Save More, Spend Less

I decided to wrap up my income & expense statement for the month of April a few days early. I can see it was a banner month, financially speaking.

Despite spending $834 on a nice new computer and an unexpected $275 on new brake pads and calipers, I was still able to come out ahead by $1200.

Not an easy thing when you're working part-time, but I had a great month for freelance income ($1191), plus all my other little sources of income, like credit card bonus rewards ($111) and various product/medical studies plus some great refunds or gift cards ($40 from Dell and a $50 refund from Puritan Pride for some returned vitamins) really added up.

I was especially happy with the $40 gift card from Dell, which came with an additional 5% off, simply for calling and asking them if there was a way to lower the cost of the computer I was ready to purchase online.

I was also impressed that my return of vitamins to Puritan Pride even included several bottles I had already opened. Still got the refund on them!

It's a beautiful day out there. I may need to do the inaugural mowing of the season. I was sort of waiting til I heard one of my neighbors mowing, but heck, the grass looks like it's getting high.

On the list of things to do: take apart my old computer tower and remove 1) the newly added memory, if I can find it and 2) the hard drive, so I can smash it to bits with my hammer before recycling at the dump.

I also need to wade into the fenced garden. Have to get the weed whacker charged up.

I was able to find a different appliance place to install a new range hood for just $10 more than the first guy. But I have to wait another week for them to come. I decided to call the first place to complain about the no-show guy, and spoke to someone there who said it sounded like he was doing the job on his own time, on the side. I didn't know that and wasn't given a choice in the matter. I'm not sure it mattered. The person I spoke with had no-show guy call me later. He was very nice on the phone and said he thought we agreed he was coming THIS Wednesday, not last Wednesday. I choose to believe him. I think it was an honest mistake by both of us....a lesson learned for next time, be sure you are both clear on the agreed upon date. It could save a lot of hassle.

I also want to get a handyman guy I know in town to come over and repair/replace my picket fenced garden, the one that's all overgrown. It also occurred to me that maybe one way to get rid of all the vinca and weeds is to rent a rototiller; it would make pulling up all that vinca by the roots so much easier. Still a job, but....

This past week I had called around for prices on a replacement range hood. Nothing fancy. I got what I thought was a good price on it: $89 for the product itself and another $60 for installation.

"Tony" and I scheduled a time last week on the morning of one of my days off for him to come and do the installation. He called the night before and said he couldn't make it so we rescheduled for the following day at 6 pm. He said "Perfect, I get off work at 6 so I'll be right over after that."

That was Wednesday night. Do you know he never showed up? I keep looking out the window, rushed through dinner so he wouldn't catch me in the middle of it. Wondering what happened. Called the office number I had for him but it just rang and rang; not even a recording.

He never showed, and worse, in my opinion, is that he never even had the courtesy to call to say he wasn't coming.

I figured MAYBE the next day he'd call with some sort of explanation, but nope. Haven't heard a peep from him! Very disrespectful, IMO.

So Thursday morning I initiated a "dispute" with my credit card company and told them I wanted the $80 charge cancelled since I never received the product and in fact the guy has gone AWOL. I received a notice this a.m. from the credit card company that the charge has been cancelled.

So that's that. Now I'll have to start all over again to try to find a reasonably priced installation. The one place I'd called years ago wanted $150. I'm just surprised at the actions of this other guy since the company, family owned, has been around for years. The guy I placed the order with over the phone was the same guy who was going to install it. Anyway, good riddance.

I'm also thinking of finally getting around to having some fencing fixed/repaired. It's just a waist-high, wood picket fence that is rotting in places.


Here's a portion of it.

I don't think it requires total replacement, just portions of it. It comes in 6 foot lengths. I don't know what kind of wood it is, I'm guessing pine (?) but it's a nice, weathered gray, and of course the new wood needs to weather gray as well or it will look ridiculous. I may have Bill the handyman do it. If I can get away with spending $100 or less, I'll be satisfied.

Looks like we had a frost last night. I hope it hasn't zapped my many tulips. This is the FIRST year in 18 years that I've had them (!) because last summer I cut down some overgrown shrubs near the front entrance and in their place, the only place in the yard protected from deer, I planted tulips.




Each year, these hyacinths seem a little bigger.

I posted a bunch of perennials and my hypertufa for sale on Craig's List 4 or 5 days ago. So far, no takers. It may be a bit early.

I got a coupon for a $6 haircut at Great Clips in my news circulars the other day. Perfect timing, I really need a haircut.

My co-worker and I went in and talked to HR about getting on the company health plan, as part-timers. I doubt anything will come of it. They could replace us in a heartbeat but they'd have to retrain. Nothing lost, I suppose.

The same woman (my coworker) brought in her adorable English springer spaniel puppy, just 9 weeks old, to work yesterday. Really, really adorable.

I realized I have 2 Home Depot gift cards worth about $36. I had been saving these solely for vegetable seedlings, mainly tomato plants, but I AM tempted to use some of it for 3 small perennials in the area I recently dug up invasive vinca. There's plenty of perennials around my yard I could divide, but I feel like I've done that many times over with the same plants, and I'd like something new.

This weekend I also need to plant the rest of my lettuce, put out the hummer water (the males arrive first, as early as late April, according to my records) and in desperation, I will try painting the stubs of awful invasive brambles too hard to dig out when growing in pachysandra with RoundUp. And a haircut is definitely in the plans.

It's 7:24 am and I just have one more day of work to get through. It's so boring and unfulfilling and mind-numbing. Hate it.

Two of my other co-workers were telling me they found what appeared to be a large bear print on a walking trail right behind our office building. Yesterday I walked and looked for the print and found it; they'd marked it with a stick and day-glo tape. It did indeed look like a bear print, either that or a very large dog with very long claws. That's why I think it's the former. I must admit to feeling a bit squeamish after inspecting that print, and finding 4 or 5 other more faded prints nearby. I think bears are more active at dusk, but who knows? These trails can be completely deserted when I walk there. They're not at all far from civilization, and in fact, I can walk briskly to the left (before it narrows into a much smaller trail) or to the right trail and back to work in exactly 30 minutes, my lunch time.

There are periodically photos in the local paper of assorted wildlife including black bears, wolverine and bobcats.

