four months

I hate it when this happens. I had a post all written up, ready to publish. I was just going back, putting in a couple of links, and somehow managed to navigate away from the page. And now the entire entry is gone. I *hate* it when that happens!

OH WAIT! Yes! I forgot Blogger saves drafts! Bless it! Okay, here's the post, complete with links.

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Boss man avoided me all day today. I left him three messages to see if we could meet first thing tomorrow morning, and he finally called back this evening. He's busy tomorrow, but he wants me in the other showroom anyway, so we'll hook up Tuesday. He asked if I wanted to talk about anything over the phone, and I said I'd rather speak face to face. We chatted for a bit about his trip and his parents and how the week went. It will be interesting to see if anyone there notices that my stuff is gone from my desk. I'd actually be surprised if they did. I mean, I had my eyebrow pierced about six months ago, and no one said a word about it. So we'll see.

In other thoughts...

In just under two months, I'm having a baby shower. Just two months after that, I'm having a baby.

I suddenly feel very much not ready for this. We really do need to get cracking, setting up a space for the baby and for all the stuff that tends to accompany the arrival of a baby.

I spent today organizing my office, putting together the new files for my new filing cabinet, cleaning and sorting. It looks like I haven't done a damn thing in here. But my files are pretty and organized and my old ugly filing cabinet is mostly empty. I feel like I've accomplished something huge.

I also did some site-hopping, and ended up on a site for Once A Month Cooking. Fascinating. I love to cook, but I hate my kitchen, so I don't cook as often or as well as I would like. And when this baby comes, I know I will be even less interested in standing over a stove. But DH does everything else around here - laundry, bills, kitty care, dishes. All I do is clean the bathroom (sometimes) and cook (most nights).

Every once in a while I cook up a double batch of whatever's for dinner, and freeze half for use later. I have one of those FoodSaver vacuum sealer things, and that helps a lot. More often than not, though, I use the extra food as leftovers the next night, because of the appeal of not having to cook again.

This OAMC thing, though, intrigues me. The gist is, you plan all your menu for an entire month, shop all at once (using coupons and sales to save money), and then have a Cooking Day. Cook and freeze, and you're set for a month.

I'm going to try this. I want to have a couple months' worth of food stored up by the time Baby G gets here. It would be nice to be able to just defrost and serve, instead of going through the mental excerise of figuring out what's for dinner, seeing what ingredients I need to pick up, and then assembling it all.

I figure I can try the OAMC technique, and then maybe use half the dinners that month and cook half of them fresh. That will still leave me with two weeks' worth of frozen dinners. Or still a month, if those dinners are large enough for leftovers the next night. Then I can do it again the next month, and stock up that way. Less effort from now 'til the baby comes, and food for after.

We'll see how it goes. First I have to clean out the freezer, create a workspace in the kitchen, and figure out the menu. I just got some new software from 30 Meals In One Day that should help with the menu and grocery planning. I've also stumbled upon coupons.com and frugalmom.net. Both are interesting sites for saving money and/or making money.

I'll let you all know how it goes.