Trip to Tulsa and The Oklahoma Renaissance Festival

We went to the Oklahoma Renaissance Festival on Saturday. I was a bit worried about spending the money and where we were going to stay and all that. This is something that I've wanted to do for a long time, but after being a bit disappointed by The Four Winds in Tyler, I wasn't sure that I should do this. Besides the money for the tickets, we would need money for food and for tipping the people on stage and for a motel room Saturday night. Friday night's motel room in Tulsa was already paid for, or we wouldn't be doing this at all. And then I was worried about getting a room at all on a Saturday night. It is a bit of a hassle sometimes, if you don't already have a reservation (or better yet, have already checked into a room), and we didn't have either of those cause we weren't really sure if we wanted to stay in Muskogee or try to get part of the way home and maybe stay in McAlester.

And then there is my usual apprehension I have now if I go anywhere. If I leave the house overnight for any reason, I worry. The house wasn't as much of a mess as when I left last time, but still, it does make me nervous. But now I suppose it would make me nervous even if the house was perfect. There's always something that might go wrong while I'm away. Someone might break in or the plants might die or something. I just never feel comfortable anymore.

So, Thursday at about noon we left for Tulsa. We hadn't had lunch yet, and it started to rain about half an hour later. That's good for the plants (although I'd already tried to give them a good soak before I left), and there hadn't already been so much rain that I'd worry about flooding. We stopped for lunch when we had almost cleared the DFW area. We ate at Genghis Grill, which we had never tried before, though I've been to other Mongolian grills. I think that I might like this one a bit better than most, but on the other hand, it costs a bit more than I'm used to.

We were a bit worried that we weren't going to stay at our favorite place. We almost always stay there, because there's almost always a coupon. But we didn't see one right away. In fact, I started to panic that I didn't even remember the name of the place or which exit it was on. Without the instructions on the coupon, how were we going to find the place. But after stopping at the tourist info place we found more coupons books, and one had the place that we wanted for about fifty-five dollars (or about five dollars more than the company will pay, but the extra five bucks is well spent there). And we asked for coupons for the ren fest, and the lady all but laughed in our faces, cause she said that they didn't give out coupons for things that a lot of people will go to without coupons. I thought that was a stupid thing to say. Other ren faires have coupons and Six Flags has coupons, and it seems to me that even Disneyland sometimes has coupons. Anyway, we picked up a few things and left.

After we drove away, I noticed that one of the booklets did contain a $2 off coupon, but since I didn't notice that at the info center, I only had the one. I looked at other places for another coupon but did not find one. Still, two dollars off is better than no dollars off.

We got our room at the discounted rate for Thursday and Friday night. As it turns out, the jets on the hot tub weren't working, but I spent some time in the tub anyway. And they still have bacon or sausage and eggs for breakfast. This was a minor disappointment for what was mostly a good trip.

Friday he went to work, and I mostly stayed in bed and read a book. After packing all that yarn, I didn't knit anything. I was just too tired and aching, for no real reason that I could think of, as the drive was not that bad until maybe the last hour or so. Maybe it was the late start (not my fault, just necessary because of my husband's work schedule), or maybe it was the fact that I tried to get real work done in the six hours or so before we left. But I felt really bad and worried that it would continue and that I wouldn't even feel up to going to the faire.

After sitting in the hot tub twice on Friday and using some muscle rub, I felt much better on Saturday morning. Still, not quite a wake, I went down to breakfast and managed to burn a waffle. So I had half of a waffle and then spent some time cleaning the machine so that other people could have waffles. I thought I was awake, but it was early, and I forgot to spray the top of the waffle maker.

A couple of hours later, all was well, and we had the car packed and were on our way to Muskogee. We tried a few more times to get a second coupon, but we didn't find any. We got to the place at just the right time, got the best parking space you can have without paying an extra five bucks, and went to buy our tickets. Without even asking, the lady let us use the one coupon for both tickets. So four dollars off of about thirty. Thank you. And then there was a bit of a wait, and various people tried to entertain us. There's even a stage, but unless you are right in front of the stage, you can't hear whatever is going on there. But just other people walking through the crowd are funny. Some of them work there. Others are just funny people.

There's usually this opening bit about the royal family that I don't care much about. The king or the queen or somebody welcomes everyone to the faire and then they open the gates. After we went in we wandered around for a bit and debated about buying tickets to the Queen's Tea. By the time we'd made up our minds it was too late and they were sold out. If you really want to do that sort of thing you need to buy advance tickets online.

Okay, so when we were first trying to decide whether or not to go to the faire, we were wondering if the stage acts were any good and such, and then we noticed that The Jolly Rogers were going to be there. So that settled that, we were going. So first stop, the pirate stage, where we watched Cut, Thrust, And Run. Seems like they also shared the stage with The Jolly Rogers in Kansas City. This is an act with four guys pretending to sword fight. It isn't our favorite act, not that it is a bad act, just that we like Don Juan and Miguel better. (Don Juan and Miguel were not there, they were at Scarborough.) So after Cut, Thrust, And Run left the stage, most of the audience left with them. We thought that was odd, though a lot of people will leave at the end of a show and not watch the next one, in Kansas City it is usually the other way around, with most of the audience leaving when The Jolly Rogers stop singing and not stay to watch Cut, Thrust, And Run. Additional people came to watch, though not near as many as had been there for the earlier act, and that seemed to hinder their performance a bit. We were glad to see them, but it was all a bit quiet for them. At the end of everyone's show there is this bit of trying to ask for money and not have it be totally awkward. The Jolly Rogers solve that problem by singing this song about "pay me, you owe me, pay me my money now." This is usually a very loud song, but Saturday it was not, and one of the guys is just sort of leaning against the stage and didn't try to collect any money at all.

Weird.

Okay, time for lunch, since we did not get tickets for the Queen's Tea. For future reference, the fish and chips weren't that great (more cornmeal breaded southern type fish than English style fish and chips) and I did not care for the hummus either. And I don't remember either place having plastic forks, so when you run out of bread you can't finish your hummus unless you brought your own fork (or unless you like hummus so much that you'll lick the plate).

Then we went to see Bob the Juggler or Bob the Incredible Juggler, or something like that. We thought that might be one of the acts from Kansas City, either the bald guy with the bowling balls, or the skinny guy with the ladder. It was the skinny guy with the ladder, and he had also been one of the guys entertaining us at the front gate. Bob's a nice guy. We love you Bob.

The act following Bob's was an escape artist. We like him too.

There was a costume contest, but we just missed it. We would usually go and see the show with the birds of prey, but somehow we missed that too. And we didn't watch a joust either. I usually don't bother with that. The first joust I watched was great, not because of the show itself, but because of our section's cheer leader. You're supposed to say stuff like God save the king and God save the queen, which we did, but then this guy also had us saying stuff like the bishop is a ninny. Without that guy (or someone very much like him), I've mostly don't care for the jousts, so I rarely watch them anymore.

Next, we looked for someone else we had seen before the opening ceremony, and we found her. She one of Willie's Wenches. (Sometimes I'm a bit slow, and it didn't occur to me who Willie was until the next day.) So she directed us to the correct stage, and then we got lost because we went off to buy a drink (possibly at Bud's Root Beer, where you at first buy an expensive bottle and then get refills all day for a dollar or two), and then we somehow still managed to end up back at the right stage in time to see the show. And then after the show we stayed to watch Captain Thom Bedlam, who we had seen at The Four Winds in Tyler.

So after the show, I asked Thom if he was the same guy from Tyler, cause I suppose that I might not remember correctly, and that maybe one drunk pirate pretty much looks like another. But it was the guy from Tyler, and we said something like he was the best act at The Four Winds, and he encouraged us to say that louder, so that someone with him might hear us. At that point we insult this guy, who turns out to be the new part owner of The Four Winds, and he's sorry that we didn't enjoy our time there and gives us free tickets if we want to try it again next year.

For the record, I was mistaken when I said that I did not enjoy The Four Winds last year, cause it was 2008 when we were there, and probably that guy we were talking to wasn't involved that year. I am debating on sending the guy an email explaining why we didn't care for The Four Winds, which for us got off to a bad start when they didn't take credit cards.