More common are coyotes, wild turkeys, foxes, woodchucks, possums, skunks and deer.

I rarely see rabbits because there are too many cats roaming around.

Every once in a GREAT while there's an errant moose that wandered down from Canada. There was just one time I saw a pheasant in my yard.

I saw a coyote pup in my yard 2 summers ago eating apples fallen from the tree and there was a large, unidentified cat-like creature (pointed, feline face and long tail, solid tan coat) I saw in my backyard before I startled it and it ran into the woods.

And once, my neighbor up the hill behind me saw a human being laying down on their lawn, sleeping!! She called the cops, then called me to warn me. He moved on before the police found him, but that was mighty strange as my neighbor's place is set well into the woods, up the hill and off the road. We don't have homeless people around here that I know; this is a small town. Maybe he was drunk. or something.

This photo I took today makes me laugh. It appears as though I have a whole army of daffodils marching down this hillside. I DO have a lot of daffodils, but not as many as this picture would seem to indicate.

As soon as the growing season really sets in, I'm in a kind of losing battle trying to stay on top of my yard. I need to wrestle control of a large, fenced in garden that unfortunately is being taken over by invasives like vinca, pachysandra and even wild oats (which I planted) is making aggressive inroads where it's not wanted.

This afternoon I spent some time and with considerable effort, managed to clear out the vinca from a very small garden bed on the outside of the fenced garden, where I had pretty black-eyed susies as well as strawberries (which I have never enjoyed because whatever little berries they produce are quickly consumed by chipmunks or birds). I felt forced to pull everything out becus that's the only way to also eradicate the vinca.

Not sure what to plant in its place, a sunny spot that gets afternoon sun. I have so many sedums, so while that would be a good choice, I have enough of them already. It needs to be deer-resistant and I don't want to spend money so it needs to be a division from something I already have! It needs to be tidy and not too bushy cus I have a fairly narrow walkway beside it.

It occurred to me that 4 little boxwoods would look nice there, but of course I'd have to buy them.

I have so much more vinca inside the fenced area. I am determined to get a handle on this unruly patch of land this year, even if it means using the mower in there over the vinca and pachysandra and the wild bramble shoots and....everything except the blueberry bushes. I also still have a single dwarf cherry in there I'm not sure if I'll keep.


The dwarf cherry is not really that small... It's a magnet for bees and readily proliferates, thanks to birds that eat the cherries and drop them all over the yard. This is the time of year I realize I have little cherry trees all over the place; you can only tell now cus they have these pretty little pink flowers but otherwise blend into the landscape and become invisible.

Right now it looks quite pretty in bloom but with its branches, it's hard to keep the area weed-free. I also have a large mulberry tree in there and an assortment of perennials.

When I bought this place 18 years ago, the area was all nice green grass, but with my grand plans and visions of a cute little garden with brick walkway and fountain etc, I tore it all up. Now it's a huge effort to maintain and I never have the time with all the rest of my yard demanding my attention. How I would love to have it all planted in grass again that I would only have to mow to keep it looking tidy.

The guy who was supposed to come and install my new range hood tomorrow a.m. had to reschedule, which may be just as well since tomorrow is going to be a fairly busy day. I have to drive out to Yale to do the first in a two-part study on food and self-control ($145) and after that I have a dinner meeting to attend. I've invited my friend R. to join me as he lives nearby.

In the a.m. I'll be going to the dump with a few more logs (the bane of my existence, will I ever get rid of them all?) and I want to get a few containers of free mulch, which helps keep the weeds down in my many perennial beds. It's essential, in fact, and with some Preen, it will cut down on backbreaking labor.

I got my new Chase Sapphire card today. The reward on this one, $100, is more modest than others, but the spending target, $500, is also fairly easy to hit.

I spent the better part of a day getting my new computer set up.

First, I transferred all my Word files and thanks, Frugal Texan, for the tips about bookmarking. I did set up Diigo, but there was so much to read and I was feeling impatient about getting the computer up and running, so I'm sure there was an easier way for me to transfer those bookmarks (with Diigo). Anyway, I think I got most of them.

That was on Friday night. Yesterday morning, I set up the computer itself. I always feel high anxiety when I have to do this, but it went pretty painlessly, although Dell has just too many instructions for everything. If I read everything, I'd still be reading now.

At first I freaked cus when I checked to see that all my Word documents were on the pre-loaded Word. When I clicked on the folders, they were empty. Oh no. What a pain it would be to have to hook up the old computer again. But luckily, I realized that I couldn't see the documents because I hadn't "activated" the pre-loaded software with my product key. Once I did that, they magically appeared.

I did fail to transfer over many photographs; however, they're still on my camera card so right now, I just don't feel like it. There was still so much organizing to do and putting docs and bookmarks back in folders and so on.

But I am happy with my new speakers and 21.5 inch monitor. The one I use at work is 24 inches, and if I had known how much I'd like using it, I would have spent the extra money for those extra few inches. But still, it's nice, big enough that I can have 2 docs up on the screen at the same time, which I could never do before with my older square screen.

I "test-watched" "Pickers" on Hulu last night just to make sure I could, and it ran beautifully. You don't know what crap I'd been putting up with the every 5 minutes screen freeze-ups. Maybe it was the motherboard, really don't know.

My only beef with this new computer is that the document preview function in Word is still not working! When you go to open a document, it's very, very handy to be able to see portions of that document in the preview panel before you click to open, like when you're searching for something specific, it saves you the trouble of having to open everything up.

When I feel an unusual amount of patience, I will call Dell and ask them why that stupid thing doesn't work with their system. I remember reading of a way around it but it wasn't that convenient. I think when you go to attach a doc, rather than simply open it, that you can read it. Oh well.

I am getting a new range hood for over the stove on Tuesday. It's nothing grand, like those stove to ceiling hoods I've seen. This one's a Broan and will be a near exact replacement for what I've got now. The one I have is SUCH an eyesore, all rusty and so on. It works fine, though I rarely use it. I just want something that looks "presentable" for when I sell this place.

I would have done it years ago but when i called a different place, their installation charge was something like $125, which was more than the actual cost of the hood. The guy who's coming Tuesday is only charging $60.

