Diapers.com

I know I've told you before how much I love ordering my diapers online - it's so easy.

If you're interested in trying out Diapers.com, please use my "special code" to save $5 on your first order.

Enter code: LIWA4859 to save $5 on your first order!

I also have to point you towards www.igive.com. This site allows you to assign a charity to your account, and whenever you shop at certain sites, a donation will be made in your name to that organization. For me, I selected Birth Roots. I go to www.igive.com and navigate through their site to www.diapers.com, and 8% of my purchase goes to Birth Roots.

Very cool.

Bonus - they track your donations, so it's a legitmate tax deduction.

TLC - check it out!

You'll notice a permanent link in my list of favorites to the left - Turtle Love Committee. Check it out!

Here's what Yahoo! has to say about it:

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/NonDiamond-Engagement-Rings-prnews-14493094.html

Invalid Clickers - please read!

Hello all,

Thanks for reading so much this month! Google has contacted me about the "clicks" on my ads, and send me a friendly reminder about "invalid clicks." If you have been clicking on my ads, please take a minute to read the links in their letter below.

Keep reading, and let me know if there's a topic about which you'd like me to write!

Thanks,
Lindsay
*********************************************

Hello Lindsay Walsh,
It has come to our attention that invalid clicks have been generated onyour Google ads, posing a financial risk to our AdWords advertisers.Please note that any activity that may artificially inflate anadvertiser's costs or a publisher's earnings is strictly prohibited byour program policies.
We understand that you may want more information about the activity wedetected. However, because we have a need to protect our proprietarydetection systems, we're unable to provide our publishers with anydetails about their account activity, including any web pages or usersthat may have been involved. Thank you for your understanding.
We recommend reviewing these references to learn more about invalidclick activity and other activities that could endanger your accountstanding:
https://www.google.com/adsense/policies?hl=en_UShttps://www.google.com/adsense/localized-terms?rc=US&ce=1&hl=en_UShttp://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/topic.py?topic=8426&hl=en_US
Please note that because we credit advertisers for any invalid activitywe detect, we may adjust your account earnings for any days duringwhich invalid clicks occurred.
If you were clicking your ads out of interest or to see who wasadvertising on your site, please note that clicking on your own ads forany reason is strictly prohibited by our program policies. Instead, wesuggest using the AdSense preview tool as an alternative. This toolwill allow you to check the destination of ads on your page without therisk of generating invalid clicks. For more information, please visitour Help Center at https://www.google.com/adsense/previewtool?hl=en_US.
Lastly, please note that if we continue to detect invalid clicks onyour Google ads, we may take further action on your account in order toprotect our advertisers' interests. Thank you for your understanding.
Sincerely,
The Google AdSense Team

On the road again...

Dan has his first truck-day today. Mondays and Tuesdays are classroom time, and Wednesdays-Fridays are half-days for practice. I imagine he's somewhere, tootling around in a parking lot right now. His permit test is on Monday, and Gargamel (that's what we're having Vi call Dan's dad, Greg...he didn't want a real "grandpa" name, so we picked one for him. She says Gro-Gro) has offered to help him study. Very exciting!

I think I'll try to make an iPod playlist for him. What songs are good driving songs? Not just trucking songs - a la "On the Road Again," "Pickup Man," or, as my brother-in-law suggested, the theme from "BJ and The Bear" - but real, good music for road trips. There's a chance that Dan's first job will be an over-the-road, long-haul sort of job, so he'll need podcasts and songs and books-on-tape. Post a comment below with your suggestions!

Wardrobe crisis averted!

Anyone who has seen me recently knows that I'm wasting away to nothing. I realize that most American women would be *thrilled!* to be losing weight in this manner, but I assume that those women have a clothing budget and actually enjoy shopping. Not me. The first part goes without saying in our current situation, and the second part...well...sometimes I love shopping: a fun day out with a sister, mom or girlfriend with good taste and the ability to be brutally honest, no time restrictions, and plenty of lattes and cookies. But most of the time shopping is a nuisance: I'm spending money I don't have on clothes that won't last in stores with no customer service, and I'll probably have to shorten or lenghthen the pants due to my long legs...that's assuming I've found pants that happen to fit my hips, thighs waist and inseam. I really need to take a sewing class and just start making my own clothes.

