I sold a couple of things on ebay today, posted them, and went grocery shopping. I've been rooting around for days trying to find my favorite summer nightgown--I hate PJs that are anything but cotton, and it's been so hot. But no luck. So I caved and bought one at Kohl's for $18. Later this afternoon DD and I were finishing yet another book, and I found it fallen in back of our headboard. I'm relieved at not having to spend that $18 when cash is tight around here.

And indeed I continue to unearth more to sell. I have a plastic bin in the office that hold DD's outgrown clothes that I intend to sell on ebay, but heck, let's sell them all at the garage sale, right? So the pile increases.

DH has come down with some sort of cold and has gone to bed, so it's me and Bob Costas for the next hour or so.

In my quest to de-junk and make some garage sale cash, I'm getting a little overwhelmed. Partly it's the realization of all the junk we have. And much of it is tangled up with memories. I'm finding things from my mom, things from my ex-husband, things from old friends--and just plain too many things.

I'm going to try a couple strategies to stop the frustration--perhaps one room at a time. Or maybe even one corner of the dread office at a time.

On a positive note--the RR magazine the Brits left her in June sold for $3 on ebay.

DD and I spent yesterday with friends picking strawberries and peas. I made jam and froze berries, and have more to do. But those peas were pure heaven. I wish I would have planted some in our garden.

In further slight progress towards decluttering goals, I divested my office of a towering stack of DD's clothes and had a heartening discussion after our post-picking picnic lunch with friends about the need for us all to curtail restaurant meals in favor of monthly potlucks. I love going out, but we're all still reeling from the state paycuts. Most of my university friends have cut all kids' summer camps and other activities, so we're going to have to make our own fun.

My late ebay buyer is still late. I've now contacted her twice after the initial invoice. One more day and I'll open a claim.

In happier news, I've located a free voucher for Noodles. DD and I are heading there for lunch tomorrow since it expires soon!

Yesterday I pushed the button and graded the final students of the semester. Then I had a long meeting with the Study Abroad folks who went over the recruiting I need to do, the budget in place, and various other things like visa, forms, establishing a website. It looks like that will be an ongoing job until we actually begin.

I need to have at least six students sign up, and the cost gets cheaper for them with every additional student after that. I hoping the London Olympics gets people even more interested in the UK.

But this morning after DD went off to school, I went back to bed with a cup of coffee and a new volume of short stories. I read a terrific story, and then slept for over an hour. I think that's a suitable kickoff to summer break.

Now to clean and tackle the million things that didn't get done over the semester's chaos.
I feel energized!

On my list today? Make dinner and dessert from the various odds and ends we had around. I made a batch of Paula Deen's beef/veggie soup. It was good, but made enough for a small army. It did use up cubed beef, a cup of frozen okra, black-eyed peas, green beans, and a cup of corn--all lingering freezer leftovers. So count that as a check.

Next item? Finish grading the online class. Although it took hours and hours, it's done. Check that one.

The mixed fruit crumble/crisp was also from the freezer. It used last summer's raspberries, some frozen cranberries, and last year's last rhubarb, supplemented with apples. Check that one off.

Checkbook? We got a call from the local bus company that someone found DH's checkbook on the bus and turned it in. He hadn't realized he'd lost it, but I'm grateful to whoever turned it in!

My plans to clean out the freezer are coming alone ever so nicely!

Nothing spent yesterday as I'm working on clearing out the semester's debris. Lots of clothes washed, lots of papers graded, and then the evening class where I usually at least buy a coffee. But I got talking to a student on the break--and there was no time even for coffee.

Lots of clutter to be cleared here. Last night I gave a friend DD's purple fairy sheets. I'm a bit sad she feels she's outgrown fairy sheets--but the pink scotty dogs are pretty cute too.

Today's goal is to finish grading--then start in on the clutter clearing and cleaning.

After two long weeks without a dryer, we're currently spinning along. That darned Sears wouldn't match the Home Depot package that came with free delivery and removal of the old dryer, so we ended up with a Home Depot purchase, despite my qualms about their politics and ethics.

