BEEN A LONG WHILE...

Okay, so Facebook is really cool! I need to remove myself from the games though, there is a time and place for everything and they are consuming my life. I've put posts on there that I'll have to transfer to here to blog spot. Today we planted all the corn, we found a new system in doing it and it worked so incredibly well...none the fact that teamwork played a huge role in it. The only thing that I have left is to plant the onions, peas (which is too late, will have to wait for fall planting), asparagus (this is so very detailed it's not even funny), more strawberries, cucumbers, more tomatoes and more peppers. The squash and zuch is thriving leaps and bounds. I gave my first to SC but found out that she didn't like it so next time I'll give it to someone else. I'm sure that tere are plenty who do like it. I also need to replentish my supply. We mistakenly planted pumpkin in the garden instead of the wood yard, it got pulled today. The black beans are coming up so well it's great, the kidney beans are in too! I also found cherry tomatoes this afternoon. I'll see if Duck can down load my pics. I'm pretty sure that I sprained my right wrist today, and I'm really not sure I know where my brace is. It is hurting something fierce. But work must go on.

Let's see..oh yea my mother died on May 27th, while we knew it could any time, it was expected that she was maintained healthwise and was going to outlive my grandmother. She died of a heartattack in her sleep. I look forward to the resurrection where I'll be able to have a meaningful realtionship with her. Until then and forever I have a wonderful family and a fabulous group of friends.

Duck missed his summer semester signups so he will be home this summer looking for work. Okay well a lot has happened and there isn't enough time to say it all, I'll transfer over my posts as I can, until then this is my journal and I need to do a better job of keeping it up. Below will be a list of stuff we want to get done in the next 10 weeks.

Reroute the dryer (even though we don't use it a lot, it still gets used on rainy days and when put in shower surround clothes need to be unwrinkled)
Get all the wood cut
Get a LOT more wood.
Get funace installed and ready
Get windows sealed
Insulate the basement
Clear out our rooms and get the carpets cleaned
clear off front porch
plant cucu
plant aspar
plant toms
plant peas
plant lettuce
plant onions
start tom's for fall planting
Get boys room set up
Start fall gardening in Aug
Set up hyroponics.
Get lettuce beds started.
Possibly get green house set up.
Get water system set up.
Paint livingrom
work on deck
put up pool
put together solar panels
put up another windmill
purge toys
purge boy clothes
purge mommy clothes
purge daddy clothes
purge dishes
purge backroom
purge basement
purge book shelf

Okay so I think that's enough for now...not sure what is on my other list..but here is a 9 week list. Some impossible due to money, everything else we already have.

BTW....

Panels are here, Houston, we have solar panels...well at least they are still in the box. I plan on cleaning the rest of the house (as much as I can do) which will give Duck more time to complete this weeks homework and get started on putting them together. Tomorrow night is the Memorial of Jesus Christ's Death. We will be attending this most wonderful event!

Night...

And the hits just keep coming....

Let's just say that I'm very happy it is getting warmer. I do hope that the warmer temps keep coming..to a certain degree of course. I'm thinking that we are going to start beaking the ground up tomorrow and Thursday. I would like to see the three tomato plants that are big go into the ground with the protective covers. As soon as I figure out how to get my pics uploaded, since my phone is giving me trobles I will post the latest pics of my plants. They are getting really big. We are going to be looking at a wood furnace addon coming up. Most of any of our free time will be spent this summer either tending the garden or cutting up wood.

We are going to be doing daily meter reading...to see where we are at. This will also help us keep track of how much our bill is going to roughly be. Normally we are around 1200 kw per month.

Todays reading is 8803. I am also running the four biggest energy suckers at the same time :(. The dryer is keeping the house warm, the washer is keeping the drying running which is keeping the house warm, the dishwasher is cleaning the dishes and the hot water heater is keeping the water hot for the dishwasher. Since I was in cold it isn't running more for the washer. I will do my best to keep it running less but keeping the house confortable and chores done.

Well I need to get going, I have to make sure my uniform is clean, my keys are somewhere I can find them and I need to take a shower before we shut the water heater off for the night.

Toodles.

hydroponics....

