When I first started this blog, I had grand visions for it. I planned on turning it into an entire website, with lots of cool features and advice for moms like me who needed to get the most out of their money. I figured I would employ lots of SEO, promote the heck out of it, maybe even hire one of those directory submission services to get more traffic.

But things just didn’t work out that way. In fact, it seems that I’ve lost my focus altogether and this has become a rather general blog instead of what it was intended to be. I guess it’s because I ended up being less inclined to be a webmaster and more oriented toward being a writer over time. I like creating websites and all, but it’s turned out to be more of an occasional hobby than a passion for me.

Sometimes I feel like I’m spinning my wheels here. I guess I should probably try to create more content that relates to the site’s intended purpose, at the very least. Then again, it’s my blog with which to do what I see fit. So if I want to write about nothing but rubber chickens, I can.

I guess what I’m having here is sort of a blog midlife crisis. Just overlook me. I’ll get everything figured out in time.

There was a time when I had a major sweet tooth. But for the past few months, I just haven’t craved much of anything sweet. I’ve been much more likely to pick up some chips or crackers than cake or candy.

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve found myself almost repulsed by the though of sweets. Last week I went to the grocery store and saw that Hershey’s with Almonds, one of my favorite types of candy bar, were on sale. I picked up a few of them and brought them home. Pumpkin asked for one, and I gave it to her. She ate half of it, and then said she didn’t want the rest. Normally, I would have been happy to finish it, but this time I turned it down. I never imagined that even the world’s best diet supplement could make me do that.

The only thing I can think of that might be causing this complete aversion to sweets is my new medication. I seem to have less of an appetite overall since I’ve been on it, and maybe that’s also contributing to it. It’s not a bad thing at all, just weird.

I mentioned in a post a couple of weeks ago that the doctor put me on Prozac. I had high hopes for it. But so far it doesn’t appear to be helping much, and it’s producing a highly undesirable side effect: I’m staying sleepy all the time.

She said it would take a couple of weeks to start working. Well, it’s been a couple of weeks, and I don’t really feel any better. I’ve read online that it can take up to six weeks to reach its full effect, but it would be nice if it would start doing something soon. Other than making me feel constantly exhausted.

But I’m going to hang in there until I go back to the doctor at the end of the month. I’ll just have to fight the urge to sleep all the time as best I can until then. Too bad I don’t have some exercise equipment to jump on and start working out when I feel myself fading. Guess I could try cleaning house when I need a boost. That’s something that I need to do anyway.

Flossing is one of those things that we all know we should do, but relatively few of us do it regularly. I’m a prime example. I’ve flossed on occasion, but it’s never been one of my favorite activities. And there’s a very simple reason why: because it’s always been a pain for me to do.

And I’m not just talking about it feeling like a chore. After all, brushing your teeth isn’t exactly my idea of fun, but I manage to make myself do it at least twice a day because I want to keep my teeth healthy. But flossing has always been a painful prospect for me. You see, my teeth are very close together, and it’s quite difficult for me to maneuver a strand of floss between them. Just about every time I’ve done it, I’ve ended up hurting my gums because I had to use so much force. Not fun. Plus, by the time I was done, the piece of floss I was using would always be all shredded, leaving pieces between my teeth and not doing its job very well any more.

Then I got the chance to try Dentek Complete Clean Floss. It’s touted as an “easy sliding floss,” and that sounded like it would be right up my alley. So I gave it a whirl.

Once I had the product in hand, the first thing I noticed was its cute little blue and white stripes. But they’re not just for decoration. The floss is actually made from two thin strands of floss that are twisted together, making it easier for it to grip the particles between the teeth. It also means that there are no sharp edges to worry about cutting your gums with. Very nice!

Still a little skeptical, I pulled out a strand and gave it a try. And lo and behold, it did not massacre my gums! I can honestly say that it was the easiest floss to get between my crowded teeth that I’ve ever used. Here’s a video review I did for it:

This awesome product hasn’t yet made flossing a habit for me. That’s something I’ll have to work on after so many years of not doing it very often. But now I don’t dread it. And that’s certainly a step in the right direction.

