FundyNutter

Everyone is wondering how everyone is doing, caring and curious.  Okay, maybe its just me.  But in case you are wondering to, I’ll share.

We’ve lost half of our retirement fund at this time.

I don’t even want to check the kids college money.

I’ve got time on my side, which is a comfort.  I’ve got thirty four years or so until my husband retires.  I’ve got thirty years to pay off the house.  At some point in time I will go back to work and do what I can to bolster the old home economy.  I won’t sacrifice my kids to do it, but eventually I will be bringing in a check significant enough to make an impact on our wallet.

The hope is that our shares will grow in value again someday. And we can wait for that someday.  Our parents were hoping that the someday for retirement was in a couple of years.  Our grandparents are trying to live on what they have left.  In the great world of comparisons we have it so easy.

We can take a deep breath right now and say “buy low.”  And then we can buy low.

And we can remember that the Lord God Almighty owns the cattle of a thousand hills.  That the world is His and everything in it. We can remember that he told us not to worry about tomorrow. He said ask and you shall recieve, seek and you shall find, knock and the door shall be opened.

We can expect manna.  We can expect just enough to keep going.  We can’t expect always to get to keep our homes we love, or our big yards that we like to garden in.  I shouldn’t even expect to get to keep my high speed internet or even my cars.  I don’t need them to make it from one day to the next.  And what God intends for us is to make it one day to the next trusting in Him. Trusting in Him and not wall street or main street or sesame street, for that matter. Only God.

I can’t believe it worked!

I was low on brown sugar, so I used a mix of brown sugar, white sugar and molasses syrup.

My carrots were in sorry shape so I used grated apple.

I added a splash of vanilla because what could that hurt?

i didn’t feel like getting out the big bag of flour so I scrimped on that.

I estimated the amount of oil.

Maybe it was the magic of motherly love.

Or maybe I’m a cooking genius.

The girls and I made the recipe on the side of the bran flakes box.  Sort of.

And we got the greatest, sweetest, lightest bran muffins with a perfect crust of sugar on top.

I’m flabbergasted and delighted. If only I had written down exactly what we did!

Apparantly I didn’t.

Our house was a good buy.  Decent location, not super small by my standards.  And with a nice big yard that  I don’t seem to go in much these days.

And I don’t go in it much because of the trouble I’ve caused inside.

Our house was once a miniscule ranch.  A previous owner had a few dollars and some sense and built an addition. So now it is an L shaped ranch. We have been fighting the tacky factor inherent in that design with nice paint and well planted landscape.  I’ve tried to distract viewers from the addition roof line with tasteful design.  Currently our curb appeal rates “satisfactory” with me. It will move up to “highly satisfactory” when we get the board and batten shutters up.

The addition also created an awkward traffic flow inside the house.  We agreed when we bought it that it would be easy to fix and well worth the effort.

So the original house plan had three bedrooms at one end of the house, with the “Master” (the bedroom with a 3/4 size closet instead of a 1/2 size closet) on the back yard side.  The addition is a new master off of the original master bedroom.  The new room has patio access, full bath, double closet with an organization system built in,  and a nice little nook I turned into a sewing space.  Now, “Master suite” is the technical term for this room, but Daniel and I moved into one of the tiny spaces with half pint closets. The girls sleep in the other small room and the big suite is now a cozy family/tv room.

The akward space –the previous master bedroom is currently a den.  The family that added the addition just stuck the addition on and left the other bedroom a closed up bedroom-like space that you passs through to get to the real bedroom.

In our world of open concept homes this weird closed off space had to go. Or change.

We have one of those hall bathrooms in the front of the house with a kind of long hall in front of it.  You know the kind, it T’s into the regular hall and has a coat closet.  It’s a handy closet.

The wall that makes up this bath/hallway space is also the wall that makes up the corner of the passthrough den.

It has been my plan since we moved in to knock that hall wall and the adjacent doorway out to open up the den.  It would make the flow of traffic more comfortable. It would bring the sunlight from the south facing window in the den into the hallway and it would make our house seem more intentional.

The layout of hte house would then be: Walk into the front room, you are also facing the dining room and kitchen.  Turn right, walk down the hall way. First door on the Right, small bedroom. First door on the left, hall bathroom.  Door at the end of the hall, small bedroom.  Comfy, open space with southfacing window is the den. Second door on the left, Master bedroom.

