Save More, Spend Less

OK, so I needed to come up with a photo today, but it's been so cold, dreary and now rainy that I haven't really ventured outside. So I had to delve into my photo gallery to pick something recent. I imagine you are getting tired of my many plant photos, so here's another dish I enjoyed at that favorite cafe in town I told you I visited last week with my father.

This dish is "meatball salad." Each meatball is the size of 3 regular meatballs. It's delicious.

I have a small collection of head planters. They're not looking too spiffy at the moment, but they look great with the right kind of plant in there.

I had an incredibly productive day.

* I took a small pussy willow cutting from my one pussy willow shrub back in APRIL, and the poor thing sat in water all these months. I wanted to plant it sooner but couldn't find the right spot for it. It needs a lot of room but also needs sun. I tucked it in the ground today, FINALLY. It had quite the root system on it. I will be curious to see how it does.

* I also transplanted one black oak seedling from a bad spot where it popped up early in the spring and put it in a better spot. I have 3 or 4 more I'd like to do the same with.

* I finished cutting down a kousa dogwood. I noticed it a year or two ago; I had mixed feelings about taking it down, but it doesn't have much wildlife value. And then I noticed it was starting to steal sunlight from a nearby oak sapling which I very much want to thrive. In 31 years I've never had a single oak  here, and now this year I have at least 5 or 6 popping up all over. This sapling was about 6 feet high last year and has doubled in height this year. 

The kousa dogwood was a lot of work since this involved cutting up larger branches and then dragging them to a brush pile hidden in the woods. I got almost 13,000 steps in today, and this was a big reason why.

* I mowed part of the lawn.

* I started organizing the garage so I can store lawn furniture in there and all my plant pots. Maybe even my SUV. Didn't quite finish but made great headway. Also filled 4 trash bags with old newspapers I had used a few years ago to suppress weeds but decided I didn't like it as it required mulch on top of it and inevitably the ugly newspaper sheets would show thru the mulch. I'm doing a more natural mulch now of just leaves. Mice had gotten into the newspaper anyway.

* Continued work cutting rampant trumpet vine at the base near soil and then dabbing it with herbicide. There are a zillion individual plants. I feel like I did quite a bit but then when I look around at how it has gotten into every nook and cranny in this area, it's quite discouraging. Yesterday I was doing the same thing and pretty much cleared and treated the vine that had been growing up a very large evergreen I'd like to save. Vines will kill a tree pretty quickly. It's really a challenge to eradicate it because by June this whole area becomes impenetrable and the best time to treat this particular plant is late summer/early fall. So I get just one shot at it all year. I CAN try to maintain some sort of narrow pathways in there in spring and if I can do that, I can at least cut back the vines even if I don't treat them. This can help maintain some sort of control.

Tomorrow we're getting a fairly significant storm, big enough that I charged up my 2 "power stations" just in case I lose power. The big one can keep my fridge and freezer going for 4 days.  So, maybe I'll squeeze in another mowing session before the rain starts in the afternoon. 

We had our first frost last night, which reminded me of the days when I used to do the No Heat Challenge. Ha! As I get older, I appreciate creature comforts more. Though the heat is still OFF; just threw 2 blankets on the bed.

This week I reviewed Kiva loans from Kazakhstan, Ghana and Philippines.

I was just thinking about what photo I would post today when Nature decided for me! Saw this beautiful bobcat pass through my yard just now.

Took my father to physical therapy yesterday and then one of our favorite cafes for lunch. I'm not even sure of everything that was in these, but they were soooo good: tostadas topped with potato, feta cheese, avocado, diced red peppers, a fried egg, black bean spread, oh my. Not a low calorie meal, that's for sure!

This was last night's dinner: a quick stir fry with snow peas from my garden, broccoli florets, mushrooms and cashews over jasmine rice. I'm so happy a few others are doing the Photo Challenge! Makes it more fun!

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We are finally getting some much needed rain today. Not driving rain, just a nice light to medium rain.

We're expecting a possible first frost Thursday night, which may signal the end of my herbicide treatment of tree of heaven seedlings. I'm just anxious to do as much as I can since I will have to wait an entire year to treat again. There are literally hundreds of these things popping up in back and they grow fast. The trumpet vine can continue to be treated until a HARD frost (defined as 24 degrees or colder), and temps are still well above 50 degrees. The trumpet vine is inaccessible until late September or so, so for the same reason, I want to get to as much as possible as it's killed some nice evergreens here already. It's relentless.

Yesterday was warm and humid so I didn't do any of this work then, but tomorrow will be considerably cooler and is ideal for this kind of work.

OK, with this photo I'm caught up with the daily photo challenge. It shows the new chandeleir ("sputnik" design) my handyman installed this morning. I like modern stuff. I liked the one I had before, which was more traditional, but, well, after 16 years living with it, time for a change. 

Aside from that, the only meaningful things I did today was write a two-sided handout for a presentation my invasive plants group is putting on at the senior center this week. I also went to the transfer station with mostly recyclables and stopped in at grocery store for a few items since it's nearby. I also scheduled my father for PT and will be bringing him tomorrow.

I was flooded with at least 6 or 7 pleas for money in the mail from various groups, and I vaguely remembered seeing some sort of notice a while ago indicating that my registry with the Do Not Mail list had expired. So I renewed it for another 10 years; I see now they charge you $6 to do this. I'm not positive it's the same group I registered with before, but anyway....they estimate doing so will cut down on junk mail by 80%.

Opsie. Skipped another day. I'm just busy.

View from my doorway...

In the past year, I realized my house plants were threatening to take over this small space, so I have winnowed down my collection of cacti and succulents considerably. I think I now have 8 now, plus 2 pothos. But I still have this pencil cactus, which loves its spot in my sunny bathroom. I may bring a little Ikea stool down from the attic for her.

This week I reviewed Kiva loans from Tonga, Rwanda, Phillipines and Indonesia.

Opsie, I took the photo yesterday but forgot to post. It's mistflower. It's nice to see such a vividly colored flower in bloom this time of year.

This is what I did today. Been pulling it for weeks. Rather exhausting as it also includes carrying the stuff on a pitchfork about 300 feet from where it's growing. Next stop: dump.

Now that the 3rd quarter is behind us, I thought it would be a good time to project my total 2025 income and see if I could manage a small Roth conversion while still staying in the 12% bracket, which tops out at $48,475. Cus I'm not sure my income would ever exceed the 22% bracket, which tops out at $103,350 for a single person, so not sure during a Roth conversion now and paying 22% taxes would offer any benefit.

To my surprise, my projected income this year, between annuity payouts, traditional IRA distributions and a few taxable mutual fund distributions, total about $63,000, and that's not including dividends or cap gains on two taxable brokerage funds. That was surprising since my expenses have remained in the low $40s for many, many years. But then I already forgot the January purchase of my new SUV, and the whole idea of taking out a loan for the purchase was to avoid a larger $30K bump-up in my income that would push me into the 22% bracket. I've been aggressively prepaying the loan in addition to the regular payments, and all told, all those car payments do seem to account for most of my income increase. (I plan to have it paid off next year.)

Although my income will be over $63,000 this year, with the standard deduction of $15,750, my adjusted income will be roughly $47,416, just within the 12% bracket. Cap gains and dividends will likely add another $3,000 or so to that total, but I guess I can live with that.

