NSA- day 6

day six...
 

ever notice when you want to give up something ... like you're going on a diet or giving up spending extra money for a month... that's the month everyone wants you to have cake and go shopping and do lots of fun things that will never be offered again (in my mind)???

this morning i found out that they are having the last fitness cruise next monday night. that means that if i want to do it (and the hubs and i had talked about doing it) i'd have to forgo my wine date. forgo wine date? i think it's $20 and it's the last time they're doing it this summer. decisions, decisions.

aside from that so far so good. well, if you're me. erik, on the other hand, is running low on milk and had a peanut butter and honey sandwich for lunch today. due to his distaste for the roast beef i got last week/refusal to have a salami sandwich and my $200.00 grocery limit/not going to the stores closest to us restricts my ability to get him new stuff. he's so fussy. and he doesn't want egg salad which is ridiculous because i have a ton of eggs. so i'm not sure how that's going to fair. i'm thinking i might just breakdown and get it nearby and take it out of the grocery money because i refuse to drive all the way to the grocery store tomorrow.

i moved some money into savings too which makes it look like i have no money and therefore my desire to spend money is more limited too. day six is a piece of cake.

and now i want cake.

lynn and keith

lynn and keith got married saturday. their ceremony made me cry. yes. i'm usually a crypot but somehow i usually manage to keep it together at weddings. this one got to me. it was totally beautiful. i'll always remember the streamers hitting lynn in the face while she said the lovely promises to her husband to be. the way everyone was dancing so hard on that poor old barn floor that i could barely stand still. photobombing every picture possible due to the captain kirk death punch. (i just added the 'death punch' part.) the socializing with all the wonderful people who love lynn and keith so much. the hang over that the captain kirk's left me with even though i only had two and a half and i left at 10:30 to go home to bed. we were only the second people to go home, only after elsah and van, her 7 month old baby.

congratulations you two. friendship is the best part of marriage.

NSA-day five

day five.
eek.

ok. so i couldn't resist my friday night wine date with my husband. but i did limit myself. i mean, you don't want me to have a mental break down or anything do you? i did limit myself to two bottles of wine. and he limited himself to two bottles of wine. so together we just might make it through.

it does kinda feel like cheating that he isn't doing a no spend month because i definitely get away wiht a lot more. for instance, last night (completely hung over day due to wedding extravaganza) we had a chicken parm sub thanks to hubs. therefore, i have no actually cooked since... friday? thursday? do nachos count? i keep planning on making this coconut chicken dish that looks amazing on pinterest but i haven't gotten around to it.

the update: so friday afternoon i got out of work early (1ish). i went home, spoke with my neighbor who is going through everything imaginable right now (cancer in her lymphnodes, not sure how bad it is, stage 3?, dumb boy problems, trying to work everything out... it's a mess. i feel so bad for her.), then i walked to the post office, bank, back to the office to drop off mail, and home and there was my sweet husband! yipppeee! so we went to his parents house because the traffic was ridiculous and there's only so many times you can make fun of people trying to park before it realy just isn't funny anymore.

there we got to spend some time with his parents before his sister and her husband showed up. it was really nice to get to spend time with all of them. we laughed and ate dinner (yep, round one emily not cooking). at some point, we had been there for what hubs declared was long enough and we went home. i went to the fair and spent $25 of my $50 limit on frames. so many frames. i bought big frames and little frames and one frame that was so huge that i decided i was going to fill it with corks and make it into a cork-board. i bought one frame just because it was pink. i bought another frame because it had a picture of a gigantic spider in it and hubs does not like spiders so i thought it was rather funny. that was my most expensive frame. $9. least expensive was 25 cents.

oh and i spoke with the most delightful old couple who own most of the frames. they own a barn. now i can frequent it whilest not on spending limits. won't hubster be proud. i wish i could have taken a picture of him as i'm walking across the street with my two bags and hands full of gigantic frames. i have far too much fun with this.

