It has been a long time.

I have not written for a long time, not even sure where to start.

How about a new introduction to who I am at this moment:

Hi I am a 33 year old female. I am the mother to a sweet hearted 6 year old boy. I am unhappily married and five days ago I met with a lawyer to clarify some points so I can get divorced. On Tuesday I am hoping to sit down with my STBX (Soon to be ex-husband) and go over the marital assets list and Parenting plan guideline and agree to terms so I can turn them into my lawyer.

I am hoping to do what is called a stipulated divorce, it will cost me $1000 and then $85 court filing fee. This means we are in total agreement and basically my lawyer is just typing up the papers in the way the court wants them we sign them in agreement and then they are filed.

Not sure how long it takes before I am legally divorced.

Hopefully Tuesday goes well, 5 days ago was also a big day because it was the first day that the realtor's co workers came to view our house. Yes we own a house together and we are trying to sell. My STBX has decided he wants to move out of state for school while our son and I stay here. That is why I am hoping all will go okay when we sit down to work through the terms.

My lawyer did say if we get caught up on a few points she would recommend mediation to get us through them instead of having to go to court.

Since Late January when my STBX returned from out of state employment I have not been doing much couponing; he hates the clutter. I have not visited CVS in months. I need hair spray and know if I was still shopping CVS I would probably have free hair spray in my closet BUT since we are selling and I am trying to de clutter I am just going generic or with coupon whatever is cheaper without having to deal with rolling ECB's at CVS etc.

I hope to sell our home quickly, The sooner we sell the sooner I can start looking at Apartments. I have been checking listing and there are a few 2bed 2 bath that are half the price of what I am paying in the mortgage payment and a few have a pool or workout room. I would LOVE to be able to spend my summer swimming in a pool in my own apartment complex.

Now on the other hand since my STBX said he would watch our son this summer while I am at work it would be easier IF we were still living together or close. If we are in the same house (it is a two story 2 beds up 2 beds down) then my son would really get a good summer because he could go to bed when he wanted and get up when he wanted instead of me having to drop him off at his fathers when I go to work.

That is if he agrees to still watch him after we are divorced. I was planning on paying him HALF of what I would pay for full-time daycare since if we are splitting daycare costs I would have still been paying someone the same amount to watch him.

Hope that was a good catchup, The saga continues and I will try to update as I know more.

To do Weekend (Monday included)

Need to post a to do list.

I need the power to say yes I did that and well to have my 5 followers hold me accountable. Going to break it down Small so I get lots of extra checks.

#1 Oil Change *****DONE*****

#2 Email Ebay seller with the pictures (bought 2 data cords and they sent the wrong one- need to send pictures of what I got so we can figure out how to handle refund/return etc.) ****DONE******

#3 Mail Insulation refund ******DONE*****

#4 Pickup supplies to finish basement (contractor coming Tuesday PM)*****DONE****

#5 Buy Workout clothes for ME

#6 Buy Reebok Tonefit Shoes in black

#7 Pack up Playroom move stuff upstairs *****DONE*****

#8 Pack up office

#9 Pack up office closet

#10 Move furniture (that I can move by myself) up stairs

#11 Pack up Family room

#12 Move Family room stuff upstairs

#13 set up laptop upstairs as main computer will be unplugged and disconnected

#14 clean off kitchen table

#15 read books with son (Library, School, Class room)

#16 Find thing to get rid of during the pack up process daily for the 365 day challenge.

#17 Balance Checkbook *****DONE****

#18 Pay DH CS and mail the check

#19 Measure kitchen Cabinets *****DONE****

#20 While picking up basement supplies; get a estimate for new Kitchen cabinets installation and all

#21 Drop off tote of things to Once upon a Child.

#22 Buy small portable printer for laptop with Staples rewards ????? (I will be unhooking the main computer and with it the ability to scan and print until the office can be set back up.

#23 email anything important off my main computer to my email account incase I need it while my main computer is unhooked.

#24 Start collecting all the 2009 tax stuff in one folder for later.

An Update

I am still working the daily challenge! Everyday I toss at least one item, I am doing good; the sad thing is just doing three small items like I normally do never feels like enough. I find myself looking over things thinking there has got to be something I can get rid off that will feel to me like I got something BIG done.

Oh well small steps.

I have started back on my healthy eating life style, my small goal is to make sure I am increasing my water consumption so that soon I will be up to 8 glasses or more a day.

Eat from the pantry challenge, yesterday was the first time in a long time we have gone to the store. We bought a loaf of bread, a carton of eggs, a bag of apples and two boxes of pretzels. All in all I think that I did great because it is hard to make sandwiches without bread and most cooking needs eggs. The apples were because my son has been asking for them, when my child asks for fruit or vegetables such a apples I don't tell myself no I am eating from the pantry and freezer. As for the pretzels that is a kick my child has been on, I could have passed right by it and not purchased it BUT I got that I am here at the store a BLIZZARD is in the overnight forecast maybe I should get a few things for my son IN CASE. Oh well the pretzels are really they only thing I call cheats and I am going to say I have been doing the no grocery shopping challenge for a while now. Oh and I bought Subway for dinner two nights ago because I had a meeting after work I needed to attend and it met my diet goals and I did not have any bread to make anything portable to eat on the run.

