Save More, Spend Less

As of right now, I still don't have the IRA CD distribution I requested from US Bank on the date that CD matured on Sept 12.

After 6 painfully protracted phone calls (with 6 different individuls, of course) and 3 separate trips to the library to fax them their 3 required forms, I finally filed a complaint that was confirmed by the OCC (Office of the Controller of the Currency), which regulates US Bank.

So this morning after noting the passage of another week, I called US Bank to check on status, and they told me the check was mailed out Oct. 7 so I should have it any day now. I almost couldn't believe my ears and asked the rep to repeat what he said. Interestingly, the email confirmation of my complaint by OCC was on Oct. 7, so I am thinking that complaint really moved the needle on what has become a horrendous customer experience with an inept bank.

I can't wait to ditch my credit cards with them, but want to wait til I deposit the check.

I had my mason over here a few days ago to repair a crack in my foundation.  He had told me earlier it would cost "a couple hundred." I'd been trying all summer to get him over here, but I knew it was a small job and that he'd probably rather focus on the big jobs first.

I was just about ready to move on to someone else but he finally came through, sending his father, who is part of his crew, to do it.

I texted the mason later that day and asked him what I owed him. He said "No charge!" since I've referred him to others many, many times.  Yay!

That's helpful, since I have just $1300 left in checking and no idea when I'll get my CD from US Bank that matured Sept. 12. . I am so aggravated with them that I filed a complaint with the OCC (Office of the Controller of the Currency) as they are the ones that regulate this bank.

Plenty to do today, but I'm procrastinating a bit.

It's been a while since I've posted pix of my gardens, so thought you'd enjoy seeing what's in bloom here now.

This is a low-growing wood aster.

These are Autumn Joy Sedum with mums (not daisies).

This is a buttonbush I planted last spring. It's a small, native shrub that gets beautiful pure white gumdrop-looking flowers in summer that turn into these seed pods later in the season that feed wildlife.

These are snowball hydrangea flowers that start out pure white in late summer and gradually turn a bronze-pink color. It was once a small tree but it was toppled by a storm years ago and now it's more of a multi-stemmed shrub, as vigorous as ever.

These are hyssop in the back, a total bee magnet, and cosmos in front, which will bloom from early summer til frost. Such an easy, carefree flower.

This is white snakeroot and sneezeweed. I love the late-season color when many other plants are spent.

More wood aster, such an important native fall pollinator plant that grows freely around here with several different species.

My main Autumn Joy bed, photo taken in mid-September. The flowers gradually darken.

This is blue mist flower, a native that popped up in my veggie raised bed, which I then transplanted to a more suitable spot. It has already spread a bit in just one year.

This is bluebeard. Not a native (it was mislabeled by the grower) but gorgeous nonetheless and popular with the local native bees.

Milkweed seed pods

Sneezeweed with bumblebee closeup.

Tatarian aster is not native here in the Northeast, but....It gets to be about 6 feet high unless you remember to cut it by a third mid-summer.

Here's my most recent bill. People all over the state are up in arms right now because the Public Benefits charge, which allowed people to not pay their bills during covid, shot up. It also covers the cost of new EV stations? I believe these higher charges for the rest of us will last for 10 months. People are furious.

Anyone in my state would think this bill is great. I have seen people in my town's FB page post bills of $900 for a month! But then upon closer inquiry, you learn they have a heated swimming pool or Jacuzzi.

I still don't have my $12k from an IRA CD that matured on Sept 12. I'm down to about $400 in my checking account.

Had another stressful conversation on the phone with them just now. Two weeks ago, they promised to "expedite" the distribution, but here I am, still waiting for their snail mail check to arrive because banks don't operate in the 21st century. Apparently they don't believe in direct deposit of funds (they consider that a transfer, not a distribution), nor even email to send me  forms to fill out; had to make 2 separate trips to library so as to use their fax machine to return said completed forms to them.

Today's rep sounded competent, so fingers crossed...but so did the last rep. She emailed her supervisor, her supervisor's supervisor and a few other people to expedite it a 2nd time. She said she saw it had been "disbursed" but not "redeemed" or "processed." This is bank code for let's slow down this process for as long as possible.

The customer service manager is supposed to call me today by 1:30 pm and a cashier's check may be overnighted tonight. The key word being "may." They acknowledged this was a banking error and said it was a "coaching opportunity" for them. However, I have a doctor's appointment scheduled for tomorrow morning, and it being less than 24 hours from then it is too late to cancel it without being charged. The bank will probably want me here to sign for it, so I don't know. Maybe they can have it delivered in the afternoon.

It's really messed up my cash flow. I know I can take an IRA distribution from other sources but prefer not to do that for various reasons. And becus I am stubborn. Banks can accept your money in about a half-hour when you purchase a CD, but getting it back should not take a month and all this aggravation.

Will they be paying me the interest for the additional weeks they've held onto my money? I don't think so. So they are making out financially by dragging their feet.

Last night I finally heard from my mason; I've been asking him all summer to repair the crack in my foundation, but it's a small job, so I think he kept putting it off in favor of higher paying jobs. Now he wants to do it this weekend, which is great, but it will be a couple hundred dollars, putting me perilously close to zero in my checking account.

But wait! I forgot that since we're now in a new month, my monthly annuity payment should show up in my checking account by tomorrow. The annuity saves the day!

Regardless of that, I will be cancelling my US Bank credit cards and will never do business with them again. Even though that will surely zing my very high credit score because between the 2 cards, my credit card limit with them is over $20K.

Or maybe what I'll do is apply for a new credit card with an upfront bonus of $200 or $250. Once that card has been secured, I will cancel just one of the US Bank cards and see how that impacts my credit score. If it's not too bad, I will cancel the other one in short order. No use shooting myself in the foot.

I had an IRA bank CD maturing Sept. 12. What a pain in the butt trying to get a distribution. They make it so easy to open one, but gosh, seems like they try to put up as many roadblocks as possible to prevent you from accessing your money.

They wouldn't accept a phone call from me a few days ahead of that as to what I wanted to do with the CD; they said I had to wait til the day of maturity and then i had just 10 days to let them know what I wanted, or it would renew again for another 5 years at 2.something%. Nope, nope, nope.

The US Bank rep insisted that if I wanted it transferred to my bank checking account, that they wouldn't consider that a distribution, and that if I wanted a distribution, they'd have to mail me a check. Yes, snail mail.

I filled out all their paperwork and was told I had to fax it to them. Not email. Special trip to the library to do so. The following week, they send me a snail mail letter saying I failed to complete their transfer form and they were returning my application to get the distribution. Which they hadn't included with the other forms they sent me to complete and return. In the letter they said to complete and return the form in the enclosed postage-free envelope. Except there was nothing else in the letter!

So I had to call them again, and that was when I learned they don't consider a transfer to my bank a distribution. Egads.

They promised to expedite my case once I resent the original paperwork (another trip to the library fax machine) and handwrote in, "Mail me a check."  Meanwhile, I have just about $1600 left in my checking to cover the bills.

Much of this back and forth could have been avoided if their forms were clearer. But I know from having worked for a large bank for a few years that banks seem to want to minimize the information they provide to customers, about anything. They are very secretive. I used to work in customer communications, writing a wide variety of letters to customers about all sorts of things. They were always less than transparent. Hated that whole vibe.

Yesterday was an extremely busy today. In addition to battling with US Bank, I also struggled to assemble two kitchen dining chairs I bought from Bed Bath & Beyond. There really wasn't much assembly, but I got stuck with this square metal piece that is supposed to let you swivel in the seat. You couldn't screw a screw in the 4 oval holes in the metal plate and i just couldn't figure out how I was supposed to attach it to the chair. The assembly instructions consisted of only diagrams, no words.

Every time I communicated with BB&B, I'd have to wait a day for a different rep to email me back and they seemed unable to let me talk to a technician would could walk me through it on the phone. They said I could return the chairs for a refund or find a handyman to put the chairs together. I FINALLY figured out by myself that the square metal piece could be pulled/pried apart/rotated, revealing an additional 4 holes and another metal plate that you're meant to attach it to the chair with.

I got in a 35-minute walk with my weighted belt, reorganized my dining linens (tablespreads, placemats, runners) and was able to gift some and donate others to good will. Now what I had left (mostly my mother's things) could neatly fit in the storage bench.

Also yesterday I was interviewed over the phone by a news reporter about knotweed, the focus of one of the group's I volunteer with. She had a very tight deadline, and by the time I called her, she only had 2 hours, but we spoke at length and today I saw the story published online. What's great is that Hearst News owns not just one daily in my state, but a whole bunch, so the story appeared in every one, plus a bunch of weeklies and a monthly magazine and various online news outlets to boot.

So in one feel swoop my group just got a whole lot of exposure. I shared the links with the other board members and everyone is thrilled. It really gives us a lot of "cred," and being a relatively new group, this recognition is very helpful. Finally, yesterday, I somehow managed to wash 3 windows here, inside and out, as I had noticed a while back how dirty they looked. I also washed the trunk liner in my car, ahead of my planned trip to visit DIDO next week!

I am very much looking forward to this trip (rain or no rain) as I haven't done anything like this (mainly, becus of my cat) for a very long time. It will be refreshing to have the change of scenery. We're about 2.5 hours apart.