I am now well stocked in my favorite brand diced tomatoes, Muir Glen. They are pretty expensive (over $3 a can) but they go on sale to half-price (!) in the fall, so I took full advantage of that recently and should have enough organic, sodium-free diced tomatoes for the entire winter's worth of soups and stews. I use 2 cans per pot of soup with a whole lot of veggies.

Generally speaking, my diet is as low sugar, low salt and low sat fat as possible, and it's very hard to eat in America without consuming some degree of processed foods where much of that sugar, salt and fat can be found. I used to buy dried beans for my soups and stews but it was too time-consuming to soak the beans overnight and then cook them. The Muir Glen brand also uses BPA-free linings in their canned products.

I am also very happy with my Biroux water filtration system, which is said to filter out all kinds of unwanted stuff, including BPA, microplastics, heavy metals, and more. The water does taste subtly different; I'd mentoned that to a customer service rep, who asked me if I could describe what it tasted like, and I could not. I found myself puzzling over that for weeks afterwards, and decided that it just tastes like nothing, which I guess is what water is supposed to taste like. Perhaps in the past I tasted flouride or minerals, although Biroux is supposed to retain beneficial minerals while stripping away contaminants.

Biroux sells a nice countertop stand for their water filtrations system (i bought the small one shown) but I saved a few bucks and just used a plant stand.

The 2025 vegetable garden is wrapping up. All I have left are my snow peas, but here's the tally of everything else I harvested. Note that I planted for one person using 3 4 x 8' raised beds.

Cherry tomatoes: 490
Lost a few to exploratory chipmunk bites.
Yellow squash: 31
Cucumber: 21 (wiped out early by powdering mildew)
Zucchini: 16 (also pulled early due to cucumber beetle and powdery mildew)
Medium-sized tomatoes: 8
Stringbeans: 3 lbs
Snow peas: 40.5 oz (2.5 lbs)
Plenty of red lettuce but not counted

Next year I may skip the stringbeans and return to eggplant.

This morning I woke up and, looking out the bathroom window, I saw a wooly caterpillar in a large, ground-level water bath I put out for the animals. Fearing it had drowned or was drowning, I ran downstairs and outside, to remember with some relief that I had dumped the water yesterday after seeing mosquito larvae swimming around. The wooly caterpillar was just wedged beside a small river rock in there. I let it be and now, with the warming sun, I noticed the caterpillar crawling around the rim of the bath, maybe doing its morning calisthenics. So all is well.

Since I'm so fond of photography, I've been thinking of doing the Photo a Day Challenge starting on Jan 1. Although it's harder to find things to photograph during winter. It would be fun to compile a year's worth of photos which would likely be rather mundane but also accurately reflect my life. 

I've now achieved my credit card goal to earn $100 credit. Now I can go back to a different card to charge up entertainment purchases, which include restaurants, where I can get a refund on any entertainment-related charges with credits I already earned on a travel rewards card. I think I have a year to do that.

Wow, the Shark cordless vaccum (the PowerDetect) that I bought 3 months ago (which I love) has jumped in price by $80. I gave it a 5-star review on Amazon.

Violet's owner picked her up 2 days ago. We had a nice chat about the dog and also their travels to Berlin and Prague. I am definitely missing the dog, but I am also enjoying me freedom again. I would not be opposed to dog sitting again should the opportunity arise. 

Didn't do a heck of a lot today. I am STILL sick; it's been harder to get rid of than I thought. Which stinks, as I want to go to the gym, get back to invasive work, etc. Well, I did manage to change the bed sheets and vacuum. 

Yesterday I pulled up my tomato plants but am still picking squash and snow peas.

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I am nearing the end of dog duty this week but unfortunately came down with a cold (!) that forced me to curtail the twice daily walks totalling about 70 minutes to just a single, 25-minute walk. (She still gets out 4x daily to pee and poop.)

I've gotten a little attached to the dog and in some ways will be sorry to see her go. She is so exuberant when she's going for a walk and is very easy to care for. She follows me around the house wherever I go. I could see myself pet-sitting again in the future if the opportunity arose. I actually lost 3 lbs just walking with her!

Today is the first day I'm feeling more energy and I think I've turned the corner. However, out of an abundance of caution, since my friend is coming to pick up the dog on Friday and since I've had a low fever (99.4), extreme fatigue and hacking cough, I decided today to get a covid test. Luckily, I tested negative, but I'm supposed to retest myself in 2 days, right before my friend arrives.

A friend and neighbor dropped off some dog food and a box of tissues the other day, which I really appreciated. She's a nurse, and I think she chose the right profession because she is a very caring individual.

Otherwise, not a whole heck of a lot new. 

I have 10 more transactions I need to charge on my credit card in the next 8 days ( by month's end) to earn my $100 credit.

Looking forward to some much needed overnight rain.

I like to make my money work for me, especially when I don't really have to do anything to earn more/get more back, aside from being alert to various promotions.

Today, in a single trip to BJs, I was able to take advantage of 3 separate offers:

The 1st was spending at least $100 at BJs to earn $10 off. Done.

The 2nd was to purchase $30 in "baking goods" to get $10 off. Since I was already getting walnuts and Truvia, I threw an extra bag of walnuts into my cart to earn that. (They freeze well.) Done.

The 3rd was that by getting gas and then groceries at BJs, that was 2 more transactions on my US Bank Altitude Go credit card. Specifically, transactions #36 and #37 toward 50 transactions by this month's end, to earn $100 credit. (It was a 2-month thing.) Done.

Dog sitting has been interesting. She wasn't eating her food, so her owner said I could try canned. She LOVED the canned food, which I first served straight out of the can to make sure she'd like it; the next meal, I mixed 50/50 with her regular food, to try to reduce the number of cans of dog food I'll need to buy for the remainder of her stay with me (another week). It's kind of pricey. I'll be reimbursed, but I think he's kind of price-conscious.

She has been very cooperative about peeing and pooping. In addition to her 2 walks a day, she also gets 2 quick trips outside just to pee. At first I was thinking I might want to use the garden hose to dilute the urine on the grass so I don't get dead spots, but that really hasn't been necessary since she has taken to peeing exactly where the grass meets the asphalt part of my driveway, and it ends up trickling down the driveway. Once it rains, it will rinse away.

She absolutely LOVES her walks, and I suppose you could say this is her one bad habit: pulling me along on the leash. I haven't had the heart to reel her in because she is just so happy and exuberant; she has at times PRANCED on the leash in her enthusiasm to carpe diem. The rest of the time, she is very good about not pulling on the leash, especially as I walk out the door with her or when she has to wait for me to put her leash on or off.

Still, I will be glad to have my life back when I give her up to her owners next week. Right now, all my personal chores (mainly, weekly trip to the transfer station, grocery shopping and the gym) all revolve around her schedule and needs, and then I fill in my my errands in between her outdoor time. The weather has been absolutely perfect for an extended period of time; I can imagine this kind of schedule would not be so painless in the dead of winter or rain, so I'm grateful for that.

I'm trying to take her with me when I can, just to give her more stimulation in between walks; so far, we've been to the bank drive-up window, the local Stop & Shop for a quick run in, the library (to return a book using the drive-thru thing), the transfer station and the healthy pet food store, where she got extra attention and a treat from the clerk. 