So...looking at this title many will think that my mind is heading down an illegal raod. On the contrare. It is a wonderful idea! Building a garden in water makes sense for those who don't have access to land to build garden in and who want to grow year around but are like me who are stuck in a cold climate state. The ideas are amazing~you can grow things faster and inside year around....oh.and the best part is...it's cheap to do. We have plans for three different types of systems, two that can be put inside and one that is strictly for outside. If we can get it done in time, this will grow all of our lettuce plants. Well we are going to have company tomorrow and I want to get my stuff done today...I'll look up more on hydroponics...here is a youtube clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ah3zrGRmx80&feature=related

Vaccine...

So after talking to one of the people at work, she was contact multiple times by the school in regards to getting her 6 yr old girl vaccinated with the H1N1 shot. I found it interesting that the schools are harrassing parents to get this shots for their children, I would not have put up with it at all..thank goodness I kept Sunshine home this year. I read at a local new station that they have recalled 800,000 doses of the vaccine for children. Siting that they believe they aren't even potent enough to protect children from the virus. SO let's look at they cycle here...child unwillingly gets stuck with a needle, full of a concoxation that is not believe won't prevent them from getting sick, they still run the risk of getting sick due to the vaccine, get stuck again since most kids need two shots and still wind up sick with the flu. HUM...where is the logic here? None the fact that it hasn't been tested enough. The most alarming fact of this virus is the range of people that it is attacking, and most that it is very deadly for pregnant woman. All the same...I'm really glad that I don't have to worry about my children who are being presurred into getting this vaccine.

I'm off to rearrange my upstairs. I want to get the boys new special beds made tonight and on top of what happened yesterday I'm ready to get my home clean and NOT leave. We got stranded in the local town about 25 minutes away. We were stuck in our cold car with only blankets and waiting for 30 min for a wonderful brother from the Hall to come and rescue us. He spent most of the evening with us, we had to stop 2 times to charge the car battery enough to just get us home. The alternater is going out....and the worst part is that a remanufactured one is 125.00 OUCH. We will pull one off the parts car and replace it at tax time. We are going to be putting 15-20 fuel cells in it and try to run it soley off of water...I wanted to get it hooked up for solar/electric but Duck wants to try the cells first since we'll have to pull parts off for the electic anyhow.

The semester ended today, we'll get him set up for classes for next semester today. He'll be set up for 12-15 hrs this time. He should graduate next summer. I'm not sure if he is going to transfer his credits over but I can't wait for him to get a job. I long for the time when I can aux pioneer and pioneer fulltime. I've been going out a lot more recently and the joy it brings me is amazing. Well I need to get working on the boys room, I'm working a lot tomorrow and won't be able to do anything else.

Katy

What is we could....

Save 80% on our home energy usage?....and still run the dryer? Would you do it? It's going to take some work, but we are going to give it a try. I could not imagine spending only 20-30 dollars a month for our utility bill. That would save us so much money..better yet if we could run a electric furnace and only pay 50-75 dollar a month and never pay a gas payment again. That would save us about 250 dollar a month during the winter. Wow....what a though. Our monthly electricity bill is down to about 100, just under a month as it is. If it is true and we can build solar panels for $100.00 each, we are looking to put up about35-50 units. It would then only make sense that we would pay for them in about 60 months. Since they will last 25 years, that will be a good return on our investment. The return is about 20,000. That is worth it. Then if 6 windmills can provide about about another 3000 watts per hour, that will allow us to bank what we aren't using for months that we may use more like summer or winter.

Okay, well I've got a lot to get done, I need to get the laundry finished up so we can move the washer and dryer and hopefully we can move the deep freezer...we'll see.

Toodles.

I'm exhausted.

I have NO idea what is going on. I've been sleeping for nearly 2 days. I can't seem to stay awake. Now I feel sickly. This isn't cool! I think it could be in part becuase of the lack of caffine. I stopped drinking pop again, in efforts to reduce the water retention. So I finally made me some tea, but it may be a bit too late for today. I also want to start excersing regularly again. I felt better and had more energy. We are going to start a strict schedule with the kids, this should help on so many levels.

Tonight we are having potatoes and beans for dinner, yup starchy here I come! I need to make some chili again, we are out, this time I'm going to cook it before I can it.