This morning I am up early because I went to bed 3 hours early last night; I got a call from the school telling me to come pick up my son from school. He had a tummy ache and was not willing to listen to the teacher or follow directions; at least not follow directions more than normal. But that is an issue for later. So since he was sick I did what I had to do to get him extra sleep.

I told my son it was time for bed and even though it was 6pm 6:30pm (I want my son in bed at 8pm) but lately with holiday etc 9pm 9:30pm is his new norm. So I said he could sleep in the big bed, which means I can make sure he lays there until he is asleep. He had a habit over the holidays of getting up out of his bed and playing then me finding him in the morning on his floor sleeping. So he gets to sleep in the BIG bed and he went to bed much earlier than his new normal and a little earlier than his should be time. I have to work this weekend and he will be at my cousins so I think I will repeat this again tonight so he can get caught up on his sleep and maybe help get him better faster.

What did I do with my extra 2 hours this morning?
#1. Checked the gas level of the large snow blower
#2. Checked the oil level of the large snow blower
#3. Added the stabilizer to the gas cans
#4. Replaced the wiper blades on my car
#5. Picked up a little trash in the garage (to count to my 365 challenge)
#6. Posted this entry
#7. Reviewed blogger posts over the last few days (sad I missed the one day free down load for the Starting over finish rich book).
#8. Hope and pray that I will be able to get my son to school and my to work, I almost got stuck trying to get home last night.

One thing I will not miss once we sell this house, living off of a road that when ever it snows goes down to one moving/packed lane. I almost got stuck last night because as I was pulling into the road another car came barreling down it with some teenagers in it so I was not able to get into the worn part. I purposely put myself in the deeper stuff to avoid being hit by the barreling teenagers. I should have gotten their license number as that road is 25 miles per hour and they were going much faster than that in foot and a half plus deep snow. By almost I mean it took me 10 minutes of me with my son in car going forward, going reverse, going forward, going reverse, then going out pushing snow in front and behind my tires to traction and repeating for 15 minutes.

Ahhh the feeling of completion

Yesterday in the 365 days of decluttering I got rid of some papers. Why do I feel I have to hang on to papers. Oh well more are gone.

Today, I got the donations dropped off at the thrift store. Six boxes of stuff and 2 bags of clothing. I also took about half the food items I cooked up from food I had in my freezer/pantry to work for lunches. Tonight the repair guy came over and looked around to see what needed to get done so he can give my a price.

Because the donation things were already in my car or in my garage because every time I tried to donate them it did not work out I just do not feel like I did anything for the challenge today. I will have to clean more papers off my table or work on the office so I feel like I am making progress.

Oh I am trying to not buy groceries; sort of a little challenge but not a full only from the pantry/freezer deal. Today I used up the last of the eggs and we are low on bread so i will have to go buy them but I plan to only buy one loaf of bread and one carton of eggs. A super low grocery spending month for me please.

BAD BAD GIRL - NO LOOKING AT HOUSES!!!

After finding out that to rent a 2 bedroom 2 bath apartment with a 1 stall garage will run $775 per month to start, I am really rethinking homeownership.

Currently We have a four bedroom 3 bath home with triple garage with a 132K mortgage with a value between 179K and 209K the reason for the range is our basement is about 90% finished and we have not had a RE Agent in to give us a market value, currently the 209K is what our insurance says our house would cost to rebuild not including lot since if a fire happened we would not need to replace the lot.

I want a smaller mortgage as our current mortgage including taxes ran 1190 per month this years I paid off our specials this year and so our taxes should go down thus our monthly payment should go down by like 100 per month.

I keep thinking if we could take our equity and apply it to a cheaper home we could get smaller payments. I want a house in the 125K to 145K range. I think that would get us to around or lower than the $775 rental price.

So as I am looking at homes online and thinking yes I could deal with that horrible paint job, paint that brick fireplace, oh that waterheater is going to have to be replaced for a bigger one; I imagine the cheaper mortgage and smile.

Then low and behold I find a newer home, much like our home but on a smaller lot but without a sprinkler system, without the walkout basement, not on a cul-de-sac, with only two stall garage and with one less bathroom on the main floor. It has a unfinished basement.... The price is 149,900 which is 22K less than what we paid for ours when we had our basement unfinished.

I think to myself does the basement have the plumbing in the walls and the toliet drain hole in the floor? I want this home, I want to take the about 77K equity we have in our home and apply it to this new house and have a 73K mortgage.

But sadly I know that we have to sell our home first and I am sure that by the time our basement is finished and our home is sold it will be gone. It just motivates me to get the contractor here that much more so that maybe just maybe we can sell our home and get this new one.

I want the lower mortgage but I also like the chance to get the finish the basement equity on the new house, I also like that it is very similiar to our home. Of course the first thing we would have to do is install a sprinkler system and build a shed.