For the 2 walks a day, I've mostly been sticking with a large campus (maybe 200 acres) in the center of town very popular with dog walkers and walkers, baby strollers, etc. Lots of paved walking paths, a fruit trail, victory garden for the food pantry, municipal offices, volunteer ambulance, community center, pool, senior center, ball fields, the gym I belong to, a micro-brewery and the location of our farmer's market, road races, arts festival, etc. It's getting a little boring becus I'm going there often twice a day (not including when i go to the gym), but I like it because they have poop bags, which I've run out of, and trash cans, plus I can avoid other dog walkers, which I have been doing just to play it safe. 

I tried taking her on a newly built sidewalk that extends from my neighborhood for about a half-mile to a small park, but that road is so busy with traffic it's not that enjoyable. I also tried a larger park that is made of of a small pond and grassy areas, but there's a lot of geese poop and the grass is pretty high. So I just return to the large campus in town. It's a convenient 5-minute drive, although one of her walks is at 5 pm and it can be tough making a left turn off my street during rush hour.

I continue to be impressed by how price competitive places like Whole Foods and BJs can be. The BJs price on organic cosmic crisp apples were better than Wal-Mart. Whole Foods also continues to beat Stop & Shop on a variety of foods, I've noticed. 

Making slow progress on assembling things I have purchased, a chore I HATE doing. I've assembled everything from a full size outdoor composter to a desk and other stuff, but I've also returned something once (a simple bench!) that just wouldn't assemble.

Lawn mower

The Greenworks lawnmower arrived yesterday and I was relieved there was not much to do beyond charging up the battery and inserting the battery. I like to mulch my grass and leave in place, so I didn't even need to attach the bagger.

I had found a mower guy who was $5 more expensive per cut than my last guy, so I just gave him the job, and he said he'd be here today, so I just briefly tried out the Greenworks and liked it very much. I want to do a full mow to see how long the battery lasts and just to assess overall performance and if it's easier to push with the somewhat lower weight, so since my mower guy will only come every other week, I'll do a full mow on alternate weeks, starting next week. But so far I am very much liking the simplicity of design.

Meanwhile, I posted the old Black & Decker mower on Buy Nothing and even with the needed wheel repair issue, I already have a taker who has picked it up.

The new mower was here. Actually there were 2 mowers who also did trimming and then blowing. What a racket. I'm going to ask him to skip the blowing. It's too noisy and I have pollinators around here that could be harmed. But anyway, without having gone out there yet, they seem to be more thorough; my old mower had his son doing the trimming and he did a half-a**** job.

Fancy water filter

My Biroux water filter is another story. Right out of the gate, I had a really vexing problem priming the 2 filters. They give you 4 different ways to prime them, and none worked. Beyond frustrated! They shipped out a replacement filter and auto primer, but that still took 6 days. I was so relieved the new auto primer worked exactly as it should. You charge the primer, attach to the filter, hook on the side of chamber, then push the on button and the Start button and it does its thing. It runs for about 2 minutes and then shuts off. Then you do the same thing with the 2nd filter, which is about the size and shape as a rolling pin.

Next step was doing the red dye test. Had to do it a 2nd time as pink water came out when it should have been clear. I don't think one of the filters was attached correctly.

I thought I was NEARLY ready to go using this thing, but once filled up with water, the spigot developed a slow leak/drip. There's a bunch of washers on it where it attaches to the lower chamber of the unit, but it's not leaking from there; it's leaking from the spigot itself. So the company just told me they will have to send me a replacement spigot. I'm hoping that's not another 6-day wait. I thought there might be a workaround for that. I have a wood floor in the kitchen so I have to be absolutely sure there's no leak.

Yardwork bag holder

I bought a bag holder thing on Amazon that I thought would be very helpful when doing yard chores. I often collect the berries of invasive plants I come across on the property and bring them to the transfer station to reduce the repopulation cycle going on here. It would be very helpful to have something that holds open the large trash bags I use for yard work so I can just dump stuff in there instead of holding the bag open with one hand while putting stuff in with the other. I gave away some old trash cans on Buy Nothing a year ago; I suppose they would have worked as well.

Anyhoo, the highly rated bag holder I ordered on Amazon never arrived, even though they said it had arrived at Teterboro Airport, and then Manchester, CT, but then no further updates since a week ago, which I thought was strange and maybe means they lost it. I finally decided to cancel that order and order the same item from another brand, but now I have to wait to cancel per Amazon's rules.

Dog-sitting

Ms. Violet is very well-behaved and couldn't do anything to be easier to manage. She's very quiet, sleeps through the night, etc. The real challenge for me is 2 of her 4 daily walks, at the very beginning and end of the day. Getting up and dressed to bring her outside around 6 am, even just to my driveway area. The noon walk is her biggest walk, at around 40 minutes at a popular spot in town that dog walkers and others love with its paved trails, ball fields and lots of open space. I've been only going there as it's the easiest place to avoid other dogs if you want to, though, because Violet's parents say she loves people but other dogs is a 50/50 proposition, and I don't want any problems.

The 5 pm walk is a bit shorter, at about 20 or 30 minutes. The last walk is at around 10 pm. That one is hard to get up for. I've been getting away with letting her do her thing alongside the driveway or across the street in a grassy area between homes. I thought today that i would try to use the garden hose where she pees so i don't get dead spots on the grass.

It's just that now, at 8 am, I am feeling tired from having gotten up too early and the 10 pm walk kind of wakes me up at a time when I'm usually already comfortably ensconsed reading in bed.

She is not a big eater, though, which her parents said was something new, that she doesn't immediately finish her meals, so breakfast may sit around til noon. Her meals are just dry food with some pumpkin puree mixed in. She does seem to have a strong interest in people food, but owners are not in the habit of feeding her that, so while I gave her small bits of chicken or cheese, I'm thinking I'd better curtail that or she'll let it be known at the table when she gets home with her and her parents won't appreciate it.

In other news...

It's funny how your chosen careeer and line of work kind of lives on even when you're retired. I worked as a marketing writer and journalist, and that's largely what I do as a volunteer for my groups. It's what I'm good at, and I really do enjoy it.

I started a series of interviews with "leaders in the litter cleanup community," which I've posted on our Facebook page. I bet you didn't know there WAS a litter cleanup community, but indeed, many small towns around here have their own dedicated litter cleanup group. The first guy I spoke to had such an interesting background and strong leadership traits at just 23 years old that I decided to interview him and write about it. The man I interviewed today, from a different group, told me his most interesting litter "find" was a $100 bill! I'm waiting for him to send me his photo and then I'll post it.

I'm trying to grow the presence of our little knotweed group, which is becoming better known elsewhere in the state simply because most towns don't have this kind of group. We are now on Facebook, Instagram and Bluesky, in addition to our own website. I am new to Bluesky but am flummoxed by the 300-character limit on posts with no way to edit them. You just have to delete them and start over if you want to change something. I still like Facebook best.

This month we're meeting with the sustainability director of nearby city who expressed interest in seeing our demonstration plot, which shows a stand of knotweed divided in 2, with one side having been merely mowed and the other treated with herbicide. There's a pretty dramatic difference in how many canes came up on the mown side (hundreds) vs the herbicide side. We've done this multi-year project becus there are a lot of people who hope to kill knotweed by tarping it or cutting it repeatedly so as to avoid using herbicide. Neither work.

