Monday we took the kiddo in for his second Covid shot. Due to staffing shortages, a lot of appointments locally have been cancelled, so I felt especially thankful that he kept his appointment. T-10 days until my birthday and two weeks after his second shot. Fully vaccinated on my birthday.

With the Omicron news flying around – still so much unknown yet – I’m so grateful that we’ve been able to get our boosters and he was able to get his shots. Again, holding extra space for the families with kiddos in the under five crowd, because this wait and see with the newest variant must be even scarier when you have unprotected kiddos.

A reminder, again, that this pandemic is not over yet. I wish we would stop declaring it so.

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Friday’s Frugal Five

1. Thanks to my local Buy Nothing group, I brought home three new pairs of leggings this past week – one pair of black “jeggings” nice enough for work, and two pairs of running pants. I’ve honestly always enjoyed wearing new clothes – don’t we all – but I can honestly say I get more satisfaction wearing “new to me” clothes than actual new ones that I purchased. Now that we’re into December, I’m within three months of hitting the five year mark on my clothes buying ban, with no intent to stop it now.

Because Buy Nothing is hyper local, I was able to walk over to the house that I got the pants from instead of driving my car, making my new to me clothes even more environmentally friendly. If you aren’t yet part of your local Buy Nothing group, I highly, highly recommend it.

2. Again, it’s December, but that doesn’t mean the garden is done for the year. I’ve done the year round garden thing for a few years now, but picking produce to eat in the winter months never gets old. The weather has been particularly mild, so the garden is even more productive than it normally would be in December.

The kiddo and I picked carrots, leeks, kale, and celery and combined it with some of the garlic we harvested earlier in the year to make an awesome fried rice. Alas, the chickens aren’t laying right now (we don’t have a light on to push them to lay through the winter), so the eggs in the meal came from the farmers market – the last carton from a farm before their chickens were also done for the year. The meal was delicious, cheap, local, and filled with vegetables. Hard to beat that.

3. I’ve been racing through audiobooks lately, which makes me particularly thankful for the Overdrive app and the ability to check them out from the library. Audiobooks are expensive, and so is an Audible membership, so the cost to buy them all would be pretty significant. The library might not have all the audiobooks I want to listen to, and sometimes the wait time is a while, but it’s so worth it.

Right now, I’m listening to Good Husbandry, having just finished Health At Every Size. The kiddo and I are listening to Trickster’s Choice together (during drives, preparing meals together, etc). And then I’m also re-listening to Drums of Autumn, which I do “own” on Audible, for when I want more background-ish noise. What are you reading? Anything I should add to my list?

4. With the mild weather, we’ve been taking evening walks together as a family with the dogs most weeknights. It might be totally dark, but Christmas lights are starting to sparkle throughout the neighborhood, so it’s been quite enjoyable.

I’ve also starting asking my guys each night for something that made them happy over the course of the day. We’re all run down and feeling the burnout of a pandemic that is about to hit the two year mark, and I’m finding that asking and talking about the good snippets really has helped end our nights better. Sharing this here especially as accountability to make sure that we keep it up, because it is worth doing.

5. Regina and I are putting on an Investing Basics class for Women’s Personal Finance next Friday (December 10th). The Live Zoom event is limited to 100 attendees and is filling fast, so if you want to attend live, I would sign up soon. As a reminder, the live event is for women and nonbinary folks only, please. However, the class will be recorded, and the recording is open to all.

If you’re interested in learning more or to sign up, you can access the class details at this Eventbrite link. (Note: this class is free to WPF Insiders, so check your email for your access code).

Ps – if you missed the Weekly Women’s Personal Finance Wednesday Roundup that I curate each week, this is your reminder that it is now shared over at the Women’s Personal Finance website. We also have a new, heartbreaking post up there about one woman’s late term abortion of a much wanted child. It’s a hard, personal read, but so, so important considering what is going on at the US Supreme Court right now.