The Hot Mess Girl

I once listened to a speaker that had everyone look at their neighbor and say "I'm a mess."

We all laughed, but I thought. "Damn! I really am a mess."

What have I done lately? Tons ... especially considering my lack of concentration lately. Mostly because Kevin has made concerted efforts on the weekends to help me complete small projects.

We've finished cleaning out the basement. We've created a pantry area since we don't have one upstairs.

We sold our bedroom furniture on craigslist and purchased (with cash!) a new dresser, TV, and chair. We're still sleeping on the old box spring and mattress on the floor, ala college ... wait ... I actually can't remember the last time I slept like that. But, we aren't buying a bed frame until we find one we can agree on and pay cash for it. We'll see how long that will take.

My super awesome friend, Brandy, and her husband even came over to paint the room. Apparently, some people actually *enjoy* painting! Who knew?

I've gotten a really good grasp on my food budget and have become a (self-proclaimed) coupon expert. Promising not to turn this into a coupon blog, I will spare you the details. That's my coupon binder. Just one more bit of evidence that I am extremely OCD.

Along with reining in the food budget, we've got a household budget in play that seems to be reasonable. We've had budgets before and were somewhat good at sticking to them, but they always seemed to be unrealistic and we'd eventually give up. I'm looking at this like a diet. If you go off the deep end and go on some crazy water and grapefruit diet, you'll quit quickly. If you start with reasonable expectations, not expecting to lose the weight in two weeks, you may just get where you want. Perhaps that's only logical to me. But, we've got to start somewhere and the deep end hasn't worked well in the past.

We used Kevin's bonus to pay off his car and now have two paid-for cars in our driveway. We've got lots of little bills we've been scratching at for a year or so and they will be gone in the next month or so. Then ... we've got the biggies. The credit cards we used to make up the difference when my income disappeared (or ... looking on the bright side ... decided to stay home with Lubbock) and my student loans.

We'll get there. I have no doubt. We've stopped the bleeding by paying cash for things. I realize a wiser person would probably have kept the old bedroom furniture until the bills were paid, but ... no excuses ... I'm just not wise 100% of the time. After all ... I'm a mess.

I'm seeing a few signs of spring and that makes me optimistic. There are little green shoots of daffodils appearing on the side of my house, I can see the grass in my backyard, and I went out without a coat on the other day. I know we've still got another two or three months of snow, but little things like that keep me hopeful.