Wednesday, March 24, 2010

At the stroke of midnight

I'm starting this at midnight. It was one of those evenings where I putzed, read, didn't exercise, and had a fine time doing all of those activities. My mind is busy, working on several different things. I'm doing a fairly good job of putting aside the whole lost check thing. All in all, a nice evening.

Did I tell you that I live next to 1,648,327 frogs? (I counted!) They literally serenade us from dusk to dawn. I wonder how long it will take me to tune them out. Then I'm really wondering how we will sleep once it's summer when we sleep with the windows open. 1,648,327 frogs are awfully loud through the double pane windows. I can just imagine the cacophony once there is nothing blocking the path from them to my ears.

Disorder has reigned over me. With the house stuff, work stuff, I've just been a disorganized mess. I've taken back my old ways of making out a to-do list, assigning time values to each item, and then structuring my day so I tackle some of the small stuff and then make some progress on the bigger stuff. Time really seems to get away from me anymore. I'm not sure how since I don't watch TV. But then again, I blog and am on Facebook quite a bit. And I read. And I'm supposed to exercise. If I try to accomplish all of those in one evening, that's 4 hours per evening. I'm just going to have to buckle down and get some tasks done, even if that means I don't blog for a few days.

I'm mostly very frugal. I say "mostly" because there are indeed things I spend money on, but usually those are well thought-out...except for that house thing...maybe. Well, back to the point. I got all of the supplies to make my own laundry soap. I spent $8 on the supplies, and the supply is supposed to last a year. We'll see. It involves me making some witch's brew over the stove. That's definitely a weekend task, and then I'll have to try to do it when my darling husband isn't watching. Because he'll look at all the ingredients, the big stockpot, and shake his head, saying, "I'm staying out of this." But then he'll check in and make that doubtful expression and shake his head. You know the expression. "What in the heck is my loony wife up to?" THAT expression.

On a slightly less weird topic, I also want to start making meals in bulk & freezing them. We FINALLY have some freezer space since we got a new fridge and moved the old fridge to the garage. I want to fill that freezer with meals to last us for the next month. Real meals! It seems like all of these meal preparation franchises have gone under water & it's cheaper to do it yourself anyway, the thing is that it's a long process. You have to come up with 6-8 different meals to make, do the math on how many ingredients you'll need, shop for all of the ingredients (I have a hard time merely keeping milk and bread on hand), set aside a time to prep the ingredients (i.e., chop onions/celery), then set aside more time to make all the food. If you do it all in one day, it basically takes up the WHOLE day.

So those are 2 projects I'd like to do in short order, in addition to remodeling the bathrooms, painting, shopping for some things, etc.

Time! Where is that elusive time? I'd say I should do something now instead of blogging about what I want to do, but it's after midnight and I should probably get some shut eye. I have to be up at 6:10am.

3 comments:

Leigh Ann said...

Have you been to Moneysavingmom.com? She has what she calls "baking days" where she cooks for an entire month all in one day. You should REALLY check her out if you haven't! She's got it down pat!
Let us know how it goes. It's something that I would like to do myself.

Scrapping in Circles said...

A couple other moms were just telling me that they use a service called e-meals. You can chose type of meals (low fat, glutten free, etc), and a store that you shop typically. It then sends you a month of meals and grocery list for the store you picked. If I understand correctly, they ask you for a store since they keep the grocery cost under a certain amount each month and take into account sales, but maybe I misunderstood that. You should check it out.

I, on the other hand, will probably never use that type of service because I'm way too picky. They probably don't have a "no cooked veggies, no fish, and no yucky sauces option".

It does cost though, I believe.

B said...

LA, I did subscribe to her. I remember reading a few of her entries about it. Before Julia, we went to those meal preparation franchises that have since disappeared. We did the once-a-month cooking 3x on our own back then, and I remember it was a chore before kids. Since we have the space now, I've got to get back to it.

N, I'm picky like that too. We eat lots and lots of chicken. I'm like Bubba Gump was with shrimp, but with chicken instead. We do lots of Mexican chicken & bean dishes. I'll take the "sometimes gluten-free, mostly chicken dishes, don't make me work too hard" option.