Day 39 of 365

When I was at school the other day dropping off my Elton John concert tickets it occurred to me that I haven't been doing much quilting lately. Actually, it took the school secretary to make me realize that.

She was asking if I'd been doing lots of quilting to which I replied that I had and that it was on my blog. So we got onto my blog to look. Except I didn't have many quilting projects pictured on there. Sewing pictures, baking pictures, but only a couple quilting pictures.

Looking back over the last 38 days I have sewed:
Pincushions
Cloth Memory Games
A Camera Bag
A Baby Quilt
Pillowcases
T-Shirt Grocery Bags
A Clothespin Bag
Potholders
A Make Up Bag
Bread Basket Liner

One quilt. That's it. Way back at the beginning I also had mailed out a flag quilt top, but that had already been finished. But to actively work and finish a quilt? Nope.

So that's why I've decided to cut back on my sewing and move ahead quickly on my quilting.

That's why I wound up fighting with my quilting frame yesterday. That's also why in the last two days I have put together another baby quilt top. Quilts for Kids sent me the fabric for the top and back as well as the pattern. The top is now complete, but I still have to add the batting and start quilting it. It's small enough I think I can use my sewing machine for it. It's the closest thing to a boy's quilt that I've ever made.

Speaking of the Elton John concert, the gal that I gave the tickets to sent me an e-mail:
The concert was AWESOME!!   The seats were only 21 rows from the stage!  It appeared to be a sold out crowd from where we were sitting.  He played for 3 hours straight without any breaks. I don't know how someone can do that for such a long time and not look even a little tired. The crowd was on their feet at the end of every song. He got up from his piano and walked around the stage bowing and waving to each side after most of the songs. He played all of his classics with the addition of some selections from his new duet CD with Leon Russell. The crowd exploded (and sang along) when he played Crocodile Rock and Benny and the Jets near the end of the concert  For his encore presentation he came out and signed some autographs for some of those "groupies" up next to the stage, and then he thanked the fans of Boise with "Your Song". He said that he is enjoying playing for the fans more now than ever.  My husband, Rick enjoyed it thoroughly too.  I can't thank you enough for sharing your tickets with me.  I read your blog about how badly you had wanted to attend. Hopefully, next time he comes to town you will be feeling 100% better and able to get up and dance on the stage with him!!!   I have attached a few pictures from the concert.   Again, THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart!!       

You can just hear the excitement of the night and her appreciation for the tickets. Those tickets definitely went to the right person. Here's one of her pictures.

Day 38 of 365

I had a fight today. Not with a person, but with a thing. A quilting thing.

A quilting frame, to be exact. I have a large Grace hand quilting frame that stands on the floor. It's been hanging on the wall of my sewing room holding my unfinished projects for quite some time now. I decided to finally finish up on one of my larger quilts (I think it's about 60" x 65") and wanted to hand quilt it. So it was time to get the frame off the wall and onto the floor.

I usually do all my hand quilting on that frame in front of our big picture window in the living room. That way I get the morning sun and get to look out at the river when I need to give my eyes a break. I used to do all my quilts on it. Since I was working I mostly quilted on the weekends, 5-6 hours a day. But that amount of time of the hands was tough, so I just stopped doing hand quilting and went to smaller projects that I could machine quilt on my plain old machine.

So this new larger quilt was going to be a refreshing change. And with me not working right now, I could spread the time I worked on it throughout the week.

Except the frame is a pain to put up. Setting it upright isn't too tough, but this quilt was just a couple inches too wide for the bars I had on the frame. Which meant I had to get my extension bars and attach them. Which is the pain in the rear part. Which means bolts and nuts and screws and washers and pliers and wrenches and Allen wrenches. And bars falling down and washers rolling away and nuts coming oh-so-close to falling down the heat vent.

And me getting frustrated, cursing at myself, at the quilt, at the frame. Finally, after several hours and lots of breaks to clear my head, it is up. And the quilt and the batting and the backing are secured. And it's ready to go. And time for me to relax. But not with that quilt.

There are two things I like to do best to relax. If you've read many of my posts, you know it's all about the baking and the sewing. So this afternoon I did both, as you can see in today's picture.