So, I took the matter into my own hands. That is to say, I took the splitting maul into my own hands and began knocking the dry wall off of it.  I have to say, the sunlight into the hall is all I hoped it would be.

Daniel urgently requested I talk to a professional before I knock the studs out, just to see if they were load bearing.

It’s funny, I swore they werent’ for good reasons. My mother in law swore they were.  It turns out she was right.  But by a fluke.  We have a tressle roof that supports its own weight. For half of the house. And then tha bedroom half is supported by the walls. I guess, just because they wallls were going to be there anyway, the builders figured, “why not?”

I’ve got my sunlight now. But I’m still waiting to hear back from the respected professionals about how much the new support beam is going to cost us.  I know their labor is $90 an hour for two men.  They said they wanted to price the beam and get back to me. They said they could do the job Tuesday. They didnt’ have any problem just putting the beam in and then letting Daniel and I do all of the finish work.

Do you think it could take more than two hours to do the job?  I’m scared it would be more than a three hour job.  Really scared. I plan on using my October babysitting money to pay for it, and that would cover a three hour job if the beam isnt’ too much money. And yes,  that is the same pay check I was going to use to buy the dishwasher.  And some new blue jeans. And socks for all the girls that live in the house.

It felt so good knocking the drywall down and pulling away the first of the nonessential 2×4’s.  (fun note, they are from 1960, so they acutally are 2×4! Daniel laughed and said they just looked so big!) It felt so good that I am trying to be happy I started the project. However, if the fix-it men quote the job at half a day or something like that I will have to live with the studs for a little while.

It can’t hurt, Daniel would say. After all, I have plenty of practice living with a big stud.

Nanowrimo began as a personal challenge between some friends who thought it would be cool to write a novel.  They chose November and said “get it done in a month.”  The next year they invited some more friends.  By now it is international with thousands of participants.  I think technically it is hundreds of thousands or participants.

For people like me who “have always wanted to write a book,”  who daydream about careers in ghost writing, who realize that whatever paltry skill they have with a pen are their only skills, who are stuck with a daily grind in life that leaves little room for creativity or brain engagement, Nanowrimo is like heavan.

Nanowriomo has a huge, smooth running website that takes many servers to run. There you can connect with other folks like yourself. You can connect according to area you live in, style you write, or lifestyle similarities.  They have a runing word count metre, famous authors who write encouraging emails to participants.  Nanowrimo works in schools with young writer programs (a project dear to my heart.)

I could sing its praises for at least two more paragraphs.

But today Nano got infinitely better.

They added a prize.  Now truly, I was happy with my blog bling and the print at home certificate.  I was thrilled with my sense of accomplishment.

Christ Baty, the director of the non-profit organization sent out an email to all of the 2007 winners.  That would be all who completed the challenge.  He said it took all year but he finally found the prize he wanted to give us.  A free self-published paperback of our novels.  createspace.com is the fabulous self publishing site that is offering us this prize and so thank you to them!

We have six months to make use of our special offer code.

I dont’ want to self publish and unfinished story, so here it goes. I’ve got to finish The Restaurante.

Reviews of The Restaurante have run the gamut from the dead silence of reviewers embarressed that they offered to read it–as they had no idea it could have actually been that bad–to my husband who enjoyed the story, saw pretty sections worth commenting on.  There were also some friends aggrivated with me for not finishing it. THey found leaving the story hanging in space the worst part of my writing.

Now I really wanted to know if the story and the characters were worth working on and trying to improve or if I should consider it a good practice and move on to the next project.  I pinned down a couple of friends and forced them to give me feedback.  One suggested that I try to comment on religion a little more subtly and another (in desperation) asked “do you only want positive feedback?”  I’ll admit by that time any positive feedback would have been welcome.  I was desperate to hear that a months worth of constant activity had produced one or two good segments, one or two scenes worth reading.

So I guess I just summed up why I abandoned the story. And now I get to ressurect it for the purpose of putting a pretty cover on it and setting it on my shelf.

Too bad finishing an old story is cheating in Nanowrimo…it would have been perfect timing.

NaNoWriMo (as it is properly written) is giving me two reasons to go quiet on my blog right now.  I’ve got a new novel to write in ten days and following that, a novel to finish.

