hqueen's collection of Far From the Usual stuff.

YES, FEM! And we've been able to keep going! So now we haven't eaten out since last Wednesday, at least not meals together. He spent $50 in the first 5 working days of the month, but we had a bit of a reality check conversation last night so I think that will stop again. I also stopped at Chickfila yesterday morning and got a biscuit for free because I had a coupon, and I bought hash browns, too, because they were cheap. I managed to pay for it with a dollar I had in my wallet plus change I dug out of my backpack!
SO yeah, we had a heart to heart last night about where the finances are. It all started when he began talking about getting a new(er) vehicle again, and I asked him what the payment would be on what he was considering. He said $400/month. I was like yeah, no, not in the budget what so ever. He gave me the exasperated "but where does all my money go!?" and I'm like well, half goes to the mortgage, then there's another $300 that I set aside for the car insurance, then there's the power bill, and the credit card debt bill, and then everything else is either gas, us eating out, or you eating at work, or spending it on the house. It goes FAST. Once I gave him a bit of a reality check about how much he's spent on building this dang shed he was like Oh. I'm like yeah, it goes QUICK when you aren't paying attention to it! I reminded him that he just needs to refocus what his priorities are and decide does he really want a greasy sandwich while he's working or does he want a new vehicle, or things for the house. I'd rather have the car or things for the house because I won't remember a greasy sandwich a week from now, but I will remember several years from now how my nice car got me around. If we stay focused we can maximize our money and really do a lot with it. The trouble is staying focused. I guess that's always the trouble.
I'm glad we finally had the conversation, though, so now we can figure out how to get back on the wagon and start making progress again. Now I just have to keep managing the groceries so that we can avoid eating out and we'll be doing really good. I need to do some planning around that this weekend because next week is going to be CRAZY busy with all the farm sitting I have to do and prep for getting ready to go away. I'm THRILLED to have the extra income in the business from the farm sitting, that is letting me breathe a lot easier for a little while, which is a really good thing. I've managed to be a month ahead on most of my major bills, so now I just need to get some of the smaller bills built up and I'll feel much better. Then I need to get the BF ready to finish the work at GH's house so we can get PAID for that and I can get the tractor down payment paid OFF, and have some extra funds to pay my accountant finally. I'm highly embarrassed to say that I haven't paid her yet this year. Things have just been not going all that well. I am grateful to say that G & SH hadn't been out of town nearly as much the past two months, so that means I'm coming out ahead, way ahead, on these months and that helps me tremendously. This is the time when the flat rate retainer is working out to my advantage! And it looks like I'm not going to lose any farm sitting while I'm away in a week or so, and that's even better.
Now if I can just make up the office time I'll be doing good. I'm busting my butt to make sure that I get as many hours as possible before I go. It's not fun, but it's just about all that I can do. If I don't make up any hours I'll be losing 3 out of a 6 day pay check, and cutting my pay check in half is not going to make ends meet! I also STILL need to have a conversation with my boss about a raise. I'm tempted to send him an email detailing all the projects I have managed in the past 2 years and tell him I want to be sure we go over this in our meeting... I don't know if that will work out in my favor or not. At least the business has mostly been doing good, other than purchasing the other practice which always costs money in the first year or so.
Just gotta keep kicking. No other choice, really.

Everyone needs a farm sitter like you living nearby! So many people just can’t get away because of their animals.

Cooking at home;
Cook a whole ham with side vegetables
Next day eat leftovers
Day 3: ham frittata (pour beaten eggs in hot skillet, toss in ham chunks,veggies and top with cheese. Bake at 350 10-15 minutes)
Day 4- make salad, scatter with chopped ham and boiled eggs
Day 5- fried ham sandwiches
Day 6- hambone and beans, serve with cornbread

5 days of ham in a row may be too much for DH.
I like to dice up the leftover Easter ham and freeze in snack size baggies - all the snack size baggies go into a large gallon sized ziploc bag that is labeled "Diced Ham". I can grab out a baggie of diced ham and it thaws really quick on the counter or in a glass with warm water. Pour the ham out onto a 1/2 sheet of paper towel squeeze out the liquid and use it for scrabbled eggs, a salad, whatever.

I often freeze portions of big meals like that so we don't get sick of 'em. It pays to keep a good rotation going.

Here's a good idea to keep you from grabbing something when you're in town: I used to make a pot of refritos, but you could use the canned stuff if you don't have the time. Make up a whole bunch of bean and cheese burritos and freeze them in sandwich bags. When you are going to be in town for a while, just grab one or two frozen burritos and put them in a bag (one of those insulated lunch bags is great for this). Add a baggie of cut up veggies if you have them. The burritos will keep the veggies crisp and cool while they slowly thaw. The burritos taste fine at room temp, unlike ones with meat in them.

After supper, we will often measure out a meal's worth of left overs, and pack it for the following day's "work" lunch. Much less stressful IMO to eat lunch at work, than taking the time to drive out to pick up "fast food".