Homemade buttermilk biscuits and a new homemade bread basket liner. Ahh, relaxation.

Day 37 of 365

It was an eventful day today.

The mail itself was exciting. I received a little makeup bag from Target with samples of lip gloss, shampoos, and lotion. I also got a check from Aflac to help cover some of my physical therapy costs. If that wasn't enough, UPS came with my three free quilt kits that I'll be making for the Quilts for Kids organization. Nice, bright fabrics! It even made up a bit for the internet being down all day.

Earlier this week, I had received an e-mail I had won some tickets to tomorrow's Elton John concert. When we first heard he was coming a couple months back, we knew we wanted to go. But with me recovering from surgery, I never got around to ordering tickets. Then a few weeks back I entered a contest put on by the Boise paper. And I won! So today on my way over to Boise to take my daughter back home, I picked up the tickets.

My husband and I had been talking about the tickets all week. I've been having more bad days than good so I was contemplating not going to the concert. Now I love Elton John and all, but knowing I had to sit/stand for 3 hours was worrying me. As time goes by, I'm learning what I can and can't put my body through. I knew if I went to the concert, I would pay for it for several days to come. And I wasn't willing to experience any more pain than necessary. It seems I'm becoming more of a pain avoider instead of a pleasure seeker these days.

So the question became - as I was sitting in the parking lot of the ticket office today- do I go or not? I decided not to. Then the decision had to be made about what to do with the tickets. So in between the time I left the parking lot and the time I pulled into the auto service center to have my burned out headlight replaced, I had an idea. I texted a friend from work to see if she wanted them. Nope. I also worked with her sister. How about her?

As I was sitting waiting for the headlight to get fixed, her sister called. Told me about being a big Elton John fan, having his albums growing up, having been to his concert last time he was in Boise, and how she had been trying to win tickets herself. A perfect match for my tickets.

So I drove out to work this afternoon to give her the tickets. For free. No charge. No strings attached. My good deed for the day. My service to others, my own version of paying it forward.

Enjoy the concert, Marcie. Can't wait to hear all about it!

Day 36 of 365

I used to like decorating cakes.

Since our daughter was little, I've made her birthday cakes most years. And made my husband's cakes. And my cakes. Then a few years back I got into making baby shower cakes for other people. I always got great feedback about them. Except cakes were hard for me. I wanted the cake to be perfect, and when I made a mistake I would have to scrape frosting off and start again. It was no longer fun.

But one thing that did continue to be fun was decorating sugar cookies. Many, many, years back I started giving decorated Christmas cookies for gifts. I've been doing it most years since. I have also added heart cookies for Valentine's Day, shamrocks for St. Patrick's Day (like on Day 12), and ghosts on Halloween. And I've gotten great feedback on all of those, too.

It's something I loved to do so I kept with it. Now I have over 250 cookie cutters for all occasions. Need a pirate ship cookie? I've got that. Need a tyrannosaurus rex? Got it. A cactus? Yep. A hammer? Yep. How about a barn? Yep, I've got that, too. I have everything from an acorn to a camel to a hockey stick and worm.

So now I decorate sugar cookies for anyone anytime they want them. The best part for me is I get to enjoy the process. If I make a mistake on a cookie, it becomes a "reject" (and my family likes those).

Today's sugar cookie beneficiary is the folks attending my husband's meeting this afternoon. It might be early for Easter, but I think they're not going to be complaining about a basket of Easter egg sugar cookies.

Day 35 of 365

I got my helper daughter home for a couple days. She's always looking to make some money, so she's doing some outside work for us. Weeding, plugging up woodpeckers holes in the shed, planting my gladiolus (those bursting in Day 32's picture), raking some leftover leaves from the fall. Basically the stuff I can't reach or bend over to do.

And the cat finally decided to give up her napping spot from Day 31's picture, so I was able to get going on my daughter's make up bag. I used a tutorial from the internet, and thank goodness this one finally was written correctly with all directions clearly explained.

