So guess who spent four hours yesterday afternoon repainting her kitchen because she suddenly abhorred the blue walls she'd painted last summer?

Yes, Debra.

And guess whose back is all stiff and weird this morning after spending four hours painting the blue walls she'd painted last summer?

Yep, Debra again. Sigh. Used to be when I was a kid of 40 I could paint walls for 6 or 8 hours and awaken the next morning with a back all perfectly aligned. Ah, I remember those days fondly.

But at least I love the new green of our walls (I mixed the paint myself with two cans of all-wrong green and some black). It astounds me how you can wake up to a kitchen of awful blue one morning, and then to a green kitchen you love, the next.

And the Christmas miracle of it all? Now I look at our repulsive 1970's orange counter tops and they appear as though we meant to use them in our kitchen. Wild, huh? Gone is the urge to rip them out with my tiny bare hands.

There'll be more pictures later. Three walls still require touch-ups and since I even painted our (way too few) cupboards, they need a second coat.

One final note for my fellow homemakers out there: Remember, there's more than one way to 'make money.' By my painting our kitchen myself, it's as though I saved hundreds of dollars... and since a penny saved is a penny earned (as they say), it's rather like I made those hundreds of dollars. The same for the bazillion meals we all cook ourselves--just think of all those restaurant dollars we've saved. And the numberless loads of laundry loads we wash rather than taking them to a laundromat or laundry service... And so the list goes on and on.

So, all you happy homemakers, remember that, ok? Most likely you're making thousands of dollars every year. Boggles the mind, right?

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P.S. The green on our kitchen walls is darker than it appears above.

Of No More Home Phone Bills. Kinda.

Everybody on tv is talking lately like cutting corners and saving money is something new.

Well, ol' Debra's been doing that for centuries. Or so it feels like.

Tom and I have never been what you might call financially well-to-do, perhaps not even what you'd call financially solvent, so I'm beyond-used-to thinking creatively of ways to make us appear and feel as though we have money in the bank.

Oh, there have been those weeks, here and there, when we had some extra dollars right before pouring them into some home repair/addition or something even more extravagant. Nice weeks, those.

But usually? Usually I'm slicing the cheese thinner and adding extra water to homemade soup and going out to eat only once a week (when we'd so love to go out more). And I'm turning off lights in people-less rooms and borrowing books from the library (when I'd much rather buy them) and downsizing all that can be downsized and trying so very hard to avoid late-payment charges and baking and cooking everything from scratch while attempting to use up all food in the cupboard so to space supermarket trips as f-a-r a-p-a-r-t as possible.

But this time Tom came up with a great money-saver, at least, we're crossing our fingers and praying we've not gotten ourselves into some pending phone disaster. Yesterday Tom signed us up with Magic Jack. Have you heard of him, er, that?

Now, for clarity's sake, you'll definitely want to check out that website, but here's the explanation in Debra Talk. Magic Jack is this phone jack thingy which you buy for around $40, then when it arrives, you plug it into your computer, then you plug your household phone into ol' Magic Jack. Then somehow you are walked through instructions (this part is hazy because Tom did it all) and eventually voila! You have a new phone number and your first year of service is free. Yes, if I can believe Tom (I'm still skeptical...) the first year of your phone service is free. No more phone bills arriving in your mailbox to complicate your life.

We can even call Canada free--again, according to Tom. For other international calls, you purchase a block of time...yada...yada... Check that out yourself.

After the first year? It's something like $2 per month. Wow. I do hope Tom was right about that part because that sounds pretty great. I can live with a $2 per month phone bill.

A tiny annoying thing? To call anyone, even your nextdoor neighbor, you must dial your area code first. Not great, but hey... doable. And you do have to leave your computer online all the time.... and if we lose power, well, we'll lose Jack. But Tom does have a cell phone provided from his job.

Before we signed up I asked Tom if he knew anyone in Real Life who has this service and he said, "Oh yes! Bud from work has it and loves it. He's had it for a whole month."

Hmm.... I was sorta hoping to hear from someone with a tad longer committment to good ol' Jack. Oh well.

Anyway, if this works, it will save us something like $600 a year. I like that. I'd like to use that $600 in a more creative way than giving it to the phone guys.

Again, here's the website: Magic Jack.

And in case you've tried Jack and found him nasty and mean, well, don't tell me of our impending phone calling doom, ok? Why? Because Tom's got it into his head that we're gonna stick with this and you know how that goes, right? There'll be no changing his mind until he changes it. And in the meantime, I simply wish to be left alone in blissful Magic Jack ignorance--and hope. :)

Okay. Regarding my, Why I Don't Like Parties post. After reading some of your comments I guess I should add this:

I love gatherings of 1 to 4 people. Love them.

Tiny gatherings like those, to me, do not remotely resemble church parties where the crowds are large and the noise is deafening. Oh, and I forgot to mention that part--it's only within crowds that I notice the hearing loss in my right ear. It's all that background noise which muffles what people are saying/nearly shouting and by the party's end, I'm usually exhausted from my tandem attempts of straining to hear and staring at people's mouths while trying to read their lips.

But tiny, intimate gatherings in homes? Why, those are amazing. Worthwhile things get spoken there, deep subjects are touched upon and that special warmth of camaraderie nearly always appears, as well.

I mean, after all. If I avoided huge, crowded parties and tiny gatherings, well, wouldn't that make me a downright hermit? But I abandoned that 'Life dream' eons ago. heh. I told you about that here, don't you remember?  ツ


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Romans 12:13
"Contribute to the needs of God's people [sharing in the necessities of the saints]; pursue the practice of hospitality." Amplified


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