October No Spend Challenge: How'd We Do?

October 3rd. That is how long I made it into the month before purchasing something I was not supposed to. I totally forgot that I was not supposed to be spending until after the fact. Bear had her first cavities filled that morning, so I let her pick what she wanted for lunch. And in the rush to get out the door in the morning I had not had coffee. So we had Subway and Starbucks.

Oops.

So to make up for it, I decided to leave my weekly mad money in the account and consider this my personal spending allowance. And I started adding "Do not buy anything" to my daily to-do list. Is that not the saddest thing you've ever heard? Besides the horrors of things like human trafficking, genocide, and disease? I think my to-do list comes right after disease.

On October 14th, I ordered some PlayDoh from Amazon to keep at my inlaws' house. They're keeping a family friend's preschool-age son during the day for a few weeks and the set looked like something he could get a lot of use out of, plus all the kids can use it when they go over there. Also, I had a $10 gift card, so it only cost me a buck out of pocket. Well worth it.

On the 18th, I bought Bear some boots. It finally got too cold for flip-flops, so this was an actual necessity. Then we got Wendy's for lunch on the way home. Also a total necessity, because I was very hungry, which makes me very grumpy, and Mean Jen was starting to blame every car on the road for every problem she'd ever had. Quick food was mandatory.

On the 20th, we had fast food again. This was because we'd all had sort of a long day and were in wretched moods and I WAS NOT COOKING ANYTHING.We may or may not have had fast food again on the 24th. Ahem.

And the on the 26th, I bought Bear some snowpants on Ebay. We got her a really nice winter coat at Once Upon a Child last month, but the snow is coming and she had no snowpants, so I broke my rule. But I got a pair of Zero Xposur snowpants in barely used, pretty-much-brand-new condition for less than $20, including shipping. So her coat AND snowpants (which will both probably still fit her next year) cost me less than $30, total. I feel zero regret about this.

But still. Not great. I am kind of terrible at this. Don't get me wrong—had I not been consciously choosing to avoid extraneous spending most of the time, this list would be much, much longer. So maybe if I treat every month like No Spend Month, it'll sort of balance itself out.

As a side note, I think I have given some people the impression that we are being actively frugal because we are kind of poor. Not the case. We've just discovered how fulfilling it is to feel like we control the spending instead of being controlled by the spending. "That's not in my budget" does not mean "We are broke." It means I have not budgeted for whatever "that" is at this  time and I have more desirable/important places to put that money. Often that place is into our savings account to sit and wait. Buying clothes for the kids at thrift shops or accepting hand-me-downs is not an act of desperation. It's just smart money management.

We are certainly not wealthy (or even upper middle class) people, but we haven't been broke in several years. You know, since I was in college and Husband took a $4 on the hour pay cut for his apprenticeship. The years of buying food with student loan money are behind us. Now we're just exerting control over our finances because it feels GREAT.

This Week in Homebuilding...

We're still firmly entrenched in "hurry up and wait" mode, but we can finally at least see the end of the...trench. I was going to say tunnel, but that is a mixed metaphor, which is apparently my thing. So we're ambling along down this...trench...looking for, um, the part where we the digging stopped and it slopes back up to ground level and I think that's the point where we're all moved into the house and settled.

We are nowhere near that. But we can make it out if we squint. Through our binoculars. Which are standard-issue in trenches, I think.

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This week I began emailing the contractors on our mediumlist so I can whittle it down into a shortlist. People in trenches love whittling. It passes the time. I've heard back from several who were able to eliminate themselves because they don't build in the areas we're looking at, or they only do $350,000+ homes, which is NOT us. There have also been a few that do fit our needs, at least on the surface, and have made it to the shortlist.

On a whim, I also Googled "be your own contractor". *snort* Nahgunna happen.

