This Months Goals

Environment:
House- For February- Spring Cleaning. Fix dining room ceiling. 
My "accomplishments" this month were a disappointment. I began the month by cleaning my Master bedroom but my motivation to clean other rooms in the house petered out. Although I started to clean my Craft Room in the second week, I did not continue.  I did not Spring clean any other areas of the house.
As far as fixing the dining room ceiling,  I got nothing done. It is not a job I can do myself; but, I could have spent some time removing the nails from the boards in preparation.

This week I have decided to start on my Master bedroom as the beginning of my Spring Cleaning for 2018. I did not get anything done in this room before Christmas except for vacuuming, so it is the logical place to start.

• I want to dust and wash all the walls, especially the woodwork around door and window frames, closet doors, and built-in shelves. I washed all the woodwork but  only spot cleaned the walls.
• I need to clean inside and outside of windows. I cleaned the inside of the windows but will wait for a warmer day in Spring to wash the outside of the windows.
• I will clean glass shelves and mirrors. Done
• I will dust and polish furniture and purge items as I come across any. Done

Garden-  For February- Start vegetable seedlings indoors. Not done
This week I will go through my seeds to see what I have already.  I checked my collection of seeds saved from last year and bought some more. I now have zucchini, cabbage, broccoli, cucumber, beefsteak tomatoes, carrots, green beans and cantaloupe. I still have corn, pie pumpkins, turnip, radishes, lettuce and green onions.

Finances:  (Spending and Saving) For February- I spent far more than I intended on my Cruise. This was a total failure on my part. (Yes I paid for excursions, but I did not need to buy souvenirs for myself or anyone else) I put my expenditures on my credit card and now I have to make a determined effort to pay it off as quickly as possible. It will take several months. I don't want to pay down any of it with my meager savings, but I may put any extra money I can find into c.c.  payments instead of savings. I will have to try harder to find extra money for payments. February means extra costs for license stickers, license renewals and my CAA membership. I paid $210 for my driver's  license renewal and  to update my license plate, so I was only able to pay an extra $100 against my credit card. I let my CAA membership lapse. I will probably pick it up again this month, so in the future I won't have so many one-time payments all due during the month of 
February.

This week I am examining other expenditures to see if I can cut more from the budget. Since my latest water bill is much higher than expected, I am going into the municipal office tomorrow to see the Utilities clerk to find out why. I may be able to pick up a "leak test" to see if I am losing water. Next month when I receive my renewal for home and auto insurance, I will begin to shop around for quotes to see if I can get the same coverage for less money. I will stop off tomorrow at Canadian Tire to get my E-test (should cost me nothing) and then head over to Service Ontario to pick up a one year license sticker instead of two. (It isn't a better value, but it will be less money to come up with). I also have to pay to renew my license for 5 more years. I got the municipal workers in to change out the broken water meter, so I will need to watch future billings very carefully in order to get back extra money I may have paid out due to their guesstimates on my billing.  As it turned out, paying to have my license plate sticker renewed for two years instead of just one year would not have resulted in a cheaper rate. I am therefore glad I paid for just one year. My auto insurance actually went down by a hair, but I am still investigating the huge increase in my home insurance.

 
Family and Friends: For February- Comment on blogs regardless of whether or not I have caught up from missed posts over my vacation. Continue to stay in touch with family by text or facebook messaging.
I failed miserably here. I started off very well I thought. If I had some time in the day, I tried to use it to write comments rather than post a new blog entry. Then last week I got terribly busy so that I didn't have any spare time at all, and this week I have been grappling with some family issues.
This week phone some of my IRL friends who I have neglected over the past little while.
This month was certainly better but I need to continue working on this. 
 
Health:  For February- Continue to eat a low carb diet and see my GP. I received a letter reminding me I need to make an appointment for my physical and Pap test. This should be the last one as I will be 70 in 3 years. I had two doctors' appointments last week that went well. My sugar went up a tiny bit because of some errors in judgement (I CANNOT eat any fruit but berries and no alcohol) I have an appointment for a physical and pap test this coming week. My GP was pleased over all and doesn't need to check my blood chemistry for 6 months. I continue to lose weight but I am starting to plateau.
 
This week I am going into Kingston early tomorrow for a "fasting" blood test. Then I will be able to call and schedule the appointment.

Crafts and Leisure- For February- I will continue to make cards one day a week and I would also like to start an embroidery project, with the idea to build up a supply of handmade gifts. I have started my embroidery project, but haven't worked on it recently. I bought 2 kinds of cord to begin some macrame projects and I am making lots and lots of encouragement cards this past week.

This week I will make another six birthday cards. I will sketch out a pattern for sewing while I watch TV in the evenings. Done. I have been able to make a minimum of six cards every week....sometimes more.

So there are my goals for the month of February, and specifically for this coming week. This will give my days more structure, so hopefully at the end of this week I will feel  like I have accomplished something.