Omar has figured out how to get up onto the kitchen counters now.  He really wanted a muffin.  I told him he couldn’t have one.  He pushed one of his little chairs over to the kitchen counter and used his sticky little toes to scramble up the side of the cabinet and onto the counter where the muffins were.  Well, there’s no stopping him now.

He did it again last night and my husband saw him do it and freaked out.  He is scared that Omar is going to fall off the counter and break his neck.  So he took his little chairs and hid them.  I really don’t think this will stop him, though.  He’s going to find the chairs or use something else.  He already pushes his high chair up to the light switch so he can flip it on and off.

I cooked parsnips this weekend.  I decided to just go ahead and peel and dice all the parsnips from the garden.  Most of the recipes I wanted to try called for chopping them up, anyway.  I ended up with about 1.5 lbs of dice.

The first recipe I tried was Parsnip Muffins.  I wasn’t really sure if they would be good or not, but my 2-year-old was pining for muffins.  It turns out that they are pretty similar to zucchini bread muffins, but with just nutmeg for the spices and less oil.  I had to grate the parsnip for this recipe, which I did in the food processor since they were already diced.  The batter was pretty thick, and the recipe said it would make 12 muffins.  It filled each muffin cup up to the top, which made me kind of nervous, but they did not overflow.  They rose very nicely into perfect, tall pro-bakery-looking muffins! Mine never turn out that good!  The parsnips are slightly peppery and they tasted great with the nutmeg.  My son liked them.

The second recipe I tried was curry parsnip soup.  I had high hopes for this recipe.  I was really in the mood for a nice, creamy soup.  But it didn’t taste that great.  And it was not soupy!  It turned out to be the texture of mashed potatoes.  The curry flavor was pretty much the dominant flavor on top of the sweetness of the parsnips.  My husband hated it.  I wasn’t too wild about the strong curry flavor either.  I had a huge bowl full of it, so I decided to freeze most of it for a Thanksgiving side dish.  Even if I can’t get rid of it all at Thanksgiving, at least I’m hoping I won’t have too much of it left to take home.  And who knows – maybe somebody there will be into it.  My dad was really gung-ho about curry cornbread stuffing a few years ago.

That used up all the parsnips from our garden.  I’m kicking myself for not making a half-recipe of that curry “soup.”  Then I would have been able to try a different recipe.  I was torn between trying that curry one, or a different one that had paprika for the main spice.

Now I need to find some recipes to use up the six delicata squash I have.

I made three batches of crepes this weekend.  I have a little cookbook that is nothing but crepe recipes and I’ve been putting some mileage on it.

First I used up the last of the spinach from our garden to make some spinach crepes.  They were good.  The batter was pretty thick and green, but they cooked up a nice tan color.  They are thicker than a usual crepe.  They were good.  I didn’t know what to fill them with, though.  I may just eat them like bread.  The cookbook suggested something creamy for the filling, but creamy stuff doesn’t sound very appealing to me right now.

I also made dessert crepes.  I was not especially impressed with them by themselves.  I imagined they would be sweet, but they were not.  The batter was super thin, too.  It cooked up fast and got crispy around the edges.  They taste pretty similar to regular crepes too, just thinner.  There are some other “flavored” dessert crepe recipes in that book that I’ll try next time.  I filled these with another recipe from the book, flambed figs in brandy cream sauce.

The figs started out promising and my first attempt at igniting brandy was way less scary than I thought it was going to be.  The flames were not very tall.  I was afraid it was going to create some enormous fireball in my kitchen, but instead it was just a dull blue flame that danced around the pan for a minute and then died out.  Whew!  The sauce was tasting pretty good, and the last ingredient was cream.  That’s where it went south.  The cream really didn’t make it taste better to me.  In fact, it went from being a pinkish figgy and carmely sugar syrup to tasting like sweetened condensed milk.     Yuck!  If I make that again I’ll skip the cream.  The cream really ruined it for me, since I hate condensed milk.

I made a half-recipe of regular old crepes for breakfast the next day.  My two-year-old likes them with peanut butter.  “Want more crepe,” he kept saying, even though he’d only eaten half of it.

Omar was too tired to go trick-or-treating as he didn’t take a nap all day.  We got him into the dog costume, but he wouldn’t let me paint his face.  And he didn’t want to wear the hat with the ears.  We gook him to three houses and then gave up.  The first house he was fine.  The second house was playing some scary music and he didn’t want to wait around on the doorstep to get a piece of candy.  At the third house he wouldn’t even go up the steps.  So we walked around the block and looked at jack-o’ lanterns and then went home.  He didn’t even want to eat the candy. Maybe next year.

We cleaned out the community garden plot for the year.  Omar ate some of the last carrots while we worked.  We dug up the parsnips.  There are a lot of them.  Milad cursed the whole time, yet he has decided he still wants to do the garden again next year, because Omar likes it.  I was ready to give it up. I don’t want to do as many tomatoes and peppers.  My idea for next year is to fill the whole plot up with giant pumpkins or some other squash.  But probably we’ll do fava beans and carrots again.  Omar is really fond of the carrots.  And maybe spinach.  No doubt the chard will reseed itself as it has the last few years.

