Save More, Spend Less

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.

.

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.

Early spring was a little frustrating because I couldn't seem to get any of my planned on home maintenance jobs going.

Now, things are moving along. 

After the back stone stairs were rebuilt last week, my vinyl siding guy has arrived today and is working to replace siding where 2 small holes were made during 2 different storms. In the last storm, the Internet wires were literally ripped out of the side of my house! The 1st hole appeared the day after a bad storm years back (I've kept it sealed from weather and insects with color-matching duct tape) so I have to assume a tree branch somehow hit it at just the right angle to actually puncture it.

He said he would not bill me for doing this (!) because I've been chasing after him since April and he kept saying he would be here and then he wasn't. However, I decided I should pay him for his work and didn't really feel right about it; it was only $220 that he asked for. It involves removing siding from the bottom of the north side of my house (that people don't often look at) and using that siding to the vinyl with the holes so that the color matches more closely; otherwise, natural fading of the vinyl from sunlight would really make the new siding obvious, especially since the one hole is right above the garage door.

So I told him I would pay him and he said don't worry about it and that it would make him happier if I left a good review for him.

Another project I felt I should do to get this house ready for possible sale down the road was to recoat my concrete basement walls. This is an old house, and some of the concrete you can even scrape off as dust with your finger. I thought crumbling concrete is not a good look.

I had my old mason (Alex) do 2 walls, in 2 different years becus it was expensive. And not long after he did it, I got lots of hairline cracks in the concrete, as well as some unsightly discoloration.  When I showed that to him, he didn't really seem to have any solution for it.

Now, my new favorite mason (Jeff) who just did the stone stairs outside gave me a price to recoat the 2 remaining baement walls for a price that is actually less than half the cost of what Alex charged me for 1 wall! And he knew why the hairline cracks had appeared, and said the solution was to apply a coat of a type of primer first. The discoloration can't really be helped, but he said he/I could, after the concrete dries, apply Dry Lock to cover up the discoloration. His charge for the Dry Lock application was $800, which seemed like a lot, so I may try to do it myself. I've done it before, but it's messy becus it has a consistency of water, so drips all over the place.

He told me unexpectedly he could do that job possibly starting today. (As it is, the siding guys are here and I need time to clear areas in the basement anyway.) But I want to get it done fairly soon becus in our conversations he mentioned he is 50 and will retire in about 5 years, so I'm thinking i want to get any remaining masonry projects done before he retires, becus his prices are great.

The front door install happens next Friday. The only other remaining maintenance thing I want to do this year is have an appliance guy come over to check my dishwasher for a possible leak; I haven't used it in a while becus it smelled mildewy when I was using it.

Oh, and Tabs, if you're reading this far, you wanted to know if cayenne pepper worked to keep the chipmunks out of my raised beds. Short answer is no. They still have an entry hole at the bottom/outside of one of raised beds but I have liberally been shaking the pepper on the soil on top where I'm growing veggies. The chipmunk is still digging around here and there but the digging is not too keep and he is not treating it as an entry hole that goes all the way down. I consider it an uneasy truce; as long as he doesn't ruin my veggie plants and stays in the ground, not the raised beds. I got a large container of cayenne pepper at BJs but it cost $8 and that stuff goes fast when you're sprinkling it like I am. Each time it rains, it washes some of it away, and even just watering the plants while trying to avoid wetting the pepper is not really doable. 

My stone mason...or rather, 2 very hardworking Latino men....probably undocumented aliens that rumpty dumpety has such a problem with....finished rebuilding my stone stairs today. The stairs are at the top of my driveway and lead to the backyard and back patio. It's beautiful, and I think they did a great job. I had them put in a drain at the top to divert water rushing off my back patio into a brushy area instead of down the stairs. When I pay him the second half tomorrow, he'll show me how to lift the grill cover with a screwdriver, I think, but said I could just rinse any leaves that may get stuck in there with a hose.

There's a fairly large area to the left where they trenched the drainage pipe through an overgrown bed of lily of the valley, which I've long wanted to get rid of, so this kind of helped. I may have just assigned myself my next job. I will plant grass in the part where my mower mows, but try to find a nice native groundcover for underneath the shade of the rhododendrons here if pulling out the lily of valley that remains isn't too much.

Anyway, I observed during the past 3 days that my contractor was wholly absent from the job site except for dumping off stone, which was hand cut by his men, and gravel, for the drainpipe. I was ok with that because I could see these 2 guys knew what they were doing. So after running out this morning to help my father get a notarized letter to close a bank account (big hassle I'll explain later), on the way home, I squeezed in a gym workout and then stopped at my bank to get some money to tip both men. The contractor's price was very reasonable compared to the 2 or 3 other bids I got, so I felt fine tipping his men, something I don't normally do.

However, when I got back home, they had finished the job, cleaned up the whole job site and had left already, so I texted the contractor, told him they did a great job and asked if his men were still in the area as I wanted to personally thank them. No, they were not in the area, but he said if I was thinking of tipping them, I could put the tips in an envelope and he told me their first names, and he would take them tomorrow when I pay him.

OK, so...This is the first time I've hired this guy. I imagine that giving him envelopes for his men that he knows are tips might be a temptation to open the envelopes and pocket it himself? He's done nothing to make me question him, but I just don't know and I want to be sure my $$ goes to the intended recipients. So I decided to type a short thank you note, in Spanish, along with a brief request for them to text me at my cell # to let me know they received it. I figure if the boss man opens it up, he'll see the note and realize he has to give it to them or I'll know he took it. I hate for him to find out I don't fully trust him, but if he DOES open the envelopes, then I'll have good reason to not trust him (!), and if he DOESNT open the envelopes, then he'll never know, they will get their tips, hopefully they'll confirm that and all will be well.

