Yellow Wallpaper

I hate leaving a negative post up there with no resolution, but I've been busy during the past week. Things are feeling better; often just writing down feelings and getting them out of my head helps a lot. I'm still not sure if I should put them on the internet or not, but I guess I already made that decision and I'm sticking with it. This week has also started to feel like spring for real, and that is helping my mindset too. I know it seems weird, but the lack of normal winter weather the past few months has really stressed me out. The fact that so much of my life is out of whack did not make the fact that natural order of the universe has apparently been disturbed any easier to bear. Now that it is early March, I'm happy to see the sun and to feel warmer air on my skin finally. Yes, it might snow tomorrow, but the light and the air feel like spring so I'm a lot happier. I also made some decisions, because making decisions makes me feel happier and in control. La...

That's a phrase from this NY Times article about stupid things people do in an attempt to save money. I think we're actually both grocery wise and cable wise, especially since we just have the very basic cable package, but it really is difficult to make good money choices. The article brings up the example of grocery shopping, which really will tie your brain in knots if you let it. Take, for example, my recent turkey shopping expedition. We haven't bought meat for a few months and are trying to transition to a mostly vegetarian diet. Ideally we would like to put our money towards buying meat that has been raised in a humane, environmentally friendly way. However, I found out today that my subconscious only responds to monetary concerns, not my ethical ones. In shopping around I found a few turkey options. Our local groovy co-op grocery store has turkeys for sale that were raised on a farm 100 miles away from here. They've been allowed to range freely, eating a "ve...

I just finished compiling totals for our spending last year. We keep track of our budget in a spreadsheet in Excel, so it wasn't too hard to see what we've spent on various things over the course of the year. It was a very enlightening exercise. For instance, I tend to think (and say) that we don't eat out very much. We probably don't, especially compared to a lot of other people. But we still managed to spend an average of nearly $60 a month on eating out during 2005. Now, that average is a little skewed by the fact that we went on several vacations, when we tend to eat out a little more often. But still, all those quick lunches at Burgers Supreme really do add up. Our monthly average for eating out expenses is more than our average for books and movies. I think we should reverse that. Literature is so much more healthy than french fries. The other disturbing thing was discovering that if we add up our insurance premiums as well as our out-of-pocket stuff, we spent so...