Damn you, LLBean Fall Catalog. It’s not that I really want anything specific from you, I mean, you’re LLBean, there’s not a lot of innovation appearing season to season. It’s not like an Apple keynote. But what you’ve done is made me think “oooh, fall is coming. Then winter. Fluffy snow! Cookies. … oil bills. OMG, what are we going to do. Money is going to be so tight.”

To that end, I’ve been once again fiddling with finance sites (wesabe.com, mint.com) and trying to estimate costs for the winter, bleeding the turnip, etc etc. If you don’t heat with oil, it means nothing to you, really, but if you do (and I do) the price of oil is going through the roof at an alarming rate. We heat exclusively with oil, and are cheap, cheap, cheap about it, and average 450 gallons per heating season, which is less than anyone else I know. (And I know a lot.) Running the numbers, assuming oil will be $5 a gallon ( almost $4 more than our first winter, four years ago), it basically works out to about $375/month for the heating season. We’ve installed windows in all the primary living spaces, and we’ll be rearranging the living room so that the couch is away from the big window, just to keep us more comfortable, hopefully. I plan on spending ~$300 on honeycomb shades before we turn on the boiler this year, as well, in an effort to keep what heat we do produce, inside. It’s freaking me out.

Our debts are our house and my student loan. Our commutes are about 3 miles apiece, including daycare stops. Our cars are paid for and get 25+ mpg, pretty good for their ages. We don’t spend frivolously, we don’t eat out, I budget for food and for one takeout meal per weekend, we don’t go to movies, or on ‘real’ vacations, or anything like that. We don’t have cable, we have the cheapest cell plan available (200 minutes), and even our Netflix is the $9 version. After our mortgage, our single biggest expense is daycare (although, Ingrid just switched to Jr Preschool, so we get our first daycare break, EVER, from 667 to a cool $630 a month) and we just aren’t extravagant spenders. We work on saving, but car repairs this summer ate up a chunk of that, on top of the money we’d earmarked for windows, and we haven’t even finished all the windows! Argh.

So, I spend a lot of time thinking about this. The other track is that I think about how in the FUCK I can ever afford a second, how utterly wrong it is that money dictates the size and timing of my family in such a way, and trying to just figure. it. out. We’ve decided it’s time to start hoarding sick and vacation days (and besides, I can’t afford a vacation, anyway) to hopefully create a stockpile for a hypothetical 2010 maternity leave. I’ve trolled craigslist wondering if there’s an ideal, but cheaper, option for childcare. (Answer: No.) It’s just weighing heavily.

So, in light of all that, I decided to fantasy spend some fantasy money. If I had the following, this is what I’d do with it: $1 : go buy a diet coke from the campus center. (I might do that in a minute.) $10: make plans with Andy to get coffee or something on Friday. $100: put it towards the thermal shades $1000: dining room windows, and some thermal shades $10000: finish windows, do the roof $100000: windows, roof, siding, pay off student loan, save money with some earmarked for my dream car (the 09 Forester… lame, I know, but oh how I long for that car!). $1000000: windows, roof,siding — wait, with a millionbucks, I might even figure out how to add a master suite and first floor bathroom. Or buy out a neighbor or something — and, of course, pay off student loan, get that sweet, sweet 09 Forester, and save. Maybe just get pregnant and do the SAHM thing. Wouldn’t that be lovely? Alas.

Since it’s been dead at work D-E-A-D dead, I’ve had lots of time to fantasize, dwell, worry, etc on just Life As We Know It. I’ve used the ol’ plate-spinning analogy before, where my plates are Family, Work, Body, Money, Brain.

Work is going well — the only thing I’d change would be to have a 4 or 4.5 day schedule, as I find that even having Friday afternoons off for summer hours makes a huge difference in how I feel about the work/life balance.

