Or at least, a baby picture. I don't have a substance-packed post for you, so here's your sop:
(Admit it. You only read this blog for the pictures anyway.)
Here is Miss Boo, looking deceptively angelic.
Deceptively, in that she is actually very very human and so am I. I mean, of course I have good kids. It just seems like there's a lot of them lately. Which makes me wonder how people with five or six or eight or, for heaven's sake, nineteen, do it. All I can think of is that three or four is sort of max difficulty in number of kids-- two kids and you can still do one-on-one care when your husband is home, and five and up and by sheer laws of nature usually the oldest is at least five by the time the youngest comes along, and potty-trained.
I hope. Because otherwise, I'm a wuss of epic proportions.
They don't look like they're capable of strafing through the house like the Luftwaffe and reducing everything to a state of anarchy (and potty) in a matter of minutes do they?
Right now I have surrendered my principles and we are watching a Veggie Tales DVD, because I don't have the mental free space to wrestle with kids who want to read two different books at the same time. (Buddy has discovered that there is such a thing as gender, and has promptly rejected anything he feels is feminine. Like, for instance, any book his sister picks.)
To relax I've been rereading my copy of The Complete Tightwad Gazette. It's always heartening to me to remember some things--like homemade cocoa mix is easy (not that we need it yet here), and that as frugal as we are we don't do near everything we could. I'm planning to step it up a bit going forward, not just because the Husband and I have been eyeing the global economic situation askance, but because the Husband's car has emphysema. Or its air conditioner is broken. Or something.
Anyway, the guys at the garage can't figure out what's wrong with it and they don't want to charge us a lot of money to replace the compressor. They keep looking at it and replacing fluids and not charging us, which is kind of them, but we kind of just want the a/c to work again. It's not safe to not have an a/c in Texas in August.
Being mindful that cars tend to keep going bad once they start going bad, and desirous to pay for the next vehicle in cash, we're saving. (I've got my eye--pun intended--on Lasik for me next year, too.) So, with that in mind, Tightwad Gazette-style strategies look like a bargain. Eat off-brand toasted oaties now, get new car and fixed vision next year? Deal.
With that in mind, I'll be featuring some money-saving tips as we head toward next year.
My favorite self-figured-out tips today?
1. Sometimes it's cheaper to serve (medium) eggs and (homemade bread) toast for breakfast than it is to serve cold cereal, even store-brand cold cereal. And the eggs don't leave you hungry again at 10am.
2. Homemade laundry detergent really does work, bizarrely.
My favorite Tightwad Gazette tips?
1. Homemade cocoa mix: 1/3 cup powdered milk, 1 teaspoon cocoa powder, 1 teaspoon sugar, mix, add cold water, mix again, microwave.
2. The "cut the amount you use in half and see if it works" experiment. Because of this I use half the liquid dishsoap, laundry soap, toothpaste, and many other things. But not half the dishwasher detergent. As far as I can tell there's no way to save on that stuff--the bargain brands don't clean anything, and skimping on the amount of Cascade doesn't clean anything either. Hm.
Cheers,
Breanna
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