Okay, so that was about the last show of the day, and we can't do much else but get more root beer and look at the shops. Not that I buy a lot from the shops, even when I have money. But there are a few things that I will always buy if I can find them, and there's the odd impulse buy here and there, and we always buy a few small things like incense and scented oil. And we hadn't bought anything yet (other than food and soda), and we found some incense and bought that, and then I had to look at Dragon Pets one more time. I think that I'd stopped to look three times. I wanted something that was twenty dollars, which I decided was too much, and there were even really cool glow-in-the dark dragons for thirty dollars, but I just could not see spending more than ten or fifteen dollars for a toy that I would just have on a shelf most of the year and only actually carry around with me maybe at another ren fest. But I took one last look, decided that the twenty and thirty dollar options were definitely out, but maybe the ten dollar ones were not so bad. There was a glitter blue one for ten, and a purple for fifteen. I bought the blue one.

On the way out I find the scented oil place. But I've just spent ten dollars on a dragon and I decide I don't really need to spend more money. Besides, selecting an oil takes time, unless you already know exactly what you want and are just buying a refill. So I skip the oil.

On the way out, a bunch of people sing to us. That was nice. I had already filled out a survey (and was given a ticket for one of the Halloween things in October). I doubt that I'll be there in October to use it, but just in case, we stopped to fill out another survey so that we would have two tickets.

Then we had to find a motel. That can be a hassle on a weekend, especially during a special event. I was all for driving down the road a bit, but I wasn't the one driving. He was tired. We stopped at a place he had stayed before and asked if they would take coupons (when we already assumed that they would not but you cannot get a discount if you don't ask for one). We were told no discounts, and that there was only one room left, and it was a whirlpool room, which made it $56. With the whirlpool (and the driver being very tired and not wanting to look elsewhere) that seemed reasonable and we took the room. Then we walked a few stores down the street and ate at the steakhouse, even though we mostly do not care for steak and ended up eating the chicken. And then it was back to the room to use the tub. This time, the jets were working.

On the drive home Sunday, we stopped and bought some peaches and some really tall pepper seedlings.

I think that there is one weekend left of Scarborough, but I don't think that I'll go. I am quite tired from the trip.

Size 8 Jeans

Okay, so I'm in Oklahoma in a motel with a hot tub and a nice breakfast. It is a short trip, but I usually go here if I can, mostly cause of the hot tub and the nice breakfast. I was debating whether or not to go, cause it is a bit of a drive just to use the hot tub for the one day, but then we realized that we'd be able to go to the ren fest if we added an extra day.

So, I am here.

Anyway, we tend to stop at a certain Walmart, because it is a good place to stop, and we usually need something anyway. I misplaced my belt and my black yarn, so I knew that we needed something. And while we were there, I decided that I'd about had it with the jeans, so I tried on some new ones. And I bought them. They are a bit snug, but they look much better, and I suspect that except during long drives they will usually feel better. So I'm hoping to break them in and be comfortable wearing them tomorrow.

Size 8 jeans. It just isn't right. In regular jeans I shouldn't wear size 8 until I got down to 120 pounds or so. And here I am close to 160 pounds wearing size 8 jeans. That's just wrong.

I'm a bit concerned about where we will spend the night after the ren fest tomorrow. Looking for a motel room on a Saturday night usually isn't a lot of fun. But we have decided not to come back here. It is in the wrong direction, and the hot tub jets aren't working anyway.

Mystery Meat

So, my husband is going here there and everywhere, but no place particularly interesting is scheduled, just middle-of-nowhere Texas and Oklahoma. I have been to middle-of-nowhere Texas and Oklahoma many, many times. While I maybe have not gone to some of these particular places before, there doesn't seem to be anything in them that I need to see, and we don't have tons of money to make it into anything really fun anyway.

And there's still tons of stuff to do here, and I usually get more done while he's away, so, I should stay here and try to get something done. And I couldn't leave for very long anyway, unless I make arrangements for someone else to water the plants, and most times the someone else doesn't do a good job with that anyway. But, depending on the weather, I can sometimes leave for a day or two without anything bad happening, and I did think that just one night away might do some good. And the schedule was written just so that he was going away for one night and then coming back for one night before heading out again for a couple more nights.

And this particular place that he was going for the one night was not that exciting and not that far away, but it did have a motel with a hot tub that we like, so one night there would probably be a nice thing, as I could really use a hot tub right about now.

Still, whenever we get ready to go anywhere, I start to get nervous, and I sometimes get so nervous that I even change my mind and stay home, or else I stay nervous during the whole trip and might as well have stayed home. So I was starting to get nervous and wanting to stay home, cause the whole getting nervous thing is worse when the house is really messy, which it was, and I have this fear of people coming in the house when it is like that. Not that I have any real reason to believe that someone would come in the house, as the stuff that needs to be repaired has been neglected for about two years now, and I don't think that they will suddenly decide to fix it anytime soon. But still, I worry about it so much that I cancel trips and stay home and do nothing.

Okay, so I decided that I needed to go out, even if it was just for one day, even if the house did look like a tornado hit it, because we needed to do the whole bug fogger thing. And I know that we had bought stuff to do that, just in case an opportunity like this presented itself, only the night before we are ready to go I cannot find the things. So, I decided that I would go if we either found the things or had time in the morning to go out and buy some more, or else if we didn't I would just stay home.

So we didn't find the things, but we did get up in time to buy more. So we put stuff in the car and began the process of fogging the house, and then I have no choice but to get in the car, cause no matter what you think you might have forgotten, you can't go back into the house.

Having gone to this particular place several times before, and having gone out in the general direction many times, we have this place that we like to stop that is a bakery, and we usually get jalapeno and sausage in a roll for breakfast, and then either kolaches or cookies, and then we look for discounted focaccia or beer bread. So off we went, and we got our traditional breakfast thing, though I'm trying to be good and not load up on cookies and kolaches. And we looked for the focaccia and beer bread, but there was none on the discount rack, and I did not want to spend four dollars each getting them at regular price. And then we noticed the four dollar bags of what looked like a six-pack of the sausage and jalapeno things, and six-packs of other similar things, probably roast beef. And while these are a good discount, somehow I didn't think it was a good idea to buy something that contained meat off of the discount rack. But we decided to get just one bag, and off we went.

And then there was the problem of where to eat for lunch. It was too early by the time we reached a certain bbq place, so we went on to the motel and got our room. And I thought that we would just get something cheap at KFC, only that one didn't have either the Monday special or the value menu, so we ended up at Whataburger instead. If we were going to spend that much money on lunch, we should at least go someplace one of us really wanted to go, and that is one of his favorite places. We bought him something for lunch (half of it went to waste cause he thought he was supposed to leave half for me, and I was just planning to eat one of the jalapeno sausage things), and then he went to work, and I stayed in the room and knitted for a bit. I also tried reading a certain book, but this part of the book maybe is going over my head a bit, and while I'm getting the general idea, right at the moment it isn't a real page turner.

But of course there was the hot tub bath in the room, and you can sit in it all day if you want to. In fact, you can turn the tv just a bit so that you can watch while sitting in the tub, so that you only have to get out of the tub to eat and such. Not that I stayed in that long, but when I got out I found that I had somehow managed to burn myself, and I have these two perfect circles on my back from all the time I spent in the tub.

The burns are not that bad, and I would be back in that tub right now if we were still there. I love hot tubs.

Okay, so then I was on the computer a bit, trying to decide what we would do on the way home the next day. I am always wanting to go to the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center, but we never seem to be in the area at the right time of year when we have time to be tourists. So this is the right time of year (not perfect, as the bluebonnets in my yard have flowers, but those south of us are mostly at the stage of making seeds), but about an hour and a half in the wrong direction. So that would cost gas and three hours of drive time in addition to the time and money actually spent at the place, and we decided against it. In Waco there is an exhibit of a wooly mammoth, and it opened to the public a few months ago, so we thought that we might do that. Only on Tuesdays it doesn't open til eleven, which would have left us just waiting around in Waco for an extra hour or two looking for something to do (and probably spending money for it) and also that would mean that we would need to eat lunch there (and the particular place that I wanted to eat lunch was more money that we should spend right now). Anyway, we were both rather tired already, which didn't make any sense as it was early and we hadn't yet done anything to get tired, but we decided to skip the whole thing and just head home (except for stopping at that bakery again). The wooly mammoth has been there a long time, and Waco is not that far away, and we can see him another time.