It's tedious. It brings about more questions that I didn't think of. I'm terrified that the budget we have carefully settled on is going to be inadequate and we won't be able to build next year, or ever. I'm overwhelmed by the sheer number of choices we will be faced with, the headache of making sure everything is right, the worry that stuff isn't being done as well as we were told it would be or with the materials we expected and I won't know the difference until my house starts hemorrhaging energy or my roof need replaced in five years. I'm having daymares about being in this tiny, claustrophobia-inducing, project-riddled house for another five years. I'm scared we'll give up and end up settling for just building in a development on a half acre, or giving up on building all together because it's so incredibly overwhelming.

This process is terrifying.

But it's progress. It's a step toward our dream and I'm trying to enjoy it, even though it's stressful. We're hoping to begin actually talking to builders in person in February, though I am making no guarantees. Right now I wish I could just get my mind off of it. 

Things I Do Not Care For: Homeschool Edition

I really like homeschooling. I do. It's an entire lifestyle, a community, and I'm glad every day that we have chosen it.

However. Like all communities, it comes with its rude neighbors, shady businesses, and dogs barking way into the night. Let's talk about some of those things in the homeschool community.

Things I Do Not Care For: Homeschool Edition

Dads as "principals"

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Oh, HELL, naw. Nothing. NOTHING. NOTHING sends me fleeing from a blog or website faster than seeing a homeschool mom refer to her husband as The Principal. I absolutely hate this. I mean, okay, I can laugh when she makes a tongue-in-cheek reference to sleeping with the principal, because that's kind of funny when the dad has only been cast as the principal for the purpose of the joke.

But this is not so in many homeschool families. I believe every family is different and blah blah blah. But damn, I find this so demeaning. It's sexist and it diminishes the role of the mother to subordinate rather than equal partner. Sure, I do most of the formal "teaching" in our house, but Husband and I make many of the administrative decisions together, and the rest mostly actually fall to me because I am the one in those homeschool trenches every day.

Husband certainly imparts his skills and knowledge to our kids whenever he can, too. But like I said, we are equal partners in this house, and while I consciously try not to judge other people's family setups, this husband/principal crap really pisses in my proverbial Cheerios.


The labeling wars

I have never seen more, abbreviated labels in my life. Everyone's super-special kid has twelve disorders coupled with seventeen various gifted labels. It is not uncommon to see a homeschool parent talk about their "DS, 12, PKD/ESPN/ADHD/OPP/ICP/TTYL/LYLAS with giftedness in LMNOP/G6/PBS" or some shit.

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I'm not saying all the various disorders and learning abilities/disabilities don't exist. I'm also not saying that these kids don't have these various things. What I am saying is that it kills me to see how snippy moms can get, trying to outdo each other with the labels. There is legitimate competition to see whose kid is a more delicate (but also more brilliant!) flower. I roll my eyes daily. It goes well beyond discussion about special needs or learning and devolves right into competition/virtual hair flipping, and it's maddening.


The over-achieving, hyper-stressed Mom

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You know her. She is on that committee. She can organize and supply that bakesale. She knows all those people who are Very Important. She is pretty in a whimsical, thrown-together-but-somehow-still-cute way. And oh, yeah—she's a huge, snippy, passive-aggressive bitch.

I thought I left her behind when we left the public school, but I was wrong. She is alive in the homeschool community and she is THRIVING. She plans all the outings and activities and co-ops and answers every question in a clipped, bothered tone on any and all of the fifteen online groups/boards she runs. She rolls her eyes and rushes around, screaming about how busy she is and that's why she has NO TIME for your shenanigans, yet she cannot stop her compulsive need to volunteer for every, tiny thing that crops up.

The thing about her is, she is actually not a bitch at heart. She is also not like the Annoyingly Perfect Mom because she is not chipper or perfectly put together. She is stressed and grumpy because she cannot say no, because she is a perfectionist to a fault, and because she genuinely wants to be more helpful than humanly possible.

So yeah. She drives me insane, but she's also misunderstood. It's due to her own actions, yeah, but still. You know if you need anything, OAHSM will jump over a semi truck to help you. She'll be frazzled and irritable and brash, but she will help. So while she is one of the most maddening, confusing, illogical people you've ever met, you know she means well and you simply thank her while biting your tongue and then shaking your head in private. She's a mess, but she's good people. And aren't most of us?

