It's been more than awhile, but I have a happy excuse for my negligence: employment!
More than I could handle, in fact. For the past 5 months, I've been working as a Home Health Aide. The highs (getting to know fascinating elders & hearing their stories) did outweigh the lows (changing dirty diapers & being disrespected), but I decided it was time to move on & travel. Such is the position I am in today: soaking up free time & a social life but teetering on the brink of financial insecurity.

It's hard to say if this change will inspire me to be more attentive to the blogosphere, but perhaps such these two factors will coincide & leave me loquacious! For now, all I can say is "It's good to be back!" (Just wait until I can't pay my student loans in a few months...then you'll get an earful of complaints...)

This photo I took a few weeks back at the Green Lane Reservoir happily illuminates my mood: content, but at the mercy of the winds of change.

Stupid Mistake

What are you most ashamed of? 

That one is easy for me: stupid mistakes. 

Stupid mistakes like parking in a handicapped spot in a crowded city by accident & getting an astronomical penalty.

You guessed it! That’s what I did this afternoon. I am infuriated with myself. The astronomical fee? $301.

Instead of rattling off the ways I could have better used $301, I’m going to look at this situation constructively. It sucks that I will be wasting three-hundred-and-one dollars, especially because the time my car spent in that spot was exactly 16 minutes ( I had paid for more than that on the meter), especially because I made this trip to the city for those 16 minutes, during which I ran into Reading Terminal Market, ran to the Cookbook Stall, bought an expensive cookbook because I had half-heartedly asked after it one day & the owner made it a point to get in some copies & call me to tell me there was one waiting for me. I justified this special trip & expensive purchase by the fact that I was supporting a very small business (about 20 ft x 10 ft, realistically). But now not only did I spend a lot of gas money, a lot of time sitting in traffic, a lot of extra funds that I didn’t really have on a book that I could have bought on Amazon used for $5, but I also have now spent a whopping sum on a penalty.

Of course I didn’t see the 6”x6” sign hanging on a pole above the sign & if I were appearing in court I would make a case for myself by saying that I live out in the country, where we rely on painting on the ground to tell us if a spot it handicapped. (There was no painting on the ground. I would NEVER had made this mistake if there had been painting.) And while I could go to a hearing in Philadelphia to contest the ticket, I think I’ve added up the implications & stress of such an event (not to mention: taking off of work for a day) and decided that I couldn’t bank on my no-blue-paint-on-the-pavement argument to get me out of there free.

Ok, so first I was angry. Now let’s move on to the constructive side of this. There are going to be things I will do to not let this $301 get in the way of my financial goals (which are already a bit ambitious for a gal with a low-paying job). I will enumerate, more for my own benefit than for yours.

1. Scrimp more: on the way home I opted to get off in Lansdale rather than Quakertown because the toll charges were half. I usually don’t use toll roads but I was pressed for time today & I’m glad I did. That leads me to my next resolution. 
2. Get EZ-Pass: Pennsylvania drivers just saw a toll increase for cash payments, but EZ-Pass fees didn’t go up. It’s high time I get myself one! 
3. Debt Collect: If you already owe me money, I may ask you to get me a check more urgently! 
4. Start an Etsy shop: This is something that requires a bit more time than I have right now, since I don’t really have time to be crafting beyond the gifts that I have in the works for people. But now I will hurry up & finish them so I can build up an inventory of things! 
5.  Prepare lunch at home: With this new job, I often don’t have a lunch break or if I do it’s in my car driving from one client to the next. Obviously fast food would be the easiest option. While I try to avoid this, the long hours are getting to me & I often don’t feel that I have enough energy to think ahead & prepare meals to take along in my tiffin. It’s changing tonight as I resolve to not spend any money on convenience snacks or food. 
6. No buying gifts: Until I have made up this $301, that is. I usually make about 75% of the gifts I give, but I can’t afford to go to any expense with this new bill. 
7.  No shopping: As of last week, I bought enough scrubs to bolster my wardrobe. There is no reason for me to be buying anything for myself since I have too much already. 
8.  Get on those letters of complaint I talked of so long ago: I keep meaning to write them but just never seem to have the time. The reality is that I am too lazy to do so, as they could each take 5 minutes to write. 
9.  Spend less on postage: this is going to be the hardest resolution for me to keep. I have several packages to send in the next month, but I will be seeing what I can do!