So, on to the bakery, where we bought sodas and again looked for focaccia and beer bread on the discount rack, and again did not find them, but found more six-packs of meat in a bun, though they were not marked and this time we could not tell just by looking which meat was in which bag. We made a guess and bought two bags anyway, so we now have about a dozen left, and he will take most of them to have for breakfast.

Anyway, we tried some that we were guessing to be roast beef, but they turned out to be pepperoni, and I rarely turn down pepperoni, so that was good.

So that was it. I guess it was a bit of a dull trip, but it was really good to get out so that we could deal with the bugs. So I will spend much of the day dealing with dead bugs, which I am much happier to do than deal with unwanted live bugs.

I might not be writing for a bit

Not that I have been writing a lot. I might go out of town today. Or I might not. I can never decide.

It's only for a day or two anyway. I couldn't leave for longer than that without making arrangements for my plants to be watered and such.

Anyway, I've been planning to go for about a week, and now I'm starting to panic. I tend to panic now every time I leave the house, but it turns out fine.

Okay, I've decided that I will leave or not leave depending on whether or not we have time to go and get one of those bug foggers before we leave. It is about time to do that again, and I was sure that we had already bought something for that purpose, but I can't find them now, so we will have to buy some more. Anyway, if we can do that I will go, so we can get rid of these damned bugs and not have to be here until a full day after it is over, and it won't smell so bad when we get back. If we don't have time to go and do that, I'll just stay here and wash dishes or something. He can go without me.

The bug fogger idea also gives me an excuse for not having finished washing the dishes and such, as I would wash them again afterwards anyway.

Okay, I have about an hour left. We'll see what happens.

More drama in the neighborhood

The neighbors are after me about the plants again. Not my neighbors specifically, not those people who live next to me and are the only people who should care what is going on in my backyard, just other people who don't like that I have wildflowers and ugly vegetable plants instead of a boring grass lawn. Anyway, someone has complained, and the office left me a notice that I have violated some rule, and that the plants must be removed from the fence.

I have looked around, and about two-thirds of us have stuff grown in and around our fences. Of the people who don't have anything on the fence, about half of them don't have fences, which is another problem entirely. Two-thirds of us did not receive notices about removing the plants, just some of us, mostly those of us who aren't friends with someone at the office or on the board.

I have read the rule book, and there is no such rule against growing plants on the fence, only that tall grass growing in the fence be removed, which I don't have much problem with. There is another rule about not allowing wild trees to grow (and a great many of these appear in fences and cause problems), and I have several of those to deal with, and most of them are in the fence, and if I see one in time to cut it with the shears, I do that. I have already done my part for the year, though I did miss a couple of things last year, which is causing me problems this year, and I will probably have to borrow some power tools to deal with that. There are more of these in the fence and too close to the fence, but so far as I can see, most of them are on my neighbor's side, not mine. To be sure, I have gone around again and cut what I could.

But the notice says to remove plants, not weeds and such, just plants. The plants include honeysuckle, blackberry, iris, daylily, and something else that might be grape. I will have to go and ask if I'm being instructed to remove all of those plants.

It is already too late in the season to safely transplant anything (even if I had a place prepared for that), so if I am being told to remove all those plants, basically I'm being ordered to kill all of those plants.

I'll have to get clarification on that later today.

I had thought that maybe someone would be reasonable, and I wrote a letter pointing out that there are no such rules to be obeyed. But they are sending notices to other people regarding other rules that do not exist, ordering some people to paint their storage sheds a certain color (which is not a rule, and again they are only ordering certain people), and ordering other people to take down structures that they do not like (supposedly the entire structure has to go for not having done something a certain way, and one cannot be expected to know that is a problem after watching management construct things that same way), while directly across from them an older structure of the same sort and similar appearance was not ordered to be removed.

There was a meeting, and someone asked me to speak, and I declined, but I went to the meeting anyway. I had thought that someone else was going to speak on the subject, and I would just back up that other person, as there are rules limiting the speakers to one per subject, and I am not good at public speaking anyway. I was upset enough already. Then we were all given a paper listing the police reports in our area for the last two months, with the nature of the crime listed, the date listed, and the address listed.

Line four was about a rape. There are laws that are supposed to protect the victims identity. The laws are a bit odd. If the victim does not want her name used, it isn't allowed, and public reports will say something like Jane Doe was assaulted. However, if Jane Doe was also robbed, her real name is used to report that. So if someone really wanted to know the victim's name, you could figure it out from the report of the robbery that happened at the same time.

So if I am reading this correctly, something similar was done here. Though her name was not on the list, and the exact address was not written on that line, the line beneath that was listed as "follow up report" and the address was reported.

Most of the people I spoke to are furious. But at the meeting he was publicly thanked for providing the information. I do not know the person attacked, so I cannot say for certain that she asked for the Jane Doe bit, but it does look that way since there is no exact address for the first report, only a reference to "the block of" where the report was taken.

After the meeting, someone actually defended this man's right to distribute information that is part of public record. And it is true that this is all on public record, though it would not be arranged in such a way that it seems to point to the address of the victim.

Some days I just really hate this place. But it is home, and I don't know where else I would go.

Trying to eat what is good for me

Someone I know is going to try going on a diet. He's ordered two weeks of frozen dinners, and if he eats nothing but these dinners and some snacks that are included, he'll lose weight. I wonder how long this is going to last.

About a week ago I had the place to myself and tried to do the dollar a day thing for a bit. I usually am able to do this and have both yogurt and a small cola every day. This time a few prices went up, and I had to skip the yogurt. Not that I've been eating the yogurt for a while now anyway.

But I must start eating right, and I would like to stop spending so much money, and I would like to lose weight. The one time I did lose weight (safely), I ate a lot of spaghetti with a lot of veggies. And I ate yogurt. And I ate popcorn and drank V-8.

I've been reading a blog by someone who is trying to eat on a dollar a day for a year. She's a vegetarian. Her plan is to buy a lot of basic stuff and then after she has the rice and flour and such she would spend a certain amount every week or two on fruits and vegetables. Since she's a vegetarian (and almost vegan), she doesn't have much else to buy that needs to be bought fresh and kept refrigerated. Sometimes she might add some tofu and soymilk. Everything else is kept in the pantry and possibly bought in bulk.

I am not a vegetarian. Last week I tried writing down what I thought that I should be eating (plus a few sort of splurges that I tend to eat when I am not feeling great). I didn't write down the cost of veggies, cause those prices tend to change with the seasons, so I'd never really know what that would cost until the week of purchase. Still, there is almost always something I like on sale, so I didn't think that should add too much.

I was disappointed that after I added everything up I didn't have much that could be kept in the pantry except for spaghetti, and that what I wrote down added up to more than sixty a month. That is with the new low price store that just opened. I'm surprised how much I take for granted that they didn't have. They have a great price on milk, but they don't have 1%, so if I buy the milk there I will have to mix skim and 2%. And they have a great price on eggs, but I didn't see anything like Eggbeaters. They had sodas, but no diet cola. No sugar free pudding mix. Other things were good deals, but not really great deals. My plan for one-stop shopping isn't going to work here.

Okay, so with the what I think I'm supposed to eat plan (which is not vegetarian but has one vegetarian meal everyday), I'm spending sixty dollars a month plus veggies (the thing that I'm supposed to eat the most of), and I forgot to add popcorn and V-8 (another thing that they don't seem to have at the new store), and this is before I go to the added expense of buying any special diet stuff or substituting stuff like Eggbeaters for eggs.

I think that I'm going to try this on Monday, for about a week (except that I'm going to see about getting free breakfast at Subway on Tuesday). We've already had junk food this week, and I don't think that we need more. But we'll see how it goes.

Monday morons--design a better DVD case

I have hated the DVD cases from day one. For some reason, most of them are designed so that they hold onto the disk so securely that you have to bend back either the case or the disk or both to get the disk out of the case. CD cases were not designed that way, at least I don't remember buying any like that, and CDs and DVDs are pretty much the same, so I don't see why they needed to be in differently designed cases. I assume that the DVD cases were made a bit taller so that they did not get stocked with the CDs by mistake, so that part made some sense, but there doesn't seem to be any reason for making the inside of the case different.