This am I went driving around with another board member of the knotweed group. We were looking for homes that have knotweed and making a list of their addresses. We plan to write and then mail a simple brochure asking people, Do you have knotweed, then explaining how to ID it, why it's bad and what they can do. It's a unique plant in that it's not easy to kill, and all the usual methods, like cutting it, mowing it or digging it out will actually make it spread worse. It has to be treated with herbicides. Preferably by a licensed applicator.

We are a small group of local residents, so all we can do is raise awareness and educate people (both homeowners as well as public works employees) about management best practices.

I worked out at the gym in the afternoon, but otherwise, that's about all I did.

I'm supposed to do a litter cleanup at a beautiful beach/preserve tomorrow am but it's over an hour away and they want everyone there by 9 am. Which is feeling more and more doubtful.

It's hard to say goodbye after 17 years.

Even if you knew it was coming.

I took him to my old vet, not the new one, because I remembered how good he had been with Waldo at the end, 8 years ago. The staff were caring. Luther did not seem overly frightened from the car ride or the barking dogs as we awaited his sad fate together. There was a small window that looked out on the parking lot, and beyond that, a bit of woods, and together we looked out that window for quite some time, given some privacy before the end.

Not much more can be said right now, except my heart feels like it's been ripped out.

He was a good boy, and he had a good run. 

I spent a wonderfully productive couple of hours this afternoon organizing my kitchen to be more attractive to a prospective home buyer. Suddenly, a layout that worked for 30 years seemed cluttered and unattractive.

I only made a few little tweaks, but what a difference. Remembering how positively meticulous and clean the homes at every open house I've attended looked, that boxy oversized toaster oven that was my mother's, stuck in a corner next to the stove, was too much. I mainly use it to bake salmon, but decided I can do that in a frying pan, stovetop. Once in a great while I roast garlic in it. I liked using it because it used less energy than my full size electric stove, but it's been a few years since I used it to cook raw oats for  my homemade granola or toast nuts and I cook sweet potatoes in the microwave, I have less and less use for it. And I really don't eat much toasted bread.

I cleaned it up as best I could and offered it on Buy Nothing and had a quick request for it. Done! The cute set of 4 Pottery Barn ceramic pumpkin plates that I got myself on Buy Nothing but never really used, I decided to offer on Buy Nothing and got about 10 people vying for them. Perfect timing and great for kids.

The other big appliance taking up counter space was my microwave. It's a smaller size, and believe me, smaller than the one I used to have, but still, not especially attractive on the counter. I have a large kitchen cabinet which curiously has an electrical outlet on the back wall inside it; there must've been a remodel at some point. Anyway, my fairly compact microwave fits in there perfectly, and voila! I don't have to look at it on the counter. And with some further organizing, I was able to fit all my food items back in this cabinet, which I remember the listing agent laughably called a "pantry." I composted an ancient jar of corn starch, a smaller jar of garlic powder that expired a year ago and set aside an unopened jar of fake maple syrup for my friend's mother.

This was just a spontaneous thing I started doing when I got home from a gym workout. I really like tackling little corners or rooms of the house like this...so it doesn't seem so overwhelming when the time gets near to list it.

In other news, I ordered a navy blue , la t-shirt off Amazon that i planned on wearing while marching in the parade Monday, but I somehow ordered a men's size x lg and it's way too big on me; they don't want the return but refunded me for the purchase, so I plan on bringing it with me and offering it to someone else in our group who may want to wear it for the parade and then just keep it.

I'm down to just $1,000 ($1900 as of Sept 2 after monthly annuity payment), which has to last me til my CD matures Sept. 12. I'm not expecting any more big credit card bills, so I should be okay. That CD is $12K, and I plan to make that cover all my income needs for the remaining 4 months of the year, along with my annuity. So that's about $4k a month, doable.

We had torrential rain all day today and now, half the roads in town (including the interstate and other state highways) are closed or washed out. The meandering river that flows through the heart of town is now a force to be reckoned with; I do believe one storefront may have to be torn down as the water overflowed the river banks and the structure, as seen from drone footage someone took, appears now to be IN the river.

I'm seeing cars floating in what was the road, abandoned by their drivers. People on our local FB page opening up their homes to others who can't make it home. They have declared a state of emergency.

I am counting myself extremely fortunate as last I checked my basement remains dry. I attribute that largely to the fact that when I had my back paver patio rebuilt, I knew the grading was bad and specifically asked my mason to slightly tilt the pavers, which run the length of the house, away from the house as much as possible instead of making it level. This turned out to be very effective in keeping water from accumulating near the foundation, and instead it funnels it all down to some old stairs i have which lead to my driveway, and there is a downward slope to the drive, so the water all eventually runs toward the street and storm drains installed there.

Feeling stir crazy, I had actually really wanted to go to my gym, which is just a few miles away, but I'm glad I didn't as they did close that road as well. The sirens have been nonstop since mid-afternoon.

I'm going to cancel an appointment I had Tuesday morning as it may take a while for these waters to recede.

Well, this is entirely not money-related, but I do feel a great sense of accomplishment/satisfaction since I was able to basal bark treat 4 small tree of heaven saplings. Tree of heaven is one of just 2 plants i can think of that absolutely must be treated with an herbicide to eradicate. I learned this the hard way; each time I cut it down, it not only came back, but several more sprung up in the vicinity.

So that makes a total of 10 tree of heaven saplings I've been able to treat this summer. I have until early October to do as many more as I can. The real challenge is beating a path to each sapling, which are growing in heavily brushy areas I usually avoid this time of year due to ticks.

I'm not sure how many more I have....at least a few...plus the big tree that needs to have the "hack and squirt" method used. Then you wait 30 days, then cut down only when completely dead.

I've been completely inactive when it comes to yard work for about 3 weeks now. While we had lovely weather in June, July and August have been oppressively hot and humid. This was the first day I've been able to do anything, and since this decent weather is supposed to hold at least til the end of the week, my goal is to do something in the yard each and every day. I have 3 ironweed plants and a gooseberry that have been in pots all summer and really need to go in the ground, but clearing areas where they go is a ton of work. Must be done!

But going after the tree of heaven is a top priority.

Here's an update on my cash flow situation since my last post: my checking balance has shrunk to $3583, and that needs to last me for another 4.5 weeks. I will get an infusion of $932 Sept 2 from my annuity. I should be able to stretch it out until the CD matures.

I've been picking tons of cucumbers and tomatoes. I'm only growing cherry tomatoes and  a yellow grape hybrid. I've gotten a decent amount of yellow squash, and my stringbeans should be developing beans any day now, since they're flowering. I've given extra cucumbers to my father, who likes to pickle them, and my friend/neighbor R.

My knotweed group is meeting on site this week at a popular walking trail in town where a smallish patch of knotweed has been sighted. We will make it a demonstration plot, mowing one side and then cutting and then treating the other side with herbicide, with instructional signage designed to show residents walking by that mowing alone won't be effective.

Still going to the gym 4x a week.

This, in a nutshell, has been my summer.

Since coming to the realization that I need to move, I've been looking around here with different eyes. With thoughts about staging the house, eventually, and still working to give things away for less clutter. Today I posted a rather beat up old rattan chair that I acquired from Buy Nothing, but no one wants it so to the dump it goes. I have a sentimental thing for rattan, a hangover from growing up with my grandparents' complete patio furniture set, all rattan.  

I think it was actually something Dido said that made me realize I was just fooling myself by saying I was going to "age in place" here.  The yardwork, or my inability to care for the property the way I think it should be, would likely always be a source of stress for me. I want to do other things with my life. I was telling my father of my decision and he surprised me by telling me his opinion, which was that I shouldn't move. He hardly ever insinuates his opinion about anything, so for him to say something was unusual. Basically, he said you have everything you want in your house now, and the yard is only a source of stress because I allow it to be so, and that most people would not be so focused on invasive plants, etc.

That doesn't really change how I feel about things though.

These comments were made on the same day that he confessed his regret about selling his beautiful home on the Jersey shore, which he'd made so many improvements to, to live in a small studio apartment on my sister's property. He decided to try renting out the home for a while (which I would never have done, given the distance between that house and where he moved to), and unfortunately, he failed to do a background check on the woman who someone at his favorite diner said was looking for a place. She was late with the rent from the get go, often not paying the full amount. He had to start eviction proceedings and she stole things he left in the house. (Carelessness on his part, I have to say.) Because she had no assets, his attorney told him it wouldn't be worth pursuing in court. An all-round unpleasant experience that I got to experience as well since I had to drive my father down to NJ a few times to meet his attorney. Sigh. Well, that's all in the past now.

I brought my father to physical therapy this morning, then took him out to lunch afterwards. I drove back home around 2 pm. When I walked in the front door, my cat immediately began meowing to be fed, and when I walked into the kitchen, there was a funny noise coming from the basement that sounded a little different.

Wondering if either my central air or my new heat pump hot water heater was malfunctioning, I went into the basement to find about half the basement floor covered in water and then, shockingly, I saw that the cause of the sound was a burst pipe where water was gushing out.

