Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Busy winterizing and being frugal

I'm not online much at all these days.  Busy being frugal, winterizing the house and knitting.  Always knitting.  My love/hate relationship with facecrack is still there.  I love it but resent the amount of time it takes to actually read it...not because of facebook, but because it slows my computer down to a crawl.  That's what happens when your 10 year old computer tries to deal with the faster speeds. 

I'm rotating my projects, trying to get some things finished up.  I didn't go to the knit thing at the library but did knit all day at home.  I'm not so much working on projects for the community now as working on projects for us.  I do have a baby blanket on the needles, but now I'm working on my sweater coat, Zach's sweater, socks (always socks) and am thinking of starting to knit up some bags for groceries.  I have some store-bought bags but I have no idea where they are.  They disappeared last time I organized things.  Still, they don't handle heavy things well, being made of paper, after all.  I stopped buying library bags since they only last a couple of weeks before the handle breaks off.  My library visits are never without lots of heavy books, after all.  I have tons of stash to knit up, or in this case...crochet up.  I should get busy.  Or busier. 

I'm making progress with cleaning. Catching up on over a year of cleaning isn't going to happen overnight so I've got a system where I don't necessarily tackle one room and clean it; I just clean bits up of several rooms and am making much more progress this way.  Plus we're tackling the basement as well.  I've gotten 6 big garbage bags out of there in the past two weeks.  You can't tell to look at it, but I know it's that much cleaner.  And I'm caught up on laundry as well.

We have a drip in the bathtub faucet when you shower so I've got a bucket under there that I have Zach take downstairs after each shower (I can't carry that much weight anymore) and put in the washer.  It takes a few trips before I have a washer full of water but it does save us some money.  Tom doesn't think it's worth it, but that kind of thinking is what has gotten us into trouble over the years.  I've done it as well, thinking that I can spend now and save later.  Or thinking that it's not worth the trouble to save money in one aspect, when it's all aspects that we can utilize frugality.  I'm getting there.

I've still got some windows to put plastic on but the new screen door is making a huge difference already.  I haven't turned the furnace on yet because we haven't needed to. Before, standing in the foyer, you could feel a steady breeze through the door.  Now, nothing.  No breeze at all.  I won't need to close off the foyer at all this winter.  I do have a curtain up that we can close for an arctic entry of sorts.  It's not completely closed off but it does help keep the initial breeze from flowing into the dining room once the door is open.

I moved my bed back up against that wall with the bookcase headboard in place again.  It just wasn't working as a living room the way I had it and with no place to prop up my pillows ( I have a hiatal hernia and have to sleep propped up a bit, plus with the congestive heart failure, sleeping flat affects my breathing) it's hard to get comfortable.  It was really hard to get in and out of the room as well, with the futon opened up, making a tiny entrance into the living room.  Now it's just a bedroom (which is what it was when the house was first built anyway) and more spacious.  Well, as spacious as a tiny room can be.  I'm getting used to it and sleeping pretty well still.

I have the guys' supper in the oven so I'm waiting until it's done and then off to bed to knit some more.  Today is socks.  I'm almost ready to turn the heel on the second sock.  And maybe I'll dig out some yarn and start a bag for shopping and/or library.  I've got some leftovers in the fridge to eat later.  Butternut squash & mushrooms.  It turned out pretty good for me just throwing things into the pan.  I'm losing weight again, finally.  Didn't lose a pound in the past 2 months.  I have no idea why I can't lose weight on 1000-1200 calories a day...and exercise.  I'm down to around 201 now...or just under that.  I'll be so glad when I can lose all this weight.  As long as I've carry this around, my heart is working that much harder and as it's already damaged, this is not good.  I am trying, not cheating at all.  It's just so frustrating.

Off to get supper out of the oven.

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