Wednesday, September 24, 2008

So Glad I'm Not Retiring Now.

I can't imagine being one of those people being a year or two away from retirement. Having to watch as your investments plummet in value in the course of a week. Then you would have to weigh either retiring on less money, not being able to do the things that you wanted in your retirement, and possibly running out of money. Or you could work longer, save more, and hope for economic rebound.

People like my husband and I who have money invested in retirement have seen our share of loss as well. Thankfully we are young and have 30 years to recover and surpass it. If we are really smart we will invest now while the market is down and make even more money. The knee-jerk response to this is to pull all our money out of the market and stuff it under our mattress. However, we have done our best to live and spend responsibly and not beyond our means. Plus Scott has significant job security thanks to the baby boomer generation being so large and entering the ages of needing more and more medical care. Selling our house would make it even easier on us financially. Saving $300 a month on gas would be a big plus (more money to invest?).

Other than the economy crumbling around our ears, things are well with the family. I think the total so far of my canning adventures is 26 jars of pickles and 15 jars of tomatoes. I got lots of Roma tomatoes this year and they are so yummy. I also found a great use for my eggplant. I tried out a Greek dish, Moussaka. It was so great and it was nice to actually be successful in cooking with eggplant. The bechamel sauce was so smooth and brought everything together. . mmmmm.



No tattoo so far. I don't feel strongly in any direction as to the design that I want to permanently etch into my arm, so I will wait. But Erin decided to do some decorating herself. Her favorite part was pulling the stickers off making me say Ow! The other picture is our grapes that grew on our pergola this year.

I am feeling the itch to knit again. I think it is the changing leaves and the appearance of fall even though the temperatures continue to climb into the 80's. I just need to pick a project, to a gauge swatch and dive in. I think my downfall has been that I don't do a gauge swatch. I'm not a person who likes to take my time and get my ducks in a row, I like to dive in and it has doomed too many projects for me. There is a great idea for a hat with an attached scarf for kids that would be wonderful for Erin this winter. That would be a nice small project to start with.


Scott's brother, sister-in-law and their son Ian came for a visit. Erin had a lot of fun with him. He is just crawling so their interaction was pretty limited. However, the other weekend we visited Scott's sister and their son Walker is 1 1/2 and they played so well together. It will be fun having cousins close to her age as they all get older. They had so much fun on Walker's toy train, it was hard to get them off it.




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