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Wallpapering is not a job for perfectionists

February 3rd, 2010 at 12:07 am

I decided to open a SEP-IRA finally. Anyone who has any kind of income from self-employment can do it. If you're a "sole proprietor" like me, you can contribute up to 20% of your profit before self-employment tax and overhead is deducted. (Correct me if I'm wrong MonkeyMama, I know you're reading this.)

It's not that i make that much from freelance; this past year, for instance, I only grossed about $1,000, so that means I can contribute $221 for the entire year of 2009. Still, if I had gotten around to doing this 10 years ago, i would've had a tidy little nest egg by now. There was at least one year when i grossed about $5,000. The more money you can put in a tax-deferred account like this, the better. That way, it's not taxed every single freakin' year, plus it reduces your taxable income in the year that you make the contribution.

So I filled out all the paperwork and am mailing it off tomorrow, with my little check.

I was fairly busy with freelance work today, 1 press release after a phone consult with the client (let's hope 3rd time's the charm) and then got a signoff on a blog post i wrote for another client and got go-ahead to start work on the next 2 assignments for that same client for February and March. So this keeps me happy cus I feel like I'm EARNING Money (i say this as i type by flashlight.)

I also am feeling especially accomplished today becus LO AND BEHOLD, I started wallpapering my downstairs bathroom!!!! You know, the project that's been on hold for roughly 2 years becus mid-project i suddenly appeared to have lost all taste for messy wallpapering jobs. (That hasn't changed, I can assure you.)

So i did about one quarter of the bathroom (it's pretty small) in about 2.5 hours. There's measuring involved, which I'm not good at, and once you wet the wallpaper backing, it's quite slippery to handle and glue gets everywhere, and you have to work fairly quickly or the backing gets tacky and it won't stick, and you have to make sure to smooth all the bubbles out. OMG. What I got up on the wall is by no means perfect, but it'll do. I hadn't bothered to line up the pattern when laying side by side paper becus the pattern is a stone-look design and i didn't think I'd need to, but i do see that yes, i need to. Depending on how often the pattern repeats, you can waste a lot of wallpaper that way, so I'll have to be careful to maximize every inch of that wallpaper. I bought is several years ago and if it ends up i need another roll, for all i know it could have been discontinued, which seems to happen a lot in the wallpaper world.

The most difficult parts are yet to come, namely, behind the toilet, The tank actually touches the wall, so i HAVE to remove the tank to do the wallpaper. I've had the water turned off for a while now becus there was/is a leak that i haven't wanted to spend money to have a plumber over to fix, so i think at least the tank is empty. I just have to see if you just lift the tank off, or what. Does anyone know?

The other hard part will be around the mirror and new light fixture above the mirror. I'm not going to take either one down so am hoping the wallpaper will slide in under both. The light fixture has a round base that attaches to the wall; i will most surely mess that part up. (wish me luck)

I skipped going to the gym in order to start on the bathroom. It was worth it; i can't go to the gym every day like i did last week.

I went over to my mom's for lunch yesterday. (I really enjoy the unemployed lifestyle, that is, if it weren't for the lack of money) She made my favorite dish, soft as butter Brussels sprouts in the pressure cooker, and cream of broccoli soup and very good bread.

I agreed to help her install her next art show at a local library 3/31, assuming I'm still out of work.

I called the census bureau today to find out if they'll be calling me soon to offer me a temporary job since i took their exam back in November and scored 89. Responding to my questions, she said yes, they usually have more applicants than they have a need for, but that with my score of 89, I should be hired, altho she didn't say that in those very terms, that was the gist of it. She said to expect a call late February/early March. So that would be great to have several weeks of f/t employment.

So last week i worked out at the gym and spent about a half hour each time on the stair stepper, burning between 200 and 310 calories each time. I had hoped that would be enough to tip the scale (down) but i was very discouraged to see my scale did not agree with me. I haven't lost anything.

So since this is week 2 of my 3 free weeks at the gym, i had already decided to kick it up a notch and work out on the stair stepper 45 minutes each time I'm there. It really is a sweat inducing workout and i get my heart rate up to about 90% of maximum capacity, which is roughly 150 beats a minute.

Then, of course, my mother had to tell me about her neighbor's son, my age, who had a heart attack and died while working out at the gym 3 years ago. Sort of got me nervous. How do I know how much plaque i might have built up in my arteries?

I did some laundry the other day and let the clothes dry indoors, which worked fine.

I have earned 2 points for the Feb. home cooking challenge MTD.

Next week i'm driving my neighbor to the doctor's to have the first of 2 knee replacement surgeries. I told her take advantage of my free time while I'm still not working! So she scheduled it quickly cus i don't know who else she would have called.

That's about it.

Tomorrow I'm going to the dump and will be able to get rid of some items i culled during the January Purge 30 in 30 challenge. An old electric sander, a non-working cordless drill, a rusting toilet snake. Since they all have metal parts, I'll put in the metal section where they can recycle some of it. I'll put a note on the sander, "Take me, I work fine." Offered it on CL but no takers. The drill's lithium batteries I'll hold to drop off at the Household Hazardous Waste pickup day in May.

1 Responses to “Wallpapering is not a job for perfectionists”

  1. CB in the City Says:
    1265205124

    Are you sure you can't just patch around the toilet? That's what I did once, and even though it was not perfect, no one, including me, ever noticed it.

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