I have done such a good job of conditioning myself not to spend money, but I think I need to push past my reluctance to do so to get certain things around here done. It would be fine if I didn't plan to sell, but since I'd like to, there's nothing standing in my way except a ton of deferred maintenance around here.

Looks like another bright and sunny day here. Yesterday I managed to cut back all the dead sedum stalks as well as some butterfly bush. I'd like to plant some peas and lettuce in the garden today.

Also would like to vacuum out my car, badly needed.

I had to cover up all my tulips last night with plastic buckets and a tarp because it was going down to 33 and I didn't want to risk them getting zapped days before their bloom. It's the first year i 18 years I've been able to grow tulips. They're planted in the ONE spot where deer aren't likely to go, close to the foundation near a landing and stairs. I can also block it off pretty well each night with a lawn chair I have on the landing.

Can't wait to see them bloom.

Ho-hum.

Another Thursday, the part of my life I wish would go faster, when I work at my boring proofreading job. My time, and my life, are my own from Saturday through Wednesday mornings.

Next Tuesday my new computer should be delivered. I just hope it works flawlessly, is easy to set up and is everything I hoped for. I can't get rid of the one I have a day too soon. But I'm wondering if I should try to remove the added memory my computer repair guy installed? Thing is, i have no idea what it looks like, and if he did it of course he'd charge me. So maybe I'll just bag it.

I remember last time I changed computers I lost all of my many bookmarked websites, so I want to save those too. Does anyone know of an easy way to do that other than painstakingly writing down each URL? I don't think a cut and paste will work with bookmarks.

I've more or less decided to delay further thought of a new car until the end of the year. Winter is when I've purchased new cars in the past and I think dealers are more eager to make a deal with you during a time that's usually very slow.

While I have the money, buying a new car is not just about the purchase price. It's also about the insurance, various state fees and of course our lovely car tax here in Connecticut. Barring further high cost repairs or getting stuck on the road, I will hang on to the Honda a while longer. It runs perfectly fine; it's just the unforeseen parts that go without warning that concerns me.

Still waiting for a check from a product study i did in early April, but it looks like April will be a good income month, despite higher-than-average expenses related to car repairs, healthcare and the new computer.

On my list of things to do this weekend is to restart my hypertufa activities. If it's not warm enough, I may not feel like making the hypertufa, but I have several that I'd like to photograph (ideally, with plants in them) and then post for sale on Craig's List. I'm just curious if I'd have any takers, and hypertufa is usually priced ridiculously high, mainly because it takes a long time to cure and so on, I guess. I don't think I'd want to sell them with the plants in them, yet they'd look far better to be photographed that way, so I'd have to keep repotting some poor plants without mangling them too much for each photo shoot.

I also have two outstanding writing assignments to do which have been hanging around only becus the subjects haven't gotten back to me; one's a builder and the other is a realtor I need to talk to about a new condo complex.

Well, it's 7:18 am and I guess I'd better start getting ready for work.

I left my part-time job early on Friday as I had a longstanding eye doc appointment for 1 pm. I squeezed in some extra time at the office on Wednesday and Thursday, so I only lost 1.25 hours worth of work. There was something going on along my driving route, though, with fire trucks all over and really backed up traffic so I had to do a big detour but I managed to get there only a few minutes late.

My eyes are fine; have to return in 6 months. (This is all becus my higher than normal eye pressure is indicative of glaucoma, although some people apparently just have high eye pressure.) Glaucoma can be controlled with eye drops, but the important thing is to catch it early. I have not been diagnosed with glaucoma but he wants to keep an eye on it. (No pun intended.)

Anyway, after that I hit the grocery store to use up $10.84 left on a pre-loaded Visa card I got as part of a rebate for buying Norton Anti-Virus software. The card won’t work if the charge exceeds the balance left on the card. I grabbed a gallon of bleach and a jar of marinated artichokes. I knew there’d be tax on the bleach, a non-food item, and CT sales tax increased to something like 6.35%, but I didn’t have a calculator with me. Do you know the charge came to EXACTLY $10.84? That was pretty cool.

After that I stopped at the auto parts place for a pair of front brake pads which cost me just $50. On Saturday I went over to the home of the woman who shares my proofreading job; her husband is a mechanic and works from home. Both the dealer and my mother’s mechanic had already told me that next time I came in I’d need to replace the 2 front brake pads, so I knew I needed them. From my files, I saw that front brake pad replacement cost me $170 at the dealer in 2002; my friend said she thought he’d charge me $50, cus that’s what he charges per hour and she didn’t think it would take him more than hour.

So I was hoping for “a deal.” The two of us chit-chatted over tea in her very Victorian house and later went for lunch at Panera’s while he worked on the car. When he started to take apart one of the brakes, the caliper broke in his hand. It and the other caliper were totally rusted and needed to be replaced, he said, but he wasn’t sure he could get the additional parts on a Saturday. Oh great. I had plans to leave later that afternoon around 4 pm for a dinner get-together in Nyack, an hour’s drive away, to meet family to celebrate my dad’s 80th birthday. And it would be the first time I’d be seeing my 2 year old niece.

He did get the car fixed, but instead of a total outlay of $100 (the parts I’d purchased and his labor), I wound up spending $275 becus he also had to replace those calipers. She told me it’d cost me $600 at the dealer. I know the dealer charges about $100 for labor, but I checked the price of the front calipers at autozone.com and for the two it was just $87. I don’t know exactly how much time he spent on it, but I’m not seeing the “huge” cost savings. So it cost $87 for the calipers, $50 for the pads I bought = $137, so looks like he charged me $88 for labor. He probably was cheaper than the dealer (remember, the dealer charged me $170 just for brake pad replacement 10 years ago), although I don’t think their charges would approach $600. Unless they really, really mark up parts far in excess of 100%.

When I drove over my friend’s to pay for the work, she invited me to Sunday dinner but I had to decline as I still had work to do at that point. I’m sure I’ll see her soon as they’re adopting a new puppy this week and she’s invited me over to see it.