Don't get me wrong - I don't mean to sound whiny, and if I do, you've probably already stopped reading...

It boils down to the fact that my two pairs of work slacks are baggy and dumpy, so I had nothing to wear in client-facing situations. What to do? I reached out to a friend and humbly asked if she currently had a Goodwill pile through which I could scavenge. This was all okay in the email I sent, and her reply was favorable, but when I arrived at her house to try on h er clothing, I almost started crying I was so embarassed. She was exceptionally graceful and I left with a pair of pants, two skirts, a blouse and two pairs of shoes. I am so glad I asked! She actually suggested that we gather a group of girls together for a clothing-swap party. That's today's money-saving recession-surviving tip: Repurposing items through exchanges with friends and family!

THEN, we were being treated to taco night at another friend's house, and I mentioned my "shopping" experience. This friend is an itsy-bitsy petite person...as she says, I have two feet on her. It wouldn't have crossed my mind that she and I would be the same size in any article of clothing...to illustrate: a few weeks ago she and I went to a yoga class together after a slumber party. I hadn't packed yoga clothes, so I borrowed her maternity clothes! That's the difference in our sizes. At the end of the evening, she produced two professional-looking, high-quality sweaters from her "repurposing" pile. They fit beautifully!

As humbling as it was to ask for such a favor, I feel so happy and proud and grateful that I have these girlfriends.

They are SO invited to come to the gender-segragated commune with goats.

But that's another story altogether...

Sweetness

Vi was trying to fall asleep last night, when she decided that the "Itsy Bitsy Spider" might help. I understood her hand signal as a request, so I began to sing it. She apparently knows all of the motions, and some of the words. Through her bubba I could hear her singing "la, ah, ah, la....sssshhhh!.....ah, la, la, ahhhh." The "sssshhhhh!" being, of course, "washed," when the rain came down and washed the spider out. We sang the song, oh, say, seven times, and then she fell into a deep sleep, not waking up until 5 am.

This might be our new official lullaby and "bedtime routine."

Since Dan is terrified of spiders (picture a little girl shrieking) and my icky grandfather used to sing that song to me, I NEVER would have imagined that I could find sweetness in that song...

Having a baby changes just about everything.

I, for one, am very happy to have reclaimed a perfectly good song.

A Licensed Arborist

Dan and I have an ongoing inside joke, which I will share with you, internet.

Dan and I are both total know-it-alls. Whenever Dan is instructing me on how to do something, or revealing a Thoroughly Interesting Factoid (ie how to wash a dish, the origin of the cedar waxwing, the toxic or non-toxic qualities of a substance), he refers to the fact that he KNOWS this because he is a licensed arborist. They taught it to him during his arborist studies. While he was in arborist school. Studying arborism.

Of course, he is NOT a licensed arborist, but I think the joke originated when he was telling me something about killing or not killing a tree...I don't remember, really, but it is now a way for me to diffuse the situation when he is getting on his soapbox. We end up laughing and he usually butts out. It's a good thing, indeed.

Today started with a phone call from a real licensed arborist - a friend of a friend - asking if Dan could come help him out today. Casual Labor? Will work for money!

So, Dan is getting real-life tree-working experience today.

I'm totally screwed.

:-)

I don't have much on the tip of my "pen" today. Here is a list of mildly interesting occurences from the past 24 hours:

1) Dan's car did NOT need a new wheel bearing, which is a good thing. Wheel bearings are expensive. It DID, though, need some new lug nuts. I thoroughly approve of the phrase "lug nuts." It's quite nice to say. Lug. Nuts. Go ahead, try it.

2) Vi slept fairly well last night, only getting up once. I have no idea why.

3) I slept fairly well last night, although Riley was hogging the blankets.

4) I saw two foxes! Last night, I went to Friendly's for what is becoming a regular ice cream date with my friend Adrianne. After gabbing longer than the allowable booth-rental period, she drove me home and we continued to gab in the car, parked in front of my house. (Very good gab session.) I saw what I thought were two cats trotting down the street, so I excitedly said, "Ooh! Cats!" (I state the obvious with exuberance.) One walked by the car, and Adrianne turned on her headlights to see the second one. It was then that we thought - huh. That's either a tall cat or a short dog, and soon realized that it was a fox. The headlights stunned the poor critter, and after a moment's pause, he walked up my driveway, across my doorstep, through my yard, down my neighbors' driveway, then ran down the street to the Pekinese-owning Republicans' house. (They are new renters who are never home, so we don't know them...but I've seen their dog and their McCain sign, so we just refer to them as The Republicans.) People tell me that seeing a fox - or maybe having one cross your path? - is good luck. I'm happily anticipating my good fortune.