Except that this pattern called for iron-on vinyl for the inside. But my daughter said she didn't want vinyl so I used a piece of fabric for lining. Which would have been okay, but when I finished the bag wasn't very stiff and didn't hold its shape well (unless propped up for my picture). It then occurred to me (only after the entire bag was completely finished) that since I didn't use vinyl, I should have used something else like the iron-on fleece that I have. The same fleece I used for my camera bag that turned out so nice on Day 14. Why I didn't think of that before I finished the bag?

So a floppy, non-shape-holding makeup bag is complete. Now I have to go back and figure a way to put some interfacing or fleece or batting or something into it without having to tear the entire thing apart and start over. My sewing skills are just a bit off lately.

And my counting skills are obviously off, too. As I was looking back for the pictures of my glads, of the cat napping, and of the camera bag I made I realized my post numbers were off. At around Day 12, I skipped a day somewhere. I've now gone back and made things right. I'm on Day 35 now, not Day 34.

Boy, I need some remediation!

Day 34 of 365

I've been learning lots of new things about sewing lately.

I'm not a natural born sewer. I used to sew some of my daughter's clothes when she was a toddler, but had no clue what I was doing. A quarter inch seam allowance? On the bias? Cut notches? Sew interfacing? Make a button hole? I had not a clue to any of those. Yet, I continued to sew for her because I enjoyed it.

Skip ahead 20 years later and I'm still learning. I just found out last week that I have a quarter inch sewing machine foot. I still can't make a proper buttonhole. But I've been reading up on the internet. I've been following people's step-by-step tutorials and watching how-to videos. And through the process of creating each project I've been learning from my mistakes. My seam ripper is becoming my good friend.

I have enough problems making enough mistakes on my own that I don't need the internet messing me up, too.

This week I made four potholders. For three of them I followed a step-by-step tutorial and for the fourth I watched a video. Unfortunately (as I found out much too late) the directions on one of the tutorials wasn't complete and the measurements on the video were off. So I wound up having to re-do/guess/cut corners as best I could.

And that best wasn't good enough for me. So while they may look okay in the picture, they're not up to my perfectionist standards.

And that's another thing I'm learning about sewing. I can't be perfect. My skills, although improving, aren't there yet. But I'm not sure it matters. Is there a sewing police that will check to see if my seams line up or my points are folded correctly?

If so, I'm in trouble.

Day 33 of 365

I love my red KitchenAid stand mixer. I've had one for almost 25 years now and would never go back to any other mixer. The best part is I can add ingredients, turn it on, and let it be. No standing over the mixer, no kneading, just let the mixer's motor do all the work. I recently got a more powerful, bigger one (red again) and love this one even more. I use it all the time. Like today.

It was another cloudy, windy day and I had some baking to do. My husband needed some sugar cookies for a meeting later this week so I mixed up a double batch of dough in the mixer. We're having homemade pizza for dinner so I mixed up a batch of pizza dough.

And as I was reading this month's Food Network Magazine this morning, I came across a recipe for Almost-Famous Rosemary Bread. It's a recipe that is supposed to be like Macaroni Grill's Rosemary Peasant Bread. (And I'm a sucker for a recipe that replicates a restaurant one.) Now, I've never been to Macaroni Grill and have no idea what their bread tastes like, but the picture in the magazine sure looked good. And since I just planted rosemary and should have plenty on hand later in the summer (fingers crossed), I figured today was as good a time as any to try out a new rosemary recipe.

If you like bread and you like rosemary, this is a recipe for you. Yum!

Day 32 of 365

Some days I just don't want to get out of bed.

Just too many things hurt.  My shoulders, my hands, my knees, my hips, and my back. Today was one of those days where everything ached. But I forced myself out of bed and took it easy for a while. Usually when I have really bad days, I do some type of organizing where I can sit in a chair and do something. I enjoy straightening shelves, organizing drawers, color coding fabric - something that is easy for me, that I get pleasure from, that doesn't tax my system, yet takes my mind off of hurting.

Most of today was just too much for even that. So I sat in the chair for a while, had some breakfast, read Readers Digest for a while, watched some NASCAR with hubby, and then finally got around to do some organizing. Actually, it was more of a straightening up project.

