Solutions

We have had a few solutions and conclusions come about in the last few days that I thought I'd share.
1) My job situation is going to stay the same. When you crunch the numbers, my commute is maybe 1/3 of my gas expenditure. Not really enough to justify finding another job that may or may not be much closer. I'd pretty much just have to work at the school to save money, since I'm driving there anyway. And they're not hiring. I may look at a four-day work week and make the days a each a little longer. That will be temporary and not an effort to conserve gas. It's mostly an effort to conserve sanity. I may have to get a second part-time something down the road. We shall see.
2)We looked at whether we should replace our car with something that gets better mileage, cause hey - I drive a big green boat. It's not exactly efficient. But it's a free big green boat. And there's no way that it could cut my gas expenses enough to leave room for a car payment. So. Here we are. And we're staying right here.
3) I think the hobby I'm going to drop will be the Kiki's Suds stuff (I hear that groan of disappointment, Amy). Maybe not totally, but I'm not going to actually pursue it. I just don't have time. I do like making my own lotion and I do hope to try my hand at soap this year, so I'll do it for myself and for gifts. I think I'll keep my Etsy shop open and just list stuff when I get around to making it, just for fun. But I'm not going to look into product development and any more-professional packaging and marketing and stuff.
4) Economic stimulus package arrived. I ordered a new camera. It's a Fuji Finepix S8000FD. That sounds fancy, huh? I did a lot of research, most of which was just empty words since I'm not actually a photographer. And strings of numbers and acronyms make my head hurt. That's why I could never join the military. Or be a scientist. FStop? Aperture? ISO? What? Anyway, I'm really excited. It looks like this will be a fun camera with some manual controls that I can learn about and ease into with more time. There is a newer model of this camera with more megapixels, but the opinion on several forums and reviews seems to be that more pixels on the same-sized processor is a bad thing. So, I saved me some money and went with the older model. Photography on this blog? Oh yes. There will be even more. Lots more of my amateur crap photography. But I don't do this for your enjoyment.
5)Monday exercise time was just a fluke. I feel maybe just a little bit guilty about it. But not much. I have come up with a solution, though. I am now doing the dishes after supper. What's that? Dishes are not exercise? I beg to differ. For one thing, we don't have a dishwasher. And Chris has heretofore been our dishes and laundry man. But before all of you ladies get all breathless and wonder if he has eligible relatives, you must know that this has always been kind of a contentious thing between us. He does those chores because he doesn't like how I do them. But I would rather him do yard chores or household honey-do stuff and let me do the dishes. But he doesn't trust (for whatever weird, totally random, inexplicable reason) that I will get them done. So. After 14 years of this, we have come up with a new solution, wherein he promises not to freak out if I want to sit on the sofa for, say, 30 minutes after supper before I start the dishes and I promise to actually get them done before bed. Also, he does little man-chores around the house instead. So, the iPod helps me multitask with this and I am happy. IPod + Dishwashing = Exercise. Seldom have you seen booty-shaking and suds coexist in such a way. To top it all off, I get to shut out the kid noise, which by 6:30 or so is rather unbearable, for half an hour and I feel so much better after that.
So many solutions. I'm on a roll. World peace, anyone? I think we can do this.

DAILY BLISS: rain. lots of rain.