Daydreaming while waiting impatiently!

tortoise

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I'm terrible at math. My garden is 9,000 sq ft. Oh my, how many times have I typed 900 sq ft just in this forum? :facepalm: :gig

My functioning is continuing to creep upwards. I'm catching up on housework. My freezers are full, so I need to stop prepping food and meals. :D I'm working on re-establishing housework routines. It has been 2 years since I was on top of things. (I had a good couple months of functioning last spring, but I used my energy on gardening rather than housework.)

Food eliminations and challenges continue. I reacted to large serving of dairy, presumably the lactose. Seems like small servings of low-lactose products might be tolerable. I'm busy working through a list of eliminations before I see my doctor next, so it will be a while before I come back to dairy to determine what exactly goes down okay.

Bay is back to work (training) today. Her eyes aren't quite right, but better. They're kinda sunken still and the third eyelid is not retracting as much as it should. But her vision isn't obstructed so back to work she goes. She loses weight precipitously - she can lose 10# in a day or two. Apparently a weekend at the boarding kennel set her over the edge. She doesn't eat well there. Her water intake is tied to her food intake. She gulps air so badly when she drinks that I soak her food in water (because, bloat risk). Not eating = not drinking enough either. I've been overfeeding her and her eyes seem to be improving. She was happy to see her harness this morning and get back to work. It was really her idea, she was bugging me. :love

My seed order arrived! So happy! I need to get these Ailsa Craig onion seeds in dirt!

It's a snow day here. We had rain and hard freezer on Sunday night. 2" snow on Monday. 6" snow on Tuesday. I went grocery shopping yesterday. Forecast is up 8" snow today and potential blizzard conditions this afternoon. I am especially grateful, on snow days, for homeschooling and not having anywhere to go.

On the budgeting - I don't expect to have reduced variable expenses for the "month" ending mid-February. I bought a food processor and some small kitchen items. I spent a lot on groceries! I am working through new recipes so I bought new ingredients for them. Plus, I found some items worth stocking up. And a couple times I paid my friend [who babysits for me] in groceries rather than cash because it worked out better for both of us. Those are on separate receipts though, so when I update my budget those will get sorted into correct categories.

Attempts at minimalism and organization continue. I'm working on minimizing my digital life too. Starting to work through purging and archiving photos. Just retrieving them from all the various places they've ended up online has been a chore. Off an ipad, off hubby's phone, off amazon photo cloud, off google albums cloud (I didn't even know that existed!), off Facebook. Still to come, off walgreens photo account too. Next up is to compile everything in one place, remove duplicates, purge anything that's not worth printing. I plan to print copies, and store on external hard drives - one at home and leave the other one at DH's work in case of fire/flood/disaster at home. I'll have to create a system for dealing with new photos that accumulate too.
 

canesisters

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Have you considered the 'A1/A2' proteins in milk? My girl was tested A2/A2 and a couple of friends who get stomach issues with 'regular store bought' milk can drink hers without any issue.
Not saying that this is the issue you have with dairy.. but IF you're wanting to be able to include dairy, this might be worth looking into?
 

tortoise

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Have you considered the 'A1/A2' proteins in milk? My girl was tested A2/A2 and a couple of friends who get stomach issues with 'regular store bought' milk can drink hers without any issue.
Not saying that this is the issue you have with dairy.. but IF you're wanting to be able to include dairy, this might be worth looking into?
I'm not particularly motivated to include dairy! I'm surprised I don't miss it! I'm trying to get my family off dairy too. We used to go through 2 gallons of milk per week - and half our grocery budget was spent in the dairy section. Getting away from dairy would be a step toward self-sufficiency. We've ruled out dairy animals for multiple reasons. One being that my health is erratic and milking is a consistent chore, the other that we don't want to be cleaning up cow poop in the barn. Sheep poop is much easier to clean up.
 

NH Homesteader

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Someone's selling fresian (milk breed) bottle babies near me for $20. I had to lose the website lol!!

Dairy is crazy expensive! Not milk, but cheese and butter are!
 

frustratedearthmother

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OH man....go get 'em. I dare ya, lol! You might need a milk breed someday - you know - justincase! Sheep's milk cheese might be a good source of income. ;)
 

NH Homesteader

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Lol no I haven't. But there's a lady near me that has a line of milking icelandics. If I wanted to get milking sheep I'd get a couple of those. They're smaller and easier to restrain lol!
 

sumi

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Sheep's milk cheese is delicious... just saying ;)
 
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