I've been working on several small sewing projects. I haven't finished any of them, but am getting close. Usually when I sew I pull out the fabrics I'm using and keep them nearby on the table in case I need them again before I'm done. Being I have three or four projects nearing the end right now, I have quite a few fabrics and bindings sitting out. I keep all my fabrics wrapped on boards and organized on the shelves by color, so it's been driving me crazy to have fabrics out loose.

So when I felt a bit better this afternoon, I got to work folding and wrapping my bindings and fabrics and putting them back on my shelves. I picked up scraps, refilled my iron with water, covered my sewing machine, and put my unfinished projects in a neat pile.

All projects except one.

I'm making my daughter a make up bag. We have the fabric, I have a pattern printed from the internet, and I have the zipper. I haven't started it yet, but I wanted to put it with the other projects. But I couldn't get to that project. It was temporarily unavailable. It was being used as a napping place.

It seems I'm not the only one needing to take it a little easy today.

Day 31 of 365

Our nice 60 degree weather has disappeared. Today is cloudy, rainy, windy, and cool. Not a good day to be working outside, so I decided to dig through our old seed packets to see what else I had to plant. Which then led me to checking on my glads.

I've never had much luck growing gladiolus. I love them all tall and colorful, but have always had problems with digging them up in the fall and replanting them in spring.  I'd plant them, they'd bloom (or not) and then I'd get too busy with school and forget to dig them out. Sometimes I even forgot where I planted them so I couldn't dig them out if I wanted to. One year I bought some that were touted as winter hardy, but after they flowered in the summer they never reappeared again.

But a couple years ago I decided I was going to try and do glads again. I was committed. I was going to mark where I planted them. I was going to make sure I didn't get too busy to dig them up and would have a dedicated container where I would store them for the winter.

Except that between the time I ordered them in the late summer and the time they arrived for planting in the following spring, I had hurt my back at work, been diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis, and had knee replacement surgery. When the bulbs arrived in April in a box marked "live plants", I knew my gladiolus days would not happen.

Then along came my helper. (My daughter, of course.) A couple weeks later she was able to come home and get them planted. Out front, in the back, on the side of the fence, in the planter box - wherever she could find a space. My hopes weren't too high since they'd been sitting in the box for a couple weeks, but some of them did bloom. They fell over in the wind and wound up on the ground most of the time (I didn't realize at the time that we were supposed to stake them or plant them along a wall or fence for support), but they did bloom. My helper girl even dug them up in the fall for me and put them in my "designated container" with some potting soil. All I could do was hope they'd survive the winter so they could be planted again.

So imagine my surprise with the bad luck I've had with this flower when I went looking for seeds and decided to check on my glads. In their designated plastic container with a lid. Or, maybe I should say, their designated plastic container with the lid pushed off (and not by me).

I think it might be a good year for glads.

Now to just get my daughter over here...

Day 30 of 365

We finally got a break in the weather. Today is the second day the temps have been in the 60s, plus today we have no wind. I've been itching to get outside and get some planting done.

In years past we've done planting over Spring Break (which is usually the 3rd week of March), but since our our helper/daughter left home we don't adhere to that schedule as much. And last year during Spring Break I was in the hospital with my knee replacement so we didn't even attempt a garden.

Just like my big plans to hang up laundry on the clothesline all summer, we have big garden plans this summer. My husband has some things growing in the greenhouse at his school, but we needed to get some other seeds started ASAP.

So today in the nice, bright, warm sunshine I planted seeds in some pots. Some of them will stay in the pots and will eventually make it to our porch and others were planted in a pot as a temporary "growing until they're big enough to put in the ground" spot. Spinach, arugula, kale, rosemary, oregano, dill, basil, cucumbers, and cantaloupe seeds are now planted. We have them on the south side of the house where it is always so warm. I guess I'm hoping the extra warmth they'll get there will make up for lost time. Kind of like me.

I guess I'm hoping this picture-a-day project will help me make up for lost time, too.

Day 29 of 365

One of my favorite things about spring and summer is that I get to hang my laundry on the clothesline.

I love clothes hanging on the line in a nice neat row. I love the smell of clean clothes when they come off the line. And of course I love saving electricity.

