#imagine kingsland road

[lizzygrantarchives]

Wonderland, November/December 2011

The “Video Games” singer’s dilapidated, sepia-tinged glamour and heart-melting vocals have made her the talent to watch this year. For all you wannabe internet sensations out there: this is how it’s done.

Lana Del Rey and I are perched on the curb trying to light cigarettes with a novelty lighter shaped like a gold bar. Tiny, encased in a leather biker jacket and skintight jeans, her soft brown curls cascading over her shoulders, she finally beats the breeze with the diminutive flame that pops out the top.

It has been a whirlwind year for the 25-year-old NY native, who has been splitting her time equally between Brooklyn and east London’s Kingsland Road (couch surfing all the way). Like Willow Smith, SuBo and, er, Boo the dog, she has achieved that dubious accolade of “internet sensation” status and is in the process of turning her hit ‘Video Games’ – seemingly everywhere at the moment, from the Christopher Kane show this September to the latest episode of Made In Chelsea – into a proper chart topper.

To be fair, the song does its own PR pretty well. It’s one of those niggling tunes that lodges in your head, both because of its simplicity (the main refrain is just four notes, mirroring the slow march of the backing chords) and a more complex, displaced sense of nostalgia, full of odd contrasts. Lyrics like “I say you the bestest/ Lean in for a big kiss” have a sad, faded coquettishness to them, while the chorus (“It’s you, it’s you, it’s all for you”) blaze with naïve sincerity. Then there’s the repeating full stop of ‘Video Games’ – which seems both weirdly out of place and suitably childlike in the midst of it all.

Del Rey’s heart-stopping voice – think Mazzy Star with Stevie Nicks’ vocal range and Nancy Sinatra’s fragile strength – stands a mile out from the other stuff in the charts. There’s no Auto-Tune or expensive video or banging remix. It’s just Lana, and some harps and a bit of piano, creating a spooky, swirling filmic atmosphere.

I expect her to be like her songs, a bit sad and introspective. She’s not. She’s giggly and full of beans. She jumps up to talk to various other people that walk past, proclaiming her love for them. She flutters her eyelids, which are thick with eyeliner and falsies, and twiddles with the tassels on her purple slippers.

Lana (born Lizzie Grant) started to make music when she was 18. “I was always writing little songs, but nothing I liked then. When I left school I wanted to do music because I thought I was good at it and I wanted to do something that I loved. So my uncle taught me to play guitar and I did these little shows, just me and my guitar, singing and playing the five chords that I knew.”

I mention how that’s quite punk, that Patti Smith famously only knows three chords, and she laughs, “I’ve got two up on you, Patti!” That might not be the only similarity either – Patti famously plugged away until the world sat up and took notice of her. “Yeah, there were so many times when I didn’t think ‘it’ would happen. I just carried on living my life, you know?”

Raised in Lake Placid, upstate New York, Lana listened to Eminem as a kid (“Everyone listened to him, it was the 90s”) until she discovered Bob Dylan, Nirvana and Frank Sinatra, “the masters of all genres. Does their music inspire mine? They inspire me in life and my life inspires my music, so I sort of think they have influenced my music.”

I’m trying to imagine how the Dylan/Cobain/Old Blue Eyes triumvirate permeates her life on a day-to-day basis – her hair is perfect, her face is perfect, she’s not wearing a suit or a holey old sweater: she looks like an escapee from Valley of the Dolls meshed with, as one blogger put it, a blow-up doll version of Natalie Portman.

Maybe it’s in her old-fashioned Hollywood pizzazz that so many aspire to and even more fail at. And this in turn might be the crux of some of the Del Rey backlash that has surfaced online – that her lips are fake and that she originally recorded under her own name. Neither things are new or surprising with many other pop stars, but with Lana it has caused a Marmite reaction.

“Yeah,” she sighs, “my mood changes about it depending on the day. In general, you don’t want anyone to say anything bad about you. I think when anything gets popular quickly there is always scepticism, but I don’t think that’s grounds for being rude or cruel. I’m sure it wouldn’t have happened if I were a man. I personally don’t believe in expressing a negative opinion, just because I’m not interested in it. Life is so short in general – the more negative energy you put into the world is just time-wasting.” She takes a long draw on her cigarette and adds, fixedly, “What other people think of me is none of my business, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt my feelings.”

The dilapidated glamour of Del Rey’s aesthetics is part of the reason we love her. Her DIY videos, made with her sister holding the laptop to film her, and spliced in with old clips from YouTube, are part of what has gotten her to this point. No marketing man or video director could have faked the naivety and enthusiasm she’s poured into them.

“Yeah,” she bursts, “I’ve made all the videos so far – it’s expensive and I had no budget to ask anyone else. I think when you really want to make your own world around you, you just do what you can with what you have. And I didn’t have that much. Building my visual world was something that I transitioned to because I had done everything I wanted to do sonically – I’d finished my first record and I needed to get the pictures around it and, again, I was just guided by my own intuition, for whatever that was worth.”

We shoot the breeze for a while, talking about boarding school (she went, she was an outsider, although she wouldn’t want to put it like that), stylists (she has one, it’s more of a gay-best-friend-who-helps-her-find-the-right-frock-for-events scenario), where to get the best manicures (she has huge acrylic nails) and where she’d like to call home (“New York. Or Paris. I don’t know.”).

Listening to Del Rey’s music, it seems incongruous that someone so chirpy could make such sad songs. “I’ve been happy and sad; I’m not sad anymore. It doesn’t have anything to do with the music; it has to do with enjoying life, on life’s terms, and finding peace with yourself. I’ve been happy for a real long time – seven or eight years.” Is she happy because she makes the music she wants to? “Yeah,” she beams before saying, dogmatically, that she believes “it’s important to walk along a path towards something that makes you happy career-wise. And if you’re not happy, you can’t tell yourself that you are.”

Has having four million hits and counting on ‘Video Games’ made her happy? “I am happy with the way things are,” she says, “but I was happy with the way things were. I could be doing anything but I am doing what I love, and not doing things I hate.” There must be parts she doesn’t favour? She grins. “When I thought it was never going to happen, I stopped doing it and just lived my life. I haven’t been on stage for two years… so I’m not too sure how that is going to work – I’m not a natural exhibitionist.”

This much was evident during Del Rey’s recent appearance on Later… With Jools Holland. Dressed all in white, with huge hoop earrings, she shuffled uneasily from side to side, her eyes cast down and her voice perhaps even more fragile than usual. But somehow it ended up being all part of the charm – the rapt silence in the room was palpable.

She lights another cigarette and stirs at the gravel with her toe, hands neatly folded in her lap. What will happen next to the girl who reminded us that pop can be crafted and beautiful, whose favourite records are Lil’ Wayne and the American Beauty soundtrack? Whose big hit that was made at home on her laptop went viral quicker than you can say “Bieber”? “This afternoon I’m off to work with Bobby Womack,” she laughs. So, she’s right. There’s something to be said for gentle persistence.

Originally published in the November/December 2011 issue of Wonderland with the headline Miss November.

[a-libra-writes]

OH SPEAKING OF BOBBY B WOULD YOU EVER WRITE HCS FOR BEING LIKE HIS DAUGHTER/LIKE JOFF’S TWIN OR SMTH AND ROBERT ACTUALLY LIKING YOU

-🐚🌌

i miss my dad so i guess thats why im doing these specific requests LOL

So, imagine the first child between Cersei and Robert. The one that survived a sickly cradle, against all odds. The one with hair that was unmistakably black, not gold. The one Cersei couldn't stand the moment every time she laid eyes on her in the crib, because of all her negative and hurt feelings toward Robert. This is back when she was still a teenager, and her fantasies about the brave Baratheon that toppled the Mad King turned to smoke and mirrors.

Needless to say... over the years, she'd take out a lot of her frustration on this kid.

Robert likes that the child laughs and runs and smiles. He's far too indulgent, allowing her to sit on his knee during tourneys even if Cersei finds them too violent. He has extravagant gifts for her, anywhere from expensive dolls made of silk or a whole pony. He'd even take her on hunting expeditions - even if his Kingsguard protested - showing her how to use a bow and boarspear, even if she's far, far too young and small to handle such weapons.

When Joffrey is born, Robert struggles to bond with him the same way. Joff doesn't laugh easily like his daughter did, instead he cries and screams all the time. Cersei protectively keeps him away, claiming Robert distresses the boy. In truth, she prefers Joff right away, because he's a boy, and a son of Jaime besides ... ... and deep down, she's always been hurt how her daughter seems to prefer Robert.

The more the girl grows up to be like him, the more Robert prefers her. If she's outgoing and laughs easily, he'd much rather spend time with her than a fussy Joffrey. If she's active and healthy, he'll want to teach her how to ride. He'd allow lessons with swords and spears if she begged enough, though Cersei would absolutely forbid it.

As the child gets older, she'd begin to notice her father breaking promises. Sometimes he smells too much like drink, and he loses his temper and yells at her mother. Her mother yells at him, yells at her. She can't seem to get her mother's favor, no matter how nicely she dresses or speaks.

Her grandfather Tywin is cold, distant and scary, and she knows her father dislikes him, so she hates coming to Casterly Rock. Uncle Jaime is strangely distant too, but at least Uncle Tyrion is kind and plays with her. He gives her books and encourages her to read to Myrcella and Tommen, and look after them. Uncle Stannis is a bit strict, but once he showed her all the ships on the harbor, and she always remembered that. Uncle Renly was almost as funny as her father, and always smelled better.

To Cersei, Robert's favor to their first child is beyond irksome. He should be favoring his first son, his heir! He's a little indulgent with Myrcella, and doesn't think too much about Tommen. She'll begin to criticize and pick at her eldest daughter, trying to cut down on traits that are too much like her father.

She'll quickly think of marriage, not caring that her daughter hasn't even had her first moonblood yet, not remembering how panicked and angry she was at her own father's plans to marry her quickly. She doesn't want Ned's oldest marrying her daughter, as much as Robert wants that match. In her anger, she almost wants to punish her husband and oldest daughter for having the gall to be so similar. She wants a match that will upset them.

If the girl was more tomboyish and fond of fighting, she'd win the argument to learn swords. It would be a huge wedge between Cersei and Robert, one of their big fights, but she'd learn. And she'd be good at it. If she was more ladylike and interested in the court, she'd begin to find her father's mistakes and cover for them at too young of an age. Lord Arryn would try to shield her from it, but, well ...

No matter what, by the time she's thirteen or fourteen, her idyllic image of her heroic, strong father would begin to tarnish. She'd see the drinking, the whores, the expensive feasts, the explosive fights with her mother. She'd notice the cruel tendencies in Joffrey, and would try to shield Myrcella and Tommen from not just him, but the rumors surrounding their father. She'd want them to stay sweet and good. She tried with Joffrey, but he never liked her. He was clearly Cersei's favorite, while she was clearly Robert's, and that meant they were tools during their parent's arguments.

She'd have no end of handmaidens from various wealthy kingslander families, and the loyal Kingsguard that were fond of her, and whatever pets she desired. She might still feel lonely in the Red Keep, and escape to the vast gardens to hide from her parent's fighting over who she'll marry. The feasts and parties were fun, but sometimes too tiring, and it seemed every knight and lord's son wanted to fight in her honor or be the first to dance with her.

And she'd start to notice that Lord Arryn and Uncle Stannis were asking her odd questions, or observing her as she played with her youngest siblings. She didn't hear them muttering about her black hair or loud laugh.

She'd have a lot on her plate, and a lot of pressure to work under. When Jon Arryn died and her father announced they were going North, a place she'd never been, to meet a man she'd heard so many stories about but never met... Well, it was an exciting adventure and a distraction. She even got to take her youngest siblings, and her father would let her ride with him if the road was safe. He even bought her a new, fine horse for the long journey.

He always told her war stories, but when he talked about these, he finally seemed happy. His blue eyes twinkled as he talked about the mischief he got up to in the Eyrie with his best friend Ned, who was more brother than his own brothers. He'd tell her about Winterfell, and how she might be the Lady of it someday.

"It only seems right to join our houses," Her father was saying. He didn't bother wearing the crown on this ride, and he was dressed in comfort instead of style. "It's what I've always wanted, but... I'll make sure that son of his is deserving of my girl. You're the Princess of the Seven Kingdoms! We'll have to have a talk with this wolf-boy of Ned's. We'll see if he's up to your standards."

Robert laughed, and it was hard not to smile. He meant it, she knew. He really did want what was best, and he'd been delaying marrying her away to whoever asked. She had cautious optimism when it came to her father's promises, but for now... it was a beautiful day, and they were having a nice ride.

[mentallyinwalmart]

There Is Nothing To Forgive a Braime soulmates one shot

This fic is a twist on the “shared dreams” soulmate trope, where, in my version, the God’s let your soulmate appear in dreams.

Jaime Lannister had never been good with words. All his life they had evaded him, from the time when he was a child and he couldn’t read without a heafty struggle, to his adolescence when he’d attempt to express to Cersei his feelings.

She didn’t care of course. She didn’t want his love, his admiration, and she didn’t care about his words, or lack thereof. All she wanted was his body and the pleasure it could bring her, all she sought was the security of knowing he was hers, under her spell, forever.

So the appearance of anyone speaking to him in dreams was odd. He was visual, and his dreams often came as a bombardment of images, some cruel, some lovely, all powerful, without a word to be gleaned from any of them.

But this night was different.

The dream was simple really, he was there, in the throne room, watching from above like a raven in the rafters, Aerys on the throne, his own white cloak shining. He watched as the mad king laughed, and he could hear the innocent scream as the king shook with wicked, mad laughter. He tightened the grip on his hilt and stepped closer. He could not hear what Aerys was saying, nor could he hear any other words, but he could smell the sickly chemical scent of wildfire and could feel the heat that would surely come from it.

He watched his own hands shake as he took another step up behind the king, all the fear he had felt in that moment evident on his terrified face.

But suddenly, he was not alone as he raised the sword to strike true. A girl, tall and strong, with long blonde hair hanging down her back. She was younger than him, but her eyes glowed like saphires and as she pressed herself against him, she took his hand on the swords hilt in her own, wrapping a warm hand around his, and helping guide the blade.

I understand. Her words materialized in his mind, and she smiled sadly before helping him guide the word into its sheath through Aery’s back.

Forgive me. Never before had he spoken in a dream. Nor had he cared to.

There is nothing to forgive.

She faded before he could get a true glimpse at her face, leaving him alone to claw at the air, before waking bolt upright, alone in the summer night.

—

Actions spoke louder than words, and yet words were what Brienne put stock in. Honor was her pillar of principle, and she believed in any man’s word as she expected them to do in hers.

And so, when a young man’s begging voice pierced the foggy clouds of her dreams one night, begging for help, for forgiveness, and justifying why he killed.

For the innocent. For those he would slaughter. Because if I do not do it, who can?

She felt a strange sense of longing for that voice, for the man who must wield its mighty tone. She let herself drift towards it, it’s words becoming more and more earnest, panicked, even.

Please, mother, father, someone, guide me.

She searched the crevasses of her dream for its source, but as always found no images, only fragments of words. But then, just as she was about to give up, he appeared.

Forgive me.

The boy was behind the mad king, drawing his sword, tears gathered in his eyes. And suddenly, Brienne was there too. One look at the boy and she knew what he needed. She wrapped her hand around his, and pressed herself gently beside him, taking on the burden of the blade and the sentence it was about to deal. She knew how this story would end.

The sword pierced.

There is nothing to forgive.

All was warm and light was everywhere for a moment, and then it became too much and she awoke, sweating and panting in the summer night air.

Soul dreams are a thing of the distant past. I am no fool. She repeated the sentiment over and over, across years as she travelled lands and seas, and came to the service of Renly Baratheon. Finally, she had stopped thinking about the boy, the Kingslayer, with whom she had shared a dream unlike any other.

Until the night she dreamt of the shadow.

Though she could not see it, she could feel the cool air sweep through the tent, and could feel the hair on her arms stand up. She felt her heart hammer in her chest, and her blood run frozen.

No. No. Please no. Do not make me watch this again.

Renly was dead a week, and yet she could not sleep without watching it play out, over and over again. Perhaps I am the Kingslayer.

You are not.

Suddenly she could see again, and there he was. Older now, but without mistake: Jaime Lannister.

It takes one to know one, and it is not you.

It was his phantom turn to come closer, to warm her against the chill.

How can I ever forgive myself? She wept as Renly before her died once again, and her heart felt as if it were frozen to ice.

There is nothing to forgive.

Her heart beat fast and she turned to see his face.

But he was gone. And she left alone in her bedroll in Catelyn Starks tent.

—

There is nothing to forgive.

Jaime repeated the words his golden haired maiden had once offered him so many years ago. He prayed it would bring her the same solace it brought him.

He had heard of soul dreams, of the most ancient and purest loves, ones which the gods themselves were invested in. Ones for whom the soul was so tightly bound that they could, when direly necessary, appear in dreams.

But he didn’t believe it. Rather, he believed that as comfort had been offered to him, so would he offer it. For some reason. He couldn’t quite place why, but something had compelled him to speak to her, to comfort her, despite not even knowing if she was real, or just a figment of his imagination.

He thought about it a lot on the road to Kingslanding, as him and Brienne walked in silence. There was something in the way she looked at him, this odd familiarity, overshadowed by anger and confusion. It made him wonder a great deal about what she knew of him. It was not an expression he was used to being on the receiving end of.

—

To Brienne’s chagrin, Jaime did not appear in her dreams after the night he lost his hand. Despite the fact that she so sincerely blamed herself for it.

But as they stared at one another at the bathhouse, and he suddenly, inexplicably began to speak, something in her chest thrummed.

“I know, Ser Jaime.” She said, before he had fully begun the explanation of why he killed Aerys. “You did it for the people, for the innocents. If you didn’t, who could?”

His face went slack and his jaw hung loose, eyes fixed on hers as they simultaneously put the pieces together. In unison they spoke their next words carefully.