But I'm very happy to have a dryer and it's made my day of intense grading much more pleasant to sit in the cloudy grayness and listen to the dryer!

I can indeed hear the end of the semester. I spent a chunk of the weekend grading proposals and presentations with a rather staggering variety of grades. Some groups will not be happy with their grades. Classes are over on Thursday; I suspect it'll take me another week to wind things up.

And my new evening "Mysteries" class starts tonight. We always start with Poe and then a look at the many many renditions of Sherlock Holmes. I wonder if any of you have seen the PBS "Sherlock" series with Benedict Cumberbatch? I was determined to hate it, but I indeed like it a lot.

Our DD adores her new green bedroom. It's as cute as cute can be--partly because I spent hours dejunking it. And my Groupon painting coupon was a real bargain as it took the painter almost nine hours to do the ceiling and two coats on the walls. It was a very humid day.

Once the end-of-semester storm clears, I'm getting busy with selling other stuff around here.

My DD's room will be painted tomorrow, thanks mostly to a Groupon I bought last fall. We spent the bulk of the evening excavating in there, so it'll be ready for the painters.

I vow to sort through everything before it goes back into the newly painted room. She's a little squirrel, and tonight I found a bag of Valentine candy stashed in the back of her closet. Yuck.

But happily, much of her stuff--from outgrown clothes to books and other junk has found a good home.

It's been a low-spend day, with spending only on (you guessed it) coffee.

DD and I went paint shopping yesterday, as my Living Social painter was about to show up and estimate both her room and our exterior. He was a nice enough guy, but either over caffeinated or just nervous. I hope he doesn't talk that much while he's painting.

Despite some anxiety yesterday over finding the right paint and bedspread combination, we seem to have got it done today. She's opting for a very fresh and preppy pink and green pattern comforter with daisies. Bloodbath and Beyond had several she liked, and the entire package--with sheets, comforter, valances, a throw, and weirdly--socks--came to $99. With my 20$ off coupon, a little over $83 with tax!

We got terrific bargains at Target today too, and spent $30 there on misc groceries and shampoos. Our only real impulse spending was a mall pretzel yesterday.

I'm again catching up on grading and house chores, but I feel like we've made real progress with the painter, windows, and DD's room.

Conscious of the impending NYC and UK spending, I avoided the grocery store and perused some Easter leftovers' recipes. And I'm happy I did. I made a Martha Stewart recipe spinach salad which used spinach on hand, leftover Easter ham, hardboiled eggs, and radishes topped with a warm olive oil vinaigrette.
It was fabulous. DH--who loves spinach salad anyway-- swooned. To combat the healthiness of it all, DD and I also stirred up some Rice Krispie treats.

About six months ago I bought a room painting daily deal for $100. I called the guy today and am scheduling DD's room redecorating. She and I spend an hour looking at paint samples at Home Depot. It was lovely, and we also spent $7.99 on a hanging basket of violas. That was the total of today's outlay.

We've had yet another spate of egregious plagiarism
with my capstone projects. I've had to take the flamethrower to the instructors and students both.
Not only are they copying from the internet, they're copying from previous capstone projects. Idjits.

No, not a break down, just the realization this morning that my break is done. I wish I could say it was well balanced with fun and work, but frankly, there was way too much work. I finished up my grading this morning.

We did get some major items addressed. Although his final bid isn't it, we've decided on a window replacement company. Compared to the three other ones we spoke with, this company got top ratings on Angieslist, they were very detailed and professional, and they offer to mix and match windows from various manufacturers when possible. We walked out of their showroom on Saturday and said, "well, that settles that."

We also got the taxes done with a decent enough refund from both the state and the feds. My flex benefits claims have been filed, and the mountains of laundry are now down to small hillocks.

