Germination Theory

Today I made cornbread with some of yesterday's dried cherry tomatoes and some garden chiles. I also brewed sun tea, cleaned the chicken coop, watered, and did a load of laundry. In retrospect, it doesn't seem like this all should have taken three hours, but you know how things go in the kitchen.

I used all of the serranos from the fridge, and have asked my housemates to let as many as possible go red on the bush. Then I can dry them and grind them into red pepper flakes. We did this with thai red peppers a couple of years ago and they were a big hit.

We're talking about putting more concentrated effort into production gardening. As of now, we have just enough of anything for nibbles. On any given day we might harvest a couple of strawberries, a handful of tomatoes, or maybe a squash. Not bad, but not close to making a dent in our nine-person grocery budget. And it's easy enough for the okra to get forgotten, or the green beans to go to waste. I'd like the garden to produce enough of any given vegetable that we might have enough to enjoy large meals and preserve.

This late in the Summer planting almost anything is asking for trouble, but I want to risk black-eyed peas. This legume is known for thriving in drought conditions, will replenish nitrogen reserves in our soil, and is one of our collective favorite foods. On top of everything else, dry beans are basically self-preserving. Protect the plant, pull the weeds, leave the pods until the end of the season, and after a long day or two of shelling they can go straight into storage bins for the year.

My only concern is that I want to plant a LOT. I'm thinking two pounds of seed, which will take up a significant amount of sunny space in the garden. On the one hand, the peas will serve as a cover crop as the season draws to a dry and painful close. On the other hand, my gardening housemates aren't used to anything even vaguely resembling monocrops. Neither, in fact, am I. What if a single bug wipes us out? What if the seeds don't germinate? What if the birds take a liking to the sprouts...Still, I'm going to take the risk. I'm fairly convinced that, in order to be really cost effective, a gardener has to plant for storage. It's not enough to pick salad greens.

Really, I'm doing this for you guys ;) I really want to flesh out my gardening knowledge to best cover the topic of free and frugal food, as opposed to "expensive and work-intensive flavorings," which is how I could best describe my current understanding of gardening. This will be my first real experimentation in home food production...and I'm tackling it in hundred degree weather!

Is anyone else out there crazy enough to be thinking about germination this late in the game?

The Three Hour Game

I've read from a number of sources that pre-industrial/prehistoric/hunter-gatherer man only worked about three hours a day. I personally don't ascribe to, well, any sociological theory, but I've developed an affinity for the concept as a method of motivation.

See, there is a LOT I want to do in terms of sustainability and frugality. It's easy for me to get overwhelmed. I simply can't tackle every project, which includes knitting, quilting, cooking, baking, gardening, writing, preserving, researching, cleaning, and building. Never mind riding my bike, practicing an instrument, hanging with friends and family, or otherwise idling. I can spend entire days devoted to a single task (cleaning the woodshed), or an entire week spread between multiple daily chores (cooking and watering the garden), or a month completing a one-time project (building a shed or sewing a quilt), but I never really feel satisfied because what doesn't get done far outweighs what does.

But what if I simply asked myself for three hours? Three good, solid hours of productive daily work? If it takes three hours to maintain the garden one day, fine. Three hours cleaning the bathroom, great. Three hours knitting, cooking, and recording grocery receipts are perfectly acceptable. So long as it falls under the heading of "productive," I can feel good about myself.

I decided to implement this way of gauging success on last weekend. My daily three hours have been spent the following ways:

Sunday: Prepared lunch for my siblings. Fed eight adults and two children with quiche and salad, for a total cost of probably-under-$20.

Monday: Cleaned out refrigerator, made spinach noodles and baba ganoush, put linens through the wash (another housemate hung them to dry, and yet another folded them).

Tuesday: Picked basil from garden and made pesto, which was then served in green noodle soup using yesterday's spinach noodles, zucchini, and a great deal of collards that were on the verge of composting. Sliced cherry tomatoes in half and arranged them in food dehydrator along with brown bananas. Tomorrow we'll have tomato raisins and banana jerky! Watered the garden.

Whew! Normally I'd review my week and think, "really, Maya, you couldn't get any crafting done?" But knowing I spent 9 hours honestly putting my principles into practice, I feel pretty darn good about myself.

Projects I'd like to tackle, in three hour increments, in the next week:

* Start knitting my Mother's birthday present
* Plant a BIG Black-Eyed Pea Patch
* Build the chicken run
* Preserve the serranos

Family and Community

One thing that really saddens me about my generation is how broken up families have become. Even among sustainable/frugal/cooperative folks, there is a serious disconnect between community and family.