“There is nothing forgive.”

~~~~~

Thank you so much for reading!!!! I am so happy to be back, and I hope to write a lot more in the coming weeks. Pleaaaaaaaaase send me any suggestions or promps you might have, or if you’d like to see more continuations of any of my work lmk!!!! As always, PM me if you want to be added or removed from the tag list :) Love you all xx, Bea

Tag list: @b00kworm @sassbewitchedmyass @onlyjaimebrienne @nashilena @oathbreaker-oathkeeper @averageinside @itsclaucueva @briennexofxtarth @slytherinoftarth @ladyem-fandom @afittingdistraction @ben-roll-io @marasjadesfire @paceofbase @hotarukuro

[tacitwhisky]

Jon of the Kingsguard, pt 9

Jon x Sansa - AU where Jon goes to Kingslanding instead of the Wall, there’s no war, and he becomes a knight of the kingsguard even as Joffrey marries Sansa / AO3 Link

It is easy enough for Jon to slip his white cloak. In the dawn bustle of the Red Keep a single man in a simple traveler’s brown cloak goes unnoticed, just another poor knight or squire hoping for a lord’s favor. Even if one of the servants recognize him Jon knows it will mean little to them, think merely that his white armor is being cleaned. It is stranger for Jon. Strange to stride the halls of the Red Keep without the weight of the armor he has worn every day for years. A cage he’s thought of it as for so long, but now free of its weight he feels naked.

Though he knew he shouldn’t tarry, Jon had lingered in his chamber in the pre-dawn dark looking down at where he’d laid out his white armor the night before. He’d run his fingers over the white enamel, tracing the scrollwork of the edges, rubbing his thumb over every dent and scratch he knows better than his own skin. For so long since coming south knighthood was all he’d dreamed of: a way to slip his bastard name, a way to prove false the whispers that have followed him all his life. What good was a knight who could not keep his vows? Simple the answer had always seemed to Jon, but he no longer knows, knows only that after today there would be no escaping his name, no escaping the whispers. What he does today will strip every scrap of honor from his name. Will prove right all those that sneered that the bastard could not be trusted.

Let it then. Jon clenches his jaw as he reaches the gate of the Red Keep. Only then does he pause, heart in his throat as he looks back at the high walls rising above him. He shades his eyes against the rising sun already beginning to paint the sky in splashes of orange and red, tries to seek out the tower of the queen, the window from which he’s seen Sansa stare out of a hundred times as the wind lifts her red hair.

Come back. Come back to me, Jon.

I will, Jon promises silently, and as he turns to leave the Red Keep, the beat of his heart loud in his ears, he hopes that of all his vows this one he will not betray.

---

A Tyroshi galley takes him across the Narrow Sea, a week of rolling waves and fickle squalls that keep Jon below deck much of the time, stomach roiling as the galley tosses to and fro. A few of the other passengers empty their stomachs until all the galley smells of vomit, but Jon clenches his jaw, refusing to join them. What kind of knight of the Kingsguard loses his stomach over a few waves, he thinks grimly, teeth clenched so tight he half expects them to crack, but he knows the answer. One who’s turned his cloak, one who’s betrayed his vows.

“Volantis?” The Tyroshi captain had snorted days before as they stood on the quay of Kingslanding and Jon asked him which of the ships at dock could take him there. “No ship sails there. The dragon whore has set her sights on it, determined on striking the chains from their slaves and washing the black city in dragonflame.”

The captain had leaned back and shouted something in low valyrian at one of his crew before turning back to Jon. “For a gold dragon you may come to Tyrosh with us, and from there find another ship to Lys. Perhaps one of their captains is foolish enough to sail for Volantis.” He’d given Jon a brusque look up and down. “But if pirates find us off the stepstones you fight, yes?”

Jon had nodded silently, and though he would have prefered it to the rains that rocked their ship and sent his stomach roiling, they meet not a single pirate before reaching Tyrosh late in the day. He finds an inn off the dock and sits in the corner of the common room as the light dies, listens to the idle chatter of the other westerosi, ears straining for any mention of a turncloak knight of the kingsguard, but he hears nothing. Word travels slow, he tells himself, but draws no peace from the thought. Slow or swift, the news will come. News of a knight of the Kingsguard. News of a knight who’s broken his vows and sullied his cloak.

And late that night, as sleep escapes Jon and he tosses and turns on the hard cot all a bronze groat could buy him, all the thoughts and worries he’d shoved down in the creaking hull of the Tyroshi galley seep to the surface. Will Joffrey’s temper flare in a fresh set of bruises across Sansa’s arms at word of Jon’s escape? You left her at his mercy, a voice in him hisses. You abandoned her when she needed you most.

I had to, Jon tries to convince himself, it was the only way. But it does nothing to settle him, nothing to ease the shame in the pit of his stomach.

Hours Jon tosses and turns. Only as his thoughts drift to Sansa does he find sleep: the sweet girl in a slim blue dress she’d been in Winterfell, the way even back then she pursed her lips at her embroidery when it wasn’t perfect, the deftness of her fingers with a needle, the touch of her hands in his, the quirk of her lips in a teasing smile, the feel of her warm in his arms, the tickle of her breath against his ear as she whispered come back to me.

---

From Tyrosh Jon sails to Lys, but no captains there is willing to set sail for Volantis, and so he is forced to travel eastward by land, the hooves of his horse clattering against the smooth black stone of a Valyrian road as he passes hills and fields and ancient crumbled stone sphinxes.

Three weeks he is on the road, and on the dawning of the fourth he catches sight of Volantis in the distance. Jon draws his horse to a stop as he reaches the top of a crest and looks down on Old Volantis, first daughter of Valyria, a city so huge it could swallow Kingslanding five times over.

It sprawls across the mouth of mother Rhoyne like a warm wet kiss, a massive bridge of fused black stone spanning the river to connect the two halves of the city like a stitch trying to draw closed a rotting wound. On the far side of the river, out of a labyrinth of alleys and temples and merchant houses rises a high a round wall of the same fused black stone as the bridge. The Black Walls, Jon had heard the Lyseni call them, the walls that enclosed those slavers of the most ancient blood. Thin tendrils of sullen smoke rise like grey fingers from within it.

And above the smoke circle three dragons.

Despite the cloying humidity a shiver runs down Jon’s spine. Somehow, he realizes distantly, he’d never thought that part of the rumors true. In the bowels of the Red Keep he’s glimpsed once the skulls of the Targaryen dragons of old, but it is one thing to see the bones of a beast long dead and another to see it alive and soaring, scales flashing and wings spread, fire and grace made flesh.

One of the dragons splits from its brothers as Jon watches. It coasts over the city, wings flapping lazily, it’s shadow flitting across the streets and courtyards and alleys below, and Jon can only imagine what it must be to stand under it as it does, to feel such an impossibly huge shape rush overhead. Over the mouth of mother Rhoyne the dragon flies, scales catching the morning light and setting them alight with pale flame.

And suddenly, with a certainty deep in some part of all he is, Jon knows the dragon is flying towards him.

His horse whickers and rears as the dragon nears, and Jon jumps down from the saddle as it rushes overhead, wind buffeting the branches of nearby trees to and fro as though in a gale, Jon nearly losing his feet. He barely notices his horse galloping away, too caught in watching as the dragon wheels in a wide circle and alights on the grass only yards before Jon. It is the palest of the three beasts that circled the city, white and serpentine, and its yellow eyes shine like discs of beaten gold as they fix on Jon.

A strange calm fills Jon as the dragon stalks forward on its wings like an enormous pale bat. He doesn’t turn away, doesn’t run, doesn’t flinch as the dragon circles him slowly, the heat of its breath even from feet away searing as that of a forge. He turns to follow it as it circles him, studying the dragon as it studies him: the white of its scales, the lash of its tail, the tilt of its golden eyes. Distantly, he wonders what Sansa would think of it.

The dragon comes to a stop, and Jon with it. Its lips pull back from its teeth in a silent snarl, fangs long as Jon’s forearm catching the light as it hisses , the sound a physical thing that slits Jon’s ears and pulls at his skin. He doesn’t flinch. Slowly, carefully, eyes on its gold one, he raises hand and touches the tip of its nostrils. White scales rasp beneath his fingertips. White as snow. White as Ghost. White as the cloak he once wore.

“He likes you.” A voice says from afar. “It’s rare for my children to come across a man they like.”

The dragon’s gold eyes blink, and only then does Jon glance away and up to the voice. So intent upon the pale dragon he never noticed the two others alighting on the field beside it, one black and one green. Astride the back of the black one sits a delicately built silver haired woman, a half dozen bells braided into the shining fall of her hair, eyes dark and violet and curious. Jon lets his still outstretched hand fall to his side as the pale dragon whips away to snap and hiss at the green one. “You’re Daenerys Targaryen,” he says, tilting his head back to look up at her. “The one they call Stormborn. The one they call Mother of Dragons.”

The woman regards him curiously. “And you are?”

“Jon.” Come back to me. “Jon Snow.”

---

“And if it is as you say?” The dragon queen asks coldly hours later as Jon stands before in the long hall of a Volantene palace. Though slim and delicate she is no less regal upon her throne then she was dragonback: a barbarian kind of queen though she seems to Jon flanked as she is by jackal eyed sellswords and Dothraki screamers and bronze clad eunuchs, a white lion cloak over one shoulder and a circle of dark Valyrian steel crowning her head. “If you are who you say you are then your father betrayed mine and plotted the murder of my good sister and her children in their beds. Why would I trust you?”

“Your father gave my uncle and grandfather to the flames and laughed at their screams as they were cooked alive.” Around Jon the mercenaries and Dothraki shuffle and mutter, and his fingers tingle for the hilt of the sword he gave up to the eunuchs when he entered their camp. But one sword against a hundred thousand Dothraki screamers will mean nothing, so he stills his fingers and doesn’t take his eyes from Daenery, only cocks his head to the side. “But that does not mean we must need be enemies.”

The dragon queen regards him flatly, violet eyes impossible to read. One of her Dothraki steps forward, hand resting on the pommel of his curved sickle sword. “Blood of my blood, let me take this one’s head. It is known no traitor may be trusted.”

“It is known,” intones another of the Dothraki.

“A waste of flesh.” One of the sellswords leaning against the wall grins, finger idly curling his blue mustachio as he does. “Give him to your dragons, my queen.”

Daenerys holds up a slim hand, and both Dothraki and mercenary fall silent. Her violet eyes move over Jon coolly. “Tell me, why should I not listen to my advisors? Why should I spare a bastard and turncloak?”

Still a bastard, even here half a world away. “Because I know his plans. Aegon the Conqueror united the seven kingdoms with only three dragons, but not without roasting thousands on the battlefield. I can offer you another way. A way to unseat Joffrey quickly and bloodlessly and make you loved by all Westeros for it.”

Daenerys tilts her head to the side. “And what could this king have done to make you betray him?”

“He struck my sister.”

Daenerys arches a silver eyebrow as off to the side one of the sellswords barks a laugh. “That’s all?”

“Every night.” It cuts Jon to lay naked and bare Sansa’s pain here before these barbarians and sellswords who have no right to it, but he knows this is the only way, knows that Daenerys must believe him beyond the shadow of any doubt. “Every night Joffrey graces her with the bruises of a royal temper. You ask why I would betray him? That is why. He is a vain, cruel child and unfit for the throne.”

Jon sweeps his gaze at the court around him, the screamers and sellswords and eunuchs, a long, cool look that refuses to flinch an inch. All the hate and helpless anger he’s pushed down deep inside him for so long he lets seep into his gaze, turns it cold and savage. Bastard. Faithless. Traitor. The words are old dull bruises, but Jon no longer feels them, no longer cares who spits them at him. I did not leave you Sansa defenseless before a monster to be cowed by sellwords and barbarians.

He turns his gaze back to the dragon queen. Call me what you will. I may be a bastard, and I may be faithless, but not in this. Not to you, Sansa. “I do not know if you are a better queen than Joffrey. I pray you are, but you cannot be worse. And if after I help you unseat him you see fit to take my head or send me to the Wall or feed me to your dragons then so be it. If that is the price I must pay to see Joffrey off the throne and my sister safe then I will gladly pay it a hundred times over.”

For a long time Daenerys is silent, violet eyes studying him, the Dothraki by her side shifting their weight while the eunuchs stand still as though carved from stone in their bronze armor. “The dragon must have three heads,” she says finally. “Aegon had his sister-wives to ride beside him, but I am only a young girl and have no husbands or sisters or wives. Many of my Dothraki and sellswords have tried to mount Rhaegal and Viserion and each has been met by dragonflame. Never once have my children accepted so much as the touch Viserion did yours. You wish to keep your life, son of Eddard Stark? Mount Viserion. If he does not toss you from his back then you may ride with me to unseat this king you hate.”

[katieprattartist]

Final week coming up Autumn Attic at @flowersgallery Kingsland Road 12 August - 18 September 2021 1. From left @jason_gubbiotti @demondawson @tonydaleyart @suzybabington 2. #suzybabington detail of 403 Forbidden. This exhibition, guest curated by artist Katie Pratt, brings together the works of nine artists using distinct modes of artistic enquiry to explore the alchemical shift between intention and outcome. The techniques employed in Autumn Attic range from improvisational gestures to algorithmic strategies, incorporating chance, imagination, process and error. The attic referred to in the exhibition title is a metaphor for the part of the artistic and imaginative psyche where latent ideas are given space to evolve. Exhibiting artists include Suzy Babington, Adam Gillam, Ian Dawson, Prunella Clough, Bernard Cohen, Anthony Daley, Jason Gubbiotti, Katie Pratt and Katie Trick. @matthew_flowers #flowersgallery @adamgillam #adamgillam #iandawson #prunellaclough #bernardcohen #tonydaley #anthonydaley #jasongubbiotti #katiepratt @katie.trick #katietrick #contemporaryart #contemporaryartgallery #londonart #exhibition #artexhibition #abstraction #abstractart #contemporaryabstraction #contemporaryabstractart #londongalleries #londongallery https://www.instagram.com/p/CTo0k_2sCIF/?utm_medium=tumblr

[meaty-matticus]

RULES: We’re snooping on your playlist. Set your entire music library on shuffle and report the first 10 songs that pop up. Then choose 10 victims.

Tiësto - Secrets

Kingsland Road - Dirty Dancer

AWOLNATION - Guilty Filthy Soul

Somo - Make Up Sex

Snakehips - All My Friends

Lily Elise - Taken

Imagine Dragons - It’s Time

Gotye - State Of The Art

Marina And The Diamonds - Girls

K.I.D - Wish I Was Your Cigarette

Tagged by: @ghoullist Tagging: hh everyone i know has already been tagged ;w;

[readonline]

https://nyti.ms/3r9diMp 17, 2020 at 09:09PM

Modern Love

Auditioning for the Role of Boyfriend

When you have been strung along and ghosted by guys who play it cool, how do you handle a man who is adoring and sincere?

Credit...Brian Rea

By Amre Klimchak

It was nearly midnight by the time I reached Erica’s backyard party, after going to a concert in Prospect Park and taking a long subway ride to Williamsburg. Honestly, I was proud that I had managed to drag myself out at all.

I had been in the habit of canceling plans, too depressed to leave my apartment. My career had stalled. I’d just extricated myself from a long entanglement with an emotionally unavailable man. And my father had recently died from cancer only three months after his diagnosis.

The beers I had downed at the show were giving way to a gnawing hunger. Before me, on a dessert table, lay a sumptuous chocolate cake, but I couldn’t find any forks.

I turned to the guy next to me: “Do you know where the utensils are?” (I was ready to eat with my hands.)

He produced a plastic spoon. “No, but you can use mine if you want.”

“You don’t have any diseases or anything?”

“Nope.”

He seemed harmless and kind, so I grabbed the spoon, served myself a slice and walked away, shoveling mouthfuls.

Later, as I was leaving, I bumped into him again, and — no longer blinded by my appetite — I felt as if I were seeing him for the first time. Tan and handsome, he looked to be just shy of 30.

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“I’m James,” he said. “How do you know Erica?”

“We work together,” I said. “I’m an audiobook producer, at least for now. I’m quitting soon.”

“Why?”

“I’m going to drive across the country with my dog, Reine.”

“Like ‘Travels With Charley,’” he said, referencing the famous Steinbeck book that I owned but hadn’t read. He was focused squarely on me, undistracted and earnest in a way I hadn’t experienced since moving to New York from Atlanta four years earlier.

“Maybe it’ll be like that,” I said. “I haven’t read it though.”

“Where are you going?”

“Everywhere. I have friends all over and family in the South, and eventually I’ll get to the West Coast.”

“I’m from Arkansas,” he said. “If you go through Little Rock, you can stay with my mom.”

I thought he might genuinely mean it. Southerners are known for their hospitality, after all. “That’d be great,” I said. “We’ll see.” I wasn’t sure how seriously to take him. “Well, I have to go now.”

“Have a good time on your trip!” He smiled, gazing at me intently.

Was he flirting? Most of my romantic prospects in New York had cultivated an air of disinterest, always scanning the room for better possibilities. I would connect with men only to have them ghost me. Assuming he was no different, I said, coolly, “Thanks, nice to meet you,” and sauntered off.

After Erica’s party, I thought about James but let go of the idea of him until a few days later, when Erica called me.

“My friend, James, is into you,” she said. “He said you made him ‘weak in the knees.’”

My heart somersaulted. “The one with the light-brown hair and great smile?”

“Yeah. He’s 23, but you’d never know.”

I gulped. I’d thought we were closer in age. “Never mind then,” I said. “I can’t date someone that young. Besides, he’ll lose interest when he finds out I’m 36.”

“He won’t care! I’ve known James for years. He’s an old soul. You should have a drink with him. Come on.”

For the past year I had rejected new romantic possibilities as I pursued my commitment-phobe. Now I was ready to move on.

“OK,” I said. I was nervous, but my father’s death had upended my life, bringing new urgency to changes I longed for.

“Fantastic! I’ll do an email introduction.”

Over the next hour, until I received her email, I checked my inbox approximately 316 times.

“James, meet Amre. Amre, meet James. Bye!”

This was all the encouragement James needed. He emailed right away with the subject line “Travels With Charley,” asking if I was free for a drink that weekend. He was following the basic recipe for successfully asking someone out: show clear interest and make a straightforward request. It sounds simple, but after a year of chasing a man who never once did that, I found James’s frankness to be an unexpected delight.

I told him I was available Sunday night. He promised to call that day to firm up plans. I was equal parts thrilled and terrified.

At 9 p.m. Sunday, I waited for James outside of one of my favorite Williamsburg beer bars, its outdoor garden perfect for a first date on a late summer night. He soon arrived, and we embraced. A sense of familiarity washed over me, as if we had done this before.

We sat outside under a bright moon as he asked about my road trip.

“My father passed away, and that’s why I’m going,” I said. There I was, being vulnerable with ease.

“I’m really sorry about your dad,” he said. “You’re brave to go by yourself with just your dog.”

“Thanks,” I said, blushing. “I don’t feel brave.”

Our voices floated along a light breeze as we confided our aspirations. James was an excellent listener and gifted storyteller. He had moved to New York on a Greyhound bus, which was the deciding factor in his current boss, a TV producer, hiring him. She thought he had more spunk than all the wealthy private-college grads who had applied. His ambition was to direct his own films, and I could see he was hard-working, driven and resourceful. I sensed myself falling.

At the evening’s end, he said, “Can I walk you home?”

When we arrived at my building on Kingsland Avenue, we stood at the bottom of the stairs, gazing into each other’s eyes. I was lightheaded with anticipation.

“I had such a good time tonight,” he said. “I have a crush on you, and I’d like to take you out again.”

“I’d love to.” I turned my face to meet his lips in a long kiss under the moonlight.

About two minutes after our date ended, I started to obsess. I couldn’t help it.

The next morning at work, my mind kept drifting toward our possible future together. Since he knew I was leaving in several weeks, did he see me as a pleasant diversion? Should I even bother to bring up the matter of our age difference? Would that ruin everything?

Over the next few weeks, the relationship blossomed. We watched “Pierrot le Fou,” ate vegetarian food and listened to soul music. We decided at midnight one evening to drive to Coney Island and drink wine on a blanket under the stars. I wasn’t afraid to tell him he was a frequent visitor to my dreams. He assured me he’d been dreaming of me too. Our gap in age seemed unimportant, but we still hadn’t discussed it.

After Labor Day, I worked up the courage to ask what had been simmering in my brain for weeks: “I think I know the answer to this, but are you seeing anyone else?”

“I can’t imagine wanting to see anyone else.” His guilelessness melted my anxiety.

I told him about the guy who had kept me hanging as he saw other women, worried that I was exposing too much about my past relationships.

“Well, I was seeing about nine people,” he said, “but I managed to squeeze out the other eight for you.”

We laughed, my fears vanishing.

A week later, we were circling the McCarren Park track with Reine when I asked James if he wanted to meet me on my road trip.

His response meandered as he found his way to the point: “I don’t know if you’re looking for a boyfriend, but if you are, I’m auditioning for the part.”

I was stunned. I had not had any romantic interest ask to be my boyfriend since I was in junior high. It was such a refreshing change from the ambiguity I’d suffered through with all of the men I’d been attracted to in New York.

A week before I left, James was helping me pack one evening when I finally decided I needed to reveal my age and see how he reacted. “I have to tell you something,” I said. “I’m 36.”