I was able to stop it by turning off the water for the whole house. There was plenty of water on the floor, but judging from the amount of water, it seemed that it had only been gushing out for 5 or 10 minutes. That's why I think if I had arrived even 20 minutes later, I would have had a REAL mess on my hands. I can't imagine what I would have found if I had been away for a much longer time period. This is the kind of thing you just can't prepare for; it just randomly happens.

I started calling plumbers but all I was getting was answering machines. Since I had no water in the house now, I didn't want to wait around for someone to call me back, so I kept calling til I found one right up the road that I have never used. He said he could come over in a half-hour.

I found the cap that had burst off the main water line on the basement floor and showed him. He told me it was quite old because it was made of iron, and nowadays they are made of brass, and said that it was the wrong type to have been used on my water line. It was an easy fix for him. Since he was there, I showed him some copper piping that was pretty badly corroded and he said since the burst pipe didn't take up the full hour, he could fix the copper corroded pipes for just an additional $38 (materials), so I had him take care of that too. A good thing to do since I'm planning on selling the house now. All told, I felt kind of fortunate to have  only had to shell out $213 for this unexpected emergency.

While he was here, the other plumbers I had called started calling back, and the wife of one of them texted to tell me that her husband and assistant were on their way, but I was able to tell her I already had someone here. At least now I know these plumbers do respond fairly quickly to emergency situations.

In my town, if you ask someone whose a good plumber to call, 85% of the time you get 1 of 2 plumbers who are mentioned again and again. It's like they have a lock on the town. There are plenty of other plumbers, but they are recommended less. As a result, these top 2 plumbers charge a premium, it seems. I have used them both; they were both competent, but I had issues with both of them, aside from price.

So I was happy with the plumber who came here today and will call him first should I have a need moving forward.

I'm running my dehumidifier down in the basement now to dry it out. All the water also flowed into my adjacent garage, and for the first time I used a wet vac I had bought for just this kind of emergency. So I got most of the surface water sucked up and now it's just wet concrete. I had a 5 x 7 cheap indoor/outdoor rug in front of the washer and dryer which I guess I'm going to have to toss since with this humid weather it's not going to dry out anytime soon and will probably get moldy. There's also an old draft dodger my mother had made for me that got soaked as it was in front of the basement door, so guess I'll toss that too.

You think your life is orderly and you're on top of everything; it's disconcerting to realize life will always throw you curve balls and that you can't organize every possible curve ball away.

All of the high cost bills I mentioned recently have been paid, save for the paint job of the garage ceiling ($366), which will happen next week. My taper finished retaping it today, so not only has that bill been paid, but also my car, homeowners and umbrella policies and my property taxes. I used two different agents to try to get better prices fo the home/auto policies, but in the end, my current policies were more affordable. They had risen substantially, but apparently not as substantially as The Hartford or a host of other insurers would like to charge me.

So that means I have $4,107 left to live on until Sept. 12, when my IRA CD matures. SEEMS reasonable. That includes about $935 after taxes on my annuity payment this month. I already shut off the Vanguard dividends income stream since I planned to obtain income from the IRA CD instead, all in the name of keeping my 2024 income low. The CD is about $12,000, and after trying unsuccessfully to have it rolled back to my Vanguard account 5 years ago and then getting stuck with where it is now at a lower rate for ANOTHER 5 years, I figure it will be simpler to take the distribution. I called them to see if I could notify them in advance I'd be taking a distribution on it, but she said I would have to wait until the day of maturity, and then I have just 10 days to tell them what to do. This was originally a State Farm CD, and then US Bank apparently acquired this part of the business. I am anxious to get my $$ out of there.

I have a birthday coming up very soon but won't be doing anything special except for a litter cleanup with the group I volunteer with, at a beach about 35 minutes from here. On the way home, I may treat myself to lunch out somewhere, and when I get home, I'll go to the gym. Business as usual!

My cousin in PA shipped me my B'day present from Amazon, but inadvertently sent me 2 packages (an air fryer and chichuahua meds) he intended for himself. He asked me to give him a day this week when I'd be home all day, so I picked Tuesday, a day that came and went with no sight of a UPS driver to retrieve the package. Which was a little annoying becus I did have things to do that day. I rarely have a day with nowhere to go.  So looks like I'll be holding onto the packages until he makes another trip out this way.

I heard from another cousin who had been living with her husband in upstate NY, who had moved to Utah to live with their daughter/son? about a year ago. At the time, she had said everything was great, it was a big house, etc., but apparently things weren't so great after all because when she texted me a Happy Birthday, she told me they are back in NY state and plan to start house-hunting in North Carolina to be near their grandchild. Well, NC is closer than UT, and I would like to meet her someday. We discovered we were related via Ancestry.

I received a little gift from another wonderful cousin in NJ and I need to call and thank her for it.

My friend R., the baker, always bakes me whatever kind of cake I want to mark the occasion, but this year I requested dark chocolate chip and walnut cookies. Built-in portion control.

Tonight was my little presentation to the local Rotary Club chapter to talk about a group I've been volunteering with, the aim being convincing them to partner with us on an upcoming litter cleanup event, which is what we do.

Now, I need to give you a bit of history. All my life I've been petrified of public speaking. I guess it all started in high school when I had to give little presentations of one sort or another. I would turn beet red, sweat and even my voice would shake a little. All the boys would snicker. I hated it. Which led me to a lifelong fear of public speaking. When I was in law school, I knew I'd need to do some public speaking at the end of the first year, in front of 3 actual sitting judges. Somehow I fumbled through it. In various jobs to follow, I did everything I could to avoid further public speaking, and most of the time, I succeeded in avoiding it. I didn't feel good about the avoidance behavior, but I felt I would never, ever feel comfortable doing it.

Here I am, decades later, and I ran into the husband of a woman whose nonprofit I used to be involved with. I had taken my dad out to lunch at a local restaurant, realized who this man was, and introduced myself as dad and I were leaving. He is a Rotary member. One thing led to another and he said your group and my group should team up on a litter cleanup, and I agreed.

What I didn't anticipate was his invitation a month or two later to speak to the Rotary about my group so they could decide as a group if they would do this. Even with my public speaking phobia, I accepted. It was almost as if I knew this man didn't know anything about my background or my public speaking phobia, so I would "pretend" to be someone else: a confident woman who can speak to a group with ease. Fake it til you make it, as they say.

I sensed that something about me had fundamentally changed. It could quite simply be the passage of time! At this point in my life (60-something) I really don't give a s*** what other people thing of me, and I also have greater confidence in myself, and that I have an important message to share about my group. So I agreed to do the presentation, although I did invite some of my fellow board members to join me, knowing they probably would say no since they don't live in my area. And that's what happened.

So I definiely over-prepared for the meeting, rehearsing my little spiel to make sure that any kind of stage fright would not send my prepared talking points out of mind. Everything actually went very smoothly. Maybe I talked a tad too fast, but that was it. It helped that it's a restaurant that I'm very familiar with and is in fact the one where I met the Rotary guy with my dad. And everyone was very welcoming, introducing themselves before the meeting started, offering me beverages and even to share the meal with them. The guy who invited me to talk said nothing about that, and said that I would be talking during their dinner, so I assumed I would talk and leave. But once they realized I'd already eaten, they let me present before their meal began so I could get out of there.

I said everything I wanted to say and really felt rather unafraid. It was just amazing. A small group, maybe 20 people, and one of them was taking my picture with the head of the group for I guess the local paper. There were a lot of questions afterwards and people were raising their hands waiting for me to call on them and i wasn't even really focused on that at first as I'm not used to being in that position.

I can't tell you how liberating it is to feel I've conquered a lifelong fear. I feel I can do anything now. I have finally grown up.

I called my Medigap insurer to see if my current gym is in their network for their "Active and Fit Direct" gym discount. Unfortunately, no. It's a small discount. I did submit my gym for consideration for their network.

It would have been nice, BUT. When I was choosing plans with my agent, this insurer was NOT the lowest cost for Medicare Plan N. (Once you choose a type of plan, which is lettered, all insurers by law must cover the same services; only the price is different.) The insurer with the lowest cost was not a company that my particular agent dealt with. The cheaper plan was cheaper by $11 a month ($132/yr, or $2,640 over the next 20 years). 

That amount of money is not a deal-breaker for me. I chose the higher priced plan simply because the agency I was working with provides a lot of value-added services beyond helping you sign up for your Medicare or Advantage plan and helping you do all the research involved with that. They also will help you dispute bills you don't think are accurate, which could be really helpful, among other things. So for that reason, I went with my current choice.

So next week I am making a presentation to my local Rotary Club about one of the groups I volunteer with, the litter cleanup group, so that they can partner with us, hopefully, to do a cleanup event in my town.  They will have a dinner meeting at a local restaurant. Since they didn't invite me to share a meal with them, I assume I will just go there to make my presentation and then leave, which is fine. Public speaking is something I avoided all my life, but I think I may have reached a point in my later years where I don't give a s*** what other people think of me, so I feel freer to say what I think, and I guess somehow that percolates down to making a public presentation.

So I am reading the huge Medicare & You 2024 to see what's covered, what's not. This, after learning they don't cover routine bloodwork during a physical. Medicare DOES cover cholersterol/lipid/trigylceride blood screenings for cardiovascular disease once every 5 years only. Interestingly, they only cover acupuncture for chronic low back pain. They only cover pelvic exams once every 2 years, not annually, unless you are high risk.