5) Vi had OMM this morning at the University of New England; she's participating in their free clinic, which allows students to practice and learn and allows patients free treatment. She did really well, and the teaching doctor explained that there is some compression in her skull and around her sacrum. They're going to hang her upside-down next week to help relieve it. Sounds fun to me! I know hanging upside-down in yoga always helps with my musculo-skeletal issues.

This is the final week of corporate-crunch, race to the finish, hurry up and finish up 2008 books for my clients. It's pretty crazy in my office - lots to do. Therefore, I am now signing off.

Have a great Tuesday!

P.S. My mother is back from Ohio. I'll post some of her funny stories from when my poor grandmother was on pain killers... I think we're all laughing about it, now.

Grin and Wheel-bearing It

A friend warned me two weeks ago.

She said, and I quote, "Of course, remember that now that you’re in the situation that you’re in, everything you own will break or stop working. "

I'm hopeful that she's not entirely right, but we DID just drop Dan's car off at the dealer to get a new wheel bearing. Before y'all post comments about saving money by not getting one's car serviced at the dealer, I'll let you know that we have some Subie Bucks that are only good at a dealer.

Some people get air miles on their credit cards. Some get cash rewards. Some get gift cards or money put into their savings plan. We get Subie Bucks. Though it feels as though we have to spend $10,000 to earn $100 in Subie Bucks, they actually rack up pretty quickly, and have come in handy more than once. I will lie to myself about how much the Subie Bucks cost me in interest expense and say that today, we are spending $100 less than we would have otherwise.

Oh, the credit card debt burden of our generation...how are we going to solve this? I really believe this is what sets this recession so far apart from any other. I often wonder if our generation has the creativity, resourcefulness and selflessness to get through this time the way our grandparents got through the Recession.

Dan was trying to talk to Popps about not mixing money and friends, and was searching for the right cliche to convey the thought. He asked Popps, "What did you used to say when you were growing up?" Popps replied, "I grew up in the Great Depression! We didn't have any money!"

What are your thoughts on "weathering" the current economic situation? Political, social, fiscal... I'm interested in everyone's thoughts.

Rice & Beans, Beans & Rice...HELP!

We've been eating a LOT of rice and beans, or quinoa and beans, or cous-cous and beans. It's such a healthy, delicious mean, and so easy to prepare or re-heat.

It's getting a little boring.

Last night, Dan baked a sweet potato, soaked black beans, and cooked some quinoa. We mixed it all together (yes, mushed up the sweet potato) with some curry. It was...okay. Something was definitely missing...ideas?

Today Dan goes to register for the trucking course. He'll be attending Pro Drive, which is owned by an old coffee-shop friend of his. It looks like a great program, and Dan is very excited. It's nice to see him looking forward to something work-related!

He will be going for his Class A license, which will allow him to drive the big tractor-trailers. When he gets a driving job, of course he'll have to start at the bottom, which may or may not include a couple of overnight trips a week. I am incredibly stressed out about this! I just keep thinking that, in the long run, he will most likely enjoy this job more than he has enjoyed working in the last 10 years, and that the schedule will settle down to be miles better than any retail schedule could be. I'm looking forward to the day that Saturday means Saturday.

His classes will be two full days a week and three half-days. My dad will be coming down for two of the half-days, and, once my mother has had a chance to recover from her three-week stay in Ohio, I'll be asking what availability she has for those five weeks. We also have a call into the day care center to see if Vi can come for one day a week for a while.

When he does start work again, it seems that Vi will be in day care full-time, which is very hard for me to stomach. While I LOVE the center whe attended, full-time just seems like too much for me. I had JUST gotten used to 3 days! Vi likes it there and will be totally happy to spend more time playing with her friends. (I'm afraid Dada and Mama are getting a little boring, too.)