We've also decided that the 2 of us will approach the HR person at our p/t job to push for health insurance coverage for the 6 month period between June 30 and Dec. 30, for me because my COBRA runs out June 30 and Obamacare health insurance coops don't begin til 1/1/14, and for my friend's husband as well, who lacks any coverage whatsoever. They're happy with our work, we're making close to minimum wage and from our standpoint putting us on the company plan would cost them little or nothing, altho a friend of mine disagrees. I figure we have nothing left to lose although I kind of doubt we'll have success.

I learned later from my office friend that one of her husband’s buddies wanted to meet me, based on no more than seeing my car in the driveway and finding out that it belonged to a friend of his friend’s wife who happens to be single, is around his age and lives in town.

Our family dinner was nice, but once again, the choice of venue was not great…inside a very noisy restaurant inside a very noisy and crowded mall. The parking was difficult. Everyone in our group of 7 had to shout to be heard. The place had like 20 TV screens going, adding to the noise. I wasn’t terribly impressed with my parmesan-crusted chicken or the cold garlic mashed potatoes. When I tried to hand over $50 to my brother, who sat on the other side of my father, my dad returned the $$ to me and said don’t worry about it, so I knew then that even though my bro was putting the tab on his charge card that my dad was going to reimburse him…for his own birthday dinner!

In between all this fun stuff is the reason for my post heading. Friday afternoon (doesn’t it always happen on a Friday?) I got a call from my chief freelance client about a huge job they wanted me to do, but it all had to be done my Monday (tomorrow). They had negotiated the price with a local daily newspaper to take up most of the advertising space in an annual real estate pull-out section. I needed to write 4 half page articles on various new condo or single family home projects as well as update 4 that had been used last year.

This involved calling 8 different realtors to interview them about the chief selling points of each complex, and doing that on a weekend in such a short timeframe would normally be a challenge, but fortunately my contact had prepped each realtor in advance of my call, so all but one “cooperated.” (One hasn’t returned my call so I wrote what I could based on the dedicated website for that particular community.)

Anyway, I’m glad as always for the work. I’ll earn $600 for I’m guessing maybe 10 or 12 hours of work, plus I have 2 other writing assignments unrelated to this that I haven’t even started. Will save that for tomorrow. Sure wish this happened more regularly!
I also got a call Friday from a place where I applied for a junior level editorial job last December. The guy said he had saved my resume and now there was another opening or a writer/editor which I’d be better qualified for, but could I look over some of their websites and give him my ideas for improving them. Once again, hard to ignore a request like that if I seriously want a crack at the job, but it is annoying to feel like they’re picking my brain for a free consult. They have 5 mags/trade websites in the field of alternative energy.

So somehow I need to refresh my brain and spend a few hours doing that in time for his call…tomorrow, you guessed it.

First off, I want to say again that my wrist is about 90% better! What an amazing turnaround. I was really worried for a while there, but once the swelling subsided it was SOO much better.

As for the title of this blog post, not sure what’s gotten into me, but I decided somewhat impulsively to buy a new computer. The computer I have is about 3 years old but from very early on I’ve had nothing but problems with it. It’s a Dell desktop. The problem that has me gnashing teeth is that it frequently freezes or locks up, whether I’m on a Word document or surfing online. Nothing I will do will knock it back to life so I am forced to wait, sometimes for several minutes or longer, until it cycles through whatever it is doing.

I brought it to a local computer repair guy twice and he still didn’t fix it, though he charged me $100 to add more memory. I think I’ve got 8 GB in it now which is very substantial for a non-gamer like me. My plan had been to bring it back to him, hopefully without having to pay him more money, but it is extremely difficult for me to find some down time to bring it, and he prefers it early in the week which I tried to accommodate so I could get it back in a day. But I wasn’t sure I wanted to bring it back becus I suspect he just added more memory as kind of a knee-jerk reaction without really trying to duplicate the problem. Maybe it's the motherboard? I really don't know.

The other longstanding problems include the Dell printer, which I bought at the same time as the computer, very often not working. I’ll often get an error message saying there is no communication, and the only way to resolve that is to keep reinserting the printer driver and doing a repair/update. This was also something I attempted to resolve with Dell support; they sent me a replacement printer but the replacement does the exact same thing! The other problem with the printer is that if you have more than one sheet of paper in, it will often jam up so multiple pages go thru at the same time. So I have to constantly hand feed one page at a time to avoid paper jams.

The other problem that’s always bothered me is that when you go to open a Word document and you look at the list of documents, you normally are able to read the documents before opening them in the preview panel. My preview panel has never worked. It’s quite a handy feature.

Anyway, the computer is a huge source of constant frustration and so I took the easy route out. My new computer is 6 GB, Inspiron 660 and I decided to keep Windows 7 as I’ve read about a lot of unhappy Windows 8 customers. MS Office will be pre-loaded and I also got new speakers since my old ones here sometimes buzz, AND the real treat is a new monitor, a 21.5” screen. It was all a lot of money but by calling them on the phone instead of simply ordering online I got them to knock off $75. The printer I will keep for now as I’m trying to keep costs down (sort of). The new monitor should be a delight when I watch my Hulu movies.

The other decision I made today is that (thanks to all your input) I am NOT going to Kennebunkport with my controlling friend! Bottom line is that while I am willing to spend the big bucks on a vacation, even while being underemployed, it’s important to me that I’m getting a good value for money spent and in this case I felt I was already being forced to make compromises, in terms of destination and departure time (it had to be this one week becus my friend’s sister had put in for vacation for a certain week).

Yet another big decision coming thru to possible fruition….a new car!!

This has been on my horizon for years now. I drive a 14-year-old Honda and while it runs great, I don’t really want to push my luck. I had one close call when the fuel and gas lines rusted out and I lost my brakes; luckily, I was driving in my mother’s condo complex and no other drivers were around, so I was able to coast to a stop, but I can’t imagine what could have happened if I was on the road somewhere.

The car has 136,000 miles on it and I suspect it has many more. It’s just that I’d rather not take unnecessary risks driving such an old car. It’s already made me feel a little reluctant to go visit my dad in Jersey because I don’t want to do the 3-hour drive by myself anymore in case of a breakdown.

I hadn’t really made this a front burner issue consciously, but something clicked in my head today and just whispered, “do it.”

