I have a pay-as-you-go phone plan for my $4.99 cheapo phone. When I load minutes, I check online for coupon codes to enter at check-out. By doing so, I wind up with an extra 40 or 50 minutes of free airtime. It takes about 60 seconds to find a coupon code, and I get enough extra minutes for about 80 brief texts. Since I mostly use my phone for texting my daughters concerning when they'll be home each day, this is like getting a month of free end-of-day texting for my phone. I don't want to be responsible for sending someone to a "bad" site, but if you google your phone plan company + "coupon codes" your search should bring you to a site with listings of active codes, plus some reviews or comments to get an idea of whether or not the codes will work. Sometimes a coupon code is expired or only designed to be use once. When that happens, I simply back-up and try a different code. Within one or two tries I find a working code. Last Thursday I added airtime and used a code for 40 free minutes. My minutes cost me about 7.8 cents each, so I got $3.15 worth of free airtime for 60 seconds of work, or an hourly wage of $189.00. Not too shabby.
By the way, I love my dumb-phone. It does what I need it to do for under $10 per month, and I have a nice pic of my kids as my screen saver every time I turn it on. Everyone else in my household has a smartphone, but I am really okay with not having one. The money that I save by using a non-smartphone goes to things that matter more to me, like travel.
Mini-update -- after mentioning I'd added minutes to my phone to one daughter, she told me that she had wanted to buy me a smartphone as a belated birthday and Christmas present. Very sweet of her, but I declined. I honestly am just fine with my dumb-phone. By the way, I'm not trying to convince anyone else to want what I want. My point is that knowing what we want and what we don't want saves money and simplifies choices.
Monday, August 28, 2017
Friday, August 25, 2017
Preparing meals when I don't feel like it
One of the difficulties with depression is that every last chore feels like so much more work than it ever did before. For me, putting on shoes felt like a lot of work. (That's hard to imagine, isn't it?) So, for most of winter, spring and summer, if I didn't need to go somewhere I just wore slippers all day, even outside in the garden, in the yard, or on the deck. It was just simpler.
Now if this is just shoes, can you imagine what cooking feels like? It's been a struggle to make high-quality meals while not feeling myself, and while taking on some added work in the form of classes and seminars to prepare to go back to work and/or start a business. However, I do like to eat.
My solution has been to take the simple route as much as possible. We've had a lot of hot dog dinners. I have been buying bread and buns instead of baking regularly. I'm not scavenging in the garden as much, but buying produce instead. And side dishes for meals are simple but delicious foods.
Some for instances of simple but delicious sides this week. . .
fresh figs from the garden to top cut up fruit
a dressing to top a green salad -- pureed basil, cherry tomatoes, garlic and the tail end of a vinaigrette, using a stick blender in a cup to puree
blueberry coffee cake, where the tiring part was picking the blueberries; otherwise, to make coffee cake, I add less liquid and more sugar to my standard scratch pancake recipe, then top with a cinnamon crumb topping -- no recipe or cookbook to get out.
just plain strawberries, delicious, fresh, but plain. It is so unlike me to not even slice the strawberries.
I have had to be selective in how I use my time and energy. Good food matters, but fancy food does not.
Not every day has been hard. I don't go around with a glum look on my face all of the time. And I do think that I am having more positive days than I had been.
A different take on my Cheap & Cheerful menus. What was on your menu this past week? The summer fresh foods will be yielding to autumn comfort foods soon. Is there any particular summer food that you will miss? Have a great weekend!
Now if this is just shoes, can you imagine what cooking feels like? It's been a struggle to make high-quality meals while not feeling myself, and while taking on some added work in the form of classes and seminars to prepare to go back to work and/or start a business. However, I do like to eat.
My solution has been to take the simple route as much as possible. We've had a lot of hot dog dinners. I have been buying bread and buns instead of baking regularly. I'm not scavenging in the garden as much, but buying produce instead. And side dishes for meals are simple but delicious foods.
Some for instances of simple but delicious sides this week. . .
fresh figs from the garden to top cut up fruit
a dressing to top a green salad -- pureed basil, cherry tomatoes, garlic and the tail end of a vinaigrette, using a stick blender in a cup to puree
blueberry coffee cake, where the tiring part was picking the blueberries; otherwise, to make coffee cake, I add less liquid and more sugar to my standard scratch pancake recipe, then top with a cinnamon crumb topping -- no recipe or cookbook to get out.
just plain strawberries, delicious, fresh, but plain. It is so unlike me to not even slice the strawberries.
I have had to be selective in how I use my time and energy. Good food matters, but fancy food does not.
Not every day has been hard. I don't go around with a glum look on my face all of the time. And I do think that I am having more positive days than I had been.
A different take on my Cheap & Cheerful menus. What was on your menu this past week? The summer fresh foods will be yielding to autumn comfort foods soon. Is there any particular summer food that you will miss? Have a great weekend!
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