Later in the fall we're putting on a training station for our town's Dept. of Public Works. We hope to raise their awareness of knotweed, learn how to identify it and then avoid mowing it when they mow the roads, or if they must mow due to sight line issues, then collecting the fragments, the smallest of which can resprout into a new plant.

For such a small group (5 of us), we're doing a lot.  There will also be a public knotweed presentation at the library soon.

I attended a native plant sale and bought 4 plants (3 butterfly weed to expand on the few tht I have, and a buttonbush, whic would make the second). They are small seedlings and have all been planted now.

I have just 3 more weeks left in my current credit card promotion. I need to make 21 more transactions of $10 or more in that time (for a total of 50 in 2 months) to earn my $100 statement credit. I think I can do it, but I may have to intentionally make lots of small purchases at the grocery store toward the end if I find I haven't quite nailed it.

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I asked the man who has been mowing my lawn for the past 5 years or so if he could please not leave divots on the lawn, and also that I've noticed my lawn size has shrunk over the years becus he skirts the edges, allowing weeds to fill in. I figured he would just raise the blade. Instead, he suggested I find someone else to do it because, he said, my ground is uneven, and as for the shrinking lawn, he said I needed to have it mowed every week instead of every other week.

I was not expecting him to suggest I go elsewhere, but I really wasn't happy with how he mowed my lawn and it had taken me a while to finally decide to talk to him about it. So I just said okay, but would you mind just finishing out mowing for the year. He never responded, nor did he return to mow, which now has put me in a jam to find someone new rather quickly becus the grass just keeps growing.

So I pulled out my battery walk-behind mower to touch up a few areas where the grass was getting high, but I've had this recurring problem with one of the wheels coming off, and that's what happened as I mowed sideways across a steepish hill. There is this little metal gasket that holds the wheel on the axle, and when that extra weight is applied to the wheel, especially on  the downward end of a hill, it tends to push it off the axle.

It's a real pain in the butt to put on a new gasket; you're supposed to tap it on with a hammer, but as it's supposed to be snug, it's hard to get on at all. My handyman helped me with it just about a month ago.

Yeah, I could run down to the hardware store again to get more of those gaskets, but I hate having to deal with and would likely need my handyman to help me with it and I dislike throwing more $$ at it since it will likely contine to be a problem. 

I decided to buy a new mower at the same time I'm looking for a new mower to do the lawn. I like having a mower myself as a backup, as my current mower man sometimes misses an area or doesn't do narrow walkways of lawn area between pachysandra beds, for example, becus he has a much larger/wider ride-on-top mower.  If the weather's not too hot, I sometimes enjoy mowing, but it's too much lawn to have to do all the time.

Anyway, I didn't want to delay too long as it will take time to ship, and then assemble, and who knows if I get a new mower man in a timely manner. I tried texting 4 that were recommended my my town's Facebook page and only 1 responded.

So I purchased a Greenworks mower. The price was pretty good as I got it directly from Greenworks and they were having a clearance sale (out the door price including the battery and charger was $334). It is NOT self-propelled and I'm hoping that's not a problem. I made a point to check the weight of my old Black & Decker battery mower vs what I bought. The B&D was heavy, at 76 lbs and I don't think it was self-propelled. it was just 19" across. It also was just 24 volt.

The new Greenworks mower is just 65 lbs, or 11 lbs lighter than the B&D, so hoping it will be noticeably easier to push, even without the self-propelled technology. It's also 22" across, so it will cut a wider area, which is good.  And it's a 60 volt mower, which means it has a lot more power to get thru high grass than the B&D, and that was often a problem where I would be mowing and would hear the mower start to slow down and threaten to stall out in thick grass, or just when the battery was wearing down. 

When I was shopping online, I hadn't noticed that what I was looking at was not self-propelled until after I made the purchase. Hmm. I considered cancelling the purchase while I still could, but didn't. The self-propelled feature does add to the price. 

The Greenworks mower is good for mowing up to a half-acre on one charge. I have 1.5 acres, but much of that is woodsy area; the lawn, I would guess, takes up about an acre, but I can't physically handle mowing, at least with the B&D, for more than about 40 minutes anyway. The new mower should take 110 minutes to recharge while my current mower takes so many hours you could never consider doing more than 1 mow in a day.

I'm not sure how long I've had the Black & Decker; it's been a while. At least 10 years. I know i replaced the battery once. So maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised by the improved performance of a newer mower, not just a new gasket holding a wheel on the old mower.

In just a few days my friend will be dropping off his senior dog for an extended 2.5 week stay while they visit Berlin and Prague. It's going to be a big adjustment adjusting my schedule to revolve around 4 daily outdoor visits/pee walks plus meals, of course.  Partly becus the first one is pretty early and before her breakfast, at around 6-7 am, and the last one is around 10 pm, when I am usually in for the night. I don't really want to walk her in my yard becus this is Wildlife Central and I have plenty of ticks around, which I'd rather not get on me or in the house.  I plan to walk her at a place with paved walking trails and mowed soccer fields and so on, but that's a 5-minute car ride. 

This week I reviewed Kiva loans from Philippines and Kenya, about half and half, and one from Uganda. As is typical of all Kiva loans, about 90% of the borrowers were women. All of the Philippine borrowers were people who fished for a living and wanted money for a boat engine. All of the Kenyan borrowers were farmers wanting about $175 for fertilizer and good quality seeds.

The average annual income in Philippines is about $4,000 and in Kenya, it’s closer to $7,000, so even a small loan of $175 is a big deal.

I finally finished writing out 200 postcards to encourage environmentally oriented voters in Virginia to vote in their upcoming November general election. Then I’ll just need to certify I completed the project with the Environmental Voter Project and then mail them on the designated day this month. 

Saturday I went to a new-to-me native plant nursery with 2 friends. I bought 6 plants.

Well, I guess it was only a matter of time before this happened. As you may have noticed, I am very health- and nutrition-conscious. About 5 years ago, I bought a countertop glass water pitcher with a charcoal filter in it that’s supposed to filter out certain things, but who knows if it really is?

So after reading a lot about microplastics, nanoplastics and PFAs (forever chemicals), I decided to spring for a decidedly more expensive reverse osmosis system that’s supposed to be highly effective at filtering out a bunch of stuff, including what I’ve just mentioned.

I was hoping to have the whole thing assembled on Saturday, but hit a stumbling block when I tried to prime the 2 filters but could not fit the rubber gasket thingie they provide onto the end of my modern kitchen faucet, so the alternative way to prime the filters is to soak them in water for 8 hours, which I did.

The good thing is that I only will have to do this once a year, cus that’s how long the filters last. And next time, I will know to plan ahead so it’s not an inconvenience. But then when I did the red dye test, to make sure the filters are working as they should, well, only about a tablespoon of water percolated thru one filter, and none from the other. It's possible I overtightened the nut on the ends of filters, or maybe they're not really primed? At this point, I want to call customer service regarding next steps, and due to the holiday, that won't happen til Tuesday.

Anyway, I’ll be excited to get this system working and see how or if it changes the taste of my water, which is supposed to retain whatever beneficial minerals it already has.

This week I reviewed Kiva loans from Phillippines and Kenya, many for people wanted about $175 for a sanitary toilet. Many of the borrower photos show the borrower standing in a thatched hut or sometimes an outhouse built of cinder blocks. It will have the toilet itself but there is no plumbing. I have often wondered how they make do and I guess they must dig a pit in the ground under the toilet (?) and use a bucket of water to wash it all down. In any event, it's a good example of how a relatively small amount of money can be life-changing for someone living where the average annual income is about $4,000.

