Delirity

1: a respite or a time of respite from something : intermission

2 a: a scheduled period during which activity (as of a court or school) is suspended b:a period of exemption from work granted to an employee

3: a period spent away from home or business in travel or recreation <had a restful vacation at the beach>

4: an act or an instance of vacating

My suitcase is packed. The apartment is clean. Tomorrow is the day I get on a plane and start my 2 week vacation. Somehow, magically, the timing is perfect. I’ll be missing the 100+ degree weather in Portland, exchanging it for slightly cooler weather in San Diego (amazing that it’s cooler there!), Wisconsin, Missouri, Tennessee, and Washington. I’m excited for 2 weeks of visiting family and friends. I can’t wait to take mom to Graceland. And I’m thankful that my vacation will end with me getting to spend a few days with my husband… because I haven’t seen him in far too long.

It seems like there are lots of changes that I’m settling into right now. But I am settling into them, which is nice. So I’m ready to impose a new one on myself…

This morning (when I wasn’t sleeping due to a lovely bout of insomnia) I signed up for SparkPeople. I’m tracking what I eat. Tracking my exercise. I’m recommitting to myself. Over the past few years I haven’t focused on my body as much as I should. I’ve let it become something that I don’t really recognize… that I’m uncomfortable and unhappy with. Definitely time for a change there.

And body, I’m sorry. I’ll fix it. We’ll be happy and healthy again soon, I promise.

With Jesse working in another town, having his own household and income, we’ve done something we never thought we’d do… we’ve completely separated our finances. It’s a strange thing for us, but it does have some benefits.

For the first time in my life, I have a complete zero-based budget. My goal is to update the budget for every month and actually stick to it. We’re halfway into month one and I’m doing well so far – in fact, I may have over-estimated some categories (which is much much better than underestimating!), meaning that I have more money to throw at savings.

I would be throwing that extra money at debt, but because we no longer need to be in ‘horde money’ mode, I’m using what we had saved up to pay off my student loan that has interest and Jesse’s LASIK from last year (before that starts accruing interest). The only student loan I have left is $8000 that has 0% interest – that will certainly be the last thing we ever accelerate payments on!

It’s really cool to look at the numbers and know that I really do make enough money to cover everything and be able to start getting us back to that 6 month emergency fund! Kind of funny, but the budget is remarkably freeing.

In case you’re interested, I’ve been using these excel spreadsheets which have  been really helpful (in addition to Mint).

After not reading much in May (I listened to 4 audio books, but barely made it through 100 pages of any paper books), I did a fair amount of reading in June. I finished up listening to all the Sookie Stackhouse novels. I read a couple of Dave Ramsey books. I finally finished Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (which was a really interesting read).

I’m currently about 1/3 of the way through Last Child in the Woods which
is really enlightening. It’s about how children need to be out in nature, but how the opportunities for that are declining for various reasons. One thing that’s very cool to me about the book is that the author references a lot of people and places in San Diego (though he certainly mentions others as well). He has yet to talk about my favorite natural areas from growing up, but I like being able to at least somewhat visualize the areas being talked about.

I also have Pride and Prejudice and Zombies waiting on my to read bookshelf (I finally just bought it a few weeks ago). And of course, to complicate matters completely, 4 of the books I’ve had on hold at the library came in today (and there was one I started to read last week that had to go back before I even got to chapter 1!). I guess now that my eyes are healing up nicely, the only real solution is to make sure I’m spending some time reading every day (other than just listening to audio books in my car – currently listening to Artemis Fowl).

I love reading, but somehow it feels like there are just soooo many books and so many other things I need to be doing!

I’ve been in the apartment on my own for a month now. I knew that life without Jesse living here would be different, but I’m not sure I anticipated all the ways in which it would be different. My guess is that the longer we live apart, the more differences I’ll find (especially since I’m still in the phase of cleaning up from the move and getting things re-organized). Other than the basic fact of not having my husband here to snuggle up to or talk to, here are some of the things that have changed for me:

• Dinner isn’t always the production it was when Jesse was home. Now I cook a few nights a week and just eat leftovers (sometimes in odd combinations) the other nights. I’m still learning how to shop for 1 – especially considering that I’m gone about half the weekends every month.
• There’s surprisingly little laundry. So little that I’d like to just make it one load – but what do you do if you have 2 whites and then a bunch of darks?
• I made an actual, honest to goodness real zero-based budget (for July, so I’m only a few days into it) that I plan to adhere to (with the exception of me covering all standard bills like auto insurance, Jesse and I are keeping our finances separate right now since we have 2 households). It’s definitely going to take several months to get into a groove with it – especially since I’ll be on vacation July 24th through August 10th – that really monkeys things up!
• Since I’m often gone on weekends, I’m still working on getting things in order and trying to do chores during the week. I know I’ll get the hang of this, but it’s definitely going to take some more time to master.

All in all, things are ok. So far there are no major challenges other than missing my hubby. It can be challenging, especially on certain days. Quite frequently I’m so tired and busy that by the time we’ve had a chance to talk on the phone for 10 or 15 minutes, it’s time for bed. I have faith that we can do this for 2 years and try to remind myself that this should be our last major hurdle before getting to start the “settling down” portion of our life together.