TO DO:
Stop looking at house!
Call our repair guy and find out when he is coming to sheetrock the ceilings and finish the closets and the minor repairs.

365 day declutter challenge day 2

Today, I called the thrift store and as expected they were closed. I saw a sign when I drove by yesterday; but it was hard to comprehend, but yes the sign really did mean they would be closed Saturday also. I will get the donation items dropped off this week sometime, the thing that stinks is I have so much it fills the trunk and the interior so when I decide to do it I have to follow through or my son will be stuffed next to boxes needlessly.

Since the donating to the thrift store was a bust; I cleaned off my dresser in my bedroom; such relief to have that cleared off instead of tons of junk piled up just waiting to leap off my dresser top onto the floor. The big thing was relocating items to their correct home but in the process I also discarded some game dice, a empty eye drop bottle, all the pharmacy instructions and packaging and a Christmas candy tube.

Sadly it was difficult to toss the plastic candy tube. Why because the Santa on it was so cute, I wanted to find a way to reuse the Santa stopper from a Reese's peanut butter cup holiday tube. Now it is probably good that I wanted to reuse it some how but it is sad that I spent so much energy trying to figure out how to reuse it somehow before I just tossed it.

I also had my Jan issue of ALL YOU magazine on my dresser, I had already read it so I took it and cut out the coupons and in the trash it went. That got me thinking and I went through my coupon box and tossed out my expired December coupons. I also ran across a pair of undies, they are black, which I tend to wear that color religiously during a certain time of the month but these undies are a boys cut and I just don't like them so I never wear them, I finally just tossed them. It is sad to think that it took this challenge to toss out those undies. I always kept them telling myself I would wear them during that time and then during that time I am like these are uncomfortable I am not going to wear them when I am already uncomfortable enough without putting myself through pantie issues.

I came across my electronic Sudoku game I put that in my box of thing that need to be recorded and donated. I am not counting that item as gone because I need to record it and donate it yet but the fact it is off my dresser and in a to do box makes my very proud.

I few minutes ago I came down stairs to the office and scanned three recipes into a folder on my computer that I am going to start gathering recipes. I had three cookbooks I would like to take into the used bookstore to sell and wanted to scan a few recipes first. I looked through the book and truthfully I have a lot of recipes marked to try later but this was during our low carb faze and I don't have the ingredients for some of them any more so when all was reviewed and scanned I copied three recipes. Yes I had held onto three huge 500 plus page cookbooks for three recipes. Once these are sold or donated I will count them but I also want to give myself a pat on the back for scanning the recipes onto my computer and getting them out of my office and into the tote of book to take to the bookstore.

Finally This morning before I figured to clear off my dresser I was trying to think of what to do as a project since the donation would have to wait for another day, I went into my laundry room and saw the shelf laying there on my washer and drier, the shelf was a board and three decorative brackets. I have meant to remove the brackets and discard the shelf for a while now but always put it off. Today I got a screwdriver and removed the screws and put the brackets in my donate box and then thought to see if there was any use for the shelf that would not just be adding to the clutter problem and when I did not I took it to the garage.

Time to record some coke caps into my account and then toss those and I will call it a day and sit back and read for a bit with some nice steamy tea.

365 Declutter Day 1

Today, I thought would be great, nice and easy. Not so; it started off great but got hard. The night of New Years Eve my son was being watched by a relative not that I had plans but because she was in from out of state and so he had a spend over with her. I spent the evening finishing up adding the items I was going to donate to the spreadsheet I use for that purpose.

I woke up this morning and had planned to drop off 6 boxes of donations and two bags of clothing at the thrift store; but it being New Years Day they were all closed. I found that weird but that was what happened, after driving to 3 different thrifts stores in an attempt to start the year off right I gave up and figured I would do it tomorrow as the hard part for me it actually sitting down and adding the items into the spreadsheet which I use when I file my taxes.

The other big thing was to donate 5 old cell phones to Cellphones for Soldiers, we have one location in our town. The location is a tax preparation place. There December hours were 1:30 pm until 4:30pm Monday thru Thursday. Since Friday was new years and day one of January they have not posted new hours, but anyway Monday thru Thursday means it is not going to happen for at least three days.

Finally I wanted to take some things to a consignment shop; they were also closed for New years day. I will try them tomorrow.

So you might be wondering if I was able to discard, donate or recycle something today. Well I did recycle a small bag of grocery bags today when I went to Wal-Mart and used a fabric bag for what I purchased saving at least four plastic bags due to the strength of the cloth bag versus the plastic grocery bags. But just recycling a grocery bag full of grocery bags feel like cheating to me.

At the last minute I remembered one of the items I had thrown into the consignment shop box, it was an item that I had purchase a month or so ago and lost the receipt but never used the item. I decided to try to take it back for store credit; well because the item was only worth $7.95 I was given cash. So One item that was unused sitting in my house today was returned to the store and I have one less piece of clutter in my home and my purse is $7.95 richer.