The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

The Good: I got on the scale this morning and I'm down 0.6 pounds from yesterday morning. This is good because I'm down to a new number I haven't been to before. Five more pounds and I will celebrate a milestone. Seven more pounds and I will have reached a goal. I'll keep you posted.

The Bad: I ate a burger, onion rings, and a lemonade from a greasy spoon yesterday and used up 22 of my allotted 26 points for the day. So I had to dip into my weekly extra points so that I could eat dinner. I hadn't planned on working out yesterday since my feet and calves are in pain, so I debated with myself for a couple of hours about it. If I exercise, I get points back. In the end, I didn't exercise, I sat through some evening TV shows with a tummy trying to decide if it was hungry or not, and then I went to bed. When I awoke, I discovered that my intentional sacrifice (my new motivational phrase) had paid off. See "The Good" for that reward.

The Ugly: The pump on our swamp cooler isn't working. It works when Steve plugs it in here in the house, but it doesn't work when it's installed in the cooler. So we basically have a big fan that blows hot air through the house. Nice. I'm hoping Steve will be able to fix it either tonight after work or tomorrow morning. He wasn't able to even look at it last night because he went straight from work (left at 6:10 p.m.) to a deacon's meeting at church (6:30 p.m.) and didn't get home until nearly 10.

I'm wanting to go to Santa Fe on Friday (Steve's day off) and do a little school shopping. I'm hoping to be able to find a place to get some new glasses for Caleb that don't cost $334 like they would at our eye doctor. Our insurance will pay for a new pair of glasses every other year and this is the off year. That $334 is counting a whopping 20% discount, too. I saw an ad for Sears optical for 50% off - even if they charge $350, the 50% off takes it down into our budgeted range. There are also a couple of Lens Masters or Eye Crafters or whatever in Santa Fe. We might hit those, too.

So yesterday before the pump quit working, Caleb and I spent the morning cleaning his room. Not just putting stuff away, but going through books and toys. He wants to earn money to buy himself a new game for the Nintendo, and I told him we would have a garage sale and he could put some of his stuff in it. Now I actually have to have the sale. I'm thinking about telling all my friends and seeing if they have stuff they want to put in also. I don't have that much stuff, but I figure if you get stuff from 8-12 people with "not that much stuff" you'll have a decent garage sale. After the pump went out, Audrey and I worked on her room. I didn't even mention the book/toy thing to her since she's too young to get it. But we did cull out her books so they will fit better on her bookshelf.

Brain wave: Maybe if we list Caleb's big train set on eBay, it will sell for a decent price and he can earn all his money in one fell swoop. He needs about $60 and he has about $18. I think I'll go investigate how much those train sets go for...