Let's Get Cheap.

Ok, so over at moneycentral they are taking about 8 extreme ways to save money.

My question is... who DOESN'T reuse sandwich bags? Seriously? Those things are pricey.... for a few crumbs you toss them? Really?

The rest of the list, besides the reusing sandwich bags:

Turn your car off -- while it's moving. Ok, well, I don't do that... but I do make it a game to see how long I can go down the pass without stepping on the gas or the brake.

Stop saving money. I'm pleased to report we don't have to do this one... at least not yet.

Make your own cleaning supplies. We do this. It works just fine... it is cheap and enviro. I do miss softscrub. And I do confess to not giving up bleach... I've tried. I can't do it. Not yet. My sister swears by the greenworks toilet cleaner... she says it works so well she seriously doubts it is actually "green" at all. I don't use toilet cleaner because sometimes the dog drinks out of the toilet (sorry, tmi, I know) but I do sometimes give in and bleach it.... she's so lucky her dogs are too short to drink out of the toilet....

Stop drinking soda. I don't drink soda or "pop" very often. But try to pry a diet, caffeine free pepsi out of my husband's hand... go ahead. The compromise it buying it on sale at CVS with ECB's.

Move back home with your parents, at any age. Ha. Ha. Ha. If they saw us coming they'd lock the doors... if they had locks on their doors.

Get rid of your carpet. Trying. Can't talk Hot into it. But trying.

Hold a no-spend month. This is a clever idea. Maybe a winner for January when we are recovering from the holidays.

Anybody else? Clever ideas?

Pink is my favorite color.

Crayola makes a multicultural pack of markers with various shades of tan.

Why don't they make a multipinkeral pack? With various shades of pink? With what is going on at our house this makes perfect sense to me. Because Tuff is suddenly obsessed with pink and princesses. All the pink markers we own are dang near used up....

What is it with little girls and pink? It has to be the hormones her brain is stewing in because it certainly isn't anything I've done. I don't even really like pink. Her room is decorated in retro cowgirl & raggety ann.... she doesn't even have pink sheets....

She got a Disney princess word book for her first birthday which I promptly stashed in the back of the book baskets and out of rotation. She has no barbies. She had no character-princess stuff and, still, she figured it out. She now has princess and tinkerbell jammies, princess stickers and she found the princess word book and sleeps with it every night.

She's asking for pink princess panties.

What's a mom to do?

These Days.

So what do you do when you have sinus surgery and get your tonsils out?? To document.

Well... you watch a lot of movies.
And you read some magazines.
And you organize little bits of things in your life like the drawer with the random bits of ribbon and sewing supplies.
And your husband gets mad at you for "doing to much."
And you nap.
And you eat soup and refried beans and ice cream.
And you super-glue all the little broken things in the "to do" drawer.
And you sit on the porch in the rocker and drink smoothies.
And then you nap again.

I can't tell you all the movies I've watched or half-watched in the last 3 weeks.... The Princess Bride, Billy Elliot, Transformers, Girl Interrupted, Juno, Hero Wanted, The Take, The Little Mermaid, The Great Debators, PS I Love You, Bob the Builder, Red Wall, 300, The first two Bourne movies, GI Jane, Blazing Saddles....

For the first two weeks I wasn't supposed to bend over and lift things. Which is really great when you are trying to put a 2-year-old on time-out..... "Come here and climb on this stool so I can pick you up and put you in your room until you can be nice." It just doesn't work so well.

I'm rinsing my nose with Wilson's solution.... which is saline & gentamicin as far as I can tell..... it reminds me of the horse meds my dad kept in the orange cupboard in the basement when I was a kid.... same smell.

The best foods are Bear Creek creamy potato soup and refried beans with melted cheese & sour cream. Also the green "super food" juice from Odwalla (sp?) is wonderful and sweet. Smoothies are a good thing.... although the first few days citrus and anything acidic (like tomato soup) was not good. Milkshakes. Pudding. The portabella soup I got was horrible. The all-you-can-eat soup bar at Jaker's is wonderful.... we hit that for lunch after my second doc appt to get the "upper packs" taken out and I even managed to gum one of their honey scones enough to make it work for me. It's funny because we don't have Jaker's but it seems to be our post-surgery-of-choice place to eat.... we went there after Hot Stuff's cataract surgery and appointments all the time in another town (GF) and now we go there after mine im MS. Funny.

I am eating pretty much what I want now although it will be another week or so (according to the doc) before I'm ready for nachos. Popcorn and carbonated beverages are the other big no-no's right now. I also accidentally ordered some balsamic vinagrette and it was really heavy on the vinager and it hurt.

Where I been.