My apologies to Kristin...

...and to the rest of you tired of seeing diaper ads!

One of my ongoing writing topics is going to be money-saving tips. This one is about diapers!

There are lots of schools of thought on diapering. Some look at it strictly from an economic perspective (Target brand or whatever's on sale at Sam's club), some look at it as an environmental issue (cloth diapers only: it's the cheapest route, and there are, like, billions of disposable diapers added to landfills every year. Check out this article )

For us, I kind of wanted to do cloth diapers, but I knew it wasn't feasible for us. Number one, we are always strapped for time. Number two, I wasn't jazzed about cleaning them myself, and I knew Dan was WAY less than jazzed about having the cleaned on the premesis. For those of you who know Dan, you also know what a complete understatement that is. Love that germaphobe of mine. :-) This would necessitate a cloth diaper service, which I knew we couldn't afford.

Therfore, we defaulted to disposables. We used the Pampers Swaddlers for the first month or so - these fit so well! We tried the Target brand, which was surprisingly good. Once Vi grew enough, we switched to Seventh Generation. They are chlorine-free and hypo-allergenic. We switched back to the Pampers for about a week, and Vi developed a horrible diaper rash. It wasn't like the usual diaper rash, but rather, every where the diaper touched her skin turned magenta. It got me thinking...isn't it really toxic to mix chlorine and amonia? What's the ingredient that whitens the diaper materials? And what's the ingredient in urine? Huh. Maybe, just maybe, this isn't good for delicate baby skin. Huh. We switched back to Seventh Generation and quickly started looking for the least expensive way to buy them. Here's what we found.

Babies R Us, in our town, has the cheapest in-store price (not counting any coupons or special sales going on elsewhere.)

Diapers.com offers a discount card. It's about $30 for a one-year membership, and it gets you a discount on the Seventh Generation diapers ONLY. We bought one immediately, and it paid for itself within two months. I've been ordering from Diapers.com for over a year now, and I have to say, I love it. I go online, I reorder a case of diapers and a case of wipes, and in two or three days, they arrive on my doorstep. We've had to make two emergency diaper purchases at the store since we started ordering online. One of the potential pitfalls of ordering a case (four packages) is that the kid might outgrow that size before you've used them all up. This happened to us only once, with about 10 diapers to spare. We just gave them to the daycare center to have as extras for the other kids.

A close friend of mine uses Amazon to buy her diapers. I guess they have a subscription service, where the user signs up for regular deliveries of the diapers (for example, "always ship me a case of diapers once every three weeks). The price was significantly lower than on Diapers.com, but there's the "regular deliveries" piece. I'm not a big fan of having someone else in control of when I place my order - I like to do it myself. But I think we will switch to Amazon for the next month or so because of the savings. I'll just have to do some research on the frequency of my orders with Diapers.com to see what interval I should set up.

There you have it! That's all I know about ordering diapers. I welcome any comments or other suggestions.

Oh, and Kristin, I can't wait to have some Sangria on a nude Meditterranean beach with you, then retire to our villa for some gourmet cuisine which we will prepare using German cutlery, and we will eat it seated at our gorgeous, custom wooden furniture. (See? I takes cares of yous.)

Sweet!

Do you remember Sweet Valley High? I barely do. For some reason, last night, I dreamed that I was blogging about Sweet Valley High.

Strange.

Ready to Spring Forward

Maybe it's been colder and snowier than usual, but I am so looking forward to Spring. Every night when I place scraps of food in our compost bin, I get excited in my head about it. My reason? I can't wait to put in our garden. True, this year it will have more meaning for us to plant, grow, and harvest our own food, for pennies on the dollar we would spend buying produce at a grocery store. That is a very big piece of my anticipation. I really look forward to getting my hands dirty, smelling the earth, and the satisfaction of eating a cherry tomato right off the plant. One of my favorite memories of last summer is of Vi picking yellow beans and cherry tomatoes; she would wander around the backyard with her new-walker waddle, munching on something fresh.

The other reason I am excited? This will be the first summer in 10 years that Dan will get to spend with me. TRULY spend with me. Two years ago he managed to take two weeks off, straddling Vi's birth. I'm still not sure how that was made possible! Managing a boating supply store in the summer required, usually, 60-plus hours a week on his part. There were days he wouldn't see Vi awake at all - isn't that heart-breaking? I simply cannot wait for beach days and picnics - with my husband and daughter (and maybe Riley.)

