Changes

For the first time ever, I planned out our homeschooling schedule. I've been using the Homeschool Tracker for a while to capture attendance records. In the past I've had great intentions at the beginning of the year to plug in each and every activity for record keeping. But we never accomplished as much as I planned and it turned out to be a whole lot of work for me, with little benefit.

This year, though, we were faced with several time challenges. Our goals include finishing The Story of the World as our history overview for Large and Medium so they can focus on particularly interesting episodes and get into further details. They also wanted to try a more structured science program and chose Life Science from Plato learning. They want to continue reading literature together, perfect their cursive, learn to write articles and papers, build their vocabulary and progress in their math. Small, of course, wants to become a more confident reader, absorb the world around him and have fun.

With all our activities, dance and piano classes, homeschool group meetings and Roots&Shoots, it's hard to fit everything in. All three kids have a paying gig as dog walkers, Large has five hours of dance a week, Medium has three hours of dance, girl scouts and piano. Small has on hour of dance and piano.

Add to the mix my volunteer work with the wonderful InHome Conference, teaching science lab, facilitating Roots&Shoots, helping new homeschoolers find their way in our Westside House group and my need to earn significant money to pay for all this, and you get an idea of my sense of panic.

One final complication is that our login to Plato, made affordable through the Homeschool Buyers Co-Op, is active between the hours of 1 and 4 only. So, I carefully mapped the time we each could spend on each activity, overlapping where necessary, separating the kids when needed and put the schedules on nice colorful charts on the wall. It's been working for a couple days now, with some adjustments we might do OK. Most of all, the kids seem to have more play and daydream time now.

I, on the other hand, have no time. I can fit my conference work in when there is a computer free and if I can have access to my files. Our great idea is to sell books on Amazon, initially from our own stock and later from thrifting. This can be a good way to earn money, but I just don't know where I'm going to squeeze in trips to thrift stores and library sales, to the post office for shipping and computer time to track orders. I guess I'll know it when I see it.

This Credit Free Life

We've been leading a credit free life for 2 years now. We don't use credit anymore. Of course, we still have our mortgage and home equity, but we've been working at paying those off as well.

We followed most of Dave Ramsey's baby steps and were about to pay off over $20,000 in consumer debt in the first 9 months. We were very lucky to have some stocks to cash in, savings bonds lying around, a generous bonus and lots of patience. When our dryer broke, we went 2 months without. When a car died, we went 5 weeks without. Things recalibrated after a year and a half on the plan and we had 4 months in our emergency fund. Four months of basic living expenses saved just in case. I was comfortable with that cushion.

Then emergencies happened. From toilets to trees to cars to dishwashers, we are now down to less than 2 months in the emergency fund. We spent some of the money on non-emergencies (new lighting in the dining room, finishing a bathroom remodeling that began 3 years ago), but most of it was on basic items. The good news is that we used our emergency fund as a credit card, instead of piling on more debt. The bad news is that now we must work really hard to bring that balance back up. We have no more rabbits to pull out of hats and Mark's employer has announced layoffs.

On the other hand, we have that month and a half in the bank and know how to get more flowing into the emergency fund. One of our major decisions this week has been to repair the aging Volvo instead of getting a car loan for a different car. Next bonus maybe we'll plan for a new used car, but that's not until March. We'll just keep plugging along with what we have and stash more away for the future.

What's Next?

OK, so in the midst of all the craziness my life has become - taking care of my non-compliant parents, the upcoming dance recital, making big decisions about whether or not to have a homeschooling conference next year, etc., etc., etc., I have to suffer through failing equipment that is supposed to make my life easier.

The dishwasher. Would cost a total of more than $400 to repair. We can replace one for nearly that. But we can't find the time to replace it or do the research to buy it.

The vacuum cleaner. Perhaps the most used appliance in the house, my trusty Miele Solaris. We've had it 8 years and this is the first major problem. I use it every day. On Saturday, I called a friend across the street hyperventilating and asking to borrow hers. She made me promise a solemn oath not to break it. She understands my pain.

