It's pouring down rain outside. At first I was sad, because it means Bean can't play outside. But, with both babies napping and me stirring away at pots in the kitchen, it's actually kind of relaxing and nice.

I just turned 6 basically dead mushy bananas into two loaves of banana bread. My mom gave me some leftover Easter ham, so I made a big pot of red beans yesterday (the New Orleans classic, it takes at least 4 hours to cook and is worth every minute.) I'm making the rice to go with it right now.

I had a "duh" moment today. I've been trying to compost our non-meat leftovers, and I always have too much to go into the bin. It just occurred to me that I could put it in the weekly municipal yard waste pick-up. All of that is composted on a grand scale, so what will it hurt if I throw my broccoli stems out there? Nothing! And, it will save me a lot of heartache. I don't know why I didn't think of it before.

On a financial front, things are OK. Freelance is steady and I'm not making big bucks. (Only about $600-$700 a month before taxes) But, I am pretty happy to have that regular check coming every month and to keep my hands in the profession even with two babies.

I am really lucky I have a job I can do at home and at odd hours, because any other kind of work would be impossible with two kids under 2.

In this economy, and with journalism a declining field, I'm happy to have any work at all.

Now that we've paid for the kitchen renovation and gotten the tax refunds, we are back on track with saving regularly out of each paycheck. January and February are always hard months for us, because the big bills like insurance and property tax are due. We don't usually catch up until around April, so we are right on track.

Our next big house project is extending the patio along the back of the house. This weekend, my jobs are to identify a handful of contractors to give us quotes and to file our city income taxes and my quarterly self-employed tax forms. Woo-hoo!

Bean is also having his baby friends over for a birthday barbecue on Sunday, so I will need to clean up and pretend for an afternoon that we don't live in a house filled from floor to ceiling with baby toys.

In the meantime, honey and I have a movie date tonight. If you can call popping popcorn and netflix in the basement a date. I'll take what I can get!