Catching Up

I mentioned recently that I am timidly cautiously exploring some job opportunities. I'm still working on that... we'll see how it goes. I am working towards working from home, but it will be a slow (and hopefully steady) process. I am far to obsessive and cautious to dive into it too quickly, I want to make sure it is a steady and viable income before I make the move. I had assumed/planned that I would stay at the college until that time, but I am considering otherwise now.

I am increasingly unhappy at the college, for a few different reasons: I really miss Kim being there. Hardly anyone that I knew through her even talks to me anymore - even when I pass them in the hall. I rarely have opportunity to see our mutual friends - most of my contact was on my way to her office b/c they are mostly in her old building, or on the way to it. My boss (not my direct supervisor, but the head boss) is increasingly hostile towards me and difficult to work with... she really makes my job miserable. Add to all that, with the state budget crisis, my hours have been cut. While Kim and I are both enjoying the extra free time that gives us, it makes my income so low as to hardly be worth it. All those together spurred me to start exploring my options a bit. And as I did, a very odd thing happened... I found myself becoming *excited* at the prospect of such a major change and energized by my prospects. That was such a novel thing for me, but the buzz has stayed.

I went on my first interview, and I feel like it went really well. I was on my game, I presented myself well, I felt encouraged at the way I handled it. All in all it was a good thing. I haven't heard back yet - she was still taking interviews through this week. I won't be taking the job, if it is offered, for several reasons; but the interview felt like a success and it was a great start to getting my feet wet.

I have another interview lined up for the first week in November. I am feeling excited about it, but a bit nervous. This job was definitely a reach position for me, so though I feel my chances are slim, I am encouraged that I even managed to pull out an interview. If, by some off chance, I am offered this position, I would definitely take it.

Other than the job front, not much going on lately. We've been traveling quite a bit - day trips mostly - but nothing new there. I love that Kim is as into fun and adventure as I am. I love being on the go. After Kim gets back from her business trip on Friday, I think we may check out a pumpkin fest on Saturday during the day. Saturday night we have another meeting at our church with the Welcoming Congregation group. Our turn to present is coming up in 2.5 weeks. That will be fun. Right after church on Sunday, we will be staying to have pizza lunch with the youth while volunteering on a project they are working on. I'm looking forward to that too.

My biological clock is ticking like a nanosecond alarm clock on speed these days. No, I don't have any real news on that front... just thought I'd share anyway.

I'm thinking of writing a coming out letter to my grandparents. Even typing that sounds drama-filled and bizarre. It also feels slightly redundant, but important to do anyway. *sigh* Maybe I'll go into it more in a future post.

Ok, I think that's it for now!

So, two dykes go on a date...

and, where does one take their wife on a date when living in East Jesus, you ask?

Judgement House, of course!


(Don't worry, we didn't get ourselves saved.)

Just smile and nod

We paid a much needed, and long overdue, visit to our BFF, Brandon the Bartender, last night for an impromptu date night. I can always tell when we have been socializing with him because my wife gets a bit whacky more fun exciting. Because of this, I have perfected the smile and nod routine. I could tell you some stories about the ideas my wife comes up with. Nearly as exciting as her ideas though, are the conversations that she initiates from total left field. Last nights conversation went something like this...

C: *chattering on about something*

K: *totally randomly* I bet some of our friends have a hard time imagining *me* married to a man.

C: Uhhh. Yeah, probably.

K: Well, honestly, I just can't imagine *myself* married to a man either. Not anymore, I mean.

C: *whew!* Guess I can cross that off the things to be worried about list.

Bedtime

C: *popping up out of bed* Oh! I almost forgot to take my bitch birth control pill.

K: Good job remembering, dear.

C: Yeah... wouldn't want to get knocked up this month.

K: *SPEW* lol

Quarterly Shopping, Part Two

Ok, I'm back! I've been really busy the past week. We've been doing some much needed home projects, and rearranging furniture. When we weren't working on those, I was busy planning out the shopping trip. A lot of work goes into it, but I definitely think the pay off of not having to do it again for a while is worth it. This post will hopefully go a bit more into the how-to of our shopping.

First, Kim and Amanda are given a deadline for getting their requests in. I try to give them a month's notice, and then lots of reminders as the deadline approaches. For my own sanity, I give them a deadline that falls 3-4 days before I actually want the lists... everyone stays a lot happier that way. Oh, and they aren't required to list household/toiletry-type items that they need, their list is just for snacky food/drink type things. While they are working on that, I gather up all the notes that we have kept over the past three months of extras that we need. For example, this month we are getting a new case of mason jars, a moleskine notebook for Kim, a meat hammer/tenderizer, and a new potato scrubber. Those extra things that are either one time purchases, or only very, very occasionally need replacing.

Next, I sit down with my master shopping checklist. I know how many of each thing I need to have on hand for a three month period, so as I go through the house, I know I need to have *at least* that many on hand. For example, I know I need to have 6 of our handsoaps for a three month period. I currently have 3. So when I sit down with my final shopping list, I will make a note that I need to get at least 3 more. However, and I will go into this more later, I also follow the guidelines of stockpiling. So while I know I need a minimum of three, I also set a dollar limit on how much I can spend to make it all fit within my budget. I keep track of how much things actually cost (hand soap is $2.49/bottle at Target) and will set that amount, times however many I *need* to get, as the cost in my final shopping list. So my budget for the soap will be $7.50. And here is where stockpiling comes in. If I can find a coupon for the soap, or if Target is running a sale on it, then I get as many *over* three as I can still fit in the assigned budget for that item. Last time, this particular soap was on sale so I ended up getting two extra, which reduced the amount I need to buy this time, which definitely saves money, in case the soap isn't on sale this time.