No pedicure yet, and no office cleaning either. I did indulge in a little fun spending at TJ Maxx on Friday including a new spring/summer bag and a couple of new tops. I did get on the treadmill and am ready to get on it again momentarily. And I did manage to see a couple of episodes of Luther on Netflix, though the last one was a bit too violent, even for my strong stomach.

So, with my online class busy with revisions, and the questions printed out for my evening class, I'm moving on to tomorrow's students and trying to scrounge up some more money for the windows.

DD got all excited yesterday when I said we were going window shopping. Little did she know we were shopping for windows!

Our 1960 house has windows in need of replacing. They're rotting, the hardware sinks right through, even with wood putty, and they leak a lot. We've spent eight years with 3M plastic, caulk, and trying to hold off buying windows, but I think we have to start now. Since the house trim has to be painted this year, it seem like we should buy windows in anticipation of that.

Saturday we went to three window showrooms, but I need to spend some internet and library time figuring out what's best. I have estimators coming out this week, but I anticipate a month or so before we make a decision.

Any one have experience with window replacement that can advise me?

Sigh. I have to admit I'm envious of our friends' real estate success. DH and our friend bought property in the UK at the same time, DH's in Surrey and our friend's in Oxford. We let out DH's for a couple years and then sold it, albeit at a nice profit. Our friends just told us that his property in Oxford which he bought for 69K pounds just sold for (ugh) 355k pounds.

All in all he put about 10L pounds into renovations, but I have to admit, it sort of makes me slightly queasy and very envious. I never lust after cars, only rarely after clothes or bags, but their present house, man oh man. And the lifestyle that profit enabled.

Must think of something else now.
All my blessings, all my gifts. But sigh.

The goal for the weekend was taxes. For me, it's a lonely endeavor full of muttering, papers being flung up, and high resolves for the future. But I sort of enjoy it.

But DH had nothing on the agenda on Saturday so I locked him in the basement and we decluttered. He can't quite understand why I won't do this all myself, but I despise cleaning--especially alone and thankless cleaning. It's so much easier with someone to help make decisions, tote stuff to the car, and help rearrange things. The back of my car is now jammed with stuff.

I applaud myself for my ruthlessness. I had many things in my hand that I pondered keeping, but I must admit, some of them had tags from the last attempted garage sale. That was two years ago, and they were still untouched in my basement. So out they went. After lunch today they're headed to the charity shop.

It's a busy upcoming week full of school obligations, meetings, conferences, parties, and guests on the weekend. I've got yet another cold, so am pacing myself.

Today's goals then are to eat sensibly, review the Love and Logic discussion, haul junk to the charity shop, pick up groceries for the after-school meal program at church, catch up with my online students, and write a quiz for Thursday. Chili made for tonight and Love and Logic class enjoyed already.

Pheww--taxes will have to wait.

DH spent much of the day on the phone to various contract agencies. They seem unable to give him a firm idea of his salary if he signs on with them. At this point it looks like he'll stay with his original agency, but we're weighing the pros and cons. All this needs to be done by Monday when the new contract starts.

I got up to send DD off to school this morning, then returned to bed for two hours. The cold continues to hamper progress, but at least I got all (ALL!) the laundry done, ironed, and stowed. Honestly, it hasn't been all done since probably October.

We made a to-do list, but 2012 goals will wait until Monday at this rate.

I just realized I've spent nothing today! Yeah! Of course if I averaged it with the past two days, but let's not go there.

Still wrapping and organizing and cleaning here, but have made a big batch of my mom's hot fudge sauce in honor of her and decanted the cherry brandy for gifts.

I'm geared up for getting it done!

Oh my--how did it get to be November?
Do you all feel like that?

I'm swimming in deep water trying to catch up with grading and prep. But I'll get there, despite DD having ANOTHER day off school on Friday.

DH returned from England late Saturday night. He's emotionally spent and physically jet lagged. I expected that and feel for him. It's hard for him to get back in the flow of things--and we need him to do just that.

When I returned from my evening class last night, he was on the phone to Citibank's fraud alert folks. Someone has charged $600 on his card, and happily Citi spotted it. He'll have to go through all the hassles on a new card, but so far, so good.