I visited a native plant garden nursery in my area with a friend who is as passionate about native plants as I am. She's chair of my town's conservation commission, and also serves on the same board as I do that promotes awareness of Japanese knotweed and how damaging to the environment it is.

I enjoyed walking around and talking plants with her. I bought a Pearly everlasting. (I always enjoy the names of these plants.) The next day, I dug up 2 smallish beds here that contained lily of the valley (spreading into my lawn after enjoying itself since before I moved here) and a daisy that was pretty for a brief week or two but rarely attracted pollinators. I'd like to get 2 more pearly everlasting to fill in that bed.

The other bed, nearby, is shaded for most of the day by large rhododendrons, so while I haven't yet settled on what to plant there, I'm thinking maybe great blue lobelia, maybe with some geranium maculatum. I have a small patch of the lobelia and it's doing great, but probably gets too much sun in its current location.

Here's a picture I took last night of a bumblebee bedded down for the night inside a lobelia flower. It closely resembles how I would feel after a long day at work. It is said that male bumblebees, which do not return to the nest after leaving, often bunk down at night in the flowers they are foraging on, both for protection from predators and also for warmth.

We're in the middle of some very nice weather here in New England so I've been spending more time catching up on yard work. Which means other things get ignored, like house cleaning.

I was doing well avoiding poison ivy rash until early August. I vaguely remember something barely brushing up against my forearm, and I remember even better scrubbing the area with Dawn dish soap, which I'd read was just as effective as specially formulated products like Tec-nu in preventing the rash. But it didn't work. I also have it on the top of one foot, which really puzzles me since I always wear socks and boots. Anyway, neither spot looks like it's spreading at all.

I heard back from my agent on auto and home insurance. As I was anticipating, no one can really beat my current insurer. I get a lot of discounts with them, the biggest being roughly $230 for having driven around with a tracker for 6 months several years ago to earn a permanent discount that transferred to my new car. I was also able to save $112 on the auto by increasing the deductible, which I'd thought was already high, but that must've been a different policy. (I wouldn't mind driving with the tracker again in an effort to earn a higher discount, but I think I already asked about that at some  point and they said no.) They gave me the same option with the home (increase my deductible), but i decided the savings I would achieve there wasn't worth the risk of having to pony up $5k if a tree falls on my house. With the ever-increasing ferocity of these storms, it doesn't sound like a remote possibiity.

So if you're curious, I'm paying $916 on the homeowners and $900-something on the car. Both those prices seem sky high to me but I know as soon as I say that others will tell me they're paying substantially more. 

We're on day 1 of another heat wave here in New England...the 4th? I went to Stop & Shop and Aldi's this morning, then sat in on a meeting of one of my groups that I volunteer with, then went to the gym but could only eke out 15 minutes on the treadmill.

The End

So, very recently I was actually toying with the idea of getting a very part-time job, just for a little pocket money. I retired in the spring of 2023 and by all accounts I will be perfectly fine, financially, but I can't help feeling a little stressed by constantly rising prices on just about everything, and it makes me feel a little insecure.

Every time I use a calculator, and also, Dido from this site tells me this, I will have about $7,000 a month in income for the rest of my life. This boggles my mind. Me, a lifetime frugalite. But I think that's once I start collecting Social Security, which won't happen for another 4 years, so I do feel cautious about going on a spending spree.

Then I was having a phone conversation with an old friend who is heading to Berlin for a few weeks with his wife this fall (so very, very jealous) but was having a hard time finding someone to look after his dog. I volunteered, and so I have my first pet-sitting gig that should yield about $500. They are very well off, like, the top 5% based on net worth, but he tells me $30 a day is on the low end for pet sitting services. They are coming up next week to leave their dog with me for a few hours so the dog becomes acquainted with my home before the 2-week visit.

This should be interesting. I have not owned or lived with a dog since I was a child. I imagine that by the end of the dog's visit, I will know for sure whether I might like to get my own dog (a retirement dream for many years during my working life and having cats) or not.

The dog is used to going outside to pee like around 6 am, which is a little early for me, and then the last outside visit would be 10 or 11. It might get a little old, but we shall see. By all accounts, she's a very well-behaved and easy to care for doggie. We have met before.  I don't have a fenced in yard and I don't really feel I want to walk the dog in the yard because there are always ticks around here; so I'll have to get in the car and driving a short distance to a nearby, better manicured park.

Also along the lines of making extra money, I'm currently working on 2 different credit cards for various rewards. I'm just about done with the spend requirement on the one card, which will give me $250 in credits for entertainment stuff. Which is fine, cus I've wanted to focus more on doing FUN stuff in my retirement at the same time I'm a bit concerned about rising costs.

The 2nd card could give me as much as $100 if I charge I think 50 purchases of $10 or more on it by August 31. I have no idea how many purchases I charge among all my cards, but it's a lot.  There are very few things I'm unable to charge, like my lawn mower guy, my property taxes and stuff like that. And I'm paying closer attention to the higher cash rewards different cards offer for different kinds of purchases, something I never could be bothered to pay attention to before. So yeah, I'm always using my Discover card this quarter at gas stations for 5% cash back.

My auto and homeowners policies are set to renew this month. They have both increased again this year, though I have a perfect record with no claims. I know it's based on other drivers and homeowners. I asked my agent if she thought the price hike for the car was reasonable, something I was having trouble determining since I just bought a new, more expensive vehicle in January. So she offered to shop it around to see if I could do better somewhere else. I'm not expecting another insurer to outdo Progressive though. I've been with them maybe 4 years now?

I recently purchased a cordless, rechargeable fan, about 8" diameter, and I love it! Being cord-free means I'm free to use it anywhere I like, including outside, which I may try at some point when I'm doing yard work. Although I don't often stay in one place. But maybe sitting on my patio under the umbrella table would be a good place to use it.

I had a birthday recently and my cousin wanted to send me flowers a few days before my birthday. When she called me on the day of my birthday, she asked if I'd received them, which I did not, and when she called 1-800-flowers they said it was delivered and gave her a time of delivery (but no photo). They promised to deliver them to me the next day, so I hung around here all day, but again, no flowers. She called them again and this time they admitted they didn't have the right flowers for what she had ordered, and promised to deliver today. Why would they lie the first time? I finally got them today. This florist isn't even located in my town, so that to me would be the first mistake, to tell a florist 20 minutes from you to make my delivery. Oh well. They ARE nice flowers.

I pulled out my 2 cucumber plants since they had succumbed to insects, but I did get about 20 cukes out of them. And now in their place I've planted a late summer crop of snow peas. In a few weeks, I'll pull out the first bed of string beans I planted, which are nearing the end of their productive life, and plant lettuce.

I always feel good when I can increase the weight I lift, pull or push at the gym. Today, I was able to increase the weight I'm lifting when doing Romanian deadlifts to 65 lbs. I hope to lift much more than that eventually.