I love hanging clothes on the line so much that when we were a young married couple and our dryer went out, we went 5+ years without a new one. Not an easy feat in Idaho. We hung clothes outside in the spring, summer, and fall, and inside during the winter. Sometimes inside during the winter it took a couple days for things to dry, but we were okay with that. Even now that we have a dryer again, we sometimes put things inside on drying racks during the winter months.

Last summer I missed my clothesline. I had torn my rotator cuff and there was no lifting my arm. My daughter and husband attempted to hang things a couple times, but their version of clothes hanging neatly on the line wasn't the same as mine. And as we learned, if they aren't hanging neatly they come out wrinkled. Which means ironing. Which means using a shoulder that's not working. So our days of hanging clothes on the line were rare.

But I'm hoping this year will be different. I've now had surgery on both shoulders. (Still can't lift them above my head yet, but they're coming.) The weather is getting warmer. (Not quite warm enough but almost.) And I have a new clothespin bag. (One I made myself.)

With our wind here, I'm not sure how it's going to hold up. But I will soon find out.

Day 28 of 365

I don't go out much anymore. I'm usually in the house all day, every day, with no one to talk to. But I'm okay with that. Actually, I like it a lot.

After several years being sick and still working, it became exhausting having to be "on" all the time. I had to work hard at keeping up a good front. Some people knew I wasn't well and would ask about how I was doing. While I didn't want to admit how bad things had gotten, sometimes the lack of spark in my eyes gave it away. So working was double exhausting - having to work while sick and in pain, and having to keep faking happy as long as possible. It wore me out.

Now being home all day by myself is a good thing. At one time I probably would have been bored or felt alone or even antsy without being part of the outside world. Not anymore. Now when I'm not feeling well, I don't have to hide it. I don't have people asking how I'm feeling and I don't have to push myself beyond what I know my body is capable of (even though I do sometimes, by choice). When my fingers are swollen, I don't have to wear shoes with laces. When my back or knees are bothering me, I can sit down. When I'm just trying to survive the day and nothing is on my mind but getting through the pain and I don't want to talk to anyone about anything, I don't have to.

But once in a while I have to leave the house to go to the doctors or get groceries. I try and make all the stops I need in one day so I don't have to go back out. Today was a grocery day. I also hit Target for some cereal.

I planned on picking up some Special K there since it was on sale for $2.50 a box. I usually never pay over a dollar a box for cereal, but we ran out a while back and I was missing my morning cereal. Like in most cases, I came out with more than what I had originally went in for.  I usually take my coupon binder in with me when I go to Target because they have such great clearance or price cut deals that match up well with the coupons I have. Like today.

My take:
Purex Crystals $2.99 minus a $2 coupon
3 boxes of Special K $7.50 minus a $2 coupon
4 trays of Meow Mix cat food $1.56 minus $1 coupon
Zantac 24 count $7.59 minus $5 coupon and $2 Target coupon

Before the coupons, the price was $19.64
After coupons, the price was $7.64 + $1.06 tax

Total cost of all items was $8.70. I used a $5 Target gift card that I got free from a cat food offer a few weeks back. Leaving me $3.70 to pay.

$20 worth of items for $3.70. It pays to leave the house sometimes.

Day 27 of 365

As a teacher, you wouldn't expect to have to attend students' funerals.

As an elementary teacher, I didn't have much experience with that. But as a high school teacher, the number of students my husband has lost is in the double digits. Most of the deaths occurred while the students were in high school or just graduated from high school. And usually from car accidents.

One death was different. Ross Aaron Clevenger. And this death hit my husband hard.

Ross was a different type of student. He was funny, yet was serious about his schoolwork. He loved to skateboard. He loved it so much that he, along with some other students, approached the city council to get help in building a skateboard park. They agreed to match funds and a city skateboard park was built. 

Ross went off to college and then joined the service. He was called to active duty in early 2006 and was deployed to Iraq in September. He came home on leave in January 2007 before returning to Iraq.

A month later he was dead. He was 21.