Am I too mistrusting?

Now that this has been done, I immediately texted my vinyl siding guy to let him know he could come to do the repair of 2 small holes whenever he could. He was all set to start this past Monday, and then out of the blue the stone mason contacted me and said he was ready to begin work the next day at 7 am. He had been totally incognito since I had first met with him back in April. So I had to ask the siding guy to stand by. Which I HATED to do becus the siding guy, after failing to do the job after promising to do so 2 or 3 times, finally volunteered that he would do it for free and seemed to be truly on the verge of actually doing it. In return, I said I would sing his praises on social media.

But having to ask him to wait was not a great move since now there's not much incentive for him to follow through. I may have to offer to pay him anyway, just to get him to do it.

Meanwhile, the door installation is still waiting in the wings but has been scheduled for the week after next week. I will be so happy to get that done.

The issue with my father closing his bank account related to a Santander checking account he opened when he was still living in another state. They have a lot of offices there, but the one closest to where he lives now with my sister is a good 45-minute highway drive. Since he doesn't drive, it falls on me to ferry him around whenever he has a need, and it was getting old having to schlep up there, so the last time I was there with him maybe 2 years ago, I suggested he close the account and open an account in the town where he resides. He declined, and I told I would not be driving him up there again becus there was no need to maintain that account. He didn't care, but now he does, and he's got a 6-figure balance earning 0% in a redundant checking account there.

He tried to close the account on his own but could not do it because he doesn't have the right kind of personal identification. They need one "primary" ID with a photo which ususally consists of a driver's license, military ID or a 3rd option, which I think was something that was also either state of federal-government-issued. Then the "secondary" ID can be any number of things, like a utility bill, signed credit card, etc.

The problem is that my father is legally blind now so he hasn't driven a vehicle in years and his driver's license expired a long time ago. He has trouble walking and uses a walker. He lost his SS card a few years ago and we never found it; replacing it means a trip to local SS office and I really try to minimize all the trips. He has a bad habit, when going to a doctor's office, of just handing them all the cards in his wallet because he can't see which are his Medicare/Medigap cards. I'm not always right there to find them for him since I usually drop him off as close to the front entrance as possible, then go and park the car while he walks in there. I tried getting a handicap plaque for my car, but once again was stymied by state requirements and gave up.

Since he rents from my sister, he doesn't have utility bills sent to his name. What he DOES have is a VA ID card, which has his photo and an expiration date. You would think this would be acceptable, but it is not. Pulling my hair out at this point. Surely, these banks have had other elderly customers in similar situations. 

Then my father started saying he wanted to change the address on the bank statements while I had the bank on speaker phone, and I had to shush him because banks are so careful about fraud, so someone emptying out a large account and THEN saying oh, i also need to change the address, well, that would really be a big red flag.

My father has had his mail going to his son's address out of state.  I knew the bank would never want to change the address while closing out the account, and given my father's lack of identiification and sloppy, no, non-existent record-keeping, I don't see a way around it. My father has made things very difficult and has not given any of his 4 children power of attorney, which would have totally avoided all this hassle. 

I do everything for my father, from clipping his finger nails and cutting his hair/facial hair to bringing him to physical therapy (he wants to go weekly "for the rest of my life") and doctors (dentists every 3 months), lunch out every week as I am his sole provider of "recreation" or just getting out of his little studio. My sister cooks him dinner and does his grocery shopping, and that is it.  It's just too much at times. His place is a disaster but he is too cheap to hire housecleaners; he allows me to change his bedsheets and vacuum, but that's it.  My sister sees the mess every night when she brings him dinner, but walks right out the door again. 

So Santander stood firm with their policies, designed to prevent fraud but in actuality prevents valid account holders from accessing their money. The rep finally told me I could mail them a notarized letter requesting them to close the account and mail him a check. Which was nice to know; when I brought my father to PT this week, he gave me an attorney's business card and told me to make him an appointment, which I would not do until I knew why, which pissed him off to no end, but I stood firm, so he told he wanted to hire the attorney to help him get his money out of his account; I told him I thought we could do it without resorting to that, or at least I would try myself first, and so that's when I began making phone calls.

After Santander told me a notarized letter would work, I made the mistake of contacting the local bank where my father (and I) already have accounts and asking them what THEIR id requirements are for notarizing a letter. Well, their requirements are pretty much the same as Santander's, so I was getting the door shut in my face again.

So then we decided to try to get the letter notarized at my local library. Perhaps they would not be so stringent. I called ahead and asked, with trepidation, what ID requirements they had, and more specifically told them what my father, a horrible record-keeper, actually had: his VA photo ID card, a credit card, Medicare card and that's about it. The  notary said that would work. Sigh of guarded relief.

We were there this a.m. and got it done, though not without the notary hesitating when he noticed the VA ID card did not have an issue date, only an expiration date. Anyway, we got it done. Then I stopped at the PO to mail it certified so the bank couldn't claim they didn't get it. I have to wonder if they just make it hard so they can continue to make money of his balance. They could have made an exception for us given dad's condition and circumstances.

Oh happy, joy, joy.

My handyman came over last week to set up the plywood platform he had built for my front-loading washer and dryer. It's very sturdy. His buddy (with a very strong grip/handshake) came over, too, as they had to lift both up onto the platform, which is roughly 15" high. I LOVE the new height. Only problem: the washing machine vibrates QUITE a bit. Having it sit on a concrete floor vs plywood I guess makes the difference? I texted a video to my handyman, and he agreed there was too much vibration. That being said, I had it set to "high spin," which i like becus it really wrings out the water, so less drying time.