So now we have a number of DVD movies, and there are also many DVDs of television shows, and they will often sell a whole season of episodes together in one box. The box often contains a number of smaller individual DVD cases, or cases that hold two disks each, with one disk held on either side of the case. But lately I've encountered a design that is even more annoying, with one case attempting to hold seven disks. So this very securely holds one disk on one side of the box, and one disk on the other side of the box, and they are as difficult to remove as from any other DVD case, that is, that you almost have to bend back either the case or the disk to pry the disk loose from the case. But then over those two disks are two more disks that are quite easy to get at. The real problem then comes with the three disks that are held in place over those, or rather, not held in place over those, as they usually fall to the floor as soon as you open the case.

Last week I noticed that multiple CD cases, such as those that hold audio books, have a totally different design, and in my opinion, a much better one. The case contains a bunch of clear plastic envelopes held together, and each envelope holds one CD, or maybe it holds two CDs, one on each side. These can hold as many as twenty CDs, and the disks do not fall out as soon as you open the case, nor do they refuse to release any of the disks, and there is no confusion about which disk goes where or having to remove all of the disks to get to a certain one or any of the other problems that you get with having multiple disks in a DVD case.

Why didn't they just design DVD cases to be taller CD cases?

This is only a problem for me now with library loans and such. I've bought a travel case which holds 144 disks in clear plastic envelopes that are held in a three-ring binder, and most of my DVDs are stored there.

Sorry I have not posted

I have started a couple of posts, but then not finished them.

I have had the place to myself for a few days. I debated on going, but then decided that I could get a certain thing done better by myself, even if I did not get anything else accomplished.

You wouldn't think this would be something I would want to do by myself, but there just doesn't seem to be room for me and the junk and other people, so other people are out.

I told him that there would be a surprise for him when he got back. I didn't tell him I would be moving furniture, but that did kind of commit me to do something impressive while he was away.

It would have been better to clear away some space in the backroom first, and I did sort of try that for a bit, but I gave up on that about halfway through. Friday I needed to deal with the bedroom, thinking that I would get halfway and need the halfway point to be Friday night when I went to sleep. But I got to that point earlier than I thought, and managed to get the furniture moved Friday night.

Of course then most of Saturday was spent in bed watching TV. But I have moved furniture from one wall to the opposite wall, and also removed everything from another bookcase so that I could clean behind it and spray for bugs. And I threw away a lot of stuff. Now all I have to do is move three more pieces of furniture, clean under the other side of the bed, and throw away more stuff.

Okay, not even done with one room. But this is a big deal, that I was able to move the furniture by myself (should have just done the one piece and left the other, as the other piece had to be lifted instead of just dragged to the new spot, but I managed), and that half the room is the way it is supposed to be, and the other half should be easier (no furniture needs to be lifted, and most of the actual trash is gone).

I am about out of certain cleaning supplies, so I can tell myself I took a break because of that and get right back on it Monday.

So my husband came home to his surprise and said that is just how he would have moved things, if he weren't so lazy.

Anyway, after all the complaining about not having enough work, this week stuff has been added from another division so that he has six things scheduled. He is starting to whine a bit about stuff that might happen at the other division, but I am thinking that a total switch might be best. It might have most of the advantages of having a new job, without the stuff like losing our health insurance.

Today we will probably go out (though I'm not sure where), and then after lunch we will go to my brother's and watch Riverworld. While they are hoping that it is better than the last one, I had never read the book and thought the last one was okay. Anyway, it is a two-parter, which usually means that they have put more work into it than the usual SyFy movies. We will see.

Well, I did manage to do one thing yesterday. I made yogurt, which if I did it right should be ready to use just about when I finish writing this. I didn't do any special measuring or take temperature readings or anything. No fuss. I just decided to accept that everything done last time was correct and try doing it without the thermometer. If I'm going to do this on a regular basis, that is the way it will have to be. If I have to spend all day checking on it then it becomes a serious chore and I'll make excuses for not doing it. This way I'll have no excuse.

Also, after today, I plan to eat what I am supposed to for the rest of the week and compare that to the dollar a day thing. So we'll see how that goes.

Now back to the usual stuff, like whining about cleaning and such.

New Job?

Not for me. For him. He's actually going to talk to someone about a new job today. I just don't get why.

Things are not going well at the job, and everyone is complaining and everyone is saying how that they need to quit and find something different. That is what everyone is saying. I'm not sure if anyone actually means to find something different, or how much effort they are putting into finding a new job if that is what they want to do.

Anyway, my husband is looking, just in case, and occasionally filling out applications and such. So last week someone called to talk to him about a new job. Fine. They are going to talk more about it today.

I guess what surprised me was that they are still talking about it. The actual job that needs to be filled doesn't pay very well. Compared to what he made this year (and this was not a good year), it would be a significant decrease in pay.

I doubt that I would take this job. Not that I would be offered this job, as this is my husband's speciality, not mine. (Not that I have a speciality.) But if I were offered a job with similar pay and similar hours at someplace near this location, I wouldn't take it. Now, things are bad, so soon I will have to consider things like this (though I will not be considering driving to the other side of Dallas to do them). With this amount of pay, I would not be able to take care of myself if I were by myself. Usually, if a job pays enough that I want it, my husband needs twice that much before he's interested.

So it was really a surprise that he kept talking to this guy after he found out what the pay was. He can't pay the bills on that. It has been many, many years since the two of us were trying to live on this amount of money, and back then we weren't paying for two cars, and we were putting a lot of stuff on credit cards, and currently we do not have any credit cards to use while we wait for the pay to increase.

That seems to be why my husband is interested in this job, because the guy said that there would be more money after thirty days, and possibly he would then get moved to a different position.

I guess that I've heard that one before, and I just don't take such things seriously. That's just a carrot that they wave in front of people so that people will work this job when it isn't enough money. There's a raise after three months. This job isn't much, but we'll be needing a supervisor soon, and right now we don't have anyone who can do the job, so you might get it. So someone will take the job that doesn't pay enough and then keep it for a few months because they can't get their old job back, and then the boss tells this same story to someone else to replace the other person when he figures out that the raise is a quarter and that either there isn't a supervisor job or that everyone else has also been almost promised that same job.

So that seems to be it, that my husband doesn't care anything about this job, he's just been told that it will lead to this other job. I just don't believe that there really is this other job, or that my husband would be getting this other job soon. And my husband's idea of a raise and this employer's idea of a raise probably aren't even close.

I'm trying to stay out of it. Maybe this is really something good and my bad vibes will spoil everything.

Note to self

I just missed the plant sale at the botanical gardens. It was April 10th. Next March I need to remember to look into that.

Anyway, earlier this week we went to look at the irises and such, and that's how I knew that we had missed the sale, cause the signs for it were still up.

Not that I needed to buy any more plants. I think that I have just killed the last one that I bought, and another one is soon to follow.

Last week's dollar a day thing

Okay, so Monday's total was $0.79, Tuesday I got sick and had a total of $2.11, Wednesday's total was $0.62 (because my mom bought me a sandwich), and Thursday's total was $0.63. Plus I twice ate popcorn for breakfast, which I have yet to figure out what that cost, and I had a bunch of crackers, which again I'm not sure how much that cost but I think it was twenty-five cents.

I did not make the rest of the quinoa, only the third of a pound that I have already listed (which I got on sale so only cost $0.34 for what I ate the two days). Friday and Saturday I ate spaghetti instead. I know that whole grains are supposed to be better for me, but I really like spaghetti.

On Friday, my brother gave me half of his hamburger for dinner. On Saturday I drank most of the remaining orange drink, and I had spaghetti twice.

Friday
(?) popcorn
.14 diet cola
.28 black bean soup
.04 orange breakfast drink
free half of hamburger
total
.46 (plus popcorn)

Saturday
.16 egg
.04 orange breakfast drink
.14 diet cola
.17 pasta
.17 pasta
free asparagus
.06 more orange drink
total
.74

Now, I can't really figure in the little bit of oil or the sprinkles of Parmesan cheese or the salt, so I'm just not going to count them. If I count twenty-five cents for the crackers and another twenty five cents for the popcorn, the total is $5.85, or just a bit under the six dollar goal. But if the popcorn turns out to be fifty cents, then the total would be $6.10, and I've gone just a bit over.