A Frugal Halloween? Maybe?

Remember when Husband and I did the No Spend Challenge back in June? And remember how we spent? Okay, not much. We actually did REALLY well, I think. But here we are, settled in to a new school year, our vacation and most of the birthdays we celebrate behind us, and a brand new home on the horizon. So we've decided that it's time for another No Spend Month.

This time we're going to take it on in October. It won't be easy, since our anniversary and Halloween are in October, we are attending a wedding, and we have a family tradition of visiting a pumpkin patch. So what we've decided to do is budget a certain amount for each of those things and stick to it. Halloween candy is insanely expensive, so I gave myself a $20 budget and bought as much decent candy as possible at Kroger and I am going to worry less about making sure I have enough for every kid who might knock. Once it's gone, I'll turn out the lights and be done with it. Sorry, latecomers.

We're also doing a zero-budget costume challenge. Bug is going to wear a hand-me-down costume from a friend. Bear will have to create her costume out of things we either already have, or that she can borrow. It's going to require some creativity, but I think that's a GOOD thing. She is going to be a Minecraft Endergirl, so it's a fairly simple costume, anyway. Purple hair, black and purple clothes. Easy stuff.

Endergirl

Before we begun, I tallied up all of the "extra" spending we did in July, August, and September and came up with an average per-paycheck total. That amount will go towards our ALMOST PAID OFF credit card balance and our down payment savings fund during each of the three pay periods we have this month. I was both excited and nervous to see the number, but I think it was good to be faced with it. It's so easy to justify all those little purchases, but it can very easily get out of hand. And at this point I'd much rather sink that cash into a beautiful piece of land than an over-priced, calorie-laden cup of coffee.

Are you ready for this? I was not. We're spending about $250 per pay period (that's every two weeks) on "extras". YIKES. That's going out to eat, random little Amazon and Ebay purchases, alcohol, Starbucks, etc. So roughly $500 PER MONTH. That is sobering. But on the upside, that's $750 we'll be putting toward more useful things this month (three pay checks!), and we can use this buffer month to discuss a better way to budget for fun extras without spending thoughtlessly.

If you haven't done it before, consider logging into your online banking account and tallying up all the extraneous spending. We don't use our credit cards at this point, so I didn't have to take those into account, but if you do, make sure to include those purchases in your tally. It's a painful reality, but a good one to face.

Four Weeks into our School Year

We started back with our formal lessons on August 26th. Most of Bear's friends went back about a week and a half before, but we were too busy being at Disney World.

Nah nah nah boo boo?

All the local Florida schools were back in, too, but there were a LOT of European families there!

It's kind of fascinating (I think that's an oxymoron...) to me how different our first month looked this year as compared to last year. We were completely different homeschoolers a year ago. We were brand new to the game, unsure of how to relate to each other in this brand new way. Bear was still bitter with me about making her miss out on participating in drama club (which got canceled, anyway) and Project Ascent (which is cool, but nothing we can't do at home) and being with her friends all day (I won't even get started on that one). I was still actively struggling with the notion that school at home does not have to look like school at school. We were having fun and learning a lot, but I think we learned more about ourselves and our relationship than we did about Ancient Whatevapotamia or the SuperDuperFancy Equation.

We weren't floundering, as I approached everything with caution and tried very hard to be okay with discarding things that didn't work for us. But we were definitely finding our way. And after some ruthless but judicious weed cutting, we've found ourselves on a really lovely path. There are flowers to smell to the left and caterpillars to stare at to the right. There are volumes of historical fiction dangling from branches right at eye level. There are clear spots to stop and rest, to lay down a quilt and enjoy the silence, the freedom, and the power of choice.

It's going really well.

Lest you think me an optimist (the horror!), there is no pie in my sky. There is usually pie in my refrigerator, because I am a compulsive baker and also PIE! PIE! But you know, every day has its hiccups. It's not all caterpillar watching and flower smelling. There are days when it takes me five or ten "gentle reminders" in an increasingly loud voice to get Bear to mosey downstairs and PUT THE DAMN POET IN YOUR BOOK OF CENTURIES! My favorite delightful challenge as of late has been the crapping out of my printer, which I need to make copies of our math and grammar pages and sometimes other fun stuff, too. Not to mention the way Bug seems to believe read-a-loud time is also scream-loudly-about-milk-or-some-unintelligible-yet-crucial-Thing time.