So I was driving home on backroads from somewhere and realized I'd be driving by a creamery that has the best ice cream in town. I made an impromptu turn into the parking lot when I saw relatively few people there. We actually have a Facebook page for people to report how long the line is. Today, there was no line! My father loves their coffee ice cream. He has to stick with sugar-free variety. They only have about 5 different sugar-free varieties, and they rotate the flavors around so you never know what they'll have. As luck would have it, today they had coffee. I got 5 pints for dad! And a pint of vegan mint cookie for me.

He will be so surprised. He hasn't asked me all year for their ice cream, which is unusual. I think he knows I hate waiting in line.

This is to be the last year of enforced frugality since I intend to ensure my health insurance remains moderately priced. To do that, I have to limit my overall income to around $37K for the year (even tho I start Medicare next month), and for the YTD ending in June, I only grossed about $12,000 in taxable income for the 1st 6 months of the year(!) if my numbers are correct. That would be my monthly annuity and some dividends/cap gains from 3 of my mutual funds. Plus I also got some decently sized state and federal tax refunds earlier in the year so that was used for living expenses and kept in my checking account.

I haven't had to do any IRA distributions so far this year, but the 2nd half of the year would likely require a cash infusion.  I hadn't planned on doing any home improvements this year, besides the heat pump hot water heater I did in January, since taking more distributions would boost my reportable income. But then after getting a garage door repair that put some holes in my garage ceiling, I knew I wanted to have that ceiling retaped and spackled. It's been an eyesore for years and needs attention, and those holes will allow entry for mice if I don't cover them.

So to cover this upcoming expense, I transferred most of what remained in an online money market acount so it would have no impact on my reportable income for the year. I think I'm paying $1600 for the garage ceiling redo.

I have been avoiding unnecessary purchases, but my checking account will eventually dwindle, so what I would like to do is direct my $12K IRA 5-year CD, which is maturing in September, to my checking account as a distribution when it's mature.  I had wanted to do this in the prior 5-year CD term when it matured and was still with State Farm Bank, but trying to get the paperwork from Vanguard in a timely manner to do a transfer just didn't happen and I ran out of time, so I was stuck with ANOTHER 5-year term, and then State Farm became US Bank, or at least my CD became theirs.

I figure taking the distribution directly in my checking account will be much easier as I won't have to rely on Vanguard to do anything. So the $12k will be more than enough to cover my living expenses for the remainder of 2024 and still keep my income very low for the year. At least I think so. I just need to get thru August and another 2 weeks in September with about $4500 remaining in my checking account after paying for the garage ceiling and car/home insurance. It could be close.  I also went ahead and stopped auto distributions of those Vanguard dividends/cap gains funds to my checking, becus that could push me a little beyond the income I want to be at, and it's hard to control income when each distribution is a different amount. So if I need more $$ toward year's end, I could do a small IRA distribution.

So I'm eating my morning breakfast cereal today, as I always do, when, after 3 or 4 spoonfuls of deliciousness, I look down at the bowl to see what looked like an earwig resting at the top rim of the bowl, on the inside. Like it had just crawled out after being submerged in soy milk.

EWWWW.

I had to dump it. It just grossed me out. Since the blueberries came from a frozen bag and I'm pretty sure it didn't come from the half gallon of soy milk, it must've crawled into to 1 of the 2 glass cereal canisters I keep on the countertop (mason-type jars), OR the bag of raisins OR the glass jar of walnuts. I checked each to be sure there weren't others.

I very recently decided to divest myself of a lot of unframed art my mother had created. To sell it, I would have to frame it, and many of these people were quite large (like 2 x 3 feet), making framing not only very expensive but also very heavy and unwieldy.

So I decided to gift close to a dozen pieces on my Buy Nothing group (where you can just acquire just about anything, from a canoe to a set of dishes to yes, a work of art).

I wasn't sure there would be much interest in my mother's modern/abstract art, but I have been gratified to see how much interest and appreciation there has been. Much of my mother's work sat in storage in a spare bedroom for the past 8 years. I only have so much wall space. I have sold some of her work and donated other pieces, too, but I am gifting the unframed stuff. The room is by no means cleaned out, but I still felt a great sense of lightness having taken some concrete steps to do something with the art. Better they go to people who can enjoy and display them than sit gathering dust in my spare bedroom.

I do feel pangs of regret parting with some of it and it's definitely got me thinking more about my mother. I also wonder if I'm going to regret doing this later.  I think she would understand, but still, I do feel a certain sense of loss and dare I say, guilt, in giving these away.

The other thing I tackled yesterday after thinking about it all year was herbicide treatment  to kill tree of heaven saplings that popped up all over the property after I tried cutting them down several years in a row. This is one of a handful of invasive plants that MUST be treated with herbicide. It's also a host plant to the spotted lantern fly.

I had to mix the herbicide with an oil (for better adhesion), then add food dye so I can keep track of which saplings I've treated. There are probably a few dozen here. (I'm also keeping a written list with the date, since you need to wait 30 days for it to die before cutting it down.) Cutting it down before it's dead will stimulate it to spread even more.  Anyway, I knew I had just one day (yesterday) to get started on this before the heat wave returns for most of the week. I waited til 4 pm but it was still hot as heck, and you have to wear long pants, socks, long sleeves, and mask. Because I had to clear all the vegetation surrounding the tree of heaven, including poison ivy (most all located in the brushy perimeter of the property), I was only able to treat 3 saplings in 2 hours.

The optimal window for doing this treatment is between mid-July and September, when the plant is sending sugars/carbohydrates down to its roots. If you do it another time, it won't be effective.

I'm getting too old to have to do this kind of thing. Which is the reason I've also been thinking in recent weeks (again) that I should sell this place and move to a condo. The challenge now is the really tight real estate market. My greatest preference would be to remain in my hometown here, but it never had a lot of condos, and with this market, even fewer listings.

My second choice would be a particular complex in neighboring town (where my dad lives now) but it only has about 90 units and there aren't usually more than a handful on the market at any one time. I also like the units in the much larger complex (several thousand!) nearby it, but there are 2 problems with that complex: the garages are detached and a bit of a walk to your unit, so not so nice if you're carrying groceries or it's raining, and 2) the common charges are quite high, like $700 to $800/month, due to the extensive landscaped grounds. It's like a small village unto itself. The units at the small complex that I like has attached garages and look very much like single family homes, each unit with its own yard and very private back deck or patio, usually fronting woods.

I've even been looking for updated ranches on small lots in my hometown, but not much of those, either. I won't buy a fixer upper at this stage of my life. My worst fear is that my home would likely sell fairly quickly, but then I'd feel pressured to buy something I wasn't really in love with, or feel pressured to buy when there simply weren't many choices. I don't plan to move again, so it needs to be a great fit.

So thoughts of moving sometime in the next few years are part of what's driving my divestiture of art work. I've been very slowly decluttering household items, and have made a list of maintenance/repairs that I feel should be done before I put anything on the market. I am hoping that I could wait out the tight inventory market and that things will improve in a year or two, but I don't really know.

I've done some cost comparisons of certain expenses like property taxes, lawncare, snow removal, monthly condo charges, etc. Even though my favorite condo in neighboring town includes TV and Internet in what its common charges cover, I still would be paying roughly $4,000 more a year to live in a smaller condo than here in my freestanding home. And that's before factoring in senior tax credits for my hometown. (There are both state and local senior tax credit programs, but even the more generous town program in this neighboring town has an income limit of just $53,400; my current town has a more generous income limit.)  Probably becus I really do live pretty frugally here, still shoveling my own snow, which I know I can't do forever. And I don't pay any monthly fees for TV.

I just have been realizing that, not only is the care and maintenance of this property something I'm not doing a very good job at (and likely never will), but it also takes up an inordinate amount of my time when, increasingly, I'd rather be doing something else, plus it's become a source of anxiety knowing stuff needs to be done but I'm not doing it, often due to tick season or extreme heat making it very difficult. My feelings were different when I bought this place at age 36, when I embraced all the yard work and enjoyed it.  Sigh.

I think this is about as near perfect a credit score as I've ever had: 100% on-time payments, a 33-year credit card payment history and well over $100K in available credit while only utilizing 1%.

Once I paid off my mortgage in 2012, I didn't think a credit score would be that important to me anymore since I didn't see myself needing it to buy another home or car. But, you never know. I plan to purchase a new vehicle next year; it's unlikely Toyota would see a need to offer 0% or 1% financing, but you never know....

Last night around 7 pm I saw a bobcat passing through my back yard. Not the first time, but the first time since September 2022. I do have a litter of 5 baby skunks with a burrow in my yard but disappointinly have not seen them since they made their first appearance a week or so ago when I was weeding. The are the cutest things. When they are this young, they all "walk as one."

Girls night out last weekend at the vineyard was cancelled due to the weather. We're now setting our sights on an International Festival in nearby small city that is mostly centered on live music and ethnic foods.

Dad and I went to lunch at a certain restaurant near him. The bill was $90 before tip. I think that's the last time we go there. It's good, but actually sometimes hit or miss, and there are other restaurants I like better. It's just so darn convenient.