Body, I’m working on as well — I am back into the groove of Group Power and the Y and all of that, and watching what I eat (but have totally slacked on the WW tracking, because I suck. Well, that and the online tools kept crashing on me, so I stopped wanting to open them) and have lost about 10 pounds in the last few months, even though it’s the season of Ice Cream and Hamburgers. I am now a Regular at the Y, which continues to amaze me, and honestly makes me more committed to showing up. I even use the elliptical now! Yeah.

Money — I love wesabe, and am being good about updating that. We are saving (or, were saving until 1500 bucks of car repairs popped up the same week we paid 900 for four more windows) and we aren’t in debt, and that’s good. I am freaking the fuck OUT about heating our house this winter though — we’ve regularly used 450 gallons a season, and are hoping that the new windows (and thermal blinds I plan to get by winter) will make a difference. Maybe not in our oil usage, but in how warm and comfortable we are inside. But with oil approaching $5/gallon, that’s about 4x what it was our first winter, and it works out to about $375/month through the heating season, which is a lot. We don’t drive much, our commutes are 2 and 3 miles, respectively, so I’m not terribly freaked about that. i think September will be another no-buying month (August is Dave’s birthday, so that would hardly be fair…) just to stockpile some oil money and such.

Brain — It’s still weird for September to not be greeted with getting a parking pass at UM or figuring out my textbooks or whatever, and that’s weird. I also am trying to figure out how to WRITE again, which seems weird as well. I can barely get a blog post up these days (but I am twittering daily — www.twitter.com/snappity — if you’re a twitterin’ too, feel free to add me!) but I just feel so… uninspired. About everything. Not depressed, just… bored. Or something.

In all of that, I’m kind of trying to think of a way to bring in some more money, somehow, to be able to be saving more, to increase our cashflow, to have more of a safety net, all of that. I really, really, desperately want another child, but that can’t happen until Ingrid is on her way out of private daycare and into public schools, so our timeline would be to TTC no EARLIER than a year from now, which would get us a spring/summer baby (KNOCK ON WOOD) and a 4 year old, and one year of daycare costing $1200/month. Not to mention a mat leave — I’d take my 12 weeks, hell or high water, but I’m already planning to start stockpiling vacation and sick days, but even THEN, I won’t have enough to cover an entire mat leave, even if I didn’t take another day off for two goddamn years. That weighs on my mind, too.

When it comes to extra income, Dave and are both into it. His freelance gig has kind of dried up for now, and that was always good for him to use as spending money. Overtime for him picks up in the fall, but oil will certainly eat a pile of that, if not all of it. I do work for my folks in May and June (and a little shot in February), which helps, but it would be so cool if together, we could come up with $1000 of Other Money. Not from our current jobs, but from other sources. $1000 is about exactly our mortgage payment, and in my mental ledger, it would just be cool to cover that — our biggest expense, currently (and yes, 2 kids in daycare will cost more than our HOUSE) — and use our incomes for the other bills, and for savings. So, yeah. That’s a plate that’s wobbling.

For me, it ties up so many of the other ones — Family (could have a 2nd kid!), Money, Brain. I feel like I need to schedule something, some Writing Time or even time to update my local baby stuff blog. (Adsense has earned me 8 dollars in the last year. I’d love if that one could be self sufficient.)

So, dear readers, is anyone out there moonlighting? Supplementing? Anything like that? I don’t want to get a retail job (though the lure of another LLB discount is strong, I really don’t think I could hack the hours), but I’d like to set myself a goal to at least try to write more, even if it’s just “I’m going to take my laptop and disappear to an internet-free coffeeshop for an hour, once a week.” Or “I’m going to research how to write a query letter, or find a place that might be a good place to submit, or …. SOMETHING.” You know?

So, I have spent my 33rd birthday (thanks for the wishes!) purging my moms pantry and fridge. My mom has hoarding tendencies, for SURE, and I think that at some point in the last 7 years, I’ve mentioned it here. Everyone has tried, and there’s a small cadre of people who can be relied on to both purge her stores and fill each other in on their finds. Last year, it was my cousin Alison and I and the big find was about 12 POUNDS of butter. Literally.