The car. The Volvo with 120,000 miles on it - shouldn't it just last forever? For over a year now it's been doing this strange thing where the ABS system clicks in when accelerating, turning corners and occasionally while braking. Over the past week it's become loud. And then Saturday it was loud, refused to accelerate and showed that arrow signal that it was time to up shift, even in reverse. Transmission, you say? Likely, we dropped it off last night.

After losing the tree and shelling out a whole heck of a lot of money from the emergency fund for that and other tangential emergencies, our emergency fund is positively groaning. No longer do we have that nice cushion of 4 months living expenses saved in case Mark loses his job. Two, maybe. And we're in a recession here.

Maybe I can send Large out in his double breasted thrifted suit to look for a job? His hair is ever so slightly shorter now...

New Toilets

Yes, I'm really writing about toilets. "But Mommy! That's so private!" Ah, well, yes. What goes on with the toilet and the body functions is private, but the toilets themselves are not.

With our bonus money this year, after funding our emergency savings (about four months of living expenses), we decided to finish our bathroom projects from a few years ago. When we started the project, we had no idea how to manage our money, funding it with a combination of credit cards, cash and home equity. And then we ran out of cash, our air conditioning broke down and we were frightened by our HELOC. So, we put it off until we had cash to compete it. Now we are ready for shower doors, a coat of paint, fixing the loose tiles, replacing the fan and replacing two aging toilets.

The toilets were my job and they came first. We wanted to go green, using as little water as possible for each flush. After much research, we settled on two Toto Aquia toilets, and purchased them from the Green Home Experts in Oak Park. Fabulous store, great customer service, wonderful products - I highly recommend it.

It's hard to imagine waxing euphoric over a toilet, isn't it? These toilets give one something to wax over. The are new and clean and shiny, which is undoubtedly part of it. But the fact that they use .9 gallons for liquid waste and 1.6 for solid is a great green boost to our consciousness. Flushing that little water is quiet! No performance problems, either.

But the best, thing and what made me fork over twice the money over a conventional toilet was this:



I live in a house of toilet slammers. Not angry toilet slammers, just unthinking slammers. This has cured them of that habit - there is no way to slam this lid. Smooth, quiet, beyond belief.

I'm easily amused.

House Presents

I like to give our house presents for Christmas each year. Sometimes, like this year, we get necessary things like a set of tires. This was our first cash only Christmas, so we're pretty pleased the house could receive gifts as well. Along with the tires, we got a device to stream Netflix movies in to our TV without needing a disc. It's made by Roku, specifically for Netflix, although it will be able to take Amazon movies once Amazon is ready. This has been a great gift. We do still get three movies from Netflix at a time, but often they are not what we want to watch before bed. Or, as in the case of the Mr. Magoo series, they are languishing, unwatched, but unwilling to be returned.

So, say it's a pledge drive on PBS - and when, really, isn't it a pledge drive on PBS? It's 8:30, everyone is ready to watch something, but there's nothing on. We really only watch PBS, we choose not to get cable for more channels of stuff we don't want to watch. We have three Netflix discs at home - a 2 1/2 hour ballet, an orchestral performance, and Mr. Magoo. We click on the Roku, see what's in the queue, pick one and watch it. If the Internet is wonky, as it has been recently, sometimes it pauses to retrieve it again. And sometimes, strangely, the picture is distorted or the soundtrack isn't coordinated with the pictures. We need to figure out these problems, but we've been able to watch alternate shows instead. And when the kids had the flu last week, they camped out with Nature programs. Great present for the house.

Our second house gift was a polymer clay oven. I wont bore everyone with the details of the combination of coupons that made this unnecessary item worthwhile, it was a spectacular deal. And the kids really love it. At least Medium and Small do. They make new creations every few days. Medium even has a box with many small compartments to store her creatures
in. Here's a picture of her teeny tiny horse collection:


None of these are more than an inch big. She also has more teensy weensy animals and food items (cupcakes and sandwiches with eyes, that sort of thing).

Large had thus far only had one foray into the kitchen to work with the polymer clay and cook something up. This is his creation, which has left me speechless:

Just my imagination

I read in the paper today that inflation is running at 5 or 6 percent for the year. So, it wasn't just my imagination running away with me? It really is a vast right wing conspiracy to keep us living right on the edge, paycheck to paycheck?

