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I recently read The Alpha Strategy, by John A. Pugsley, which asserts that the best investment in an economy like ours is tangible goods, because of inflation and other eroders of value. A post at Coffee Tea Books and Me outlines basically the same strategy.

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I was reading in Nehemiah how debts with (if I am reading it right) only 1% interest were considered crushing burdens. Back then, they easily could be.

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I finished the bra project, it turned out both awesome and amateurish at the same time. Then I made an apron, which was a simple project, but still took three days. Now I am resting up for the next big project, whatever that will be. I am extra tired because MFH worked 60-plus hours last week, and we ran around a lot on the weekend to compensate for being extra cooped-up.

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TLG hit his nine-month birthday, and really took off walking. Now he toddles here and there, and falls down a lot.

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I did the first pass through the taxes, and we will be able to take the earned income tax credit this year, thanks to TLG. So are we rich (living almost comfortably on one income), or are we poor? Sometimes it is hard to tell.

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Our car has gone a whole year without needing any major repairs, which is a first for us. Why yes, we do tithe. We tithed all the years that we paid thousands and thousands of dollars to fix it, too. I’ve been looking around on the internet, trying to determine whether or not it is actually possible to fit three car seats in the back seat. Some people say yes, some say no way, no how. We have two Britax seats, which sit fairly high, so I think we might be able to squeeze a lower, narrow seat between them. MFH has been able to sit between them for a short ride.

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I started a list of predictions for things that will occur within my lifetime. I am trying to decide whether “Laws will be passed to require car seat installation by a certified technician” should be added to the list. The trend is heading that way, but sometimes people need to move car seats from one car to another so someone else can transport the kids.

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I was holding off on finishing TLG’s birth story until we found out how much our insurance was going to pay for the prenatal care and birth. It turns out that all they will pay for is the lab work. By Minnesota law, they have to cover prenatal care and some other things, but our CPM was an out-of-network provider, and we had to pay a high deductible first, and we got to pay deductibles twice because the pregnancy was not all in one calendar year, and the insurance was pretty stingy on what midwife charges they actually allowed toward the deductible, and they specifically exclude homebirth and most medical care not supervised by a physician anyway. As MaxedOutMama says, “Health coverage does not equal health care!” Sometimes health coverage doesn’t even equal health coverage. Even though our midwife is licensed by the state to provide prenatal and homebirth care, there’s a gap in the insurance coverage statutes there. In the end we came out sort of ahead, because of the lower premiums for the high-deductible plan, and because MFH’s employer kicks some cash into the health savings account to return some of their lower premium costs to him. We also got to pay $100 just for our midwife’s insurance biller to bill our insurance, because “it’s a high-deductible plan and I might not get paid otherwise.” (I didn’t ask how she would have gotten paid for billing a normal-deductible plan, because I computed a zero probability of getting an answer that wouldn’t further tick me off.)

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The same insurance company just sent us the annual plan overview booklet. If we want the actual printed certificate of coverage, we have to put in an order for it, and they had a paragraph in the booklet saying, “If everyone was nice to us and didn’t order anything, we would save $X million in postage and printing costs.” No thanks, I want my $5 worth of real physical official documentation, and they can spare me the guilt trip.

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One of Home Living’s recent posts had a wonderful comment that basically said, “The Lord knows all about the constraints of your situation. Do the best that you can, even if it isn’t that great, and accept God’s grace for the rest.”

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I had that it’s-too-quiet-what-are-they-up-to feeling, and found the children in the kitchen. OLC was dusting her brother liberally with unflavored gelatin. Clearly if we start stocking up on things, they need to be things that are toddler-proof.