Against the Grain

We're Debt-freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee (except for the house)

I tried to take a screen shot of the checkmarked box labeled "pay in full", but my photo software is on the other computer and gmail froze up when I tried to send it and our wireless sharing died back in the old house, so I'm giving up on posting that pic anytime this century and just typing it.

In March 2008, I realized that the money we borrowed from savings to pre-pay the escrow when we refinanced the house was needed to pay bills.  It was a wake-up call.  We'd burned through $8,000 from my summer 2007 consulting gig that had been in the bank account five months earlier.  We'd bought some things for the new house, but mostly it was going out to eat and other $10 here, $5 there purchases adding up.  We paid off our credit cards every month, but suddenly I wasn't sure if we'd be able to anymore.  I wrote out all our necessary expenses and was relieved to see that our income was higher than that, but just barely.  Since life requires more than the bare minimum, something needed to change.  The consulting stints that had filled in the gaps for the previous two years looked like they weren't going to happen any time soon, so I took a WAH job with my brother-in-law that would be flexible and up my alley, if not terribly exciting.  That April, we gave ourselves $40 to spend on everything that wasn't the mortgage, utilities, and bare minimum groceries and gas.  We paid for that food and gas on our credit cards but nothing else, while paying off March's credit card expenses.  In May, we continued the bare minimum spending and cut off credit card use entirely.  We used the stimulus money to pay for April food and gas (the last credit card bill), May's food and gas, plus an extra mortgage payment because we'd gotten into the habit of paying after the due date, but before late fees kick in 15 days later.  In June, we lived off our first strict budget, Dave Ramsey style.  It was a relief to budget money for restaurants (even just $20) and entertainment ($10) after living off less all spring.  We thought we'd be able to finish Baby Step 1, saving a $1000 emergency fund, nearly immediately but it somehow took us 6 months to put aside $2000 (double the recommended because Dan's car was showing signs of near death).  There was Leo's dental bill and who knows what else.  I went crazy with the spreadsheets and sinking funds, so we probably had close to $5000 in ING by then, but it was all in categories for potential doctor bills, life insurance due in January, tuition money for Peter, and a dozen other things. 

In December 2008, we finally had a initial emergency fund in place and we started attacking Dan's $11,500 student loan.  I began nannying 2 days a week in addition to working my other job 15+ hours/wk in the evenings and knitting for hire sometimes.  We were able to knock off $1000 almost every month.  By May, it was down to about $5000 and we figured it would be dead by July because I could work more hours once Dan was off for the summer.  Then his car died.  We donated it to charity, borrowed my sister's car until school was out, and lived with one car for the summer.  In August, we bought Dan's sister's car for $3000.  We'd been saving all our extra money all summer, not knowing how much we'd need for a car.  I considered getting a Mazda5 (the closest I can find to a dream vehicle that seats 6+ and gets decent mileage), but we didn't NEED the space and we didn't really have 10K for it.  The 2001 Toyota Echo we did get has great mileage (~35mpg) and works great as a commuter car for Dan. 

In September, our great progress slowed to a crawl.  We were paying for Leo's preschool and starting to save for pre-k next year.  The friend for whom I nannied went on maternity leave.  I realized I needed to save another $200/month for self-employment taxes.  Suddenly I was glad to have any money to put towards the loan.  I was looking forward to January when taxes could go down and I'd stop having monthly CSA deductions.  I forgot to pay the loan all fall, although I had $200+ in checking waiting to be moved over.  I was debating whether, when the loan went under $1000, if I'd be able to keep myself from spending the emergency fund and pay the darn thing off. 

Then at Thanksgiving, my mom handed me a card with a large check inside.  It's not as fulfilling to admit that my parents gave us the money that pushed us into Baby Step 3.  But another time, we would have put that money into checking and let it flitter away.  Not this time.  $1501.68 has been sent to the loan company.  Goodbye loan.  It was originally $15,000, plus another $5,000 on a private loan.  Dan got his bachelor's in 2002, then deferred payments until finishing school for teaching in 2005.  I think the private loan got paid off in the middle somewhere because it wasn't deferred.  It took 3 years to bring it down $4000 and 1 year for the remaining $11,500.  Dan will be 30 in February and we will be student-loan free. 