I'm all set with Medicare and my Medigap plan, have my ID cards and am ready to go. But I was very disappointed to learn that Medicare does not cover standard physicals with the usual bloodwork. I like that extra level of reassurance that all is well each year. Medicare covers so-called "wellness visits," which mainly consist of cognition questions (!), a review of recommended vaccinations and going over your medical history.

In fact, no one told me about this, I just "realized" it on my own. So I had to scramble to to cancel a longstanding September physical and was able to squeeze it in this wee, this being the last month I have standard insurance. I'm getting the bloodwork for it done today.

One thing I want to do is find a new dentist. Since that's not covered by my traditional Medicare, I will pay out of pocket regardless, but the dentist in a neighboring town retired a year or more ago, and I'm not sure I want to continue with his successors. She gave me such a hard time about not wanting to do dental x-rays and said I would need to sign a "waiver," which seemed like scare tactics to me. It will be easier to find a dentist right here in town, anyway.

One interesting thing about my Medicare premiums is that they bill you on a quarterly basis. I just paid the first one. They let you pay for free with a credit card, so I figured I might as well get some rewards points for it.

I didn't think I'd ever need to worry abo

Looks like most of the eastern half of the country is in the same boat. It was 99 when I got in my car mid-afternoon to go to the gym, wondering if I was crazy for wanting to stick to my schedule. Happy to report, they had the AC on (low), so I was able to complete my usual routine: about a half-hour on the machines and a half-hour on the treadmill.

My garage door opener started acting up recently and I had someone out here to fix it. He recommended a few more fixes to lengthen its lifespan, and he was supposed to return today, but was running very late due to the extreme heat, so we rescheduled for tomorrow morning.

Aside from my gym outing, I've been hunkering down indoors with the AC on at 76, which is really the warmest setting I can tolerate upstairs; downstairs, it feels comfortable. The shades are drawn on all the windows except the north side, and when I do leave the house, I've been exiting thru the basement and out through the garage to avoid letting a whole lot of hot air in through the front door.

I had also done some grocery shopping a day before the heat wave got going on Tuesday, so I am mostly all set with food. Soon, I'll have to go outside again to water my vegetable garden and potted plants. I hope they are not fried. I water them daily but the raised beds dry out very quickly. I'll also put out a second water bath for the birds and refill the feeder, which is hanging from a mulberry tree that's attracting lots of avian interest now that its berries are ripening.

So far, my veggie garden is pretty modest compared to previous years. I had been having a great "Yugoslavian Red Lettuce" harvest leading up to the heat wave, and then I began picking more assuming the heat would cause them to bolt. I have 2 cucumber plants and 2 yellow squash, but I planted them from seed in the wrong medium and so half of them are pretty anemic looking; the fertilizer I added later has helped. I also have 3 cherry tomato plants which are doing pretty well, and string beans only recently germinated. I was trying to avoid the overcrowding I usually have in the raised beds to the extent that I had trouble walking around in there. I hope I have some decent harvests nonetheless.

I took my father to his first physical therapy session. He's been there before (was it last year?) but more recently wrenched his lower back and was experiencing a lot of pain. Much of his problem stems from his very sedentary lifestyle, but he's getting on in years so I don't know how much you can reasonably expect someone like him to do. But he at least needs to do the exercises he does in therapy at home, when he's not there, and that's been an uphill battle. On top of that he only wants to go once a week, so I really don't know what progress we can make. Medicare approved it in an open-ended way, with no fixed number of visits, as long as both he and the trainer feel he's making progress.

Right now he's got a $15 co-pay for each session. He told me he wants to go to physical therapy once a week for the rest of his life, and is willing to pay out of pocket for it. So once he exhausts whatever number of sessions Mediare is willing to pay for, hopefully the PT place will allow him to continue on a pay as you go basis.

What the hey. This site is just not monitored, and as a result is flooded with spammers, like the automotive manufacturing post.

I hope everyone had a good Father's Day, and hugs to those who cannot celebrate with their fathers. As I've gotten older, I realized how time with loved ones is fleeting. Most years now, there's a little dread associated with Mother's Day, and someday not in the distant future, Father's Day will feel the same way. Not to sound morbid, but it's one downside to getting older that no one ever warned me about.

I hadn't planned anything in advance with my father as I wasn't sure if he was spending time with his son or other daughter. This is how it goes in a family affected by divorce, remarriage and new families; it's hard to merge all together when you didn't really grow up together (and live in different states). At the same time, I didn't want Dad to be alone, so I did talk to him the day before to discover he had no plans. (His son had come up to see him a few days earlier.) So we went to a restaurant I didn't think would be busy because it's pretty much diner food, and I was right. The food was just okay, but we sat outside in perfect weather and enjoyed some good conversation.

On the way home, as I often do, I pulled over by a large pond (sometimes it's just some quiet wooded area or open space) and we continued talking in the parked car with the windows down. I often read things to him from my phone as Dad can't see well. He loves history, so I found a chronology of interesting articles about each of our American presidents, starting with George Washington. Yesterday we finished with Lincoln, so we are making our way through the list. We've been talking a lot about slavery, John Brown, Harriet Tubman.

I find that these seminal events and historical figures are much more meaningful to me when put in the context of my own family history. I've done a lot of genealogy work. My own great-grandparents were born around the same time as the American Civil War, all coming from poverty-stricken regions like the former East Germany, Northern Ireland and Galicia in Austria-Hungary, all coming to America in search of better economic opportunities. Just understanding that in the same timeframe, black people in America were still abused and treated as chattel, even after the war ended, what would otherwise seem like ancient history hard to fathom really comes alive.

It can be hard coming up with activities and experiences I can share with my father, given his physical disabilities. Eating out at a nice restaurant and going for drives are really the main ways we spend time together.

I had plans to join friends at a local vineyard for a casual, outdoor meetup with wine and good conversation this past weekend, but the woman organizing it cancelled it due to some predicted storminess. (It's been rescheduled in 2 weeks' time.) Instead, the 4 of us got together for dinner the following night, when the weather was again picture perfect. We met at a Nepalese restaurant I'd been to with my father twice. The food was great, the service excellent and prices reasonable. We will all meet up again at the vineyard with possibly more women from the online women's group we all came from.

Next weekend I'll be taking another friend out for a belated birthday breakfast.

I continue to be active with my 3 volunteer groups. Our next litter cleanup with the one group is in a shoreline town an hour-and-a-half drive from me, so I've decided to make a day of it and squeeze in one or two other activities/things to do on the drive home since the litter cleanups only take 2 hours.

Bills, bills, bills. I should be getting my hefty property tax bill any day now. It's the 1st of 2 annual payments, each about $3,500. Then my car and homeowners insurance will be coming up for renewal in another month. I've held off renewing my umbrella policy because I suspect I'll want to have my agent shop around for better prices on the car/auto, and they're all linked together. My car needs a bit of maintenance, a few hundred dollars worth, which the guy said could wait til my next oil change at summer's end. So I've deferred that. The guy who mows my lawn raised his prices again, effective July 1. Which irks me, since he raised his prices last year. I doubt I could find anyone cheaper so I'm just gonna have to bite the bullet.

Somehow I have gotten through the first half of the year solely on my annuity and dividends from 3 of my Vanguard funds. I didn't think this would be enough, but none of my one off big bills like the ones mentioned above occurred durning the 1st half of the year. I will likely have to take a distribution to pay the property taxes.

Next year, I plan to buy a new vehicle to replace my 11-year-old Honda. I will need to withdraw about $30K either from traditional IRA accounts, which will be taxed as income, or from a taxable brokerage account, which is not (right?) So I guess funding the car purchase with taxable monies is the way to go. Keeping track of how differenet types of savings/withdrawals are taxed can be confusing.

It seems we are in instant summer already. And with that, I found an incredibly tiny nymph tick on my calf. I don't think it was engorged but it was attached. I am mailing it to our state ag experiment station where they test ticks for free. It's a miracle I even found it, but I've been wearing a knee brace on my left leg after bruising a tendon at the gym, so as I was taking this tight-fitting brace off, I saw the tick on my leg just below it. The brace, I think, kept it from moving upward, so it decided to just chomp down right there.

I have so many freckles, moles and what have you on my body I shudder to think of whether I otherwise would have found this tick in time. Really makes me want to just skip gardening the entire season. The best time to do this sort of work is early spring, like March-April, before the foliage comes out, and that window has passed.

I've been getting a variety of mail from the Social Security Administration of late due to my switch to Medicare in a few months. Everything is in place, including my Medigap plan with Cigna.

But the notice I got today was quite interesting. It informed that I may have retirement benefits due me from a former employer, and indicated I should get in touch with them if I wished to apply for them.

This was a very interesting job I had with an employer, an insurance trade group. The job was unique in several respects, one of them being that following a group interview, it was the only time in my life I was offered the job on the spot, by the director. It was also the only time in my life I ever got a job where I sent my resume blind, without knowing if they had any openings. It really seemed like it was meant to be! Sadly, I was only with the group for about 2 years before a series of big, unexpected changes happened.

First, the director of the organization announced his surprise retirement just 6 months later, at the age of 56, precipitating a national search for his replacement. I was very disappointed to see him go, as I considered him my advocate and supporter. When he offered me the job, in front of a group of several other people, his 2nd in command protested, saying they should look at more people, but the director overruled him. It was a little awkward to hear that exchange, but I was glad to get the job.