I just realized I'd better go scrutinize my paycheck to see that the state has come up with my overdue $700!

DD and I went pumpkin shopping this morning and stumbled on the nursery's fall harvest fest. She got to create a bat pumpkin, have cookies, cider, balloons, and a hay stack toy hunt all for free. Next we went to the grocery store where we stumbled upon yet another harvest fest. This time it was apple pie, cider, face painting, and more pumpkin painting--again all free.

I am the in the bottom ten percentile for craft interest and skill, but as I was about to put DD's toddler chair in the car for the charity shop, I thought--I should spray paint this and put the pumpkins on it. I had dark green spray paint left over and did it on the spot. It's very cute. At HF#1, they had spray painted pumpkins with polka dots created by placing round stickers on the pumpkins before painting them. So I did one of those too. It's very cute.

Between that, the Brewers winning the conference, and the fabulous weather, it's been a lovely day.

"Dinner in the fridge is like money in the bank," said my mom so often that it made me groan. And my big batch of soup will be money in the bank tomorrow.

I spent three hours today helping a colleague who is beset with hoarding problems try to get her nursery ready for twins due in a couple months. Four of us spent hours filling dozens of boxes, and I estimate we got maybe 25 percent of it done. Her husband moved the boxes downstairs, but I think we all knew she would relent and keep them, so we took three boxes a piece and hauled them home for the recyclers. It was pretty bad. One box had eight or nine purses in it, but the cat had obviously spent weeks on top of it, and there was a thick mat of cat hair covering it and several others.

It was very sad to see how they live. They're smart people but cannot handle daily upkeep of their home. I came home, took a shower, and slept for an hour. Ugh.

So the week will begin with me late to bed, under prepared, but with money in the metaphorical bank.

Paulette: despite the beautiful day, no exercise except cleaning someone else's house. Sigh

and up your nose, and in your lungs... Apparently a forest fire over 500 miles away from us has blown into southeastern Wisconsin. It's been hazy and smoky all day, and both DD and I are sneezing and coughing like we've been snorting ragweed. I'd like it to stop right now. The weather folks said to close up the house and turn on the fan, but I think that's made it worse. Not sure quite what the best course of action might be.

After a very rocky start to the day, things got better. I find that calmness and order in our home always makes me feel better, and DD and I sat and did homework together tonight, I cleaned the kitchen, tidied a lot, DH got the new router up and running, and things seem much calmer.

I'm scanning in a textbook chapter now, and am working out a new semester work schedule for myself tomorrow morning. I actually watched part of the football game tonight after watching the president's speech.

On the financial front, we received a new valuation on our house. The village said it would come three months ago, and here it is! I suspected it might drop with local property values, and it did, though only $5000.

I've updated the mortgage stats and should probably update retirement fund numbers, but that can wait a little bit.

Man alive, I hit the wall today. Yesterday's onslaught of students all with various problems, tons of work to do, some odd swollen lymph node, DH tremendously distracted by computer hardware issues, his job anxiety, house looks like a hurricane hit it--eek.

I ran to the university to upload and scan first chapters of my textbooks, since students invariably order them cheaper and shipping is delayed. I'll bet I had 45 students e-mailing me telling me they couldn't do the first assignments because they had no book. That only took about 90 minutes, but on the way home I was listening to NPR--particularly a story about a woman who lost her twin brother on 9/11, and I just started bawling. Her grief was so deep and so affecting.

Then I had a conversation with a good friend who can't meet me for my birthday this year. It's really stupid, but I felt horrible about it. And I woke up at 4:30 this morning unable to sleep, so I'm zombie-ish anyway.

All this led to a huge outburst of emotion and exhaustion. After working for hours, I fell asleep in the living room chair, and feel much better. What the heck? I hope this isn't a foretaste of the semester to come!