When I talk about broken families, I don't mean divorce. My gaggle of brothers and sisters is the result of about six parents, and I wouldn't have it any other way. What I'm talking about is a tendency to get as far away from mothers, fathers, grandparents, and cousins as possible and then start talking about community. So many of us seem to start our journeys with a clean slate.

Maybe I'm sensitive to this because my parents were hippies. I am second generation subculture. Like so many of my friends today, my parents found it necessary to reject their own, leave town, and forge an entirely new lifestyle from scratch. As a result, I was estranged from my grandparents and can't remember my cousins' names. As a result, I was that much more vulnerable to the trials and tribulations of my upbringing. What my parents couldn't provide, I did without. There was no back-up, no safety net, no one to fill in the blanks.

I think it's common for folks who have had my experience to run away from their dysfunctional families. Unfortunately, we take our upbringing with us when we run. Wherever we settle, we'll find our mother's anxiety, our father's neglect, our stepmother's criticism, our stepfather's addiction, and our own collection of coping mechanisms.

When we try and create new communities from scratch, we bring all that with us. For the short-term, we may overcome our personal issues for the sake of a higher ideal. But we absolutely will not heal entirely by virtue of a "family-like" atmosphere alone. And when practically everyone is running away and starting over somewhere else, we create an entire culture of coping amnesiac sub-families.

This is not a critique of alternative communities, communes, and cooperatives. The tribes we create are valuable and necessary extensions of what we are born into. In fact, I believe that my housing cooperative has taught me how to be a better sister, daughter, wife, and aunt. I just need to take those lessons back to my biological family and put them to use.

No one grew up without skinning a knee. That's just the way it is. The scars may last a lifetime, and maybe we'll never again run with such joyous, reckless abandon. But that's no reason to give up on sidewalks altogether, and the solution will not be found in brand new sidewalks across the state. We have to learn from our mistakes, and the mistakes of our parents, and those of our grandparents. We have to acknowledge what went wrong, which behaviors made things worse, and how to avoid those pitfalls in the future. We have to learn to love so hard that we can forgive ourselves for all the pain and the misery that happens in every single family in the world.

This is how families grow strong and healthy, and how a place becomes a community.

Lunch With Family

After the hellish mildly stressful week of Darling working in Houston and Round Rock, I was ready to crash hard. But I couldn't. My wonderful elder brother brought his beautiful wife and awesome little girl down from Ohio for the week!

I invited my brothers, sister-in-laws, nieces, sister, and brother-in-law to have lunch at my house. I prepared what I am beginning to consider my favorite panic meal: quiche. So long as I stick to white flour, I can practically roll out a yummy pie crust in my sleep. Seemingly any measurement of eggs, milk, cheese, and veggies will produce a light, filling pie. Any herb from the garden produces the perfect spice; today it was fresh dill seed. And everyone is always impressed!

I tossed together the quickest of salads, brewed a pitcher of ice tea, and baked peanut butter cookies for dessert. After lunch the girls were introduced to the chickens, who are still small enough to be held in little hands and forced to accept adorable hugs.

Since I worked last night, I begged off heading back up north to have dinner with my parents. Actually, I fought tooth and nail to go, but Darling put his foot down. I really needed some sleep, and passed out the moment family was out the door.

The Houston Job

I have had the most frantic and expensive two weeks...

Since the Tuesday before last I have made the trip between Austin and Houston five times. That's fifteen hours of my life spent driving. I have also entertained my mother (driving her to and from Austin for a visit), prepared the desserts for and attended my stepmother's birthday party, and spent an entire paycheck putting gas in the truck.

Darling is working a job in Houston, which came up so suddenly I didn't take the time to research affordable transportation options. Otherwise I might have discovered the megabus, which would have saved us hundreds of dollars and hours of my life. What was supposed to be a four-day job turned into two weeks. At this point it feels like we've spent more money on this job than he's likely to earn. We're both very frustrated.

The good news is that my Mom's car stopped working. This is good news because it means that she wants the truck back  (if you'd like some bad news to put this "good" news in perspective, the bad news is that she blames me for her malfunctioning car, believing something to have happened during the four hours I spent driving her to and from Austin. Keep in mind that the "check engine" light has been on for over a year.) Having depended on her truck since last August, having spent over $2,000 on gas and maintenance in that time, having felt obligated to run errands and haul loads for my family during that time, having felt strangely crippled by the convenience, it is such a relief to be able to walk away from it. To have to walk away from it.