What fun to play novelist. : )

I’ve actually liked a number of things about being a hand dishwasher. I liked being in the select group of four women I know without dishwashers. I liked being one of the few women I am acquainted with who “choose” to be dishwasher free.  Some women choose it more willingly than I do, but there it is. I like the hot steamy water on a cold morning, or a cold whenever. I like the feeling of accomplishment when the job is done. I like how it always seems to be done much quicker than I expected. I like the way I feel like as long as there was indoor running water, a water heater, and inexpensive soap with undiluted surfactants i could totally rough it in the third world, or at least in a neighborhood really near the third world.

I wash the dishes fast.   I could beat my husband at a hand dishwashing race any day of the week.  That, more than anything else, has been carrying me along my almost year long journey without a dishwasher.  (oh boy, a whole year! aren’t I something.)

There was such a pile of dishes to be washed on Saturday and I was very bored with the whole idea of hot tubs of soapy water.  I got out the wrachet and tore about the machine.  I dug hairy gunk out of the trap. I bleached months of grime and mildew out of the drains. I jimmied the latch so it would run with the door open.

I didn’t fix anything. But I learned that it is a dead dead machine. The spinny part doesn’t spin. The fountainy part gurgles dismally.  The gunk I pulled out? Nothing more than tantalizing evidence of the massive gobs on the other side of the non-removable screen.

I was this close to running to the appliance store and throwing in the towel. The only thing that stopped me is the mountain of buyers remorse I have piled on over this last year.  A real McInley of regret.  I took deep breaths. I dismissed the same as cash sirens calling to me.  I made a plan.

I mean, of course, I already had a plan.  But did anyone really expect me to wait until my car was paid off to buy a new dishwasher? Really?  I hoped, but I didn’t believe.  And anyway, it’s almost half paid for.  I mean, we are really kicking the car loan’s tush.  It’ll be done in no time and the price of a new dishwasher only cuts one measly month off.  What’s one month compared to my sink slavery?

So , the new plan is as follows.  My November babysitting money goes for a November dishwasher.  I will wash up the Thanksgiving dishes in a brand new bottom of the line, clean and shiny, scratch and dent, steal of a dishwasher.

Or at least, that’s the plan.

Watch out for a phone call from those lousy bums at US Telcom…( I think that was it.)  They called here telling me that they were with my local provider, that I didn’t use very many long distance minutes and that I was getting a price reduction.  I asked over and over again what was going on and who they were, out of honest confusion. Eventually the caller asked if this was the phone number listed for my husbands name and I said Yes. Whoops.  Never say yes on the phone when you don’t know who is calling!  The caller then said “I’ll just mail you the changes.” I said something like “What? I just don’t get what you are talking about?” And she said “I’ll just mail you the paperwork with the changes.” And then hung up.

I instantly remembered all my Clark Howard and John Stossel warnings.  First, regarding how I said “Yes.”   They have possibly recorded the call and can use my “yes” answer to claim that I responded affirmatively to whatever their scheme was. Second, and most important, always hang up and call the published number for the folks who claimed to have called.

I called Qwest. I explained the call. They said the caller was their competition.  They said they hadn’t revieced any similar complaints recently. Then they put a note on my file stating that I do not want to change my long distance provider.  So, if (when) US Telcom sends over an order on my behalf to cancel my service Qwest won’t do it.  And if I happen to get a bill from US Telcom at any point, I have documentation that I did not agree to have them provide any service for me.

And for anyone who doesn’t know–another great resource for the consumer is your state attorney general.  If I get any trouble from US Telcom I can send a complaint in to them and they will use their big guns on my beha

I ran into John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt at church today and didn’t have the nerve to hum knowingly at him.  Doggone it.  But I bet the song is stuck in your head now!

I just wrote this little tirade over on message board conversation. I think it deserves a wider audience.

I’ve been pondering the mindset that caused this (economic) problem. It seems to me that lots of people think that there is an unending amount of money to be had from Americans. Please don’t take any of these complaints as personal–you all have your heads on your shoulders. I see a ton of just taking advantage out there though.

Realtors are an obvious starting point. They help families set the price their home could be sold for. They help you get top dollar. The realtor’s I’ve met with the last few years (bought two homes in the last 5 years) had their favorite mortgage brokers who could really make anything happen for you. We know what happened there. And the Realtors get their six percent from all this growth in the market. We bought for a 100–realtor made 6000. We sold for 194, realtor made almost 12000. We bought for 200, realtor very nice person and did it for half price and only made another 12,000. As we sold in February and bought in march, that is a pretty good earning for two months of work. And yes it was just two months of work. Our house sold after four days on the market and we already had the one we are in now lined up.