Ultimately a retired major general was hired. I worked with him a short time, and liked him, but he became ill and passed away just a few years after a decision was made for the employer to merge with a sister organization and relocate to the midwest. I was offered a job out there and even flew out to meet my counterpart there, but the whole thing concerning the job was quite vague and I didn't want to upend my life should the job change into something else.

I don't recall anything about a retirement plan, but this was back around 1990 when I was in my early 30s, so maybe I just wasn't paying attention to something seemingly in the distant future. What I don't understand is why the company wouldn't have contacted me sooner, but then, I didn't live at my current address at that time. It wouldn't have been hard to find me by doing an online search, but apparently they don't do that. (This was also the case, I learned, when handling my mother's estate....only by checking the state's unclaimed properties did I discover some refunds due me, although in that case, the assisted living facility DID have my current address and other contact info, but for reasons unknown, chose to report these funds to the state instead of just picking up the phone to call me.)

Getting back to my old employer....The benefit, as indicated on the SSA form I received, is a life annuity paid annually and the estimated amount is $853! I would find it hard to believe this would be a recurring payment since I only worked there 2 years, but there is a different code to use if it's a single payment of a lump sum. I would be tickled if it was recurring. It wouldn't be life-changing but hey! It could still make a difference.

Anyway, I called the employer and got the HR email, to whom I've since sent an inquiry, so am hoping to learn more soon.

Today was one of those days I couldn't figure out what I wanted to do. The sun was in and out, but mostly it was overcast, which nixed the idea of yard work as it was kind of on the chilly side without the sun's rays.

I have a press release to write for one of my volunteer gigs, but I just wasn't wanting to focus on that. Instead, I tidied up a bit (housework always comes last around here), did some laundry and took a late afternoon walk, and then a friend of mine offered me some of her pineapple coconut cake left over from Mother's Day, and so I walked over there and caught up with her for about an hour before walking back home with the cake in hand. (I brought her some lentil soup I coincidentally made today also.)

I bought a 40 lb bag of sunflower seed and put my bird feeder back up a few days ago. I just hope it doesn't attract any bears. They are frequently seen passing thru yards in my town, or marauding bird feeders, but that is nearly always in the heavily wooded north side of town. There was only one time a bear entered my area. I guess it was 3 years ago, and that bear wound up getting shot by a trigger-happy, off-duty detective who claimed he shot it in self-defense. (That's why he went back in the house from his deck to get his gun and go back outside to shoot it. Self-defense? I don't think so, and a lot of people were very angry about it, especially since it orphaned her 2 cubs, who were rounded up and taken to a facility.)

Anyway, being in the center of town south of the interstate makes it somewhat less likely bears would venture into this area. You don't want to have feeders up if they do come around, as it will encourage them to remain the area and lose their fear of people.

Yesterday was a rainy day so I was able to apply a special nutritional treatment to the drip line uner the canopy of my giant hemlock, which has been ailing for a while with the wooly adelgid.  You're supposed to apply it right before a rain. I hope it helps. I have plenty of the stuff to last all summer in treatments spread 2 weeks apart. I feel guilty that until last summer, I had mostly ignored the plight of this tree, but I definitely would not want it to die. I believe last summer's treatment killed the wooly adelgid and I do see new growth on the tree. Crossing my fingers.

The other day I was working out in the yard, as I often do, this time near the road trying to clear out and plant an area extending from my mailbox down about 50 feet. It is all woodsy on my side of the road and my house is set back a good 100 to 150 feet, depending on where you're standing. I noticed my neighbor across the street emerge from her backyard awkwardly carrying a large tree limb with her teenage daughter. They crossed their yard, then the road, and were headed to my wooded area fronting the road.

I called out hello and said please don't dump that in my woods. She pretended not to realize it was my property and asked how far down my property extended. It extends the whole way to the corner, I told her, so they carried the tree limb back and dumped it near a small brook on their side. Which I guess they should have done in the first place. It amazed me that I should even have to say this to a neighbor.

Super annoying to have neighbors with no concept of what it means to live in a community. They have always done their own thing, from their neurotic, barking dogs to the fireworks they force others to listen to, to the unbagged trash they put out that always ends up on my side.

At some point I realized the painful tendon below my left knee had become chronic, so I've lowered the weight I'm lifting at the gym, started wearing a heat pad at night and am wearing a brace this morning. It can be frustrating as you get older not to be able to do as much physically as you once did, but it's important to recognize when your body says stop.

I also started taking a few free-with-membership exercise classes at the senior center. The tai chi didn't work well as shifting my weight from one leg to the other and doing some gentle lunges was very hard on my knees, so then I tried a chair yoga class for general stretching, which was better. This week I'll try chair pilates and see if i like that any better.

I submitted my application for enrollment in Parts A and B of Medicare last week, and this week I'll be working with an insurance agent to select my Medigap (Plan N, Cigna) and Part D plans. I pretty much know what I want but just want to study the plans a bit more. The agent talked me out of high deductible Plan G because, she said, they increase that deductible by a few hundred dollars every year, making it harder to get any covered benefits. Something I may not have thought of if I hadn't worked with an agent.

Last Friday I took my father on a second historic barn driving tour, this time in the southern section of my hometown. I would pull over when possible and read a brief description of the barns from a website that has inventoried all the historic barns in the state, with their addresses.

After that I decided to bring him to a new-to-me Himalayan restaurant in town, and we both really liked it a lot, so we will be returning there.

Saturday I participated in a litter cleanup at a beach about 40 minutes from here.

Yesterday I descaled my electric tea kettle, did a load of laundry and some other general tidying up around here. It is gradually brightening now and soon I'll be headed to the gym and then to a friend's to exchange some plants: a pot of my gazania daisies for her mayapples, which I'll dig up as she injured her foot. They like shade, so I'd like to put them under a large mountain laurel in back. Someone from my garden group is gifting wild geranium (cranesbill), so will be picking that up on Wednesday.

I planted some yellow squash and cucumbers from seeds, on a heat mat, and 5 of the 7 have germinated. I will give the extras to dad; with his vision problems, he can't see the seeds well enough to plant himself, but I'll give him the seedlings to plant instead. Conveniently, I can open the bathroom window where they are growing and put them out to get full sun on the roof over my garage, then bring them in for the chilly overnights. The gentle breeze of <10 mph will also help strengthen the stems of each seedling so they don't flop over in the slightest breeze. I plan to plant them in my raised beds by Mother's Day. I'm also trying to germinate some cardinal flower after having stratified the seeds in the freezer and fridge. I may have less luck there. Doing the same with monkey flower and ironweed.

I am getting a very eye-opening look at dental costs in retirement by taking my father around on his appointments.

He recently had two root canals, both of which required 2 or maybe even 3 trips to the dentist, and that was several thousand dollars. I thought we were finally back to the "routine" trips where we alternate between his regular dentist and his periodontist every 3 months, but today, the periodontist said they wanted to do another scaling, to the tune of $1,740.

Dad wants to put it off. He said he'll likely die with a wonderful set of teeth. At 91, there are things he doesn't like doing, and he only brushes once daily without flossing. I don't think these big looming expenses will make much difference in his dental hygiene.

Kind of a similar thing with the physical therapy he finished maybe 6 months ago. He's found that, not keeping up the exercises he learned there has led to the return of pain in his leg, and he wants to return to PT by self-paying, but I learned today he'll likely have to ask his doctor for it and either be accepted or denied by Medicare before he can choose to self-pay. I urged him to try to do some...any of the exercises he could, but that won't likely happen.

Today after the periodontist we had a lovely lunch at a favorite restaurant...

We both got the chicken piccata...probably the best I've ever had.

The chocolate souffle with pistachio ice cream was also very good.

And after that I drove to an open space area where we sat in the woods by a trout stream and I read dad a story about President Tyler from my phone. Dad loves history. We are reading all about the US Presidents (in sequential order) each time I come to visit. and we are up to the 11th president.

This is where we sat on a rainy, cold Thursday to talk about the presidents.

Next weekend I'll be taking him to his local library where they'll have a program on what was going on in his town during the Civil War. Should be interesting.

Now that I've got my $650 rebate for the heat pump water heater, I've become interested in a new state program that involves a whole house battery.  You can get them installed in your basement with or without solar panels on the roof. The utility company pays you twice a month or so for the entire 10-year warranty of the batteries, as payment for using this power during periods of high usage, mostly in the summer. They won't take energy from your batteries 2 days prior to a forecast storm, so that you have it should you experience an outage. In that case, the batteries would provide up to 18 additional hours of power, depending on what you want them to power. For me, the main thing would be the furnace, hot water heater and fridge; afer that, my Eco "power station" that I bought a few years back would provide another day of power for just my fridge/freezer.

The state is trying to use this program to build up to 10 megawatts of reserve power to more evenly regulate power supply; once they get a certain number of homeowners who cumulatively add up to 10 megawatts, they will go to the next phase where they pay the next group of homeowners a little less money, and so on, so the first tier is the one that pays the most. I'd like to do it this year, but if I'm to continue keeping my 2024 income modest, in order to remain eligible for a healthcare subsidy, I'll have to wait til next year; hopefully they'll still be working to build the first tier.