What's next?  The plan is to put $10,000 in a full emergency fund plus save $5,000 for that Mazda5 (the earliest model year, 2006, gets cheaper every year and we'd be selling the Civic).  We have $4500 in the EF now.  Just maybe, we could hit those goals by the time the 2010-2011 school year starts.  Maybe not, but we'll be prepared for whatever financial Murphy's come in the meantime.   After working almost every evening for 2 hours all this time, I'll be able to trade childcare starting late this winter when my SIL goes back to work and her husband and I trade our kids one day a week.  Between that day and preschool hours, I'll have my evenings back soon with the potential to do extra work if we're pushing extra hard to save.  And I'll get to spend a lot of time with my new little niece :)

I'm debating calling into Dave's show this Friday.  I'm not sure if $11,500 in 18 months will be impressive enough for the air, but it's been life-changing for us.  That $108/mo we owed the student loan company won't affect us too much, but our approach to money and living frugally and thoughtfully certainly will. 

Dan and I both allowed ourselves one extravagant-to-us purchase with the gift check.  I bought a Black Friday-sale serger ($179 down from $329 and I plan to put Christmas gift money towards half of that) and Dan bought a $60 book he's been eyeing.  He couldn't bring himself to pay $11 shipping when the store is only $3 in gas away.  Even in our outlandish spending, we found ways to cut corners.

I need to wait a couple days for the check to clear, but that money is moving to ING immediately thereafter.  There will be no wittling away this time. 

Conference update

Our parent-teacher conference for Peter was tonight (Dan had to miss part of his dinner hour break in his own conference time to attend) and I feel better about things.  The teacher spent the first 18 minutes showing us assessments and projects Peter has done, telling us what they indicate about his progress.  After mostly getting calls/emails when something was wrong for the past two months, it was comforting to spend the bulk of the time seeing all the things he can do.  He's been having spelling tests and we found out that they haven't gone over the words first, which makes tests of "pig", "pot", "spot", etc more interesting -- it's a way they determine whether kids understand the letter blends they've gone over.  I realized how much his handwriting has improved in the two months since school began -- everything's facing the right way and inside the proper lines and spaces between the words.  I look at his papers and books and say yep, he's reading.  The teacher takes the same materials and sees so many facets of what he's learning.  I appreciate that they practice writing both by looking at pictures of objects and hearing words -- both visual and auditory learners can show what they know.  My father came out in me the other day when Peter brought his first subtraction flash cards home.  So far, they've done addition with doubles 0-9 , adding one, adding zero, and subtracting one.  I was curious to see if he could stretch that further and made him a sheet with addition of two, three, or four, plus some goofy ones like 300+100 and 1000+0.  I think he got them all right, although he may have had to use his fingers with some of the addition with three or four.  His favorite sheets are ones where it's a fake person's paper and he gets to correct the wrong answers.  There might be too many teachers in his family tree.  I have fond memories of my dad giving me crazy, complicated algebra equations to solve a year or two before taking algebra in school.  It's probably not most people's idea of a fun time. 

For the last couple minutes of the conference, we talked about Peter's acting silly at inappropriate times.  It came off more that he's a five year old kid who doesn't have either the patience or maturity to better deal with situations.  Last year, he sat on kids' feet or knocked their stuff off the table as a way to let them know he wanted to play.  This year, he tries to make people laugh when someone chastises him or if he can't deal with sitting quietly anymore.  When I think of it that way, it seems like he's made pretty good progress.  The teacher also pointed out that all the kids get pretty wiggly still after sitting 15 minutes or so.  They get a 40 minute recess and sometimes a second one, and she keeps them rotating to different activities in longer segments (starting the year at 15 minutes and working up to 30) to help keep them engaged.  But they're five.  They can only do so much.  Peter's natural tendency is to sit by himself with a book or building something -- he's finding ways to cope that we aren't fond of.  But I feel now like we can work with him to an extent and beyond that, he just needs to get a bit older and realize no one thinks it's funny when he acts like that.   

Want a knit/sewn dress?