Sgt. Ross Aaron Clevenger of the 321st Engineering Battalion was killed Feb. 8, 2007, when a roadside bomb heavily damaged his armored vehicle in Iraq’s Anbar province west of Baghdad.

His funeral was held at the Marsing High School gym and he was buried with full military honors.

So it is in Ross' name that I continue to do work for the Quilts of Valor Foundation. The mission of the foundation is to cover all those service members and veterans touched by war with Wartime Quilts called Quilts of Valor. I've been again working on presentation cases (in this instance pillowcases), which is the "gift wrap" for the quilt.

More information about Quilts of Valor can be found at http://www.qovf.org/.

Day 26 of 365

My mom called this morning and talked a LONG time about lots of things. When she called, I'd been thinking about what I was going to take a picture of today. (She suggested I take a picture of the phone since I spent most of my time there this morning.)

Every morning one of my first thoughts, and sometimes the only reason I get out of bed, is to figure out what I'm going to post for the day. So when she called, I didn't have it figured out yet. I thought about the hail that was still on the ground from last night's hailstorm. But by the time I got off the phone, it had melted.

A little later I was making a pot of chili for dinner and when I opened the can of tomatoes, the cat came running and started bawling at me. When we feed her wet food now it's always a pop-top can, but she obviously has that "the can opener means food" signal ingrained in her brain from 5 years or so back when we had to use the can opener. Bawling cat picture? Nah.

Kevin from Idaho Power had read my Day 23 post where I had written about tracking my power consumption. He posted a comment on the blog about Idaho Power having an online option where customers can see usage by the day and even by the hour. I created an account on their website today and now see where our high spots are during the day and week. I considered taking a picture of the charts that are displayed, but do I really want others to know when during the day we use the most power? Probably not.

When checking on my chili (it smells delicious), I realized I still had some chocolate left over from making the caramel apples. And I had fresh strawberries in the fridge.

When you have chocolate in the house and fresh strawberries in the fridge, there's only one thing to do. And I did it.

Day 25 of 365

I never liked caramel apples. They are sticky, and messy, and hard to eat.

But a couple years ago I discovered Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory's caramel apples. Caramel-chocolate-Butterfinger caramel apples, actually. The flavors were great, but the best part was they cut the apple for me. No more sticky, messy, hard to eat caramel apple.

I like replicating foods I've eaten elsewhere. In fact, I own the Top Secret Recipes books of cloned recipes from places such as Outback, Chilis, Cheesecake Factory, IHOP, Taco Bell, etc. Several of the recipes I use again and again. And the IHOP pancake recipe is my only go-to pancake recipe anymore. My thought is, why go out when you can make it cheaper at home?

So my latest attempt at a recipe was recreating the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory's caramel-chocolate-Butterfinger apple. I wasn't able to find it in my Top Secret books or on the internet, so I tackled it myself.

I used Golden Delicious apples and had some leftover Wilton chocolate and white chocolate candy melts left over from Valentine's Day. I picked up a bag of caramels and a king size Butterfinger.

I scrubbed the apples well to get the wax off of them. I dried them, put popsicle sticks into them, and put the apples in the fridge for 10-15 minutes. In the meantime, I combined the caramels and 2 tablespoons of water in a pot over medium heat. I cooked until completely melted, stirring almost constantly.

When the caramels were melted, I dipped the apples into the caramel, almost completely covering them to the top. I put the caramel covered apples onto a heavily buttered plate to cool, and back in the fridge they went for another 15 minutes. I melted the chocolate candy melts (you could use a bag of white chocolate chips) in the microwave, stirring every 30 seconds or so. I then dipped the cooled apples into melted white chocolate, then rolled them in crushed Butterfinger. Back in the fridge again.

I did a different batch, too. I did a chocolate/white chocolate one. That one I dipped in melted caramel, cooled the apple in the fridge, dipped in white chocolate, cooled it in the fridge, and dipped it in milk chocolate candy pieces ( you could use a bag of chocolate chips here too), and cooled it in the fridge.

They looked almost too good to eat.

I let them sit at room temperature for a bit, then  used a knife to cut straight alongside the stick on both sides. I then cut the halves into smaller, more manageable slices. Yummy!