Generally speaking the state seeks to get more homeowners to upgrade appliances to electrical power supplies, which are cleaner than fossil fuels like gas or oil. I am very happy with my heat pump hot water heater and couldn't believe how much it reduced my monthly electrictiy bill.

I did a litter cleanup with a few other women from my women's group at a Tibetan monastery nearby. The grounds were very pretty and they treated us to a moma (Tibetan dumpling) lunch.

This weekend there's a beach cleanup about 45 minutes away that I'll be attending.

Today I learned a valuable lesson: to be very, very careful when deciding to purchase new, energy-efficient appliances that come with a state-offered rebate. Namely, MAKE SURE your plumber is in the state program network of qualified installers, and also print out that rebate form ahead of time to get every single bit of information requested on it, preferably before installation. Or better yet, find a plumber who can offer you the "instant rebate" and take it off the price of installation right then and there.

The appliance in question is a heat pump water heater, which I like very much. It's working seamlessley and is saving me quite a lot on my electric bill.

So my state offers a $650 rebate, which is on top of the $1,115 federal tax credit you get. But the program is run by a 3rd party company located in Massachusetts. I had submitted my rebate form in January by snail mail because the yellow (3rd copy) receipt I got from my plumber was very faint and hard to read, so I made a special trip to Staples to make a better copy.

They discourage you from calling before 3 months is up, so I waited about that long before calling them this week about the status of the rebate, and they claimed they never got the application. Fortunately, I'd made copies of the form but I had to reenter all of it on their online system, but then I kept getting emails from them saying I was missing this, or I was missing that.  Then they'd send another email about something else and  had to deal with it again.

I mean, they requested information that didn't even appear on the original rebate form (!), so why are they asking for it now? They asked for info that even my plumber didn't know (the AFUE), for the old equipment, which he removed and disposed of, so I had to call the company that bought out Sears and the rep said there WAS NO AFUE number for electric hot water heaters.

They wouldn't accept the recieipt from my plumber because it didn't say "Paid in Full," it just said "Paid Ck #301." At this point, I didn't want to have to involve my plumber and I imagined it would be near impossible to get their attention for a nonpaying matter.  So I asked the rebate company if they would accept a cancelled check from my bank, and they said no. Who doesen't accept a cancelled check? That's a pretty bonafide proof of payment.

Another stumbling block, per the company, was that my plumber was not in their "network." My plumber's wife said her husband had been unaware that he had to be part of this "network" in order for me to qualify for the rebate, and so not only did they provide me a Paid in Full recept for payment, but they had also begun the process of joining the network, but apparently it was quite involved and they gave up.

In the meantime, I spent the past 2 days trying to supply this firm everything they asked for, as mentioned above, but I'd become so frustrated by their over-zealousness.

So yesterday I had a Zoom board meeting with the nonprofit group I volunteer for, and we had a few minutes to wait for others to join the call, and since I had just gotten off another stressful call with the rebate company, I started to vent about what I'd been going through. One of the board members on the call, J., spoke up. I knew he was a retired former state represenative, but what I didn't know was that he was the architect of the state rebate program that I was complaining about! He told me the name of a state senator to contact to cut thru the red tape. I mean, talk about serendipity!   I was actually getting ready to contact the senator but first I  composed a lengthy letter complaining about their process and told them it this wasn't resolved soon I would go ahead and contact not only the senator, but our state DEP and PURA (regulatory agency) as well.

As it turned out, I didn't have to do any of that. I heard from my plumber's wife tonight; when they realized how difficult joining the network would be, they reached out to their supplier and the supplier paid the $650 to the plumber, who in turn will send me a check for the same amount this weekend.

I won't now contact the senator, but I think I will follow through and contact DEEP and PURA to tell them what an uphill battle applying for this rebate was. I can't be the only one stymied by this process, and I feel sad that people are incenticized to upgrade to a more energy-efficient appliance by the rebate, only to find it nearly impossible to comply with every requirement. I am very pro-energy efficiency/pro-environment, and I think programs like this one are so valuable and helpful to residents wanting to do the right thing, IF they are well-managed.

In other news, I'm doing a litter cleanup at a nearby Nepalese monastery tomorrow. They'll be serving us a complementary Nepalese dumpling lunch, which I'm looking forward to. I recruited 3 other women from a Facebook over 50 women's group to join me.

I have my first case of poison ivy, just a single little spot on my right hand. It isn't usually that bad this time of year because the leaves have not yet come out, but I  must've touched the twiggy vertical vine thing that emerges from the ground, of which I saw many while working in the yard during the eclipse.

Wow, I just experienced my first earthquake, confirmed by a bunch of other people on Facebook in my hometown. Apparently it was centered in Lebanon, NJ, registering 4.8.

It lasted about 10 seconds max here. The house was shuddering/shaking, but there was no wind, so earthquake came to mind.

This may be commonplace where you live, but it's a first for me!

Dad had no plans for Easter, but I already knew that cooking for him is impractical because I'd need to start something in the oven, go pick him up (30 minutes, there and back at least) and then return home, get him up the stairs with his walker, finish cooking dinner, and then bring him back home. It was just too much, and right when I felt I could finally sit down and relax after dessert last time, Dad announced he was ready to go home.

This year I'm trying something different. It allows us to spend some quality time together on a  holiday but without all the extra work of cooking. I'm taking dad on a driving tour of historic barns in the area. There's an interesting website that catalogs all the barns in the state. I searched the town where he lives, and 76 barns came up. We obviously won't get to all of them, but I picked the most interesting ones that had a written history, painstakingly mapped them all out on a map and decided we could probably check out 9 of them. It's just something for us to do together, and I often wrack my brains for how to entertain him, but he can't see or walk well, and I'm not a big fan of driving. So this is local enough for me to handle, and if we find a Starbucks or restaurant that's open without need of reservations, maybe we'll pop in.

I am pretty much done with my massive burning bush. I worked on it all winter, cutting branches with my pruner saw, but I could only do so much. A friend in town then came over twice with her "mini" chainsaw and did quite a bit more. Then, today, she returned with her husband, who wielded a full-size chainsaw to cut the burning bush to about a 2 foot high stump, which I promptly painted with an herbicide. Hopefully I won't get a lot of regrowth.

I made 3 trips to the transfer station today with my trunk filled with cut-up branches from the burning bush. No bigger than 4 feet long, cus that's what fits. Very time-consuming, but most of the lower branches have been hauled, and much of what remains are the cut-up trunks, which will be heavier to carry across my lawn but quicker to load in my trunk. It's a process. Luckily I'm fairly methodical about things like this and eventually, it gets done.

I'm actually glad to be wrapping up with it as I still have a very narrow window of time to work some more on pulling smaller burning bush out of the soft ground, as well as wineberry and multiflora rose. Once things leaf out, it's much harder to get in these brushy areas without risking contact with ticks, but the poison ivy is also coming up, but not let leafed out. (It's still toxic.)

I am behind the eight ball a bit on spring veggie planting, which I would have liked to start indoors. Then I discovered I have no more peat pots, so they are on order and I should have next week.

I also belatedly realized I needed to stratify the ironweed seeds I collected last fall before I plant them. It's a gorgeou plant and butterfly magnet. So the seeds are in the fridge now for at least a month.

PSA: A while back I was informed that my account here had been hacked, so consider this as a good time to change and strengthen your password.

Not too long ago, I'd been contemplating scouting around for a 4th volunteer opportunity, but now, like a race horse settling into a comfortable gallop, I am finding more things to do with the two groups I'm involved with, so I'll just pace myself and see how things progress.

This week I'm helping the founder of the litter group staff a table at a vendor fair at a local VA, and this weekend is our 2nd cleanup event of the season, at a reservoir in a rural town. I wrote a story about the history of that reservoir to help promote the cleanup in the newsletter, and I'm now basically in charge of FB social media; so far, I've been finding it fairly easy to post once a day, culling interesting litter articles I find and writing my own little synopsis for them or otherwise calling attention to "microplastics" in the ocean and the problem with polar fleece. I would honestly like to take over the newsletter too, only because writing/communications is what I've done all my life and I just enjoy it.

At the other group, things are percolating also. After writing the first grant, we paused as my colleague nixed the next grant we were set to move on after realizing our nonprofit partner would not like seeking $$ from this particular utility company, which had cut down their trees by mistake, and things have gotten contentious.

I am quite enjoying getting more and more involved. It's nice to feel wanted, and that the work you do is highly valued and appreciated.  This has definitely taken the place of paid work for me.  I've volunteered, in very limited fashions, over my working career, but never really dug in the way I am doing now. Both groups are small and pretty new, so they could use all the help they can get.

Really, if I had to sum up my retirement thus far, I could say it centers around 3 things: 1) my volunteer work, 2) my exercise activities and 3) dad. I truly wish I had more family to spend time with, but being unmarried and without kids, I don't.  Dad doesn't care about holidays. It doesn't make sense to make an elaborate meal for 2 people, especially when I'd have to drive and fetch him and bring him back, then cook, then bring him home again. I tried that a few times and it was pretty exhausting. Easter will be tough because I'll be thinking how everyone in the world, practically, is spending quality time with loved ones.