*This review is a result of a feedback campaign by DenTek Oral Care Inc. The recipients were asked to give their honest opinion about the product they received. Good reviews were not incentivized and poor reviews will not be censored for their opinion of the product.

Running water is one of those things most of us take for granted. I say most of us because I know some people here in the mountains who don’t have it. But it’s not something that I’m willing to live without. Last week, though, I had to do just that.

It started the first weekend of the new year with our water freezing. We got it thawed back out, but there was very little water pressure. Hubby had other matters to attend to, so we figured we would just leave it be for the time being since we at least had it running. But it froze up again the following night, even though we left it running.

We thawed it out again, but it eventually quit running altogether. Turned out that our pressure tank was shot. So we had to buy a new one and all new fittings for it. All that came up to a grand total of $200. Hubby and his brothers installed it, and all seemed to be going well until they turned the water off to tighten up one last thing. When they turned it back on, nothing happened.

Hubby asked some of his buddies what could be the problem, and they offered some suggestions. But nothing he tried worked, so he figured it must be the well pump. He and his brother went to work pulling it out of the ground, and found that whoever installed it used the wrong kind of pipe. Meanwhile, I talked him into calling his cousin, who does a lot of plumbing work. And I’m glad I did.

He came over on Sunday, and he discovered that it wasn’t the pump after all. I’m not sure what exactly the problem was, but it was something simple that didn’t cost a dime to fix. We had to replace the piping to the pump because the old stuff broke all to pieces when they were pulling it out, though, and that cost us another $200.

I’m just glad that’s all over with. I have been feeling terrible both physically and mentally since the New Year, and that wasn’t helping matters. Never mind the fact that money has been scarce and the bills just keep pouring in. It sure would be nice to open the mailbox one day and find only positive things, like free samples and baby announcements.

Here’s hoping that the rest of 2010 goes better than it has thus far. And for those of you who are already having a good year, that it continues to go well for you.

Dear readers: Please don’t read the title of this post and think that I’m wishing you a horrid 2010. I’m just making a statement about how my new year has been thus far.

Where shall I start? I guess I’ll start with New Year’s Eve. I woke up that morning with my nerves all to hell, for no particular reason. I was on the verge of a panic attack before I even got out of bed. Stuff going through my head at the speed of light, and me generally just driving myself nuts. I tried to stop it, but that never works. Hubby finally talked me into going to the doctor, even though we couldn’t afford it. So there’s some more debt on the old credit card.

I went, I talked to the doctor, I cried, and she gave me some advice and a prescription for Prozac. I was hoping for something a little faster acting, but I guess I’ll just have to hang in there for a couple of weeks and see if it’s going to work or not. At least Hubby was kind enough to take me out to eat and try to have some fun together. That kept me from going off the deep end, even though we were both rather bummed that we didn’t have any friends to spend New Year’s Eve with.

New Year’s Day was pretty uneventful. We sat around the house, played computer games, and went to the inlaws’ house to watch wrestling. But this morning we woke up to frozen water. It took Hubby about an hour to get it thawed out, and then he left to go cut some wood so we would have heat during this ice age we’re going through here in the mountains right now. Shortly after he left, it quit running again. I went to the basement, used the hair dryer to thaw it out once again, and thought all was well. But the next time I went to the basement, there was a stream of water running down from the bathroom, signifying of course a leak. So I had to turn the water off, run it out of the lines, and now all I can do is wait until Hubby gets back and see how bad the news is.

If we’re going to be stuck in this place for a while (and I’m sure we are), I think I’m going to have to look into student loans and go to school to study plumbing and contracting. Sometimes it seems like keeping everything running smoothly is a full-time job. And I really don’t need all this additional stress right now.

Christmas, that is. I didn’t dread it quite as badly this year as I have for the past few, maybe because everything else was going pretty badly and I had hope that Christmas would provide some relief. In a way it did I guess, but it also brought some new stresses with it.

We weren’t able to get as much as we had hoped to for Pumpkin. I know it’s not about the gifts, but try telling that to a kid in this day and age. She enjoyed the gifts she got and had a good day, even though, according to her, Santa didn’t bring her much. So I suppose that’s a good thing. I’ll be kind of glad when she asks if Santa exists again, because next time she’s going to get the whole story and that will be over with.