The machine is completely level. I told the handyman I'd try out a load on the normal spin and see if I could live with that. Otherwise, he's agreed to return (no charge) to help me put an old 1/2" thick yoga mat under it. (I knew I was holding onto it for a purpose.) I just ran a small load to see how it went, but then I had a different contractor come over, one I've been after since February to do some small vinyl siding repairs, and by the time I was done with him, the load was done. So I need to do another load.

Just out of curiosity, I checked the price of 2 Samsung-sold pedestals and they are still significantly more expensive than what my handyman charged me, plus if I'd bought the manufacturer's pedestal, I wouldn't have gotten the labor to set it up unless i bought them, I guess, at the time I bought the washer/dryer. I passed on them at the time because they just are very expensive for what they are, though the Samsung pedestals do include a storage drawer below, which would have been very nice.

Someone on my buy nothing group was giving away tons of brand new box cutters, each retractable as a safety feature and each with 10 blades stored inside. She encouraged people to take a lot, so I asked for 2 or 3. I figured one in the basement, one in garage, one in the main house would be convenient. She gave me 20 instead! So I gave my handyman, who I really like, 3 of them and he seemed very pleased, so perhaps that helped smooth the way toward him returning to fiddle with my dryer at no charge! Either way, I'm happy too!

Just having the door leading from garage to basement open why these guys were setting the platform in place allowed abou 5 flies in the house, which I hate. I released or killed all but one, who is currently corralled in my greenhouse window with a closed curtain. Hoping it will just die so I don't have to keep chasing after it. Two of my immediate neighbors have sheep or goats, so flies, I've noticed, are in abundance.

Oh, wow. Just heard from the mason who was going to rebuild my outdoor stone stairs.  Another one who ghosted me since April, but now he wants to start tomorrow, at 7 am. Which is actually fine, I have nothing scheduled, but my weather report says morning rain is likely. So I told him that, but he said they have demo to do first and a little rain won't affect that. He just asked me for half the cost tomorrow, so that reminded me I need a written invoice. I assume a personal check is the same as cash to him, but maybe not. May have to make a special trip to bank.

I have an old (male) friend I see every few months, so next time I see him, I'll give him a few too. They do come in handy for opening deliveries from Amazon or wherever.

I made a BJs run this morning so am well stocked with fresh food.

Back to the vinyl siding guy: he offered to do the repair FOR FREE due to the delays. Which is great, how often does that happen?  I told him I would sing his praises on social media. But WILL they show up this time after repeated fails? He told me he has new front office staff to help him keep things straight, so we shall see. He's a super nice guy, and I'd like to have him back in a few years to quote me on a roof replacement.

He told me if I have a shingle come off in a storm, to call him. He seemed to know his way around working with homeowners' insurance companies to get them to pay for an entire roof replacement when you might have just a few damaged or missing shingles, because our state, he said, is one of the few that has a "matching statute" that requires this, purportedly to protect the home property values of others in a neighborhood. This sounded like a stretch to me, but I looked it up and it is indeed true! I wouldn't think that mismatched roof shingles would affect others' property values that much.

I am still a little leery of ever taking advantage of this since we've all heard how insurers will jack up their rates after you file a claim. But isn't this what insurance is for? My rates routinely go up 15% or so every year anyway, and I have never filed a claim. What do you think?

I got brave enough to take a peek at my brokerage balances and was relieved to see my overall balance was only down $5,000 compared to the pre-tariff idyll in early March. I had to log in as I needed to restart automatic withdrawals from my settlement fund for monthly income. I had paused auto withdrawals in favor of taking some income from a taxable fund I have, mainly because the amount of taxable dividends and cap gains on the taxable mutual fund was getting to be a bigger number and I never knew what it was going to be til tax time, so it was kind of unpredictable and not very helpful when trying to calculate total income (desirable for a variety of reasons), so I had decided to shrink the balance some.

But I've since concluded that taxable mutual funds can be helpful to have on hand in case you are, for instance, near the top of your desired tax bracket but need income that is not fully taxable like traditonal IRA distributions are. Long-term dividends and capital gains from a taxable mutual fund are taxed at the lower capital gains tax rate.

So my plan is to draw income for the rest of the year (and the next 7 years actually) from my traditional IRA funds. Continuing to do this for 7 years should substantially lower my required minimum distributions when the time comes. I will stick to a fixed amount withdrawn each month, and should I have any leftover money in what I have withdrawn I would use it to do and pay taxes on small Roth IRA conversions. (I could happily use unspent funds on home improvements and or fun vacations/trips should the opportunity arise.) 

I used the very helpful AARP RMD Calculator. The last time I used it was in January 2025, which is not that long ago, but I wasn't sure I had used my latest monthly income figure at that time, so my estimated tIRA balance that's subject to RMDs could have been off.

So I redid my calculations and yes, the new RMD estimate is lower, at $12,300 starting at age 73 compared to $16,000 that i calculated in January. Which just kind of confirms my original feeling all along that doing a lot of Roth IRA conversions before age 73 may not be necessary for me. $12,000 a year is not a ton of money, and I need money to live on anyway, so that, plus roughly the same amount from my annuity, plus about $43,000 from Social Security will give me a comfortable income.

The closer I get to RMD time, the more accurate my projections will be, so since I'm still 7 years out, I'll want to run these numbers annually to see how they change. Or don't.