But I gotta tell you—after a full year and one month of this life, I cannot imagine giving up this in the middle of the morning for anything:

My babes, sharing an apple in their cushion fort.

It's been the right choice for us from the word "go". I hope everyone's school year—home, private, public, magnet, Montessori, military, whatever—is going fabulously. And I hope ours KEEPS going fabulously. *crosses fingers*

Really Good, Really Simple Meatball and Hamburger Recipe

At the request of a few family members at Bug's birthday party last month, I'm putting up a link to the recipe I use for meatballs and hamburgers. It's not my original recipe and it is available online, so etiquette dictates that I should link to it rather than copy/pasting it.

I assure you, though—it is worth a simple click-thru. This is a really delicious beef recipe. I found it in the hard copy of Kentucky Living Magazine (June 2013), but you can see it online HERE.

Mmm, simmering meatballs...

Top it off with a little mozzarella, and YUM.

...the things that they find floatin' 'round my brain...

The past month or so has been extremely busy, between traveling to Florida for my brother's wedding and hosting Bug's birthday party (he's TWO. TWO). So rather than put together a real, decent blog post, here are some of the things that have been occupying my head space over the past few days. It is a very random, very profanity-laden list.


I don't like "Blurred Lines". There, I said it. I love a fun, upbeat, summer song as much as the next Joe, but this one makes Robin Thicke sound like a poor man's Justin Timberlake. It's too muddled to be slick and too produced to be raw. Thicke's vocals are not particularly strong throughout the entire song. It sounds cheap to me and I don't get its appeal. And that's not even taking the whole VMAs/Miley Cyrus/Foam Finger Seen Round the World incident, which is something I will do my best to never, ever reference on this blog again.

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It is unacceptable to me that the media is discussing Princess Duchess Kate Middleton Cambridge Windsor Wales Buckingham England's body. At all. Like, before she got pregnant, and now. Do not discuss her plans to "bounce back". Do not discuss her courage at having the audacity to not hide behind muumuus while her uterus shrinks back to size. Do not crow about her diet or her workout routine or her ankles or her hips. Just do not. I don't fucking care how famous she is, it's crass (she said, as she dropped an 'F' bomb), it's trash, and despite your best intentions (yeah, right...), it feeds our societal obsession with the shape of the female form.

Do not try to even it out by talking about the occasional famous man's body, either. Stop doing it to all celebrities. Kim Kardashian's belly is none of your business. Jessica Simpson's belly is none of your business. When one of them goes to the grocery store a few months after giving birth, she is not "debuting her post-baby body!" She is buying milk. So just shut the fuck up, media. S. T. F. UP.

Look at her, grocery shopping and shit. Who does she think she is? Source

Old wives' tales that will not die. Things like, "Plucking gray hairs causes two to grow in its place!"  While plucking them is not a good idea (that I totally do anyway), it's not because two hairs will suddenly start growing from a single follicle. Science, people.

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I think I've mentioned before that I love Charlotte Mason's philosophy about education and child development, and that we are adopting many of her ideas. That said, we are very "Charlotte Mason light". I use a lot of her ideas and things as guidelines, but the claustrophobic side of me comes out swinging and clawing for air if I try to put us in too tight of a box.

For example, CM espoused the importance of having a child "narrate" back what they've learned, through a variety of methods, and I totally agree with that in principle. But I don't plan a narration activity every day or for everything we study, because I find that it's often unnecessary. Bear does a lot of things on her own that I think count as "narration," such as asking deeper questions about the material, playacting the stories we've discussed, or telling her friends all about what she's learned. So while I keep my Reading Comprehension Cubes handy, I only pull them out on occasion. I like to think Charlotte would approve.

Doesn't she look like a kindly woman?