Hubby went and spent more money on me than we had agreed to, which rather upset me. He said he wouldn’t spend more than $10 on my gift, and then he turned around and bought me a massage mat. I knew all along that was what he was going to get me, because he is bad about dropping hints. But they were supposed to have one on sale for $9, and they sold out or something, but he went ahead and paid full price for a different one. I know because Pumpkin let it slip.

So I felt kind of bad because I spent less than half of that on a new cell phone case for him. But it was something he really needed, so maybe I should just get over it. At least he didn’t go out and buy me something really expensive like a Ladybug XL steam cleaner or something. And I can certainly use that massage mat, because my back has been giving me a lot of trouble lately.

Oh yeah, and the basement flooded on Christmas Day. How’s that for a nice gift? We had to get out in the pouring rain and dig the snow out of our trenches so that it wouldn’t get any worse, then Hubby got his brothers to help dip some of the water out and pumped out the rest. At least we have our little pump. If we didn’t, there would probably still be water down there.

I’m just rather relieved that the whole thing is over. It could have been worse, but it most definitely could have been better, too. Now we’ve got the New Year to contend with. As far as that goes, I’m just not interested. I might watch the countdown to New Year’s Day if I happen to be somewhere that I can, or I might treat it like what it really is: just another day.

Back when I was in college, going to school online was practically unheard of. There were some teleclasses that students could take, and some courses had limited online components, but other than that, you had to be physically present in a bricks and mortar school for the most part. Or at least that’s how most students (and schools) did things.

If I had known about Western Governors University back then, I might have done things much differently. They were founded in 1997, when I was in the second year of my associate’s degree program. But even then, they weren’t your typical online university. WGU was founded by the governors of 19 states as a non-profit school. That meant that tuition was much lower than most schools, including other online universities. Even today, tuition is around $3,000 per semester. Try going to school anywhere else, online or off, for that!

WGU is nationally and regionally accredited, and they offer programs in several in-demand fields. You can get an online nursing degree, IT degree, business degree or teaching degree through them. And for those who are trying to work in an education around job or family responsibilities, their competency-based education model provides the ultimate in flexibility. Each student works at his own pace under the advisement of a mentor, and each course is completed when he demonstrates competency, whether that happens in a week or a year.

With such low prices and flexibility, WGU puts a degree within reach for anyone. I’ll certainly be keeping it in mind if I decide to go back to school!

I rarely have any trouble sleeping. But Hubby rarely gets a good night’s sleep. If I got as little sleep as he does, I would need to start using dark circle cream. You can’t tell it by looking at him at all, but every morning he complains about lying awake for hours at a time.

The doctor gave him some pills to try, but they didn’t help and had some undesirable side effects. So she told him to try Dramamine. He hasn’t bought any yet, but I’m going to see to it that he either tries that or Benadryl. Benadryl always knocks me out and makes me have funky dreams, but when I wake up I feel fine and dandy. So I figure maybe it will have the same effect on him.

If neither of those work, I guess he’ll have to try a more expensive prescription. I hope it doesn’t come to that, because between the two of us, we’ve racked up a ridiculous amount of medical bills this month. But whatever it takes, he needs to start getting more sleep.

I got an early start on my Christmas shopping, and was hoping that this holiday season would be less stressful than the past few. But it’s just not working out that way.

I’ve been dealing with a lot of family crap, and it’s really taking its toll. I don’t want to go into details out of respect for the privacy of the person it concerns, but someone close to me is having some serious problems that are affecting everyone that cares about him. And I’m the one who it’s hitting the hardest. If it goes on much longer I’m going to need a truckload of wrinkle treatment and hair dye, because I already feel a few years older and will probably start looking it, too.

There have been a few bright spots, so I’m hopeful that things will work out for the best. But money is going to be tighter than we thought it would be, so we won’t be able to do all the shopping we had hoped to do. But whatever. I suppose I’ll feel lucky to make it into the new year with my sanity intact.