Expenses: Medical Insurance and Gasoline, and Reading

Gratitudes:
1. I'm grateful to have plenty of medicine right now.
2. I'm grateful to be in a warm place.
3. I'm grateful to have English Breakfast tea today.
4. I'm grateful to have already read my Bible today.
5. I'm grateful for the phone conversation I had earlier today.
Plan for the day:
1. Laundry!
2. Organize the van.
3. Follow the wheel plan.
4. Place order with Home Depot.
5. Tear down boxes.
Currently reading:
1. Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder
2. Hornblower and the Hotspur by CS Forester
3. The Obsession of Victoria Gracen by Grace Livingston Hill
4. An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
5. Lifting the Veil on the Lost Continent of Mu by James and Jack Churchward
6. The Power of Praying for Your Adult Children by Stormie Omartian

Here's how my day is going:

Wow, just found out I qualify for a medical program back to July and will get a refund from Medicare. I'm so grateful. My biggest expense in life has been medical insurance, for a few years now. This will help a lot. I can start driving my van again, out of town... things like that. Maybe take a vacation when that refund gets here. Maybe get my van fixed up like a camper-van again, like I had it before the fire. I'd like that. 

About the van - I've only been using it to drive into town about once a week for errands. Since the gas prices increased last year I decided to buy only one tank of gas each season. A tank of gas is about 100 dollars, and I can make it last three months by the power of extreme thriftiness... and just not driving very much at all. It has worked out great. However, if I felt free to go places again, it would be even better. I could stop living like a complete hermit.

However - it has been a great year for reading. Because I've spent nearly every day at home for months I managed to read over 100 books in a year. So, trade offs. I'm happy about the reading, but I'd like to see the world. Well, daydreams. I'll just wait and see what happens next.

Maybe a Butterfly After All: according to my friend . . .

Last night after the worship encounter evening at our church (all music, no sermon) I talked to my friend about my travel plan, and she said I was going to be like a butterfly. She said I came here to North Idaho like a caterpillar, and have been in a cocoon for a long time (my comfy apartment?) and now will be coming out of the cocoon to be like a butterfly in my future travel (and service) life. I thought it was cool synchronicity that she came up with the butterfly analogy right after I'd written a blog post claiming not to be a social butterfly!

#vanlife

Truth is, the van life will put me into much closer contact with other human beings in the future, and maybe that's one of the reasons I must go there. Right now, I spend most of my time in an ivory tower. A nice two-bedroom apartment on the third floor, with a great view. Today my great view started with wet streets, from rain, and now, in the last hour, turned white with big snowflakes. Like I said, snow was on the way.

Gratitudes:

1. So grateful for the worship encounter evenings at my church, once a month. Awesome experience last night! Give it all to Jesus - and trust Him for the right results - in EVERYTHING ...

2. I'm grateful for the discussion I had with my friend (Nita) about prayer . . . about how we need to give every situation to Jesus in prayer. He wants to hear our concerns. He already knows! But He wants us to be able to identify and verbalize our concerns to Him, and trust Him with them. For example - my difficult relationships with siblings and a few other family members. I can't fix a thing and have done plenty to mess things up... so I feel my efforts are hopeless. This morning I was ruminating about my situation again, and realized that this is a situation I need to identify, pray about, and give to the Lord, and He will do His Will... which is the best thing that can be done for all involved. Praise the Lord!

3. I am grateful for Naomi's neglect of me (parental estrangement) because it has taught me to understand what God feels when His children turn away from Him. Ah, the pain of it all . . . but I was one of those children turning away from Him toward false gods and false prophets, and now that I've been welcomed back, like the prodigal son, having spent so much of my life in ignorance (agnosticism, the word, derives from the Greek word for ignorance) I'm finding Jesus still loves me, and shines His light on me, and gives me the full heart I've always yearned for. I know I am loved, and what is better than that?



Plan for the day:

1. Figure out a new budget, heading into 2019, accounting for travel expenses

2. Write a book review for my lindajomartin.com blog . . . I want to review the best books I read during 2018. I'm starting with Blue Highways.

3. Walk 4000 steps and cycle 30 minutes on my exercise bike while listening to an audiobook

Currently reading:

1. The Nightingale, by Kristen Hannah. I passed the half-way point and now I'm headed downhill. That's what the second half of a book feels like to me - the downhill half of a hike.

2. Jesus Calling, by Sarah Young. I've been reading this devotional since last summer, and like it a lot. It always reminds me how much Jesus loves me.

Life, Money, and the Atkins Diet

Sorry I've neglected this weblog! Here's stuff I've been doing lately:

1. web maintenance work - a lot of it
2. enjoying my kids more now that my daughter's out of school
3. a new diet and exercise program
4. rearranging the house to put all my clutter in the back bedroom
5. enjoying our new used car and taking a few out of town trips

After a tight-money month, Keith and I sat down together yesterday to look at July's budget. We talked about where to cut corners. There won't be room for any extras but we'll get all our bills paid this time. Last month we didn't due to what we spent to take that car out of the car lot. Now we have to catch up...

The good news is that we're going to have plenty of money for food (we always have that, at least)... and for me, food will be on the Atkins diet plan. This drastic measure will be taken because I dieted on a conventional plan all of June and didn't lose even one pound - a real disappointment. I've come to the conclusion that my body's addicted to carbohydrates and must be weaned off them. I'm starting Atkins induction on July 1 and am reading the book now:



The book is well-written and easy to understand with short chapters. I'm enjoying it...

What I've learned so far is that I've been eating so many carbohydrates, my body is running on them and not burning off stored fat. The stored fat comes from eating too many carbs too... because the liver converts carbs into fat if there's too many. The solution is to slow down to 20 grams of carbs daily until the addiction is broken, then add a few more into the diet. Yes, the body does need some carbs, but not in the great quantity we have in the typical American diet. This is a main reason why obesity has become an epidemic in this country.