti sauce but no noodles so it looks like I will have to drive all the way to town for spaghetti noodles. Frustrating! He hasn't traveled in at least 2 weeks and it is starting to get to me. He is home ALL DAY LONG. Sits up there working in his office and just hearing him move sometimes makes me antsy.

I don't know why he is getting on my nerves so much but he is.

I'm edgy this week.

What a long, cold and sad day it has been. C. and I went to the calling hours. I guess people have more strength than they know. The girls parents were standing by the casket hugging, crying and talking to people as they passed by. They were playing the girls favorite songs, hip hop, pop, rock, and they had all sorts of scrapbooks and collages of her life.

C. did well. She is not one to cry in public but when she got in the car the tears came.

I didn't make supper tonight and my energy is low. I guess we will survive on cereal and ice cream tonight. Thank goodness I don't have to go to work until tomorrow. I hope my some of my energy returns by then.

I found 40 cents in the couch that I will add to my challenge money bringing the total to 68 cents. I might do a dance if I ever reach $1.

In a few hours my oldest daughter and I will be attending a calling hours for an 18 year old girl that died on Thanksgiving in a car wreck. Actually, I am debating whether or not to go with C. as she is meeting other cheerleaders there. She is a cheerleader with the sister of the victim.

I am not close with the family and have only spoken with the mother a few times. My best friend died in a car accident when we were 16 and this brings that back. I don't know if I can go or not. I am afraid I will start crying.

My heart is breaking for this girls family. How devastating, horrible and unfair it is to lose your 18 year old daughter. I don't know if I could go on.

I told C. that this would be different than any other calling hours she had ever been to. She has only attended 2 that she remembers and these were for very old relatives. Not to say their deaths were not sad but they were in their eighties. It is different when it is an 18 year old. Just saying that makes me shake.

This isn't money related but it's consuming my thoughts this afternoon so I just needed to get it out.