All that being said, Roth IRA money is the best place to be since it's tax-free, so I wouldn't mind adding to the Roth IRA portion of my assets. Right now I've got roughly 53% in traditional IRAs, 29% in Roth IRAs and 18% in taxable mutual funds. 

I've done a few Roth conversions in prior tax years but I think they were pretty small and I didn't keep track so I'd like to see if I can go through old tax returns and tally up how much I've converted in the past and to remind myself how to do it on the 1040 form. Every little bit helps.

In other news, I got through to Home Depot about the door installation. They were out here a week ago to measure the entry dimensions, but I hadn't heard a peep from them since.  Of course they required payment over the phone in full first, and it was quite a bit more than the original estimate of the "baseline" labor cost I was given due to new trim, inside and out, caulk and so on. At this point, I just want to get it done, but the earliest date she could give me was end of June. This has been one of the more trying projects I've done around here.

I'm keeping my handyman busy. He's the only reliable one who actually shows up.

He easily dispatched with 4 different tree stumps that were kind of an eyesore to look at it and made it harder for my mower. (I have a "mini" chainsaw...6"...but it's not quite enough to get these larger diameter stumps.) I care about making things easier for the mower since the more back and forth maneuvers or circles he needs to make, the more likely he will gouge out the lawn, which in turn allows weeds to grow back to cover bare earth spaces.

Anyway, after the tree stumps, we set to work assembling a "tuteur" I recently purchased after a friend of mine gave me a coral (native) honeysuckle seedling that was very much wanting to grow.  I tried putting the roughly 9 foot tuteur together myself but it was just too unwieldy for me to manage so thank goodness i had someone I could call.

He did inform me he's already raised his hourly rate (!) but only for new customers, so I believe he's charging me $65/hr. Given that many small projects don't even require that much time, I figure that's a bargain. And just to get someone to show up!  

We carried the tuteur down to where I wanted to put it and set it in place. Later, after he left, I planted and watered the honeysuckle, which has been on my plant bucket list for a while. 

So Home Depot was here 6 days ago to measure the dimensions of my front door and I'm still waiting for them to call me to just schedule the new door installation. I've called many times; at least now i have the first NAME of the person who manages door installs, but she has no direct line, and when I call the general number, sometimes it just rings and rings and rings. I've left messages, etc.

So frustrating. I guess I have to be patient, but patience is one thing I lack. Things get too complicated if you try to do more than one "project" at a time, so I want to be done with this one so I can move on to the next. Plus, that door is taking up a lot of space in my one-car garage and really in the way.

Ideally, this year's home improvement list includes:

1. Front door replacement
2. Back door replacement
3. Rebuild of stone stairs at top of driveway leading to backyard
4. Replacement of vinyl siding in 2 places where there are 2 small holes

Today is dad day so I don't usually schedule much of anything else; it's just taking him to physical therapy and then we usually do lunch somewhere afterwards. I will do my volunteer editing for kiva.org this morning before I leave, though. Last I saw, I've reviewed over 3,600 loans for that organization over the course of I think 6 years. 

I did finally check my investment balances and saw that I'm down only by about $5,000 compared to before this rumpy downturn started. I know they must've been down a lot more in the last few months. I plan to resume automated withdrawals from my settlement fund, a money market account, to at least make sure I take advantage of the 12% federal tax bracket income max of about $48,000 for single filers + the $15,000 standard deduction. Reviewing my total gross income year-to-date, I don't think there will be much unspent money through the remainder of the year, but there could be a few thousand, maybe $5,000, so I may do a small Roth conversion with it.

This am, I went to the gym to squeeze in a workout; later this am, my handyman came by and together we put together the tuteur I bought so that the coral honeysuckle a friend gave me could climb up it. Can't wait to see it grow; pollinators will love it.

He also brought his chainsaw and sawed to pretty much ground level 4 small tree stumps scattered around the yard; my mower guy will appreciate that.

After the handyman left, I decided to transplant some culver's root and mountain mint to different locations: the mountain mint was planted in a bed where a small serviceberry tree has been beset by destructive little green worms, and someone suggested that the minty smell will keep the insect that lays the eggs away. We'll see. Otherwise, I'll keep hand-picking the worms off, EARLIER in the year before they do more damage.

As for the culver's root, for 30 years it survived in the shade of a very large azaela bush I have, but as a sun-lover, it never thrived. So I've moved it to a much sunnier spot in another bed. The one clump I moved there last year is looking very good, except that it's too close to the tuteur, so I will likely have to move it again, if not this year, than next, depending on how fast the honeysuckle grows.

I'm already indoors to wait out the heat (and sun) of the day. When I go back out this afternoon, I want to:

1. Take the cover off my AC compressor thingie.

2. Cut back the many hydrangea branches rubbing against the corner of my sunroom. We don't need an ant highway there.

3. Repot a crowded haworthia (indoor succulent) that has a lot of babies.

4. Unpack and set up the new patio umbrella I bought in the table on the back patio.

5. Perhaps being overly ambitious, I'd like to put some screens back in on the upstairs windows.

6. If I have any energy left, I'd like to start my least favorite task: pulling poison ivy away from an area I cleared a year or two ago, by the mailbox. It was impossible to completely eradicate it because it was growing in and around the birch tree clumps. I suppose I could have sprayed, but I really try to reserve that for absolutely essential situations so as to avoid harm to pollinators.

7. I'd also like to clear brush and weeds away from some amsonia I forgot I'd planted on the north side so it's not swallowed up.

