Self indulgence

You'll have to pardon me for the next few minutes. I'm going to pat myself on my back and whine tonight. It might not be very attractive; but if you can't whine and brag on your on blog, where can you do it?

Little brag:
I made a yummy pizza tonight. I always make the same kind of pizza - loaded. There's a wee bit of ham, pineapple, mushrooms, sweet peppers, black olives and chunks of take-your-head-off spicy pepperoni sticks. Salty, sweet and spicy all on one place. Mmmnn. Except, I didn't plan ahead tonight. I decided to make a pizza while at the grocery store. The lady at the deli wouldn't sell me just one pepperoni stick, and I wasn't about to buy a whole bag of them. So, I picked up the fresh veggies, and figured that I had the rest at home.

I got home to discover that I had the makings for a veggie pizza. Minus the olives and pineapple. But with some artichoke hearts thrown in. It was pretty good! Probably not as great as the loaded pizza I wanted, but it did the trick.

Whine:
For some reason, the anemia has flared up again. On Saturday, my feet swelled up so much that I ended up splitting one of my funky argyle rubber boots when I tried to force it on. I'm also out of breath again, which sucks the big one. I'm really frustrated, because my surgery was 3 months ago and I should be on the mend. So, more doctor's appointments for me, and no doubt more iron pills.

(Tune in next week, where I will hopefully show you the successful results of my using a dingy repair kit to fix my boot.)

Big Brag:
In mid-January, I took it upon myself to get serious about getting out of debt. Right around that time, I started reading This Blog by a lady named Gail Vaz-Oxlade. She's apparently got a popular TV show called "To Debt Do Us Part", but my basic cable programs and I have never come across her. Either way, I liked her blog so much that I started to follow her budget plan (also on her site) and then I bought her book.

Then I made a math error in my budgeting at the end of January, and I left myself with $78 spending money - total - for 2 weeks. I'm happy to say that I survived those two weeks, with cash to spare. That resulted in my competitive spirit taking over, and I've been challenging myself to live on less and less every week. Some weeks, I do really well. (Last week, I spent less than $30) other weeks I don't. Either way, I've spent a tonne less than is typical for me. So much less, in fact, that on Saturday I deposited $1000 into my pay down the debt fund.

Granted, I've been living on absolute bare bones. As my dad pointed out, in a lot of cases I'm just deferring costs and not reducing (I've been mostly eating meals I'd already prepared out of my freezer, and will eventually have to do a big grocery shop.) but I'm looking at this as practice for living on less. Already my habits are changing, and I'm much more conscious on where my money goes. I am committed to being debt free within the next three years.