I’m relieved he’s planning on finding a job before quitting.  Since putting the word out he’s received three job offer calls.  One job offer call he received yesterday sounds like really good money but it lacks any benefits.  He could work as much as he wants, all of it would be away from home paid, and as much time off as he wants, unpaid.  The going rate right now is $1,225 a day with a company furnished truck and a few gas cards.  He’d also receive a daily food allowance.  If he went with this job he could work 2-4 weeks in a row and then take 1-2 weeks off, he’d end up making really good money but we’d be responsible for paying taxes and finding health insurance.  He has high blood pressure and I’m not sure if that would make it hard to find health insurance or not.  I’m tempted to tell him to take this job, it would be a very fast way for us to get out of debt and if he got work in California, we’d be able to go visit him while he was working on the weekends.  If he ended up working out of state, we could afford to fly me out to see him.

The responsible, mom side of me, wants him home a lot and thinks he should look for a stable job with health benefits and life insurance, which would mean less pay.  On the flip side, if he did take this job we could be free of this credit card debt by the end of the year.  By the end of next year, we could payoff everything, vehicles loans, the boat loan, and the trailer loan - everything!  If he stuck with this job a few more years we could even pay off our house.  I’m not sure it would be worth him being away for such long stretches of time. Our kids are only kids for so long.

He went and had a meeting with a man from another company yesterday and the meeting was out of town so I don’t know the details of the job offer yet.  I should find something out tomorrow.

But…. There’s always a but, I was really depressed yesterday.  I have a few reasons, most I’m willing to share and others not.

The day before my birthday we went out for my birthday dinner to my favorite Mexican food.  The weather was perfect and the tiny restaurant wasn’t crowded.  When I told my oldest our plans she informed me that her boyfriend’s mom was also going to dinner at the same restaurant for her birthday dinner.  This is a tiny restuarant, seven tables inside and seven outside.

I’m sure anyone that’s read my blog knows where this is going.  Yep, my oldest child - the 17 year old decided she’d rather have dinner outside with her boyfriend’s mom than with us.  To tell the truth this is still bugging me.  On Mother’s day my oldest spent the whole day with her boyfriend’s mom and ZERO time with me.  Boo hoo me, right? I can’t help it, this really bugs me.  The green eyed monster has a hold of me. 

The day before my birthday we were getting ready to go to my husbands dental consultation, you know where they tell you how much they want you to spend on getting your teeth the way THEY want them.  Or maybe it’s what the dentist needs to pay off some bills or a deposit on a new car?  Most of the work they want to do is elective and we can’t afford it right now.  The dentist wanted us to spend $3,700 but insurance would cover $2,700 - but they couldn’t guarantee the insurance would pay that much.  I asked if the $1,000 we’d have to come up with was negotiable, at the time I was thinking why not, most things are negotiable or go on sale so I had nothing to loose.  The dental assistant laughed at me.  Oh well, we decided to only get the teeth that are bugging him fixed.

So anyhow, while I was getting ready to go to the dentist office, I put on my jeans.  I knew this day was coming, I’ve even written about it before, the jeans didn’t go on quite as easily as I would have liked.  I had to lay down on the bed to button them up and once I got them on, I was miserable and ended up changing.  My husband was cool with going to Walmart and buying me one size larger jeans.  Actually he was more than cool, he repeated told me how beautiful I am and that he likes me just the way I am.  I’m very hard headed and wouldn’t let him buy the larger jeans.  Today. I’m on day 2 of my weight watchers diet!  This time I plan on sticking to it.  I’m writing everything I eat down in a journal and tracking my points.  I’m sure it’s just wishful thinking but I swear I can already tell a difference in the way I feel and in the way my stomach looks.  I plan on trying those same tight jeans on in a week and hopefully I won’t have to lay down to get them buttoned.  lol

I’m feeling a little depressed, I’m turning 39!

I’m running short on time and will post more about it tomorrow.

Looks like next month my credit card debt is going to drop below $40,000!  I’m sure to the average person with credit card debt this probably doesn’t sound like a reason to celebrate but for me this is HUGE!  I’m so excited!  This is exactly what I need right now.  I feel like I’m making progress.   Here’s my mint.com snapshot:

Yesterday morning I checked my email and saw an email from the electric company saying my electric bill was ready.  I opened the email and my jaw dropped when I saw my balance due was $989.91!  I clicked the link to long on to my account so I could see a detailed view of my bill.  Of course the site was down for mantenance until 3pm, just my luck, right?