So I had sinus surgery. And my tonsils out. And I was doing really well and healing quickly.... as I expected to do. Then my kids got colds. And I was very careful to wash my hands and not get too intimate with their bodily fluids. But I caught my daughter blowing bubbles in my water glass. The girl has an obsession with straws. And then I got the cold. And that sucks. The end.

The Harvest Crew

A friend commented on the fact that we go home to help with harvest. A lot of families don't do that.... heck, some even hire help. Well.... it isn't like I learned this whole "cheapskate" thing on my own, is it?

And it takes a lot of pressure off when you realize they are getting exactly what they pay for....

So here's the crew, part-timers listed first:

My Brother & Sis-in-Law. SIL drove combine which just reinforces my belief they are the favorites..... because nothing says "I Love You" like air-conditioning. Also, ps, her cookies rocked.... I take back all that brown-noser comment I said. Brother spent most of his time in the shop fixing things, running the plasma cutter, and bathing in diesel. "I need 2 inches added to my ding-a-ling" was a request honored.

My Sister. Truck Driver. It's a dirty job but someone has to do it.

My Cousins. My cousin drove some truck, her husband drove a combine. Their kids ate their own weight in wheat and supervised. They were also responsible for most of the grocery shopping because they had to go back-and-forth a couple of times a week to check their horses at home.

My Uncle. Combine Driver. Often seen leaving the harvest field as clean as he arrived.... unless something breaks.

My Aunt. Grain Cart Operator. She drives the Cat tractor and runs the grain cart. This also makes her the field boss. It also means she's in charge of tracking the grain yield.... I think she will be asking for a laptop in the tractor next year... and not just for playing solitaire.

My Mom. Truck Driver. She likes the orange truck because it is easier to shift. Also, she bought a new hat and a new lunch cooler for next summer.

My Dad. Gofer. His job is to fix things as they break. He's the busiest guy in the field. He is also in charge of moving the auger from bin to bin because, trust me, you DO NOT want to see what happens when I try to move it.

My Grandpa. Grandpa races around a lot and complains because we all move to slow. Mostly we only move enough to get out of his way. He's a 1922 model and we are trying to get him to slow down but, well, he's stubborn.

My Grandma. You know Grandma is the one who taught me how to drive my first year in the field..... in Old Yeller. Grandma just watches over us now but, seriously, I think she protects us all from Grandpa.... it's the only explanation. I miss her often but I miss her most at harvest. I miss swinging by her house between trips to the field for push-ups (raspberry please), frozen lemonade and trashy paperbacks. I miss helping her take lunch to the field.... packed in boxes wrapped with those ugly orange & green terry tableclothes that came out every summer. I miss watering her driveway to try to cut down the dust and I miss hearing her on the radio, "99 Base, this is Mother Hen.... you guys ready to eat??"

So there you have it.... Crew 2008.

We call her Tinklebell

Let's pause in the picture frenzy for a very funny story about my mom.

First, this is my mom:

Here's the background to the story that you need to know to see it as funny: See behind mom in the picture? That's the hopper on the truck and it is dumping into the hopper on the auger. The blue thing is the auger. It runs on hydraulics from the tractor to make the wheat go up into the bin. Get it? Ok, so the auger has a hopper-walker. The hopper-walker is this nifty electronic deal that walks the hopper out. So it works like this:

You pull up next to the auger with your big, big truck and jump out and use the hopper-walker to walk the hopper under your truck's dumpy thingy (technical term, stay with me) and start the auger, well, augging (more on that danger later). Then you "let 'er rip, tater chip." (So, that means you open up the truck hopper and wheat dumps into the auger hopper and gets auggered up into the bin.) Got it?

It's all pretty sweet and will be sweeter when I figure out how to download a cool song to program into the hopper-walker... right now it just goes "beep, beep" while it walks out.

Ok, more background. This story isn't very funny so far, is it? The hopper-walker is operated by a toggle switch (I would say the toggle switch is operated by a dipstick but that would be rude and insulting) and runs off the battery of the tractor (for those of you with a tech or farming background... this means it can operate when the tractor is not running).

So you can use this switch or the keychain remote. Yes. A remote. The idea is you can get in the truck, start it, move it so the box isn't in the way of the hopper's path and move it with the remote so you don't have to get out of the truck again. Sweet, huh?

So mom has a remote. In her pocket. And she has to pee. What? How can I be delicate about that? It happens. It's all the gatorade. Remember, first, that the bins are in the middle of town. Ok, now remember town looks like this:

And that is why you can squat-n-pee in the middle of town. Which is what mom did, one fine summer day. With the remote in her pocket. Do you see where this is going? SHE. ACTIVATED. THE. REMOTE. And walked the auger out from under the truck while it was dumping.

How funny is that?

And, more importantly, how big a pile of wheat can you dump on the ground in the time it takes to tinkle and pull up your Wranglers?

About 10 feet in diameter apparently.

