Day	Amount	Place	Category
Tuesday	$54.00	Gas	Car
	$7.00	Cafeteria	Allowance
Wednesday	$23.00	Doctor	Medical
	$3.00	McDs	Allowance
Thursday	$16.50	Safeway	Groceries
	$2,329.00	Tuition	School
Friday	$7.00	Cafeteria	Allowance
	$70.00	NorWesCon	Allowance
Saturday	$7.50	Safeway	Groceries
	$120.00	Cremation Urn	MIL
Sunday	$3.50	Starbucks	Allowance
	$41.50	Gas	Car

High spending week because of paying C’s tuition. It still makes me feel rich to be able to cash flow that. I also finally remembered to purchase the cremation urn we’d picked out for his mom.

Other than that, it was little spending here and there (well, and gas for both cars). We did not even get a chance to really grocery shop because I forgot that CostCo is closed on Easter. Being that we are not religious, it is something I just forget about. So we’ll do our major grocery shopping probably on Wednesday this week.

The $70 for NorWesCon was planned. I submitted some fiction to be critiqued there (to see how that went, read A Critique of a Critique over at The Prose Passage), and decided to pay for a full weekend pass. I don’t know that it was worth the full $70, but it was a planned expense.

Saturday night, we went to a friend’s house for an informal Seder (Passover dinner, usually done on Friday, but since she works, she prefers to do Saturday). We always have a good time and feel blessed to be included in their family events.

We avoided spending money this weekend by “stealing” the mattress we bought for my cousin. We went to rotate our old mattress and memory foam topper and realized that somehow moister had gotten between the bottom of the mattress and the wood of our captain’s bed, and there was mold. We decided to throw out our mattress and use this one. We have another queen size memory foam mattress that isn’t firm enough for us in our basement. We’ll get a mattress bag and borrow J’s truck to drive it down to my cousin sometime in the next couple of weeks, still giving her a mattress, just not the one we’d bought for her. (And in the process, we will be clearing my house of multiple extraneous mattresses, which I am extremely happy about.)

Bloggers Give Back Update: Again, I did my clicking for Greater Good and the FreeKibble sites, but did not volunteer at Sparked. However, we donated a LOT of stuff to Goodwill and Value Village during March. And, of course, we still have foster dog Howie and are moving forward on process of adopting a human child.

 

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 need to get back to searching for markets for my already completed pieces.

2)      Make money publishing my next art/fiction book

This is on hold for now. I did, however, start a new website called The Prose Passage, which is focused on writing and critique. As of now, I haven’t added an AdSense to it, but I probably will.

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 $45. I have already bought the ticket to FinCon12.

Our credit card points were being doubled or something for February and March. If we have another month or two like those, I will be able to pay for my entire plane ticket with credit card points. As it stands, right now I could buy a ticket with points and only $70 out of pocket.

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

I plan to be a member of Epsilon class when the application goes up in August. 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: $20.42 (They won’t send me any money until I hit $100)

6)      Be healthier

I ate salad for dinner Monday and Tuesday, and had salad with dinner on Wednesday and Thursday. We use fresh spinach as our greens, so it’s pretty nutrient packed. I had jambalaya for lunch most of the week. Wednesday we made chili and Friday J made enchiladas again.

Spring finally decided to show up in Seattle on Friday, and we’ve gone to the dog park for three days in a row. Saturday and Sunday we were able to walk full circuits without too much brambling from June and Larry.

I mowed our back and side yards on Saturday and Sunday, as well.

C is taking a combination creative writing/interpretive dance class this quarter (it’s wacky, we know), and we both agree we need to start doing the Wii fit again to get ourselves in slightly better shape.