In either case it doesn't matter, as my husband came home sooner than expected, and we went to Burger King. Now, I had already eaten my spaghetti, so I didn't need to eat anything myself, but I did go with him (and steal some of his french fries) and I ordered a very small Coke, which was a dollar, so that puts me at either just under or just over seven dollars for the six days, and ten dollars for the whole week.

You'll notice that my husband was only home for two meals this week, and we ate out at both of them.

So while I don't really think that I could live on a dollar a day for more than a couple of weeks, I can do a lot with that amount of money, and I can really do a lot with about twice that amount of money. But I can't do anything social (except when other people buy me stuff, or when it is just bringing homemade foods), and I can't do it at all if we don't actually stay home and eat what is in the frig.

In the past experiments I have had homemade yogurt, which I did not make this time, partially because I didn't think there was enough money left to do it, partially because some of the things cost more now than they did last time I did the experiment, and partially because the area of the kitchen where I would make the yogurt is currently a big mess and I can't deal with it right now. Anyway, I've been bad and haven't been eating my yogurt anyway, so I didn't see that it was totally necessary to have that as part of the experiment this time. But if I were doing it for real, for a long period of time, the yogurt would have to be in.

I had no dairy to speak of this time. I had planned to eat six eggs this week, but with the upset stomach once I thought ramen noodles would be better, and two other times I ate popcorn instead. Not the best of choices. And except for the sprinkles of Parmesan I didn't have any milk or anything made from milk. As a woman, I am supposed to have three servings a day, and I think what I ate might count as half a serving a day. The price of milk has gone up, so I think a cup of milk would have cost at least nineteen cents, and the homemade yogurt would have cost at least twenty-five cents. If you have those three times a day, that takes up most of a dollar.

I did not spend the whole week wishing I could eat a lot of meat (maybe this has something to do with being given a sandwich on Wednesday and half of a hamburger on Friday), but I was surprised how bad I wanted a pickle. (There's a song about wanting a pickle, but we won't get into that.) And olives. I want olives. Things like pickles and olives would add up, and I didn't have any this week, except for those on my sandwich and half hamburger. That would get annoying, to either give up little things like that or else have to make them part of the budget and have to count every little pickle and olive and pepper and such.

And of course, there's very little stuff like chocolate. I bought some clearance Easter chocolate, but I didn't eat any of it, it is saved for next week. I almost went the whole week without any, except that I took some asparagus to my mom and she gave me half an ounce or so.

There would hardly be any snacks, except for popcorn, unless it was something that came out of the garden.

I'm sure that I am going to go someplace for lunch. But later I will eat something at home and eat pickles and olives, and later this week I expect to bake something, probably cookies. I have had no cookies for more than a week. That's a long time for me to go without cookies.

The week so far

Okay, Monday I got a lot of work done. Tuesday I felt a bit sick and really didn't do anything except run a couple of errands. Wednesday I got a bit of work done, but not as much as Monday, and then Mom called and said she wanted to buy me a sandwich. Thursday, about all I did was paint some boards, which is some work, but mostly is a lot of time waiting for stuff to dry. Still, at the end of the day I am quite worn out, so the painting is more physical work than I am aware of while I'm doing it.

Tuesday, I went to mail the tax returns. I almost put the thing in the mailbox without a stamp (the census forms did not need stamps). We had stamps in the house, but they turned out to be old, and I couldn't find any that were forty-four cents. So I had to go to the post office. The machines were taken out of the post office, because they were getting old and they didn't have replacement parts for them. So I had to stand in line a little bit to buy one stamp from a real person.

I had to pay sixty-four cents. Apparently the envelope provided for the tax returns counts as an over-sized envelope. So not only do we have to buy a stamp (when you think you wouldn't have to since the envelope is going to the federal government), then you get charged twenty cents extra cause the federal government selected a large envelope. But I guess that it was good that I had to talk to a real person, or else I would have bought a regular stamp and maybe had the thing returned to me for insufficient postage.

On Wednesday my mom called and asked if I wanted to got eat something with her. She had a buy one get one free sandwich coupon, so I could have a free sandwich. Sure, why not. And it actually was a pleasant meeting, and she did not try to guilt me into doing anything or discuss anything that I told her was off limits.

My husband has not called recently. He sent me an email saying that the phone didn't work. (Odd that there was no phone but at some point there was a computer.) Anyway, if you are reading this, someone called about camera equipment and craigslist. I wasn't really paying attention, and I'll have to listen to the message again.

Here's my latest attempt at the dollar a day thing.

I was going to start Sunday, but I didn't, cause we went to McDonald's. I suppose I could say that someone bought me stuff at McDonald's and not count it, but I don't think it is in the spirit of the thing if it's my husband doing the buying, as it is the same money that I would be spending if I were buying something myself. The rest of Sunday I ate leftovers. So the dollar a day thing was shortened at least to six days, which would then start on Monday instead of Sunday.

Monday
.04 orange breakfast drink
.16 egg
.14 diet cola
.28 black bean soup
.17 quinoa
free asparagus
total
.79

Tuesday
.04 orange breakfast drink
.15 ramen noodles
.14 diet cola
.28 black bean soup
1.00 chocolate milk
.50 half a package of mac and cheese
(?) popcorn (I will have to look this up later)
total
2.11 (plus popcorn)

Wednesday
.04 orange breakfast drink
.16 egg
.14 diet cola
.28 black bean soup
free sandwich and coke from Mom
total
.62

Thursday
.04 orange breakfast drink
(?) popcorn
.14 diet cola
.28 black bean soup
.17 quinoa
free asparagus
total
.63 (plus popcorn)

Plus I have eaten a bunch of crackers, which I'm not sure how much they cost, but I'm guessing about twenty-five cents. But you can see that at this rate I'll go a bit over six dollars, unless my mom gets me another free sandwich or something. And this is for feeling a bit sick and spending an extra two dollars, instead of getting what I really wanted that day--pecan sandies, ice cream, and Chinese takeout.

Substitutions

Tuesday, I just didn't feel well. Not quite actually sick, but just not feeling right. At times I would think that it wasn't going to be so bad, and I might as well get up and do something. And then I would get a twinge and think, no, that's not a good idea. I'm going to get worse. I'm really going to be sick and I might as well get used to the idea and do something so that it won't be so bad.

I thought about what would make me feel better. Eating a whole lot of cookies makes me feel better, but that isn't really good for me. But I was thinking that I could make a whole lot of cookies out of this cake mix I got on clearance (not this year, and not even last year, and I still have lots of it left) and all I would have to do was add a half stick of margarine and two eggs. That would cost about fifty-five cents. Then I could eat cookies. I could probably eat cookies instead of eggs for breakfast. Maybe I could even eat cookies for dinner. I could eat cookies and still do this dollar a day thing.

But the dollar a day thing isn't important. I was going to drink less soda this week, have less sugar, and here I was thinking that eating cookies for breakfast might be the thing to do.

Probably not a good idea.

I gave up and went to the dollar store for some over the counter meds, and while I was there I bought mac and cheese and a pint of chocolate milk. So I have so far spent an extra two dollars that I had not planned to spend. And I think that I will just have to say that I've gone over six dollars and leave it at that.

I keep thinking of something I saw, maybe with John Hirsch, maybe in Taxi (though I really can't remember and I never did watch much of Taxi). Anyway, there is this man at a restaurant that he probably can't afford. And he keeps trying to make it work out that he can eat there. He keeps asking the waiter what comes with what and can he make substitutions. And then he ends up saying something really silly, like can he substitute another meatloaf for the sprig of parsley.

So I keep thinking that maybe I can substitute something and still only use six dollars for the six days. But I should give up on that. The chocolate milk and the mac and cheese did make me feel a bit better, and without most of the added sugar of eating a whole bunch of cookies. Spending less than a certain amount of money isn't really the important thing this week. Not being sick is important. Getting some work done is important. Maybe not ingesting a lot of sugar is important.

It may not always be that way. I think that if I don't want to do eat what I have planned to eat, I don't have to. There are other things in the house to eat, and if I really wanted to, I could spend ten dollars or so and go buy Chinese food, or a pizza, or ice cream, or something at a bakery. I could do something like that to make myself feel better.

