Ok, so it was more than another RA flare. I dislocated my hip and tore the labrum. It's fun - everyone should try it. NOT.

But back now and the next article on being broke but not deprived will be REINVENT. As in, reinvent your purchasing power.

By now, I should know better. When my RA flares and says "rest", I should listen to it. I didn't, and now am literally unable to walk on one leg. Good thing I took off Monday and Tuesday from work, because I'll be doing little else other than resting on the couch.

Very few people like to eat the same thing day after day after day... You develop appetite fatigue and just would rather go hungry than face the same pot of leftovers yet again.

So while you may have gotten a really good deal on that chicken and made an enormous amount of soup with it (and the soup is, of course, fantastic!), you're going to wind up wasting it when it gets thrown out because you simply can't stand to eat one more mouthful.

The way around this? A little advance preparation, some good buys at whatever store you shop at, and freezer space.

Now this works very well for me because I have two full-size freezers. Yep, I can freeze up (and have) Bambi and still have lots of room left over for Thumper.

A quick google search on "bulk cooking" or "freezer cooking" should net you some recipes. You'll find they're fairly simple and, with a few exceptions, don't use any bizarre ingredients that you have to spend hours searching for.

As for the cooking? It's the same as making the usual dinner, only on a more massive scale. One weekend I made and froze up 3 gallons of spaghetti sauce (no meat), 12 chicken pot pies and 16 stuffed peppers.

Besides having many meals made in advance that probably cost a lot less since you bought the ingredients on sale, it's a boon for those evenings after work when you're just too tired to cook. Most of the dinners are taken straight from the freezer and popped in the oven for an hour or two. Cheap, tasty and much better for you (and your wallet) than the local fast food store.

Personally I tend to do the majority of my bulk cooking in winter months because the warmth from the stove/oven also helps heat up the house. In summer, we tend to rely more on salads, using greens from the garden or gathered wild.

Just remember - cook what you already eat! It won't save you any money to cook up a dozen meals of venison, only to find out with the first one that you absolutely *loathe* venison.

And a side note on meat: think outside the box. Make friends with a hunter or two. Drop hints (or ask outright) that, if they get a deer, rabbits, squirrels, etc, you'd be more than happy to take any extra off their hands. Some hunters only want the "trophy buck" so they don't want the meat. 9 times out of 10 they'll be donating that meat to a local soup kitchen but who's to say that they won't donate to you instead? One year, a hunter gave me an entire doe. The only catch is, the hunter will field dress it but you'll have to butcher it. It's not hard and, believe it or not, the general idea can be gleaned from books.

More food/eating ideas in another post!

Ok, everyone knows the easy/common methods of living cheaply: turn down your thermostat, turn off the lights, buy used instead of new, yadda, yadda.

Well, you can do that but, odds are, you end up feeling... deprived. You know, you really want that new Kim Harrison book, but you're trying to live cheap so you don't buy it.

There's ways to live cheaply (or, as I prefer to call it, austerely), without feeling deprived. Living so that you do have a few extra bucks each month to buy something that you want, not something you need.

Here's two right off the bat.

First, if you can, get on a budget payment plan with your electric and/or natural gas company. Yes, that means that, in summer, you'll be paying more each month for your gas but, in winter when most people are scrambling for the bucks, you'll be paying less. It's the total of your yearly bill, averaged out over twelve months. And it's less painful each month when you open the bill, wondering just how much that a/c is going to cost you.

I've been on a monthly budget billing for years now. My electric runs $96/month, the gas is $87/month. That is, until this month. My plan had its' 6-month review (which is standard). Electric now is $59/month while gas is $39/month. Big difference, huh?

No, I didn't turn the thermostat down to sub-freezing and we've been using lights, the tv, computers, etc. The only thing I've done differently is 1) wash dishes by hand rather than using the dishwasher, and 2) hang clothes to dry instead of using the dryer.

Even those two changes haven't been an all-time-time, permanent thing. I still use the dryer for sheets and blankets or when I need something dried quick, and we still use the dishwasher about every 10 days (usually after a marathon cooking session). The rest of the time though, they sit and don't use electricity or natural gas. Cool, huh?

I can hear you though. Oh yeah, you live in an apartment or you must have clothes hung up everywhere and they take a week to dry. Nope. Live in a 3-story house with 3 people and 4 dogs. The clothes are hung on racks (or hangers) in the basement. Generally they're dry within 24 hours, and they don't add tons of moisture to the air and promote mold/mildew growth.

So get on a buget plan and give it a shot. Or just try for a month and check your kilowatt useage on the next month. Guaranteed it will go down. Oh, and if you pay for water/sewer like I do? That will go down too. Mine has dropped an average of $75/quarterly.

As soon as I can get my proverbial shit together... a series on how to live austerely without feeling deprived.

But first, I have commissions to complete.

Wow. I get really far behind at times.

Just wanted to jot a quick note because I am so amused by it all.

Seems that, the other night, the child was conversing with some gaming friends and they got to talking about Star Trek fanfic. Kaarin mentions that yeah, so-and-so is my mother.

Cue immense fan-girl type squee.

I have fans.

Who'd a thunk it?

Completely forgot to post this....

Way back in January, I hurt my shoulder. Tendonitis and other injuries later, it's developed/morphed into Frozen Shoulder Syndrome. Just out of the "freezing" stage, it'll be about a year before it's healed. Anyway....

What that all leads up to is: as part of the treatment, I got two steroid shots in my shoulder. The orthopod never mentioned silly things like potential reactions, side effects, things to look out for, etc. So two days after getting the injections, I toddle off to the Ren Faire. We arrive later than usual, stop and get a drink and hot dog (I was saving the deep-fried Mars bars for later), and go find seats for the Medieval Babes concert.

Thirty minutes after sitting down, and just as the Babes come on-stage, I start feeling dizzy. Next thing I know, there is some guy in a kilt holding me up and trying to get me to take drinks of water. Seems I passed out cold for about 5 minutes, going backwards to land on the people behind me.

The EMTs stuff me in a wheelchair and we haul over the ruts and through the trees to the first aid station where even more EMTs proceed to check me out. Everyone was seriously confused as to why I had passed out: I hadn't been drinking alcohol, wasn't taking any drugs, was drinking water, had eaten.... Out of the blue and for no reason, I mentioned the steroid shot(s). That's what it was. I should have been told to avoid the sun for a few weeks until my body was done doing whatever it is a body does with steroids.

At any rate, once they figured that out, I had to call for a ride home (as well as for someone to come get my car) and leave the Fair as it was deemed too dangerous to go back out in the sun.

For once, we didn't get hit the worst with tropical storm/hurricane Irene - that award goes to my mother. She has 8-10 trees down, the worst being the one that fell between the well and the propane tank, taking out meters and wires along the way. They're without power and will be for awhile, as the road is pretty much covered with downed trees.

Us? No flooding, no trees in the house (yeah, happy dance!) and, rarities of rarities, we didn't lose power.

Just when the tomatoes were recovering from the extreme heat/no rain of mid-summer, along comes Irene....

Ok, a minor shaker to all you California folks, but personally I never want to experience another earthquake! The worst damage that we've found was when Miranda paniced and peed all over the living room. I can't blame for that either! Still checking for new cracks.