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This entry has a cash register in it.
Jun. 2nd, 2008 11:42 pmI went to the ENT this morning. He was a tall, thin, friendly middle aged man who immediately set off my Gaydar. He was funny, and nice, and when he looked into my first ear he nearly shouted, "WHOA!" and then "Wow!" After suctioning copious pus out of both of my ears and looking in them a lot more he proclaimed me to have an inner, middle and outer ear infection, in both ears. He got bonus points for being on the up and up about breastfeeding-friendly antibiotics (a male ENT knows, but everyone from maternity ward nurses to female OBs seem clueless, go figure...) I'm on oral and topical antibiotics now, with a follow up appointment in one week and warnings that I will probably need a "long term plan" for ongoing ear health, possibly involving homemade drops I use after showers and things like that. $85, cha-ching!
Dropped off prescriptions at Walgreens and came home, helped G get everyone ready and then ran up to various places in Pinecrest as a family, starting with Wild Oats as he wanted to get healthy snacks for his work week. He's doing INCREDIBLE staying off of sugar and refined flour, he's already lost over 20 pounds and some pant sizes. I don't know how much he spent there, but it was a couple of bags worth of stuff, and we got one of those Feed 100 bags like I've been meaning to every time I go there, which is $35 by itself, so I'm guessing $75 total? cha-ching!
He's wanted a flat screen tv forever now, and a good one at a compromise size finally went on sale to where it fits in with what we budgeted for it. I was very skeptical about this initially, even though the tv we've been using for years is missing buttons and sometimes refuses to turn off even with the remote - I mean it has fake wood paneling and everything, it is a dinosaur. But I have to admit that the image clarity on this new one is amazing and it's pretty awesome to be able to view slideshows of pics of the kids on it and, well, it is great to have something wall-mounting that the kids won't be able to ransack and steal buttons off of because it's up too high. It's one of those HD tvs, "1080p" whatever the hell that means. $1099, cha-ching!
And then we went to Wood You because I've always wanted to check that place out. It is pretty cool...we never bought chairs to go with our new dining table last fall because I just can't fathom spending hundreds of dollars per dining chair when we need 8 of them. We've been using our old 6 that don't match the table, plus the computer chair and sometimes a bucket turned upside down under Grant if Shaun or Laura is here. It works, you know :p They have some pretty great chairs, though, for prices like $59 each. I had been planning to get some from Target that are $150 per pair, even though that still seems exorbitant to me (especially plus shipping), but these are really solid and nice. We're still thinking about it. In the meantime, I was so thrilled to finally see good sturdy kids' wooden rockers for $49, rather than the standard 100-200 I always seem to see, that we bought one of those on the spot. $49 plus tax, cha-ching!
Great local pizza place that is way healthier than normal takeout pizza (and tastes better), ordered to-go and taken to the park - $21 and change, cha-ching!
I ran most of the way around the track at the park, with Isaac. Man, I haven't run in a long time. I haven't sweat and been out of breath in a long time. It felt really good, like hard but not nearly as hard as I would have thought.
Swung by Walgreens on the way home to get my prescriptions - $130. I'm tired of cha-ching-ing.
I'm tired of money in general. We've burned through most of the settlement so fast on "responsible" things - debt, home, home repair and renovation, cars, tithing and giving, and setting aside a "financial buffer" - that we're considering getting a Home Equity Line of Credit that we can use for more frivolous things as the next couple of years go by. You only pay on what you spend, and if we got, say, a $40,000 line of credit and spent every red cent of it, our payments would still only be about $200 a month (for 10 years), which isn't bad. It would facilitate things like taking a somewhat extravagant (by our standards - like staying in hotels rather than with family, leaving the state, etc) vacation, flying in friends like I had originally planned to before home expenses got crazy, and letting the kids do less essential but super enriching activities. Like flute lessons for the flute I'm not proving a very good teacher at, with Ananda. We could use our money that we already have for most of this since we would have the HELOC as the buffer, and not need a separate cash buffer anymore. So it would be possible that we wouldn't even need to use the majority of it (meaning we wouldn't have to pay it back). It could be "peace of mind", because right now we are both having a constant headache about money. Refusing to go into the buffer, knowing how much we just burned through, trying to make it seem real that we still have all the assets and we did good things, trying not to be all spoiled and bitchy and depressed about the things we WANTED to do (vacations, friends, nicer furniture) that we can't really afford with the roof, and the fridge, etc etc etc...
This makes sense in theory but scares the HELL out of me because, really, I didn't (don't) ever want to borrow money against our paid-off house, you know? Especially before we even move in. Grant and I are switching off regularly, between being the one who thinks it's a perfect solution to a lot of things we want to do and being the one who thinks it's suicide, insanity, asking for trouble, etc etc. It comforts me to some degree that we are both set on something like $40,000, when we could potentially qualify for like $300,000. We have SOME sense, at least, I reassure myself.
I'm going to post some other pics later tonight, that I promised my mother and sister, but for now I have some pics of the new house ready.