“Are you sure you’re not lying?” he said, teasing.

“Why would I lie?” I said.

“But you’re just so good looking.”

I thought he was joking and started to laugh, but he looked hurt.

“It’s not a joke,” he said. “I’m serious.”

As it turned out, James had discovered my age through an old online profile. He had known all along.

Four and a half years later, we were walking around the McCarren Park track when he stopped and said, “I don’t know if you’re looking for a husband, but if you are, I’m auditioning for the part.”

And now we call McCarren Park “Marriage Park.”

Amre Klimchak teaches and advises at CUNY’s LaGuardia Community College.

Modern Love can be reached at modernlove@nytimes.com.

To find previous Modern Love essays, Tiny Love Stories and podcast episodes, visit our archive.

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From Modern Love

[adtwixt]

Adtwixt - News: August Diary: Promises I'm Making Myself

Regular news updates from Adtwixt Saturday:  It's late in Shabat, just two hours more to have the full extent of the day of rest.  Today began early.  I stepped out on the porch to feed the pets and looked at the sun rising and sang "Shema".   That I remember the Hebrew after all these years away from synagogue, that these words come easily still at the sight of daybreak, astounds me: Shema, Israel, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai echad. Hear O Israel, the Lord is our G-d, the Lord is One... It was a hurry up sort of morning, but the wonder of God was  there on the front porch this morning.  I felt reverent as I went about the rest of my morning preparations. Katie and I went to pick up Taylor.  Over the hills and through the woods and past meadows shining in the golden morning light and alongside fields of freshly mown hay with bales scattered here and there.  Over creeks flowing over rocks and rivers slowly moving along sandy beds.  And everywhere the golden rod standing high, the mallow stems heavy with buds, foxtail grass dancing in the air currents, and trees with autumn hues already tinging the leaves scattered amongst the pines.   My heart ached and swelled as each new sight came into view, singing a song of both joy and grief, as I see the signs of one season passing into another.  I have learned to find something lovely and beautiful in every season of the year rather than claim just one as my favorite.  And so I must grieve the loss of one and rejoice in the other. Bonus of this road trip today was being in near proximity to a well known peach shed which blissfully was packed with traffic, a sure sign they had peaches still.  I passed a little tent with a table laden with little yellow squash and red ripe tomatoes.  My mouth watered.   On our way back to the house, when time was not quite the premium thing it was on the trip up,  I stopped and bought a big basket of peaches. I didn't even ask the price.  I got heavy red ripe tomatoes big enough to fill my hand.  I filled a sack with tender little yellow summer squash.   I didn't care about my financial state just at that moment.  I cared about savoring the remaining days of summer and it's lovely fruitful state. And in the end, it's all part and parcel of the grocery budget which renews on Monday anyway.  I'll borrow now and cut back later. I asked how much longer they might have peaches.  "We hope we can stay open until next weekend."  One week...Just one week more and then we're done with peaches for the next 10 months.  I haven't eaten nearly enough of them.  I've made just one cobbler all summer long.  I promise that next year I shall eat my fill, I shall make cobblers galore, I will.... We came home and I cut up the squash with one of the last Vidalia onions into a frying pan and then added 1/4 cup of water, covered them and let them steam gently.  I made a salad with half a tomato diced finely over it.  "I've not even had a single fresh tomato sandwich..." I said, as I sprinkled those lovely red bits over the green lettuce.  "I promise I shall have at least one this week and next year..." Oh, next year! We had a lovely visit after dinner with Taylor and Katie.  Taylor wanted purple nails "with glitter...which we do NOT eat!"   Sometimes a child does hint at some corrected behavior don't they?  I imagined her with a mouth sparkled with glitter at her nursery school and a sparkling tongue and giggles before the teacher noticed... So I did her nails and then on a whim, I used the glittery polish to coat my own nails.  I'm too old for glitter...but I think it looks magical in the light.   Didn't I promise myself to do my fingernails more often?  Oh! one more promise I really need to keep! Taylor asked about the little cats on the bookshelf.  "One day," I told her, "they shall be yours...because my grandmother gave them to me and I would like to give them to you,  my granddaughter."   Not that Taylor's my only granddaughter, I have four more but somehow I know that Taylor is the one these cats belong to.   It feels odd to be thinking of little legacies such as this, but I told Katie and John, "Listen to me.  Be my witnesses. This is my promise:  these cats will be Taylor's and if I die before I gift them to her, be sure that she gets them...and the little girl with a book will be Hailey's." Taylor crawled into my lap and leaned on my shoulder.  "I love you..."  Oh my heart!  How blessed I am to know the very genuine love of these children of my children.  How very blessed! John took Katie and Taylor home to Katie's a little later.   I sat here in the quiet, with my thoughts whispering all about me.  Tired and happy and mindful of things I want to hold tight to and mindful that none of these endless days of housework, no matter how satisfying the work may be, will be the things I remember most.  It will indeed be the taste of a sun ripened peach grown in Georgia soil, the feel of a little girl's head on my shoulder, the way a good ripe tomato smells and summer squash tastes, and how lovely a meadow is in sunlight of a dewy morning.  It will be those things which I shall remember and it makes keeping these promises to myself imperative. John has stepped out on the 'verandah' as he chooses to call the front porch and the wind is blowing hot and heavy and ringing the old iron chimes.  Ting, ting, ting, ting...Deeper than most windchimes.   I confess I'm more fond of middle and deeper tones than the tinkly sorts of chimes.  These please me. It takes a real wind to stir those bells to life.  In the distance, coming ever nearer, thunder rumbles.   Summer's music...Please Lord, make me mindful of my promises to keep! Sunday:  There are sheets and towels on the line and peach cobbler cooling atop the stove.  Not for us that cobbler but for Taylor's daddy.  The house about me is clean and quiet just now.  Here in a little bit I shall head over to Katie's to visit with them for a little while before Taylor begins her journey home. I sent John off to work this morning and tackled housework right away though I was tired and thought longingly of going back to my bed.  But not today.  Today there are sheets to blow in the sunlight and a house to put to order and a child to spend time loving. I think John is feeling the pull of the seasonal change.  He's asked me to make a turkey pot pie this week and I've promised I shall.   He wants Roast beef hash, too...and he'll have that as well, but it amuses me that he's wanting these comforting cooler weather sorts of foods.  I've told you before that summer salads do pall for us after a bit.   We'll have a few more despite these longings of ours for cozy meals.   A chef salad will be a quick and easy meal after grocery shopping this week...and I find myself suddenly making up menus for the week ahead, something I'd let drop for a bit because I was just flat tired of planning.  However, between leftovers and requests I guess I've got this week pretty much covered...Now let's see how many of these meals I actually get to make.  The roast beef meal we had on Saturday and the enchiladas were thawed on Friday when John had said we'd skip the date then got that second wind in his sails and wanted to go out after all. The roast beef is in the fridge... Everything else is frozen at present or is fresh and ready to prepare. Roast Beef, Summer Squash and Onions, Tossed Salad, Matzoh Cracker Candy Chicken Verde Enchiladas, Yellow Rice and Peach Salsa Roast Beef Hash, Wedge Salads with Thousand Island Dressing on my own  out with Mama Chef's Salad, Homemade Croutons, Peach Cobbler (for us) Turkey Pot Pie, Cranberry Sauce, Pear Salads And there's my menu plan! Speaking of food: one of the frugal articles I read last week dealt with grocery spending.  She cited the USDA government site  where you can see what food costs were for the prior month and how much one following the thrifty or low cost plans might be spending.  And then she suggested that financial advisors suggest 6% of our annual income is what we ought to spend.  As nearly as I recall how to figure percentages our spending should be something like $61 a week for the two of us.  Now  that's only for food.  It does not include pet supplies, paper or cleaning products etc.   It is also a good deal less than the government's food plan figures for a thrifty diet.  According to their figures in June we would have been spending about $84/per week.  I actually think I came in right around there  with a few paper products and one or two pet items tossed in but those would not account for more than $11 so I'm still nowhere near the 6% mark.  It does give me food for thought.  I was so proud of trimming my budget to $300 a month...But could I possibly hit closer to $244?   I'm pretty sure my husband would rebel hard at that but I'm tempted to try it just the same.  And of course, once we do retire, our 6% would also be a good bit less than $244...so I feel I owe it to myself to try and trim things back a bit more.   I'll let you know! Now off I go to unload the dishwasher and finish my bit of housework. Monday:  More tired and weary than I'd thought I'd be today...I didn't plan a day of mostly rest, but there you are.  I realized this morning that I basically did the equivalent of a drive to Kingsland and back with a brief stay to visit...but 8 hours of driving!  I felt it this morning. Thankfully only light housework was needed and dinner was pretty much ready.  I am reheating Chicken Enchiladas and have a salad made.  I'd meant to have peach salsa  with this meal but it's more effort than I want to go to today. John and I have been watching an interesting series of videos where the YouTubers go to visit old graveyards along back roads here in Georgia, some of them which are severely neglected.  I think it's made us both aware of the graveyard back of our house.  It is not on my property but just over the fence line.  Granny and Granddaddy always maintained the graveyard and when my cousin bought the land, so did he.  However, when it fell into my brother's hands it was no longer kept up.  I'd asked to take it on with his permission and he agreed but then he wired all the entrances shut with barbed wire so that I couldn't get into the area.  Now that Sam owns the land, I think I can get to it once more, but ten years of neglect means that it's now snaky and heavily overgrown. It is my hope that we can reclaim the space and maintain it once more but both Sam and John feel the graveyard is just too far gone.  However, come cold weather I shall go there and begin to do what I might.  Another  of my 'small bites' projects.  I feel sure if I start it Sam and John will eventually have pity on me and join in... The graveyard was not a family ground.  It belonged to a huge old Federal house that sat on the hill before ours.  This land was likely part of that original land grant but I haven't yet researched it out to prove that fact.   Still, I do know the people buried near my home were once residents there.  I would like to do my part in preserving a little bit of history, especially since the house burned down 30 odd years ago. Another promise I shall make this week: reclaim the graveyard and give it it's proper care. Tuesday:  We didn't do much of anything at all yesterday.  I was just worn out.  Some days are just so.  John did a load of laundry and hung a few things to dry.  I made meals and kept those simple and easy. Today we played catch up.  Typically we'd drive down on payday to pick up John's check if he's not working  the Tuesday following.  Well he wasn't working today, but we didn't go down yesterday afternoon.  He wanted to cut Sam's grass since Sam's busy with renovations inside the house. John went over yesterday afternoon,  though why he waited until afternoon to do so is beyond me.  It was so terribly hot, with a heat index of 107f.  It's been that way all week long.  It's meant to end here this weekend, though. I lived without AC for years and years.  We had only window units we used occasionally.  The year Sam was born was one year when we used AC all summer long because it was miserably hot from May to September that year.  Real temperatures that year were near 110F.  Between the summer heat and the winter cold we spent much of the year living in just one or two rooms.  That's all we could heat or cool in those years. It was very expensive to run AC in the 1980's and '90s.  When John and I got together and were struggling so we simply could not afford to run the window units though they were brand new.  We ended up compromising.  We turned them on Friday evening when we came in from work and turned them off Sunday night when we went to bed (11pm). It cost us over $300 a month to run it 8 days.   We've never paid that much a month here in the worst of our summers.  We came near it this past autumn when it was freezing and we had to run the emergency heat after our motor went out on the unit.   But all in all, AC is much more affordable than it was 25 years ago and I am so grateful for that! Today we did the payday errands: banking, bills, and groceries.  Not as much work as it sounds  because I have the bills ready to go out days ahead and then I just take them to the mailbox as soon as we do the banking.   John had warned we'd have a shorter check.  We didn't.   It wasn't quite enough to meet all our needs this time around but I'd already planned ahead for that,  so it was easy enough to proceed as planned.  I'll be sure to tell him we're on a no spend from now until next pay period which should see us through this small slump. I did well enough on groceries.  I didn't buy any meat this time around.  I'd looked at chuck roasts but they were very fatty and the one I thought worth purchasing was over $20...Wowza!  I decided I'd just skip it.  I know we've plenty of meat on hand at present. As I put groceries away in the pantry, I suggested to John that we might skip a big grocery shop next pay period and get just dairy and produce as needed.  We have quite a deep pantry at the moment and I saw only two or three items that I wished to stock more heavily, like flour, cereal and coffee.   Again, good sales will  fill those needs. I was thinking this morning that over the years I've found lots of ways to save money. Our mobile phone service is quite reasonable. We pay roughly the same for two phones that we once paid for one landline and one prepaid phone.  At one point our mobile phone company bought out our satellite TV service.  We were able to combine bills and make a small savings.  However, I soon discovered the days of renegotiating our satellite service contract was an exercise in futility with the phone company as boss.  So much for twenty five years of good customer status! Our local phone service internet was abysmal.  It had gotten so that we had no internet service from Friday afternoon at 4pm until Monday morning at 9am.  No we didn't get any discounts for the lack of service.  The company denied there was any problem!  So we moved to a satellite service.  We paid a LOT for that service.  Double what we'd paid for the local service.  However,  it was reliable and we had service we could count on. When our current mobile phone service offered an unlimited data pan  we hopped right on, changed phone plans and got the newly available hot spot.  We dropped internet satellite and saved on new smart phones, buying older models that were heavily discounted, paying cash up front.  That kept our phone bills low.   Smart phones for the same price as a mobile/text service?  Please and thank you! When lightning ran in on our television last August, we bought a Fire TV and in January I finally convinced John to quit satellite.  We dropped the satellite TV service which meant we paid still less out of pocket.  I was already paying for Amazon Prime membership each month, well worth the savings in shipping alone.  We aren't big shoppers, but I guarantee I order something from Amazon every month that is cheaper than I can find it elsewhere and that is covered under the prime free shipping.  We watch pretty much all the television we want to watch with our hot spot.  We did subscribe to Netflix' basic plan.  I am still paying far less for the phone service with unlimited data, Amazon and Netflix than I previously paid for phones, internet and satellite tv services. But for all that some things change, others pretty much stay the same.  We've paid basically the same amount for gasoline each month for the past 20 years.  Some years we drive more and some we drive less.  Our average is always right around the same amount each month for costs though. Groceries is another area that remained fairly stable for a long number of years.  I stopped buying certain items and made more from scratch and yet it's only been in these past two years I've begun to see a significant savings in the grocery spending.   I might add that during this two year period of time I've fed more people and spent less, while previously we spent a good deal more and fed only two.   Now that we're basically feeding just the two of us once more, I've watched my budget amount drop to what is an all time low for us.   Still...I could perhaps save more and I am working on it! Being frugal is never a stagnant and finite thing.  As time goes on, some of those ways I saved are no longer valid.  Eating habits change, income changes, products and promotions leave the market or come on the market. Our needs change.  What is needed in this stage of life is not the same as what was needed previously and won't be the same in five years.  For every new thing that comes along there are new ways to save and manage. Being frugal has never been boring!  And for me, that's what keeps it fun. Thursday:  I had every intent of sharing with you all yesterday but by the time I was done with Mama, I was really and most sincerely done in every sense of the word.  Once Bess and the boys left (and what good medicine they were!), I hadn't even the energy to eat.  I drank a V8 and showered and went off to bed with a book on prayer and fell asleep and slept the bulk of all night long.  Wailing and gnashing of teeth might have occurred in moderation in between that V8 and the shower but it was in extreme moderation. Today is better.   Today I am mindful of my many blessings and mindful of my own ways and words.  As well I ought to be.  Difficult relationships sometimes never cease to be difficult.  But more on that another day and time, perhaps. This morning I greeted John with a proper big breakfast.  Funny thing, we are eating less these days.  I suppose it's partly due to the heat and partly due to the fact that so much of what we choose to eat is just good fresh foods and they fill us amply even when eaten in moderation.  Our 'big' breakfast consisted of Fried egg, grits, toast and turkey sausage.   It is a big breakfast but certainly not one of those mammoth restaurant 'big' sorts of breakfasts. After breakfast I started a loaf of bread.  I'd really meant to get one going yesterday morning when John left as I was sure it would be done by the time I was ready to leave for Mama's, but time slipped away from me as I got all out of routine and did things in far different time frames than usual...which all worked  lovely as I was practically dressed and fully made up by the time Bess and Isaac stopped in to start their laundry.  Quick prayers, everyone, that work on their utility room goes through this weekend and their washer and dryer are up and running once more.  It's hard work lugging loads and loads of clothes from there to here and back again... Mama, as I expected, wanted to go to the big peach packing shed just 20 minutes north of me.  It is a good hour or so from her house...But go we did and I bought a half peck of peaches.  For one thing I meant to share with Bess, and I did.   I will put some in the freezer.  And I want to savor the last of this seasonal fruit because I do love peaches! For some reason the morning flew past.  Quicker than usual.  I'm not real sure why.   Well I do too know why.  John and I had a lot to talk over this morning and to think about and come back to talk over one more time.  I was still finishing up Bible study while our dinner cooked today.  It was one of those lovely Bible study sessions in which each passage of scripture I read today was pertinent to my own thoughts about matters that we'd discussed.   Friday:  The end of another week...They do fly by these days, don't they?   John and I have a lot to consider these days.  There's a possibility that our plans for retirement will be pushed forward from next June to end of this year.  All my plans to save money and stash away all I might as far as non-perishable things will be more modest than I'd been shooting for.  I'm not worried, but it is a little disconcerting.   Still, nothing is yet set in stone and we are at the point where now is as good as later and we'll trust God's timing.  In the end, we must always let go of our plans and rely on Him anyway, as I've discovered more than once. My house is very nearly Shabat ready.   We've no plans for this weekend aside from going to church.  I will have turkey pot pie for tomorrow's dinner which I'll do my best to prep ahead.  I'm debating dessert options.  On the one hand, I think gelatin or pudding would be a nice counter to the hot pot pie, don't you?   I'd love to make a lemon meringue pie but not sure I really want to go to that much work this afternoon when the kitchen is pretty much cleaned for the weekend.  I'll have to think on this.   I  have a Chef Salad for our main meal today.   It was on my menu plan and I find between cheese, a few slivers of turkey and some hard boiled egg we've plenty of protein and fat to satisfy us all afternoon long.  And there's a lovely bit of leftover peach cobbler, though I did make a smaller one yesterday.    And that is my week, full of the expected, and the unexpected, full of the lovely and the difficult, full of promises to keep.   Frugal things: The true economy of housekeeping is simply the art of gathering up all the fragments, so nothing be lost  I mean fragments of time as well as materials...every member of a household should be employed either in earning or saving money. The American Frugal Housewife ~ Lydia Maria Francis Child It's quite hot and the AC is pretty much running non-stop until 10 pm every night and then coming on periodically all through the night and early mornings.  I turned the AC up to 78, not my favorite point as it tends to feel a bit more stuffy, but it at least is one way to save.  I've noted the AC cuts off earlier and stays off a wee bit longer. (This should end as of Tuesday evening this week...Milder temperatures are coming our way.  Hooray!) I'm also being very mindful of running water unnecessarily at present.   This is finally getting to be more and more a habit with me as I have always tended to be the sort who let the water run and run as I rinsed dishes for the dishwasher or brushed my teeth or washed my face.  However, electricity is money and so I am doing my best to be mindful that the pump must run if I must run water. Happily, all the heat keeps generating pop up rain showers so watering plants is not a chore I must attend to.  