Last night Sunshine went all night without wetting and he woke up and went straight down and went potty! Score one for him! Smiley successfully spilled 3 drinks in less than 5 minutes. It was not fun. Today we did lay more bricks on the drive way. I also got to take out some compost stuff. We are going to pull all the garden tomorrow and pull all the ac units out so we can put up the solar heaters and window plastic.

Gotta go mash potatoes.

Me.

productive two days...

after work yesterday I didn't do the right thing. I feel asleep for about 30 min on the couch and woke up too late to drive to the afternoon meeting. So we started cleaning, I scoured one side of the kitchen and we ran into town to buy a new part for the dishwasher. It didn't work...surprise surprise. We put in this new expensive faucet, that was given to us, which don't get me wrong, we are very greatful, it is awsome, but you can't use a portable dishwasher with it. So the solution....we hook it up to the bathroom sink. Okay, so it's kooky, but hey it is working! This winter as we do every winter we will seal the back door up and keep the dishwasher back there. I'm going to be caulking all the window seals and trying to learn how to using my sewing machine. I've gotten quite a few of my 45 to do list things done, I still have quite a few, but I will work on them. Duck had to go back to school to see about getting into a lab tonight. This has been a touch semester, I thought it was going to be better, but it infact has been so much worse. I'm going to go get some soup started so that I can can it tomorrow after service. I'm also going to make some potatoe soup and take some to Sister Mil.

We used our broken new chainsaw that isn't broken, the owner just never put chain oil in it apparently. It works so good, I'm SOOOOOO happy. We cut up so much wood so far we have about 2 ricks, I figure we will go through a rick every week or every week and a half. Using that info, I think that we should have about 20-25 ricks of wood ready for this winter. We will also cut extra to sell next year. This should help supliment any income that we don't have. I bet we have another 4 or 5 ricks here to cut, and another 3-5 down the street to pick up. This is going to be a wonderful start! This means that we will only have to cut about 10 ricks which is about 4 or 5 trips to our friends. Then it will be back out early spring.

I'm also really starting to work on plans for my garden next year. I found out that the cups from work that have the dome lid will make perfect for incubators, I will start bringing them home when I use one. I felt terrible, I told B to call me if she needed me and never heard the phone ring, I feel like jerk. I'm so sorry, I feel bad, it has been rough all week, and I was hoping to make it easier for her and I failed her.

Today we hooked up a solar panel, it will be interesting, it should really starting helping our battery back up really well, and hopefully we can run the tv and dvd player off of it 3 or 4 days week, if not more. This will help us reduce the amount of power we use, which would be cool, we are really trying to get our electricity bill down below 100 a month. In fact I'm looking at how to tips on how to reduce the energy you use and I ran across this tip, which doesn't make sense...

Consider setting your water heater temperature at 120 degrees. Take short showers instead of baths. You can use 15 to 25 gallons of hot water for a bath. Showers use 3 to 5 gallons per minute.

Using the median of this theory, lets say the shower uses 4 gallons of water a minute...how long does it take for you to take a shower? Now, I know that most would consider me a freak, but I can literally take a shower from water on to water off in about 3 minutes if I hurry, longer if I'm taking my time and the kids aren't beating the door down. Now, I know for fact that my shower head only uses 2.5 gallons since we have a special one that is energy efficient. Okay..but back to the point, if I took a 3 minute shower at 4 gallons, that would be 12 gallons, good job, but let's face the fact, most people take at least a 5 minute shower if not 10. So at 5 minutes you will be using 20 gallons of water, at 10 you will be using 40. WOW, that's a lot more than 15-25, even if they only used 3 gallons, that's 30 gallons of water. Okay, enough with this pshychotic rant.

We are going to be setting up a new water system in the basement for the gray water system. Thanks to the rain barrels that we found for 5 dollars each, we will need to go get a few more before winter hits, I want two for rain, Duck wants one in the garage, one for the gray water system, one for Sister H and one for Sister W. This will be interesting, this winter we will put a water system in for the dogs that will hopefully allow them to have fresh nonfrozen drinking water. We'll see how this works out. In the mean time while building all the solar heaters, we need one for Sister M and 4 for us including the one for the dogs. At night we will just use the heavy drapes that I make., this way we can use the light during the day to light the house for free and let the natural solar heat in.