I went and told my husband about the bill and we went outside to look at our meter.  The meter was spinning out of control and all we had running was our evaporative cooler and two tv’s.  My husband tripped the pump (we’re on a well) and the meter slowed down just a tiny bit, next he tripped the evaporative cooler and again, the meter slowed down just a tiny bit.   He then went and unplugged our spa, which we rarely use.  The meter didn’t slow down any.

I freaked out and called the electric company but I was told I’d have to hold for 45 minutes, so I hung up.  We ended up taking our boat out on the lake and I freaked out about the bill all day long.  I didn’t actually talk about the bill but it’s all I could think about.

Our day got even better when we hit an unmarked rock and damaged our propeller but my husband said he’ll grind it out and it’ll be as good as new.  We ended up having a great day and the kids got in a lot of swimming.

When we got home, I immediately logged onto my electric bill online and found out my current bill is ONLY $419!  It turns out I forgot to pay last months bill of $570, what a relief!  I paid the $570 and in two weeks I’ll pay the current charges of $419.  What’s strange about my bill is it’s down $151 this month and nothing has changed.  I line dry everything except for dark clothes because I need the lint removed by the dryer, we don’t run the air conditioner but we do run the evaporative cooler.  I swear if I had neighbors, I would think someone is stealing electricity from me.  My electric bill is out of control!  I plan on calling PG&E and asking them to come out and tell me exactly what is sucking up the electricity.

What’s good about the scare is my husband is finally on board with helping me lower the electric bill, before he’d look at me like I was strange when I’d go around turning lights off, like I was going overboard or something.  The spa is now unplugged and drained, we’re hoping this will shave $75 or so off our bill.  My husband is looking into drilling (himself) a well out at our barn, so we’d have more low cost electricity or putting in a “do it yourself” windmill at the barn and selling the extra electricy back to the electric company for the crazy $.25 a kwh they charge us at the barn.  PG&E has told me since the barn doesn’t have it’s own well we have to pay the higher rate, so if we put in a well we’ll get the lower rate.  My husband is in the drilling business so I’m sure he can figure out how to do drill a well cheap.

Yesterday I don’t know what got into me but somehow I managed to mess up this blog big time!  I ended up having my host bluehost restore my site from an August 9th backup so I lost a bunch of posts.  I apologize.

My husband is out of town until Friday.  That’s probably partially why I messed up my blog, I had too much time on my hands to play with it.  LOL  I miss him, home just isn’t quite the same he’s out of town.

Yesterday morning one of my dogs killed a field mouse inside our house.  I didn’t even know we had one in the house.  I went and pulled out my pot holder drawer and sure enough, there were droppings.  I guess they are coming in the house for water?  I cleaned out the pot holder drawer and put some decon behind the stove.  Last night I had a dream there were lots of mice under my sheets running around.  I have a rat terrier dog that sleeps on my bed so I’m sure it was only a dream, it still freaked me out though.  I’m going to go buy some more decon.  I know mice come with living out in the country but I’m going to do my best to fight them off.

I’m not really sure how I feel about this one, it seems like an awfully huge amount of money.  What do you think?

Yesterday I called a auto glass guy to come out and take a look at my windshield, he said he thought the windshield would probably break when he tried to repair it.  I lucked out and the windshield didn’t break.  The man noticed another place where I had a chip and offered to fix it for an additional $15.  I have another car that has two chips in the windshield and the man fixed those for $15 each, so my total bill was $95.

That man told me that he’s been seeing a lot of chipped windshields due to all the road construction going on everywhere.  I guess it’s a good time to be in the auto glass business.

My oldest daughter has been away staying with some of her friends that got an apartment about 2.5 hours away.  She left with a bunch of money, about $100 in tips from her waitressing job and a paycheck with 16 hours on it, I’m not sure how much the check was for.  I’ve been in contact with her everyday.  Yesterday when she called she informed me that she was down to just $5 but had 1/2 tank of gas.  Her car holds 10 or 12 gallons.  She was laughing about being so broke but assured me she’d be able to make it home claiming it only takes 1/4 of a tank to get home.  I was thinking I was going to have to go save her or she’d have to use her AAA card.  The area she was going to be traveling though has little or no cell phone signal.  I was so surprised and relieved when she walked in the door this morning all smiling and got to tell me, “See mom, I told you so.”

Today we had the farrier come out to trim our miniature donkey’s and horse’s hooves.  My smallest donkey put up a heck of a good fight.  She’s was unbelievably naughty, raring up repeatedly, and trying to kick at the farrier.  My husband ended up having to pin her to the gate so the farrier could get her looking pretty again.  She didn’t win the fight so hopefully she’ll be better next time.