If I really only had four hundred dollars to spend on food for the year, and I spent a dollar a day, and then I didn't feel well and went out and spent ten dollars, I could do that, once. I could do that a second time and a third time. The fourth time I wouldn't quite have ten dollars left, and I would maybe look around on the ground for someone's dropped change. The fifth time I would just be out of luck, unless I happened to find a ten dollar bill that someone dropped.

Anyway, I felt good again yesterday, but this morning, not so much. We will have to see.

And now I'm going to be sick

Of course I'm going to be sick. Whenever I feel like I'm almost going to get something done, something happens. So I'm not feeling good.

Okay, so on the one hand I have gardening to do, and cleaning to do, and I usually get more of that done when I have the place to myself, which is what I have this week, so I should be getting stuff done. And then I thought I'd do this dollar a day thing, and maybe I'd save some money, and maybe I'd lose a couple of pounds.

I think I got a lot done yesterday. I think that I might have done more, but the main thing that I wanted to do was empty and move a planter, which I did, so that's good. After doing that much work, I don't feel well. Doan's pills really do a lot for me, so my back doesn't feel like it did, but the rest of me still hurts.

Anyway, I woke up last night after only being asleep for about an hour, and I saw a few bugs. And I recently bought this "green" bug spray, which doesn't quite smell as bad as regular bug spray. So I chased away a few bugs. I'm not sure if "green" bug spray kills as much as regular bug spray, but it got rid of those.

And then I tried to go back to sleep. Only now there's this smell of "green" bug spray, which isn't as bad as regular bug spray, but still it bothered me a bit, and I couldn't sleep. So with the smell of bug spray and not getting as much sleep as I hoped for, I feel a bit nauseous.

So now I'm just mostly staying in bed watching Star Trek DVDs. Now I wonder if I drop the whole dollar a day thing and eat something that would make me feel better, would I feel good enough to go back to work and get everything done? Or, should I go ahead an ate what I had planned? It might be that I'm just not going to feel better either way, and I should just stick to what I was doing, go back to bed, and watch more Star Trek.

Another thing I could do that would make me feel better but would really not be good for me is to eat a lot of cookies. And, oddly enough, I could get some really cheap cookies and still spend less than a dollar. But that is tons of sugar. Here I had bought diet cola, and I'm thinking of making cookies.

Okay, I'll decide later. Back to Star Trek.

A dollar a day week

I found another blog about trying to spend only a dollar a day for food. Only this one is a bit more ambitious. She's trying to do this for a whole year.

Well, most of a year. She cheats once in a while. And, since it is for the whole year she isn't totally cancelling her social life either. If someone wants to make or buy her dinner, she will let them.

So I was going to do the dollar a day thing with her this week. I have the house to myself for a bit, and I should like to save some money, so this is a good time to do it.

Okay, yesterday before my husband left we went to McDonald's. I had breakfast off of the dollar menu, but still, that adds up to three dollars and tax. So yesterday doesn't count. I ate leftovers the rest of the day.

Okay, so I'll do six days instead of seven.

First thing I always do is make black bean soup. I went to the store and spent $5.13, $1.49 was for two rather sad looking onions. Onions, even at my cheap produce place, have gone up to $1.29 a pound. While I usually make twelve cups of the soup for less than three dollars, this time it cost $3.38.

Still, it isn't too bad. About a week ago I found some quinoa on sale for a dollar a pound. It is usually more like three or four a pound, so I bought ten pounds. I keep wondering if I should have bought more, but I had an image of greedy little me emptying the shelves, spending a lot of money, and then having something happen resulting in either me not cooking or the grain getting spoiled some other way, so I decided that ten pounds was enough. I don't usually eat the stuff on a regular basis. Maybe I'll get tired of it before the ten pounds are gone.

Where was I? Oh, yes, I've measured out about a pound of the quinoa, which cost me $1.03. And I bought a dozen jumbo eggs, after being surprised that the large eggs weren't on sale for Easter. The eggs were $1.89 a dozen, and I plan to eat half of them. And I plan to eat half of the soup. And I plan to eat asparagus with the quinoa. And I spent $1.10 on my special diet cola, and then thirty cents on some diet breakfast drink I got on sale quite a while ago but forgot to make.

So that's $1.69 for the soup, $1.03 for the quinoa, $0.95 for the eggs, and $1.40 for the drinks. And I'm getting the asparagus out of my garden for free, so that's $5.07. I don't know how to figure in a sprinkle of Parmesan cheese or herbs, but I should think that it would be less than the $0.93 I have left. I'll probably add something to this, like popcorn. And I'll make a note if I decide to eat more of the soup or an extra egg or something.

And, like the new blogger, I reserve the right to quit if I should win the lottery, become ill, or find some other good reason. And if someone should invite me to lunch, I will probably accept.

It is four in the morning

This is one of those times when it would have been good if I had the place to myself. I don't feel well. Not that I'm that close to being actually sick, just not feeling well and sleep doesn't seem like an option now. If I were by myself I'd pop in a Star Trek DVD and watch TV in bed until I fell asleep again. But I'm not by myself, so I'm in here.

I have just left the world's longest comment on someone else's blog. The blog wouldn't let me publish anything that long, so I took out all the extra lines between points and then also deleted three paragraphs on points that weren't that important (I can always go back and add them later). I was trying to be helpful while I still remembered what I wanted to say.

Earlier I had a weird dream about someone who looked like an actor. I think his name is Colin Firth. Only this wasn't really that guy, this was someone who would look like that guy, if that guy weren't an actor and didn't have to diet and/or go to the gym to get his next paycheck.

Okay, it is later. I finally did get some sleep. The somewhat disturbing images of someone who looks like Colin Firth are fading. I can get on with my life now.

Only now it is raining. I should have known that it would be raining. I checked earlier in the week and found out that it would probably be raining on Easter, so I had planned to do a lot of work in the garden before then. And I figured to be on the safe side that I should plan on the rain coming in on Saturday rather than Sunday. So I was planning to do certain things on Friday, thinking that it would be best to plant things right before the rain and such. I mostly took the day off on Thursday, except for buying those last few plants. Only by that time the forecast had changed and the rain was predicted for Friday afternoon. Still plenty of time for me to get things done on Friday morning.

Well, that's what I thought. It was already starting to rain about twenty minutes after I went outside. And there was actually talk of hail, so instead of planting things I ended up bringing stuff inside if it wasn't already in the ground.

And so it is raining, and I'm just sort of waiting around to see when that might be over. While it is raining, it would not be a good time to do my scheduled errands, as that partially would have been to go to Home Depot and pick up some mulch. Not something to be done in the rain. I might skip that part for now and do the rest, except for that whole thing about there might be hail or severe weather. Not a good time to be out doing anything at all.

It seems to have stopped for now. If only I had any confidence that this was the end of it for a bit. It just hasn't seemed like all that had been fussed about, so there must be more coming. I should wait.

Later again. I waited another hour or so, and the sky seemed to clear up. I think that it was mostly a beautiful day after that. We only got a little wet. It seemed to mainly rain a bit just to mess up my plans. I went on and got the errands done, and then I went to the dollar theater to watch The Blindside.

It's all good. It probably won't rain again today or on Easter, but it will probably rain Wednesday, so should get plenty of gardening done by then.

Inflation, and sad looking plants

I'm not sure how long I have been gardening (or at least attempting to make a garden), but it started sometime in the early nineties.

I was thinking how much more my gardening supplies cost.

Plants like tomatoes and peppers used to come in a same 4-pack. At places like Walmart, these 4-packs cost something like 2/1.00, 2/.88, or on rare occasions even 3/1.00. A packet of seeds from a company like Burpee would cost a bit more than a dollar. I stopped buying tomato and pepper seeds. For a dollar I could get about eight plants and not have to try to grow my own leggy seedlings on the windowsill.

For other plants that were best grown from seed, I found cheaper packets. I found places that sold seeds for a nickel, and several more places that sold seeds for a dime or a quarter. I bought a lot of seeds, just never for tomatoes or peppers, and rarely from a big name company, unless that was the only way to get a particular strain of something.

At some point I bought some small tomato cages, two for a dollar. Then I bought some larger ones for a dollar. Then I made some larger ones myself.