Many of these things are doable with a bit more energy than I currently possess. Which means that I’m going to have to work even harder to stay within my narrow means. It requires pre-planning & dedication to saving. In order to garner more respect for myself, I am going to keep track of the savings & earnings that can be dedicated to leveling off this huge bill.

What tips do you have for me? I will welcome any ideas, however ingenious they may be!

Craft Friday

Black Friday brings out the materialism in our society, without a doubt. So this Black Friday I decided to suppress materialism, or at least modify it.* That's why I invited some friends over (although only 2 could actually attend) for a Craftluck! We shared a meal, lots of desserts, and then launched right into our recycling projects.

First up: denim rug or other creation. Kelly did some clothing deconstructing this summer & we had brainstormed some ideas for the scraps left over. We decided to recycle our old, hole-y jeans into a rug. The project is still in its newborn stage, but I'll be sure to post a picture if & when Kelly finishes it! My idea behind the rug is to cut thin strips of jeans & braid the strips together, tying them when you are almost to the end of your strip. Another option that I might try with my own clothing remnants would be to use a huge crochet hook & make a crocheted rug. This is a project for another day, though!

Our candle mold station!

 Second item on the list was our candles! We set up a laboratory to melt old wax (read: aged & ancient church candles saved for such an occasion by my resourceful grandfather.). Thanks to the tradition of using particular colors for the Advent candle wreath, we even had some pink. In the future when I do the project again, I'm going to melt down the beautiful dark blue candles! Tips for candle making: put newspaper EVERYWHERE in your workspace. Last time I embarked on such an adventure I added some new pock marks to my parents' kitchen floor. Whoops! Also, candle dyes seem to dilute quickly, or maybe I just didn't buy good dyes the first time I did this. Nevertheless, if you're a cheap-o like me, better get used to having a lot of pale & cream-colored candles in your life! On the other hand, candle scents do seem to go a long way, so I do recommend buying a small bottle of candle scent.

Our third & final project for Craft Friday was recycled glasses. We had high hopes for these potential beauties. In preparation I spread the word to everyone I knew (my sister & friends) to save their wine & beer bottles for donation to my cause. We had about 30 bottles ready to be transformed from average recycling to extraordinary upcycling! You heard me: we were going to make our very own drinking glasses from the old bottles. Sounds great, right? And we even had a simple process to follow (about which we'd heard of from our dear friend C.C.). Just grab a cotton string, soak it in nail polish remover, tie it tightly in the place on the bottle you'd like to be the top of the glass, set it on fire & plunge it in ice water to finish it off! Flawless.

Not. At right is a photo of my hand holding the bottle for one of our 370 attempts to successfully heat up the bottle & cut the glass. As you now know, it didn't work & I'm not convinced that that process is actually successful. But I'll welcome any proof to the contrary. After attempting one too many times, we found a creepy video online & went out to buy a glass cutter (only $6 at the local hardware store!). To make a long story short, we did learn how to cut glass successfully, but we are still stumped as to how we can make these creations smooth enough to be safe.

Even though our final project divulged some stumbling blocks mid-process, I'd declare our first ever Craft Friday a success. I'm interested in making Craft Friday a tradition & have lots of crafts to add to the list for next year (lint mache bowls, anybody?! And then we can decoupage them?!). It was an excellent follow-up to Thanksgiving! I hope you all had as great a holiday weekend as I did!

*I have to admit, I went shopping all day Saturday. I'm sorry. I know, I'm a hypocrite. But family tradition dictates that all of the females above age 10 in our family get together to tackle our Christmas shopping lists! It's fun, exhausting, overwhelming, but also gratifying!

It's 12 pm. I'm home 4 hrs early from work. This is where the unpredictable enters in my term "occasionally & unpredictably employed." I'm home early because I got to the school where I'm working daily (a 40 min drive each way) to find out that my client (student) was out sick. I'm not allowed to work/get paid/be at the school if he's not there. You'd think this was an easy fix - the teacher should just call me & let me know, right? Right. However, this has happened once before & I'd already suggested that avenue. When this morning rolls around, though, apparently she had the wrong number.
On the 40-min drive home (I pretty much got to the school & turned around), I brainstormed productive ways to use my time, as well as productive places to funnel this frustration. When I got home, my mom invited me to go to Kohl's with her. I told her that retail therapy is not on the List of Productivity. Because that SPENDS $, $ that I do not have because I have now only worked three days this week.