8. Start edging any one of a half dozen garden beds.

I am still monitoring the raised bed where the chipmunk appeared; cayenne pepper has been sprinkled heavily. I am doubtful it will work but you never know.

But first, there's lunch to think about!

This post will probably bore anyone who is not a homeowner or not interested in a myriad of details about home improvements, but I try to learn as much as a I can from each contractor who does work on this house.

I've been trying to jumpstart a few projects around here. I had a local contractor come out a mnth ago to replace my front entry door; he took measurements and gave me his price, which I agreed to, but I've been unable to get him over here to do the work.

(The old door is probably 1950s vintage, just a beat up wood door I once tried to paint with latex, which was a mistake. The new door is fiberglass (more energy-efficient with a clear stained glass panel insert in the top. It cost a lot of $$ so I hope it looks good!  I need jobs like this done should I decide to sell the house at some point. That old door is really an eyesore.)

Anyway, when the first contractor ghosted me, I tried calling a bunch of others, and their prices were substantially higher than his, and most couldn't do it anytime soon anyway. I was starting to feel a little anxious since, based on the 1st guy's assurance my chosen door would fit, I purchased the door, and there's a return window I didn't want to run up against.

The door has been sitting in my garage for weeks. Finallly, in desperation, I called Home Depot. They sent a guy out today to measure the doorway dimensions and make sure the door would fit. I started feeling anxious about this since, worst case scenario, I don't have the means of returning this door by myself and as mentioned, the local contractor is not returning my calls.

Luckily, Home Depot guy said it will fit. Now I just have to wait for their scheduler to call me to schedule the install. I won't be surprised if it will be another few weeks, but at least I'll know how long it will be and that they WILL show up.

Their price is higher than the original guy's price, but lower than all the other local contractors I called. I mean, the spread beween the lowest and the highest price was $1,000, just for labor, which seems way out of line.

In other exciting news, I had a plumber here to check the anode rod in my newish heat pump hot water heater. I had a different plumber here over a month ago to inspect and possibly replace it but they discovered they could not remove the rod due to lack of enough clearance between the top of the water heater and the basement ceiling. So I had scheduled for them to return; for over $900, their solution was to saw through the 2 copper pipes on the water heater so they could TIP the water heater to the side enough to allow removal of the rod. Then they would install "unions" on the copper pipes that would allow them to simply unscrew them next time I wanted to check the anode rod.

The junior plumber who was here at the time said if it were him, he would go back to the original plumber who installed the water heater a year-and-a-half ago to complain, becus he had never warned me that I'd be unable to remove the anode rod due to the low clearance in my basement.

I thought about that and ultimately decided to email the plumber (or his wife, who manages the business end of it) and very nicely explained the whole situation and asked if he'd be willing to cover a portion of the other plumber's bill, which I attached.

Maybe a little unusual (at least for me) but i figured the worst that would happen is he says no.

So the original plumber calls me and said the 2nd plumber was really overcharging me and that he could take out the old anode rod and replace it with a "sausage link" style rod (which is bendable becus it has joints) for less than half what the other guy was charging.

And so he did; they cut thru the original rod to remove it. And so I saved over $600 going back to the original plumber, and I thought he and his wife were very smart in the way they handled it; instead of handing over $$ to me to cover the added work that would be needed, he took the job away from the other plumber and got me back as a customer by not being so greedy.

I know that most people don't bother having the anode rod inspected and so in those cases, this wouldn't be a problem, but inspecting the anode rod can lengthen the lifespan of your heater, and since my uber-energy-efficient heater was an investment (not cheap, in other words), I wanted to protect that investment.

When the 2nd plumber took the cover off the top of it, I saw the top of the anode rod only. It looked pretty roached to me, very corroded and all. So I thought it needed replacement after just 1.5 years. Once the 1st plumber removed it last week, we could see the rest of the rod was in very good shape; so next time, he said, you don't need to inspect it for 3 years.

My handyman fixed a loose wheel on my lawn mower. I cut down a dead 8 foot high shrub myself, save for the 4 foot trunk at bottom, so he'll return with his chain saw to get rid of a total of 4 stumps I have around here. He's also buiding me a platform for my frontloading washer/dryer.

Once I get the front door done, i'll try chasing after the mason who said he'd rebuild my stone stairs leading to the back patio. Another one who ghosted me. And I have 2 small holes in my vinyl siding, another guy who ghosted me but still emailed me asking for a review!

I have a chipmunk (maybe more than one) that seems to have taken up residence in a raised bed where I'd planted lettuce! He ruined any chance I had for veggies in that box.  I bought some cayenne pepper today and hope to dissuade it, but I don't know if this will work.

Warnng: This post is only marginally related to personal finances. Proceed at your own risk.

One thing I noticed in recent years is all the different free skin cancer screenings they used to do at area hospitals are now nowhere to be found. They are usually held in May. Yes, I could make an appointment with a dermatologist, but I probably wouldn't bother unless I had a pressing concern. Still, I like to take advantage of the free clinics just as a peace of mind thing as I do have fair skin and have my share of freckles and moles.

So after wading through the many online notices of such clinics from 5 years ago (wish they'd take those things down already), I managed to find one for this year in a town about 40 minutes away, down county, and I decided to go.

I was also trying to schedule a possible walk, workout and coffee with a friend of mine after we'd already cancelled once. This is a friend who lives literally around the block from me but whom I don't see very often, just once in a while. Still, she is so appreciative as I've helped her get serious about her bone health and exercise; she's a nurse, but works these crazy hours and has a lot of demands on her time. She also is very health-conscious, as I am, so we have a lot in common. She told me yesterday that I was her inspiration and that she was so glad she met me. Which kind of melted my heart.