July was a three paycheck month for us. We were looking forward to catching up with the emergency fund. We keep robbing Peter (emergency fund) to pay Paul (checking account) when the G.M. (giant mortgage) is due. We were going to give some more to Peter to accommodate the new driveway we've been putting our neighbors off from doing for three years running, prepare for Christmas and for my parent's imminent relocation, so I can visit them in their waning. That didn't so much happen.

Instead, July's three paycheck month left us gasping for air in August as the checking account dwindled almost to zero before the paycheck hit. The instantly, POOF, the paycheck was gone to pay for the G.M. We have dance class to pay for next week - a bargain at 5 hours a week, 8 weeks and only $400. We get a generous discount for multiple classes, and this is the only paid activity we have. Everything else is going to center around Girl Scouts and Roots&Shoots. Those are both low cost activities. I'm going to have to call the dance teacher and tell her we want to register but are worried about the check. Or we'll have to rob Peter again. Poor Peter doesn't have much left to give.

Gas prices, food prices, everything has gone up. We're not buying packaged foods and rarely eat out. We're reduced to rice and canned chicken (allergic to beans) dinners and eggs once a week (although Small is allergic to eggs and gets lunch meat instead). Pasta another night. Gone are the days of a nice leg of lamb for our Uncle Bill.

And we make a good salary! It makes me wonder how lower income folks manage. Credit, likely. When Large overloaded the washing machine last week and burned out the motor, I was looking at 7 months of laundromat experiences. The machine will run medium loads now, so it just means more frequent laundry until the bonus comes (March) and we can replace it. Hopefully the rest of the summer will remain cool and we wont have to fix that leak in the AC that's projected to cost $1500. But honestly, it all makes me reconsider the 2 gallons of gas it costs me to get to Girl Scouts and back each week.

Somehow I feel better knowing it's not my individual fault. I haven't misbudgeted or misspent - although I did buy several frivolous $3 t-shirts off the clearance rack at Target. It's the economy, stupid.

Pushing Spring

Mark took the kids on a work day at Ted Stone Forest, one of the Cook County Forest Preserves near our house and now near and dear to our hearts. There were many, many people working, burning brush, clearing brush, hauling logs cleared by contractors. They worked hard and warmed up by the fire, eating hot dogs. Hot dogs cooked in the woods on a brush pile taste better than regular hot dogs!

I stayed home with an organizer lady I know who helped me with the kids crafts stuff. It was equally as exhausting and rewarding. That's another post...

We went back to Ted Stone the next day, and also to Pioneer Woods, further south in Cook County. We mapped out our frog monitoring route, which was great fun. But also much colder than we wanted it to be or dressed for! Pushing spring, Little Missy and I went out in fleece. Everyone went out without gloves. What were we thinking? It's March, not May!

We learned a lot of things on our mapping trip. We learned how to use the GPS unit, or sort of. We learned that bringing the children along on our frog monitoring sessions will be impossible. And we learned not to jump to the conclusion that every sound you hear is a frog. I'm so anxious to monitor these little critters, I'm practically making them up!

We can't take the kids to monitor frogs because the walk will be too long for them and because it will be dark. Some of the stops on our route are off path, through brush. Frog call monitoring start one hour after sunset, so we need to get there in the light, hike out and walk back to the car, listening for frogs along the way. The kids would likely be miserable and it's difficult to carry the youngest in those conditions.

On the bright side, we'll have date nights for the first time since we went on our debt-free life change almost a year ago! And as the kids get older, their legs get longer and their eyes are out of the brush, they can come along to help. The frogs will still be there, hopefully even more of them.

Needs and Wants

Our dryer just arrived. For the second time, but it is actually hooked up and running now. It will be running all day. I've been really cranky since the delivery folks took it away a week ago for want of a shut off valve. Shut off valve was installed yesterday and the dryer today.

It is making me think about needs and wants, though. We really could have lived without a dryer. A lot of people in the world do. We've been congratulating ourselves for not considering it an emergency and spending money we didn't have, but I'm wondering if we haven't spent money on something we didn't need.