The List of Productivity:

• hang the socks for my mom. This does not earn money, but it earns good will. I'm living at home rent-free & I definitely understand the importance of being a good housemate. 
• post on the blog! This also does not earn money, but some day maybe it will! All my favorite blogs ( 1, 2, 3,)have become sources of income for their writers. It begs the question: how does a gal make her huge break in the blogosphere? Tips please!
• get around to writing that letter of complaint to Megabus (cha-ching! Travel $$$!!!). I'll post pictures to prove that I actually followed through with this one...
• learn some new Arabic words. It's called delayed-gratification, folks. 2 words a day & in a few years I'll be technically fluent (that is, if I ever actually speak Arabic with anybody)! 
• Practice guitar. Busking on the street corners of East Greenville, PA (pop. 2,951 at the 2010 census) is my back-up plan. Plus, it's good for the soul.
• Make a hearty meal - eating well is always a productive use of time. Today's plan: sprinkle copious amounts of cheese on a homemade tortilla & pop it in the broiler. Try it. It's one of those meals that can only be dreamed up by a college student with no heat & fewer ingredients.

Hope ya'll have been having a day as great (or better!) than mine! 

Skill-Polishing (it's like shoe-shining) Pt. 1

Honing your existing skills can be a very lucrative endeavor as well as a time for personal enrichment. I've recently found that my love for languages & music could be making me money, if only I were more confident & they were more polished.

My under-employed status occasionally frustrates me to the point of The Craigslist Search. I have honed The Search to a systematic quest for jobs that I am qualified. The Search usually leaves me feeling un-employ-able. No, I do not have 3+ years of experience as an Administrative Assistant. And I am not available every weeknight and weekend to start as a waitress. The two key components of getting a job are experience & availability. I am limited in both.
Occasionally, however, I'll find a posting that I am almost qualified for. It is bittersweet: there is a job that I could nearly do but am not quite confident enough to apply for it. Recently, these jobs have been short-term or one-time gigs, but even such transient employment is a start toward paying those mountains of debt! These small opportunities have inspired me to write about tailoring & honing the skills you already have to make them viable sources for income. I'll choose my two skills & passions: languages & music. In this post, I'll talk about my experience with the first of those two.


I am fairly proficient in Italian & therefore was excited to see an ad for an Italian translator. As I read the write-up, however, I became less confident in my ability to fulfill the wants of the client, who was mainly interested in using an Italian translator for business correspondence with an Italian business. She wanted a person who would be able to write professional e-mails to an Italian company. This is where I come up short: my Italian is restricted to the vocabulary I learned in 11th grade while living in Italy. I do not call myself fluent because I am sure I do not know the -___ words that qualify a speaker as fluent. I have no concrete way to measure my vocabulary, but I doubt that I could conduct respectable & professional correspondence in Italians. My optimism for this job diminished as quickly as it had risen.

But, who's to say that I will not have that fluency in the future? After seeing this post, it made me aware of the fact that my deep but dormant interest in becoming a more capable Italian speaker needed to be galvanized by this job posting. As such, I've resolved to resume studying Italian, with a particular focus on gaining vocabulary. With some hard work, the next time I see such an ad I'll confidently click "reply" (or cut & paste the address, as is the case with Craigslist) & extol the virtues of my linguistic proficiency!

I'm sure you have similar interests that are dusty from disuse. What can you do about it? Perhaps you're like my aunt who loves to paint rooms in her house. If you could use the extra cash, take that show on the road! Or maybe you've always loved writing short pieces? I'll be the local newspaper needs some freelance writers. There are opportunities for supplemental work & my bet is that the change of pace is more likely to invigorate you than tire you out!

Pt. 2 of this post will focus on the ways I'm working (that's present tense, not future!) to expand my guitar (et al.) repertoire to be available for one-time & short notice gigs in the future!

