Thank you, Joe The Plumber. We can all breathe easier now.

• The good news is -- our washer wasn't broken!
• The bad news is -- our plumbing was backed up!

• The good news is -- we didn't have to pay the $70 service fee again!
• The bad news is -- we had to wait for a plumber to come!

• The good news is -- my teenager now has clean socks! (even if grandpa did finally just buy him some)!

The cause of all the water on the floor ended up being a clogged pipe, so I called a plumber (again, via our Home Warranty) to come out and check things out.

Luckily, all it took was several thousand feet a little bit of snaking.You ever see one of those snakes in action? It's like a long, metal, um, snake that they force down the length of the pipe to force through whatever is obstructing it.

I guess you can rent them, but unless you know what you're doing, I would recommend calling your own Joe the Plumber. I'd just as soon leave a job like this to these good old boys who do it for a living -- even if they do think I'm a freak for video taping them while they do it. I'm pretty sure he didn't know what to make of me.

And I know ya'll were just dying to get a glimpse of what "snaking" was all about. Loud, eh? What you couldn't hear was his sniggering. Oh, what I'll do for a blog post...

Cleanliness is so overrated.

No sooner do I get back from my trip to Chicago then our washer goes kaput. Lots and lots of water -- NOT INSIDE THE WASHER.Not good. Especially when you're right in the middle of trying to catch up on your laundry. I'm really not too keen on washing clothes in the bathtub; I'd rather my kids wear dirty socks for awhile. (And I'm pretty sure that's what my 14yo has been doing.) (Though I'm in complete denial.) Unfortunately, the remaining laundry continued to sit smack dab in the middle of a giant tornado. When the washer broke, it stole away any motivation I might have mustered up to do anything about the mess that surrounded it. This was particularly bad considering my parents were coming to visit.

We have an awesome, incredible basement. Perfect for the kids to run around in and destroy while I look the other way. The problem, however, is that this basement also serves as the guests' bedroom. And this morning? Right before my parents were due to arrive? This was the scene:

BASEMENT BEFORE

Conner even amused himself with a funny picture he took with his DSi.

Pretty clever, actually. Maybe we should have made our own book. Then I could have hired someone else to take care of this mess.

Instead I gathered up the kids and threatened bodily harm even though I ended up picking it up myself anyway we all worked together to quickly put the basement back into tip-top shape.

BASEMENT AFTER

Not too bad, if I do say so myself.

And that corner? With all the laundry? Just to remind you...

CORNER BEFORE

Now it's a nice little oasis for my mom:

CORNER AFTER

Of course, I just hid all the laundry away...

I was surprised to learn that our washer and dryer are included in our Home Warranty. We'll still pay $70 for the service call on Monday, but the repair and any parts needed should be covered.

Hopefully the washer is reparable. It ain't exactly a spring chicken. I don't know how much longer I can go on ignoring my teenager's dirty socks.

Road Trip to Chicago

(Yes, Carmen, I went to Chicago! Thank you for playing!)

So... What do a musician from Milwaukee, a yoga instructor from Chicago, and a stay-at-home mom from Dayton have in common?

Why, a Kansas high school, of course!

We reconnected at our 20-year high school reunion this summer. Amy and I were BFF's way back in the day -- Nathan and I were in all the music stuff together. He went on to get a graduate degree in voice and now performs on stage and composes music and sings opera, and I ... ? Well, I don't. (insert smiley face)

And Amy? Well, she does stuff like this.(I was having fun with the photo editing on picnik.com.) (It's free!)

Amy fled to Chi-town right after college and we kept in touch for years. The Hubs and I even visited her a few times up in the Big City, but then in the last five years or so we lost touch... Going to visit her again, even if it was just for a couple of days... Well. It was like we never lost those years at all! We all change, and yet we're still the same. If anything, we're even better.

It was a whirlwind trip, but totally worth it.

I drove up from Dayton to Edgewater, the northern part of Chicago.

Total miles roundtrip: 638
Cost in fuel: $64.17

Chicago Tolls totally nickel and dime you to. death. Fifty cents here, three dollars, there..

Total tolls roundtrip: $9.50

And I couldn't show up empty-handed!

Booze Gift for the hostess: $33.14

I did not go to Chicago to play tourist; rather, to visit my friend. We hung out at her apartment and she fed me well. Oh. my. word, she fed me well. Yummy pasta and lamb and sauteed vegetables...

...Amazing Sicilian cannoli. (They "only make ze best".)

The motivation for visiting Chicago in the middle of the week was, however, to see Jann Klose, a friend of Nathan's who performed at "Uncommon Ground", a hip "slow food" restaurant in Edgewater. The performance rocked, and so did the food. Another friend of Nathan's joined the three of us, and we treated her to dinner as well.

Nathan with Lars, keyboardist and accordionist extraordinaire (left) and Jann Klose, singer/songwriter magnific (right).

Total cost of dinner out with tip (service was most excellent): $60.00.


Amy's place was just a few blocks from Lake Michigan. Before I left, the kids and I talked about what they'd like me to bring back for them: it was unanimous.
Sand from the beach! The cheapest travel gift around, and infinitely more interesting.






I would be remiss if I did not include some "necessary" expenses that The Hubs incurred while I was away. Namely, eating out at Micky-D's and buying donuts for him the kids.

As he explained,

"The kids were so broken up about you being gone, it was needed to keep them sane."

Pause.

"Okay. It was required to keep me sane."