Hopefully Darling will be finished with his job in Houston by the end of this week, next week at the latest. Since he's going straight from one gig to another we might actually be able to catch up financially, but right now things are incredibly tight.

Fuel To The Fire

Last week I took my Mom's truck to the dealership to take advantage of the free - or rather, pre-paid - maintenance plan. This includes oil change, tire rotation, and general check up, and all I need is a quarter tank of gas to get there.

I had already purchased a new windshield wiper to install at home when the customer rep told me my A/C filter and fuel filter were in desperate need of replacement. Without thinking, I gave him the go-ahead, and within minutes was over $125 poorer. Not including the gas.

It took days for me to realize what a foolish move that was. I just took for granted that the dealership would give me the best deal because...well, how could it not? Seems like they must get some massive discount from the manufacturer on parts, have the most efficient mechanics, and the incentive to convince customers to come back.

But no. Googling "Toyota Tundra Parts," led me to a number of websites that would have happily sold me the exact same filters and windshield wiper at half the cost. I would have saved $45 on parts alone. I might not have been able to replace the filters at home, but I bet I could have looked around for a mechanic to do the fifteen minutes worth of labor for less than $70.

More importantly, I could have found a mechanic who might have explained WHY my fuel filter needed to be replaced in the first place, when according to internet sources this isn't the most common occurrence in the world. Supposedly these things should last the lifetime of the truck, depending on use. The truck is five years old, for goodness sakes, and has had its oil changed regularly for the past three, and how did it get so dirty so quickly? I don't suspect the guy necessarily lied, but now I have to wonder if there is a problem somewhere else in the engine.

Bah. Reason 109485234058 not to depend on a vehicle.

Free Food

There are four ways of acquiring "free" food that I can personally vouch for. I use parenthesis because, although this food is practically, mostly, basically free, and certainly more free than working and buying from the grocery store, each requires some degree of investment of time, energy, and equipment.

I have never had to subsist entirely on free food - but I have significantly benefited from these strategies. I'll describe them in order of my personal success. YOUR success will vary based on your own circumstances.

1. Work For It

If you are job hunting, I highly recommend seeking a job that will  put you in direct, regular contact with food.

The obvious choice would be a restaurant. Most restaurants offer staff a free shift meal, and many provide ample opportunity to box up and bring home mistakes: the pasta fresca that was supposed to be alfredo, the burger that was meant to be rare, the baked potatoes that simply didn't sell. I would not suggest working in fast food, or even a decent deli, because you will get sick of the menu or the menu will get you sick. A high-dollar establishment is also a bad idea, as management in these establishments might not allow entirely free shift meals. A decent cafe with rotating specials is probably the best choice. In terms of free food, working in a kitchen is preferable to working as a waitress (though the pay is not half as good), and working as a dishwasher or the like is better than nothing. Don't bother getting a job at your favorite restaurant, because you will be sick of everything they have within six months. Catering isn't very steady, but the food is great. Bakeries and coffee shops have the same problem as delis and fast food, but work in a pinch.

A grocery store is an excellent job for food as well. The pay will likely be better, as will the selection, and the hours will be more steady. Many, though not all, grocery stores have free boxes for employees containing bruised produce and damaged packaging.

My personal favorite free-food job is farming, but I recognize that this is not for everyone. This job is seasonal, long, hot, and filthy. The pay is absolutely abyssal, especially on organic farms. You will literally be working for food. Working at a farm, however, provides you with the absolute best food you can ever find under any circumstances, including, to my mind, that you might grow yourself. And the skill set you bring home with you is unaccountably valuable.

Other places you might hunt for such jobs include hotels (preferably somewhere that has a restaurant or at least serves a continental breakfast), convention or conference centers (more on these in the workshops and events section), schools, retirement centers, and pretty much anywhere people gather for longer than a few hours.

2.Dumpster Diving and Scrumping

I've pocketed a number of odds and ends through the years. I don't hesitate to pull packaged food out of a trash can or fruit from an over-burdened tree. I obviously don't take anything that someone else might want: the fruit trees have to be on public property or at least totally unattended. For example, my college campus was home to several apple trees that NO ONE but me ever harvested. Austin is home to hundreds of loquat trees, and I pick those that at the bus stops.

I have also picked wild onions and lambs quarter. I don't bother with dandelion because Darling detests it, and I can't find the blackberries that seemed to overwhelm this area in my youth.