The boutique where I've had my dresses on consignment is closing and they sent the dresses back to me.  They sure aren't seasonal in Minnesota, but someday it'll be warm again, or maybe it's warm still where you are.  Anybody want one of these? Their retail prices are $45-$55.  I'll sell for $40ppd if anyone here is interested.  They are 100% cotton, knit on the top and sewn on the bottom.  My sizing is on my business site at the bottom of this page 

Size 0-6 months:

Size 3T:

Size 2T -- the top is dark brown:

 

Size 3T:

Canning 2009

These days, every load of the dishwasher averages 3 or 4 jars emptied over the course of the day.  I will probably can more soup and possibly more applesauce (I can get local apples through January) or jam (I've got a few gallons of strawberries and raspberries in the freezer) this year, but mostly, I was done the first week in December.  Here's my list of what I canned, where I obtained the fresh food, how much I paid for it, and what it turned into. 

4/20: Free frozen raspberries and rhubarb from my mom's 2008 garden -- 7 half-pints rhubarb-raspberry jam

5/15: Free frozen raspberries and rhubarb from my mom's 2008 garden -- 24 half-pints rhubarb-raspberry jam

5/26: Free frozen raspberries from 2008 and rhubarb from my mom's and my 2009 gardens -- 5  three-quarter-pints rhubarb-raspberry jam

5/30: Free frozen raspberries from 2008 and rhubarb from my mom's and my 2009 gardens -- 6  three-quarter-pints rhubarb-raspberry jam

6/17: 13.5 lbs strawberries from you-pick farm at $1.70/lb -- 7 half-pints strawberry-rhubarb jam, 8 half-pints strawberry jam, 1 gallon and 1 qt berries into the freezer

6/24: 8 lbs strawberries from the you-pick farm at $1.75/lb -- 8.5 half-pints strawberry jam and 1 gallon berries into the freezer

7/2: 12.5 lbs strawberries picked at $1.70/lb -- all went into the freezer

7/22: 9.5 lbs (3/4 gallon) black, red, and purple raspberries from the you-pick farm put into the freezer

7/22: 12 lbs sour cherries picked (free) and frozen

7/26: 1/2 bushel cucumbers & dill: $20 at farmer's market -- 19.5 qts dill pickles

7/29: 4 lbs blueberries from the you-pick farm at $2.95/lb -- all went into the freezer

8/16: 14 lbs grapes picked free down the block -- 16 half-pints grape jelly (I give some back to the neighbor)

8/16: Pickled 2 pints beets with sister using beets from her CSA

8/22: 17 lbs Paula Red and State Fair apples from orchard for $1.25/lb -- 5 half-pints apple butter, 14 pts apple sauce

8/22: 11.5 lbs grapes picked free down the block -- 14 half-pints grape jelly 

8/24: 25 lbs not-yet-certified organic peaches at $1.20/lb from the co-op and 22 lbs peaches from the orchard (shipped from MI) at $1.50/lb -- 22 qts peaches (7 raw pack, 15 hot pack) and 4.5 half-pints peach honey

8/28: 1/2 bushel Roma tomatoes from farmer's market for $12 -- 17.5 pts med-hot salsa (included $12 peppers), 10 cups bruschetta, 5 qts whole tomatoes

9/3: 30 lbs State Fair, Zestar, Haven apples for $15.50 total -- 5 lbs eating, 18 pts apple sauce

9/6: 1/2 bushel tomatoes for $8 at farmer's market -- 7 qts tomato soup and 8 pts pizza sauce

9/16: Pint figs from the CSA and frozen strawberries -- 4 half-pints strawberry fig jam

9/16: 3 lbs green beans from garden -- 5 pts green beans

9/18: 1/2 bushel tomatoes for $8 from farmer's market, plus some from garden -- 12.5 pts spaghetti sauce

9/19: 1 bushel cucumbers and 4 bundles dill from farmer's market for $67 -- 38 qts dill pickles

9/20: 10.5 qts beef stew using food on-hand

9/23: 35 lbs tomatoes including heirlooms from friend -- traded for a knit soaker -- 2 qts tomato juice, 5 qts and 3 pts half-tomatoes, 5 qts and 1 pt crushed tomatoes