( These are not great pics...and not of nearly everything, either. I just got a few while we were there the other afternoon, right after we got the piano. )
I need to hire someone to do "blog photography" for me - that's the future of the business! People to come in and do![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
ditls for you.
I think I just can't be bothered with the details of taking better pictures. Which is funny, because I made kung pao chicken from scratch, risotto, honey glazed roasted carrots and steamed brocoli for dinner tonight, and THAT didn't seem like a bother at all. "It's all how you look at it", as they say on PBSKids.
Dropped off prescriptions at Walgreens and came home, helped G get everyone ready and then ran up to various places in Pinecrest as a family, starting with Wild Oats as he wanted to get healthy snacks for his work week. He's doing INCREDIBLE staying off of sugar and refined flour, he's already lost over 20 pounds and some pant sizes. I don't know how much he spent there, but it was a couple of bags worth of stuff, and we got one of those Feed 100 bags like I've been meaning to every time I go there, which is $35 by itself, so I'm guessing $75 total? cha-ching!
He's wanted a flat screen tv forever now, and a good one at a compromise size finally went on sale to where it fits in with what we budgeted for it. I was very skeptical about this initially, even though the tv we've been using for years is missing buttons and sometimes refuses to turn off even with the remote - I mean it has fake wood paneling and everything, it is a dinosaur. But I have to admit that the image clarity on this new one is amazing and it's pretty awesome to be able to view slideshows of pics of the kids on it and, well, it is great to have something wall-mounting that the kids won't be able to ransack and steal buttons off of because it's up too high. It's one of those HD tvs, "1080p" whatever the hell that means. $1099, cha-ching!
And then we went to Wood You because I've always wanted to check that place out. It is pretty cool...we never bought chairs to go with our new dining table last fall because I just can't fathom spending hundreds of dollars per dining chair when we need 8 of them. We've been using our old 6 that don't match the table, plus the computer chair and sometimes a bucket turned upside down under Grant if Shaun or Laura is here. It works, you know :p They have some pretty great chairs, though, for prices like $59 each. I had been planning to get some from Target that are $150 per pair, even though that still seems exorbitant to me (especially plus shipping), but these are really solid and nice. We're still thinking about it. In the meantime, I was so thrilled to finally see good sturdy kids' wooden rockers for $49, rather than the standard 100-200 I always seem to see, that we bought one of those on the spot. $49 plus tax, cha-ching!
Great local pizza place that is way healthier than normal takeout pizza (and tastes better), ordered to-go and taken to the park - $21 and change, cha-ching!
I ran most of the way around the track at the park, with Isaac. Man, I haven't run in a long time. I haven't sweat and been out of breath in a long time. It felt really good, like hard but not nearly as hard as I would have thought.
Swung by Walgreens on the way home to get my prescriptions - $130. I'm tired of cha-ching-ing.
I'm tired of money in general. We've burned through most of the settlement so fast on "responsible" things - debt, home, home repair and renovation, cars, tithing and giving, and setting aside a "financial buffer" - that we're considering getting a Home Equity Line of Credit that we can use for more frivolous things as the next couple of years go by. You only pay on what you spend, and if we got, say, a $40,000 line of credit and spent every red cent of it, our payments would still only be about $200 a month (for 10 years), which isn't bad. It would facilitate things like taking a somewhat extravagant (by our standards - like staying in hotels rather than with family, leaving the state, etc) vacation, flying in friends like I had originally planned to before home expenses got crazy, and letting the kids do less essential but super enriching activities. Like flute lessons for the flute I'm not proving a very good teacher at, with Ananda. We could use our money that we already have for most of this since we would have the HELOC as the buffer, and not need a separate cash buffer anymore. So it would be possible that we wouldn't even need to use the majority of it (meaning we wouldn't have to pay it back). It could be "peace of mind", because right now we are both having a constant headache about money. Refusing to go into the buffer, knowing how much we just burned through, trying to make it seem real that we still have all the assets and we did good things, trying not to be all spoiled and bitchy and depressed about the things we WANTED to do (vacations, friends, nicer furniture) that we can't really afford with the roof, and the fridge, etc etc etc...
This makes sense in theory but scares the HELL out of me because, really, I didn't (don't) ever want to borrow money against our paid-off house, you know? Especially before we even move in. Grant and I are switching off regularly, between being the one who thinks it's a perfect solution to a lot of things we want to do and being the one who thinks it's suicide, insanity, asking for trouble, etc etc. It comforts me to some degree that we are both set on something like $40,000, when we could potentially qualify for like $300,000. We have SOME sense, at least, I reassure myself.
I'm going to post some other pics later tonight, that I promised my mother and sister, but for now I have some pics of the new house ready.
( These are not great pics...and not of nearly everything, either. I just got a few while we were there the other afternoon, right after we got the piano. )
I need to hire someone to do "blog photography" for me - that's the future of the business! People to come in and do
ditls for you. I think I just can't be bothered with the details of taking better pictures. Which is funny, because I made kung pao chicken from scratch, risotto, honey glazed roasted carrots and steamed brocoli for dinner tonight, and THAT didn't seem like a bother at all. "It's all how you look at it", as they say on PBSKids.