We also need to start the insulating project in the basement, never enough hours in the day or days in the week. We need to block off he crawl space after we insulate the floors above the crawl space, this will hopefully keep the bathroom, hallway and laundry room floors warmer. Since we don't heat those areas because the crawl space will be blocked off and it seems to waste more heat then receive we think it will help to wrap the heat pips and insulate not only the floor but to seal it off with insulation board. We are also going to put up plastic over the escape in the basement and plastic the window down there. I'm going to go ahead and plastic the boys bedroom windows upstairs and hang the new curtains and then hallway. I also want to make a door draft buster thingy, I need to find patter on them. I did find a pattern on sungglies or how every you spell it, I'm going to try to make one for each of us, and we are going to look into buying sleeping bags for our beds during the really warm night since we kick the heat down at night real low.

Duke energy which is where I also rec'd the info above on the water says:
Lower your thermostat temperature to the lowest temperature that is comfortable to your family. You may save as much as 3 percent on your energy bill for each degree you lower your thermostat. Reduce your thermostat setting at night and/or when you are away. A 10-degree setback for eight hours each day could save up to 9 percent.

We cut our from 70 to 64 at night, and to 54, which is the lowest setting it will allow us to use. Now, I'm sure your thinking that's cruel to make the kids sleep in a really cold house, keep in mind that we have a child save heater in their bedroom, have the upstairs rooms blocked off so the heaters will only heat the upstairs to 70 at night, we also make the boys wear warm pjs and give them twice as many blankets as we use and in most cases wake up in the middle of the night with all of us in the same bed.

Okay, I'm going to go for now, I feel like I'm rambling and I'm really really really tired.

Toodles....

A sad inside day...

Today we were getting ready for Dad's visit at the end of the week. I love the fact that he visits, but this requires a lot of extra cleaning as it would with anyone visiting. This shouldn't be how it is, but it is. I've done a lot of needed to do things like clean out the freezer completely! I scrubbed the inside with spic and span and the outside of the fridge. Now I have to do the fridge part and the top. I also cleared off the top of the cabinets getting rid of things that are either considered, bad or useless. I will yard sale what I can so that we can get closer to having a new wood burning stove. We did stop today in the other town and get a quote for an outside wood burning stove...ouch! Nearly 8K dollars. YIKES~! So I'm trying to think of ways to cut this cost down. All in all the tubing alone will cost well over 200. The sad thing is that is might be possible to get financing, but I really don't want to. I don't want to add another payment to the household at 15% it would be close to 200 a month. The thing to happen would be for the business to pick up a bit and then we could afford to buy it outright! The boys wanted to go outside all day, but they destroyed the house so bad it too me forever to get everything cleaned up....and I'm still not done. And on top of all of this....my dryer is broken and it is suppose to storm really crazy tomorrow. I also am going to start going through all the cabinets again, I need to reorganize and prioritize things. We are looking for see through glass containers with lids so that we can solar cook.
We are also looking at moving all the beds to one room, this way during the winter we only have to heat one room at night instead of two. We will still put a solar heater in the other room to see how they do upstairs. We are also going to look into solar water heating as well.
In light of the little girls who drowened (cnn.com story) we are trying to figure out what we are going to do about a pool, if it is even a good idea this year. With less than a month left and the temps not reaching 90, it seems like it would be too cold. I'm not sure quite what we are going to do, although at the rate Sunshine is going, he may not be allowed to get a swimming pool.
On another note, the zuch plants are dead and the squash plants are right behind them along with the lettuce plants (which I got nothing off of). I will miracle grow these areas and put in some compost in there and plant the beans. I will plant spinach where the lettuce is and I will plant the romaine lettuce in the middle, oh and the broccoli, I'll find it a home. Next year I will be buying the potatoe bags for the potatoes. I haven't harvested any yet, they still are green but starting to turn brown. I will more than likely harvest the rest of the corn on Friday. I may be able to plant the beans there and then go from there.
I'm brain dead at this point and my shoulder is killing me. More tomorrow hopefully!
Katy