The summer was not hot enough for many of the tomatoes to ripen this year.  There were a lot of small green ones on the vines when we dug them out.

Now I need to think of some things to do with parsnips.  They seem like they might be one of those fussy vegetables like squash that need a lot of prep work to make anything out of.  Some of the parsnips are quite large and probably have woody cores.

Who says the 2’s are terrible?  Terribly cute?  Omar is talking up a storm now.  Last night he was watching “baxit ball”  with his dad.  Then we carved pumpkins.  He helped pick a face from a few that I drew on paper, and he tried to help sort the seeds from the pulp so that we could toast them later.

So later I was toasting the seeds and taking out the pan to stir them around.  Omar was watching.  He declared “I LOVE pumpkin seeds!”

“You do?” I said.  “Have you had them before?”

“Yes.”

“Where did you have them before?”  I have never given him any.

“On the floor,”  he said.

I gave him a toasted seed to try later, but he didn’t like it.  He chewed on it and spit it out.

Later he found an unopened box of sidewalk chalk.  I have to admit I’d bought it for him months before but then never gave it to him.  I’m fairly certain he hasn’t seen it before. The package is still in shrink wrap.

“Open this,”  said Omar.

“What’s in there?”  I asked.

“This in there,” he said, pointing to the chalks inside.

“What are they?”  I probed.

Omar looked stumped for a minute, then he said, “Roddins.”

“What?”

“Roddins in there.”

“Okay,” I said.  They are sort of rod-shaped, but I have know idea if that’s what he really meant.  He is pretty good about just making something up if he doesn’t know.

Anybody with student loans has probably had their loan sold and bought by various companies over the years.   During the last recession I consolidated mine at a nice low interest rate with College Loan Corp, who then sold it to ACS.  I’m not so happy with ACS’s customer service, though.  They make it really hard to make extra payments without “pre-paying” the account.  I haven’t had this much of a hassle with any of the other companies that have owned my student loans in past years.

So today I had to call customer service to figure out what was going on.  Apparently you have to send your check to one department, and even if you send payment instructions to apply the extra payment to principal and not advance the next payment due date (a.k.a. pre-paying the account) they will NOT do this.

I found out from ACS’s customer service that you have to send that kind of request to a separate customer service department.  Most of the other companies I’ve dealt with just have a box on their bill our coupon that you can check if you want to do this.   Much easier!  And no other company has blatantly disregarded payment instructions that were enclosed with the check like ACS does.

I was hoping to make at least one extra payment on my loan each month, but boy is it going to be a pain.  I’ll have to notify their customer service each time I make an extra payment.  It could be easier, but I doubt they want it to be.  Obviously they want to collect as much interest as they can from these loans. Anyway, I complained to a supervisor about it.   Not sure if there is anything I can do about having ACS hold my student loan.  I wish some other company owned it.

Omar will ask for a drink of water.  He’ll drink some.  Then he’ll fill his mouth with water and spit it in his dad’s ear.  He thinks this is highly entertaining and will do it over and over again.

We have not idea where he learned it.

The garden is starting to wind down for the summer.  The zucchini plants mysteriously died, so we didn’t get too much zucchini this year.  The winter squash all ripened early, too.  They are done for the year.  Got about 7 delicata squash and 3 pumpkins. I think two of the pumpkins were stolen, because there were more green ones that that in July.

The chard, tomatoes, peppers, chard and parsnips are the only things still growing in the garden.  I’m waiting for a frost to harvest the parsnips.  Once we cleaned out all the dried up squash vines we found there were quite a few more carrots under there too.  The rainbow carrot assortment was pretty tasty.  The colors range from white to red and they all taste the same.  The red ones had red leaves also.

I planted some more spinach.  It should be big enough to harvest by early October.  We’ll clear out the garden in October sometime and put down newspaper to keep the weeds down over the winter.

Next payday I will pay off my last credit card.  I spent a few years running up the debt, and a few years paying it off.  Now the end is near.  I’ve cut up all my credit cards and will be turning my financial attention to getting rid of my student loans next.

I don’t have any “credit problems.”  Never over the limit, never late, not into the penalty interest rates or fees.  I had four credit cards with balances at the high point of my debt.  It was annoying and somewhat stressful and made paydays kind of depressing, but not quite a crisis.  I’ve got some ideas about debt reduction.  These won’t be much use if you’re into real financial trouble, but hopefully will be new ideas that you haven’t heard before in all those personal finance advice columns. (I’ve read a lot of those and I hate to read the same tired ideas over and over, so I’ll only repeat the stuff that is really true.)