And just where are they taking the old, dead-as-a-doornail dryer? Will it be used for anything? Will the metal be recycled? Will parts be put to good use? What kind of parts are there in a dryer?

I've reconciled myself with my affluenza with one word. Lint. This house has a lot of hair. My kids all have long hair, we have rabbits and guinea pigs. My own hair is short and Mark's is less than it used to be. But the past 10 weeks with no dryer have left us with lint like I've never seen before. Big balls of it over every possible surface.

Here's a little song for you:

Catching up

I haven't been writing about the thing-a-day project, but have been making a thing a day. I just caught up posting at www.thing-a-day.com and thought I'd share here as well.

First - I do, I do like that hat! Cables around the brim, cables going all the way up, really tiny 7 stitches to the inch yarn in the ss and 13 stitches to the inch in the cable. Did the fancy math to figure out the gauage, picked up 175 stitches from the brim cable stitch and followed a basic Ann Budd pattern from the Handy Book of Knitting Patterns to to the rest. I like the cables going up. They don't show up as sharply with the tweedy yarn, it's a merino wool/alpaca blend. Soft and warm. Now I'm working on matching gloves. I've never done gloves before...

This morning I made a card for my sister's birthday package. The card is from a template at www.alittlehut.com. It was fun to make. The paper is some we made at our papermaking workshop at www.vargasart.net and that's what I wrote the note on and glued to the inside of the card. Fun.


Over the weekend I made these earings. They are fun to wear, but I wish the pin were longer. The felt beads are from a local yarn shop, I just couldn't resist them. But I but couldn't figure out what to make with them. Then I used up a few of my zillion coupons at Joann's for the sterling findings.

OH, and yesterday we paid off the credit card. BAM. It's done.

That Was Easy

Not too terribly easy. Bonus came Thursday. We were all sick Friday, but Mark managed to contact Craig’s List users who posted Hondas. Saturday he put many, many miles on the Volvo to check out the cars and we ended up buying one in Hyde Park. It’s a 7 year old Civic with slightly less than 100,000 miles on it. A very basic car – 5 speed, nothing flashy. And it’s much smaller than the Buick, we are looking forward to better fuel efficiency.

Sunday we took the Civic to Turtle Wax for detailing. The car was fairly clean, it just had another family’s dirt in it and we wanted a fresh start. Unfortunately, Chicago was having a monsoon so there were no detailers at Turtle Wax. We have an appointment for Wednesday.

The rest of Sunday was a soul-killing big box store shopping kind of day. WalMart for floormats and other items. It always takes us longer in WalMart because we don’t know the store well. From there to Home Depot where we bought a dryer. After that I went to Costco on my own and managed to fill the Civic’s surprisingly big trunk.

It’s not that I mind hanging two loads of laundry a day, it’s just that it takes so much time. Our house isn’t quite in the same league as those that you see on the news when they take the kids away, but we are on that path. I suppose reducing my homeschooling, knitting and crafting time may have allowed for more housekeeping time, but that didn’t happen.

So, things are looking up. We can now get to all of our activities and classes, go to the gym and shop before 8 p.m. We did, truly, live like no one else. That’s a Dave Ramsey expression. Other people would have bought a newer car with a loan, put a dryer on the credit card and called it a day. We are focused on getting rid of all debt, intensely focused. We don’t like using money that isn’t ours – credit card and car loan companies’ money. They make a profit from our poor planning and preparation.

We like living this way, although it took a while to get the hang of it. If we don’t have the money for something, we don’t buy it. It’s that simple. Our parents and grandparents lived this way, but our society has changed and now it’s unusual. Throughout this bleak period, we reinforced the difference between want and need. We wanted a car, but waited five weeks for the cash to come in. We wanted a dryer, but wanted two months for the cash to come in. We needed to get the furnace fixed, and had the money to do so.

We are fortunate to have a good income that can support this lifestyle – when we understand the difference between want and need. We are also fortunate to have gotten on the same page with financial matters, to have the same goals and the willingness to discuss them. Mostly we are fortunate to have understood all of this before it was too late.