Then there is large manufacturing. Of course the obvious problem is how they take the manufacturing jobs out of  our country. But did you guys know that Congress approved a price fixing bill about a year ago? Grocery prices have skyrocketed. But it’s not entirely from gas (or corn or rice). Manufacture-ers have the right now to insist their product is sold for a minimum price. It does’ t sound so bad except it limits the grocery store’s ability to set their own profits and losses. Not all manufacture-ers are doing this. But many are. It’s no longer “manufacturers suggested retail price” if you know what I mean. The man.’s get their asking price no matter what the store sells things for so I can only imagine they want high prices for their product for some kind of branding and recognition power thing.

And then there is Hollywood. Actors are very expensive. Is there really any reason why an actor needs to make more than a million dollars per film? Or even half that? That kind of money is what drove up the prices of homes in California which sent Californians flooding to all of the border states with lots of equity to buy house and spread the house price bubble disease across the country. But it also makes the price of running a theater too high–a real problem for that industry in the modern era, I’d think.

And I am irked beyond belief with the striking Boeing workers right now.  Do they not know that the market has some say in how much money is available to pay for product creation? And since they make planes for government contract, do they not realize our government might be a bit strapped at the moment? That we have bigger fish to fry than how much more than the rest of us airplane makers can earn? It’s not like the Boeing workers are striking to keep more people working (this was big strike for ship workers during the depression. They wanted a 30 hour work week so that more ship builders could have an income. To spread some of the work around.) And its not like they are starving to death or working on social worker salaries. In fact, airline pilots have had heckuv low pay and pay cuts for the last seven years now, but the airplane builders suddenly get to be the only ones in America (besides the actors) to get pay raises and compensation packets? Are they watching different news than I am?

And then of course, lets not forget the consumer (I am one of those so it’s not all everyone else’s fault.) but boy, the mindset that we need everything of the best quality and we need it all now is crazy! CRAZY!

Phew. That felt good.

I just found this humorous.  Very funny actually.  Here’s a snippet.

Darwin’s theory

David Deamer, emeritus professor of chemistry at the University of California at Santa Cruz, said ahead of his presentation: “It is about 140 years since Charles Darwin suggested that life may have begun in a ‘warm little pond’.

“We are now testing Darwin’s idea, but in ‘hot little puddles’ associated with the volcanic regions of Kamchatka (Russia) and Mount Lassen (California, US).”

Understanding how life emerged on Earth within 1,000 million years of its formation is a fascinating scientific problem Prof Ian Smith, University of Cambridge

“The results are surprising and in some ways disappointing. It seems that hot acidic waters containing clay do not provide the right conditions for chemicals to assemble themselves into ‘pioneer organisms.’”

Professor Deamer said that amino acids and DNA, the “building blocks” for life, and phosphate, another essential ingredient, clung to the surfaces of clay particles in the volcanic pools.

“The reason this is significant is that it has been proposed that clay promotes interesting chemical reactions relating to the origin of life,” he explained.

“However,” he added, “in our experiments, the organic compounds became so strongly held to the clay particles that they could not undergo any further chemical reactions.”

That’s just a small part excepted from her article.  Why’s it so funny to me…

I thought we had dealt with the spontaneous life issue already…

And scientists seem to think clay is an integral ingredient for life.

So does Genesis.

Just the other day our tightly stretched missions team whose heart is to reach the very very unreached got a letter requesting support for a girl who wanted to go to Sweden.

I’ve been there. Very Christian nation, despite its worldiness and Godlessness.  Sweden has small bodies of believers who love God and serve Him and want to reach their neighbors.  I don’t see much cause for sending Westerners there on the church’s dime. Now, if Christians wanted to immigrate to Sweden and be a part of the local church body that’s a great idea.

So I said: “Sweden doesn’t need missionaries.”

Now that one sentence isn’t why we chose not to fund her. But I said it and they heard it.

And today I got an email from my Bible School. The one in Sweden. The one I will probably never get to go back to.

They are looking for quite a few new staff people. Support positions. Missionaries.

I would give my eye teeth to be one of them.

Of course, I already told my church: “Sweden doesn’t need missionaries.”

When will I learn to keep my big trap shut?