As for porch and house plants, it's easy enough to 'save' water from bits left in bottles or glasses or that is running while it's cold and I'm needing hot to catch up and use for those.  And if I'm quick, I can often pop a porch planter under the run off from the roof and water plants with rain water. I may be just longing to shop but I know my current season isn't going to be any less tight if I run up a credit card bill, so I'm deleting tempting emails full of sales and waiting a few days before even considering those few purchases that make it into a cart.  So far, nothing has made it from the cart to 'order' because I either forget it or I discover something I can use that I already have or I just make up my mind to go without. I ordered a new phone case and accessory ring  from eBay.  I bought the last case two years ago and it's falling apart.  I tried to remove the ring from the old case but it's a no go.  I even went to  YouTube and I discovered that they don't re-stick once removed.  The new ring  was pennies on the dollar  on eBay for the exact same one I bought for bigger bucks at the phone store last year.  I literally saved enough on the ring to cover the cost of the new case and keep change in my pocket.   In case you're wondering what a phone ring is, it's a ring that you stick to the back of your phone or phone case and  can slide a finger through and  allows you to hold the phone without dropping it.  Dropping my phone is an issue for me, so the ring isn't a vanity thing, it's purely a necessity.  Ditto for the phone case.  I get the shock absorbing sort of case.  Both items will be paid from my allowance. Sunday morning I did a full load of dishes right away after John left for work and then I ran a full load of laundry (sheets and towels).  Everything air dried. John and I combined errands when we went out to shop for groceries. I checked with John about how he liked the bread machine bread I've been making.  He thinks it's great...and so I suggested I make a couple loaves a week, and we supplement with the occasional loaf that we'll keep in the freezer.   Once at the store I decided to buy smaller sized loaves.  Same number of slices per loaf but just a smaller piece of bread overall.  The smaller sized loafs were about $1 cheaper.  With the homemade machine bread we've been eating  half slices. I've given in to buying cookies for John this summer.  It's not worth heating up the kitchen for any period of time to make them...but I told him as soon as it starts to cool off I mean to make more homemade cookies and forgo the bought ones until the Spekulaas cookies are in market once more.  In the meantime, Tammy has inspired me to make a batch of those yummy stovetop chocolate oatmeal cookies.  I'd forgotten those as an oven free option.  John loves those cookies. No meat purchased today, but only because I thought better of it when I priced the nicest chuck roast in the counter.  I had a fair idea of how much meat I had in the freezer at home (not to mention how much is in the fridge at present) and I felt we could by pass that purchase.  I'll watch for good sales on meat in the next few weeks and try to stock up then. I suggested to John it would be worthwhile to return to purchasing chicken breasts and ground beef on special at the organic market we used to visit.  I've noted that the price at the organic market is nearly $2/pound less so it's well worth driving there for the savings. Made a loaf of bread, a small peach cobbler and used up leftover roast beef and gravy to make hash. John hung most of a load of clothes to dry. I washed a full load of dishes in the dishwasher. I've downloaded a few free books for my Kindle.  Most are Christian non-fiction but one was a children's book (never know when that might come in handy!) and Mansfield Park by Jane Austen was free the other day.  I am not going nuts adding books.  I am trying to be thoughtful about what I might truly read and most will be deleted once I'm done but in time I will add books I really want to buy that are cheaper via Kindle and won't take up space on my filled bookcases...Not to say I am done buying hard cover books.  Some friends just deserve a full time home where I can hold them and love them as I read! I've started a 'stock up list'.   So far I've got tissues (for cold and flu season) and cold medicine (ditto from previous), pineapple juice (same), matches, toilet paper, flour, coffee (regular and decaf) and boxed cereal.   I may add more as time goes on but these are items I am very well aware we're very low or empty on.  Oh and candles!  We use them for our Shabats and typically two candles last us a couple or three months but they are awfully handy when power goes out as well so I like to stock up. I've started adding tissues and paper towels to our compost.  And this morning, I decided it was worth while to shred our weekly newspapers as well.  I've been adding shredded mail for quite a while but these are extra items I know I can compost.  I plan to 'grow my compost' so to speak, as I get more and more serious about my need for flowers and perhaps a few vegetables here and there. Meals: So I made my plans...how did that go?   Here's what we really ate this week Roast Beef, Squash, Tossed Salad McDonalds with Katie and Taylor Chicken Verde Enchiladas, Green Salad with Tomatoes and Green Onions Chicken Salad Sandwiches with fresh fruit (take out) Chicken Livers and Fries with Mama Roast Beef Hash, Sliced Tomato Salad with Basil, Peach Cobbler Chef's Salad, Oyster Crackers (something we often sub for croutons), Peach Cobbler (C) Terri Cheney For more information please click here

Adtwixt - News source https://adtwixt.com/blogs/news/august-diary-promises-im-making-myself

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Agilenano - News: August Diary: Promises I'm Making Myself

Saturday:  It's late in Shabat, just two hours more to have the full extent of the day of rest.  Today began early.  I stepped out on the porch to feed the pets and looked at the sun rising and sang "Shema".   That I remember the Hebrew after all these years away from synagogue, that these words come easily still at the sight of daybreak, astounds me: Shema, Israel, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai echad. Hear O Israel, the Lord is our G-d, the Lord is One... It was a hurry up sort of morning, but the wonder of God was  there on the front porch this morning.  I felt reverent as I went about the rest of my morning preparations. Katie and I went to pick up Taylor.  Over the hills and through the woods and past meadows shining in the golden morning light and alongside fields of freshly mown hay with bales scattered here and there.  Over creeks flowing over rocks and rivers slowly moving along sandy beds.  And everywhere the golden rod standing high, the mallow stems heavy with buds, foxtail grass dancing in the air currents, and trees with autumn hues already tinging the leaves scattered amongst the pines.   My heart ached and swelled as each new sight came into view, singing a song of both joy and grief, as I see the signs of one season passing into another.  I have learned to find something lovely and beautiful in every season of the year rather than claim just one as my favorite.  And so I must grieve the loss of one and rejoice in the other. Bonus of this road trip today was being in near proximity to a well known peach shed which blissfully was packed with traffic, a sure sign they had peaches still.  I passed a little tent with a table laden with little yellow squash and red ripe tomatoes.  My mouth watered.   On our way back to the house, when time was not quite the premium thing it was on the trip up,  I stopped and bought a big basket of peaches. I didn't even ask the price.  I got heavy red ripe tomatoes big enough to fill my hand.  I filled a sack with tender little yellow summer squash.   I didn't care about my financial state just at that moment.  I cared about savoring the remaining days of summer and it's lovely fruitful state. And in the end, it's all part and parcel of the grocery budget which renews on Monday anyway.  I'll borrow now and cut back later. I asked how much longer they might have peaches.  "We hope we can stay open until next weekend."  One week...Just one week more and then we're done with peaches for the next 10 months.  I haven't eaten nearly enough of them.  I've made just one cobbler all summer long.  I promise that next year I shall eat my fill, I shall make cobblers galore, I will.... We came home and I cut up the squash with one of the last Vidalia onions into a frying pan and then added 1/4 cup of water, covered them and let them steam gently.  I made a salad with half a tomato diced finely over it.  "I've not even had a single fresh tomato sandwich..." I said, as I sprinkled those lovely red bits over the green lettuce.  "I promise I shall have at least one this week and next year..." Oh, next year! We had a lovely visit after dinner with Taylor and Katie.  Taylor wanted purple nails "with glitter...which we do NOT eat!"   Sometimes a child does hint at some corrected behavior don't they?  I imagined her with a mouth sparkled with glitter at her nursery school and a sparkling tongue and giggles before the teacher noticed... So I did her nails and then on a whim, I used the glittery polish to coat my own nails.  I'm too old for glitter...but I think it looks magical in the light.   Didn't I promise myself to do my fingernails more often?  Oh! one more promise I really need to keep! Taylor asked about the little cats on the bookshelf.  "One day," I told her, "they shall be yours...because my grandmother gave them to me and I would like to give them to you,  my granddaughter."   Not that Taylor's my only granddaughter, I have four more but somehow I know that Taylor is the one these cats belong to.   It feels odd to be thinking of little legacies such as this, but I told Katie and John, "Listen to me.  Be my witnesses. This is my promise:  these cats will be Taylor's and if I die before I gift them to her, be sure that she gets them...and the little girl with a book will be Hailey's." Taylor crawled into my lap and leaned on my shoulder.  "I love you..."  Oh my heart!  How blessed I am to know the very genuine love of these children of my children.  How very blessed! John took Katie and Taylor home to Katie's a little later.   I sat here in the quiet, with my thoughts whispering all about me.  Tired and happy and mindful of things I want to hold tight to and mindful that none of these endless days of housework, no matter how satisfying the work may be, will be the things I remember most.  It will indeed be the taste of a sun ripened peach grown in Georgia soil, the feel of a little girl's head on my shoulder, the way a good ripe tomato smells and summer squash tastes, and how lovely a meadow is in sunlight of a dewy morning.  It will be those things which I shall remember and it makes keeping these promises to myself imperative. John has stepped out on the 'verandah' as he chooses to call the front porch and the wind is blowing hot and heavy and ringing the old iron chimes.  Ting, ting, ting, ting...Deeper than most windchimes.   I confess I'm more fond of middle and deeper tones than the tinkly sorts of chimes.  These please me. It takes a real wind to stir those bells to life.  In the distance, coming ever nearer, thunder rumbles.   Summer's music...Please Lord, make me mindful of my promises to keep! Sunday:  There are sheets and towels on the line and peach cobbler cooling atop the stove.  Not for us that cobbler but for Taylor's daddy.  The house about me is clean and quiet just now.  Here in a little bit I shall head over to Katie's to visit with them for a little while before Taylor begins her journey home. I sent John off to work this morning and tackled housework right away though I was tired and thought longingly of going back to my bed.  But not today.  Today there are sheets to blow in the sunlight and a house to put to order and a child to spend time loving. I think John is feeling the pull of the seasonal change.  He's asked me to make a turkey pot pie this week and I've promised I shall.   He wants Roast beef hash, too...and he'll have that as well, but it amuses me that he's wanting these comforting cooler weather sorts of foods.  I've told you before that summer salads do pall for us after a bit.   We'll have a few more despite these longings of ours for cozy meals.   A chef salad will be a quick and easy meal after grocery shopping this week...and I find myself suddenly making up menus for the week ahead, something I'd let drop for a bit because I was just flat tired of planning.  However, between leftovers and requests I guess I've got this week pretty much covered...Now let's see how many of these meals I actually get to make.  The roast beef meal we had on Saturday and the enchiladas were thawed on Friday when John had said we'd skip the date then got that second wind in his sails and wanted to go out after all. The roast beef is in the fridge... Everything else is frozen at present or is fresh and ready to prepare. Roast Beef, Summer Squash and Onions, Tossed Salad, Matzoh Cracker Candy Chicken Verde Enchiladas, Yellow Rice and Peach Salsa Roast Beef Hash, Wedge Salads with Thousand Island Dressing on my own  out with Mama Chef's Salad, Homemade Croutons, Peach Cobbler (for us) Turkey Pot Pie, Cranberry Sauce, Pear Salads And there's my menu plan! Speaking of food: one of the frugal articles I read last week dealt with grocery spending.  She cited the USDA government site  where you can see what food costs were for the prior month and how much one following the thrifty or low cost plans might be spending.  And then she suggested that financial advisors suggest 6% of our annual income is what we ought to spend.  As nearly as I recall how to figure percentages our spending should be something like $61 a week for the two of us.  Now  that's only for food.  It does not include pet supplies, paper or cleaning products etc.   It is also a good deal less than the government's food plan figures for a thrifty diet.  According to their figures in June we would have been spending about $84/per week.  I actually think I came in right around there  with a few paper products and one or two pet items tossed in but those would not account for more than $11 so I'm still nowhere near the 6% mark.  It does give me food for thought.  I was so proud of trimming my budget to $300 a month...But could I possibly hit closer to $244?   I'm pretty sure my husband would rebel hard at that but I'm tempted to try it just the same.  And of course, once we do retire, our 6% would also be a good bit less than $244...so I feel I owe it to myself to try and trim things back a bit more.   I'll let you know! Now off I go to unload the dishwasher and finish my bit of housework. Monday:  More tired and weary than I'd thought I'd be today...I didn't plan a day of mostly rest, but there you are.  I realized this morning that I basically did the equivalent of a drive to Kingsland and back with a brief stay to visit...but 8 hours of driving!  I felt it this morning. Thankfully only light housework was needed and dinner was pretty much ready.  I am reheating Chicken Enchiladas and have a salad made.  I'd meant to have peach salsa  with this meal but it's more effort than I want to go to today. John and I have been watching an interesting series of videos where the YouTubers go to visit old graveyards along back roads here in Georgia, some of them which are severely neglected.  I think it's made us both aware of the graveyard back of our house.  It is not on my property but just over the fence line.  Granny and Granddaddy always maintained the graveyard and when my cousin bought the land, so did he.  However, when it fell into my brother's hands it was no longer kept up.  I'd asked to take it on with his permission and he agreed but then he wired all the entrances shut with barbed wire so that I couldn't get into the area.  Now that Sam owns the land, I think I can get to it once more, but ten years of neglect means that it's now snaky and heavily overgrown. It is my hope that we can reclaim the space and maintain it once more but both Sam and John feel the graveyard is just too far gone.  However, come cold weather I shall go there and begin to do what I might.  Another  of my 'small bites' projects.  I feel sure if I start it Sam and John will eventually have pity on me and join in... The graveyard was not a family ground.  It belonged to a huge old Federal house that sat on the hill before ours.  This land was likely part of that original land grant but I haven't yet researched it out to prove that fact.   Still, I do know the people buried near my home were once residents there.  I would like to do my part in preserving a little bit of history, especially since the house burned down 30 odd years ago. Another promise I shall make this week: reclaim the graveyard and give it it's proper care. Tuesday:  We didn't do much of anything at all yesterday.  I was just worn out.  Some days are just so.  John did a load of laundry and hung a few things to dry.  I made meals and kept those simple and easy. Today we played catch up.  Typically we'd drive down on payday to pick up John's check if he's not working  the Tuesday following.  Well he wasn't working today, but we didn't go down yesterday afternoon.  He wanted to cut Sam's grass since Sam's busy with renovations inside the house. John went over yesterday afternoon,  though why he waited until afternoon to do so is beyond me.  It was so terribly hot, with a heat index of 107f.  It's been that way all week long.  It's meant to end here this weekend, though. I lived without AC for years and years.  We had only window units we used occasionally.  The year Sam was born was one year when we used AC all summer long because it was miserably hot from May to September that year.  Real temperatures that year were near 110F.  Between the summer heat and the winter cold we spent much of the year living in just one or two rooms.  That's all we could heat or cool in those years. It was very expensive to run AC in the 1980's and '90s.  When John and I got together and were struggling so we simply could not afford to run the window units though they were brand new.  We ended up compromising.  We turned them on Friday evening when we came in from work and turned them off Sunday night when we went to bed (11pm). It cost us over $300 a month to run it 8 days.   We've never paid that much a month here in the worst of our summers.  We came near it this past autumn when it was freezing and we had to run the emergency heat after our motor went out on the unit.   But all in all, AC is much more affordable than it was 25 years ago and I am so grateful for that! Today we did the payday errands: banking, bills, and groceries.  Not as much work as it sounds  because I have the bills ready to go out days ahead and then I just take them to the mailbox as soon as we do the banking.   John had warned we'd have a shorter check.  We didn't.   It wasn't quite enough to meet all our needs this time around but I'd already planned ahead for that,  so it was easy enough to proceed as planned.  I'll be sure to tell him we're on a no spend from now until next pay period which should see us through this small slump. I did well enough on groceries.  I didn't buy any meat this time around.  I'd looked at chuck roasts but they were very fatty and the one I thought worth purchasing was over $20...Wowza!  I decided I'd just skip it.  I know we've plenty of meat on hand at present. As I put groceries away in the pantry, I suggested to John that we might skip a big grocery shop next pay period and get just dairy and produce as needed.  We have quite a deep pantry at the moment and I saw only two or three items that I wished to stock more heavily, like flour, cereal and coffee.   Again, good sales will  fill those needs. I was thinking this morning that over the years I've found lots of ways to save money. Our mobile phone service is quite reasonable. We pay roughly the same for two phones that we once paid for one landline and one prepaid phone.  At one point our mobile phone company bought out our satellite TV service.  We were able to combine bills and make a small savings.  However, I soon discovered the days of renegotiating our satellite service contract was an exercise in futility with the phone company as boss.  So much for twenty five years of good customer status! Our local phone service internet was abysmal.  It had gotten so that we had no internet service from Friday afternoon at 4pm until Monday morning at 9am.  No we didn't get any discounts for the lack of service.  The company denied there was any problem!  So we moved to a satellite service.  We paid a LOT for that service.  Double what we'd paid for the local service.  However,  it was reliable and we had service we could count on. When our current mobile phone service offered an unlimited data pan  we hopped right on, changed phone plans and got the newly available hot spot.  We dropped internet satellite and saved on new smart phones, buying older models that were heavily discounted, paying cash up front.  That kept our phone bills low.   Smart phones for the same price as a mobile/text service?  Please and thank you! When lightning ran in on our television last August, we bought a Fire TV and in January I finally convinced John to quit satellite.  We dropped the satellite TV service which meant we paid still less out of pocket.  I was already paying for Amazon Prime membership each month, well worth the savings in shipping alone.  We aren't big shoppers, but I guarantee I order something from Amazon every month that is cheaper than I can find it elsewhere and that is covered under the prime free shipping.  We watch pretty much all the television we want to watch with our hot spot.  We did subscribe to Netflix' basic plan.  I am still paying far less for the phone service with unlimited data, Amazon and Netflix than I previously paid for phones, internet and satellite tv services. But for all that some things change, others pretty much stay the same.  We've paid basically the same amount for gasoline each month for the past 20 years.  Some years we drive more and some we drive less.  Our average is always right around the same amount each month for costs though. Groceries is another area that remained fairly stable for a long number of years.  I stopped buying certain items and made more from scratch and yet it's only been in these past two years I've begun to see a significant savings in the grocery spending.   I might add that during this two year period of time I've fed more people and spent less, while previously we spent a good deal more and fed only two.   Now that we're basically feeding just the two of us once more, I've watched my budget amount drop to what is an all time low for us.   Still...I could perhaps save more and I am working on it! Being frugal is never a stagnant and finite thing.  As time goes on, some of those ways I saved are no longer valid.  Eating habits change, income changes, products and promotions leave the market or come on the market. Our needs change.  What is needed in this stage of life is not the same as what was needed previously and won't be the same in five years.  For every new thing that comes along there are new ways to save and manage. Being frugal has never been boring!  And for me, that's what keeps it fun. Thursday:  I had every intent of sharing with you all yesterday but by the time I was done with Mama, I was really and most sincerely done in every sense of the word.  Once Bess and the boys left (and what good medicine they were!), I hadn't even the energy to eat.  I drank a V8 and showered and went off to bed with a book on prayer and fell asleep and slept the bulk of all night long.  Wailing and gnashing of teeth might have occurred in moderation in between that V8 and the shower but it was in extreme moderation. Today is better.   