Without having examined the cars or done a test drive, I’m kind of set on a 2013 Ford Fiesta S hatchback. The S is the cheaper version. The hatchback I really, really want becus it seems much more practical for hauling stuff than my tiny trunk is now. And the Fiesta I want becus it gets great gas mileage…39 highway, for a non-hybrid vehicle.
I’d love a Prius, don’t get me wrong, but I read an article that said for a Prius or other hybrid to really pay off, gas prices would have to get up between $4 and $5 a gallon, given that most hybrids have about a $5,000 premium for the technology. If I had the money, I’d get one anyway becus I’m an environmentalist, but I have to think more practically.

So maybe next weekend I’ll take the Fiesta for a test drive. Like a lot of sub-compacts, the car doesn’t seem to have much personality, style-wise, at least not all souped up with the extra that I can’t afford. My priorities really are GREAT gas mileage and a hatchback.

It’ll be in the $15,000 range; my car’s got various dings and dents, but it’s cosmetic; I should be able to trade it in for at least $2,000. I think Blue Book value was $3,000 OR $4,000. So t the least the trade-in would bring it down to about $13,000. I may also get a $750 cash back incentive and I will probably pay cash. In the past I’ve sold my old cars myself, but this time I don’t want the hassle or the discomfort of driving around with some stranger OR letting some stranger take off in my car. I know that buying a one or two-year old car is probably a better value, but I don't like the idea of possibly inheriting someone else's problem and since I only buy once every 10 or 14 years, I figure I should get what I want.

I suspect that part of what's driving my flurry of decisions is the fact that I feel so stymied in other aspects of my life right now. I am trying to be a caregiver to my mother, and she just isn't budging on some things right now, frustrating me. My job search...well, nothing happening in that department either. The desired marketing and sale of my house? Another big fat zero, nothing happening.

An old friend of mine (ok, old boyfriend) was in the habit of going up to Kennebunkport, Maine every summer with his now ex-wife. They had a favorite inn he liked to stay at. My friend is not really the outdoorsy type, like I am, and has gotten kind of stodgy. He says he mostly just spent his time there hanging out at the inn, reading and going online. Umm, you could do that at home, for a whole lot less money! But of course, the scenery is beautiful, and this hotel is right on the water, not far from the Bush compound.

Now that his ex is out of the picture, he still wants to go up there in June and wants some company. So he’s invited me to come along, along with his sister. I have been dying to go somewhere and in fact, my last vacation, also to Maine, was about 5 years ago! I have skipped vacations becus I have been out of f/t work for so long, but now I have an opportunity to do something fun.

The thing is, it would be very expensive and if I had my own way, I wouldn’t have chosen Kennebunkport, which is especially pricey. Another unfortunate thing is that we'd be pretty much locked into going on one particular date in late June, when my friend's sister, a nurse, has already put in for time off. It just so happens that this is the cut-off time when many of the hotels up in Maine consider it the start of summer (higher) rates. So this 4-day period includes just 1 night at a lower rate becus it falls in the "shoulder" season and 3 nights at full rates in the peak summer season.

My friend and his sister want to stay at this very expensive inn which costs $250 and up per night. Since we’d all be getting our own rooms anyway, I came up with the idea of trying to find another less expensive place nearby that would allow me to save $$ on the room. I don’t plan on spending much time there anyway.

The cheapest place I could find was a simple motel that still costs a fair amount; with the 7% state tax, it comes to $142.50 a night, or $610 for the 4 nights we’d be up there. Meals, of course, would be an additional cost, and while I don’t have to have full course dinners each night, I would like to sample the famous lobster roll sandwiches at $13.50.
Otherwise, it seems like a fairly quiet town, so after doing some research about things to do, I would mostly just want to wander around with my camera on the beaches and around town. Maybe do a walking tour or rent a bike. My friend said he’d drop me off wherever I wanted to go, like the nearby Rachel Carson wildlife preserve in Wells. I could spend 3 or 4 hours there enjoying the trails and then they’d pick me up for lunch, for example. Not sure what his sister would want to do, but this would enable each of us to do what we wanted and still have company.

If I were planning a trip myself, I wouldn’t be going to this particular destination; there are many places closer to home (this is 4 hours), far less expensive and with more interesting things to do. However, if left to my own devices, I wouldn’t be going anywhere, so this is what I have to work with.

The arrangement is atypical, but if we didn’t do this I could easily see myself being very unhappy at spending so much money and then not getting to do things I enjoy. My friend is not athletic, isn’t a walker and has a fairly short attention span. My interests run more to the out of doors and communing with nature, especially with a camera.

This kind of points to the other reason for some hesitation on my part, because my friend can be very controlling and set in his ways. I have no doubt this was largely the reason his ex divorced him. He likes to call the shots at all times, and to me, that can be positively stifling. So initially, before he told me he’d invited his sister to come along, I was thinking a vacation with just the 2 of us wouldn’t work. Now that he’s invited his sister, I could see her being a kind of buffer who would probably keep me and R. from butting heads quite as much. She’s very easygoing and a few years older than me.

So, would you do it? I’m mainly concerned about spending so much money. With meals, and probably chipping in for gas, we’re probably looking at $1,000 for 4 nights up there. I think I could get my neighbor behind me, the one who just got a job I told her about, to feed my cats each day.

The little motel I found looks clean and simple. It’s the kind of place where the door opens directly into your room. Normally I think I’d be a little nervous about staying alone in a place like that, but this is hoity Kennebunkport, and I’d make sure my friend watched me enter the room at night before they left. The room has its own bath, a TV, mini fridge and microwave. So I would bring a cooler full of fresh fruit snacks, tea and cereal so I could save money on eating breakfasts out.

I checked availability and I think they still have rooms; some of the other places I checked seemed already pretty well booked in June.

I would probably want to try to finagle it so that I had a new credit card bonus to work for on this trip, and since my friends don't do credit card rewards the way I do, I could charge their meals to my card and have them pay me back. So I could probably shoot for one of those cards with a higher spending target than I can hope to shoot for with my normal expenses.

A very quiet Sunday. I had plans to get a lot more done, but somehow I just didn't feel like it. Part of it I know is my aching wrist. Holding anything heavier than a few ounces hurts. I will monitor and see how it feels tomorrow.