saturday, being the loving wife that i am, i brought my dear hubs a bowl of cereal. around noon i met up with friends and little ones and erik's other sister came over to go back to the fair. i spent $5. so grand total of hospital fair spending left me with many many frames. two mugs. and $30 of my $50 total spent.

lunch i ate a hot dog and some nachos (with salsa, chicken and cheese). which is good because at the wedding we didn't eat until after 8. getting ready for the wedding i was really proud of myself. after only watching about six hair and make up tutorials i actually used three different eyeshadow palettes and three to four different make up brushes. this is huge for me. i'm usually more of a sweep, eyeline, macara go girl. erik told me at the end of the night that i looked great so i'd say overall success.

the wedding should probably be a different post but it was beautiful and wonderful and made me cry. but i drank one too many captain kirks and therefore i spent all day sunday hungover. sleepy. went for a run (4 treadmill miles split by 1.58 at 1% incline/2.86 miles at 0% incline at a 9:05 pace). hung out at erik's parents until i decided that i needed to be fed since i'd only had an english muffin, a granola bar and some chips so erik bought us a sub and we spent the early evening hanging out with my parents looking at an astro van as ol'blue dissolved into a cloud of steam.

overall, great weekend.
amount spent: $16.78

tonight. quiche.

NSA- day two

dun dun duuuuuuuuuuuuhh.. day two

ok so yesterday i spent a moment calculating my entire month of july to figure out where i spend my money, how much i spent and where i could/need to cut back for my no spend month.

here's the breakdown:

30% of my income is spent on what i deem "necessities". this includes rent, electric, internet, netflix (i mean.. come on), phone and gym. these are all things i have to pay and cannot change what i pay.

student loans make up another 23% of my income that i cannot change. that's a total of 52-53% of my income. awesome student loans. thank you. and they want to increase what i pay. i want to punch them in the face.

so other things that i need to pay but could potentially change the amount are groceries and gas. in the month of july i spent 26% of my income on groceries and gas. (approx. 22% on groceries and 4% on gas. i go no where. yay!)

other things that i spend money on that i don't really need to are what i call extras (random shopping trips, gifts, etc.), extra food (this includes going out to eat and times where i run to the grocery store in town - mondo bucks), and liquor. some days i deem liquor as an essential. last month i spent a total of 40.5% of my income on these things (extra- 28%, extra food 6.4%, liquor 6%).

* i've rounded up on a few number so it's not exact. plus i paid some medical bills. oh and my income randomly decreased (stupid taxes) so my income is less than it was. but i did get a bonus. ok let me just tell you my whole life story while i'm at it right? never mind. moving on.

so here's the plan:

• i have $50 from a previous bonus. that is my money allowed for the hospital fair. anything over that will dig into my
• $100 that will be my spending money for the month. (aka $25 per week in wine.)
• i was going to try to limit my grocery money to $200 which i might do anyhow but we'll see how that goes considering i'm going to be
• limiting all extra food money and all extra money. that means no presents for emily. no itunes. no extra stuff at the grocery store. oh and
• meal planning. yuck. but that's how we're going to use up all that random food. last night we had tortilla chicken and i used those stinkin' corn tortillas that have been hanging around forever. the only way i could make them delicious again.

so i guess we'll see how it goes from here. i probably won't post saturday or sunday but i'll try to keep a record of what i do at the fair and how i'm doing with meals. (i think we're going to be eating a lot of eggs. and i already miss my sweets.)  i had to pull $100 out of savings yesterday to pay my rent so i'm starting today with $3 + my paycheck. day two is already awesome.

i'm also going to try to remember my 31 miles in 31 days (hopefully more) but i have a 5k i want to fly through in september so i better get started.

no spend august

so it's official. i've decided to do a no spend month. and as day one is halfway over i'm already regretting it. i want wine! i need wine! someone get this girl some wine! i should have thought this through a little better.

