First Day

Today was the first day of my summer classes. I managed to get everything turned in for day one. Unfortunately, tomorrow gets harder. This may make me totally insane.

Tonight I am watching _Vertigo_ when what I should be doing is getting ahead on my reading and posting... I love Hitchcock movies. When I get time, I may develop a full-fledged obsession for his films. I am not normally a visual person, but I love the way Hitchcock uses the screen.

Sunday

We came up to Mom & Dad's last night for a short visit. W is staying for the week, but the rest of us are heading back home tonight. Tomorrow will be hectic. I need to work on my classes, get insurance sorted for our new truck, and figure out how we are going to pay our sales tax. Todd needs to take Lily for her vet appointment, too. And the girls want to go swimming in the afternoon. [I can feel my world closing in around me...]

Last week, Todd's aunt sent me a lovely necklace, evidently just because she thought it looked like something I would like, and sent the kids gift cards (which they, of course, *love*) for their birthdays. I am not sure that I have any suitable "thank you" cards right now, so either I need to shop or we need to make one... So that is another thing to add to the list of things to do.

We watched Ten Things I Hate About You tonight with Mom. I am a sucker for (nearly) anything Shakespeare, and Meleah just loves that movie. And Mom likes making Meleah happy. So that worked out. Olivia was less happy about the situation, but is now watching Oliver and Co. We'll not get to finish it, though, since we have to head home. The kids are tired, since Todd took them to the river this afternoon. They had a lot of fun, and came home shedding sand everywhere. They didn't take pictures, though, which is what I had supposed the purpose of the trip was. Shows what I know.

June

June is almost over and I have hardly written anything. I went to National History Day with Meleah at the University of Maryland. That was amazing. Her group, the first time they every competed, placed fourth in the nation in junior division documentary. They also won the outstanding junior entry for Arkansas. We did the tourist stuff. Arlington, Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial, World War II Memorial, FDR Memorial,Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Natural History Museum, etc. The most amazing thing I saw the whole trip, though, was the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Still, twenty years after it was built, people are leaving items there. I saw a baseball, wrapped in a sandwich bag, inscribed "We love you, grandpa." A Cavalry division left pictures and names of the men they lost, laminated, underneath the names on the wall. All those lost lives. All those dead men.

Rosary

My son has just acquired a rosary, even though he was baptized Methodist. He went to Latin Mass with my NaDean on Sunday and they said the rosary before the service (or something-- I am fuzzy on the details). Anyway he *wanted* a rosary. He just was fascinated by the ritual. So we let him get one. He sat down tonight and said a whole rosary. He had to follow the book-- he doesn't have it all memorized yet.

Finances

I.Hate.Math. Especially when a checkbook is involved. On the bright side, I have Moneydance, which does everything that Quicken does, except expire. (If I am content to use an old version of a piece of software, the company should not determine for me that it is too old, and disable downloads from my bank.) I fed in all my expenses (except February from US Bank, because they only keep 90 days of record online) into Moneydance and found out where my money went. This is what I found:

I spend more in clothes that I believed that I did.
Our grocery bill is out of control.
And we eat out too much.
We need a lot of entertaining.
We need to use the library more.

It is all very horrifying really. Essentially I have nice sum each month that I really have no idea where goes. Well, I know *where* it goes: Wal-Mart, Taget, Walgreens, the Dollar Store, Freds... So I *know* some of it is cleaning supplies. And some is clothing. And some is groceries. But what is what? I am clueless.

Then, I started poking around and found the USDA's estimated costs to feed a family. Turns out the federal government figures that we should be expected to spend $983 a month to feed our family of five. Now, all we need to do is cut down what we spend eating out...

Kitchen

Tonight, in the midst for cooking supper for my bunch and my dad who is visiting, I decided to do "something" about the open shelves in my kitchen. And what I decided to do was eradicate the plastic. So I put my baking supplies into glass jars, and put my metal cannisters on the shelf and it looks really great. I did have to paint above the stove-- evidently I forgot to do that before. But it is done, for the moment. Now I just have to decide what to put on the open shelf above the stove. It gets hot enough that I am worried about putting just anything up there...