Here's what I managed to do:
* A trip to WalMart where I used a coupon to get a half gallon of almond milk for just $2.18, along with some other odds and ends. It didn't cost me anything cus I used a prepaid Visa card I got as a rebate for buying Norton anti-virus. The card had $60 on it.
* Bank deposit of 2 checks
* Library: took out 4 DVDs

Tomorrow's going to be up to 68. I may try to do some light, one-handed yard work. Yesterday was my dad's 80th birthday.I feel blessed that he's stuck around when many of my friends' fathers have passed.

I discovered one last container of frozen homemade pesto sauce, with my homegrown basil of 2012 in the back of the freezer, so I enjoyed one of my favorite meals last night.

Tomorrow's priority is interviewing a realtor about a new development so I can write about it, hitting BJs and getting postage stamps. Also getting some estimates on finally getting someone over here to chip up a pile of pine logs taking up space in my driveway. I can use the mulch.

I’m wondering if I could possibly have a broken wrist from having lifted a log in a weird way Thursday night.

As mentioned earlier, I was doing some yard work after work that day. The log I picked up was not the heaviest I’ve ever handled, but as I walked toward the wheelbarrow to dump it in there, I think I was holding my arm out extended, away from my body, and I could feel the pain as I did so.

I finished up the work shortly afterwards and pushed the wheelbarrow into the driveway. It wasn’t til the following morning when I sat down to my computer at work that I realized how much my wrist ached. I’m thinking it’s the swelling that’s causing that, and that’s why it didn’t hurt so much initially?

My wrist is still super, super painful today, 3 days later. I’m typing with just 1 finger on that arm, and it hurts even to hold a fork or spoon in that hand. It’s my left hand and yes, I am left-handed.

It occurred to me that I could have broken my wrist…that’s how painful it is. So I did some quick online research and while they say wrist fractures are the most common place to break a bone, it usually happens when someone falls down the stairs and lands on their hand, or due to a sports injury.

I can’t decide whether or not to go and have it x-rayed. If it’s just a torn ligament/tendon, I’d rather not spend the money. On the other hand, they say if you think you might have a break it’s important to get it checked out quickly becus if the bone isn’t set in the right position, it will heal that way and you could have lingering problems with it.

My range of motion with it right now without pain is next to nothing. Over the counter pain meds are helping quite a bit, but without taking them, it’s nearly intolerable. Last night I went to bed without taking another pain med and it really interfered with my sleep, so I got up around 2 am to take a pill. Don’t know if I should wait a few more days to see if the swelling recedes or try to schedule something now since my off days from work are Mondays and Tuesdays.

OK, this photo was not taken recently, but my daffs are springing up quickly, so what the heck!

The temps here will be getting into the 70s by Monday, thankfully a day off for me, so ee-ha!

My left wrist is positively killing me. On Thursday night, it was still relatively mild, so after work I spent a half hour or so picking up heavy logs (the remains of a few trees that came down in winter storms), putting them in my wheelbarrow and unloading them in the driveway, where I'll then be able to put them in the trunk and to the landfill.

There was one log that didn't seem like the heaviest I'd ever picked up, but I must've bent my wrist a certain way because by Friday morning at work, it was really, really sore, and still is today. Using the mouse and typing probably aggravated it. I got some aspirin there at the office and that made a huge difference, but today the pain is still intense. I hope it will heal without the need for any more doctor's visits.

It's taught me a lesson...I'm not 30 anymore and have to be careful lifting things like this. I'm always very good about lifting things with my back and have never had back problems, but I happen to have very thin arms and narrow wrists. I act like I can do just about anything and that's simply not true.

A while back I spotted an ad in the Sunday paper that seemed like it would suit my neighbor to a T. A local synagogue needed a bookkeeper. My neighbor used to work as a bookkeeper for another temple. How many people could say they've done that? I told her about the ad, she applied and now, a few weeks later, she called to tell me she'd gotten the job!

She's thrilled becus she'll be making double what the other temple paid her and also quite a bit more than what she was making at another job she'd picked up to get some money coming in while she and her husband prepare to sell their house and move out of state. Her husband lost his job.

So I'm very happy for her. I wish it were so easy for me!

I have another small freelance writing assignment. Also am expecting, at some point, a roughly 35-page court report that will need editing. I want to stop at BJs, deposit a check, vacuum, and check out bulk bin grain prices at the health food store.

I've been trying to find a reasonably priced estate attorney who can name me durable power of attorney for my mother should she become unable to handle her financial affairs.

I explained to my mother the importance of having this in place, but she balked when the few attorneys I called quote prices in the $300 range. I told my mother I would split the cost with her if I had to, and couldn't help but feel annoyed when she said that was very generous (considering I'm not working full-time and my mother can afford it, she's just frugal). But I was afraid if I didn't, this would never take place.

I also wanted my mother to name me executor rather than my older sister, who I've mentioned before has distanced herself from the two of us and doesn't have much to do with us except for major holiday dinners. My sister has a high school education. I went to law school (though I didn't graduate) and have worked many years as a financial/personal finance writer, so who would you think is better qualified to act as executor? Plus my sister complained a lot when she was executor of my grandmother's estate and really didn't like having to do it. My mother's response, when I explained all this, was to say well, if your sister doesn't want to do it, then she can just have you do it. Then you two can split the money you would have otherwise paid for the attorney to draw up the paperwork. Umm, mom, it doesn't work that way. If she is legally named executor, I can't simply trade places with her and do it.

I am worried that my mother will never come around to doing this. Now that her sciatica and arthritis have eased up a little, she's back to focusing on her next art show. The whole power of attorney thing is just not a priority for her. It's hard for me to schedule an appointment becus she always has doctor's visits or other stuff going on.

Next weekend, the 4 of us kids and assorted significant others are meeting at a restaurant at a mall to celebrate my dad's 80th birthday. I know he thought he'd never make it this far becus I remember him saying something to that effect years ago, probably because his father died relatively young, of a stroke, in his late 60s.

I'm concerned about the hit I'm going to take money-wise, because both my half-brothers are bringing their wives, and they can't be expected to pay, plus we're treating my dad, of course, and I know everyone likes to drink and have a good time. It might be tacky and tedious to ask the waitress to make up separate checks.

