Gardening rocks

Gardening is really starting to grow on me (pun intended ;) Let's see, I have peas coming in - not quite as fast as I want, I may have to plant more next year. Strawberries are just starting - thanks to the Weibers for the plants they gave us last year, which each have about a dozen berries or more this year! The tomatoes are starting to have little green fruits. We have a couple tiny jalepeno peppers growing. I finally got some lettuce to grow, and just planted some more lettuce seeds - which look like they are sprouting as well! Lots of green onions, too, and a few rainbow chard plants are doing quite nice. I threw in a couple of squash, but am not sure yet how they are taking to their new home.

Next year I definitely want to do more with growing food. I'm going to try and track down some blueberries this autumn for our apparently wet and acidic soil, and have some landscaping plans that will greatly increase the amount of fertile earth for growing yummy stuff. I even found a possible filler material: Yard waste! We have tons of yard waste from weeds I've pulled out, and then we can spend just for the nice soil we'll need on top. The yard waste will probably settle over time and we'll need to add more dirt, but that's okay.

Landscaping plans include breaking down the linings for our emptied fish ponds and turning those into a garden (the big one) and a sand box (the small-but-deep one). I also have big plans for the front yard, but need a little time to polish those off - but part of them is a large strawberry patch. I love strawberries! The back corner area apparently gets pretty good sun, and so I want to put some raised beds in there as well. Plus I'm hoping to cover up all those weeds . . . that place is truly infested! I also want to dig a moat around the table in our yard (which floods in winter right now), and move it to make enough room for a campfire area so we can have cookouts in our own yard. However, I know I'll be happy to just get one or two of these big projects done in the next year or so. Some smaller plans are making some nets out of twine for peas and beans to grow up, starting some seedlings in egg cartons next year (we have lots of those!), setting up more of the pots we got with the house with good dirt (and no weeds) and using them for food, and getting more of the seeds that did well this year and planting even more of them next year.

If I get to stay home or go back to school anytime soon (possibilities for when my contract ends next March), then I want to also get some egg-laying chickens. It'll only take a little work to turn part of our shed into a chicken run - just a little chicken wire, and knocking out one wall to give access to an outdoors area. But I'm not going to try and care for chickens as long as I'm also working full-time.

Article on Evangelism for Introverts

I am very much an introvert. I'm high-energy enough that I can come across as an extrovert, but I actually will get more and more drained the more I interact with a large number of people. I like my "me" time.

So this is the kind of advice I love: Evangelism for Introverts

And as a companion to this article, some great advice I've heard recently: "Let God do the heavy lifting."

DH passed his Network+!

Yes!!!! DH passed his Network+ certfication exam. Now he has something fresh to put on his resume, and can turn his attention to finding work!

Once he recovers from the weekend, that is: We spent the whole weekend watching my sister's kids, first at our house and then at theirs. Three three-year-olds and an eight-year-old (who was very helpful, except that she was sick for part of the weekend).

It was fun. For me. DH really prefers the quiet life, and who can blame him?

Credit unions are neat

I finally started to take advantage of one of the benefits of our credit union: Free financial advising. I am very impressed by how much support we are getting right off of the bat!

I expected a quick, 15-minute conversation that would point us in the right direction and leave us to do the footwork. Instead, they are really taking a look with us at our budget (I had to fill out a long workbook with all the gory details) and then having us track our spending for the next month to make sure these numbers seem accurate - and they provided me with a handy Excel spreadsheet, which saves me the effort of having to make my own. The conversation is mostly over email, which is very convenient for everyone.

This is a big help for me, since it brings out my desire to "show off" in a good way - I want these people to be impressed by how quickly we get out of debt! It's not really all that different from setting up a financial partnership with friends to share finances and keep each other on track, but this way I know we're not inconveniencing anyone. This is these fellows' jobs!

Girl anecdote

DH and I communicate via IM throughout the day, with me mainly asking him about things weighing on my mind from the "family life" sphere, and him sharing information about how the day is going so I don't feel too disconnected. I get some great stories from him, and here is one of them:

"Iliana and I were having a conversation about not drawing on me
and she was asking very nicely if she could draw an O on various parts of my arm, to which I was saying no.

"And she finally stopped asking if she could draw on me and said instead, "I can draw on you after you say yes. Say yes daddy!""

Since this is my diary, effectively, as much as anything is, it is a good place to record this. Someday I need to collect all the various bits and pieces I've written down and put them together in a book for the girls when they get older. I know that for me, that was even cooler than a scrapbook or photo album (although Flickr gives us that, as well) - my grandmother had a plastic-bound book of all the cute things her kids had said over the years, including my sister and I.

New debt ticker

I'm stealing another thing from Annaberri's blog - the Debt Ticker! Look to the left side-bar and you'll see ours. It's for non-mortgage debt only, BTW.

We're apparently already 8% of the way over the mountain of debt - mostly due to the unemployment check finally arriving. It filled up our "monthly expenses" account, our $1,000 "emergency funds" account, and then took out one entire (albeit small) credit card's debt and scratched at the edge of one of the two big credit card debts.

We still have yet to see how much we can chisel off each month. At first it will probably be something like 1 to 2%, but we should be able to roll little additional amounts of money into that.

Things are thawing!

No, I'm not just referring to the warming ground and the shoots of peas coming up in my kitchen garden (much as I am fascinated by them).

I'm talking about the economy. And the fact that DH and I were both just contacted about job opportunities by people we applied to for different positions over a month ago. I told mine I'd be available next March, and DH is probably going to rush out his application today.

Plus, DH just scheduled his Network+ exam. It will be in just over a week. Wow!