The problem with this method is that of abundance and location. I feel Austin is abundant enough that, with time, I could live off the land without actually planting anything. But it would take years of learning what I can eat that grows wild, it would take an enormous dedication to preservation (would I have enough freezer space for a year's worth of pecans?), and I would have to reconsider my principles regarding dumpster diving.

The key to my small success in this area has been traveling by foot. Early this year I was told of a massive blackberry patch along the road on my way to work. Every single day I did my best to find that patch, and never managed to catch sight. I couldn't take my eyes off the road long enough to spy the tiny white flowers.

Two days ago I walking to the bus stop near my new job and suddenly caught sight of a vine with yellow flowers. I wasn't even conscious of what drew my attention, but I crossed the street to marvel at five fist-sized watermelons hanging from a single plant. It is growing on a fence between a busy road and a large vacant lot. I never would have seen it in a car, not if it's exact location had been marked on a map for me.

As for dumpster diving, I feel it is inappropriate to ask for free food from restaurants and I disagree with the practice of asking patrons to give you unwanted leftovers. Reserve your dignity, for goodness sake! Go to the dumpster and have the decency to look sheepish if caught. Investigate bagel shops and other places that produce hundreds of something that must be fresh. Coffee shops typically don't work because they typically don't produce or procure more food than they need. If there is a lock on the dumpster, investigate the day before trash pick-up as the dumpsters often fill up towards the end of the week and bags will be left on the ground nearby.

3. Workshops and Events

Darling and I used to live next door to an art gallery. On opening nights there would be free wine and catering. Darling and I would dust off our best jeans and saunter over for hours of free entertainment and gourmet snacks.

Down the road there was a community space that offered offices and studios for yoga classes, massage, and belly dancing instruction. Every once in a while there would be a well-catered open house with loads of yummy goodness available and, again, free entertainment. A couple of days after one such open house Darling and I stopped in to follow up on class information and, although the place was deserted, the food was still there! Uncovered, left out in the hallway, presumably all weekend. We took as much as we could carry (and later, I talked to the person who ran the event and she gave her belated blessing).

College towns will often have events open to the public. In order to get students to go anywhere, there must be free food, so these events will almost always be catered.

Many churches offer free meals, and it's common courtesy to RESPECTFULLY attend any concurrent events and discussions. It is also appropriate to stay and clean up afterward (and you might be offered a doggy bag).

I would not go to such an event and ignore a request for a donation, but I would also feel okay donating a handful of change if that was my honest best. I would also volunteer at workshops to earn my "keep."

4. Gardening

It is possible to garden for free. Without intending to, I developed a rather massive container garden while living in a basement apartment in Virginia. Much of this had to do with befriending someone who was so skilled in this area, and such a giving person in general, that she effectively forced her knowledge onto me.

If I were to repeat the process on my own...

I would start by collecting seeds and gathering flats. Flats can be found for free, built from scrap wood and spare screws, or made out of toilet paper rolls, cardboard egg cartons, or newspaper. I would collect seeds from whatever good raw veggies I could get a hold of. Squash and peppers would be a good start, as I have experience saving these successfully, but if pushed I'm sure I could happen upon others. Getting access to greens that have gone to seed might be a challenge, most gardeners pull them up first and plant "from scratch" over and over again. With any luck, I'd simply know gardeners who were thinning out their own gardens or simply in the mind to share.

My access to good dirt, sunshine, and water would shape my container vs. plot choice. If I could get hold of containers - which is easy - and find decent soil - which is not - I might keep them inside to protect against pests at night. I also might do this in Texas to protect my water bill, or to avoid wrestling with the clay soil, or even to cope with the outrageously dry Summer. Or I might garden outside if it was convenient, as has been the case in my last two homes where gardens already existed and simply needed care.


Gardens will produce in direct proportion to the amount of work you put in. The good news in Austin is that we have two growing seasons, the bad news is that we don't get that utopian period of rest northerners get, where they can repair fences, drink tea, and read seed catalogs for weeks at a time. The closest thing we have to that is the high heat of Summer, where we watch our tomatoes whither and wonder if it will cool down enough for our next crop to germinate before December.

Still, I'm fairly certain that you should plant something every day, and try to eat something from your garden every day. I also feel that it's best to plant for quantity: try and get a year's worth of potatoes, plant a hundred leeks, and hope to get enough tomatoes to preserve. Otherwise you might put in a lot of work tending a "free" garden that doesn't produce enough to feed your family.