I’m planning on surprising my husband when he comes home from work today.  I’m going to get the tractor out and go mow the fields around our house, garage, and barns.  We’ve been scared to mow because it’s been so hot and we didn’t want to spark a fire.  It’s a nice cool day today so I think I’m going to go for it and just get it down.  We have so much star thistle around here, it’s painful to walk out to the barn or pig pen in shorts.  Wish me luck!

I hope its nothing.  My husband went back to work on Monday after being on vacation for a week.  The boss called him yesterday and wanted him in the main office for a meeting.  My husband says he has, “no idea” what it’s about except he didn’t say it so nicely.  I’m making myself sick over this and I really don’t know why.  I guess now that I’m trying to get our debt under control and can see a light at the end of the tunnel, I’m just scared something is going to come along and mess it all up.  Oh gosh, it’s going to be a long day….

UPDATE:

It turns out my husband’s meeting with his boss was a big nothing!  The bad feeling I was having was actually for me.

Today was the deadline for entering the kids pigs and art in the fair.  Ya, I know, I procrastinate too much but I’d like to think I’m working on it.  :-)  We drove up to the 4-H office that’s 45 minutes away but due to traffic construction it took an hour.  Well we forgot one form and had to drive back home to get the paper.  On the way home, a truck threw a rock and cracked my windshield, it’s a beauty too and the windshield is going to have to be replaced.  I ended up driving four hours today but the kids, their hogs and art are entered in the fair.  What a day!

About a week or so ago we got a knock at the door at 8:30 pm.  We live out in the country and only have one neighbor so this was a little strange.  I got up and looked outside to find two big burly men standing outside.  My husband was following behind me as I walked outside to find out what they wanted.

They asked to speak with my husband’s ex-wife.  They said they were at OUR house to repo HER Honda.  They even had a tow truck.  My husband and I high 5′d each other (his ex is a miserable woman, a habitual liar, and has threatened to kill me before when I was 9 months pregnant).   The crazy woman doesn’t live at my house and hasn’t lived at my house in about 16 years!  They told us that she had used OUR address on her car loan.  I’m not sure how that’s possible, I never even saw a bill come to our house but Honda credit had been calling me almost daily looking for her until I finally told them to leave me alone.  Last year I had a call from a furniture store looking for the ex and they had told me the same thing, that she’d used our address and opened an account that was less than a year old.  Maybe saying this sort of thing is the collector’s way of trying to get me mad enough to give them the real address?  Again, I find it hard to believe but who knows it could be true?

We know the ex lives with her parents and have the address but we don’t want anything to do with her so we didn’t give the men her address but gave them a few clues.  I know it sounds mean but I really do hope they either get the money she owes or get the car.  This 52 year old woman is an nurse making well over $80,000 a year, lives with her parents, sends her daughter to boarding school (she makes us pay for that) and can’t manage to pay her car payments.  Yuck!

So do you think it’s possible that she really used my address even though I never saw a bill?  We don’t even live in the same county.

My husband took a total of 9 days of vacation and we stretched it out into two weeks, with that little business trip we all went on with him.  He’s nice and relaxed now and I’m just hoping he’s not still wanting to quit his job.

I’ve been so busy with the kids and their 4-H projects.  They’ve had a lot of meetings and are getting ready for the fair.  This year they are going all out and entering about 20 crafts and baked good each!  The girls hogs they’ll be showing and auctioning off are huge!  We “weighed” them with a tape measure and figure they are both at least 220 pounds.  I need to make my girls take the pigs for walks every night so get used to the pig cane.  Last year one my oldest daughter thought she could walk two pigs at the same time.  Boy was that a mistake!  The pig got into the pasture with our horse and she HATES pigs.  She tried to kick him and the pig ended up getting so exhausted from running around he could barely breath and was foaming at the mouth.  I’ve heard some horses don’t like pigs because they smell like bears.  LOL  I’m not sure if that is true or not.

I managed to get a few more ebay stores up and running. :-D  I’m going to do a little experiment with one of my cheap .info domains.  I plan on setting it up as a blog powered by wordpress but plan on putting a BANS store within it.  My thinking here is Google loves wordpress blogs so hopefully the store will do good with Google.

One of my little bantie chicks I got free from the elem. school is a Rooster!  I can hear him crowing his little butt off right now.  :-D  I just hope he stays nice but it’s too early to tell now.