At the same time, I guess I should be grateful that the older of my two brothers (who's actually 10 years younger than me) thought to include my sister and me in my dad's birthday celebration, because we've never really spent much time together. The two "boys," as I still call them, were from my dad's second marriage, after he and my mother divorced when I was very young. I drifted apart from my father in those years when they were growing up, and while I would have loved a closer relationship with my brothers, the gulf between us has never really been bridged due to so much non-contact in those critical early years.

That brother will have his two-year-old and wife with him; she's already pregnant with her second child. And the other brother I believe is getting married this weekend in a justice of the peace ceremony. I think they're getting married becus she finally conceived through in vitro. They were already living together but I understand the relationship is not a perfect one. I heard all this secondhand; my dad tells me about it sometimes, and I also keep in touch with my dad's former girlfriend, K., even though they broke up a year ago.

She is still upset about the breakup, which my dad initiated, mainly because K., his ex, just has a very pushy, in-your-face kind of personality. While I really like her, I like her in small doses, and I know she would drive me nuts if I had to live with her. My dad (and my sister and I) are much more laid back in the way we interact with others.

So while I understand why my dad finally broke things off, after they were together 15 years, I worry about him more now too since she moved out and he's on his own. He was very attached to her two dachshunds, and shortly after they left, his old cat had to be euthanized. So the house must seem very quiet.

I'm not sure how he spends his time these days. I know he goes to the local diner for breakfast every day. It's an important social thing, as he meets at least one buddy there. There were more, but I know some of them have died. K. says he watches a lot of daytime TV and falls asleep in the chair. He used to be involved in a Reclam the Bay thing in his area that involved growing baby clams for "release" into the Barnegat Bay.

K., for her part, spends a lot of time with her dogs. She got both of them trained and certified as therapy dogs and takes them to area hospitals, nursing homes and hospice to see the patients. (She's a former nurse, so doing this kind of thing does not upset her, as it would me. In fact, she gets a lot of satisfaction from doing it.) She always enjoys telling me how her dogs react in different situations, and to different people. She's a breast cancer survivor and I think she also had/has thyroid cancer and is pre-diabetic, so she's certainly had her share of health problems.

I saw a really fascinating Netflix movie last night called The Class. It was about a French teacher and his students in a really rough neighborhood in Paris. The film stars the real-life teacher, who evidently also wrote a book about his students. The students in the movie are not actors; they're real-life students. You see these kids constantly test him, and it often seems like everything is on the verge of collapsing into a state of classroom chaos. He just barely holds the kids in line even though they would probably push the average person over the brink. I gave this film a rare 5 stars (the max).

This morning I had a dentist appointment in a neighboring town. It was about a 30-minute drive, all to take advantage of a new patient special: cleaning/xrays/exam for just $95. This must be the 4th new dentist I've been to in the last 2 years, only to take advantage of these "special" prices because I can no longer justify paying $150 for a cleaning at my long-time dentist here in town. I still want good dental care, and I don't think I'm comfortable going to a university where students do your teeth.

So I'm driving home from the dentist, my head full of thoughts about whether or not I'll return to them in 6 months. (They did a good job, but if I return in 6 months, the price will be their standard price, which is $150, not including x-rays.)

I was already in my home town, driving on a secondary, two-lane highway a bit past noon when a car approaching me from the other direction, maybe 500 feet from my car, suddenly and without warning careened into a guardrail with such force that the car went airborne, just as I was coming abreast of the car. I had no time to really think but I remember swerving to the right breakdown lane to avoid being involved in the crash but at the same time I kept driving in case someone behind me plowed into me. I couldn't see what happened to the car after that, but I turned in about a quarter mile down the road and called 911. The police car with siren went past me as I continued on my way home.

That was pretty scary. It seemed so surreal. There were no blaring horns or other warnings of anything unusual going on...it all happened so quietly on a clear and sunny day. The driver must've been going 40 or 45 mph, but when it hit the guardrail on its right, I actually saw the car lift up sideways on its left wheels and fly up about 4 or 5 feet off the ground. It was like a stunt you might see in the movies.

The first thing I thought is that the driver was either texting or talking on the phone. Or maybe someone had a heart attack and just lost control of the vehicle. I don't really know. I hope they're all right.

March turned out to be a pretty good month. I thought I might be in the red after having to spend $355 on heating oil and $246 on doctor's visits. I also overspent on food, at $236, and had an unexpectedly higher car repair expense of $131 after Honda told me the transmission oil was very dirty.

All told, expenses totaled $1801. But my income from freelance work, unemployment, my part-time proofreading job, credit card rewards and online surveys/forums totaled $2754, leaving me with a positive balance of $953 for the month and $2,070 for the YTD.

Of course, my balance sheet always seems skewed to me since I only pay property taxes twice a year; after my next payment, I'm sure my apparent monthly savings will shrink quite a bit since property taxes come out to about $550 a month.

Keeping track of monthly income and expenses allows me to see certain "trends" right away, often as I'm filling out my Excel spreadsheet. For instance, I noticed that my p/t monthly income has been gradually diminishing since the start of the year, when I netted $1369. Their busy time is Jan/Feb. Now this month, I earned just $956, and I'm guessing it will drop further as we move into April. I talked to them Friday about this; they said they'd try to keep me busy on various "projects," so I guess we'll see.

While I was filling out the spreadsheet, I also noticed that I had forgotten to record the $46 refund I got after doing my state taxes, since I have a line item for that and it was blank. So I adjusted things accordingly.

In looking at my food bills, things are really out of control, despite my hopes that more regularly shopping at BJ's would save me money over the long run. Here's what I spent to date on food:

Jan: $496
Feb: $122
Mar: $236

And this was while I was still using up Shop Rite gift cards I'd purchased last year to hit a spending target for a credit card bonus. My hope was to try to keep it closer to $200.

This month I'll have to make an estimated quarterly tax payment to the IRS for my freelance work. It shouldn't be much because my chief client really drags its feet to pay me and in fact I have to call their accounting office Monday to inquire about some February invoices that still haven't been paid. Two months is getting ridiculous, though at least some of the time the delay is due to my marketing contact there forgetting to forward my invoices to Accounting.