I hit BJs this morning, then the dump and the gym this afternoon. Tomorrow, I'm taking my dad to physical therapy, and then to lunch at a cute country spot we used to love but then it closed. It's reopened as a Mexican fusion type place, much more casual than we usually eat but I think it's worth going just for the location, and actually, when I had lunch there with a friend following a protest rally this past Saturday, my chicken burrito was really very good. It's just that neither of us likes to order sandwiches or other foods you have to eat with your hands at a restaurant, him because it can be messy and me because I'm touching a lot of other stuff that grosses me out.

On the subject of the protest rally, this was one of the nicest groups of people I have yet to meet at any demonstration. This town is a very rural but wealthy country town, and the overall size of the group was modest, maybe about 35 or 40 people, but then again, its population is only about 2200 people. I just had some very nice conversations with different individuals, and all were very welcoming. 

I need to pick up the pace on my postcard writing for the Environmental Voter Project. I have 6 sheets of names and addresses, with each sheet having about 33 names. I have just a little over 6 weeks to write them all before they must be mailed, so that means one sheet a week. I am behind right now, but still have 3 more days.

I discovered weeds growing in my gutter in front. Wow. I never have that gutter cleaned out cus it has metal mesh covers on it but apparently, stuff does get in there. Have to see if my handyman might be able to do that for me. He's back from vacation in Maine soon.

Tomorrow I'm going to another rally with a new friend, this time in a different town, a country town. Then we'll hit the small deli down the road for an ice cream that happens to come from a farm here in my town, which I don't get to enjoy that often becus there is always a long line unless you go during a thunderstorm. 

It is with great sadness that I report the demise of my cucumber plants, due to cucumber beetle. The cucumbers were coming fast and furious. I got about 10 of them although 2 went soft in my fridge becus i couldn't keep up with eating them. 

The same may happen with my yellow squash and zucchini although so far, so good. Stringbeans have begun producing and I'm just waiting for the green tomatoes to ripen. I was at Tractor Supply today and bought some lettuce seed and snow pea seeds for a late summer crop that I may plant in late August.

This week in my Kiva volunteer work nearly all the loans I reviewed were the same (a little unusual). They were all from women in Pakistan wanting a loan to purchase a buffalo, to add to their herd used for milking and selling milk. I felt sorry for the buffalo: all were quite gaunt and underweight.

It's been an awful couple of weeks with continued high heat and humidity. But it's all getting washed out of here by strong rain tomorrow, just in time for what we're told will be a wonderful weekend followed by more temperate and pleasant summertime temps in the 80s all next week.

So I can catch up on some much-needed yardwork. I see weeds everywhere, for one thing.

Brought my father to the periodontist last week and the dentist broke his crown. This was the 2nd time it broke. She also informed me he has 2 cavities. We were able to get that all taken care of at his regular dentist today. They didn't charge for the crown, but even with his dental discount plan, he still paid $500 for the fillings.

Next week after his physical therapy I have to take him to TJ Maxx. He had brought 2 pairs of what had to be 30-year-old, dirty, stained pants with him when I picked him up today, and he wanted to have a tailor take the waist in becus they are too big. I had to persuade him it wasn't worth the cost and it would be better to buy new, but the last few pairs of pants i got him on amazon didn't fit. I just hope the local TJ Maxx will have his size. It's going to take him forever to try them on since he uses a walker and I don't think there will be seats in the dressing rooms. 

I've revved up my weight training routine in recent weeks with Romanian deadlifts. Sounds exotic, doesn't it? I like these becus they do not bother my knees, since you're lifting with your glutes in your butt. I started with 2 20 lb hand weights and progressed to just lifting the long bar, which is 45 lbs, and now I'm doing 55 lbs. I hope to get up to 110 lbs to replicate a well known study.

I have totally revamped the website of one of my volunteer groups after assuming control of it from a board member who stopped coming to our meetings a year ago. I had no idea I could do so much with it, but I've really enhanced the design and attractiveness of it and added major new content. Everyone is very happy with it. I have a background as a writer, not website publishing, but I've certainly worked with many designers/developers, so I knew the kinds of things I wanted to do and just was able to figure it out. 

I enjoyed it. So much so that I started wondering if I should try to find some very part time work somewhere doing something fun. Cus lately, with the cost of everything going up, I feel a little insecure not making any income. It would need to be local and need to be no more than maybe 10 hours a week max. I have a feeling I won't find anything interesting but I'm sort of keeping an eye out.

But it would be nice to make a little pocket money. I've observed how well my handyman, a guy who recently retired, does doing odd jobs for mostly single women in town. I myself have hired him probably 6 times already. His price was great to start, but recently he raised his rates, though I still think he's pretty reasonable. Most recently he cut down one large trunk of a paper birch that was leaning low in my yard after just becoming too big, I guess. Just $70.  A tree guy would charge more. He's helped me put together a large obelisk type thing in my garden, build a platform for my washer/dryer...he's coming over Saturday to install a new rack in my garage to hold some heavy duty hooks I bought for all my cordless landscaping tools and other stuff. The garage needs organzing. 

I committed to writing 200 postcards to remind environmentally leaning voters in Virginia to vote in the general election there this fall. A friend from one of my groups is going to help me by doing 25 of them, which I'll drop off this weekend. It's basically just 2 sentences on the postcard, plus their name/address, but it's going to take me more time than I realized. They have to be mailed on a specific day in September. 

I've had some communication from a web guy from this site and he has informed me that he's fixed the issue where you lose everything you write when trying to post. Let me know if it's still a problem for you.

Geez, these Chase offers are getting into serious money...

Of course, they want serious money, too, which won't be forthcoming.

Tempting to think about though.

I went to one of those retirement planning programs last night. They always talk about Roth conversions. Which I understand can be very helpful in reducing taxes you'll pay once RMDs begin, but I don't think they're necessary for everyone, and they didn't mention scenarios where they wouldn't make sense.

There's a John Lewis/anti-Trump rally tonight, the first one I'll be skipping. It will be a muggy 90 degrees here at 6:30 pm, when the rally starts. It's just too darn hot.

This is a Great spangled fritillary on purple coneflower.

Liatris (blazing star) with black eyed susies.

I got a new Shark vac and tried it out today. Pros: It's definitely better picking up stuff on both bare floors and rugs than what I had, and I like the easy empty feature. It automatically adjusts its setting after detecting whether I'm doing a rug or floor so I don't have to keep pressing buttons.

Cons: It acts like a self-propelled Ninja on rugs. Kind of like a dog pulling on a leash. It's pretty loud, so I'll continue using headphone thingies. It's also still fairly heavy, but I guess you can't have it all. 

I brought my Toyota in for its very first, 6-month service, which will be free (ToyotaCares) for I think the first 2 years? 10 years? I'll have to doublecheck. But at this juncture, all they did was top off fluids, rotate the tires and reinsert a small plastic cover that I accidentally dislodged that goes over one of the license plate lights in the back.

Door project done!

I'm happy to say the front entry is now finally done, both the main door and the storm door. The installer was here this morning. He has a very interesting background and I enjoyed talking to him because he's very personable. He was born in Marseilles, France,, but came to the US and was in the Army for 8 years. He's been installing mostly Andersen doors for 18 years and says he loves his work. He's very excited because he's leaving tomorrow for a 2-week vacay to St. Lucia, where his mother lives.

Anyway, I really like this storm door. As mentioned, I got this model because it has glass and screen panels that stay in the door and all you have to do is slide it up or down. The small sacrifice is that the screen is just for the top half of the door, (not the full length) but I am fine with that as it mean not having to carry or store the heavy glass insert back and forth from the basement in the spring and then in fall. It's also better if I ever get another cat again since they won't be able to scratch the screen.