I'm feeling pretty productive in 2024 since I've managed to do all the major home improvements I planned for the year in the first 2 months of the year. Usually I wait til fair weather, but replacement of my electric hot water heater with an energy-efficient heat pump water heater could have been done anytime. It seems to be working fine, and all the things another plumber had told me about, as he tried to talk me out of it, failed to materialize. Like a much colder basement (it's held steady at 55 F) and the noise (I barely notice it).

And the fringe benefit of the heat pump water heater is that it naturally dehumidifies the air, so I no longer need to use my dehumidifier unit, which did an inadequate job. Could save me some money, since the dehumidifer ran all the time in warmer months.

Then I had my mason over a few weeks ago to do a refacade of a second crumbling wall. He was also to close up the crack where I "thought" the milk snake had gotten through, but it wasn't really a crack at all, just a gap between a piece of lumber and the wall, so truth be told, I'm not certain "how" the snake got in. A bit unsettling. Maybe one of the same entry points where mice were getting in? Those were also sealed up, so cross fingers, no more critters in the basement. I had just ONE mouse caught inside this winter.

The sole purpose of that vertical plank of plywood was so that the laundry sink in that corner could be attached to the plywood attached to the wall. My mason removed it all and refastened it without it. Looks much better now.

Today, I have tree cutters here to do some much-needed pruning of a dogwood tree, a mulberry tree and a crabapple. They will be back to do a dying apple tree, which I'm not trying to save, so I told them to just leave a 10- or 12-foot snag for wildlife but otherwise cut down the tree.

In April, they will come back again to do the huge burning bush; I cut 3/4 of the branches but I don't have a chain saw, which will be needed to cut the roughly 20" diameter trunk, after which I'll have to paint herbicide so it doesn't resprout. They will also do soil injections for a giant hemlock with wooly adelgid issues. These guys have great prices compared to what I've paid in the past. Like less than half of what a much larger company was quoting me.

One of the guys here now was actually using a battery-powered chainsaw, which amazed me due to the diameter of some of the stuff they were cutting and it gave me more confidence about buying a "mini" battery-powered chainsaw which I've been thinking about for smaller limbs. I was looking at a 6" blade. I hate the noise and having to deal with gasoline and oil for the regular ones, but I could manage this.

Activity with the groups I volunteer for is heating up. The president of one of them unexpectedly resigned for personal reasons, so we're having an emergency meeting later this week.

At a recent meeting of my other group, I volunteered to write a grant application to Cornell that would allow us to do a big project we've been planning on. It was my first-ever grant proposal, but the chair seems very, very pleased with it. Due date is Mar. 1 so we just have some final touches to apply. Now she wants me to apply for another grant from NY Botanical Garden as a backup in case we don't get the first grant.

Ahh. Deep sigh of reief. Both federal and state taxes are done.

Yes, I do them myself; every time I hire a CPA (like the year before last), mistakes are found. I prefer the control of reading IRS instructions and doing them myself. Despite my trepidations, it actually wasn't that bad. Partly because I was a W-2 employee last year so that in itself eliminated two or three separate forms. 

I usually use last year's form as a guide, but I had a few new income sources this year for the first time, plus a federal energy credit for installing a heat pump water heater. It turned out to be not that difficult. I'm getting sizable refunds from both state and federal. I know, perhaps not ideal, but my employment and income situation has been so changeable for the past few years that estimating income was not always easy.

If you've ever scoured your state's unclaimed property website, here's a tip: don't do it once and assume you're done. Check again in a few years. Things pop up. That's what happened to me. i have checked not just under my name, but also my father's, since he doesn't use a computer, and I found a significant item listed under his name. I'll be collecting the documents needed to process the claim next time I see him. I think he'll be pleasantly surprised.

All winter I've been taking advantage of warmish days (above freezing) to continue cutting down branches of a HUGE burning bush (really a tree) in my yard. I then have to drag the branches about 100 feet to the driveway, where I cut up the branches so they fit in my trunk.  Once the trunk is filled, I go to the transfer station to dump them. I've made good progress, but will need to hire a tree guy to cut the main trunk near the ground. As soon as he does that, I'll need to paint with an herbicide so it doesn't resprout. My idea is that I would lower the bill I'll be paying...one would hope. Plus, it gave me something physical to do over the winter. I'll be working on it today and tomorrow.

Here it is in winter, many years ago now...

I also went through my jewelry and have an appointment with a local jeweler to hopefully sell them some unwanted gold, silver and a small diamond. I did this before but somehow still found a few things I really don't need. I have plenty of costume jewelery that looks just as nice, and the real stuff just mostly sits there. Better to liquidate it and put it toward something more useful. I don't entirely trust jewelers though. Some of the gold is 14K, some 18K. I'm going to make sure I've identified which is which and to check current prices online so I have some idea of the going rate. Anyway, this is something I've been wanting to do for a while.

Am hoping my mason will be here Monday as we tentatively agreed to do some important basement work. Also anxious to have tree guys over to do some much needed pruning, and it needs to be done soon, before dormancy breaks. Finally, I found a single mouse in a trap this winter so mouse exclusion person is to come back looking for anything she may have missed, or a new hole.  Just one mouse is a huge improvement over past years, when I recall catching mice in the 20-something range, in the basement.

2024 will be my last year of comparative frugality. Next year I have the planned new vehicle purchase and will just generally loosen the spending reins a bit, to lower future RMDs and just enjoy my hard-earned retirement as well. I need to settle into a routine with IRA withdrawals which I really haven't started on a recurring basis.

Socially, I've met 3 women through a group I joined online...one of them lives across the street from me (!) and for 20 years, she had never said hello! They all were quite nice; one even offered to give me an old tablet she wasn't using for my father, since you can enlarge the font on it and perhaps he could learn to use it.

So now that I've met each once (1 for lunch, 1 for brunch and 1 for afternoon tea), I feel I should reach out and suggest another get-together. One of them traveled abroad shortly after our visit, but she has since returned home. I really am just waiting for decent walking weather and also just a settling down of things to do around here, and getting the taxes out of the way was at the top of my list. Once I get my home improvement stuff at least scheduled, hopefully within the next 2 weeks, I'll feel free to schedule the fun stuff.

That's pretty  much all that's new in Patient Saver's world. I'm happy to report dad has taken a real liking to some borscht he had at a really nice restaurant we sometimes go to for lunch. No doubt we will be returning there soon.

Well, it's official. I'm without a job, it seems. I suspected my job could be in jeopardy when the person I report to asked me to stop writing, "for the time being." 

That was back in mid-December, and I figured I'd give it til after the holidays to resolve, but when I still hadn't heard back from her, I sent her a note. I had already informed the agency that pays me but they seemed pretty lax in getting back to me and I'd been in limbo long enough. So yes, she was very nice about it, but I'm out of a job now.

Now I'm faced with a few choices: 1) Call it a day and retire now. 2) Look for another p/t job 3) Look for f/t work and file for unemployment benefits, which wouldn't be available to me if I only wanted to work p/t.

I think I'm going to call it a day. But it still feels SCARY!

I went ahead and changed my reinvested dividends and cap gains  on 2 remaining big funds to be diverted directly to my checking account. I called the brokerage and was told that since these are individual taxable accounts, they don't withdraw taxes when they do the transfer so I would have to pay taxes at tax time, but as Dido told me, I would only pay taxes on the gain.  Wondering if I would need to make quarterly tax payments to ensure I don't get a tax penalty for late payment.

So I now have several traditional IRA funds from 1 brokerage and 2 taxable funds from the other diverting dividends and cap gains to my checking account, which, based on a look at my 2023 cap gains/dividends, should yield me about $17,000. I vaguely remembered that when I set up the traditional IRA funds, I only had 10% withheld in taxes, when I really should have 12% withheld. I was on hold for over 40 minutes waiting to talk to a rep as i don't see the place where you can change the tax withholding amount. And, I probably also withheld only 10% from my annuity, which will be too low, so looking to increase that also.

My net annuity proceeds for the year should come to $11,184 and there's a family $5,000 Xmas gift in December, so my 2024 annual (mostly) net income should be about $33,000, so I'll plan on taking traditional IRA distributions amounting to about $15,000 to bring my annual income up to about $48,000 (taxable income, which is minus the $5,000 gift, will be about $43,000), still comfortably within the 12% tax bracket.

Some of those funds will be used to pay for various home improvements, like the recent replacement of my 10-year-old electric hot water heater with an uber-energy efficient heat pump hot water heater ($3,000+). Next up will be some masonry work on my basement walls, including repairing a large crack where a snake came through when we had massive rain here ($3,850).

When I take that $15K in traditional IRA distributions, I think I will try to time 1 or 2 large transfers on a good market day and put in either a brokerage money market account OR my  online money market savings account that's  currently earning 4.35%. From there, I could do perhaps monthly or quarterly transfers to my checking account (which earns 0% interest) as needed. Wondering if they can automate that for me.

In 2025, I'll allow myself higher income, maybe around $50 or $55k.

Until I get a certain routine set up with withdrawal income streams, this is going to feel very wonky. My taxes this winter could be difficult for me to handle with all the changes, and next year, too. Just different line items to complete for annuity and ira distributions etc etc. but head is still swimming with newfound tax obssession. I really want to simplify things as much as possible.

I've pretty much decided to defer a new vehicle purchase to 2025.