Lunch Hours

Lunch hour is my me time. There is so much that I intend to do on my lunch hours, but often I get sucked into the internet. It's easy to click on that little chrome icon and read while I eat my peanut butter sandwich, but I always really want to read a book, but it slips my mind to get the book out of my purse. How in the world will I ever learn to use my lunch hours to their fullest potential?

Routine. I have been working on a morning routine since we moved 4 months ago and it's really helping me get the morning started on the right path. My nighttime routine is not smooth at all because it also involves my husband, a toddler, and 2 dogs—but I have faith it will start coming together someday. Next project is to create a checklist for a lunch hour routine. I've worked on them before, but always seem to misplace or throw them away. Time to get moving on it and make time limits on each project. Keep watching this space to see how I do.

Getting Back Onto the Road

We're getting more and more settled into our apartment, but a short trip out to the old house to move my father-in-law's toolboxes to my dad's garage made me remember some of the good times there. Good times picking berries and watching my husband turn them into freezer jam, pushing my son in his swing, and on and on.

We left our house because the furnace broke at the end of last winter and we couldn't afford to buy a new one. We had so many car repairs that needed done during the summer and fall that we couldn't save dollar one to put toward heating. We talked about refinancing the place and getting extra money to buy the furnace, but we didn't had very little equity. We had talked about selling our house but knew we probably wouldn't get enough to cover the mortgage, so we'd been sticking it out to see what would happen. What happened was that the value of our home fell again and we owed more on it than it was worth. That's when my husband agreed that even though we'd put roots down here and we had planted many trees there, we needed to say goodbye.

We moved into an apartment to make sure our son would have a warm place to live this winter and to save money to try our dream again in a few years.

So this is where we start saving for the future. Here is one of our biggest problems though. Even at the house we said no to satellite, internet, and kept our heat at 66 degrees and we have continued that but we still feel we don't have anything left to cut. We're breaking even now, but how do we save money without depriving ourselves of current happiness?

I do not believe in delaying happiness until a future day when everything is perfect because I know the future might never come. But I would like to save some money just in case I am here longer than my job. Especially because I would like to retire while I can still hike to mountain tops.

So my first goal of 2012 is to find out how much money I need to save in order to retire from this life and embark on one where I am a farmer, reader, and writer instead of a library assistant.

Where Have I Been?

I've been busy trying to fit more into my day, but no longer. After the move I started getting up earlier and earlier in order to practice yoga, walk the dog, write, get ready for work, etc., but no longer. My energy level was so low that I would fall asleep in my son's room while trying to get him to sleep. Last night I decided, it's not worth it. Not only am I not being present when I'm with my son, but I cannot stay focused and I'm not very creative throughout the day. So I set my clock for 6:15 vs. 5:30 and ran the dog rather than walked her then got around for work. I ate my breakfast and only ate breakfast, I didn't look at the clock and say, "oh, I've got plenty of time so I'll read while I eat breakfast." Nope, I got everything done that needed done and got out of the house. I'm hoping this will lead to more blogging and enjoying my days more.

Next steps: Get to bed earlier & somehow convince the dogs they don't want to go outside at 3:30am and again at 4:15am.

Change is Constant

I didn't mean to be gone for so long. I didn't mean to write almost nothing in the past few weeks. I didn't mean to change my life completely. But all these things happened anyway.

My family is in transition. We have vacated our house and are now living in an apartment. We are selling off a ton of large items and will be paring down other small items in our journey from a 3 bedroom mobile home with 10 acres of land, to a 2 bedroom apartment with a 10 foot patio. What will become of the house? Likely it will sit on the hill until it breaks in half, slides down to the bottom, and is reclaimed by nature. Then that piece of land will be truly beautiful again.

We tried to do a lot with that land. We wanted to grow our own food, and before I become vegan I even thought about raising chickens. My husband and his brother planted over a hundred seedlings last year. I worry about those seedlings. They are small and the grass around them is high, what if in a couple years when the legal mess settles, the new owners bring in a brush hog and clear the land not knowing there are pine, birch, maple, and oak trees trying to gain ground? Well, my husband has come up with a plan, a tree rescue sale. If you are interested in taking part, post to my facebook page and I will give you details.