Beat The System: A Book Review

I don't typically write a lot of book reviews because I don't enjoy reading book reviews. I caught myself saying this to Beanie once, and immediately bit my tongue. Her book reviews are as excellent as they are rare, and I appreciate her recommendations.

Aldra is another excellent reviewer, though this is undoubtedly because we share similar tastes and she doesn't dance around a subject. If a book sucks, she saves me the time of finding this out for myself. Hurray for her!

On Aldra's recommendation I read Your Money Or Your Life. I then read it again and again. I am currently spending time on Step 6: Minimize Spending. This is by far the most boring chapter, but I've read it repeatedly in an attempt to glean something I must have missed before, some sort of inspiration...I finally found it, not in the book itself but right next door on the library shelf, a little text entitled Beat The System: A Survival Guide by Gary Paulsen.

The book, published in 1982, looks to be pure camp. The cover portrays a wide meadow dotted with evergreens against a mountainous backdrop and suggests that the reader  "Live off the land for almost nothing - hassle free and love it!"

I was not expecting much. I did not know that this was the prolific author of Dogsong or Hatchet, two of my childhood favorites. All I knew is that it started like every single other back-to-the-land autobiography. It starts with a description of his fall from grace, his ejection from the workforce and, as he puts it, the "money ways."

Very quickly, though, Paulsen takes some unexpected turns. Maybe I've spent too much time with Suze Orman and Rober Kiyosaki, but it was a great relief to read about a man who found himself poor and decided to bloody well STAY THAT WAY. His description of poverty - and of impoverished people - is not one of diseased sub-humanity, but a perfectly acceptable way of being. Instead of trying to regain his wealth, to multiply his wealth, Paulsen simply determined that the system was insane and he did not want to participate any more.

After describing the various, mostly emotional, adjustments he and his wife had to make, he delves into the practical information. Chapters include "Getting Some Money," "Living Space," and "Cars."

In "Living Space," he basically sums up what I've known about poverty/frugality/sustainability but have never been able to put into words. "The commitment to living in  a home while poor is more than just looking for a cheap place. It demands a likewise commitment in the style that you choose to live...doing so without money, or with very little, makes it such a challenge that you soon realize, as we did, that it will take everything you've got and then some."

THANK YOU.

Being poor, or frugal, or whatever you want to call it, is a full time job with mandatory overtime, weekends, holidays, and evening shifts. It is inconvenient. Inconvenience, however, is not poison. Home-baked bread, hand-knit sweaters, and garden fresh tomatoes are examples of irresistible inconveniences.

As far as practical information goes, this is not really an instruction manual. Paulsen describes in passing how to thread a sewing machine and has some recipes towards the end, but his really contribution, to my mind at least, is his validation of honest poverty. He doesn't take for granted that life has to be expensive. He paints a picture of us vs. them. They want us to buy bigger, shinier, faster, brighter. We want to feed our families. They want us to work sixty hours a week, pay taxes coming and going, insure everything, and buy on credit. We want...to feed our families. Why do most of us choose to spend our entire lives playing their games?

He also avoids the know-it-all tone of many homestead advocates. Although he has chosen a rural lifestyle, he never dismisses urban living and provides plenty of advice for poor folks in the city. He spends a great deal of time talking about saving money on gas, car maintenance, and insurance before finally pointing out that it's really impossible to own a car while being poor. "The true problem with automobiles is that you get almost nothing for the money you spend. For all the hundreds and hundreds - thousands - of dollars put into the things all you really wind up with is a minimal service: it is a machine to take you from one point to another, usually with a maximum of expense and maximum of waste and a maximum of stink and pollution."

What Paulsen does is describe various ways to care for one's family (almost) entirely outside of the capitalist system. His advice is fairly sensible, and the book is an extremely easy read. It could have done with more stringent editing, but I am not famed for my grammar and am not as bothered as whomever had the book before me and corrected mistakes with a pencil. I would recommend this to anyone who is a little burned out on frugality, tired of reading articles entitled 10 ways To Save $100, and in need of a little inspiration.

Where Does It All Go - A New Perspective

A few months ago I decided to tackle the next step in Your Money Or Your Life: Minimize Spending.