While I didn't have an "official" recipe, I'm happy with the way they turned out and they were just as good as the expensive ones at the chocolate shop.

If you like replicating recipes, I can highly recommend the Top Secret Recipes line of books (even though my apples weren't found in the books).

Day 24 of 365

I'm a bit obsessed about our power bill. We run all electricity, no gas (our city doesn't even offer gas), so everything - lights, TV, water heater, stove, dryer - all wind up on our power bill. I'm so obsessive about keeping control over our power output that I've been tracking our average daily kilowatt since 2005.

Our Idaho Power bill's monthly statement includes a chart of average kilowatt per day for every month for the prior year. It compares the current month to the same month the year before. I've been taking it a step further, though. Back in 2005  I started tracking the number each month and inputting it into a spreadsheet. Then when 2006 rolled around, I plugged that number into the spreadsheet and had the formula tally the difference between the two months average daily use. Sometimes it was higher, sometimes it was lower. Every year after that I've continued to plug numbers in. I can see at a glance which months we use more or less, and have formulas in to give us 6 year totals of ups and downs.

The reason I track it so closely is purely financial. We have "level pay", so our bill is the same amount every month no matter what power was really used during the month. But the power company does audits of the level pay and readjusts it if you used too much or paid too much. So I like to see that readjustment number go down. There's nothing worse than a higher readjustment - especially with my income gone.

When a month is higher than the year before, I make sure we watch our use. When I see a month we've been higher a couple years running (like September), we watch our use even more. Since we've been working on lowering each month's daily average for the last six years, now it's becoming quite a challenge to see a month show up lower.

Again, I'm not really a "green" person so I'm not doing the kilowatt tracking for environmental reasons. But I started thinking about what life would be like living "off the grid", without electricity. At one point in my life, I was considering moving in that direction. I remember as a teenager visiting a home in Northern California with some folks who built their own house out of logs that they cut from their land. They grew their own food (even made their own cheese) and raised chickens and goats. They had no indoor plumbing and no electricity.

I wonder what it would be like to create your own power. I've heard of people putting in solar panels, but how could wind power play into creating electricity? When we did our cross country traveling we saw many old farmhouses with windmills. When we were driving back from our little Spring Break getaway today we also saw a couple of wind farms off the freeway. Just how feasible would it be to produce your own wind power nowadays?

It's surprising how just one picture can get my mind wandering.

Day 23 of 365

How much money is your health worth?

If you count the money spent on health-related costs for me over the last year, it'd be over $100,000. If you consider the toll it took on my family, the costs would be astronomical. If you count the cost that one day's activities - driving a few hours to a casino and gambling a bit - it might be close to $1,500.

The time spent winning the $1,500 I was so excited about yesterday was a bit detrimental to my system. Just sitting on stools and chairs with not-so-comfortable backs, standing, walking, and pushing buttons has done a number on my joints. Achy, swollen, hot joints.

And I'm doing my medication routine. I'm taking my chemotherapy drug and my injectable drug, but my lifestyle is not one I wish to keep. Granted, I just started the injectable and I need to give it time to work. But at a time when I should be so excited about getting something like a nice chunk of change, I'm having to focus on my health while at the same time trying to ignore the pain. I've been prescribed pain medication, but after many, many months of being in a drug induced stupor, I use them sparingly.

I'm frustrated (again) and I wish my life (and body) was different. So again I have to focus on the picture of the day to get me moving forward. The need to find something positive and good in the world allows me some brief respite from my own health problems.

Gambling problems? Not so much.

Day 22 of 365

Today appeared to be the perfect storm. Either the stars were in direct alignment, or the supermoon from this weekend carried over to the week, or maybe it was just plain luck.

My hubby is on Spring Break this week and our daughter had a couple days off, so we'd been looking to get away for a couple days. Since he's working on his book, he wanted to take his materials with him and seclude himself in a hotel room for a couple days. We were wanting to head to the mountains, but the snow just keeps coming and I'm not the most confident snowy road driver, so that plan was nixed.