It only gets better from here

My baby turned 4 yesterday! Four candles, four years since that freezing night of his birth, four. I relived his birth in my dreams last night, the howling wind kept me awake. I have no desire to be pregnant again or to have another child, but would love to have just one more birth like his. We labored at home until it was almost too late, he arrived 1/2 an hour after we got to the hospital, no anesthesia, no tearing, no nothing. A perfect 9 pound, 6 ounce midwife delivered VBAC.

Today I'm trying to relax about the fact that we did very little yesterday in homeschooling land due to the big, big birthday and are doing even less today. Trying not to let it worry me, trying not to feel like we are "behind" or "lazy." The fact is that we are cold.

The furnace went out this morning. It was 60 degrees when Mark left at 6, but he didn't think much of that as we set the thermostat for 64 at night and it was bitterly cold. I didn't get up until 7 and it was 58 degrees then. Still no worries. When I walked past with another cup of steaming (literally) coffee almost an hour later and noticed the thermostat read 56, I started to panic. I took the fish upstairs, called Mark, called a service guy, woke up the older two to get them tidying up our incredibly messy post-birthday home and started to work on the basement.

I've always called our basement a toxic waste dump. It is a dump. It is where we dump every possible thing we just can't throw out. We have good intentions - save boxes, bubble wrap and packing pillows for eBay sales; save the boxes we got from blueberry picking this year for next year; save fabric for weaving, knitting and other projects (OK, this borders on a compulsion); save, save, save. But don't bother to organize anything, or put it anywhere but at the bottom of the stairs! I worked up a sweat for half an hour moving junk from one place to another, sweeping up corn from around the freezer (don't ask) and cat mess from behind it (ditto) in case the guy had to get to the breaker box. I cleared in front of the furnace, moved all the hanging clothes (remember the dryer?) to the other side of the basement and cleared a path to the water shut off.

I guess because the temp was 56 when I called, they sent someone really quickly. We had half an hour and did an amazing job! Our guy was very nice, got it working, cleaned it, changed the humidifier filter and dropped the temperature to 53 in the process. No we're back to a balmy 56 and out nearly $300. That's our third major appliance to break - dryer, car, furnace. I think we are done now. I hope we are.

It really is too cold to concentrate on anything. We tried getting on the couch under blankets, but the Little Man was just too squirmy, too four to pay attention to The Story of the World. They are now all on the top bunk - hot air rises - playing DS and other electronic things under the blankets. I might try to get more interest in Babylon when the house hits 60.

Watch this!

Take two minutes out of your life, you aren't too busy to click the button. It's worth it.

From Bad to Worse

Just when we thought things really couldn't get worse for our family, the wolf is at our door. This whole string of bad luck started on December 15th, and we really think it should be done by now! It's a strange Murphy's luck vortex that we just can't seem to get out of.

First our youngest fell through the ice, then our oldest had his ear impaled with a stick, the dryer gave up the ghost and the car Mark uses for work conked out one fine pre-dawn morning in the middle of nowhere. He was working a 12 hour shift, gone from 3:30 in the afternoon until 6:30 in the morning and we were unable to make a decision on how to proceed with the ancient Buick until that was over.

Despite the mechanic telling us he didn't know how long the car would last if he fixed the alternator, we decided to go ahead with the repair. The $366.57 (including tow) repair. After all, it's not like we were intending for Mark to use it for his daily 50 mile each way commute. We weren't even intending to use it for our weekly 18 mile each way commute to Girl Scouts, or our weekly Writer's Workshop probably 8 miles away. No, we just wanted to get to gymnastics, dance, the library and maybe the gym - all within a four mile radius of our home.

We picked up the land barge this morning. I insisted Mark come back home with it so I wouldn't be stranded on the highway with three kids in the back and the mercury not quite at 10 degrees. We did OK on the highway for maybe 10 miles and then it started making noises. When we were off the highway, Mark discovered he couldn't stop without the car dying. We just barely made it home, Mark took side streets, blew through stop signs and got very lucky with traffic. It died at the end of the driveway, emitting a strange metallic, oil and burnt plastic smell.

So, we made a bad decision. We need to move on. We really need to move the dead Buick out of the driveway or we'll have to plow around it. And we need a new car.

I'm trying to find the silver lining. I know there has to be one.

