Still here

It's been a long time since I've posted anything here. Since the last post, I've had spinal fusion surgery, a trip to the emergency room for what we thought was a heart attack but turned out to be a gall bladder attack for which I need more surgery, attended a conference in Portland, and finished a semester of grad school.

In short, I've been busy and I have neglected this blog. Sorry.

We are still here. Brian is still unemployed. We have used up all of his severence pay and have nearly depleted our savings. Things are really really tight.

Just last week, I "discovered" -- in quotes because duh, I really should have been paying attention to this! -- that we were still making large payments to our credit cards. We started this last year to pay them down quicker, which was good because we have more room on them now, but not good because that was a large chunk of cash that we could still have to use for things like, oh medical bills, health insurance, tuition, etc. I stopped the extra payments, but do plan to restart them once we get back on our feet.

Added up our medical bills and if insurance had not paid a large chunk of it, my spinal surgery would have cost us over $100,000. As it is, our portion of it comes to something like $8000. Could we have waited and had the surgery later, after we're back to normal? No. My injury was such that time was of the essence; the longer we wait, the more damage to my nerves. We are waiting on the gall bladder surgery as that is not an emergency. Of course, if I have another attack, it will be an emergency, so we are gambling a bit here. Wish us luck.

I have applied for a job at CostCo and plan to apply for other retail positions such as PetCo, PetSmart, etc. While not what I *want* to do, even a minimum wage job will help us at this point. Brian has applied for unemployment insurance and applies for multiple jobs every week. Today he told me that he is branching out into other fields (for example, a photography position). I hope he finds something he likes to do and pays reasonably well!

I am not so worried about the health insurance aspect of whatever job he gets. I've done some research into California's upcoming health insurance exchange as part of the Affordable Care Act and we can get something fairly close to what we have for approximately $300 less per month than we are paying for COBRA now, and with a MUCH lower yearly deductible! We can register in the exchange starting October 1 and coverage begins January 1. This means that Brian has an opportunity now to pursue employment doing something he loves without worrying about the health benefits package of that job. If I can find part-time employment to fill in some gaps, plus ramp up my music business again, then maybe we'll be ok.

I have been trying to be creative in the kitchen. I stocked up on components to use to build meals. For instance, I have cans of tomato paste, chicken stock (more on that later), cream of mushroom soup, diced tomatoes, different kinds of dry pasta, beans, herbs & spices, etc., as well as canned roast beef, salmon, tuna, and chicken. These things can be made into a number of different meals fairly quickly -- which is great because I often forget to plan out a meal and get things thawed out or otherwise ready in time to make dinner. I need to work on the planning thing. *sigh*

Chicken stock -- I buy cans by the case from CostCo, but on those occasions when we have bought a roasted chicken, I have saved the carcass and put it in my crock pot covered with water, plus a half cup of white vinegar, and made my own stock. I use this up first, but if I don't have any on hand -- or all I have is frozen because I forgot to thaw it out, which has happened numerous times -- then I have the canned stuff.

Tonight, I am making rice, etc., in my crock pot. I started with the recipe from "A Year of Slow Cooking"but instead of following it exactly, I doubled the water to 4 cups and used 1 cup of mixed white and brown rice, plus another cup of combined wild rice, pearl barley, and green lentils. I also forgot to butter the inside of my crock; hopefully it'll be ok.

Once this is done, I plan to stir fry the rice mixture with green beans (frozen, thawing now), eggs, and some canned salmon. I'll add some granulated garlic and dried onions, plus rice wine, soy sauce, lemon juice, etc. I'll update this post (hopefully with a picture and everything!) when it's finished to let you know how it turned out!

This weekend we'll be up in the LA area for my music group's retreat. We are working with a handbell friend who also does team building. Should be fun! But I won't have time to post anything, unless it's just a quicky because I've found something worth sharing while there. (Hey, it could happen!)

Meanwhile, have a great weekend!

UPDATE #1: It was yummy! It looks a bit woodgy because I just broke the eggs into the rice mix instead of cooking them separately then adding them, plus the canned salmon is in itty bitty pieces like canned tuna, but it really did taste quite nice. We'll do it again!  I have enough rice mix and green beans left over that on Monday night, I will make green bean casserole with chicken. Yum!


UPDATE #2: Again regarding chicken broth -- a roasted chicken is less than $5 at CostCo, so I don't feel guilty buying one when it's been "one of those days" and I don't feel like cooking. It makes multiple meals, especially once you've made broth from it, and it's yummy. However, a whole frozen or fresh chicken costs even less than the roasted one and I can roast it myself in either the oven or crock pot and then I get the giblets to use for fish food, too. (My fish LOVE frozen pureed chicken livers. They're not too wild about gizzards, though.)


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