Today I am mindful of my many blessings and mindful of my own ways and words.  As well I ought to be.  Difficult relationships sometimes never cease to be difficult.  But more on that another day and time, perhaps. This morning I greeted John with a proper big breakfast.  Funny thing, we are eating less these days.  I suppose it's partly due to the heat and partly due to the fact that so much of what we choose to eat is just good fresh foods and they fill us amply even when eaten in moderation.  Our 'big' breakfast consisted of Fried egg, grits, toast and turkey sausage.   It is a big breakfast but certainly not one of those mammoth restaurant 'big' sorts of breakfasts. After breakfast I started a loaf of bread.  I'd really meant to get one going yesterday morning when John left as I was sure it would be done by the time I was ready to leave for Mama's, but time slipped away from me as I got all out of routine and did things in far different time frames than usual...which all worked  lovely as I was practically dressed and fully made up by the time Bess and Isaac stopped in to start their laundry.  Quick prayers, everyone, that work on their utility room goes through this weekend and their washer and dryer are up and running once more.  It's hard work lugging loads and loads of clothes from there to here and back again... Mama, as I expected, wanted to go to the big peach packing shed just 20 minutes north of me.  It is a good hour or so from her house...But go we did and I bought a half peck of peaches.  For one thing I meant to share with Bess, and I did.   I will put some in the freezer.  And I want to savor the last of this seasonal fruit because I do love peaches! For some reason the morning flew past.  Quicker than usual.  I'm not real sure why.   Well I do too know why.  John and I had a lot to talk over this morning and to think about and come back to talk over one more time.  I was still finishing up Bible study while our dinner cooked today.  It was one of those lovely Bible study sessions in which each passage of scripture I read today was pertinent to my own thoughts about matters that we'd discussed.   Friday:  The end of another week...They do fly by these days, don't they?   John and I have a lot to consider these days.  There's a possibility that our plans for retirement will be pushed forward from next June to end of this year.  All my plans to save money and stash away all I might as far as non-perishable things will be more modest than I'd been shooting for.  I'm not worried, but it is a little disconcerting.   Still, nothing is yet set in stone and we are at the point where now is as good as later and we'll trust God's timing.  In the end, we must always let go of our plans and rely on Him anyway, as I've discovered more than once. My house is very nearly Shabat ready.   We've no plans for this weekend aside from going to church.  I will have turkey pot pie for tomorrow's dinner which I'll do my best to prep ahead.  I'm debating dessert options.  On the one hand, I think gelatin or pudding would be a nice counter to the hot pot pie, don't you?   I'd love to make a lemon meringue pie but not sure I really want to go to that much work this afternoon when the kitchen is pretty much cleaned for the weekend.  I'll have to think on this.   I  have a Chef Salad for our main meal today.   It was on my menu plan and I find between cheese, a few slivers of turkey and some hard boiled egg we've plenty of protein and fat to satisfy us all afternoon long.  And there's a lovely bit of leftover peach cobbler, though I did make a smaller one yesterday.    And that is my week, full of the expected, and the unexpected, full of the lovely and the difficult, full of promises to keep.   Frugal things: The true economy of housekeeping is simply the art of gathering up all the fragments, so nothing be lost  I mean fragments of time as well as materials...every member of a household should be employed either in earning or saving money. The American Frugal Housewife ~ Lydia Maria Francis Child It's quite hot and the AC is pretty much running non-stop until 10 pm every night and then coming on periodically all through the night and early mornings.  I turned the AC up to 78, not my favorite point as it tends to feel a bit more stuffy, but it at least is one way to save.  I've noted the AC cuts off earlier and stays off a wee bit longer. (This should end as of Tuesday evening this week...Milder temperatures are coming our way.  Hooray!) I'm also being very mindful of running water unnecessarily at present.   This is finally getting to be more and more a habit with me as I have always tended to be the sort who let the water run and run as I rinsed dishes for the dishwasher or brushed my teeth or washed my face.  However, electricity is money and so I am doing my best to be mindful that the pump must run if I must run water. Happily, all the heat keeps generating pop up rain showers so watering plants is not a chore I must attend to.  As for porch and house plants, it's easy enough to 'save' water from bits left in bottles or glasses or that is running while it's cold and I'm needing hot to catch up and use for those.  And if I'm quick, I can often pop a porch planter under the run off from the roof and water plants with rain water. I may be just longing to shop but I know my current season isn't going to be any less tight if I run up a credit card bill, so I'm deleting tempting emails full of sales and waiting a few days before even considering those few purchases that make it into a cart.  So far, nothing has made it from the cart to 'order' because I either forget it or I discover something I can use that I already have or I just make up my mind to go without. I ordered a new phone case and accessory ring  from eBay.  I bought the last case two years ago and it's falling apart.  I tried to remove the ring from the old case but it's a no go.  I even went to  YouTube and I discovered that they don't re-stick once removed.  The new ring  was pennies on the dollar  on eBay for the exact same one I bought for bigger bucks at the phone store last year.  I literally saved enough on the ring to cover the cost of the new case and keep change in my pocket.   In case you're wondering what a phone ring is, it's a ring that you stick to the back of your phone or phone case and  can slide a finger through and  allows you to hold the phone without dropping it.  Dropping my phone is an issue for me, so the ring isn't a vanity thing, it's purely a necessity.  Ditto for the phone case.  I get the shock absorbing sort of case.  Both items will be paid from my allowance. Sunday morning I did a full load of dishes right away after John left for work and then I ran a full load of laundry (sheets and towels).  Everything air dried. John and I combined errands when we went out to shop for groceries. I checked with John about how he liked the bread machine bread I've been making.  He thinks it's great...and so I suggested I make a couple loaves a week, and we supplement with the occasional loaf that we'll keep in the freezer.   Once at the store I decided to buy smaller sized loaves.  Same number of slices per loaf but just a smaller piece of bread overall.  The smaller sized loafs were about $1 cheaper.  With the homemade machine bread we've been eating  half slices. I've given in to buying cookies for John this summer.  It's not worth heating up the kitchen for any period of time to make them...but I told him as soon as it starts to cool off I mean to make more homemade cookies and forgo the bought ones until the Spekulaas cookies are in market once more.  In the meantime, Tammy has inspired me to make a batch of those yummy stovetop chocolate oatmeal cookies.  I'd forgotten those as an oven free option.  John loves those cookies. No meat purchased today, but only because I thought better of it when I priced the nicest chuck roast in the counter.  I had a fair idea of how much meat I had in the freezer at home (not to mention how much is in the fridge at present) and I felt we could by pass that purchase.  I'll watch for good sales on meat in the next few weeks and try to stock up then. I suggested to John it would be worthwhile to return to purchasing chicken breasts and ground beef on special at the organic market we used to visit.  I've noted that the price at the organic market is nearly $2/pound less so it's well worth driving there for the savings. Made a loaf of bread, a small peach cobbler and used up leftover roast beef and gravy to make hash. John hung most of a load of clothes to dry. I washed a full load of dishes in the dishwasher. I've downloaded a few free books for my Kindle.  Most are Christian non-fiction but one was a children's book (never know when that might come in handy!) and Mansfield Park by Jane Austen was free the other day.  I am not going nuts adding books.  I am trying to be thoughtful about what I might truly read and most will be deleted once I'm done but in time I will add books I really want to buy that are cheaper via Kindle and won't take up space on my filled bookcases...Not to say I am done buying hard cover books.  Some friends just deserve a full time home where I can hold them and love them as I read! I've started a 'stock up list'.   So far I've got tissues (for cold and flu season) and cold medicine (ditto from previous), pineapple juice (same), matches, toilet paper, flour, coffee (regular and decaf) and boxed cereal.   I may add more as time goes on but these are items I am very well aware we're very low or empty on.  Oh and candles!  We use them for our Shabats and typically two candles last us a couple or three months but they are awfully handy when power goes out as well so I like to stock up. I've started adding tissues and paper towels to our compost.  And this morning, I decided it was worth while to shred our weekly newspapers as well.  I've been adding shredded mail for quite a while but these are extra items I know I can compost.  I plan to 'grow my compost' so to speak, as I get more and more serious about my need for flowers and perhaps a few vegetables here and there. Meals: So I made my plans...how did that go?   Here's what we really ate this week Roast Beef, Squash, Tossed Salad McDonalds with Katie and Taylor Chicken Verde Enchiladas, Green Salad with Tomatoes and Green Onions Chicken Salad Sandwiches with fresh fruit (take out) Chicken Livers and Fries with Mama Roast Beef Hash, Sliced Tomato Salad with Basil, Peach Cobbler Chef's Salad, Oyster Crackers (something we often sub for croutons), Peach Cobbler (C) Terri Cheney

Agilenano - News from Agilenano from shopsnetwork (4 sites) https://agilenano.com/blogs/news/august-diary-promises-im-making-myself

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Arplis - News: August Diary: Promises I'm Making Myself

Saturday:  It's late in Shabat, just two hours more to have the full extent of the day of rest.  Today began early.  I stepped out on the porch to feed the pets and looked at the sun rising and sang "Shema".   That I remember the Hebrew after all these years away from synagogue, that these words come easily still at the sight of daybreak, astounds me: Shema, Israel, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai echad. Hear O Israel, the Lord is our G-d, the Lord is One... It was a hurry up sort of morning, but the wonder of God was  there on the front porch this morning.  I felt reverent as I went about the rest of my morning preparations. Katie and I went to pick up Taylor.  Over the hills and through the woods and past meadows shining in the golden morning light and alongside fields of freshly mown hay with bales scattered here and there.  Over creeks flowing over rocks and rivers slowly moving along sandy beds.  And everywhere the golden rod standing high, the mallow stems heavy with buds, foxtail grass dancing in the air currents, and trees with autumn hues already tinging the leaves scattered amongst the pines.   My heart ached and swelled as each new sight came into view, singing a song of both joy and grief, as I see the signs of one season passing into another.  I have learned to find something lovely and beautiful in every season of the year rather than claim just one as my favorite.  And so I must grieve the loss of one and rejoice in the other. Bonus of this road trip today was being in near proximity to a well known peach shed which blissfully was packed with traffic, a sure sign they had peaches still.  I passed a little tent with a table laden with little yellow squash and red ripe tomatoes.  My mouth watered.   On our way back to the house, when time was not quite the premium thing it was on the trip up,  I stopped and bought a big basket of peaches. I didn't even ask the price.  I got heavy red ripe tomatoes big enough to fill my hand.  I filled a sack with tender little yellow summer squash.   I didn't care about my financial state just at that moment.  I cared about savoring the remaining days of summer and it's lovely fruitful state. And in the end, it's all part and parcel of the grocery budget which renews on Monday anyway.  I'll borrow now and cut back later. I asked how much longer they might have peaches.  "We hope we can stay open until next weekend."  One week...Just one week more and then we're done with peaches for the next 10 months.  I haven't eaten nearly enough of them.  I've made just one cobbler all summer long.  I promise that next year I shall eat my fill, I shall make cobblers galore, I will.... We came home and I cut up the squash with one of the last Vidalia onions into a frying pan and then added 1/4 cup of water, covered them and let them steam gently.  I made a salad with half a tomato diced finely over it.  "I've not even had a single fresh tomato sandwich..." I said, as I sprinkled those lovely red bits over the green lettuce.  "I promise I shall have at least one this week and next year..." Oh, next year! We had a lovely visit after dinner with Taylor and Katie.  Taylor wanted purple nails "with glitter...which we do NOT eat!"   Sometimes a child does hint at some corrected behavior don't they?  I imagined her with a mouth sparkled with glitter at her nursery school and a sparkling tongue and giggles before the teacher noticed... So I did her nails and then on a whim, I used the glittery polish to coat my own nails.  I'm too old for glitter...but I think it looks magical in the light.   Didn't I promise myself to do my fingernails more often?  Oh! one more promise I really need to keep! Taylor asked about the little cats on the bookshelf.  "One day," I told her, "they shall be yours...because my grandmother gave them to me and I would like to give them to you,  my granddaughter."   Not that Taylor's my only granddaughter, I have four more but somehow I know that Taylor is the one these cats belong to.   It feels odd to be thinking of little legacies such as this, but I told Katie and John, "Listen to me.  Be my witnesses. This is my promise:  these cats will be Taylor's and if I die before I gift them to her, be sure that she gets them...and the little girl with a book will be Hailey's." Taylor crawled into my lap and leaned on my shoulder.  "I love you..."  Oh my heart!  How blessed I am to know the very genuine love of these children of my children.  How very blessed! John took Katie and Taylor home to Katie's a little later.   I sat here in the quiet, with my thoughts whispering all about me.  Tired and happy and mindful of things I want to hold tight to and mindful that none of these endless days of housework, no matter how satisfying the work may be, will be the things I remember most.  It will indeed be the taste of a sun ripened peach grown in Georgia soil, the feel of a little girl's head on my shoulder, the way a good ripe tomato smells and summer squash tastes, and how lovely a meadow is in sunlight of a dewy morning.  It will be those things which I shall remember and it makes keeping these promises to myself imperative. John has stepped out on the 'verandah' as he chooses to call the front porch and the wind is blowing hot and heavy and ringing the old iron chimes.  Ting, ting, ting, ting...Deeper than most windchimes.   I confess I'm more fond of middle and deeper tones than the tinkly sorts of chimes.  These please me. It takes a real wind to stir those bells to life.  In the distance, coming ever nearer, thunder rumbles.   Summer's music...Please Lord, make me mindful of my promises to keep! Sunday:  There are sheets and towels on the line and peach cobbler cooling atop the stove.  Not for us that cobbler but for Taylor's daddy.  The house about me is clean and quiet just now.  Here in a little bit I shall head over to Katie's to visit with them for a little while before Taylor begins her journey home. I sent John off to work this morning and tackled housework right away though I was tired and thought longingly of going back to my bed.  But not today.  Today there are sheets to blow in the sunlight and a house to put to order and a child to spend time loving. I think John is feeling the pull of the seasonal change.  He's asked me to make a turkey pot pie this week and I've promised I shall.   He wants Roast beef hash, too...and he'll have that as well, but it amuses me that he's wanting these comforting cooler weather sorts of foods.  I've told you before that summer salads do pall for us after a bit.   We'll have a few more despite these longings of ours for cozy meals.   A chef salad will be a quick and easy meal after grocery shopping this week...and I find myself suddenly making up menus for the week ahead, something I'd let drop for a bit because I was just flat tired of planning.  However, between leftovers and requests I guess I've got this week pretty much covered...Now let's see how many of these meals I actually get to make.  The roast beef meal we had on Saturday and the enchiladas were thawed on Friday when John had said we'd skip the date then got that second wind in his sails and wanted to go out after all. The roast beef is in the fridge... Everything else is frozen at present or is fresh and ready to prepare. Roast Beef, Summer Squash and Onions, Tossed Salad, Matzoh Cracker Candy Chicken Verde Enchiladas, Yellow Rice and Peach Salsa Roast Beef Hash, Wedge Salads with Thousand Island Dressing on my own  out with Mama Chef's Salad, Homemade Croutons, Peach Cobbler (for us) Turkey Pot Pie, Cranberry Sauce, Pear Salads And there's my menu plan! Speaking of food: one of the frugal articles I read last week dealt with grocery spending.  She cited the USDA government site  where you can see what food costs were for the prior month and how much one following the thrifty or low cost plans might be spending.  And then she suggested that financial advisors suggest 6% of our annual income is what we ought to spend.  As nearly as I recall how to figure percentages our spending should be something like $61 a week for the two of us.  Now  that's only for food.  It does not include pet supplies, paper or cleaning products etc.   It is also a good deal less than the government's food plan figures for a thrifty diet.  According to their figures in June we would have been spending about $84/per week.  I actually think I came in right around there  with a few paper products and one or two pet items tossed in but those would not account for more than $11 so I'm still nowhere near the 6% mark.  It does give me food for thought.  I was so proud of trimming my budget to $300 a month...But could I possibly hit closer to $244?   I'm pretty sure my husband would rebel hard at that but I'm tempted to try it just the same.  And of course, once we do retire, our 6% would also be a good bit less than $244...so I feel I owe it to myself to try and trim things back a bit more.   I'll let you know! Now off I go to unload the dishwasher and finish my bit of housework. Monday:  More tired and weary than I'd thought I'd be today...I didn't plan a day of mostly rest, but there you are.  I realized this morning that I basically did the equivalent of a drive to Kingsland and back with a brief stay to visit...but 8 hours of driving!  I felt it this morning. Thankfully only light housework was needed and dinner was pretty much ready.  I am reheating Chicken Enchiladas and have a salad made.  I'd meant to have peach salsa  with this meal but it's more effort than I want to go to today. John and I have been watching an interesting series of videos where the YouTubers go to visit old graveyards along back roads here in Georgia, some of them which are severely neglected.  I think it's made us both aware of the graveyard back of our house.  It is not on my property but just over the fence line.  Granny and Granddaddy always maintained the graveyard and when my cousin bought the land, so did he.  However, when it fell into my brother's hands it was no longer kept up.  I'd asked to take it on with his permission and he agreed but then he wired all the entrances shut with barbed wire so that I couldn't get into the area.  Now that Sam owns the land, I think I can get to it once more, but ten years of neglect means that it's now snaky and heavily overgrown. It is my hope that we can reclaim the space and maintain it once more but both Sam and John feel the graveyard is just too far gone.  However, come cold weather I shall go there and begin to do what I might.  Another  of my 'small bites' projects.  I feel sure if I start it Sam and John will eventually have pity on me and join in... The graveyard was not a family ground.  It belonged to a huge old Federal house that sat on the hill before ours.  This land was likely part of that original land grant but I haven't yet researched it out to prove that fact.   Still, I do know the people buried near my home were once residents there.  I would like to do my part in preserving a little bit of history, especially since the house burned down 30 odd years ago. Another promise I shall make this week: reclaim the graveyard and give it it's proper care. Tuesday:  We didn't do much of anything at all yesterday.  I was just worn out.  Some days are just so.  John did a load of laundry and hung a few things to dry.  I made meals and kept those simple and easy. Today we played catch up.  Typically we'd drive down on payday to pick up John's check if he's not working  the Tuesday following.  Well he wasn't working today, but we didn't go down yesterday afternoon.  He wanted to cut Sam's grass since Sam's busy with renovations inside the house. John went over yesterday afternoon,  though why he waited until afternoon to do so is beyond me.  It was so terribly hot, with a heat index of 107f.  It's been that way all week long.  It's meant to end here this weekend, though. I lived without AC for years and years.  We had only window units we used occasionally.  The year Sam was born was one year when we used AC all summer long because it was miserably hot from May to September that year.  Real temperatures that year were near 110F.  Between the summer heat and the winter cold we spent much of the year living in just one or two rooms.  That's all we could heat or cool in those years. It was very expensive to run AC in the 1980's and '90s.  When John and I got together and were struggling so we simply could not afford to run the window units though they were brand new.  We ended up compromising.  We turned them on Friday evening when we came in from work and turned them off Sunday night when we went to bed (11pm). It cost us over $300 a month to run it 8 days.   We've never paid that much a month here in the worst of our summers.  We came near it this past autumn when it was freezing and we had to run the emergency heat after our motor went out on the unit.   But all in all, AC is much more affordable than it was 25 years ago and I am so grateful for that! Today we did the payday errands: banking, bills, and groceries.  Not as much work as it sounds  because I have the bills ready to go out days ahead and then I just take them to the mailbox as soon as we do the banking.   John had warned we'd have a shorter check.  We didn't.   