I buckled down last night and went through my four-drawer file cabinet and some binders to fill five (5!) paper garbage bags with stuff for the shredder. Ir took hours, but I managed to watch two episodes of "House of Cards" and two episodes of "Mad Men" on Netflix while sorting, so it was more fun than onerous.

In the pitching pile: 1995 tax returns, my ex-husband's brokerage statements, brokerage statements from my investment club in the 1990s, my DH's paycheck stubs since 2001. Tons of stuff! Can you tell how excited I am?

The credit union near us had a free shredding day today--and it was jammed. What fun! I got me thinking that all my notes from my dissertation can probably go too. I've freed up two entire drawers in my office.

I've spent the morning and much of the afternoon reorganizing the kitchen to help eliminate some of the problem areas. I've cleared a shelf in the basement for seldom-used appliances, scrubbed out some cupboards and discovered, to my horror, flour weevils in my stash of bread machine flour. Out they went, and I'm busily scrubbing out the containers which weren't sealed very well. Cleaning those cupboards out made space for my mom's dishes which means they're finally off my office floor.

While cleaning downstairs I found a few items which need to be donated or freecycled, so those will go today or tomorrow. Slowly but surely I'm getting there. Stock market plunges always make me very busy as I feel the need to put the house in order!

I managed to get quite a lot done this afternoon:
*Got five or six things listed on ebay
* Made a huge pile of things for Purple Heart
* Had my hair cut and colored
*Prepared a fast but good dinner of burgers and a salad from the garden and freezer stock
*Put another dent in DD's school supply needs at Walgreen's (using some register rewards in the process)
* About to tackle the next pile of laundry and junk.

I'd love a couple of cool days. They say it's going to turn cooler, but I've heard that before....

I was scheduled to help a friend organize her house today to help her get organized before she has twins this fall, but she's cancelled. I suspect she's embarassed about the state of the house, so I've decided to spend a couple hours on my own house.

I need to list some ebay items and just put lots of things away. Yesterday I spent nothing, but I've got a haircut this afternoon. The blueberry pound cake I baked for my friend will go to my stylist, I guess!

I crave order and need to get more of my Mom's things dealt with. I see how overwhelming it can be for people and want to clear it up before school starts.

Just when I thought I had our budget figured out until I get paid in October, our A/C quit last night. I did all the troubleshooting things I found on websites, but to no avail. It cycled on, quit quickly, the fan worked but wouldn't "listen" to the thermostat. Off to Angie's List to find a repairer. Now $592 and a new control board later, I'm wondering how that's going to fit in the budget.

But at least he got it fixed before the heat starts again tomorrow. Glad we have an emergency fund. Wish I had fewer emergencies.

It's been a spectacular day here, the kind you dream about in February. I spent a chunk of the day finding homes for a bunch of my mom's things--extra sheets, kitchen linens, that kind of thing. I took advantage of the weather and hung some laundry outside.

But my excitement of the day has been the arrival of our new cherry dresser. I knew I'd like it, but it is so much prettier than the models were in the store.

So I'm spending the rest of the day sorting through our old dresser's contents, pitching some things, and rearranging others. That dresser is going into DD's room to replace her 9-year-old trash-picked chest. I painted it when I was pregnant with her, and we'll all be glad to see it go. I think I'm replaying my childhood. I didn't have a stick of new furniture until I moved to my first apartment--and neither does DD. She has a second-hand (but very pretty) four poster bed, an estate sale desk, and now our old dresser.

We brought my grandmother's rocking chair home from my mom's too. She brought it from Sweden--and for more than 100 years old, it's in great shape. Now to find a place for it!

Last week when I was at the MN Landscape Arboretum, we spent about 30 minutes admiring the iris. I've always loved iris, and have often thought about putting a few in our garden, but balked a bit at the cost.

This morning DD and I went out for a long walk, and in a very expensive house I always admire, a lovely man and his gardener were dividing iris when he asked me if I'd like some! We got the car and I came away with about six big clumps of lovely purple iris!

Let's hope this is the theme for the day!