Our second choice was the nearest gambling town, Jackpot, Nevada. We had received an offer earlier this month for comped rooms, some comped food, and some free gambling money from one of the hotels there. We're not big gamblers. In fact, I was in my mid-30s before I ever stepped into a casino. So a secluded room, time for writing, and a little time for some penny slots seemed like a grand idea. We even took a couple hundred dollars, just in case. We figured that amount would be adequate in case we wanted to gamble more or stop somewhere else along the way.

Adequate. Actually, it wound up being more than enough. Much more. Even with time set aside for writing my husband and I both hit several jackpots on penny slot machines. We kept cashing out and tucking the money away. When we got to the room and counted the money - all $1,500 of it. On penny slots. In one day. Staying in a free room, ate free food, and used their free cash. $1,500!

The clouds rolling in during our drive must have been a sign of the perfect storm we were about to enjoy. A gambling perfect storm of sorts.

Day 21 of 365

My husband is writing a book. Well, more like composing ideas and stories for a book. He's a high school teacher and has years worth of stories of what really goes on in a high school. By the time he retires in a few years, I'm sure he'll have many more. He's had the book idea in mind for a long time, but only recently has starting putting ideas down on paper.

He could easily write an autobiography of his life. Although he was born with Cerebral Palsy, he isn't confined to a wheelchair. He does walk with a limp and doesn't have use of the right side of his body. If you were to see him, you would think he'd had a stroke. (He gets that assumption from people a lot.) Despite his disability, he was very active in athletics as a kid. Played baseball, basketball, and football, and when he physically couldn't maintain the level of performance needed to play on a high school team, he still remained in athletics. He became basketball manager and was voted "Most Inspirational". He was also "Handicapped Student of the Year" for the State of Idaho.

He went on to college and continued being involved in athletics. He was involved with the athletic training department for Boise State University's football program and was the Equipment Manager for the basketball team. Graduated from college and got a teaching job.

That was almost 25 years ago. Since then he's been teaching at the same high school, has been named Teacher of the Year, has had a fellowship with our state senator back in Washington DC, served with the National Council of Social Studies, and has been on our city's Planning and Zoning Committee and our City Council.

While there are many people who have fought adversity, his life story is unique in that it is his. And maybe someday he'll write it. But right now he's working on his career life story. But he's not a writer. To use education-eze, his oral language proficiency exceeds his written language proficiency.

So it looks like I'll be the editor-in-chief as he pursues his latest adventure. To ease the burden of having a one-handed person typing hundreds of pages of text, (and me having to re-edit all of it) I bought him some micro cassettes. He now has hours of tape to tell his story.

Make a Tote Bag from an Upcycled T-Shirt - Day 20 of 365, Tutorial Tuesday

I had to stop and get some groceries today. Not too much, just some staples - fruit and veggies, yogurt, bread, eggs and some milk. I usually shop at the same few stores every time I make a trip to town. Fred Meyer, Target, and Walgreens.

But all along the way I seem to pick up too many plastic bags. A bag for the bread. A separate bag for the eggs. Yogurt gets its own. The prescription gets its own. Film to be developed? Another bag. We have a system for re-using the bags, but it seems lately they don't last like they used to. My husband uses them to take his lunch to work (then of course throws it away) and we double bag the kitty litter with them. Sometimes we use them for the garbage we create when cooking dinner or something, but otherwise they just sit there being stored. And for some reason we never seem to remember to take them back to the store to be recycled.

I see folks using cloth bags more and more these days, but then I read about how they harbor germs and that people don't wash them enough. I'm not a "green" person at all, but I've been wondering how to reduce our output of trash - including those plastic, not-so-strong bags.

Being the sewer that I'm becoming, I started looking up how to make the bags. Since we've traveled a lot, we have a lot of t-shirts. And being the big gal that I am, I don't always fit into the shirts we've bought. To solve the plastic bag problem and the "I can't fit into this shirt but don't want to get rid of it" problem, I turned several t-shirts into grocery sacks.

Hem the bottom, cut out the collar, cut away the sleeves, and you've got yourself a grocery sack.

I don't know how long they'll last, by I'm anxious to find out.

Need a tutorial to show you how to make your own t-shirt grocery bag? Got it!