I am feeling much better today, after a good night's sleep. Other than a trip to the gym this morning, I haven't gone anywhere. I haven't spent any money.

I've got two days before my Social Security check is deposited (not counting today), and I've spent 97% of my variables budget. I thought it was lower than that, but I made a few underestimates. Anyway, I just want to come in below. I went over two months in a row, and I need to know that I CAN come in under when I put my mind to it.

Menu for today: I finished the bread pudding for breakfast. For lunch I made a mashed potato bowl with chicken, red peppers, mushrooms & turkey gravy. For dinner I will finish the macaroni au gratin.

For the next few days I have leftover pizza, frozen tilapia, mac & cheese, potato soup, canned tuna -- as well as plenty of frozen vegetables. I will be all right. But it will be nice to feel a little freer.

I've started looking ahead to see what I want to watch on TV, and it's keeping me from doing that aimless search on the remote. Today I watched a special on Auschwitz on PBS, and I'll watch Call the Midlife this evening. I've done some reading, some housework, including cleaning the fish tank, some work on the diary, and I also watched another episode of "Further Back in Time for Dinner" on my computer. I've gone through the 30's now. Very interesting. I like getting an idea of how my mother was living during the time she was writing her diary. Even though she was in a little Midwestern town, not England. I'm sure there were similarities, just the same.

In her world, there is not much to report. It is interesting to see my aunts and uncles appear, and to get a view of my grandparents as mother- and father-in-law. My poor mother can't figure out what to call them -- sometimes it's Mom & Dad, or Mom & Pop, sometimes it's "the folks", sometimes it's the M...'s, or Mr. & Mrs. M.

It sounds like they all spent quite a bit of time with each other, having dinner, going to movies and amusement parks, playing games, golfing -- all were living in various small towns just south of Indianapolis, very close to each other. I never realized before that my father and mother were the first married couple in the "young" set; all my aunts and uncles are either courting or very newly married.

Money is not mentioned very much. It seems they are doing all right, financially. My mother does mention that her aunt made her a dress for 30 cents. Hmmm, that wouldn't buy a button today. I expect leaner times will come with the addition of children (my brother will be born in 1942) and the privations of the upcoming war years. I have gotten through September 1940, so we are just a couple months short of the bombing of Pearl Harbor.