When I told her about the skin cancer clinic, she really wanted to go, so she joined me, and we were able to fit in some extended quality time together on the ride down there. Then we walked downtown to a local coffee shop with a lot of personality (kind of a funky vibe going on, which was surprising in such an upscale town) and ended up having a light lunch there.  I dropped her off back home and we reconnected again at the gym around dinner time, even getting one of the trainers there to show us the proper form for doing a Romanian deadlift. All in all, a fun and productive day!

Today is a day I set aside for yard work and more mowing. Tomorrow, I'm looking forward to an afternoon program on the battle at Gettsyburg. Seeing as how I just returned from a trip to Gettysburg Nat'l Park, I thought it would be interesting to see how the speaker at today's program either reinforces what I just learned about that moment in history, or adds to it.

Then on Monday a small group of us from 3 different local environmental groups are coming together (thanks to me!) to walk a section of a local high vaue river and tape knotweed, the hope being we can return after July (optimal time to treat with herbicide is July-October). 

It's in a very sensitive riparian area, so we won't do foliar spraying, which is very nontargeted, nonspecifc and harder to control.  (You can't dig this stuff out; the roots go down 10 feet.) We may use an injection method for the herbicide (depending on how much knotweed we find, it may or may not be feasible), or possibly paint it on with a small paintbrush.

I have also ordered, for my own use at home, 100 very small mesh bags with a drawstring attached (typically used for wedding party favors). I plan to use these on the cut stems of an invasive vine I have in my yard. Out of an abundance of caution, I will attach these small bags around each cut stem I treat with painted-on herbicide so that no insects are harmed by landing on the stem. So I'm going to ask the people in these other groups if they'd want to use them also. They're very inexpensive. However, we have not secured any permits from the town or state yet, and that could really delay us big time. We have the town land use director joining the walk so am hoping he agrees the need to tackle the knotweed is urgent.

I hope you all had a nice Mother's Day. I had an old friend come up for lunch and we spent a nice couple of hours. After he left, I set about to repair a kitchen cabinet where the trim that covered the gap in the middle of 2 corner cabinets had broken off. I happened to have a handy clamp that I found outside on a street sign that one of the utility companies must have left, so I used it here, along with some rubber brands to hold it in place while the gorilla glue dries.

I also was mowing the lawn until I had a recurring wheel issue occur.

But onto the focus of my post: Groceries are consistently one of my biggest expenses. In fact, last year, it was my #2 expense after property taxes, at $4,700, and I'm shopping for one.

It seems like for years now I've have a goal of lowering my grocery expenses but haven't made measurable progress. So for the past couple of months, I've been working on another Grocery Price List, where I track costs for individual items I buy regularly, at about a half dozen stores I frequent.

I thought I knew that in general, Aldi's had the best prices. HOWEVER, after analyzing the prices of 58 food items, I was surprised to see that BJs edged out Aldi's with 16 best prices while Aldi's had just 13. I've had a half-price membership at BJs for about 5 years now but only shop there once a month or so, but now I see from my spreadsheet I created that they actually have the best prices among BJs, Aldi's, Whole Foods, Stop & Shop, Trader Joes and Big Y for:

Bananas, organic raisins, mushrooms, avocado, fresh carrots, frozen berries, organic pears, prunes, gold kiwi, pink grapefruit, raisins, frozen turkey meatblls, red onions, organic celery, organic corn and kiwi.

While Aldi's had the best prices for:

Mango, yogurt, soymilk, Dave's bread, cantaloupe, organic blakberries, frozen peas, frozen broccoli, butternut squash, organi grape tomatoes, organic mini cucumbers, kefir and pineapple.

I eat a plant-based diet but supplement with eggs (2x weekly), small portions of meat or wild salmon, and I avoid processed foods, so I mostly shop the fresh produce section.

Whole Foods has the best price for organic canned, sodium-free beans, at 99 each. I also will continue to buy the 2 lb bags of wild sockeye salmon there. Stop & Shop seems to have the best price on dried split peas and their Nature's Promise organic soymilk has a great price at $2.99 a half gallon although I don't like the sugar in it, but will no longer pay inflated $5 for Silk brand, which is unsweetened.

Tracking all these prices is time-consuming, especially since prices DO fluctuate, and also, some stores are sneaky (like Trader Joe's and S&S) where they sell you an odd amount, like 12 oz instead of 16, or they sell by the piece of fruit, instead of by the pound. That's ok, then I just calculate what the "per ounce" price is instead of "per pound."

So I'm going to try to go to BJs more regularly, much as I complain about the drive (16 min) and their overly sensitive self-scanners. Their gas prices, the lowest around, is also another incentive. I also noticed that while S&S has quietly increased prices on a few items I'd recorded just a month or so ago, the other stores have not.

Also, I have to say in the past when I bought fresh bagged fruit like oranges, there could be smushed ones, but today i bought a bag of their organic Cosmic Crisp apples with a coupon and they are delicious! Super crunchy!

I am back, safe and sound, from a 4 day trip out to see Dido. It's a 3-hour trip there, so I spent Monday night, then Tuesday we left for Gettysburg, which I believe is another 2 hours.

Gettysburg National Park was really really awesome. I especially liked seeing the battlefield, which is quite spread apart and maintained by the park service as rolling hills of green, but you can definitely see how the hills were used by both sides for defensive purposes.

We signed up for the guided bus tour and I was delighted to find out that the two of us were the only ones on the tour (!) so the guide gave us his full attention. He said he'd been doing the tours for 41 years, so yes, he had an encyclopediac mind chock full of all sorts of fascinating details.