Oh yeah, I love last night's leftovers for lunch (Matter of fact, today's lunch was a wrap with leftover shoyu chicken, half a roasted hatch chili, and a a handful of 'squoodles'- like zoodles but with any old summer squash). But I liked having the frozen burritos on hand in case there wasn't anything else appropriate.

Thanks for the suggestions, yall!!
LOL Squoodles. I love it. That sounds way more fun than zoodles. That sounds like it's something at the zoo!

We did GOOD this weekend, and didn't eat out! We did get Rita's gellato as a treat, but that was $4.50, and we shared. I'm SO pleased that we stuck with it. The BF also requested chicken for his lunches, so last night, despite it being LATE when we finally got home, he threw a bunch of pieces of chicken on the grill, and we made him a lunch for today, and we'll prep the rest tonight. He should have enough lunches for the rest of the week, and so I'll only have to worry about dinners and myself, which I generally can keep covered fairly easily. SO now we haven't eaten out at ALL this month, because the last time we ate out was July 31st! I'm really proud of us! My goal is to not eat out before we leave town again at the end of the week, and I think there's no reason we can't do that. I should have enough of everything, even if I have to resort to a frozen pizza one day just for something easy. The only trick will be not eating out again when we get home! We do have some things that will be in the freezer, so there will be stuff we can cook, it's just a matter of remembering that it's there.

We also finished the siding on the shed this weekend. I'm SO glad to have that part DONE. Now the BF can do the doors, so we can get it secured for the weather, and then we'll be ready for the roof, but that can wait a little while. I'm just SO ready to get the junk out of the old one and into the new one (cleaned out of course!) and then we can begin to get the old one dismantled. The BF will have a few days after we get back home again that he'll still be on vacation so he should be able to do some good work on that when we return, which would be SO nice so that we can really make some real progress. I'm so ready to not be staring at the giant pile of weeds and dirt out the kitchen door. Since it's been so dry I figured out I can park my truck in the "driveway" next to the dirt pile, which makes me feel fancy. I can't wait for that to be an everyday normal thing!

So some progress, but there's so much going on right now that I'm feeling a wee bit over whelmed, too. My neighbors are only away for a few days, thankfully, and their animals aren't difficult, it's just that it's a new routine for me, so it's an adjustment of the learning curve and finding the groove. The alpaca didn't eat yesterday, even though I locked her in the barn. She followed me willingly, but then didn't finish, so hopefully she'll finish today. We'll see how that goes. I finished the other farm job I was doing, so that's a relief. When they overlap it gets really tricky to juggle everything. We did hang out by their pool though yesterday afternoon which was SO nice. And the weather this weekend was beautiful.
We even opened the windows on Saturday night, and managed to keep them open on Sunday, even though it did get warm. I turned the A/C back on again this morning because it was getting sticky again.

So that's about all that's happening around here. Just trying to keep things caught up and keep moving. It hasn't been easy, but like it or not things are moving along!

Our trip went really well. It was such a relief to get out of the 90+ temps with high humidity and down into the mountains where the humidity was so much lower and the highs were only in the 80's. I miss it already!
We had a smooth trip down, and then went to visit my grandfather at the lake house. It was great to hang out down there for a while and talk with him. We drove around some with my parents and went to visit some fun places, and had a glass of wine at Biltmore Estate. We had hoped to go walk through the gardens, but we couldn't get in without paying the fee, so we just had our wine, which was fine. We helped my parents get a few things organized, and that was about it. We did get to have dinner with my sister and everybody for a while. We were packing up the car on Tuesday evening to make sure that everything we had to take home would fit, and standing on the driveway, I looked up the hill and a black bear just wandered by my parent's yard. All I could do was point and go Look! Look!! It was really good to see, and I was sort of simultaneously so excited, and also wondering if I should have been worried, all at once!
So now it's back to the grind. I've got double farm duty for the next few days, which is exhausting after coming home from a 10 hour drive (including stops), swinging by the BF's parent's house because it was his dad's birthday (his mom made dinner, so that was really helpful at least!) and then having to make 2 stops before we could get home. The BF was so kind to unload the car while I jumped in the shower since I needed to crash. This morning came WAY too early. And today will be LONG since I can't get to the barn before 5 to do chores there, and I have 2 stops to make along the way plus the barn chores. Hopefully I can get it all done fast, and I can survive sitting in the office all day without falling asleep... We'll see how well that goes. The extra cash in the business will help tremendously, though!
So not much to report, just keep on keeping on. The BF is off still until Monday, so hopefully he can get quite a few things done and we can make some progress on stuff. We'll see how that works out... LOL

Oh wow - it sounds like the trip was really nice. I'm a tiny bit jealous of your mountain trip...coolness and less humidity is awesome! I can't even imagine how awesome it must've been to see a bear in the wide open like that. We don't have bears around here (and I'm kinda glad, lol)!