9/25: 28 lbs conventional Bartlett pears for $10 from grocery store -- 12 qts and 6 pts pears, 4 half-pts pear honey

9/29: 1/2 bushel (18 lbs) Paula Red apples for $16 from orchard -- 5 lbs eating, 10 pts super-pink apple sauce (Leo's favorite)

10/1: 21 lbs Macintosh apples (free from Dan's co-worker's tree): 7 pints applesauce, 13 half-pints apple butter

10/4: 10 lbs green beans from farmer's market for $10 plus some from garden: 16 pts beans plus extras for dinner

10/5: 1/2 bushel romas for $9 from farmer's market: 11 qts whole tomatoes

10/6: 1/2 bushel romas for $9 from farmer's market: 11 pts spaghetti sauce 

Report Card Season

Peter came home with the following sheet today:

 Dear Mom and Dad:

This week you will be seeing my report card.  This report card will be my teacher's attempt to describe my actions and accomplishments at school during the past weeks. As you read the card, please remember that my teacher is describing someone near and dear to you, so please don't get "uptight" if you see a blemish.  I hope you accept me as I am.

Remember that all children do not learn to walk and talk at the same age, nor do they learn math or reading at the same rate.  Please do not compare me to my brothers, sisters or friends, because I am unique to this world.  Be realistic in setting my goals.  I need to be challenged, but not to be pushed beyond my ability.  I need to taste success and I need time to "smell the flowers" while I am still a child.

Please understand that my report card is a picture of me at school.  It is a whole different world from the one at home. Can you imagine having 20 children my age at the dinner table tonight, or 50 children in the backyard playing?  Don't be surprised to find that I respond in a different manner at school.

My teacher knows me as I am at school.  You know me as I am at home.  The "real me" may be somewhere in between.  When these two images are blended with sufficient understanding, acceptance and love, I hope you will see a unique individual who can make you proud and bring you much happiness.

Love, Peter

I'm so glad the teacher sent this, even though I find it somewhat disturbing and it's choking me up.  These are five year olds.  When the teacher has to send home a peremptory note warning us to be kind and not to judge our own kids, it's pretty sad.  Maybe it's partly because this is a private school and parents have high expectations to match the high tuition.  And I can't say it's all those other parents and not me -- conferences are next week and I've been trying to figure out if there's an appropriate way to ask if Peter can be challenged more.  I still don't know if I need to lay off entirely, or if he should be more challenged in reading but have more fun time in other ways. 

We know Peter's been acting out, talking back to teachers and being silly at inappropriate times.  Since I was a total goody-two-shoes throughout school, I'm disturbed that my kid thinks he can laugh in a teacher's face.  But I don't know whether that's the product of being in a desk most of the day, a lack of sleep, a lack of clear discipline at home, or what.  It would be great if throwing him in a reading program that he couldn't coast through kept him too busy to goof off, but that doesn't seem likely. 

Parenting certainly doesn't get easier when they spend nine hours a day with someone else.

More sewing pictures

I made this peasant dress as a practice run.  My SIL bought the pattern and I used some random Christmas fabric that looked like it might be wearable to test out the fit.  My SIL has bought two kinds of nice fabric once we get the sizing right.  The smallest size was 3-6 months and this appears pretty true to that.  It'll work on my not-quite-8-lb niece and fit all winter, but she might want me to shrink the neckline and wrists a bit to make it more of a 0-3 month dress.  Just for kicks, I tried it on the 27 month old girl I took care of yesterday (who just moved into 3T clothes) and it's too tight in the armpits, but the arms and length look fine.   I love the idea of styles like this that grow with the child and can get tons of wear.  I might be experimenting with combining fabrics and adding a sash. 

My next door neighbor, the neighbor directly behind me (we share the alley), and her next door neighbor are all having babies between now and February (so if I get pregnant, it'll be the two houses on the end of each block having babies within the year).  The behind-me neighbor's little boy was born two weeks ago.  I brought them a fleece pouch sling and 3 cotton knits and asked her to choose one and whether she'd prefer a gown or sleeper.  She went for the jungle gown.  Her guy is under 6 lbs, so I went for the smallest size, which fit my 7.5 lb niece at birth, so hopefully it'll fit him soon.  The pattern is from KwikSew -- I love both the gown and sleeper, although I had to cut a few inches off the newborn gown.  KwikSew patterns are so easy to follow and generally true to size.  I've gotten fed up with all the Big 3 patterns I've tried.  It's easier to reverse engineer baby clothes I like than hope to end up with something reasonable from the Big 3.  Grr.  My SIL bought a knit dress she's going to have me try to reverse-engineer, so hopefully that will work out.  I need more girly knits...