Busy and Idle

First the busy stuff. This is the hat I knitted for Little Missy. She picked out the yarn at Joann's - it was on sale (my criteria) and sparkly (hers), then told me the design she wanted and I went to town. It's a thick and thin yarn, so there wasn't much to do but boring knit, but she loves it.

After that, I got a copy of the two Sew What? books from the library and made myself a fleece shirt. The fleece was also on sale at Joann's and I had coupons for the buttons and the pearl cotton. The books are really great, they teach you how to make a body template and then design the piece to make it fit you perfectly. I hope there are more books coming in the series.


And then I made these fun potholders. Our dryer is still dead and we have not deemed it an emergency at this point. While hanging our old potholders to dry the other day, I decided to just throw them out, they were that grungy. These were made from a pair of Mark's old jeans, stitched on top of felted wool from a blanket project last year. The wool came from sweaters purchased at Goodwill. The blanket was a disaster, but these potholders and the mittens I've made from the recycled sweaters are sure fun.



But no amount of craftiness could help today. Ever since discovering Dave Ramsey last year and agreeing with him that "debt is dumb, cash is king", we've sworn off credit cards. We had missed a payment, had our interest rate on a considerable balance zoom to nearly 30%, transferred the balance to a zero interest card and have been steadily paying it off ever since. We've realigned our priorities to paying of the debt except the house, bringing our emergency cash fund to 6 months of expenses, funding IRAs for us and educational IRAs for the kids (this is a good year or two off) and then tackling the mortgage. We've learned what really is an emergency - food, clothing, shelter, transportation, medication. And we've tried to learn what is not an emergency - Christmas, the dryer, new scissors, etc.

Today it was transportation. We have a 15 year old Buick, generously given to us by Mark's mom when the Honda hit 200,000 miles four or five years ago. The poor thing just gave out today, they really don't like to go over 100,000 miles. Mark had just moved to a 12 hour night shift last night and was leaving the plant when the car died in the left turn lane at 5:45 a.m. With a lot of help, we got the thing towed and asked the mechanic to call my cell. The guy was very honest, he said that he could fix the alternator and charge up the battery, but he's not sure that will make the car run - the engine is knocking, there's fluid in places it shouldn't be and something bad has happened to some gaskets. He wanted us to decide if the car was worth the money. We're thinking about it.

So, the kids and I are idle. It's not an emergency in the sense that we have to use credit to solve the problem. (Our emergency fund is only $1000 while we pay off the credit card.) We can walk to most of our classes and things locally, and skip a few weeks of far away homeschooling fun while we decide what to do. I need to take a fresh look at our stuff to decide what to put on eBay as cash raising, we need to play with the budget a bit to squeeze more blood from the turnip and find a rabbit to pull out of our hat.

One day at a time. Luckily, my yarn and paper stashes are big enough to carry me through without having to break that other resolution.

Stuff

There's a great, short video on the Internet that I'd like to share. I received it in an email from a yahoo group I'm on for home schooling Roots&Shoots leaders. I started watching it to make sure it was something my kids would want or need to see, and was riveted. It will take 2o minutes to watch and much thinking time afterwards. Find it at http://www.storyofstuff.com/.

I thought I was pretty good about not buying things, about donating unused things, buying used whenever possible, not creating so much waste. After watching the video, I realized just how wrong I am. We just bought a new computer monitor, for example. And new socks for the girls in the house. Individual chip bags, juice pouches for car lunches, small yogurts and new LED Christmas lights. Yikes. The video puts the whole consuming society a natural resource perspective.

Then I started gathering up headless toys, plastic things for a snow globe project. It's fun to put army guys or spare cootie legs in a snow globe. Expect the unexpected. I went through toy bins I had just been through a couple of months ago when I donated a huge bag to Goodwill. We have so much surplus, it astounded me. We made some good snow globes from some of this surplus, used jars from the basement and from other people's kitchens, and glitter left over from another project. It was a recycling kind of project, but we can't litter the world with snow globes!

Even those of us who think about these things have a long way to go. My kids had no idea about planned obsolescence, I'm glad they have a little understanding of it now. I hope it stays with them.