This storm door and its install will be much cheaper than the main door was. The main door cost $2,000 and its install was $1100. Yup. It's shocking how expensive everything is. The storm door install will be just $140 and he said he would give me a break on the cost of the storm door, too. I'm not sure how he can do that, but if he can, great. Otherwise, the normal cost of it was almost $500.

This is the last of my major (major to me) home improvements for this year. The only thing I have to do is some painting on both inside and outside trim. I think I'll wait til cooler weather to do this, like September.

Tonight I'll be traveling to another town to meet up with another board member from my litter group to help a different group in a cleanup. I like to take lots of pix to post on social media before and after each event.

Bummer.

Today was the day Home Depot was to install the new Andersen storm door with retractible glass/screen in the door (not interchangeable, where you have to physically remove one or the other). The arrival window they gave me was 11 am to 3 pm. They got here after 5 due to some delays and they brought the door up, still packaged. Thank god we chit chatted about the door and I discovered the door they brought didn't have the retractable feature which is what really sold me on the door because it would eliminate the need to drag the heavy glass insert up from the basement each time I changed it in spring and then again in fall. I was able to show him my original order on my phone; he said the guy at Home Depot gave him the wrong door. 

So he will try to return with the right door, hopefully on Friday cus he's on vacation next week.

A young woman is supposed to come over tonight with her fiance and truck to take a Victorian couch I got from Buy Nothing a few years ago and decided I don't want. They are moving into their first apartment together and need everything. I could have posted it as a regift on Buy Nothing, but I didn't want to hurt the feelings of the person who originally gifted it to me, should she see the post, so this way, I don't have to do that.

The heat is still brutal here. Even at the gym, where it's air conditioned, I could barely do 15 minutes on the treadmill. No doubt my electric bill will spike cus I've had the central air on quite a bit. The highest I can bear is 78 degrees but it's usually set at 77. The problem is that while the downstairs usually feels ok, the upstairs always feels a good 5 degrees warmer. I always say I'm going to sleep downstairs, but I never do.

Tomorrow is dad day: physical therapy, probably the bank and then lunch, hopefully at one of our favorite cafes, which is closing this week. They have plans to redevelop part of the center of town and possibly related to that, the landlord jacked up the rent, forcing the restaurant owner to make plans to leave. It's a very cozy place where he literally knows everyone by name, just like in Cheers. He will come over to your table and lovingly recite all the ingredients in his different dishes. There's not really a menu; it's all verbal. The food is good, the portions are huge and the price is reasonable. And it's in a very picturesque area where you can sit outside on a deck that overlooks a river. And he always serves you a pair of complimentary mini cannolis for dessert. He really makes you feel taken care of there and I'll be so sad to see it go.

There is a decent chance of rain overnight so I'm going to skip watering the garden. A welcome break. 

What's growing in the garden
The garden is reaping benefits. I've been enjoying lots of green/red lettuce for a while now, and it is only now starting to bolt.  I will miss it!  

I've also been picking small zucchinis, yellow squash and cucumbers. Not sure how long the zucchini will last as it's beset by cucumber beetles that I pick off when I can, and the leaves are riddled with tiny holes, but I don't feel comfortable spraying Neem as I noticed bumblebees nesting at one of the raised bed.

I decided to underplant everything becus in the past I squeezed in too many plants in 3 4 x 4 raised beds and they grew so much i had trouble even getting in there. So I just have 1 yellow squash, 1 zucchini, 2 cucumber plants, a row of lettuce, a row of string beans just starting to flower and 4 tomato plants.

Really, the one disappointment so far is the tomatoes, which I consider my most important crop. I only planted 2 initially, but we had an unusually cold spring, so while they were alive, they appeared stunted. I bought 2 more and just added them without pulling the original 2 out in case the first 2 recovered. So of the 4 plants i currently have, only 1 appears to be the right size for this time of year.

Next Day Trip
My "one fun thing" this week will be a trip to visit Wickham Park, which seems to have a ton of stuff to see (aviary, arboretum, many different gardens, nature musuem) and yet I hadn't ever heard of this place until about a year ago. It's about an hour away but no tolls.

Kiva Loans
This week I reviewed Kiva loan profiles for borrowers in Jordan, Kenya, Phillippines, Tonga and Uganda. 

Any Cordless Vac Recommendations?
I need a new vacuum.  I have a cheap cordless stick vacuum that only does a very modest job on bare floors and is not really good at all on rugs, but that's okay since I have just a few area rugs and a backup vac. I LOVE the cordless but need something more powerful but still lightweight.

I also have a corded canister vacuum which is VERY powerful but also pretty heavy and loud so I don't like to use it.  

Based on reading a zillion reviews, I've come to the conclusion that a good cordless vac doesn't exist and will settle for a corded one as long as it's 1) lightweight and 2) powerful "enough." I don't need it to suck up everything within a 5 foot radius and sound like a fighter jet, but it should be strong enough. If you have one you really like, let me know!

I had a nice little day trip to New Paltz, NY as planned. It was a guided tour of Historic Huguenot Street, an area occupied by the Lenape Indians up until the 1600s when the Dutch and French settled there, with their slaves.  There were just 3 of us on the tour.  Here are a few pix I took.

The Lenapi Indians were widespread in the NY/NJ area, and in fact they occupied the town in New Jersey I grew up in, at Ramapo Mountain. I went to high school with so-called Jackson Whites who were said to be descendants of the Lenapi and/or fugitive slaves, and who were somewhat ostracized. Today they are a recognized tribe with about 5,000 members.

My goal is to plan at least one "fun" thing to do every week. This week I'm thinking of asking a woman I know out to lunch at one of my favorite cafes in town which is closing this week. She is someone in town who gave me some plants from her garden a few years ago, and theN we met again in the gym last week and started talking to each other without realizing we had met before. 

I had my front door installed 2 weeks ago. The door is beautiful but there were issues with its installation like a pretty prominent scratch on the front that I guess I'm stuck with. The worst thing is the way they left my storm door. I have an old Andersen storm door I thought i could keep, but it doesn't work with the new door as they could not screw in screws for the molding so they were flush. Hard to explain but you can see screws half screwed in up and down either side of the storm door molding.  It looks terrible. Installers said they warned Home Depot about this and that Home Depot "should have" warned me, but they didn't. 

So I plunked down more money, about $600 on a new storm door, which I was excited about since it solves another problem for me: instead of having interchangeable glass and screen inserts, like my current door, this one has glass and screen that stays in the door itself, so no more heavy lugging of a full size glass insert up the basement stairs twice a year.

Installer guy said he would pick up. I started getting automated reminders from Home Depot that the storm door needs to be picked up. I texted the Installer company and he said don't worry, they're just reminders. Well, yesterday i got another message from Home Depot saying your order has been cancelled because no one picked up. Installer guy hasn't responded to me message. the job was scheduled to be done this Wednesday. I'll have to call Home Depot tomorrow. Super annoyed. I already left a bad review. 

I went to another rally/protest in a neighboring small town on Saturday. Probably about 100 people.

The End

I've had a few more grocery price surprises. Today, I managed to get out, drive the 15 minutes or so it takes to get to BJs, and get home by a little after 9 am. Trying to beat the heat, which will reach 95 degrees today.