Haste and Humor

In a haste to post something which gave me a much-needed laugh, Saturday's vodka post seems to have caused some confusion. (I'm discovering that haste is something I need to work on, in many aspects of my life!)

My dear, dear, oldest friend Kristin sent me an hilarious rant about the ads being generated based on the content of my blog. Since I've been writing a lot about Vi's development, the ads have been mostly for potty-training and toilet products. She was jokingly suggesting I try to get some other ads to appear on my site. Please re-read the list and have a good chuckle, everyone.

On the topic of getting other ads to appear on my site:

There are strict rules about publishing ads. I use a product called Google AdSense, and it seems to be working for us. The more I post, the more the ads get changed-up. Over-clicking my ads will get me kicked out of the program, so please don't. I do believe one may click on each unique ad once, sincerely, without creating an issue. See also:

http://ask.metafilter.com/24986/What-to-do-when-Google-suspends-you

So, I'm not asking you to click on my ads. I am asking that you read my blog and post comments. This blog has been an outlet for me over the last two years, and it's nice to know that my writing is being read and hopefully enjoyed.

Thanks for reading!

Coffee, Vodka, Pride & Prejudice, and Politics

I originally posted this entry without a sufficient introduction. This was an hilarious list of items my friend created, not because she doesn't like the content of my blog, which, as we all know, is, like, TOTALLY RAD. It was about getting new, different, varied ads to be published on my site. Please re-read her list and have a good chuckle as was intented.

I must also add two things:

1) Aegean nudist beaches
and
2) http://ask.metafilter.com/24986/What-to-do-when-Google-suspends-you

****************************************************************************
Original post:

Here is a list of things I might blog about, at the suggestion of my dear old friend KJ. I am hoping this list provides more interesting material for the "contentedly child-free persons" among my avid readers:

1. vodka
2. Campari
3. limes
4. club soda
5. no wait, that was a list of ingredients for an Americano
6. not an Americano coffee, an Americano cocktail
7. mmm, that sounds good
8. OK, get back on track now
9. ahem, I was saying vodka
10. gin
11. rum
12. other adult beverages
13. R-rated movies
14. actually, make that unrated movies, because the directors who release unrated cuts tend to be the more daring and interesting ones
15. fashionable glassware
16. fashionable china
17. other fashionable, breakable things
18. fancy corkscrews such as the Rabbit
19. that other Rabbit
20. high-quality German or Japanese kitchen knife brands
21. salacious celebrity gossip
22. higher-end Scandinavian-designed furniture
23. Central American jungle eco-tourism packages including zip-line rides and attractive, machete-bearing guides
24. anything with the punch line "The Aristocrats!"
25. clothing-optional beaches of the Mediterranean and Aegean
26. retail providers of adventure gear (rock-climbing harnesses, etc.)
27. retail providers of leather "adventure" gear (other kind of harnesses, etc.) <---- for browsing, pointing, and "ohmygod"-ing entertainment purposes only 28. how to toilet train your CAT. (Relevant YouTube links encouraged.)

(links provided by me, not KJ)

Money-saving tips...re-discovered

Dan and I are quickly finding that we get as much - if not more - joy from being resourceful as we did from being, well, spoiled.

Fact is, we were living outside our means for a while. Between my so-called non-traditional undergraduate degree, having a nice wedding, buying a house, my career path, and Dan's taste for toys, we racked up some debt. We have spent this past year changing a lot of our priorities - having a baby will do that to you - and have cut back on our spending quite a bit. One of our vows for 2008 was not to buy any more gifts. There were three or four occasions on which we splurged - my mother's birthday/retirement party, my bonus sister's wedding, Christmas - but overall, we were able to re-gift or make gifts. I didn't realize that most people are totally happy with a batch of brownies or a used book.

If you look back at my posts, you'll see that Dan sold his boat - one of the aforementioned toys - to pay for the installation of our wood-burning stove and three cords of wood. We were able to pay for the chimney, wood at the highest price of the season, and materials for the hearth. Our neighbor built the hearth in exchange for us snow-blowing his driveway for the winter. Dan's dad bought us a tank of oil for Christmas, so we have NO heating costs remaining this winter. That is truly something for which we are thankful.