Truck Driver. This is Your Job.

Classic

Long Live the King

That's a big friggin steering unit

Sis again

She said to just label this one, "Harvest 2008"

G-Grandpa's Truck

Great-Grandpa's Truck, the Jimmy, has over a million miles on it. Great-Grandpa (my grandpa) has about a million on him as well. He's a 1922 model.

Slug, the orange fuel pickup, has no brakes.... ask me how I know this.....

Check out the skyline.... that is Flat.

Plain Old.... Not Bad.

So pretty. One of my favorite things. I wish I could make this post scratch-n-sniff... well.... so you could smell the ripe wheat.... not so you could smell the dust, diesel and sweat.

Eagle

My sister.

Nice boots.

Nice glasses.

Nice.... surgical mask??

In Training

I guess I better point out the tiny little farmer-man sticking up there next to the stack.... That's my boy.... he's checkin' the wheat for Grandma....

Before the Wind and Grasshoppers

Please note

1. The tree in the background.... it's a juniper. We are thinking of cutting it down.
2. The diaper on the porch. We are classy like that.
3. Tuff's face after she smelled the wine. She then plugged her nose and said, "tinky, mama, tinky."

On the porch watching three babies with spots.

Geez.... we need to mow again.

Recipes

Ok.... Mary P over at DaycareDaze has a kid recipe swap going on....

Elle- you MUST post your enchilada recipe.... because I love it.

So, basically, our meals break down into the same three categories as everything else in our lives.... cheap, easy & green. Everyone already knows my kids eat too many hotdogs and chicken tenders but let me attempt to further the myth of super-mom with the following selections...

Tomato cubes in the freezer. At the end of every summer I get a giant flat box of tomatoes and various other garden leftovers from my grandpa. More than I could ever eat. Ever. So I dump all the extras (tomatoes, onions, zucchini, squash, carrots... whatever) into my big soup pot and cook it down. Then I run it through the blender and freeze it in ice cube trays. I toss the cubes in zip-lock bags and whenever I'm making soup or pizza or spaghetti sauce I toss a couple in for spare veggie goodness.

Cream of Green Things soup. Same idea as above but lots of green stuff (or yellow or orange or whatever) all together in the trusty soup pot. I pause and wish I had a stick blender. Then I run it through the blender and freeze it. Thaw and add cheese tortellini and cream. Ta-da. Ok, sure, the torts and cream aren't exactly health and diet food but YUM.... and the kids will usually eat it.

For FUN we do zip-lock bag omlettes (two eggs and whatever toppings you like mooshed together (be careful not to use too many mushrooms.... it makes it watery), put in a freezer-type small zip-lock with your name on it (seal well and try to get all the air out) and toss in (that trusty soup pot again) boiling water for 13 minutes) or hobo dinners (a hamburger patty topped with tomato slices, carrots, potatoes, onions all wrapped in a foil packet and cooked in the bbq or oven..... best eaten outside while you pretend you are camping.)

Ok.... I admit... FUN in this case means no clean up for mama.

And I present the following two for super-speed.

Pita Pizzas. Um, this isn't really a recipe... pita bread, top with tomato sauce or tomato cubes from above, sprinkle with pizza-style spices and cheese and everyone select their own toppings. Ok... I'm going to confess.... I've also done this with cheddar cheese and left-over taco meat and called them Mexican Pizzas. You can bake them or, in case of emergency "mama, I hun-gee" moments... nuke 'em.

Turkey Roll Ups. My mother-in-law called me at work one night and asked what a turkey roll up was..... Sweet was asking for one. She was concerned with cream cheese and tortillas..... I explained how we make turkey roll ups at our house.... You take a piece of deli turkey. And roll it up. The End.

Oh... and the ultimate swimming lesson meal. I leave work at 4:30, get the kids at 5, take them to the pool for lessons at 5:30. By 6 they are both starving. So last week I made "hamburger-cheese rolls" for special snacks.... served cold, we ate them, with baby carrot sticks, snow peas & blueberries, by the pool and then swam again (without waiting a single minute for our food to settle!) for a while before we went home. They are super-easy to make up and stick in the freezer: Brown some meat (I used elk burger... it isn't greasy) and make a batch of dough in the bread machine. Roll out the dough and sprinkle with meat & cheese & whatever else floats your boat.... we put some tomato sauce & mushrooms in the last batch. Or you could do ham & cheese. Tuff likes chopped pickles in hers. Ew. Then roll up and slice like cinnamon rolls. Bake. Serve hot or cold with ketchup or salsa. Easy and portable. You can also make "mama" rolls with pesto and expensive cheese.

Oh wait... one from my mom.... a special treat when we were kids was a freshly-washed lettuce leaf sprinkled with sugar and rolled up tight. Sugary crunchiness. Mmmm.