things i did think through:
i already got my parents an anniversary gift. but i didn't wrap it.
i know what i'm wearing to the wedding i'm going to saturday. so that's out of the way.
i sent amy a card for her anniversary (hope you get it!) but i forgot about all the other anniversarys this month so obviously i'm a terrible friend.
i went grocery shopping yesterday. (not that i'm not going to go grocery shopping at all but i'll probably limit it. when i go shopping i always try to over buy like there's going to be a food shortage or i'll never be able to go grocery shopping again. - actually that's only half true. i try to grocery shop for the month. i hate that stinkin' store. so this month will be about only buying what i NEED and meal planning... or trying to.)


i am planning on giving myself an amount of money that i'm allowed to spend this month. i was thinking one paycheck worth but i think that might be too much. and i still need to figure out what's included and what's not included. like the hospital fair is this weekend and it only happens once a year so do i allow the money i spend there to count as i could get things that i need/want for the house for super cheap or does that go towards my allotment?

the plan is to pay my bills and not get anything extra. we'll see how this goes. i feel like i live this three months out of the year anyhow but now i'm making a conscious effort to keep track of these things.

like i'm refusing to buy myself lipstick. darn me. but i did allow myself to buy a headband on forever21 yesterday so i guess i'll survive.

i'm going to give my financials a look over and i'll be back with specifics. hopefully. unless i fall off the wagon. day one. no wine. lots of tude. no good.

this is why i run

or i should say, this is why i put myself through the agony/stress/nerves of races..

"What’s great about marathons in general is the lack of competitiveness. For world-class runners, they can be an occasion of fierce rivalry, sure. But for a runner like me (and I imagine this is true for the vast majority of runners), an ordinary runner whose times are nothing special, a marathon is never a competition. You enter the race to enjoy the experience of running twenty-six miles, and you do enjoy it, as you go along. Then it starts to get a little painful, then it becomes seriously painful, and in the end it’s that pain that you start to enjoy. And part of the enjoyment is in sharing this tangled process with the runners around you. Try running twenty-six miles alone and you’ll have three, four, or five hours of sheer torture. I’ve done it before, and I hope never to repeat the experience. But running the same distance alongside other runners makes it feel less grueling. It’s tough physically, of course—how could it not be?—but there’s a feeling of solidarity and unity that carries you all the way to the finish line. If a marathon is a battle, it’s one you wage against yourself."
                                                                                                           ----Haruki Murakami
Boston, from One Citizen of the World who Calls Himself a Runner

middlebury maple half

otherwise known as the sweetest half.

the middlebury maple half was beautiful. from the description i was nervous going out to it. (i was nervous anyhow. i mean, this would be my first half marathon where i was not going to be home the night before, i would not have anything that i was used to around me and my first half marathon where hills were even an issue) i guess thinking that vermont hills were so much worse than new hampshire hills. maybe the people they were really warning were mass people. or flat landers. but the best part about the run was the scenery. and the rolling hills.

i find that hills tend to be an achievement. like once you get to the top of a hill you get to breathe a sigh of relief and know that you totally conquered that hill.

we ran past wild flowers and green green green fields with cows and horses and old barns and stone buildings. i think the worst part about it was when we ran down this long dirt road past barns and that was only bad because you knew when you got to the end of the road you had to come all the way back. plus it was after mile 8. who likes anything past mile 8?

that and it was more so in the sun. and at 77 degrees my pale pale pale new hampshire skin was not happy. i had sweat salt getting in my eyes.

i always finish my races knowing i could have done better. i could have tried harder. pushed harder. trained better. left more on the course. i think running with debbie was a challenge because running is always a competition. even if it's just with yourself. no matter what it's hard not to compare yourself to others and debbie is no different. having her compare herself to others and knowing that i was holding her back was hard. it's nice having someone there to keep you going but it's hard knowing that you're the reason they aren't doing their best. and knowing that there really isn't anything you can do about it. this race, i probably walked about a mile and a half. and when i was pulling into that finish line i knew that i probably could have pushed a little harder and gone a little fast but for the most part - more than ever before - i had left it out there.

and that i really wanted to jump into a huge lake and cool down.

oh, and i pr'd. what up two hours and twenty six minutes. nice to have you here.