I can't find 4-pack plants anymore. For a while there were 6-packs for a dollar, but now they are closer to two dollars. Then there were the 2-inch pots, first 4/1.00, then 3/1.00, and now 2/1.00 when I can find them. 4-inch pots are usually twice as much if not more, but they are supposed to be bigger plants. This year I am finding a lot of 4-inch pots that just have 2-inch size plants in them.

The tomato cages that used to cost fifty cents or a dollar now cost three or four dollars. That just seems like too much to me. Most of the places that had the nickel seeds aren't around anymore. Places that sold seeds for a dime last year are selling them for a quarter this year. The big name seeds that used to be about a dollar are now closer to two dollars.

Some things seem about the same. The small hand tools that used to cost a dollar are still to be found at the dollar store.

Hard work has gone up, sort of. I think when I started my first garden, I was making about minimum wage, which I think was around 3.80 an hour. Now minimum wage is 7.15. But I am older, and the ground here is clay, while the ground at the old house was mostly sand, so everything is more work, and I have less strength to do it.

Of course, at the moment I have no job, minimum wage or otherwise, so one way of looking at it is that as long as I'm doing the work by myself, it is free.

Except for the cost of aspirin and muscle rub.


Yesterday, I went shopping for plants. I made a trip to Fort Worth and spent about twenty dollars. I didn't buy as much as I planned.

I used to buy from different places for different reasons. One place tended to have less expensive plants, another might have more variety of plants, and still another place seemed to have bigger healthier plants. So I would go to the first place and buy a lot of stuff, go to the third place and spend a bit more to get a few plants that were bigger, and then go to the second place and pay a bit extra to get a few more plants that I couldn't find at the other two places.

Okay, the place with the less expensive plants still seems to have the best prices, if they have what I want. But, like everyone else, they seem to have no cheap 4-packs, and less of the 2-inch pots than they used to. Still, they have the best prices on herbs, so I bought about ten. Last year I bought everything, thinking that I would plant a big herb garden and never need to buy most of them ever again. Except that most of the herb garden drowned last year, so this year I'm trying to be a bit more cautious. Still, the plants I bought were worth the trip.

There were two places that I used to go for the variety. One of them is still quite good, but it is quite a drive, and I usually end up spending too much money there, and sometimes I buy too much and end up not having enough space for the plants and seeds that I get there. In the future I need to stay away from this place until after I have a bed dug and ready to plant.

Another place that I used to get unusual seeds from seems to be getting rid of those displays. And it isn't that I bought a lot of those seeds, it was just nice to know that they were there and that I could buy them someday.

And the place that I used to buy the bigger plants seemed to not have such impressive plants this year. They seemed to have a lot of 2-inch size plants in the 4-inch size containers. And half the place looked like it was dying. Maybe those are plants from last year and they are going to be replaced soon, but mark them down or something. Some of these sad little plants still had four dollar price tags. Who wants to buy a dying plant for four dollars?

So that leaves my local independent. I don't usually buy a lot from her, cause her plants usually aren't special in any way, not the cheapest, not the biggest, and usually not the rare varieties (though she was the first I saw with the Stevia plant). She does have two things going for her. She is the closest place I can buy from, and she takes the time to mark all of the plants. The 2-inch and 4-inch containers often arrive without the little plastic name tags (they are just on the trays, and not on the individual containers that you take home), but she takes the time to write the names on popsicle sticks so that you know you've bought a cherry tomato instead of an early girl. If you buy a plant without a marker, that's probably because the truck just made a delivery and she hasn't had time to write them out yet.

I think that she'll be getting more of my business this year. With everyone else raising their prices, hers seem to be closer to the mid-range, and if I'm not getting the cheapest plants or the biggest plants I might as well go to the closest place and get plants that are properly marked.

Taking the day off

I have been hard at work in the garden, partially just because I wanted to get started planting things, and partially because of some other stuff that I won't get into just yet. And, as I had the place to myself for most of the week, I did actually get a lot done, as I was getting up with the sun and going to work (for fifteen minutes intervals) through most of the daylight hours. So, on three of those days, in between breaks, I got about five or six hours work done. So, maybe twenty hours or so for the week, not counting that I had started on it the previous week, or tried to start working the week before that, or that little bit that I managed to get done before the great snow of 2010.

Anyway, I have been transplanting things and picking up trash and emptying pots and filling pots and moving dirt from one end of the yard to the other, washing rocks, putting down a few stepping stones, etc.... I go to bed tired and wake up hungry and between moving this and that have watched most of Stargate SG1 season 8.

And it is not finished. Still, I do see a lot of progress. I think to myself, this part over here actually looks nice. If the weather would cooperate (and my would health hold up, and my husband would stay out of town, and I could find a magic ATM that dispenses money without deleting anything from my account), I could make this whole place look nice and have flowers and yummy vegetables and everything.

Of course, most of that won't happen. But the weather might be okay for several days next week, and I plan to keep working on it.

I have made such progress that one of my nicer neighbors came and almost hugged me.

The yard still needs to be weedwacked, which is something I just cannot seem to get the hang of, so my husband will have to do it.

Anyway, I had planned to do more of the same today, but it was just too windy. See, I blame the fact that I did not get more done earlier on the rain that came (dirt I can deal with, though slowly, but mud is entirely different), and today I used the wind as an excuse to spend most of the morning shopping.

I got an early start on the shopping. First there was breakfast at a 24-hour taco place at around seven this morning, then I looked around Lowe's, and then I went to Walmart to buy day lilies. I guess that I waited too late to buy those day lilies, but then I thought I'd go to a different Walmart. I found Pardon Me and New Toy. New Toy wasn't what I had planned to buy, but I decided that two Walmarts in one day (without a sale) was enough. And then as long as I was in the general area, I might as well go to Home Depot too. By the time I did all that it was time for lunch, so I had to stop at McDonald's on the way home.

And then when I was unloading the car, I noticed the wind was a bit much. I decided that the plants could wait a while. About half a hour later, it was worse. The trash had not yet been collected, and some of mine was starting to get blown down the street. While putting it back on the curb I briefly lost my glasses.

At that point I decided that I was done for the day.

A bit later, I went to my brother's place to watch cable, and then he took me to dinner.

Well, it was nice to stay clean all day.

I didn't buy that much (though my wallet is much lighter), but I did a lot of window shopping. There is all this stuff made from recycled tires that I will be buying as soon as I win the lottery. And I saw this product for sale at Walmart. This is the sort of thing that you buy if you have a lot of money and want to do the new Square Foot Gardening, while I have no money and sometimes try to do the old Square Foot Gardening by buying scrap lumber. I would love to have several of these, but they cost about forty dollars each. (I spend about four dollars each.)

Still, go and look at this on their site. I'm not sure about their calculations, but it is fun to play with.

Eventually, I want to have no grass in the backyard. I would rather just have pathways between the garden beds and trees and such. This is not impossible, as I do not have a giant backyard. Still if I am not going to have any grass, I will have to have a lot of stepping stones or mulch or rubber mats and such to replace the grass. That would take a lot of money, and a lot of work. But I am thinking that if I just buy a bit every time I am at Home Depot getting something else, that I would eventually get it done, and the work would not be so terrible, and I would not notice the money so much.

Speaking of not noticing the money so much, I am trying to remember where it all went to. The stepping stones have gone up to 1.27. I bought six while they were on sale for .94, and then I bought eight more. I bought one 2x6 rubber mulch roll for fifteen dollars, two bags of sand at four dollars each, about twelve dollars of bedding plants from a local independent, 2.50 on two bluebonnets, two dollars on a six pack of petunias, ten dollars on day lilies, and a bag of rubber mulch for seven dollars. The bag of rubber mulch is less than half the size of the mulch I usually buy, but it costs about four times as much. But I have decided to try it anyway, because in most places where I have put mulch, I can only see what I bought last year, maybe in some places the stuff from the year before, and the rest is gone. I'm assuming that the rubber mulch will last a lot longer than that.