Not sewing, but whatever.  Dia de los Muertos bread I made on All Souls Day.  That's a full size jelly roll pan -- that thing was enormous.  I should have realized that when it called for almost as much flour as my double loaf bread recipe that I should have halved it.  Dan brought half to school and we ate a bunch of it until I made sandwich bread and we finally threw out that last couple pieces today.  I was bummed that my mom, the retired Spanish teacher, was out of town and didn't get to try some.  She used to give extra credit to student who made it and our house was always full of bread in early November.  I don't like anise much, but I make the bread anyway.

Stuck at home

Leo woke up with a fever Monday night and we've been pretty well quarantined here ever since.  I suppose we've briefly ventured to the grocery store, library, and once to Peter's school but we haven't seen anyone we know for four days.  He's been better since lunchtime Thursday, but today there weren't any nearby playgroups and Leo whined when I tried to get him out of the house, and it wasn't worth the effort to force him.  He managed to be sick the exact combination of days to keep him out of his Tuesday/Thursday preschool which was a slight disappointment for him and an inconvenience for me, now that I rely on those mornings to get my work done.  My bosses were kind when I told them I couldn't make today's deadline, at least.  It would have taken me 7 hours to get caught up yesterday and the idea of somehow squeezing that in after the kids went to sleep is unpleasant even for night-owl me.  I can stomach 3 or 4 hours of work in a day, especially if I split it into smaller chunks, but it's really monotonous for longer than that.

So, what did Leo and I do, since he wasn't sick enough to sleep all day, just sick enough to be cranky.

I played a LOT of Lego Creator, in many Leo-friendly variations, always changing on his 3 year old whims.  Does anyone else have that game?  It was a garage sale find, so I have no idea if it's widely known.  There's a gameboard and building cards and lots of Lego pieces.  You pick a card, that says how to build something.  Then you take turns rolling the die and doing what the space says: 'take a red brick', 'take a brick from a neighbor',  'take a special piece', etc.  Usually, Leo doesn't build what his card says, although he takes a lot of time making sure he has one of the best cards.  Sometimes he wants me to help him build it correctly after he's made his own "crazy thing".  Sometimes we skip the board entirely and build the proper structures.  Sometimes he just uses the pieces and does whatever he wants.  I'm really tired of Lego Creator, but it usually degenerates into him making bigger and bigger Lego vehicles, which means I can go online while sitting next to him and we're both happy.

I've done a fair amount of baking.  I'm almost out of whole wheat flour (but will be getting 50 lbs next week so I don't want to buy more), so I made two loaves of oat-n-honey bread.  I've also made these granola bars, which stuck together better than most I've tried, French toast, and chicken broth.  I'm always looking for ways to stretch a chicken for 2+ meals or 2 lbs of steak into 2 dinners.  This week we had a larger chicken and I turned the leftovers into chicken fried rice as suggested by Jess.  This is my new favorite leftover chicken meal.  I made a ton of rice the day before and was able to use up lots of veggies we still have from the CSA and put a dent in our 3 dozen (and growing by 4ish daily) eggs.  It was fast and made enough for dinner plus a couple lunches for everybody.  The boys even mostly ate it.  Our steaks are packaged in 2 lb bundles and these days, unless I make a point of having steak on the side, we can go through most of that for dinner.  So today I made steak fajitas (using up more veggies), made rice, and tomorrow we'll have beef fried rice. 