For example, there is a memorial/statue dedicated to the last documented Civil War veteran to die at the age of 106, in 1956. He was a Union Army drummer boy from Minnesota who enlisted at 14.

One of my favorite photos above.

This is part of the cyclorama, a massive, 360-degree painting done in 1883.

This is the Pennyslvania Memorial, the largest one at the park, representing the 34,000 Pennyslvania soldiers who fought in the Civil War. Each state that fought there has its own memorial.

This is Little Round Top, site of a pivotal battle and intense fighting that purportedly decided the direction of the war.

General George Meade, who President Lincoln put in command of the Army only 3 days before the battle at Gettysburg.

You can also drive around the park yourself and look at the many statues and plaques.

There are 3 battlefield observation towers, and we climbed this one.

From atop the tower you could see the small stone farmhouse that had been purchased by a newly freed slave who worked very hard to fix up his farm, only to have to run with his family for their lives when the Confederates were coming. When he returned after the battle of Gettysburg, there were shallow graves dug all over his land, the farmhouse demolished. A sad story. He got reparations, but less than he asked for.

Before leaving Gettysburg, we also stopped by the farmhouse that Eisenhauer purchased upon his retirement. It's pretty modest for a former president, but he had many famous visitors, including Winston Churchill, Nikita Khrushchev and Charles De Gaulle. This is the back of the house. We were not allowed to go inside, unfortunately.

After that, we stopped at the Hawk Mountain raptor center and walked the trails to take a break from the driving.

I have been busy as a bee since my arrival home Thursday. I mowed the lawn, planted my vegetable garden, went grocery shopping, went to the gym, etc etc. I missed the May Day demonstration in my town.

It's good to be home, but it was a really great trip. The weather was divine the whole time, there were no crowds and I hit no major traffic jams coming or going!

Mid-week I suggested to our litter board's exec director that we reschedule the litter cleanup set for Saturday to Sunday instead, on account of expected rain. She agreed.  I don't take doing that lightly because it takes quite a lot of work to reschedule anything and let people know, and since I do all the social media promotions and the PR, this has fallen on me to do.

I had to create and post new Facebook and Instagram flyers, call the first selectman's office, call the state representative's office (both are still coming), revise the date on earthday.org, contact the local paper (which luckily is online so they can publish quickly), cancel the Facebook "event" and make a new one with the correct date, revised the greeting on my landline, which I'm using so people can call the number and listen to the pre-recording as to whether we're still on or not...and on and on.

Anyway, I think we're ready for the Sunday event.

Today was a very productive day, yardwork-wise. After I got back from the gym, I had lunch, relaxed a bit, then headed outside to see if I could clear some of the wineberry and multiflora rose and bittersweet that climbs into 4 beautiful, mature evergreens I have out back. If I don't stay on top of it, you can see how the trees slowly begin getting bald spots; eventually, they will die.

This shows the edge of the lawn in the back and the "brushy" area behind it. To the left, you see a red maple beginning to leaf out, and to its right are the 4 evergreens. Two of them are very large (larger than they look here because I took this photo from a 2nd floor window) and in great shape; one is smaller, probably becus deer browsed on the bark, damaging it, but it's still hanging in there; I think I'll put some  plastic fencing around the trunk. The 4th one, which you can't see, has lawn all its needles except for the top part; not sure what's happening there.

So I worked on that for about 2 hours, to the point of exhaustion. I was afraid I may not get another chance to do this this year, because once all the foliage is completely leafed out, it just gets too overgrown out there to take a risk with ticks. (As it was, the other day I caught 3 climbing on me after working near the road front doing something different...so they are definitely out.) I dress all in white so as to see them easier. Plus the poison ivy grows a good 10 inches high before it flops over on the ground and I have to avoid that, too.

I'm feeling really good about what I accomplished. Did I clear it all out? No, no way. But I did a lot more than I thought I would.  A lot of the bittersweet I could pull out by hand (with gloves), and I was also pulling lots of small burning bush and Japanese maple seedlings. I also see I have a problem with the doublefile viburnum, which tends to be invasive.

Little by little, I'm making progress. The most important thing is to attend to doing this sort of thing REGULARLY or your work will be reversed.

Earlier in the week I dug out the final (I hope) patch of lesser celandine I hadn't noticed before. That, too, was a job. I didn't want to compost it, even at the town transfer station, so I spread it out on a tarp on my sunny driveway to bake and dry out for a few days. Since it will rain tomorrow, I threw the now dead plants into a trash bag and will take to the dump.

I took a self-paced, online safe driving test with AAA last week. It costs $20, but will entitle me to 3 years' worth of discounts on my car insurance. I forget how much of a discount it is. The test was QUITE long with a lot of different modules, so it took all told probably 4 hours or so.

My knotweed group met with the chair of a river watershed group here in town and we agreed we'd work together to begin treating the knotweed that is growing IN the river. Very bad. Trout Unlimited will join in, too. The first thing we'll do is tape the knotweed stands up and down the river. We can't treat it til late summer/early fall, so as to minimize any impact on bees; honeybees LOVE knotweed. I was actually considering buying a pair of waders so i walk through dense brush with the others to access the river, but I may not do that. Ticks, again, is my concern. We'll invite the press to come, but I would also like to be there taking pictures so I can post on our group's Facebook page. So I don't know.

Oh! I received another donation to my fundraiser today. I think it was someone from this group, but I'm not positive becus the name isn't the name that's used here. If it was you, Ceejay, THANK YOU SO MUCH.