Today, my parents were working, and they asked me to go to the dump. ABSOLUTELY. I filled — literally FILLED — my mom’s Matrix with trash. One 40 gallon bag was their weekly trash, but the rest was food. Expired food. The Matrix has a split folding rear seat, and it folds in 2/3 and 1/3, and I put Ing’s carseat in the 1/3 slot and folded down the 2/3, and the entire back was filled, and even the front passenger seat. I’m not kidding. I should’ve taken a pic of the loaded Matrix. I did take pics of some of my finds — the retro labels made me wonder if the boxes might be worth something, honest to god. Anyway, I filled 3 40 gallon yard bags, and two 13 gallon kitchen bags, with stuff from the pantry and fridge. I called my sister, and made her PROMISE to come help me when my folks died. They aren’t hoarders on the level of a 20/20 special, but maybe like on the Clean Sweep level. I’ve tried to help by not giving them things, but experiences, but still, it’s bad. And food is my mom’s achilles heel. I know it comes from growing up with depression-era farmer parents, and from living so far from town (what if there’s a storm! Why, that’s why I have 1 dozen cans of cherry pie filling, the most recent two purchased on SUNDAY) but it’s really insane. My mom has this awesome pantry — if it were in my house, I would honestly never fill it. Or, I’d fill it half with food, and the rest with cookbooks, cookware, and small appliances. Seriously. She has the pantry, and then had shelves built into the basement stairwell to store food, and is now talking about adding a peninsula in her kitchen for more storage. A peninsula would be nice, but not for storage. The solution to her storage needs is to get rid of shit.

I took pics, I’ll be uploading when I return to the land of high speed internet (dialup SUCKS, fyi) but I threw out 4 boxes of (expired) belgian waffle mix, all unopened, and all the big boxes, and 5 boxes of bisquick — all expired, some opened. Four tubs of butter — one expired 2 years ago, never opened. Maybe half a dozen small jars of minced garlic — some opened, some not, I left one unexpired one — and maybe 2 dozen boxes of Jello and/or pudding mix. An entire box ( shoe box size) of spice flavoring packets (you know, like “make gravy!” or “ranch dressing” stuff) that were clearly from the Reagan administration, and while not technically ‘expired’ (no date) I sure wouldn’t rely on them for flavor. Four boxes of shake n bake, original pork flavor, of which one thing was used. a dozen boxes of jiffy mix. Shredded cheese that expired before Ingrid was born. A bag of pretzels, in the stairway storage, that expired Oct 17 02. (It was with three other bags of chips, which have expiration dates of July and AUgust, but no year, and now I’m seriously thinking they are from last year — or earlier.) Literally, 150 gallons of expired food. When I got to the transfer station, the dump guy insisted on helping me, and in his Maine dump guy way said “good lawd, did you load this into the cah y’self? I aint gonna sass you none!” I would guess at least 150 POUNDS of food. That was expired.

I left stuff that didn’t have a date, or was on the cusp or not expired, but I labeled everything with red sharpie marker 07/08. If I come back in a year, and it’s still there? it’s GOING.

My sister is kinder than I, and can explain it well — mom shows love with food, so when Kate was here, she had to say “Mom, I want TWO cups of yogurt. Just two. No more” because if you say “mom, get me some yogurt” then she buys a dozen cups, because she wants to be sure that the ones she loves has enough yogurt, by god. She loves to feed people, as well as “be prepared,” and the two together add up to a food hoarding situation. Oh, and add in that she still shops like she has a growing family at home, AND they spend half their time at the mountain now, and they are not home nearly as much as they were when we were kids.

