Cheapskating

Being a one income family who is saving for an approaching retirement (December, yay!), budgeting is a high priority. To avoid cutting too much into things I love, I have tried cutting deep into things I don't care about. Take trash, for instance. It's trash. As long as I get it out of my house, I'm not especially particular about the whole business. Living in the country means we have to contract with a private company if we want our trash collected. Our trash collection rates recently increased. I don't know what this service goes for in town, but the service here now goes for $32/month. I know that doesn't sound like a huge amount, but it comes out to $384 for the year. However, did you know that you can drop off a 33-gallon bag of trash at a collection station for $1? Because we recycle, we only fill one of those each week. That's $52 for the year if we are willing to drop it off ourselves instead of having the truck come to our house, saving us $332 for the year.

My cell phone is my next big save. As I've said, I get no real signal where I live, so the cell phone is simply something to use when I'm out. I was paying $34/month for the cheapest plan I could get. I downgraded that to a pay-as-you-go plan which charges me $2 for each day I use the phone. That $2 gets me unlimited calling and texting. Since I'm only really out 2 days a week and don't need to use my phone everytime I'm out, this has turned out very well. Instead of that $34, my phone is now costing me about $10/month. That's $288 for the year.

And just to show that I'm crazy (and because this post could not get more boring), I have to throw in my doggie savings. We have a goldendoodle. Goldendoodles are great because they don't shed, but their coats do require a lot more maintenance than the lab we used to have. To have a full grooming on my dog costs over $100 and has to be done 2 or 3 times each year. So I got myself a $40 electric dog clipper and did it myself. I'm not putting up a picture of the results, because my technique could use some . . . er . . .  refinement. But my neighbors are too far away to see him, he's happy, and my $40 investment is going to save me around $300/year.

For just a few cuts that do not affect my life in any profound way, I am putting over $900 in my pocket every year. That's more than enough to buy a very nice doggie sweater, in case you were wondering.

Conjoined Twins

Two flowers fused together. This goes along well with the five-leaf clover I found last year. I love nature's little oddities--and they make for great science lessons.

A Bird in the Hand

If a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, what is the value of one you pull from the bush with your hands? Five years ago, we brought home four mallard ducklings. They grew, multiplied, were eaten by foxes, raccoons, snakes, snapping turtles, and hawks, flew away, were given away, and, in the end, were reduced to the one lone duck we have today. He's a very nice duck and I figure he must have some rock solid survival skills to have made it this far in what is clearly a hostile environment for waterfowl.

So today, I was walking back home from our garden and I noticed this stalwart duck struggling in some brush at the edge of the woods. Rushing to his rescue, I discovered that he had gotten his foot caught in a briar bush. The thorns had completely pierced through the webbing of his foot and he could not get free. He held perfectly still and let me free him. I hate to think that he might have ended up as dinner for a fox if I hadn't happened to be out there when I was. I guess his luck continues.

Best Homeschooling Week Ever - March 28-April 1

Really. What could be more fun than a week in which one's 11-year-old has lessons on human reproduction in both health and science? If you said nothing, you're so right! There is a toddler in our home, of course, which means that a little over a year ago we got to answer the "how is the baby actually made" question. And me, I'm the luckiest girl in the world, because I married a nurse. He's not just a nurse, either; he's a certified labor and delivery nurse. So my wonderful husband broke out the textbooks and gave the subject the full scientific treatment. Case closed, I thought. But no. Out come the diagrams, with eggs, sperm, and other unmentionables. All with my ace-in-the-hole husband off at work. After some giggling (mostly mine) and much groaning and exclamations of disgust (the tween), we got through it. Phew!

Looking ahead . . . it's April! The month of big curriculum sales! It's a little embarrassing how exciting that is to me. But I'm not about to let a little embarrassment interfere with my unrestrained giddiness. More on that next week.

Living on the Moon

I live, obviously, in the country. When I first moved here as a child, the road was a barely paved, unnamed stretch of ignored gravel. Now we have a name and even one of those new-fangled yellow lines down the middle. What we don't have? Cell phone reception or high speed internet. My house is probably the last cell dead zone in Delaware. It's true. I can get reception in my yard, but inside we get just enough signal to make the phone ring, but not enough to take the call.

Internet is even more fun. Here I am, 5 miles from a town that, though small, has DSL, cable, Fios, every technology you would care to choose from, and my only choices are dial-up or satellite. Comcast likes to tease me by sending me offers of cable internet service for about half what I pay for satellite. And, like Charlie Brown running to kick Lucy's football, I'll call them up, ever hopeful that this will be the time they mean it. At first they'll tell me they can provide service at my address, but it always ends up the same. My address isn't in the service area, I'm too far off the road, they can do it but installation will cost $5000, etc. So I continue to limp along with my over-priced satellite internet because it is, after all, faster than dial-up (as long as it doesn't rain hard).

The whole thing makes me rather grumpy. What's a girl need to do to get a little technology? I'm really not out in the middle of nowhere--more like the edge of somewhere. I am smack in the middle of the great urban centers of the east coast, but I might as well live on a 500-acre ranch in Montana or the moon, for all the notice these companies take of me and my neighbors (yes, there are other people out here). Come to think of it, I think the astronauts on the space station have better connection speeds than I do.

We're Expecting . . .

What the stork brought

In less than three weeks, we will be the proud parents of as many as 53 bobwhite quail chicks. This will be our second time hatching quail. Last time, though, we only incubated 15 eggs and ended up with just 11 chicks. I may be going a little octo-mom on the program, but I'm really hoping to establish a sizable enough flock that they will be able to survive introduction into the habitat. But if you see me with my own reality show or as a guest on Animal Hoarders, you'll know things got out of hand.

So tiny!

Marked and placed in the incubator--where am I going to put all these birds?

The goal--aren't they cute?

The "D" Word

There comes a time in the life of every parent of a special needs child when you have to decide how to approach the topic of diagnosis with your child. For us, we chose to approach Austin's issues on a symptom-by-symptom basis. We felt that saddling him with the label of his autism diagnosis would discourage him too much and provide a too-ready excuse for not rising above his challenges. For the longest time, one of those challenges was a lack of initiative and motivation, so we had a real fear that a full knowledge of his developmental disorder would derail the progress he was making. With that in mind, we had always explained his interventions to him in vague terms.

But now, after so much growth and so many giant steps made, we decided that our sweet son, now 16 years old, was ready to know his own story. The facts-of-life talk was nothing to this hurdle for me. Even after making this decision, we delayed the actual discussion for three months. Yesterday, though, we pushed aside our excuses for delaying and plunged in. Austin seemed a little distressed over the news, but it opened the door for more open dialogue and he seemed comfortable in the end. We tried hard to stress the fact that all people have weaknesses and strengths and he is different only in the specific nature of his weaknesses. We also let him know that we will continue to stand with him and support him in his efforts to achieve a full, independent, and happy life.

I know a lot of parents choose to address these issues at a much earlier age, and I will be the first to say that I don't think there is a "right" time to do it, but I'm very pleased with the road we've taken and where it has led us. That doesn't stop me from feeling uncertain about where to step next, but there is a definite sense of hope when I look a little farther into the future. I truly believe in my son.