Leo's been watching more than his usual 30-60 minute after-lunch show.  Yesterday I plunked him in front of a Bob the Builder video for 45 minutes so I could get some work done in the morning, then we saw another show after lunch.  The day before we watched Toy Story.  Other days, he only watched one short show, but played on the computer in the early morning. Today, now that he's feeling better, I cut back to one 30 minute show.  We have a big couch downstairs and I usually nap next to him while he watches.  Everybody's happy.  When he could be outside most of the afternoon, he was only watching TV a couple times a week.  I figure, it's winter in Minnesota, TV is acceptable. 

Our meals start to disintegrate when it's just Leo and I.  He prefers to eat small amounts frequently, so I either split breakfast into two halves (yogurt now, banana later) or put his leftovers in the fridge and take them out when he's ready.  That's on the days when I don't declare that cheese and crackers is a perfectly fine lunch when we had frozen grapes an hour ago. 

I've been buying milk directly from a farmer since spring.  It's a 15 mile/25 min drive one-way and I try to squeeze it in before dropping Leo off at preschool.  Of course, that's the one day I seem to need to wake Leo up rather than him dragging me out of bed at 7:30.  Every once in a while, I run into Erin.  On days when we don't need to rush to school, he likes to go see the Minnehaha Creek headwaters at Lake Minnetonka.  It's not as exciting as the Mississippi's headwaters, but it's a nice park and no one's ever there.  There's a dam that's designed so you can see inside.  I've never seen it open -- I'll have to see in the spring.  There's a boardwalk running across the lake and wetlands.  On the other side is a new housing development with giant homes going up, which is a big draw for Leo.  We saw a skid steer preparing a driveway on Tuesday.   

Leo has been really, really into asking "what would these make if we combined them?" for the past few weeks.  It ranks pretty high in the annoying phase list.  I can't convince him that all the tools in the toolbox don't make anything better if they're used all at once.  Or all the colors in the world.  Or all the food.  He doesn't accept my answer that it would make crazy soup.  We have a library book called "Tools" by Taro Miura that Leo loves.  It shows a spread of tools that some tradesman would use and on the next page, says the occupation.  It includes barber, mechanic, painter, chef, and others.  We take turns reading the names of the tools and after 2 weeks, he is now declaring what they would make combined, which is much better than him asking for my opinion on it.  Books like that are perfect in the car--he can spend as much time as he wants on each page that way.

Leo's reading keeps getting better.  I took something I saw on Starfall.com (those catchy rhymes! How dare they get stuck in my head!) and started "chunking up" long words.  He can figure out words like 'carpenter' now.  Peter brings home little books every day with sight words put into sentences with matching pictures and Leo can read those with little to no help.  As far as I can tell, he's reading everything the kindergartners are expected to read.  He's just starting to show interest in holding pencils and crayons and doesn't write or follow lines much yet.  Peter has flashcards for all the doubles (1+1 through 9+9) and 1+  (1+0 through 1+9) and Leo and I were counting those using our fingers this afternoon.  He tried but failed to convince me that 2+2=3. 

We got a bunch of new library books out today -- he'll sit with me for book after book.  "The Lorax" is his favorite bedtime story.  I'll read him a hard storybook, then we'll go through a simpler picture book or early reader with me pointing at words for him to read and either taking turns reading sentences, or my helping out with the tough ones.  Then we'll go back to another tougher one and I'll read it.  We went through a disaster book stint earlier this year and now he'll mention the sinking of the Titanic randomly in passing or talk about lots of people dying.  I sort of regret letting them watch the particular episode of "Reading Rainbow" that started them down that path. 

Leo hasn't been as into trucks and trains lately.  He's just begged for board games for a couple weeks, even though most of them are beyond his ability to play by the rules.  We can play The Orchard Game with all four of us and no cheating, so that's a favorite of mine, if not the boys.  Candy Land and Chutes and Ladders are designed so poorly -- why would you want to play a game with a three-year-old and have to go back to the beginning?  No good.  I need games with a 15 minute max.  I tried Dwarves and Dice today, but he didn't really have the patience for it.  I should do some simple memory games. 

Tomorrow, the now 27 month old that I nannied for from December - August is going to be at our house all day and the boys will be so excited to have her around again.  But that's going to be 10 hours with three kids on a cold, wet day and Dan will be gone all morning.  We may have to head to an indoor park. 