Occasionally & Unpredictably Employed

I just got home from a frustrating day of working/not-working. (The not-working was what made it frustrating.) When I walked through the door, I began typing frenetically. Even though I have not attended to this blog for some time, its initial mission is a constant thread in my life: to live life fully but also frugally. I’ll provide a little explanation of why I am once again empowered to live thus:

I have created a new demographic to aptly describe my status: occasionally & unpredictably employed. Over the last six weeks, I have been on the roller coaster entitled “The Job Search.” I thought I had disembarked last week but today I rounded the bend to see that my future could hold another period of unemployment. I am “working” as a behavioral aide for an autistic boy. I was just alerted that, while I was assigned to this position last week, apparently somebody else has been promised the position for the last 6 months. If they cannot relocate her, I will be reassigned to another case. Read: my day-to-day working hours will be put on hold while I wait by the phone to hear if I have a new situation to walk into. In this field, you cannot walk from job to job seamlessly. Each new assignment means an entirely new learning curve due to the fact that autism is unique in each person on the spectrum. For instance, I was previously working with a boy whose main impairment was in his social skills while another client is barely verbal. Enough about my job. That’s not what you want to read; it’s also not what I want to write.

The big question is: what am I doing about this situation?

In the beginning, this blog was devoted to frugality & ingenuity. It still will be but it will also take the shape of a self-help page for myself. Writing is a form of therapy for many & it will also be a way for me to organize, regroup, and direct my energy. From now on, I will continue to suggest projects to do for the conscientious frugaler (made up words rule.); I will also suggest ways for the “occasionally & unpredictably employed” citizens to refocus their energy into productive & mildly lucrative areas.

To get my blog flowing again, I’ve brainstormed about what it takes to regroup during frustrating times. The virtues of the occasionally & unpredictably employed lifestyle are:

1. Habits: maintain some sort of schedule.

2. Diligence: follow-up thoroughly on each aspect of your life. (Don’t let things slide through the cracks.)

3. Inspiration: be creative about ways to earn the green stuff.

4. Crafty-ness: be creative about ways to not use the green stuff!

5. Productivity: even if you’re not earning a paycheck, remember that your time is valuable. Spend time in a productive way so you can be energized by your yield.

I’ll spend a blog entry on each of these topics & I am sure there are other virtues that I will come to. What would you add to my list?

Vegetarian cooking will save the world. Or at least your paycheck...

I have been majorly neglectful of the blog. Mainly because I don't have time to manage one and I really should be writing my Religion midterm right now. But I'll let that wait.

Now that I'm back into mainstream technology for the fall (my home doesn't provide the most conducive setting for connecting to the internet but college does!) I might try to update more often. Or I might fail at that as always.

Living in a dorm has its charms. A few of them, at least. Convenient laundry, internet...ok that's all I can come up with for now. I actually am not a fan of dorm life. At all. One substantial reason is that I love to cook. I'm a vegetarian and dining hall food just doesn't supply enough choices to satiate my cravings for a balanced diet. In fact, I've been fantasizing about having a kitchen to such an extent that I've gathered several blogs and websites to share with you. These are my particularly favorite vegetarian websites.

Check them out:

V e g a n D a d is a blog updated frequently by a father who is raising his children vegan. His recipes are quick and not too involved, although a general know-how of cooking will definitely go a long way. The right-hand side of the page offers an index of ingredients so that you can click on an ingredient and go right to a recipe which utilizes or frames that food. On top of all of that, his photos will lure the most ardent meat eaters!

The Hummus Blog: Who doesn't love hummus? Ok, it can definitely get old, but this blog is a interesting look into the world of hummus. It is created by Israeli brothers who know the best hummus first-hand.

The Toby Show: Organic on a Budget is a specific page from a blog called "The Toby Show." The author is a mom living in the midwest. This page is specifically interesting because, even though you've already thought of some of these ways to save money, she gives some other interesting options as well. Explore the rest of the blog-it's a lot of fun!

The Post Punk Kitchen: Vegetarian cooking & vegan baking with no attitude is a vegan website which gives a bit of edge to traditional cooking shows. It's a lot of fun to check up on occasionally even if I don't follow it regularly.

Have you gotten the hint? Go vegetarian!

Ok, I'll back off a bit. It's a personal choice that everyone has to evaualate, but there are a lot of persuasive reasons. Most importantly to me is the detrimental environmental impact I avoid by eating vegetables and legumes. But another excellent reason to become a vegetarian is to save on groceries! Vegetables, fruits and dairy are significantly cheaper than meat and will give you long-lasting energy. I can't praise the diet enough. But if you're not quite willing to retreat from the meat yet, take it one step at a time. If you refrain from eating meat every night, you'll definitely notice that your budget is not so stretched the next time you go to the grocery store.

Buon appetito!