So here goes.  A few things I’ve learned about paying off credit cards:

Cut them all up.  If you really need one for some reason, just call and say you lost it and they will send you a new one.  Slightly inconvenient, but it will definitely keep you from digging the hole deeper.

If you have more than one card with a balance, pay off the one with the smallest balance first.  Now financial advisors may tell you to pay off the one with the highest interest rate first (which makes good financial sense), but can be emotionally tiring.  It will boost your confidence and reduce your stress every time you pay off a card. When you pay one off, start paying MORE on the next card with the smallest balance and so on.

Pay an odd amount instead of a round number.  Instead of paying an even $100, pay $115 or $135 or such.  It adds up more than you think, and you won’t miss the few odd dollars from your budget.

Set a goal.  Any goal.  Make it slightly challenging.  Start with some rough estimates of how much and how long.  There are two ways to look at it: a time goal for paying off the card, and a $ amount that you want to pay each month.  Next, figure out how much (or how long) you have to pay each month to reach that goal.   For a time goal you can get a ROUGH estimate by dividing you current balance by the number of months, say 12 months, 24, 36, etc… (it will be off by a few months since you aren’t calculating interest payments, but you can refine your figures later).  If the amount seems too much, extend your time line until you find a figure that will fit into your budget.  If you want to pay $100 every month, then divide you current balance by 100 to get (roughly, again) the number of  months you will be making payments.  If it seems depressingly long, consider making some sacrifices and paying more each month.

Tell people about your goal of paying off your cards.  You don’t have to tell them the amount you owe or anything that specific.  You’ll probably find you have a lot of friends in the same situation and they will be impressed and supportive of your goals.  Personal finance is the last “taboo”  and some of your friends may not want to talk about it, but you’ll probably find a few that do.

Whatever amount you decide on, try to stick to it ruthlessly.  And pay more if you feel you can (like if you get some birthday money, or a tax return or some other windfall), but cut yourself some slack if unexpected expenses come up that hijack your budget.   It happens all the time. If you pay more or less as you can, it should average out to meet your goal over the year. And you can change your goal as needed.  Don’t feel like it’s an “all or nothing” situation if circumstances change.

Cut back your expenses where you can, but don’t completely deprive yourself.  Pick a few treats you will allow yourself that you can pay cash for and put them in your budget.  For me I had to cut eating lunch out at work, so I let myself get something cheaper than lunch, like a latte or mocha a few times a week instead.  Now I really look forward to “mocha days.”

Don’t dwell on the “sacrifices” you are making, or dwell on how deprived you feel.  It is easy to imagine that other people don’t have to make these kind of sacrifices or don’t have the debt you do, but it’s not true.  They just may not talk about it, since personal finance is sort of taboo.  Try to think about how smart and realistic you are being and imagine the day when those debts are paid off and you will have extra money to spend on yourself.  Think about your financial goals in positive and optimistic terms instead of being pessimistic about it.  If you believe in positive affirmation and that you get more of what you think about, then don’t think about how in debt and miserable you are, or you’ll just be more miserable. Be glad that you can meet your basic needs AND pay extra on your credit cards at the same time – you are richer than you think, and doing better than many!

Be realistic.  If you’ve spent 3 or 4 years running up the debt, prepare to give yourself 3 to 4 years to pay it off.  You may surprise yourself and find you can pay it off sooner.

It sounds silly, but get excited when you can pay extra, and make a game of it.  Every time I got some extra cash I’d practically run to the bank, deposit it, and then go online and make an extra payment to my credit card.  I kept track of it in a spreadsheet so I could chart how fast my balance was going down.  I’m almost sad that I’ll be paying off the last one – it was so fun to strive for the goal!    (I know – I’m kind of a dork.)

Keep a savings account, even if it doesn’t have much in it.  Now some financial advisers will say you need to have a big emergency fund and some will say it makes no sense to have a savings account paying 2% interest if you are paying 10% on your credit card debt.  Both or true and nice ideas, so go with whatever feels right to you.  Honestly, my paltry savings account is often just an extension of my checking account.  I often use it to even out my monthly budget.  Some months I raid my savings account to pay my bills (including my monthly credit card goal), and some months I add a little extra into it.  But I have a goal – when I get all my credit cards paid off, I’ll put more in savings.  And I’ll have less need to raid it to pay bills.

Consider wiping out your savings account (if you have one) to pay off a card.  To me this option starts getting really tempting when my credit card balance is lower than my savings account balance.  It sounds scary and dramatic, but can also make you feel really great.   Say you have $400 left to pay on a card and you have $500 in savings.  You could pay the whole thing off today!  Or you may not want to.  And it’s not all or nothing.  You could go 50/50 (or pick a $ amount that you are comfortable taking out of savings).  For example, take $200 from savings to make a nice big extra payment on your credit card and leave the rest in savings.  You’re credit card balance will be reduced dramatically and you will feel good about that.   Even if you decide not to raid your savings you can feel good that you have the means to do it if you want to or have to.  Another positive affirmation!