Where am I and what happened to the heat?

Living in Texas for the past three and a half years I have gotten somewhat used to the seemingly unending heat. It’s just always hot here, or, it seems that way compared to where I grew up in Indiana with nice Lake Michigan breezes.

But lately…

I have had the windows open constantly. The air conditioning hasn’t been on since sometime last week. It IS like Indiana in the fall. Woo! The only unfortunately part is that Robert’s allergies are bad enough thatw e do have to close everything up when we go to bed. But, it still stays cool enough that we don’t need the air on. Awesomeness! I really get excited when we can save big chunks of electricity.

I am doing pretty well on posting this week and actually beginning to get my income on target for the budget that I would like to have. That is definitely a good feeling. And I think in my last post I mentioned that I would tell you my motivational secret this time around. It’s a bit odd I guess and probably won’t work for everyone, or even a lot of people.

My husband is my motivation. Not in the way you might think either. There is no pressure to make tons of money or anything coming from him. There are some clear targets that need to be hit as far as contributing to bills and all that  but honestly, they aren’t all that high. So, the motivation comes from him in a different way.

I was sitting at home one day last week, not feeling like doing much of anything at all. Then I thought about Robert and how much he would love to have the job I have. And then, I thought about him actually having a job like mine. And how he would be going 90 mph with his hair on fire to do the very best (and make the very most) that he could. And I realized how truly lucky I am that I have the opportunity to do this. And that I have him to support me (not in the financial sense, but in the emtional sense). I expressed an interest in this opportunity and did some of the ground work and he has been behind me 100% the whole time.

What an awesome gift. Why on earth would I waste it? Motivating? To me it was.

In other news… I made some amazing muffins this evening. I got the recipe over at Owlhaven for these Baked Apple Donuts. I didn’t have any apples on hand, but I had two pears, which was just the right amount. I didn’t bother chopping them, I just ran them over the cheese grater, peel and all. They are seriously good.

I think next time I will substitute applesauce for the butter in the actual batter and then just brush some melted butter over the tops instead of dipping them in butter (eek!) before dipping them in the cinnamon sugar mixture.

At the same time, I baked some brown rice in the oven. It came out pretty well, same as when I make it on the stovetop, but, it was easy and got accomplished while the muffins were baking so that was nice. We had the brown rice with left over proteins from the week – chicken in sun dried tomato sauce and bbq brisket.

I’m really looking forward to the weekend. It will be nice to spend some time with my husband. It’s been a  really long week for him (starting on September 8th since he hasn’t had a day off since then!) so I haven’t had a whole lot of time to spend with him. I’m not complaining… it will just be nice to have some good quality time together. And, he has Monday off. Yay!