It wasn't quite enough to meet all our needs this time around but I'd already planned ahead for that,  so it was easy enough to proceed as planned.  I'll be sure to tell him we're on a no spend from now until next pay period which should see us through this small slump. I did well enough on groceries.  I didn't buy any meat this time around.  I'd looked at chuck roasts but they were very fatty and the one I thought worth purchasing was over $20...Wowza!  I decided I'd just skip it.  I know we've plenty of meat on hand at present. As I put groceries away in the pantry, I suggested to John that we might skip a big grocery shop next pay period and get just dairy and produce as needed.  We have quite a deep pantry at the moment and I saw only two or three items that I wished to stock more heavily, like flour, cereal and coffee.   Again, good sales will  fill those needs. I was thinking this morning that over the years I've found lots of ways to save money. Our mobile phone service is quite reasonable. We pay roughly the same for two phones that we once paid for one landline and one prepaid phone.  At one point our mobile phone company bought out our satellite TV service.  We were able to combine bills and make a small savings.  However, I soon discovered the days of renegotiating our satellite service contract was an exercise in futility with the phone company as boss.  So much for twenty five years of good customer status! Our local phone service internet was abysmal.  It had gotten so that we had no internet service from Friday afternoon at 4pm until Monday morning at 9am.  No we didn't get any discounts for the lack of service.  The company denied there was any problem!  So we moved to a satellite service.  We paid a LOT for that service.  Double what we'd paid for the local service.  However,  it was reliable and we had service we could count on. When our current mobile phone service offered an unlimited data pan  we hopped right on, changed phone plans and got the newly available hot spot.  We dropped internet satellite and saved on new smart phones, buying older models that were heavily discounted, paying cash up front.  That kept our phone bills low.   Smart phones for the same price as a mobile/text service?  Please and thank you! When lightning ran in on our television last August, we bought a Fire TV and in January I finally convinced John to quit satellite.  We dropped the satellite TV service which meant we paid still less out of pocket.  I was already paying for Amazon Prime membership each month, well worth the savings in shipping alone.  We aren't big shoppers, but I guarantee I order something from Amazon every month that is cheaper than I can find it elsewhere and that is covered under the prime free shipping.  We watch pretty much all the television we want to watch with our hot spot.  We did subscribe to Netflix' basic plan.  I am still paying far less for the phone service with unlimited data, Amazon and Netflix than I previously paid for phones, internet and satellite tv services. But for all that some things change, others pretty much stay the same.  We've paid basically the same amount for gasoline each month for the past 20 years.  Some years we drive more and some we drive less.  Our average is always right around the same amount each month for costs though. Groceries is another area that remained fairly stable for a long number of years.  I stopped buying certain items and made more from scratch and yet it's only been in these past two years I've begun to see a significant savings in the grocery spending.   I might add that during this two year period of time I've fed more people and spent less, while previously we spent a good deal more and fed only two.   Now that we're basically feeding just the two of us once more, I've watched my budget amount drop to what is an all time low for us.   Still...I could perhaps save more and I am working on it! Being frugal is never a stagnant and finite thing.  As time goes on, some of those ways I saved are no longer valid.  Eating habits change, income changes, products and promotions leave the market or come on the market. Our needs change.  What is needed in this stage of life is not the same as what was needed previously and won't be the same in five years.  For every new thing that comes along there are new ways to save and manage. Being frugal has never been boring!  And for me, that's what keeps it fun. Thursday:  I had every intent of sharing with you all yesterday but by the time I was done with Mama, I was really and most sincerely done in every sense of the word.  Once Bess and the boys left (and what good medicine they were!), I hadn't even the energy to eat.  I drank a V8 and showered and went off to bed with a book on prayer and fell asleep and slept the bulk of all night long.  Wailing and gnashing of teeth might have occurred in moderation in between that V8 and the shower but it was in extreme moderation. Today is better.   Today I am mindful of my many blessings and mindful of my own ways and words.  As well I ought to be.  Difficult relationships sometimes never cease to be difficult.  But more on that another day and time, perhaps. This morning I greeted John with a proper big breakfast.  Funny thing, we are eating less these days.  I suppose it's partly due to the heat and partly due to the fact that so much of what we choose to eat is just good fresh foods and they fill us amply even when eaten in moderation.  Our 'big' breakfast consisted of Fried egg, grits, toast and turkey sausage.   It is a big breakfast but certainly not one of those mammoth restaurant 'big' sorts of breakfasts. After breakfast I started a loaf of bread.  I'd really meant to get one going yesterday morning when John left as I was sure it would be done by the time I was ready to leave for Mama's, but time slipped away from me as I got all out of routine and did things in far different time frames than usual...which all worked  lovely as I was practically dressed and fully made up by the time Bess and Isaac stopped in to start their laundry.  Quick prayers, everyone, that work on their utility room goes through this weekend and their washer and dryer are up and running once more.  It's hard work lugging loads and loads of clothes from there to here and back again... Mama, as I expected, wanted to go to the big peach packing shed just 20 minutes north of me.  It is a good hour or so from her house...But go we did and I bought a half peck of peaches.  For one thing I meant to share with Bess, and I did.   I will put some in the freezer.  And I want to savor the last of this seasonal fruit because I do love peaches! For some reason the morning flew past.  Quicker than usual.  I'm not real sure why.   Well I do too know why.  John and I had a lot to talk over this morning and to think about and come back to talk over one more time.  I was still finishing up Bible study while our dinner cooked today.  It was one of those lovely Bible study sessions in which each passage of scripture I read today was pertinent to my own thoughts about matters that we'd discussed.   Friday:  The end of another week...They do fly by these days, don't they?   John and I have a lot to consider these days.  There's a possibility that our plans for retirement will be pushed forward from next June to end of this year.  All my plans to save money and stash away all I might as far as non-perishable things will be more modest than I'd been shooting for.  I'm not worried, but it is a little disconcerting.   Still, nothing is yet set in stone and we are at the point where now is as good as later and we'll trust God's timing.  In the end, we must always let go of our plans and rely on Him anyway, as I've discovered more than once. My house is very nearly Shabat ready.   We've no plans for this weekend aside from going to church.  I will have turkey pot pie for tomorrow's dinner which I'll do my best to prep ahead.  I'm debating dessert options.  On the one hand, I think gelatin or pudding would be a nice counter to the hot pot pie, don't you?   I'd love to make a lemon meringue pie but not sure I really want to go to that much work this afternoon when the kitchen is pretty much cleaned for the weekend.  I'll have to think on this.   I  have a Chef Salad for our main meal today.   It was on my menu plan and I find between cheese, a few slivers of turkey and some hard boiled egg we've plenty of protein and fat to satisfy us all afternoon long.  And there's a lovely bit of leftover peach cobbler, though I did make a smaller one yesterday.    And that is my week, full of the expected, and the unexpected, full of the lovely and the difficult, full of promises to keep.   Frugal things: The true economy of housekeeping is simply the art of gathering up all the fragments, so nothing be lost  I mean fragments of time as well as materials...every member of a household should be employed either in earning or saving money. The American Frugal Housewife ~ Lydia Maria Francis Child It's quite hot and the AC is pretty much running non-stop until 10 pm every night and then coming on periodically all through the night and early mornings.  I turned the AC up to 78, not my favorite point as it tends to feel a bit more stuffy, but it at least is one way to save.  I've noted the AC cuts off earlier and stays off a wee bit longer. (This should end as of Tuesday evening this week...Milder temperatures are coming our way.  Hooray!) I'm also being very mindful of running water unnecessarily at present.   This is finally getting to be more and more a habit with me as I have always tended to be the sort who let the water run and run as I rinsed dishes for the dishwasher or brushed my teeth or washed my face.  However, electricity is money and so I am doing my best to be mindful that the pump must run if I must run water. Happily, all the heat keeps generating pop up rain showers so watering plants is not a chore I must attend to.  As for porch and house plants, it's easy enough to 'save' water from bits left in bottles or glasses or that is running while it's cold and I'm needing hot to catch up and use for those.  And if I'm quick, I can often pop a porch planter under the run off from the roof and water plants with rain water. I may be just longing to shop but I know my current season isn't going to be any less tight if I run up a credit card bill, so I'm deleting tempting emails full of sales and waiting a few days before even considering those few purchases that make it into a cart.  So far, nothing has made it from the cart to 'order' because I either forget it or I discover something I can use that I already have or I just make up my mind to go without. I ordered a new phone case and accessory ring  from eBay.  I bought the last case two years ago and it's falling apart.  I tried to remove the ring from the old case but it's a no go.  I even went to  YouTube and I discovered that they don't re-stick once removed.  The new ring  was pennies on the dollar  on eBay for the exact same one I bought for bigger bucks at the phone store last year.  I literally saved enough on the ring to cover the cost of the new case and keep change in my pocket.   In case you're wondering what a phone ring is, it's a ring that you stick to the back of your phone or phone case and  can slide a finger through and  allows you to hold the phone without dropping it.  Dropping my phone is an issue for me, so the ring isn't a vanity thing, it's purely a necessity.  Ditto for the phone case.  I get the shock absorbing sort of case.  Both items will be paid from my allowance. Sunday morning I did a full load of dishes right away after John left for work and then I ran a full load of laundry (sheets and towels).  Everything air dried. John and I combined errands when we went out to shop for groceries. I checked with John about how he liked the bread machine bread I've been making.  He thinks it's great...and so I suggested I make a couple loaves a week, and we supplement with the occasional loaf that we'll keep in the freezer.   Once at the store I decided to buy smaller sized loaves.  Same number of slices per loaf but just a smaller piece of bread overall.  The smaller sized loafs were about $1 cheaper.  With the homemade machine bread we've been eating  half slices. I've given in to buying cookies for John this summer.  It's not worth heating up the kitchen for any period of time to make them...but I told him as soon as it starts to cool off I mean to make more homemade cookies and forgo the bought ones until the Spekulaas cookies are in market once more.  In the meantime, Tammy has inspired me to make a batch of those yummy stovetop chocolate oatmeal cookies.  I'd forgotten those as an oven free option.  John loves those cookies. No meat purchased today, but only because I thought better of it when I priced the nicest chuck roast in the counter.  I had a fair idea of how much meat I had in the freezer at home (not to mention how much is in the fridge at present) and I felt we could by pass that purchase.  I'll watch for good sales on meat in the next few weeks and try to stock up then. I suggested to John it would be worthwhile to return to purchasing chicken breasts and ground beef on special at the organic market we used to visit.  I've noted that the price at the organic market is nearly $2/pound less so it's well worth driving there for the savings. Made a loaf of bread, a small peach cobbler and used up leftover roast beef and gravy to make hash. John hung most of a load of clothes to dry. I washed a full load of dishes in the dishwasher. I've downloaded a few free books for my Kindle.  Most are Christian non-fiction but one was a children's book (never know when that might come in handy!) and Mansfield Park by Jane Austen was free the other day.  I am not going nuts adding books.  I am trying to be thoughtful about what I might truly read and most will be deleted once I'm done but in time I will add books I really want to buy that are cheaper via Kindle and won't take up space on my filled bookcases...Not to say I am done buying hard cover books.  Some friends just deserve a full time home where I can hold them and love them as I read! I've started a 'stock up list'.   So far I've got tissues (for cold and flu season) and cold medicine (ditto from previous), pineapple juice (same), matches, toilet paper, flour, coffee (regular and decaf) and boxed cereal.   I may add more as time goes on but these are items I am very well aware we're very low or empty on.  Oh and candles!  We use them for our Shabats and typically two candles last us a couple or three months but they are awfully handy when power goes out as well so I like to stock up. I've started adding tissues and paper towels to our compost.  And this morning, I decided it was worth while to shred our weekly newspapers as well.  I've been adding shredded mail for quite a while but these are extra items I know I can compost.  I plan to 'grow my compost' so to speak, as I get more and more serious about my need for flowers and perhaps a few vegetables here and there. Meals: So I made my plans...how did that go?   Here's what we really ate this week Roast Beef, Squash, Tossed Salad McDonalds with Katie and Taylor Chicken Verde Enchiladas, Green Salad with Tomatoes and Green Onions Chicken Salad Sandwiches with fresh fruit (take out) Chicken Livers and Fries with Mama Roast Beef Hash, Sliced Tomato Salad with Basil, Peach Cobbler Chef's Salad, Oyster Crackers (something we often sub for croutons), Peach Cobbler (C) Terri Cheney

Arplis - News source https://arplis.com/blogs/news/august-diary-promises-im-making-myself

[stephaniemarlowftw]

OAKLAND THRASHERS VALE UNLEASH DEBUT ALBUM - LISTEN NOW

Burden Of Sight will be released this Friday via The Flenser. // Catch VALE on tour throughout North America starting next month.

The wait is now over: Oakland thrashers Vale have unleashed their debut LP for public consumption (ahead of its May 24 release date). Burden Of Sight, Vale’s crushing foray into the world, is now streaming via Decibel Magazine.   Providing a devastating soundtrack to a grim, post-apocalyptic future, Vale spend six tracks on the brink of sonic destruction.  

Listen to Burden Of Sight in its scorching entirety via Decibel Magazine today.

Burden Of Sight can be viewed as a dirge against the pervasive exploitation and avarice that has taken root in the band’s own backyard. From rampant homelessness to classist hedonism, it’s all too easy to imagine the harsh reality of decomposing landscapes fraught with cannibalism and religious zealotry that Vale depicts across their rightfully nihilistic debut. 

Vale formed in late 2015 and boasts a roster featuring members of Ulthar, Void Omnia and Abstracter. After recording a demo and hitting the pavement on tour throughout 2017 and beyond, the outfit sporadically composed the material that would become Burden Of Sight.

Burden Of Sight will be released via The Flenser this Friday, May 24. Preorders are available here.  

Catch Vale on the road this summer — more updates to come.

Burden Of Sight — Track listing: 

1. Final Flesh

2. Guilt Among the Dead

3. The Guilded Path

4. Starvation Eternal

5. Beyond the Pale

6. Grief Undone

VALE Tour dates:

June 17  San Louis Obispo, CA @ The Graduate

June 18  Ventura, CA @ Gigi’s Cocktail Lounge

June 19  Las Vegas, NV @ Naked City Collecive

June 20  Santa Fe, NM @ Zephyr

June 21  Colorado Springs, CO @ 110 Below

June 22  Denver, CO @ Hi Dive

June 23  Omaha, NE @ Lookout Lounge

June 24  Minneapolis, MN @ Hexagon

June 25  Milwaukee, WI @ Walkers Point Music Hall

June 26  Chicago, IL @ Subterranean Downstairs

June 27  Detroit, MI @ Fireside Inn

June 28  Toronto, ON @ Hard Luck

June 29  Rochester, NY @ Skylark

June 30  Montreal, QC @ Brasserie Beaubien

July 1  Quebec City, QC @ L’Anti

July 2  Manchester, NM @ Ohmen DIY

July 3  Portland, ME @ Geno’s

July 6  Brookyn, NY @ Kingsland

July 7  Philadelphia, PA @ Kung Fu Necktie

July 8  Boston, MA @ Once Ballroom

July 9  Baltimore, MD @ Sidebar

July 10  Richmond, VA @ Wonderland

July 11  Chapel Hill, SC @ Local 506J

uly 12  Atlanta, GA @ 529

July 13  Jacksonville, FL @ Nighthawks

July 14  Miami, FL @ Las Rosas

July 15  Orlando, FL @ Uncle Lou’s

July 16  New Orleans, LA @ Santos Bar

July 17  Austin, TX @ Lost Well

July 18  Dallas, TX @ Club Dada

July 19  Albuquerque, NM @ Sister Bar

July 20  Phoenix, AZ @ Yucca Tap Room

July 21  Los Angeles, CA @ Lexington 

Artist photo by: Sam Capparos

[sigridcountessvongalen2-blog]

Imagine: What if,

The Novel, by Sigrid Countess von Galen

To the numerous anonymous victims, who became the loose ends of one woman! R.I.P.

Imagine: What if, a young pregnant woman from Essex, a Templar maid, volunteered gladly to play a Princess’ double for a weekend in Paris, all expenses paid.

But her Freemason recruitment was not to end happy ever after at all, as she ended in the bottom of a lake, whilst a princess did simply a Salem witches’ sabbatical courtesy of Vatican immunity take, and her own death fake!


To one day return as the Queen Mother of a fascist King in the advent of the fourth empire in a new world order - and she blew her own cover, when she was caught in broad daylight in front of a Middleton Street cafe on Kingsland Road in a state most bored and spent some of her blackhole money that she had secretly offshored via Rome and Dover on bribery and silence for property on churchwardens and on psychics in and outside a bench or pew across the Haggerston-Dalston border…

Imagine, all the people, who were slandered and framed and killed as loose ends of an operation of unseen proportion with the truth on almost all levels a distortion! To the young Essex woman with innocent unborn child, who left a grieving and silenced family behind: R.I.P.

As for the woman, who wanted a new start into anonymity: You better stay undercover and never reveal again your face nor your present identity, as you are a walking dead with only your own lies and deceit as your daily bread for what is left of your life!

And you have no longer immunity from Rome or Dover nor impunity and your access to offshore funds to bribe and silence communities all over the world is cut off! After all, you were given last time of resurfacing the latest Range Rover and some cash and even one last identity! You better make it last and reflect in penance and isolation on your past!

You were unrepentant so far, and thus, even your former allies do you now from their vicinity bar and fear condemnation in every nation, which is your fate already.

And your crimes are so grave not just against your own kins, towards whom you did even in many a nave misbehave but also against your victims and their families that your sins are retained, as because of your selfishness too many were slained and stained, and you have at all times from putting wrong right refrained and with your secret societies put up against humanity a most vile fight for a fascist empire of a new world order that you wanted to rule even across the Scottish border! Mother Teresa knew that you only ever went for media attention and obsession with power the extra-mile, and in her little black book she lists your every mercenary, whom you recruited in every RCC and CoE pew, as the Vatican's spying apparatus is also not new !

[mairi-mia1]

Game of Thrones - Season finale

"Heartbroken on the final episode of GOT...(I expected better for Jon Snow.

Dany is proof what will happen if the hunger for power and fear of losing it overtakes your sense of judgement between right and wrong. It takes a 'life time' to become 'something' from 'nothing' and a lot more than just 'time' to become 'something great'...but only a moment of emotions clouding your mind to become 'nothing' from 'Everything!'

Jon Snow is proof that it's not necessary life will be fair to you if you always follow the right things and go after being a good person... Life doesn't play by the rules man created... The same realm he went to save put him back to Night's watch he didn't deserve to be in..(not after fighting so hard to save the ENTIRE mankind! He cared for everyone he knew and didn't know, including those yet to be born & all the future generations to come! All this without any obligation or bound by duty to do so, or expecting anything in return.)

And Arya is proof that the ultimate goal we set for ourselves might just lose meaning anytime. What's more important is what you become in pursuit of your goal, it's the journey that makes you stronger, a road Arya wouldn't have taken otherwise but for her strong desire to reach her goal.... In the end it's the journey that matters...

About Sansa- Anyone who ever thought Marrying a man with a 'Prince' tag attached (deserving or not) from a so called noble family, who comes with a palace and luxury life is all a girl needs to be happy in life.... Think again. A girl needs no Prince or King to create her own identity. In the end she becomes a Queen in her own right based on her own abilities enriched by her life's experiences. (Not by merely tying knot with a King or King to be). As a true Queen in 'essence' (not just by birth as a lady of Winterfell) she ensures North is independent and doesn't bend the knee to anyone just how her people always wanted. So she clearly earned her throne!

Sansa's story is proof that you many have many fantasies as a child, but life is the best teacher as it unfolds & she grows out of the immaturity through all the pain & hardship, remains resilient through her stay at Kingslanding her enemy's den & an even more gruesome experience at her own homeland and ultimately becomes a Woman to admire! (The way she uncovers Peter Bailish's real intentions in deceiving her & Arya is proof that no one can play the fool with her now and get away with it.) So I think it is the worst experiences that unleash your true potential not the road laid out with roses all the way. It's upto you what you do with the lessons it gives.

So about Tyrion, ohhh there are soooo many thoughts crossed my mind but I will list only two....