This week's plan included taking inventory of our pantry, making a menu based on what we already have, and creating a grocery list from that menu for ingredients we were lacking. As I write this, I'm saying "DUH" to myself. This is basic, basic, basic. Duh. The point isn't that I shoulda thunka that before, but that we only spent $44 at the grocery store this week! We'll have to go back for milk in a few days, but $44 is a far cry from what we used to spend.

I must mention that I was rather pleased at some of the items currently in our inventory, including pricey items we won't see again for a while (Seeds of Change Greek Feta dressing) and items we accidently bought in multiples (Peanut Butter, rice, tuna, dried beans).

I know we're not alone in our current situation. What are you and your family doing to cut costs during The Recession?

Posting!

I'm going to try to post more often, as this site is a source of revenue for my family. If you don't know what I mean, I'm not really allowed to tell you what to do. I just know that I'm not allowed to click on my own ads, ever. CHECK THIS OUT:

http://ask.metafilter.com/24986/What-to-do-when-Google-suspends-you

A friend of mine said, "Sounds like you're having a fantastic week!" And that was only Tuesday. As most of you know, my husband lost his job on January 31st. I'm not going to waste too much space here, but I will tell you that Dan WAS the bread-winner, and his employment provided us with health, dental, vision and FSA benefits. All of those went away immediately on January 31st. We need to bring in money as soon as possible, and reduce spending NOW.

Here's what we've been doing:

1) Looking at EVERY way we spend money and figuring out how to reduce it.
2) Eating everything we already have, including the emergency tuna.
3) Taking fewer and shorter showers. I had never thought about my water consumption from an economic perspective before, just an environmental one. We are blessed to live in an area with no water shortage, and with good, clean water. I just never thought about how much we get charged to flush the toilet or wash our dishes before.
4) Unplugging energy-suckers! We have a clock-radio in Vi's room for no reason at all. Unplugged. We keep our coffee maker plugged in all day. No more. All of those little plugs with (what are they called? transformers? that can't be right) box-thingies on them suck energy all day. Who knew? (Probably lots of you did. Hmph.)
5) Driving less.
6) We withdrew Vi from daycare, since Dan is home all the time. That was a no-brainer. It is one of the saddest parts, for me, since I had such a long, drawn-out struggle with child care. We had finally found the *perfect* place, and now she's losing her spot in the program.
7) Dan applied for unemployment. This will be a rather long process, as the system is flooded with applications right now. In Maine, the unemployment rate is around 7% right now. I have a friend who applied over three weeks ago and still hasn't received a check.
8) Dan applied for a few jobs, posted his resume, and is calling on all contacts for ideas. He has a list of his former customers with whom he had a good, long-term relationship, and will be contacting them for suggestions, thoughts, prayers, and brainstorming. He is in touch with a long-ago customer, from his coffee shop days, who works as a truck-driving instructor. He may have his Class B trucking license in a few weeks - I'll keep you posted.
9) We are working on the health insurance issue. My biggest fear is, of course, for Vi, who is just getting over pneumonia. Her course of anti-biotics will be done tomorrow, and I worry that the infection will come back. Dan points out that keeping her out of day care will avoid "kennel cough." :-)

Most of all, we have been laughing. Don't get me wrong - we are terrified and I am still having bawling fits. But, Vi is at this age - 18 months, now - where she is a total ham. Everything she does is cute, silly, funny, goofy or intriguing. She has really kept us from crawling into bed and hiding. With an active toddler, that's not an option at all.

We've been doing a lot of brainstorming and long-term planning. Dan is still interested in going to college, but says "I can't wait two or four years for a paycheck." Being an apprentice for an electrician piqued his interest. 2nd shift jobs are a realistic, short-term possibility.

So, my question to all of you is, what should Dan do? Please let us know if you have any ideas for him, for us. Anything at all - no idea is stupid.

Thanks for all your support as we navigate this time in our lives!!

Things come in threes, right?

Dan lost his job yesterday.

Vi has pneumonia (but is improving rapidly).

I'm not thrilled about the prospect of whatever the 3rd item will be.