Tuesday Talk

I can't believe it's September already! We've had a mild summer here in the Kansas City area and there's already a hint of autumn in the air, so I decided it was time to change my template to something more fall-like. I hope it's not too drastic a change. BTW, the picture in the header is of one of our maple trees from last year. They're still green and lush right now.

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We've had a lot of ups and downs around here lately. My daughter and her husband adopted a dog a week ago Sunday, and the following day, my daughter fell while walking it and broke her leg. She spent most of Tuesday here with me while she figured out how to get around with as little pain as necessary.

On Friday I finally went in for all the dental work I needed done. It (mostly) went well. I wasn't as sedated as I'd been for previous appointments like this, so I remember a lot of what was happening, but didn't really care. That is until something happened with the root canal. To simplify things, the filling they put back into the tooth after the root has been removed somehow got into the inflamed tissue below the tooth. Sedated or not, THAT was painful and required more Novocaine and also a prescription for Vicodin to take later. I'm glad to say that it's resolved itself now and all that's left for me is to go back in three weeks to get my permanent crowns. That's not painful, so I won't need sedation for that appointment.

After spending a quiet weekend at home, Shane's truck broke down on the way home from work yesterday. We aren't sure what's wrong with it yet; the mechanic will have to try to work it into his schedule in the next day or two. Shane's work requires a lot of tools (two large tool boxes in the back of the truck). They're heavy and dirty, so he never wants to pet them in our our van and drive it for work. We are fortunate in that Shane's dad is retired and doesn't need his truck daily; we were able to borrow it for as long as we need it. But we definitely don't need the expense of a truck repair. Hopefully it won't be too costly, and unless it's a very serious problem, we should be able to pay for it without putting any of it on the credit card.

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I'm very much looking forward to camping this coming weekend. We all need the break. We're going to Crowder State Park near Trenton, MO. We've not camped there before and it's always fun when we explore a new park. The park is also near Jamesport, MO, which has a fairly large Amish population. This is exciting for me, because I love going to their bulk grocery and craft stores. We'll be spending a good part of Saturday doing just that.

This will probably be our last camping trip of the season. Every year we say we'd like to make a final trip later in the fall when the leaves have turned, but once again, it looks like that probably won't happen.

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Hope all of you have a good week!

What Happens When I Can't Sleep

I don't know if it was the antihistamine I took before bed*, or just one of those nights, but I've been up since 2:15 this morning. It's 6:30 now and I'm finally starting to feel sleepy again. But Kat will be getting up in half an hour, so I can't go back to bed until after I take her to school. My whole day is going to be screwed up, whether or not I take a nap later this morning.

While the rest of you slept, I made template changes. I don't really care for the three interlinked hearts at the bottom right, but I like the rest of it.

I also read through the entire archives of a new blog I found called A Mom, Money and More. SonyaAnn adds her own brand of humor to her posts about money, kids, writing and everyday life. Check her out!

*I guess antihistamines put some people to sleep; they usually keep me awake. I took one before bed because the sinus pressure was going to keep me up anyway. If I was going to be awake, might as well be awake without pain.

Sidetracked By Thoughts Of Spring

I came here to find one of my cookie recipes and ended up spending an hour changing my template.

Does anything like that ever happen to you?

Taking A Break

I'm taking a break from posting for a while to focus on other things.

I'll be back.

Changing Seasons

I thought it was time for change around here.

Please let me know how you like the new look and if you encounter any problems with links, etc.

If you're looking for a new look in hurry, check out One Cute Blog.

New Blogger Feature

In case you didn't already know, Blogger now allows you to schedule a post for a future date and/or time. Just set your post options to the future time and date you'd like and click on publish. The post will be "scheduled" and won't publish until the indicated time.

For more details, go to your dashboard and scroll to the area under your blog name(s).

Jumped the Gun

Some of you may have seen the earlier post that I was going to make some blog changes here. Unfortunately, that's been postponed; my daughter was going to help me with that, but she's not able to.

Sorry for the confusion. If I can figure out how to make the changes on my own, I will. Otherwise, what you see is what you get. For now anyway.

Recipe Index Is Now Available

Now you can find the recipes I've posted quickly and easily. I've posted links in the sidebar to search recipes by title, category and main ingredient.

Housekeeping

I'm participating in Improve Your Blog Month,
started last year by Jenn at Frugal Upstate.

I probably won't be making a lot of visual changes here,
but there is some clean-up work on links and sidebar info
that I've been putting off for way too long.
Improve Your Blog Month is just
the encouragement I need to get it done.

Want to participate, too? All the info you need is right here.

Some Changes

I've been having trouble with my template lately and can't seem to find the problem, since I know very little about HTML. So, I've decided to change templates. This one is just a basic Blogger template. Nothing too impressive, but it was the template I used on my very first blog a couple of years ago, and I still like it. A few little tweaks and it should be done in a day or so. I've also taken away the Adsense ads.

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Posts are few this week because I've been reading, reading, reading. There are so many good personal finance, frugality and home management blogs out there, and my time online will be limited once I start working in January, sot I decided I needed to make the most of the reading time I have.

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A Little Something To Save Money: You've read it before, I'm sure, but it does make a lot of sense (cents) to use instant dry milk instead of fluid milk when you can. My family doesn't like the flavor as substitute for milk as a beverage, but I still use it in cooking. The flavor is almost always undetectable in cooked foods. I use it, reconstituted, any time I can as a substitute for milk. I also add it in it's dry form to many recipes (breads, meatloaf, casseroles, soups, etc.). I have osteoporosis, and it's an easy way to boost my daily calcium intake. In my area I can get a box that will make 5 gallons for about $5.50. That's $1.10 per gallon, compared to an average of $4.00 per gallon of fluid milk. I can't afford not to use it whenever I can. Prices will vary across the country, and I've read that occasionally, dry milk is more costly, so be sure to do the math first.

A Little Something To Save Time: Our post office is slow, and especially so at this time of year. Whenever I send a package in the mail, I use PayPal Auction Services to pay for and print a postage label. It doesn't have to be for an eBay auction; you can print a label for any package. Just log in to your PayPal account, select the "Auction Tools" tab, and select "PayPal Multi-Order Shipping" under "Shipping and Tracking". When the blue "Getting Started" box comes up, select "Create New Orders" and go from there. Large packages still have to go to the Post Office (unless at least one of them is Priority or Overnight, in which case you can arrange a home pickup), but I can just set them on the counter and leave instead of waiting in a long line.

Don't Mind Me

As promised more than a month ago, I'm moving some recipes in from a former blog and linking them to my weekly menus. This will be happening throughout the week. They'll probably show up for those of you using readers. If anyone not using a reader would like to see them, they are all being published with a 10/28/07 date.

Just A Heads Up

In the next week or so, I'm going to try to do a little maintenance around here. That includes adding some recipes, bringing some recipes over from my old kitchen blog, and updating links in posts and in my sidebar. This will make it easier for folks to find the recipes in my weekly menus. It will also make it easier for me to find them when I need them.

Those of you who use readers may see things published out of chronological order and/or you may feel like you've already seen some of the posts, especially if you kept up with the old blog.

The rest of you lucky readers probably won't notice anything.