Now, taking a moment to side note. You may have noticed a few glaringly obvious things missing from my master checklist. Items such as: toilet paper, laundry detergent, dishwasher detergent, dish soap, and tea/coffee/cocoa. Also: fabric softener/dryer sheets, other paper goods (such as paper towels), household cleaners, and maybe some other things. Well, we don't buy anything from that second set because we don't use them at all. The items in the first set we do use, but I purchase all of those things online, in *very* large bulk orders, and most of them on a rotating schedule, so that I am not hit with needing to make that big investment very often.

Next up on the list making, I start figuring out what food items we will need. I look first at our meal plan for the quarter. Luckily, (because it isn't a task I particularly love) our meal plan is already laid out for the year. I put them together a year at a time, so I only need to refine it when I'm looking ahead to each quarter. I take the time at this point to go through and make note of any trips I know we will be taking, or if I know of a specific event we have going on that will affect the plan and adjust to remove or change those meals. The result is a pretty accurate look at what we will be eating for the next three months. Here you can see a sample week in our plan. (It actually looks a lot neater than that in my real spreadsheet, but oh well.) You may have noticed the shopping list column. That is SO very handy for me. I have a tendency to forget the most obvious aspects of meal planning - like the time it totally didn't register that we would need hamburger buns to go with our *hamburger* dinner. Yeah. In that column, I list every single possible ingredient I might need, including pantry staples like salt and pepper and flour.

Then I turn to my shopping list and itemize everything that appears in each week's grocery list. It gets very long (obviously). I don't have any sample documents from this stage because I do not save them in this state. I then do a sort so all same items are listed together (i.e. 20 rows of flour). I figure out how many times something has been listed, and then put the number in column b, next to the first time that item is mentioned, and then I delete the other 19 rows of flour. Unfortunately, I don't have a sample of it in this form either. But finally, I figure out just how much *actual quantity* of each item I'm going to need. Just because flour appeared 20 times, doesn't mean I need 20 *bags* of flour, kwim? So once I figure out how much I need, the final grocery list starts taking shape. Finally, following the guidelines for stockpiling mentioned above, I take note of how many of these things I already have in the house and then mark them off, or alter amounts accordingly. Oh, also at this stage, I fold in any requests from Kim and Amanda, anything extra I want, and any extras I think we may need. Once the final edit of this list is done, I put together the final shopping list.

The final list includes EVERYTHING we will definitely be buying. The amounts that appear next to most of the items indicate the minimum amount I must get. The prices in the last column indicate the maximum amount I have to spend. If, because of sales or coupons, I can get more than the minimum for no more than the maximum, we have had a very successful stockpiling trip. You can see the stores we shop at in the middle column. After everything is entered into the list, I sort it by store, and then, within each store group, manually sort it by aisle or by the way we move about the store. I don't *always* take time to do the last step, but it is so very helpful when I do, and makes for much less backtracking.

Ok, more, including pictures, coming soon.

Why quarterly shopping?

Below is a blurb that I posted elsewhere about why we do it. I'll add more details tomorrow - I've worked hard today, and I'm beat! (Because I'm also busy putting together the finished plans for the kids' visit.)

I started doing this because I honestly have a strong dislike of shopping. Now I hit all of the stores (Sam's Club, Kroger, Target, health food store) once every three months, and may not be inside them again till next quarter. We get almost all of our fruits and veggies and sometimes milk and eggs at the farmer's market - which is a pleasurable outing - so really, I rarely even hit the grocery store during the quarter. It definitely saves me time. It takes a HUGE majority of the Saturday that I do it, but then it is DONE. And honestly, I've done it twice now, and the second time was quicker and more efficient that the first, so I expect to see that result again. Going to the Farmer's Market is, as I said, a pleasurable outing, and usually gets folded into date time, so I don't even count it. The rare trips to the grocery take, seriously, 20 minutes - and that includes our drive time!

My hope with starting it was that it would also be a money saver too. Honestly? It's hard to tell. I'm not saving money... compared to last year. Which is what I had hoped to do. But *everyone* I talk to says that the costs of groceries is just soaring, and I see that in my own comparisons too. I still have all the spreadsheets from the groceries that I bought last year and there really is a huge difference in many things. Am I saving money over what I *would* have been spending this year doing it the old way? I dunno, it is a tough comparison for me to make. But I know, for example, the bigger amount of bulk goods I buy at my health food store, the bigger the discount I get. So I think I am probably saving money there.

Also, I do quite a bit of shopping - all of our 7th Generation things, among others - online. That saves time, and it saves money b/c I buy huge quantities. But it would be harder to put in that much upfront on a regular monthly or weekly budget. I have all these things set up on a rotating buying schedule, so I never get hit with, for example, laundry and dishwasher detergent at the same time.

More to come!!

I feel so decadent...

Normally posts about food would go on the other blog, but considering I talk about how *healthy* we are over there, I would be far to embarrassed to write this post over there.

Amanda's party is over... I would call it a mixed success. It was certainly interesting. We let her buy lots of party foods on Friday in preparation. We gave her a budget, but what she spent it on was entirely up to her. She bought lots of really horrible junk food. And (fortunately? unfortunately?) there is quite a bit remaining. And Kim and I are both totally PMSing. You can see where this is going, right?

We have totally binged on JUNK today. Crackers, cheese ball, cream puffs, chips... and way too much of all of them. None of it is homemade. It is all packaged junk. Nothing natural, organic, or whole grain in the bunch. I think we're finally winding down a bit... I say that as we're each polishing off a large cup of coca-cola in all its awful, delicious glory... and we're even drinking it out of plastic cups. (My anti-plastic post is coming soon.)

I should feel awful horrible about what we are consuming today. But we all need days like this, right? And we did have green smoothies for breakfast, so the day hasn't been a total waste... ;)