The weeks are so chockful of stuff going on. Tonight a friend is driving over, and then we'll do about a 12-minute walk from my house up to the town flagpole (in the middle of Main St) where we'll attend an outdoor candlight vigil for those who were wrongfully deported and detained in El Salvador.

I started a fundraiser on Swing Left to raise $$ to win back just 3 Democratic seats in the House to take back the House in the mid-term elections next year, which would go a long way in impeding the orange man's Project 2025 plans. Just 3 seats is all we need! (And not to lose any.)

So I made the first contribution; I was so happy to find someone I know in town made the next contribution, but otherwise, it's been quiet.  My friend who I'm seeing tonight is chair of the town's conservation commission, and I think I can also count on her for a donation (if she remembers). My goal is to raise $1,000 by the middle of next year, so I have some time, but still, I was wondering how to drum up more contributions as up til now, I had just about 85 or so Facebook friends.

I came up with the idea of expanding my Facebook network by friending more people with similar political views. It was easy to find them. So now I have well over 400 "friends" on Facebook, but so far that hasn't led to any more contributions. I also did 2 posts about why I'm doing this. If anyone is interested, I'll send you a link!

I really hate asking people for money. Back in the day, I used to participate in a lot of MS walkathons where I looked forward to the challenge of a 20-mile walk, yet disliked raising pledge money.

Today I had a handyman come out to repair one of my raised beds. He was very reasonably priced and came out right away. I would love to have him build a platform for my front-loading washer/dryer to save my back. Today was my first time using him. He was recently retired from other work and decided to do handyman stuff and couldn't believe how many single/divorced women have a need for this kind of thing. I know I certainly do.

I've been less successful getting other home projects going. One guy gave me a price to replace vinyl siding in 2 places where there are small holes, and I said great, let's do it, but twice now he failed to show up when he said he would. Becus it's a small job.

My go-to mason gave me a ridiculously high price for rebuilding some old stone stairs here and when I called him on it, he quickly dropped the price by nearly $2,000. This bothered me, and it's still a high price, so i had someone else come out but still waiting for his estimate. The large outfit (that means high overhead) quoted me a price that was even higher than my go-to mason, so that's not going to happen.

And still waiting for a price on front door replacement. I'll wait for Easter to pass, then will start pestering certain people again.

Tomorrow I'm taking my father to a German restaurant that's new to us. It's been 10 years since my mother passed, and traditional holiday celebrations like Easter have come to a grinding halt. It's crushing to me, but it's forced me to find new ways to mark the day. Some years I do nothing and have a pity party, other years a friend invites me over and in recent years, I've taken my father on barn tours and then dinner out. I think we've done 3 barn tours locally here, so I think we're done with that.

After Thanksgiving, Easter has always been my favorite holiday because there is not the pressure of gift-giving and it concides with spring. And what's not to love about bunnies and daffodils and eggs.

I planned to spend some time working in the yard today, and while I did, the time wasn't spent on what I hoped to do. That's because I did one more walk along the road front looking for invasive lesser celandine, which I found last year and dug up as thoroughly as I could. I didn't see any more on my first 2 "inspections," but that's becus it wasn't blooming and is otherwise very inconspicuous without its bright yellow flowers, which could be mistaken for dandelion if you didn't know better.

Anyway, I did find a good size patch of it in bloom near a culvert and wet spot where the skunk cabbage is coming up. It took some time, but I got out what I saw, but walking back I saw yet another largish clump of the stuff that wasn't yet in bloom. Sigh. I'll have to do that another time, but very soon, because once it does bloom, it becomes nearly invisible.

It all came from my neighbor across the street's house, jumping the road. She also has knotweed on her property, which I pointed out to her and she was very grateful I told her about it, but I'm not sure she's sprayed it yet. (Cutting it makes it grow more vigorously.)

So after successfully recruiting someone to serve as treasurer for my litter group, I found 2 more people who expressed interest in serving on our board. One of them will join us at our next cleanup in a week or so so that we can all meet him. The other one I need to talk to on the phone first, and then i will likely invite him to the cleanup for the same reason. Getting both these 2 people on the board would be a real accomplishment, especially since someone else who is currently on the board plans to resign in June.

Update: I would say at least 300 showed up tonight. Here are some pix:

That's my street to the right of the Meeting House (looks light a church).

This is the Episcopal church at the flag pole intersection.

So far, I've participated in 2 rallies and 3 protests. The rallies were different in that they were indoors and featured a series of very inspirational speakers making testimonials. One of my favorites was from a local church pastor. I would love to see more faith leaders speak out on what's going on.

At the last demonstration on Saturday, we got about 500 people to turn out in my little town of just 28,000, so that felt pretty good. And of course, there were much larger protests going on in major cities.

Here we can see be seen walking up Main Street to the flagpole while others are already returning.

My latest online fixation is watching short video clips of young, ungroomed men with long hair be transformed in a barber shop. It seems to be a thing. And once you watch one, a whole bunch more show up in your feed. It's amazing how much better someone can look with a simple haircut.

My other favorite is watching crowds of voters booing and shouting at Republican legislators at town hall meetings as they attempt to defend what 47 is doing.

I still have not looked at my brokerage balances becus I know it will make me anxious. However next month I'll be needing to take a distribution, so seeing my balances will be unavoidable. Luckily, I have about 3 years' worth of income sitting in a Vanguard settlement money market fund, so I won't lose additional money when I take the distribution.

Here are some handmade candies direct from Ukraine. I only tried one so far and it was very good.

Spring has sprung here in the Northeast but the temp are more like March.