So that was around seventy-five dollars, plus I've been mostly eating the dollar menu at McDonald's, so that and the taco place was probably another twenty. So I spent all the money that I had this week (just in case I had jury duty), except for twenty dollars, and I was thinking that wasn't too bad, cause I would spend the twenty on a phone card that I need to get soon. I was looking at my last twenty dollar bill and telling myself that it was okay, that of all that money I had spent (mostly on Saturday morning) most of it was either something that I really needed (like the sand) or something that I had planned to buy (like the day lilies, though I had thought that they would be six dollars instead of ten), and that my only real impulse buys were the two bluebonnets (which if I didn't buy them I probably would have just bought a second pack of petunias) and the 2x6 rubber mulch roll (which I bought at fifteen dollars after seeing it someplace else for twenty, and I figured at 1.27 each for stepping stones that I would pay about the same amount to cover 2x6, so I might as well get the rubber and have a look at it). But then as I was leaving the Home Depot I noticed that blueberry plants had been marked down to four dollars, and I bought one of those too.

So I no longer have twenty dollars left, I won't be buying that phone card til next week, and I now have a blueberry bush that I have to deal with. Blueberry plants are in the grand scheme of things, but I have not yet prepared that area where they will go, so now I have to wonder what I'm going to do with this plant until then.

At some point I went out and measured everything, but I seem to have misplaced the notebook where I wrote everything down, so I shall have to take all the measurements again. I should mark out where I want the fruit trees to go and build barriers to go around them so that I remember not to plant anything else there.

Now it is Sunday. Being all clean for a day was nice, but now it is time to get back to work.

Does this make any sense?

It seems that I've read a number of things that didn't quite make sense the way that they were written. I can't remember most of them, but this was in the 2010 Census.

This concerns either questions 8 and 9, or questions 5 and 6. And maybe there are different Census forms, and other forms don't look like this.



--> NOTE: Please answer BOTH Question 8 about Hispanic origin an Question 9 about race. For this census, Hispanic origins are not races.

8. Is Person 1 of Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin?

_ No, not of Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin
_ Yes, Mexican, Mexican Am., Chicano
_ Yes, Puerto Rican
_ Yes, Cuban
_ Yes, another Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin--Print origin, for example, Argentinean, Colombian, Dominican, Nicaraguan, Salvadoran, Spaniard, and so on.

________________________________

9. What is Person 1's race? Mark x one or more boxes.

_ White
_ Black, African Am., or Negro
_ American Indian or Alaska Native--Print name of enrolled or principal tribe.

________________________________

_ Asian Indian
_ Chinese
_ Filipino
_ Japanese
_ Korean
_ Vietnamese
_ Other Asian--Print race, for example, Hmong, Laotian, Thai, Pakistani, Cambodian, and so on.

_________________________________

_Native Hawaiian
_ Guamanian or Chamorro
_ Samoan
_ Other Pacific Islander--Print race, for example, Fijian, Tongan, and so on.

_________________________________

_Some other race--Print race.

_________________________________



I don't know if your copy of the census looks like that. Mine had blue columns in English and green columns in Spanish. I don't know what race you are if you are Hispanic and Hispanic doesn't count as a race. What race would a Mexican American be if not Hispanic? He isn't White and he isn't Black, and he is not any of that other stuff listed. If White and Black are races, then maybe Brown should be race, but it isn't listed either.

I would not know how to deal with this if I had to answer that I was Hispanic. But I am not Hispanic. There are Hispanic people on my husband's side of the family, but he doesn't speak Spanish, so he doesn't even say that he's mixed, he just says that he's White.

I'm not sure why they need to know anyone's race anyway. Blacks and American Indians count as whole people now. The census is supposed to be counting to figure out how many representatives a state should get in Congress. That number isn't going to change because of a race majority or minority.

I also don't get the point of question three. Not that any of the answers were good ones for my situation, but I made a guess. Seems like there should be a few more boxes on that question, like condos or dorm rooms or even jail cells.

No, I do not live in a jail cell.

But, again, renters and homeowners and maybe even actual homeless people should count the same on a census. The state representative number won't go up or down either way. Why do they need to know if a person pays rent?

Whatever.


I heard another thing was was maybe poorly phrased.

My husband went to this meeting. This is part of a process to change the way that things are done so that my husband will start doing his job paired with one salesperson, while in the past he has usually worked with two salespeople. Most people don't like the idea. This isn't going to fix the problem. This is going to make everything better and get back those larger paychecks that a lot of them got used to getting.

And, it seems clear to me, that this means that there will not be work for half of the salespeople.

So this middle management guy (who possibly doesn't have a real job when he isn't going around giving speeches) gets my husband and other people with his same job and their two managers together, and a couple of the salespeople's managers were also at this meeting, though most of the salespeople were not there cause they'd already had one of these meetings.

So my husband is telling me about the meeting, how this middle management guy was trying to convince everyone that the new one on one system is going to be great (while most of us have figured out that it is a bunch of BS, but there's just no choice in the matter if you want to keep your job). And he starts out by saying that the new one and one system is a good thing, because right off it will get rid of half the problem. So this is a really good thing.

Sounds like he was saying that the salespeople were the problem, and that this was a good thing to get rid of half of them. And he said this not only in front of my husband and other people with his job and a couple of his managers, but also those few salespeople managers sitting in the back.

They were not amused. My husband did not laugh. Most of the other people didn't laugh either.

How about getting rid of half of the appointment setters and people who arrange for the accounts, since they bring in all the "customers" who don't buy anything. And how about getting rid of middle management, who probably don't do much when they aren't giving BS speeches.

But stand up in front of people and say that the new system will get rid of half the problem? What was he drinking?

A few more hours of doing mostly nothing

Okay, here is how my day goes.

I wake up. I wake up usually several hours before he does. I would prefer not to wake him up, but I cannot get back to sleep. I could either a.) suffer in silence, b.) flick on a light and quietly read next to someone who is trying to sleep, or c.) come in here and use the computer to maybe watch hulu or something like that. I would usually pick c, though that isn't possible when he is working, because if he worked the night before the computer is doing some work thing. So this morning it was b, which works if he is really asleep and I tilt the lamp at the right angle so that it doesn't light up the whole room.

Then I wait for him to wake up and do whatever it is that he's going to do. This morning involved: doing something over again with the computer cause it didn't do whatever it was supposed to do during the night, trying to cut the grass (actually weeds, but that is another post) (thanks for cutting the grass before we get a warning note), getting about half done with cutting the grass before deciding that new trimmer line was required, taking a shower, watching the episode of House that we missed, going to a hardware place to get new trimmer line, going to the library, going to Burger King for lunch, coming back here and looking at stuff online. The stuff in between taking a shower and looking at stuff online we did together. We do stuff like that together, which means that until he leaves for work I don't do much, cause I'm either doing something with him or I am waiting for him to get done with something so that I can do something else.

So I am waiting for him to get done looking at stuff online, when he asked me if I've done the insurance stuff.

No, I haven't done the insurance stuff.

Well, it needs to be done by Sunday.

Like I'm supposed to know that it needs to be done by Sunday. He's known about this for weeks and I only heard about it yesterday. Not my fault he waited so long.

Okay, let's do it now. It probably isn't any different than last year, and it shouldn't take that long if we don't change anything. And we don't change anything, cause we don't really know what we would want to change anyway.

So last year we took this little test, and I suppose that we should do it again this year. So he takes his test, and gets the same score as last year.

Well, if you don't lie, and you don't change your habits, your score stays the same.

So I start to take my test, only the computer takes me around in circles and I never actually end up taking the test. We can't figure it out. We tried the helpline and I thought I had it figured out from there, but I didn't. Now he's had to leave for work, and I can't take this stupid test.

Anyway, I can't take the test now cause it won't let me guess anymore passwords. Maybe I can take the test tomorrow, if I don't have jury duty.

And now, since I haven't started much of anything and three o'clock is only about an hour away, I might as well just wait for it to be three o'clock. I should be gardening or cleaning the backroom, but if I get jury duty I will probably not do either and will just do laundry and dishes and kitchen stuff instead. So I will just wait to see what I'm going to do.

Which means that by the time I do anything, I will probably only be doing it for about four hours before I call it a day.

I think that it is highly unlikely that I would get called on a Friday. They just don't start trials on Fridays. Still, there doesn't seem much point in starting what I plan to do today and tomorrow until I know for sure that I will actually be home to do it. So I am just mostly doing nothing for another hour or so.

It's sad. It is two in the afternoon and of all the stuff that I should have done today, so far all I have done is take a bath and eat lunch.