I told my mom I’d purged the stuff (didn’t even TOUCH the freezer or deep freeze) and she was kind of upset, but Kate thinks she also likes when someone comes in and just dumps stuff like that. I also want to help her make up a printed grocery list — because of this food thing (it’s been a lifelong thing, I remember in high school that my dad took over the grocery shopping after he and I did a purge and found 16 bottles of ketchup, and a jar of cheese that expired before my sister was born — and the reason she wasn’t helping was because she had basketball practice and was DRIVING HERSELF HOME) I am really anal about the food I keep in my house. I made a grocery list in Excel, that I minimized and printed 4 to a page, and it has all our staples on it. I plan our meals on the back, and make the list on the front, and Dave can check off what he is out of. There’s a whole separate column just for Ingrid’s food. (It also helps me by being typed, and I’m not forced to read my own writing.) On Sunday, we all go to the store, my budget is 100 bucks, and I regularly come in under that, and on Monday, when Dave gathers the trash to put on the curb, the last stop is the fridge and we get rid of any leftovers or food that’s passed or whatever. I also don’t have even HALF the storage my mom does — no deep freeze, no massive pantry, the smallest fridge you can get (50s house) — so I live within those boundaries. But yeah, a huge motivating factor is to not end up like my mom, who has been known to wedge the fridge door shut with a chair.

Anyway. Tomorrow, we have lobster and cake and Dave will be here, and that will be awesome.

Ingrid’s daycare is closed, so I took the week as vacation and we are currently at my parents house. Dave couldn’t get the time, so he will join us for the holiday.

So far, it’sbeen awesome. Ingrid has totally opened up to Grammy and Grampy (from her, this morning: “Wake UP, mama! Go see gammyngampy!” and even MORE impressive is that the two things I’d have bet money that she’d have hated, she’s LOVED. First, the boat. My parents got her a new PFD, and she loved wearing that, even around the house, and when it came time for “da boat!” she was alllll smiles, even when dad went kind of fast. He also let her drive, which, again, she loved. Weird.

Today was just about as good a day as you can have — my parents had to work, and won’t be home til midnight tonight, so Ing and I were on our own. This morning was spent coordinating my sister’s 30th birthday present — she mentioned needing/wanting a bike basket, so I found her housemate on facebook and messaged her, to see if kate meant wicker or metal, and her friend jumped in with both feet to help me. I ended up ordering one from REI, so that she can return it fairly easily if possible (the friend couldn’t find one locally) and then I called her fave coffee shop, bookstore, and health food store and bought gift certificates, that the friend will pick up this weekend. Then, she’s going to install the basket (I shipped it to her) and put in the gift cards and some flowers and park it in front of her bedroom door. (I also bought a giftcard at the coffee shop for the friend, as a surprise and thank you for her help.) The idea is to have a “ride around town” and celebrate her 30th in a bigger way than usual (we usually don’t, now) with gifts from local, independent companies (save REI) that are easy to use up, and don’t require much storage. This afternoon we walked over to get the mail — the post office is open about 10 minutes each day, and not after regular business hours so my mom regularly stays home just to get mail — there was 2 weeks there, today — and the schoolhouse where the PO is has a little playground next to it, so Ingrid swang for a bit. The PO also has a book & magazine exchange, so I picked up some reading materials for free.

When we got back from the walk, I was DYING from the heat, so we suited up and hit the beach, where I fully expected at best, reluctant toeing of the water, and at worst, full meltdown. The lake is spring fed and because the beach area is right by the dam, the moving water makes it even colder. It is, to say the least, refreshing. But no! Ingrid sat right down and played with the rocks, and waded out, and then I carried her way out and swung/floated her around and she LOVED it. WHen she toppled near shore and went under, she came up sputtering but happy, never shed a tear. She didn’t want to go, but she was starting to shiver, so I made her.

She went to bed early, I just ate ice cream and am watching House Hunters and reading recycled magazines and life is good. Except for that bigass spider I killed on our bed, which I took pictures of before I sucked the carcass up with the vacuum. I’ll be sending those to flickr, keep your eyes peeled.