The "surprise" is discovering that Stop & Shop charges MORE than Whole Foods for organic oranges. Oranges are heavily sprayed, so I like to buy organic.  They are currently $5.99 for a 4 lb bag at Whole Foods and $6.99 for a 3 lb bag at Stop & Shop.

Here's another example: 1 lb of baby bok choy is just $2.79 (organic) at Whole Foods, but costs $6.99 for 1 lb (not organic) at Stop & Shop. That's a crazy difference!

At my BJs trip this morning, I noticed they LOWERED some prices since last time I shopped. I know this is routine as summer approaches and fresh produce becomes "in season," but it was the Wellesley Farm brand of Greek yogurt that also dropped.

The masonry crew finished the basement walls yesterday. I was SO glad when they left. Even though they were in the basement, I could clearly hear them talking (in Spanish) from my 2nd floor office, with various noises, etc. What really upset me was that in the process of cleaning up, one of them chose to use a gas-powered blower on my driveway. They did create a lot of dust with the cement mixing out there, but they cleared the whole driveway. I had 2 small parsley plants out there with baby black swallowtail caterpillars. The caterpillars were literally blown away and I'm sure died. The other thing was, they cleared a whole lot of groundcovers that were growing along the edges of the driveway, against my stone walls, plus some beautiful ground phlox that took many years to grow into a large clump. I liked the way they softened the look of the stone walls and paver driveway. All blown away. Very upsetting.

Continuing the tradition of contractors always causing some kind of damage or work for me, this crew splattered concrete on my brand new hot water heater, the oil furnace, my water tank, my kayak and even the pump for the water tank, plus copper piping. There was dust everywhere. Concrete smeared on my outdoor faucet handles, one of which is now hard to turn, I think becus concrete dust got inside the mechanism. 

I spent a lot of time wiping a lot of concrete and dust off stuff, but I'm not done.

Now that I am cat-less, I would really like to make the basement as clean and dust-free as possible, partly to protect the new hot water heater, which has a filter at the top that i clean every month, but also just to be cleaner. I need to think about how best to reduce the dust. I think a household vacuum with hepa filters would still be ruined by vacuuming up fine dust. (I learned that once and had to have the vacuum repaired.) I do have a shop vac but is that going to blow the dust around? I think it would. I guess wiping with damp rags would be best; i don't even own a mop, but maybe I'll get one at $ store. 

Remaining projects for 2025: I ran a load of wash at the "normal" spin cycle setting and it still seemed to be vibrating too much on its new stand. The clothes were still extremely wrung out of water, though, which is good. Next I want to run a load on the "low" spin cycle to see if that noticeably reduces the vibrations. If not, I'll ask the handyman to return and help me slip a half-inch foam yoga mat i no longer use under the washing machine. I may also call Samsung and ask for suggestions. I mean, I love the new stand the handymay built for me, and I want to be able to use it!

Also need to call an appliance guy about a possible leak with my dishwasher, which i haven't used for over a year.

Then there are my father's projects. I have to bring him back out to the  notary at library again to redo notarization on his letter cus bank said i left off a "0" that appeared on his statement with a space after it, so I didn't think it was part of his account number. Notary has not called me back yet. He was on vacation, but i think that was just last week.

The talking watch i got my father a year or two ago is talking very faintly now. It needs a new battery. Rather than me fiddling with it and just getting frustrated, I want to bring it to a jeweler, who will charge $15 to do it, although i have purchased the battery for it.

I made a reservation for myself next week for a guided walking tour of Historic Heugonot Street in New Paltz, over an hour's drive for me. I've passed through that area and the homes are beautiful. The area was originally founded in 1894 by descendants of the first settlers. The tour includes going inside 5 or 6 of the houses, settled by French/Dutch, I believe, and also a 1717 French church and cemetery. It should be interesting.

There are a lot of things of interest to me within a 2-hour drive that I have never gotten around to seeing, so I plan to start making "fun" daytrip stuff more of a priority. There's more to life than grocery shopping and home projects.

My mason was supposed to finish up the basement walls today, but was MIA. He said he'll be here tomorrow.

It's very easy for me to waste an entire day basically reading stuff online. So, since we're in an awful heat wave and I don't plan on going out except to the gym after lunch, I decided to do more decluttering. I really can't stand living with so much stuff around that really has no place to go (but OUT) in my small (1650 sf) home. 

It often drives me nuts. I really like the concept of "Every thing has its place." That has hardly been the case here for 10 years, really since my mother passed. I've been gradually letting go of her things for the past 10 years but I just wish I coud speed up the process. Plus just the fact that having lived in one spot for 30 years tends to encourage "accumulation."

So today I chose to tackle clothing. This one's hard for me. I look at things in my closet, some of it not worn for YEARS (like dress clothes), and I say, well, it's a little stretched out but I can layer it under something. Or, it's something I wore to the office, but maybe I'l need it. Or, I bought this in the last few years, but it was a "mistake" and now if I get rid of it I'll never "recoup" the loss. And so on and so on.

I was able to purge 15 pieces of clothing, plus a Mexican blanket and a pair of sneakers. I think I could do more, clothing-wise, but I also hate to waste money. Still untouched are 2 homemade things that don't fit me, but my grandmother made: a robe and a sweater. Also 2 or 3 items that belonged to my mother that also don't fit me but were in her favorite color: turquoise. I still get emotional contemplating getting rid of them. People say just take a picture, but that would not really make it any easier. I don't know what they're going to take.

Over the weekend I decided to offer my big chair and a half on Buy Nothing. I've had it forever and am just tired of it, and am generally trying to lighten my load before I possibly move within the next few years. It's in very good shape and has washable cushions. Right after posting it, I saw a nice oak bench with cushion that someone was offering, and I jumped on it.

Sigh. i brought it home. But only one person expressed interest in the chair (maybe the timing is bad due to the heat wave) but turns out she has no one to help her carry it, and I have a bad knee. So she passed on it, even after I offered to ask for help on our local town group, where people will occasionally ask for a ride or help of some sort, and get it.

So now I've made things worse by adding a bench I have nowhere to put. I'm my own worst enemy.

I could wait til fall and post the chair and a half again. That often works. 

I have been gifting lots of other stuff these past few weeks, mostly stuff from the attic, where I have tons of art and even just frames I probably will never use. 

Also today I was in the linen closet and gifted piles of standard sized pillowcases, which I don't need because I now use 2 longer length pillows, which I just prefer. (I kept a few of the standard size for the fold-up twin bed guests very occasionally use.) I must've gifted 25 pillowcases! So now the linen closet only looks "moderately" stuffed instead of "greatly" stuffed.

I want things to look SPACIOUS so when potential homebuyers come, it will be more inviting. I mean, I am one person, yet my clothes take up 3 closets (1 in each bedroom). Then I have 2 linen closets upstairs: one has nothing but sheets, blankets and a bulky comforter (plus my vacuum and 2 hampers) and the other holds towels mostly, plus winter scarves, hats and purses. I just have too much of everything!

I think I'll take a break for lunch.

PS I recently communicated wtih "Jon" from this site and told him about the main SA glitch I've encountered: how you will often lose your entire post upon hitting the Publish button. Long ago I got into the habit of saving all the content as a precaution, but anyway, he said he would fix that; if you have any other issues, let me know, or just send a message yourself.