Thriftiness

Noah is back! And how wonderful it is to be together again. We haven't been apart that long since he went to Japan for six weeks in 2006. Together, together, together. I will say it is weird having him in the apartment after being here alone for that long--whose dirty dishes are those? Who ate all the cereal?

I am still sick, or sick again, it doesn't matter which. Focusing on moving past it, which involves sleeping 12 hours a night and feeling lightheaded for a good part of the day and coughing until my chest hurts. Please, echinacea tea, make me well again. Please, green soup with ginger and sweet potatoes, heal me.

Our new PC is here, and tomorrow we should have Windows 7 from Seth for a decent price, and I will actually do some editing for the two clients I have with manuscripts of the same length (200 pages), due the same time, in mid-January. I may disappear after tomorrow for a while, surface for Christmas, disappear, surface for New Year's, disappear, surface for my FIVE-YEAR ANNIVERSARY, and ... hopefully be close to done. It isn't that much editing, really, since I am not working any other jobs. And I can probably average 5 pages an hour. So, 80 hours worth? I will make the deadline for both of them.

Remember my repetitive stress injury? And my worker's compensation claim? It is settled, 1.25 years later, I have the check, I am depositing it, and that is done. If only I was healed all the way. Still, it is enough money to start the yarn-dyeing business and to throw some serious money at whichever student loan I choose. For that I am thankful. I am also thankful that I have less constant pain now that I ever have since the injury, that I'm more aware of how to manage the pain, what to avoid, what I can do. What I can't do. I had some really amazing occupational therapists to get here, and I am most thankful for them. The lawyer, eh. The doctors, no. But Becky the therapist, yes.

And so, in the middle of this, our new life here in Seattle, we are making enough money to get by without trouble, but we want to pay off all of our loans as quickly as possible while rebuilding our savings that have been totally depleted by leaving Urbana in August and moving to Seattle in November. And trying to set aside money for things like our car which will inevitably die some day and need to be replaced, and how great would it be to buy our next car flat-out in cash, like we did this one because of Noah's careful planning, and not have payments? And set aside money for a house? A house, here in Seattle, where houses in my current neighborhood start at 300k? And the fixer-uppers start at 150k and are described as "needing new plumbing and being stripped down to the studs"? I am handy but that kind of house ... that is a lot of work.

But what I came here to write about is cooking, and eating, for less money, but cooking and eating well.

Ideas:
--use this woman's meal plans--they seem a little boring, but I can use her plans and sub in my favorite recipes with the same ideas, with the goal of feeding the two of us for about $200 a month
--make bread at home, since I love making bread and homemade bread is delicious
--make yogurt at home, in the crock pot?! That's revolutionary.
--make our own cleaning products when possible, with vinegar, baking soda, and a basic degreaser like castile soap, and maybe essential oils that I already have

Now, don't get me wrong--we're planning on buying an LCD TV that is somewhere between 32" and 40" sometime soon. But being thrifty some places means we can spend in other places, right?

On to knitting for Christmas!!