Updating my eyes for the decade

A couple weeks ago I went on an appointment-making rampage.  I hate making phone calls, especially those that need to happen during the work day (ie, when I have an impatient three year old asking me questions) and will be annoying and tedious (like giving my whole medical history and spelling out names three times).  It occurred to me that while Leo was at preschool one morning, I should get all possible calls out of the way.  After two years of driving half an hour for all our medical care, I transferred the boys to a new pediatrician and set up yearly checks for next March, switched myself to a CNM who could give me a physical in a couple weeks and do general well-woman care, I talked to an insurance person to find out who I was allowed to see, and made my first eye appointment since 2003. 

I have already managed to lose my prescription (although I still have the ones from 1999 and 2003), but I'm otherwise ready to buy some new glasses.  Did you know that they don't blow air into your eyes after putting the drops in to check for glaucoma these days?  I suppose everyone who keeps up with their eye care would know these things. 

My sister and I went to a quick eye place to scope out glasses this weekend.  I'm planning to buy from ZenniOptical because it's. so. cheap.  Even with the pricier lenses due to my bad vision, I think I can have them purchased and shipped for under $50.  Amazing.  My sister and I share the same narrow face and nose, which make purchasing glasses tricky.  She had LASIK done recently and only has to deal with sunglasses now, but between face-knowledge and her far-superior knowledge of what looks good these days, she was a good person to bring along.  Also, she has a camera phone, which lets me demonstrate this: and this: .  We concluded a few things:

1. The wider the glasses, the closer my eyes seem to be, and the more I resemble a bug.
2. I really need a nose bridge of 17mm or less and ideally, lenses 51mm or less (photo on left's lenses are probably 55mm)
3. Half-rimmed glasses seem to take down the bug-effect a bit
4. Browns look better than other colors.  Kelsey says I can't do blue, I'm not sure why.  Dan agrees.  I'd be up for red or other colors if everything else works.  Black wasn't good.
5. Ones where the bridge dips down, rather than staying straight makes the glasses look like an enormous eyebrow.

I went to Zenni and didn't immediately find anything perfect, but I'm leaning towards these in brown.  The lenses are only 46mm wide, so I think I'll be safe.  Even if they look crazy, I'll only have spent $52 and I can try again. 

Any thoughts?

At least it's a definitive answer

My temp dropped just enough today that I didn't test this morning.  Specifically, it fell to 98.0, which for me is the dividing line between this-cycle-is-doomed and it-is-reasonable-to-hope.  I then spent the entire day surprised that my period had not yet come and debating whether I should take an EPT test despite it being the middle of the afternoon.  The symptoms I've felt over the past days didn't seem to be getting stronger and that convinced me to hold off until morning to test again.

Finally tonight, my period came.  Mostly I'm relieved to know what's going on.  Yeah, I'll have to start over, but at the moment I know what's going on and I don't have to wonder "what if".  Here comes cycle #5 (in which I will not test before 10dpo or assume that any symptoms short of severe nausea or completely different bra sizes mean anything)...

Leo just woke up with a temperature of 102.5.  What a great evening this has turned into (ha!).

You'd think I'd have a clue by now

When a person with regular cycles and nine years' charting experience takes pregnancy tests five days in a row and gets negative results each time, a few things are clear:

1. She needs to start testing much later in the cycle.
2. It's a good thing she realized tests were only a dollar at DollarTree.
3. Unless the DollarTree tests are a useless waste of money and won't show a positive until the second trimester or something.

I'll be 13 (or possibly 14) dpo tomorrow.  I bought a two-pack of EPT tests (on sale, with a coupon) tonight and will use one in the morning if my temp stays high.  The tests sure seem to indicate that I'm not pregnant, but everything else makes it seem like I am.  This cycle is my last chance to have a due date before Dan goes back to work in August.  When we stopped TTA in July, I thought FOR SURE that I'd have a spring/summer baby.  Late August and September are not ideal times to give birth with a teacher-spouse.  I think it still beats having a third March baby and putting all our family celebrations within a 3 week period, but not by much.  If my period shows up this week, I will be more patient before testing next time.  If I get a positive EPT tomorrow, I might have to buy another Dollar Tree test to see whether it decides to show a positive too, or if they're completely ineffective.