Day	Amount	Place	Category
Monday	$  70.00	Massage	Allowance
Friday	$300.00	Adoption Agency	Child
Saturday	$  80.00	Safeway	Groceries
Sunday	$    2.00	Starbucks	Allowance
	$  50.00	Gas	Car

This was a good week, spending wise. Yes, I got myself a massage on Monday. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have been able to turn my head the entire week. I put that expense under allowance, but on some level, it is medical. I have a very messed up shoulder, and while my insurance covered massage therapy when we were treating my tendonitis to get full range of motion back, they won’t cover maintenance. That usually means that I go in for a massage every 6 months or so, but it has been closer to 8 months this time round, and it was needed.

The other big expense was on Friday. The “super secret” application I mentioned earlier this week- that was our application to an adoption agency. Were we ever really in danger of not being accepted? Probably not, but about the big things, I worry even when I don’t need to.

Lest you all think I am copying Money For College Project (I’m not, but this is a really cool thing to have in common), this is something C and I have been discussing for years. We originally looked at working directly with the state and adopting from foster care back in 2010. After taking some of the training, we realized that was not going to work for us. For various reasons, this was put on hold until this year.

We are very excited to be working with the agency we are, but we also know this is a very slow process and we’re still at the very beginning of it. But I promise, I’ll be doing a post on the economics of it soon.

 

As a note on our gas costs, we noticed today at one of the cheap stations that diesel was $4.19/gallon. We’ve been paying $4.00/gallon for our bio-diesel (B99) all winter, but figured that the price would be up today. Nope. Our bio-d was still $4.00, but at the place where we buy our bio-d, regular diesel was $4.29/gallon. You’d think that the prices would even out a bit, but not this winter. This winter our bio-d has been consistently cheaper or the same price as regular diesel. I guess it’s nice not to be so dependent on petroleum.

 

I have six goals for 2012. As part of the Sunday evening posts, I am tracking those goals, kind of like I do for spending, in order to hold myself accountable.

1)      Be paid for publishing one piece of fiction

Submissions so far: 2

Responses: 1 rejection, 1 acceptance

I had a short story accepted into an anthology! I got notification on Tuesday. There is no guarantee I’ll be paid- the anthology is run like a contest. Two editor’s picks will get paid $100 each, and one contributors’ will get paid $50. (All contributors will have a chance to read all stories accepted and vote.)

So I may not get paid, but I will have a physical book that my work is published in. Quite excited about that. (And I promise to let everyone here know when the anthology is available.)

2)      Make money publishing my next art/fiction book

The artist I plan to be working with has been really swamped with her new job. I saw her for about 2 minutes earlier this week. Once her schedule gets settled, we can sit down and discuss the book.

As for using my dog park pictures for a dog park/Life by Pets version, I need to go through my pictures and make sure I have enough that are decent enough quality, and then work to get a web page for them put up.

Update: I’m rethinking the micro-fiction Life by Pets idea. I’ve put up a couple of pet pictures as inspirations on Fiction in 50, and by far, they get the fewest submissions (they rarely get any). I don’t know if I’ll really need to hit up the pet blogger faction for entries or if it’s just going to be a no go. It costs around $100 to publish one of these books in a fashion that makes them widely available, so this time around, I don’t want to wait over 2 years to get a $22 check.

3)      Attend FinCon12. Pay for the trip with money from allowance/side projects saved/earned BEFORE the conference starts. Goal: $600

My current balance is ($194), however, I’ve already bought the FinCon12 ticket, so I only need to save $500 more.

The $250 I get from the tax return will put me in the positive.

4)      Become a member of Yakezie (6 month anniversary is Jan 21)

It was announced this week that the Epsilon class application will go up in August. I plan to be a member of that class. I do need to make sure I’m still connecting with new challengers, though, because a lot of the challengers on my list this last time will be Yakezie Delta class members.

5)      Make money from my blogs.

AdSense earnings: $18 (They won’t send me any money until I hit $100)

6)      Be healthier

We went to the dog park yesterday, but that’s it.

I don’t even remember much of what we ate this week. Last night, C did make the sausage tortellini soup that he made for our very first date, only without the sausage. It’s quite healthy (tortellini, zucchini, carrots, tomato base) and that will be dinner again tonight, as well.

But since I took it, here’s a picture of my turkey noodle casserole from last week.