One, no matter how wise you think you are in making the right choices & choose the good side (as per your sense of judgement....) it doesn't take long for the so called 'good side' to become the wrong choice with 'time'. If you are not alert...constantly evaluating your choices, you're in for a catastrophe beyond your imagination. (So closely resonates with today's political situation in our country).

Secondly, no matter how close you get to the end of your story or how many times... you don't always need a sword or power to save yourself. Your mind is the greatest power one has if one knows how to use it ... You can always talk yourself out of every negative thoughts and situation. The kind of power only human beings are blessed with and often grossly underestimated...

Finally Brandon Stark.... is proof that it's not your legs that take you far in life.... It's patience and perseverance... never giving up despite all the odds."

[loveforinfoworld-blog]

Jumping on the Brandwagon - How to Give Your City a Motto Makeover in 10 Easy Steps

So you're thinking of creating a new slogan and brand identity for your city Join the club Omaha Search Engine Optimization. The entire country is caught up in a frenzy of sloganeering. More than 80 percent of towns with populations greater than 25,000 either have a motto or are attempting to develop a new one.

The surge in branding can be attributed, in large part, to our friends in Las Vegas, whose daring motto, "What Happens Here, Stays Here," hit the national airwaves in 2001 and shows no signs of abating. Of course, it helps if you're blessed with a towering budget, an endless supply of neon lights, and hordes of tourists who are admitted adrenaline junkies.

Other big cities that have jumped on the brandwagon to polish their image include the likes of Cleveland ("Cleveland Rocks!"), Omaha ("O!"), Atlanta ("Every Day is an Opening Day"), San Diego ("City with Sol"), and Atlantic City ("Always Turned On"). They have launched city-wide campaigns to help sell their new brand message and make it stick. The results so far have been favorable and city fathers are relieved. Projects of this magnitude are usually accompanied by a fair amount of anguish and nagging doubts, especially when detractors start chomping at the bit. After all, a city's pride and reputation are at stake.

City Branding Isn't For Sissies

To put it bluntly, branding isn't for sissies. Big cities can expect to spend nine months to a year in brand development and several more years promoting their brandiwork. They also have to contend with lots of stakeholders, such as city officials, neighborhood leaders, corporate sponsors, downtown redevelopers, the Convention & Visitors Bureau, and the Chamber of Commerce. Oh, and let's not forget the opinions of vocal city residents and members of the press who weigh in throughout the entire process.

So if branding is painful, protracted, and perilous, why do cities do it? Why don't they keep their old motto? Why can't they simply quote that cool Latin inscription on their official seal? What difference does a brand new slogan really make?

Well, I'm here to tell you...it makes a huge difference. A slogan is a valuable ambassador. When conceived correctly, it can reflect a city's style and personality, leverage its assets, and communicate a compelling message. Think of it as urban renewal without having to pass a bond measure.

Every city is unique, possessing both positive and negative perceptions. It has a history, a culture, and a constituency Omaha Web Design. The key to effective branding is to embrace an appealing slogan that promises an experience that can't be duplicated anywhere else. A good slogan is just the tip of the iceberg, an exclamation point at the end of a municipal pitch to the world at large.

Cities that succeed in incorporating their refurbished brand message into their campaigns and advertising creative provide the impetus for attracting visitors, retirees, home builders, and investors, which, in turn, helps generate greater tourism, tax revenue, unity, and goodwill.

Cleveland's motto makeover is a case in point. After 30 years of living with the shameful moniker, "The Mistake on the Lake," and the ever-so-brief, yawn-inducing slogan, "America's Comeback City," it has emerged with its self-esteem intact and is now enjoying renewed pride and optimism largely inspired by its new slogan, "Cleveland Rocks!" Cleveland has fast become a popular destination for the rockers and the Dockers® set, and its brand barometer has never looked brighter.

Preparing Your Motto Makeover

Your city's motto is the focal point of your brand message. It tells a story, your story. It should be succinct, positive, original, and memorable. It should be believable (this is who we are), but it can also aspire to be something bigger and greater (this is how we're evolving).

Mottos can be humorous ("Experience Our Sense of Yuma" - Yuma, AZ); alliterative ("Livable, Lovable Lodi"); quaint ("Where the Trout Leap on Main Street" - Saratoga, WY); clever ("There's More Than Meets the Arch" - St. Louis, MO"); disarming ("It's Not the End of the Earth, but You Can See It from Here" - Bushnell, SD)," or rhyme ("Where Nature Smiles for Seven Miles," - Spring Lake, MI). Whatever motto you select, it reflects on you and vice-versa. Think of it as a robe you put on that fits well, feels good, looks great, and makes the right impression.

Since your motto competes with others in the municipal, regional, and national marketplace, it should also be strikingly unique so that it stands out in a crowd.

In the long run, you need a solid strategy for not only developing a motto, but also promoting it and communicating its value. A motto is just part of an overall brand awareness program that your town's citizens and the rest of the world will judge by its clarity, consistency, and creativity.

The Ten Steps to Successful Sloganeering

As a public service, I have identified 10 easy steps that any city or town can follow, regardless of size, budget, or inclination, to ensure that its branding and sloganeering process is satisfying and successful. Here we go:

Step #1: Build Your Case

To kick off a city branding project, you need top-down and grass-roots buy-in. The officials who control the budget will want to know why re-branding is necessary. Be prepared to give them a good answer. Conduct a brand audit to benchmark your current thinking and build consensus. As you move forward, try to obtain pro-bono support from a leading ad agency and donations from a few local corporations. Assemble a plan, a timetable, and a set of expectations. Refer to the branding success of other cities and focus on bottom-line results. Start thinking like a brand manager...not a city manager.

Step #2: Don't Be Afraid to Re-brand

Okay, so you have a tired, worn-out slogan that's negative, unoriginal, boring, and trite - and it doesn't do justice to your fair city. Well, then, do something about it! If companies can re-invent themselves with exciting new slogans, so can you. Perceptions change and you can find yourself in a rut very quickly. You don't need to spend millions on urban redevelopment to have an excuse to re-brand - just a strong belief shared by others that your slogan is no longer channeling your city's mojo.

Give your citizens something to rally around. Give them a new battle cry. Create a new platform for delivering an enduring message that expresses confidence and shows some attitude. Who remembers Las Vegas's former motto, "Las Vegas Loves Visitors?" That's ancient history. The city re-branded itself and never looked back.

Step #3: Test the Waters

Brainstorm as much as possible. Solicit opinions and ideas from newspaper readers and all of your key stakeholders. Organize their responses in a meaningful way and ask your agency to help you sort, craft, and polish them. Narrow down the best slogans to a manageable list. For a reality check, do a little focus group testing. Feedback is always invaluable. Be sure to determine in advance who will make the final selection of your motto - a branding committee or the results of a city-wide contest. In some instances, a branding committee will select three to five mottos and then ask city residents to vote on them.

Step #4: Focus on Brand Attributes

What are your town's assets and attractions? What words best describe its past, present, and future? Focus on slogan attributes that illustrate your town's brand character (traditional or innovative), style (colorful or understated), tone (informative or imaginative) affinity (Main Street or Wall Street), and personality (playful or serious). What core values are ingrained in your town's culture? Be sure to survey the competition (e.g., other cities and other slogans) for added perspective.

Step #5: Make Your Slogan Specific

Me-too, cookie-cutter slogans are a dime a dozen. If you borrow another city's brand style, personality, or message, you're selling your town down the river. What are you proud of? What are you known for? Are you merely the gateway to someplace else or is there a there, there? Too many towns have generic mottos or monikers that sound notoriously alike ("America's Hometown," "A Great Place to Live," A Place to Call Home," etc.). Don't go down that road. Instead, you can:

oHonor your hometown hero: "Birthplace of Johnny Cash" - Kingsland, AR

oConfer a title upon your town: "Goat Ropin' Capital of the World" - Gotebo, OK

oEmphasize something unique: "Home of the Candy Dance" - Genova, NV

oPlay up a weird attraction: "The World's Largest Chee-to" - Algona, IA

oMake an unusual claim: "The Poison Oak Capital of the World" - Forestville, CA

Step #6: Turn Your Brand Into an Ambassador

Your slogan is your brand ambassador. People experience your brand every time one of their five senses comes in contact with it. Your job is to package the most positive impressions that comprise their experience, and then brand it for them. "The Sweetest Place on Earth," the motto of Hershey, PA, is a perfect example. Its brand image and message capture the joy and happiness that people feel when they experience chocolate.

As your brand ambassador, use your slogan to make your town more appealing. Is it a fun place to visit? What are the benefits of living there? Does your motto inspire us to learn more about your town? A good brand ambassador hits all the emotional touchpoints.

Step #7: Keep Your Brand Visible

More than 80 percent of the web sites of the 50 largest U.S. cities don't even mention their official slogans, which just goes to show how little thought they give to their own branding. Too often, a city will spend months on brand development and then fail to make its new slogan and logo a visible part of its communications. Make sure your new brand identity is front and center on business cards, brochures, e-mail messages, and the home page of the Web sites that promote your city (e.g., city government, Chamber of Commerce, Convention & Visitors Bureau, etc.).

Strive for synergy and consistency among these sites, especially a common look and feel in the treatment of your logo, slogan, and city colors. The creation of a style guide will help achieve this. Finally, give some thought to turning your slogan into a web site address, such as Charlottesville's which takes you straight to its C&VB site. Now that's branding!

Step #8: Tell a Compelling Story

It's the story behind the slogan and the theme that drives it that gives it "legs." It should be told and re-told with conviction and enthusiasm. Since your stakeholders are your strategic partners and strongly invested in the outcome, get them on board from the get-go. Early adopters make the best evangelists. When it's time to announce your slogan publicly, make sure you inform your team how and when you're going to roll out the new brand message. Make sure they have the talking points they need to help promote your program. You also may want to take a few members of the press into your confidence. Whatever else you do, publicize, publicize, publicize!

Step #9: Devise an Integrated Marketing Plan

The first six months after you announce your brand identity and new slogan are the most critical. Many people will be in a state of shock; others will be totally nonplussed; and there are those who will write nasty letters to the editor and turn your fresh new branding into rancid lunchmeat. Don't worry, this is normal. You don't have to embrace these opinions, but you can rise above it all with a carefully-planned and well-honed market strategy.

An agency can provide expert guidance and the necessary overview if you're planning to mount a communications campaign that involves print, radio, or TV advertising; collateral development; e-mail marketing; and web messaging, as well as the creation of signage for billboards, buses, and downtown banners. An integrated marketing plan is designed to work multiple channels for maximum effect, leveraging all of your resources under one branding umbrella.

Over the past year, the city of Omaha has enjoyed great success at promoting its new brand identity and slogan, embodied dramatically in a bright, eye-catching red logo. The "O!" has popped up on street corners, public buildings, local businesses, festival streamers, and even election stickers. Merchandise emblazoned with it can be purchased online, and city residents are encouraged to submit photos of "O!".

Despite the uneasy comparisons with Oprah, Oxygen, and Overstock.com, the city of Omaha has played the branding game with a lot of smarts - partnering with key stakeholders in the management of its brand awareness campaign, integrating its message across complementary web sites, and encouraging the entire community to get more involved and embrace the spirit and surprise of "O!"

Step #10: Think Beyond City Limits

City mottos were not meant to change with every passing mayoral administration. If they did, they wouldn't address what is universal and timeless about your town. They would simply serve as a convenient catchphrase to spur, at best, downtown economic growth. When you sit down with your creative folks, focus on things like vision and values and the qualities that define your city's greatness. That's the level on which you should communicate.

There are no absolutes, no right or wrong answers in the branding game. When all is said and done, success in branding is measured by the integrity of the concept that underlies your main message. It's the bridge that lets you reconcile the experience of your city with the expression of its message. Remember, your city's motto is more than just a calling card; it's a special invitation. So treat it like one.

Results of City Branding Survey

A national survey conducted in 2005 by TaglineGuru (www.taglineguru.com) ranked the top 50 U.S. city slogans and top 50 U.S. city nicknames. One hundred marketing, advertising, and branding professionals in 82 cities across 38 states were asked to rank, respectively, their top 10 city mottos and top 10 city monikers.

Brand expressions were evaluated and ranked on how clever, funny, charming, original, friendly, inspiring, and memorable they were, in addition to how well they illustrated a city's brand character, style, and personality. Both official and unofficial, as well as past and present, slogans and nicknames were eligible for consideration. To level the playing field, a city could be listed only once in each category even though it had several mottos or monikers to its name.

Survey results indicated that 52 percent of top-ranked slogans were from towns with populations less than 25,000. In contrast, 58 percent of top-ranked nicknames were from cities with populations greater than 100,000.

When it comes to slogans, small towns have an easier sell. They're known for one thing, and everyone usually agrees what that one thing is (e.g., spam, hub caps, barbed wire, etc.). On the other hand, big cities are complex and have many constituents. They require an overarching message that must satisfy and unite disparate interest groups. Sadly, the result is often a nickname that is more bland than brand-oriented.

Cities and towns located in the Southwest comprise 36 percent of the top-rated slogans in this survey (e.g., "The Soul of the Southwest" - Taos, NM; "Where Yee-Ha Meets Olé" - Eagle Pass, TX; "Named for the Turn of a Card" - Show Low, AZ, etc.). Perhaps it's the region's history and lore or its penchant for spinning a good yarn that account for such colorful and romantic slogans. Whatever the reason, the Southwest understands its unique value proposition and knows how to leverage it.

For the most part, slogans that tell an engaging story and speak directly to deeply-cherished dreams and desires are better at forging strong brand identities that stand the test of time. Ultimately, a successful slogan is one whose appeal is universal, and whose underlying values and sentiments are immensely personal.

Summary

In the last five years or so, sloganeering has become a popular way to spruce up or overhaul city image and brand identity. Most efforts have succeeded: mottos are being crafted more cleverly and competitively, and are being promoted in creative and compelling ways. More importantly, they're treated as an integral part of an ongoing branding and communications campaign designed to raise awareness and crystallize public opinion.

However, those cities under pressure from various camps to refresh their message and update their slogan need to step back and ask themselves, "Is it really necessary to re-brand?" The pros and cons should be weighed carefully based on shifts in the political, economic, cultural, and competitive climate. Caveat civitas (let the city beware): branding requires more time and effort than a simple roll of the device. Just ask Las Vegas.

Of course, if the slogan-savvy town twenty miles down the pike is siphoning off much-needed tourism dollars, there's probably sufficient reason to ramp up your branding lickety-split and play some old-fashioned hardball.

One thing is for sure, city branding is here to stay. As long as we're influenced and inspired by iconic ideas and expressions, mottos and monikers will continue to strike our fancy, capture our imagination, and resonate in our lives. The good ones have staying power. They move and inspire us. They make us think and laugh. They guide our vacation planning.

Rome wasn't built in a day. Either are the best slogans. Since all branding is local, make sure the roads you take lead back to your home town.

©2006 Eric Stephen Swartz. All rights reserved.

Eric Swartz is founder and president of Tagline Guru (www.taglineguru.com), a branding and communications agency specializing in the creation, alignment, integration, and packaging of slogans, names, messages, and concepts for companies, products, destinations, and individuals.

Swartz is creator of the Integrated Marketing Communications Audit(tm), or IMCA(tm), a platform for communicating consistent brand messaging across all media -- helping client organizations come to a consensus regarding their vision, values, mission, differentiation, solution, promise, and competitive advantage.

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Adtwixt - News: August Diary: Promises I'm Making Myself

Regular news updates from Adtwixt Saturday:  It's late in Shabat, just two hours more to have the full extent of the day of rest.  Today began early.  I stepped out on the porch to feed the pets and looked at the sun rising and sang "Shema".   That I remember the Hebrew after all these years away from synagogue, that these words come easily still at the sight of daybreak, astounds me: Shema, Israel, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai echad. Hear O Israel, the Lord is our G-d, the Lord is One... It was a hurry up sort of morning, but the wonder of God was  there on the front porch this morning.  I felt reverent as I went about the rest of my morning preparations. Katie and I went to pick up Taylor.  Over the hills and through the woods and past meadows shining in the golden morning light and alongside fields of freshly mown hay with bales scattered here and there.  Over creeks flowing over rocks and rivers slowly moving along sandy beds.  And everywhere the golden rod standing high, the mallow stems heavy with buds, foxtail grass dancing in the air currents, and trees with autumn hues already tinging the leaves scattered amongst the pines.   My heart ached and swelled as each new sight came into view, singing a song of both joy and grief, as I see the signs of one season passing into another.  I have learned to find something lovely and beautiful in every season of the year rather than claim just one as my favorite.  And so I must grieve the loss of one and rejoice in the other. Bonus of this road trip today was being in near proximity to a well known peach shed which blissfully was packed with traffic, a sure sign they had peaches still.  I passed a little tent with a table laden with little yellow squash and red ripe tomatoes.  My mouth watered.   On our way back to the house, when time was not quite the premium thing it was on the trip up,  I stopped and bought a big basket of peaches. I didn't even ask the price.  I got heavy red ripe tomatoes big enough to fill my hand.  I filled a sack with tender little yellow summer squash.   I didn't care about my financial state just at that moment.  I cared about savoring the remaining days of summer and it's lovely fruitful state. And in the end, it's all part and parcel of the grocery budget which renews on Monday anyway.  I'll borrow now and cut back later. I asked how much longer they might have peaches.  "We hope we can stay open until next weekend."  One week...Just one week more and then we're done with peaches for the next 10 months.  I haven't eaten nearly enough of them.  I've made just one cobbler all summer long.  I promise that next year I shall eat my fill, I shall make cobblers galore, I will.... We came home and I cut up the squash with one of the last Vidalia onions into a frying pan and then added 1/4 cup of water, covered them and let them steam gently.  I made a salad with half a tomato diced finely over it.  "I've not even had a single fresh tomato sandwich..." I said, as I sprinkled those lovely red bits over the green lettuce.  "I promise I shall have at least one this week and next year..." Oh, next year! We had a lovely visit after dinner with Taylor and Katie.  Taylor wanted purple nails "with glitter...which we do NOT eat!"   Sometimes a child does hint at some corrected behavior don't they?  I imagined her with a mouth sparkled with glitter at her nursery school and a sparkling tongue and giggles before the teacher noticed... So I did her nails and then on a whim, I used the glittery polish to coat my own nails.  I'm too old for glitter...but I think it looks magical in the light.   Didn't I promise myself to do my fingernails more often?  Oh! one more promise I really need to keep! Taylor asked about the little cats on the bookshelf.  "One day," I told her, "they shall be yours...because my grandmother gave them to me and I would like to give them to you,  my granddaughter."   Not that Taylor's my only granddaughter, I have four more but somehow I know that Taylor is the one these cats belong to.   It feels odd to be thinking of little legacies such as this, but I told Katie and John, "Listen to me.  Be my witnesses. This is my promise:  these cats will be Taylor's and if I die before I gift them to her, be sure that she gets them...and the little girl with a book will be Hailey's." Taylor crawled into my lap and leaned on my shoulder.  "I love you..."  Oh my heart!  How blessed I am to know the very genuine love of these children of my children.  How very blessed! John took Katie and Taylor home to Katie's a little later.   I sat here in the quiet, with my thoughts whispering all about me.  Tired and happy and mindful of things I want to hold tight to and mindful that none of these endless days of housework, no matter how satisfying the work may be, will be the things I remember most.  