Even though I've been tracking my income and expenses for twenty months, I'm having a very difficult time deciding where and how to cut back. So, I went through my monthly tabulations and determined, on average, what I spend every month on every category.
For instance, in April I purchased boots for $95. That's a lot of money for boots, and if I just looked at April's data I might think, "wow, I spend too much money on shoes!" But so far as May's data is concerned, I haven't purchased any clothing. If I take into account the full year, however, I can see that, so far this year, I've spent about $19 dollars a month on boots (I actually returned said boots for a refund, but the point stands...)

I then looked at my top five expenses from this perspective:
Debt Principle: $1315.16
Rent: $950
Gas: $245.98
Computer: $169.13
Dentist: $141.61


At first this information seemed really useless. The debt needs to be paid off, and my dental work must be completed. My rent isn't likely to decrease, and we're not going to find cheaper accommodation in Austin. As for the computer, it was a large one-time purchase. The only thing I see on this list that could be reduced is gas, and I'm not sure I can even commit to that.

After some reflection, however, I realized that most people probably feel the same way about their biggest expenses. It's so much easier to cut out the lattes and feel guilty about smoking cigarettes than question one's most basic - yet most expensive - choices. When it comes to rent or mortgages, transportation and other big bills, we don't have a choice. At least, that's what we tell ourselves.

Over the course of a lifetime, however, or even a 20 year period, recognizing and tracking these expenses can make a huge difference. Darling and I could choose to live in a more affordable area. We could choose not to drive a truck in the future, by reclaiming car freedom or purchasing a smaller car. Of course, by the end of the year, my debt will be gone and my teeth will be repaired, but in the meantime I can prioritize my other spending choices around these goals.

Sometimes the big stuff falls more easily into our blind spots, slipping under the heading of "need" by virtue of it's natural expense. Private school or college tuition, medical bills, the second car, the phone bill...Doubting these expenses can put one's entire life into question. Do I need a job that requires an expensive wardrobe and flawless appearance? Do I need to live in the country but work in the city? Do I need a pet? Is there way I could qualify for social services and medical care?

Since paying debt and dental bills is the only thing that makes them go away, I don't plan on laying off on that spending. I've been brainstorming ways for the co-op to save money, but we won't see the results until early next year. Darling and I won't be spending money on computers until that category falls off this list, however, and I really will do whatever it takes to reduce my gas bill; I've already re-acquainted myself with the bus for getting to and from my workplace and running errands around town. My goal is to only fill the tank once a month.

Do you track your expenses? What are your big five?

June 2012 Net Worth

The last week or so has gone by in a blur. For weeks my focus was on the chicken coop, the largest project I've ever completed - which speaks volumes while not saying much at all. The chicks are all happily bedded down, but pretty soon I'm going to have to put up the actual run.

I finished the coop on Wednesday just a few hours before work. My new night job is fairly undemanding, so it's not a big deal for me to work a shift after a busy day. I slept late on Thursday, but would have gotten a lot more sleep if I had any idea how demanding the next 32 hours would be. I woke up at 5:00 pm and went to work at 11:00 pm, where I was appraised of The Emergency. The Emergency kept me occupied until 2:00 pm Friday. I came home and crashed after my fifteen hour shift, and was awoken by Darling only three hours later to find out if I still wanted to see Midsummer in Motion.

"Do I want to see a rendition of Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream as performed by the Austin Bike Zoo set to Bulgarian Folk music...while suffering the effects sleep deprivation? Yes. Yes I do."

So I went to see the show, then went to work my last shift of the work. By 7:00 a.m. on Saturday I was very grateful that my job mostly involves making sure other humans aren't being disruptive. I'm pretty sure the look on my face alone let patrons know that it was quiet time. All said, I worked 22 out of 32 hours and only got about five hours of sleep.

The good news is that I could use the extra padding in the paycheck. After a weekend spent entirely with friends, I have a to-do list the length of my arm. Top priority was getting the oil changed in the truck, which I've been (foolishly) putting off for a month. The oil change itself was free, fortunately, but I needed a couple of replacement filters and a windshield wiper. I spent a little over $100.

Today I'm taking it easy. I took the bus up to the feed store to buy chick feed, then stopped by the library to check out Your Money or Your Life for the thousandth time. I'm re-reading the part on saving money, which I kinda sorta scanned every other time. It never really feels like there is any money to save, though my monthly tabulations prove otherwise. More on that later.

One thing I did not spend money on this month was debt. So that's holding steady at $2,336.58. In the meantime, I didn't have as much money in the bank account as I normally do at the start of the month, so my assets are down to $502.27. That gives me a net worth of -$1,834.31, a drop of $529.26.