Total Cost Breakdown:

• Gas: $64.17
• Tolls: $9.50
• Hostess Gift: $33.14
• Restaurant: $60.00
• Misc. Groceries: $15.82
• Wendy's on the way home: $2.92
• Donuts and Micky-D's for The Hubs the kids: $17.82
• Total: 203.37

Me and Amy: 1989




Me and Amy: 2009

Of course, you can't put a price on friendship. Go ahead and pull out the tissues.

Guess Where I've Been?

Hint:

1. I drove there from Ohio.
2. It was windy.
3. I spent a wee bit of money. (Details to follow...)
   

My Local Egg Source

I've been buying our eggs locally for a few months now, from a family that moved to the country just in the last year and is already well on their way to running a full-fledged, self-sufficient farm.

They have a couple of cows. (Still calves, really.)Pigs (these are mainly their teenage son's venture)...

And goats, among other animals.
The goats roam free, along with the chickens.
Not that you can tell from the picture above of the chicken coop, but these guys have the run of the land. They roam all over the grass and field and even into the plentiful woods, eating worms and grubs and bugs and whatever it is you don't want to know about that they love to pick out of the cow patties.

They just wander in on their own come evening time and put themselves to bed. Every once in awhile a chicken will go missing and they'll find a pile of feathers in the woods...

Sigh. It's a hard life, even for a chicken.

Peter really liked this little guy.
He was friendly, and not in an obnoxious way. He and his buddies help keep the grass mowed.

Maybe we should look into getting goats? I bet the neighbors wouldn't mind.


A couple of days ago, they got in a shipment of 100 chics.
How's that expression go - "Shake the hand that feeds you"? In this case, I guess you can say we just pet her feathers.

At least, she'll be feeding us one day. Because these eggs rock.

When I run out of eggs and can't connect with my egg pusher for too many weeks, I go through withdrawal. I try to make the kids eggs every morning for breakfast, and we have Brinner at least once a week. I almost can't stand to scramble up the store-bought eggs anymore: they are decidedly pale and tasteless in comparison. My kids don't gobble them in the morning as readily, either.

How much? $2.50 for one dozen. That's up from the original $2.00. Supply and demand, people, and their business is booming. That's capitalism at its finest.

Evolution of an Attitude

After yesterday's post of "Oh, woe me, I really want a big flat screen TV -- WAAH!" I thought I'd put finger to key and relate to you all a couple of ways how we've evolved for the better on this debt-free journey of ours.

On Cars
You might recall how The Hubs' car went kaput about a month ago? And how we thought it might be the transmission? The immediate reaction was, "Oh, we gotta get a new car."

Once upon a time (like, oh, a year ago) we likely would have started looking into trading it in for a different vehicle. Not a new car, mind you, but a new one to us and one that we would not have the cash to pay for. We would have acquired new debt and not thought twice.

Before we found out that it wasn't the transmission (phew) we talked about the options. It came down to, What can we do that won't accrue debt?

I told The Hubs, "We have the cash to fix this car to the tune of $2000-$3000, if that's what it takes. Would you be willing to drive a different car that we could buy for that same amount of money?"

The answer was an unequivocal, "No."

We stopped talking about trading it in.

Then it ended up being a $300 repair instead of $3000 and all was well with the world.

On Computers
Our desktop frustrates us on a daily basis. If The Hubs were not so computer literate it would have died long ago. New desktops are cheap -- but not free. We're holding off. A year ago? We'd probably have bought a new one by now.

The Hubs has been jonesing for a new laptop for.ever. (I might have mentioned that here, here, here, here and here.)

I really want The Hubs to get a new laptop, too. Because I'll get his old one! Between the (relatively speaking) archaic desktop and me and the 14yo fighting over it (darn his pesky homework) I'd love me a laptop just so's I could do my writing stretched out on the couch all lazy-like.

We came to a compromise that, if he deployed, we'd get a new laptop before he went even if we hadn't finished our (current) snowball. It does look like he'll deploy (for real this time) in January. Now it's just a matter of waiting for the official hard copy orders...

But I'm not sure if he can hold off that long. It's like the proverbial carrot, just dangling there, teasing you.

Baby steps, people.


Oh, And the flat screen? If I'm being honest with myself, I just can't justify it.

Blast this blog.

Happy Friday the 13th Pizza Special!

We caved. And $22.60 later...

Is this what happens about six months into a debt eradication plan? Is there a 12-step program for this? Because pizza is but a small step in a spending direction we seem to be heading toward.

The problem is that The Hubs is (likely) going to deploy in January, and that is opening up all kinds of spending justifications.

• He needs a new laptop.
• I would really like one of those big flat-screen TVs for that great price we saw advertised around here.
• The Hubs also saw a GPS for a great price. (We've been coveting one of them for awhile now...)

We can't seem to help it. With deployments come a few extra dollars, and already in our minds we are spending them. How can I justify a new Tv? Already I can see myself all alone on my couch curled up in my afghan with my cat perched on top watching some mindless show on my DVR to distract me from thinking about The Hubs thousands of miles away in a foreign land...

See how easy that is?

Time will tell. This is really hard. Blogging about it is even harder. Part of me wants to just forget the whole thing so I don't have to put finger to key and type about it for all of you to see and know how fickle we really are.

But this is real, and it wouldn't be real if I didn't keep it real. For real. I don't know what you all are going to tell me, if anything. I don't know if you can tell me anything that will change my mind about any of the above purchases. We haven't even made up our minds about any of them (except the laptop). Maybe this blog is my 12-step program -- accountability and all that.

At least it's keeping me honest about the accounting. If we cave in to all our desires this month? It ain't looking good.