It will indeed be the taste of a sun ripened peach grown in Georgia soil, the feel of a little girl's head on my shoulder, the way a good ripe tomato smells and summer squash tastes, and how lovely a meadow is in sunlight of a dewy morning.  It will be those things which I shall remember and it makes keeping these promises to myself imperative. John has stepped out on the 'verandah' as he chooses to call the front porch and the wind is blowing hot and heavy and ringing the old iron chimes.  Ting, ting, ting, ting...Deeper than most windchimes.   I confess I'm more fond of middle and deeper tones than the tinkly sorts of chimes.  These please me. It takes a real wind to stir those bells to life.  In the distance, coming ever nearer, thunder rumbles.   Summer's music...Please Lord, make me mindful of my promises to keep! Sunday:  There are sheets and towels on the line and peach cobbler cooling atop the stove.  Not for us that cobbler but for Taylor's daddy.  The house about me is clean and quiet just now.  Here in a little bit I shall head over to Katie's to visit with them for a little while before Taylor begins her journey home. I sent John off to work this morning and tackled housework right away though I was tired and thought longingly of going back to my bed.  But not today.  Today there are sheets to blow in the sunlight and a house to put to order and a child to spend time loving. I think John is feeling the pull of the seasonal change.  He's asked me to make a turkey pot pie this week and I've promised I shall.   He wants Roast beef hash, too...and he'll have that as well, but it amuses me that he's wanting these comforting cooler weather sorts of foods.  I've told you before that summer salads do pall for us after a bit.   We'll have a few more despite these longings of ours for cozy meals.   A chef salad will be a quick and easy meal after grocery shopping this week...and I find myself suddenly making up menus for the week ahead, something I'd let drop for a bit because I was just flat tired of planning.  However, between leftovers and requests I guess I've got this week pretty much covered...Now let's see how many of these meals I actually get to make.  The roast beef meal we had on Saturday and the enchiladas were thawed on Friday when John had said we'd skip the date then got that second wind in his sails and wanted to go out after all. The roast beef is in the fridge... Everything else is frozen at present or is fresh and ready to prepare. Roast Beef, Summer Squash and Onions, Tossed Salad, Matzoh Cracker Candy Chicken Verde Enchiladas, Yellow Rice and Peach Salsa Roast Beef Hash, Wedge Salads with Thousand Island Dressing on my own  out with Mama Chef's Salad, Homemade Croutons, Peach Cobbler (for us) Turkey Pot Pie, Cranberry Sauce, Pear Salads And there's my menu plan! Speaking of food: one of the frugal articles I read last week dealt with grocery spending.  She cited the USDA government site  where you can see what food costs were for the prior month and how much one following the thrifty or low cost plans might be spending.  And then she suggested that financial advisors suggest 6% of our annual income is what we ought to spend.  As nearly as I recall how to figure percentages our spending should be something like $61 a week for the two of us.  Now  that's only for food.  It does not include pet supplies, paper or cleaning products etc.   It is also a good deal less than the government's food plan figures for a thrifty diet.  According to their figures in June we would have been spending about $84/per week.  I actually think I came in right around there  with a few paper products and one or two pet items tossed in but those would not account for more than $11 so I'm still nowhere near the 6% mark.  It does give me food for thought.  I was so proud of trimming my budget to $300 a month...But could I possibly hit closer to $244?   I'm pretty sure my husband would rebel hard at that but I'm tempted to try it just the same.  And of course, once we do retire, our 6% would also be a good bit less than $244...so I feel I owe it to myself to try and trim things back a bit more.   I'll let you know! Now off I go to unload the dishwasher and finish my bit of housework. Monday:  More tired and weary than I'd thought I'd be today...I didn't plan a day of mostly rest, but there you are.  I realized this morning that I basically did the equivalent of a drive to Kingsland and back with a brief stay to visit...but 8 hours of driving!  I felt it this morning. Thankfully only light housework was needed and dinner was pretty much ready.  I am reheating Chicken Enchiladas and have a salad made.  I'd meant to have peach salsa  with this meal but it's more effort than I want to go to today. John and I have been watching an interesting series of videos where the YouTubers go to visit old graveyards along back roads here in Georgia, some of them which are severely neglected.  I think it's made us both aware of the graveyard back of our house.  It is not on my property but just over the fence line.  Granny and Granddaddy always maintained the graveyard and when my cousin bought the land, so did he.  However, when it fell into my brother's hands it was no longer kept up.  I'd asked to take it on with his permission and he agreed but then he wired all the entrances shut with barbed wire so that I couldn't get into the area.  Now that Sam owns the land, I think I can get to it once more, but ten years of neglect means that it's now snaky and heavily overgrown. It is my hope that we can reclaim the space and maintain it once more but both Sam and John feel the graveyard is just too far gone.  However, come cold weather I shall go there and begin to do what I might.  Another  of my 'small bites' projects.  I feel sure if I start it Sam and John will eventually have pity on me and join in... The graveyard was not a family ground.  It belonged to a huge old Federal house that sat on the hill before ours.  This land was likely part of that original land grant but I haven't yet researched it out to prove that fact.   Still, I do know the people buried near my home were once residents there.  I would like to do my part in preserving a little bit of history, especially since the house burned down 30 odd years ago. Another promise I shall make this week: reclaim the graveyard and give it it's proper care. Tuesday:  We didn't do much of anything at all yesterday.  I was just worn out.  Some days are just so.  John did a load of laundry and hung a few things to dry.  I made meals and kept those simple and easy. Today we played catch up.  Typically we'd drive down on payday to pick up John's check if he's not working  the Tuesday following.  Well he wasn't working today, but we didn't go down yesterday afternoon.  He wanted to cut Sam's grass since Sam's busy with renovations inside the house. John went over yesterday afternoon,  though why he waited until afternoon to do so is beyond me.  It was so terribly hot, with a heat index of 107f.  It's been that way all week long.  It's meant to end here this weekend, though. I lived without AC for years and years.  We had only window units we used occasionally.  The year Sam was born was one year when we used AC all summer long because it was miserably hot from May to September that year.  Real temperatures that year were near 110F.  Between the summer heat and the winter cold we spent much of the year living in just one or two rooms.  That's all we could heat or cool in those years. It was very expensive to run AC in the 1980's and '90s.  When John and I got together and were struggling so we simply could not afford to run the window units though they were brand new.  We ended up compromising.  We turned them on Friday evening when we came in from work and turned them off Sunday night when we went to bed (11pm). It cost us over $300 a month to run it 8 days.   We've never paid that much a month here in the worst of our summers.  We came near it this past autumn when it was freezing and we had to run the emergency heat after our motor went out on the unit.   But all in all, AC is much more affordable than it was 25 years ago and I am so grateful for that! Today we did the payday errands: banking, bills, and groceries.  Not as much work as it sounds  because I have the bills ready to go out days ahead and then I just take them to the mailbox as soon as we do the banking.   John had warned we'd have a shorter check.  We didn't.   It wasn't quite enough to meet all our needs this time around but I'd already planned ahead for that,  so it was easy enough to proceed as planned.  I'll be sure to tell him we're on a no spend from now until next pay period which should see us through this small slump. I did well enough on groceries.  I didn't buy any meat this time around.  I'd looked at chuck roasts but they were very fatty and the one I thought worth purchasing was over $20...Wowza!  I decided I'd just skip it.  I know we've plenty of meat on hand at present. As I put groceries away in the pantry, I suggested to John that we might skip a big grocery shop next pay period and get just dairy and produce as needed.  We have quite a deep pantry at the moment and I saw only two or three items that I wished to stock more heavily, like flour, cereal and coffee.   Again, good sales will  fill those needs. I was thinking this morning that over the years I've found lots of ways to save money. Our mobile phone service is quite reasonable. We pay roughly the same for two phones that we once paid for one landline and one prepaid phone.  At one point our mobile phone company bought out our satellite TV service.  We were able to combine bills and make a small savings.  However, I soon discovered the days of renegotiating our satellite service contract was an exercise in futility with the phone company as boss.  So much for twenty five years of good customer status! Our local phone service internet was abysmal.  It had gotten so that we had no internet service from Friday afternoon at 4pm until Monday morning at 9am.  No we didn't get any discounts for the lack of service.  The company denied there was any problem!  So we moved to a satellite service.  We paid a LOT for that service.  Double what we'd paid for the local service.  However,  it was reliable and we had service we could count on. When our current mobile phone service offered an unlimited data pan  we hopped right on, changed phone plans and got the newly available hot spot.  We dropped internet satellite and saved on new smart phones, buying older models that were heavily discounted, paying cash up front.  That kept our phone bills low.   Smart phones for the same price as a mobile/text service?  Please and thank you! When lightning ran in on our television last August, we bought a Fire TV and in January I finally convinced John to quit satellite.  We dropped the satellite TV service which meant we paid still less out of pocket.  I was already paying for Amazon Prime membership each month, well worth the savings in shipping alone.  We aren't big shoppers, but I guarantee I order something from Amazon every month that is cheaper than I can find it elsewhere and that is covered under the prime free shipping.  We watch pretty much all the television we want to watch with our hot spot.  We did subscribe to Netflix' basic plan.  I am still paying far less for the phone service with unlimited data, Amazon and Netflix than I previously paid for phones, internet and satellite tv services. But for all that some things change, others pretty much stay the same.  We've paid basically the same amount for gasoline each month for the past 20 years.  Some years we drive more and some we drive less.  Our average is always right around the same amount each month for costs though. Groceries is another area that remained fairly stable for a long number of years.  I stopped buying certain items and made more from scratch and yet it's only been in these past two years I've begun to see a significant savings in the grocery spending.   I might add that during this two year period of time I've fed more people and spent less, while previously we spent a good deal more and fed only two.   Now that we're basically feeding just the two of us once more, I've watched my budget amount drop to what is an all time low for us.   Still...I could perhaps save more and I am working on it! Being frugal is never a stagnant and finite thing.  As time goes on, some of those ways I saved are no longer valid.  Eating habits change, income changes, products and promotions leave the market or come on the market. Our needs change.  What is needed in this stage of life is not the same as what was needed previously and won't be the same in five years.  For every new thing that comes along there are new ways to save and manage. Being frugal has never been boring!  And for me, that's what keeps it fun. Thursday:  I had every intent of sharing with you all yesterday but by the time I was done with Mama, I was really and most sincerely done in every sense of the word.  Once Bess and the boys left (and what good medicine they were!), I hadn't even the energy to eat.  I drank a V8 and showered and went off to bed with a book on prayer and fell asleep and slept the bulk of all night long.  Wailing and gnashing of teeth might have occurred in moderation in between that V8 and the shower but it was in extreme moderation. Today is better.   Today I am mindful of my many blessings and mindful of my own ways and words.  As well I ought to be.  Difficult relationships sometimes never cease to be difficult.  But more on that another day and time, perhaps. This morning I greeted John with a proper big breakfast.  Funny thing, we are eating less these days.  I suppose it's partly due to the heat and partly due to the fact that so much of what we choose to eat is just good fresh foods and they fill us amply even when eaten in moderation.  Our 'big' breakfast consisted of Fried egg, grits, toast and turkey sausage.   It is a big breakfast but certainly not one of those mammoth restaurant 'big' sorts of breakfasts. After breakfast I started a loaf of bread.  I'd really meant to get one going yesterday morning when John left as I was sure it would be done by the time I was ready to leave for Mama's, but time slipped away from me as I got all out of routine and did things in far different time frames than usual...which all worked  lovely as I was practically dressed and fully made up by the time Bess and Isaac stopped in to start their laundry.  Quick prayers, everyone, that work on their utility room goes through this weekend and their washer and dryer are up and running once more.  It's hard work lugging loads and loads of clothes from there to here and back again... Mama, as I expected, wanted to go to the big peach packing shed just 20 minutes north of me.  It is a good hour or so from her house...But go we did and I bought a half peck of peaches.  For one thing I meant to share with Bess, and I did.   I will put some in the freezer.  And I want to savor the last of this seasonal fruit because I do love peaches! For some reason the morning flew past.  Quicker than usual.  I'm not real sure why.   Well I do too know why.  John and I had a lot to talk over this morning and to think about and come back to talk over one more time.  I was still finishing up Bible study while our dinner cooked today.  It was one of those lovely Bible study sessions in which each passage of scripture I read today was pertinent to my own thoughts about matters that we'd discussed.   Friday:  The end of another week...They do fly by these days, don't they?   John and I have a lot to consider these days.  There's a possibility that our plans for retirement will be pushed forward from next June to end of this year.  All my plans to save money and stash away all I might as far as non-perishable things will be more modest than I'd been shooting for.  I'm not worried, but it is a little disconcerting.   Still, nothing is yet set in stone and we are at the point where now is as good as later and we'll trust God's timing.  In the end, we must always let go of our plans and rely on Him anyway, as I've discovered more than once. My house is very nearly Shabat ready.   We've no plans for this weekend aside from going to church.  I will have turkey pot pie for tomorrow's dinner which I'll do my best to prep ahead.  I'm debating dessert options.  On the one hand, I think gelatin or pudding would be a nice counter to the hot pot pie, don't you?   I'd love to make a lemon meringue pie but not sure I really want to go to that much work this afternoon when the kitchen is pretty much cleaned for the weekend.  I'll have to think on this.   I  have a Chef Salad for our main meal today.   It was on my menu plan and I find between cheese, a few slivers of turkey and some hard boiled egg we've plenty of protein and fat to satisfy us all afternoon long.  And there's a lovely bit of leftover peach cobbler, though I did make a smaller one yesterday.    And that is my week, full of the expected, and the unexpected, full of the lovely and the difficult, full of promises to keep.   Frugal things: The true economy of housekeeping is simply the art of gathering up all the fragments, so nothing be lost  I mean fragments of time as well as materials...every member of a household should be employed either in earning or saving money. The American Frugal Housewife ~ Lydia Maria Francis Child It's quite hot and the AC is pretty much running non-stop until 10 pm every night and then coming on periodically all through the night and early mornings.  I turned the AC up to 78, not my favorite point as it tends to feel a bit more stuffy, but it at least is one way to save.  I've noted the AC cuts off earlier and stays off a wee bit longer. (This should end as of Tuesday evening this week...Milder temperatures are coming our way.  Hooray!) I'm also being very mindful of running water unnecessarily at present.   This is finally getting to be more and more a habit with me as I have always tended to be the sort who let the water run and run as I rinsed dishes for the dishwasher or brushed my teeth or washed my face.  However, electricity is money and so I am doing my best to be mindful that the pump must run if I must run water. Happily, all the heat keeps generating pop up rain showers so watering plants is not a chore I must attend to.  As for porch and house plants, it's easy enough to 'save' water from bits left in bottles or glasses or that is running while it's cold and I'm needing hot to catch up and use for those.  And if I'm quick, I can often pop a porch planter under the run off from the roof and water plants with rain water. I may be just longing to shop but I know my current season isn't going to be any less tight if I run up a credit card bill, so I'm deleting tempting emails full of sales and waiting a few days before even considering those few purchases that make it into a cart.  So far, nothing has made it from the cart to 'order' because I either forget it or I discover something I can use that I already have or I just make up my mind to go without. I ordered a new phone case and accessory ring  from eBay.  I bought the last case two years ago and it's falling apart.  I tried to remove the ring from the old case but it's a no go.  I even went to  YouTube and I discovered that they don't re-stick once removed.  The new ring  was pennies on the dollar  on eBay for the exact same one I bought for bigger bucks at the phone store last year.  I literally saved enough on the ring to cover the cost of the new case and keep change in my pocket.   In case you're wondering what a phone ring is, it's a ring that you stick to the back of your phone or phone case and  can slide a finger through and  allows you to hold the phone without dropping it.  Dropping my phone is an issue for me, so the ring isn't a vanity thing, it's purely a necessity.  Ditto for the phone case.  I get the shock absorbing sort of case.  Both items will be paid from my allowance. Sunday morning I did a full load of dishes right away after John left for work and then I ran a full load of laundry (sheets and towels).  Everything air dried. John and I combined errands when we went out to shop for groceries. I checked with John about how he liked the bread machine bread I've been making.  He thinks it's great...and so I suggested I make a couple loaves a week, and we supplement with the occasional loaf that we'll keep in the freezer.   Once at the store I decided to buy smaller sized loaves.  Same number of slices per loaf but just a smaller piece of bread overall.  The smaller sized loafs were about $1 cheaper.  With the homemade machine bread we've been eating  half slices. I've given in to buying cookies for John this summer.  It's not worth heating up the kitchen for any period of time to make them...but I told him as soon as it starts to cool off I mean to make more homemade cookies and forgo the bought ones until the Spekulaas cookies are in market once more.  In the meantime, Tammy has inspired me to make a batch of those yummy stovetop chocolate oatmeal cookies.  I'd forgotten those as an oven free option.  John loves those cookies. No meat purchased today, but only because I thought better of it when I priced the nicest chuck roast in the counter.  I had a fair idea of how much meat I had in the freezer at home (not to mention how much is in the fridge at present) and I felt we could by pass that purchase.  I'll watch for good sales on meat in the next few weeks and try to stock up then. I suggested to John it would be worthwhile to return to purchasing chicken breasts and ground beef on special at the organic market we used to visit.  I've noted that the price at the organic market is nearly $2/pound less so it's well worth driving there for the savings. Made a loaf of bread, a small peach cobbler and used up leftover roast beef and gravy to make hash. John hung most of a load of clothes to dry. I washed a full load of dishes in the dishwasher. I've downloaded a few free books for my Kindle.  Most are Christian non-fiction but one was a children's book (never know when that might come in handy!) and Mansfield Park by Jane Austen was free the other day.  I am not going nuts adding books.  I am trying to be thoughtful about what I might truly read and most will be deleted once I'm done but in time I will add books I really want to buy that are cheaper via Kindle and won't take up space on my filled bookcases...Not to say I am done buying hard cover books.  Some friends just deserve a full time home where I can hold them and love them as I read! I've started a 'stock up list'.   So far I've got tissues (for cold and flu season) and cold medicine (ditto from previous), pineapple juice (same), matches, toilet paper, flour, coffee (regular and decaf) and boxed cereal.   I may add more as time goes on but these are items I am very well aware we're very low or empty on.  Oh and candles!  We use them for our Shabats and typically two candles last us a couple or three months but they are awfully handy when power goes out as well so I like to stock up. I've started adding tissues and paper towels to our compost.  And this morning, I decided it was worth while to shred our weekly newspapers as well.  I've been adding shredded mail for quite a while but these are extra items I know I can compost.  I plan to 'grow my compost' so to speak, as I get more and more serious about my need for flowers and perhaps a few vegetables here and there. Meals: So I made my plans...how did that go?   Here's what we really ate this week Roast Beef, Squash, Tossed Salad McDonalds with Katie and Taylor Chicken Verde Enchiladas, Green Salad with Tomatoes and Green Onions Chicken Salad Sandwiches with fresh fruit (take out) Chicken Livers and Fries with Mama Roast Beef Hash, Sliced Tomato Salad with Basil, Peach Cobbler Chef's Salad, Oyster Crackers (something we often sub for croutons), Peach Cobbler (C) Terri Cheney For more information please click here

Adtwixt - News source http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Adtwixt-News/~3/_ILY5TjGLIk/august-diary-promises-im-making-myself

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