But I decided to call Accounting about it first this time because it seems like my having to pester them about timely payments has an inhibiting effect on my getting more work. Not intentionally, but it's basically unpleasant for us both when I have to bring it up, so my preference would be to go straight to their Accounting office so I can avoid bringing it up with the person who gives me work if I can do so.

Today was one of those rare days when I didn't really have any things I HAD to do, no running around and oh, I like that.

I did do some baking for Easter. I made my yummy three nut and cranberry pie, very similar to a pecan pie except it's walnuts, hazlenuts and pecans with a little maple syrup and dried cranberries. I also made some cupcakes with a crushed walnut and tahini crust and cheesecake filling that I'll top tomorrow morning with lemon curd and sliced kiwi. Does that sound good or what?

It was sunny and up to 50 degrees today so I got out there in the garage and planted some lettuce and snow peas in pots and put them in front of a large, south-facing window in the garage. They should germinate okay in there, I would think.

I did a little sweeping in the garage, cut out some dead leave from the many perennials I have stored in there (also, some very nice annual flowers overwintered again successfully there, saving me money and the need to buy any), watered them some, collected more pine cones (which I'm bleaching to a lighter color), sawed up a small amount of wood and put out some crushed eggshells for the birds, which need calcium right about now as they set about nesting.

I had some time for a 15-minute late afternoon snooze and did my April investment report. (See sidebar.) I gained about $12k for the month of March, which is doing quite well, but I need to rebalance on Monday as I'm over-weighted on domestic stocks.

My total portfolio is up to $554K now. I believe that's the highest it's ever been. Remarkably, that's $54,410 more than I had a year ago at this time, and I wasn't working f/t then, either! So that's a nice piece of change to make for doing basically nothing.

I would love to grow that to $600K, but that isn't going to happen anytime soon since I can't afford to contribute a penny without a full-time job. It's so frustrating not to be able to move toward my goals, because I have such clarity, focus and determination. It kills me to let time pass without inching closer toward my goals.

I set up my new cordless keyboard and mouse and everything's working quite nicely. It's even nicer knowing I didn't have to pay for it as I used Amazon gift cards earned from a couple of different online forums I'm in. I've been earning $40 a month from this since last year and I do look forward to that as a way to spend a little fun money without having to feel guilty about it.

I'm working on a new credit card bonus reward for the Capital One green cash reward card ($100 after spending $500). I have my eye on the Citi Thank You Premier card (not to be confused with the Amex Premier card or the Citi Thank You Preferred card, both of which I've earned upfront bonuses on already), but won't go for it til September. You have to spend $2,000 (for $250 in gift cards) but both my car and homeowners insurance are due in the fall, so it will help me spend not quite half of the required amount.

So for the month of March I watched 7 Netflix movies, you know, the old-fashioned way where they mail you one at a time. I like that sense of anticipation waiting for a new movie to show up in the mailbox.

Here's what I saw:

Hiding & Seeking: I thought this was an excellent documentary, about a modern-day Jewish father living in upstate NY who is concerned that his two grown sons, both Orthodox, have insulated themselves in the Jewish community. He takes them on a trip to Poland to visit the Polish farm family that sheltered his father and two uncles from the Nazis by hiding them in an underground pit in a barn. Going into it, the 2 sons had conflicted views about non-Jews, not wanting to have anything to do with Poles in general since many of them collaborated with the Nazis. It's a documentary, so there are no neat endings, but there is some resolution and closure.

Delicatessen: I didn't really care for this one; it was a bit too bizarre for me, about a butcher who kills tenants who live in his building and sells the meat in his shop to impoverished customers.

I Served the King of England

The Edge of Heaven: This was very good. A Turkish man accidentally kills a prostitute and the man's grown son becomes involved with making amends for her death to the woman's daughter.

Late Bloomer: Didn't care for this one at all. About a handicapped killer.

Doubt: This was excellent. Starring Meryl Streep as the principal of a Catholic school who suspects the parish priest is molesting one of the students. Thruout the film, Meryl is steadfast in her knowledge of what the priest is doing, based wholly on circumstantial evidence, and determined to protect the boy. At the very end of the film, Meryl has succeeded in forcing the priest out (though he's just being transferred, not prosecuted) but she confesses her lingering doubt to another nun. Hence the name of the movie.

The Way Home: Great movie, poignant,funny, low key, subtle. A selfish and spoiled boy in South Korea is dropped off by his mother to live with his grandmother in the rural countryside for the summer while mom looks for a job. All he wants to do is play video games and eat fast food, but when his batteries die, he slowly becomes more receptive to another way of life and stops calling his grandmother a retard. Really beautiful movie.

What will April bring?

Went to the product testing place to pick up product I will test for 7 days, then return for 2nd and final visit next week = $90.

Used my 3 BP gas cards to put about $20 in the tank, but one card, which has just .65 on it, was not read correctly. Dang, I don't want to waste it. Will try again another time.

Stopped at Kohl's and wanted to use up a $19.12 balance on a gift card there. I didn't want to overspend that $19.12, so I thought I MIGHT be able to get a single top or something. I was able to get a shirt, a turtleneck and a pair of pants, all from the 60% off racks. (And I still got .84 in change back.)

Picked up a cotton long-sleeved shirt for my sister's birthday in a color (minty green?) I'll be seeing her Easter Sunday at my mother's. I think she'll like it. Hopefully it fits. Marked down to $3!!

Also got a mock turtleneck for myself ($5 and change!) and a pair of coffee colored cord pants ($8!). When I got home, I saw the receipt rang it up as "Young Men's Pants." Ha! What were they doing on the women's rack? They seemed to fit ok, altho a bit snug around the waist. For the price, I'll deal with it (and lose a few more pounds).

Amazon got the book I returned and I promptly placed another order with the money returned to my gift card balance. I really need a cordless keyboard/mouse combo becus I put the tower inside the cabinet where it's supposed to go (it'll get less dusty there and I won't have to be kicking it anymore under the desk. All the other many cords reached the tower thru a cutout hole in the back of my computer desk Except the keyboard one BARELY was long enough and sort of requires me to type with the keyboard at a funny angle and not on the slide-out tray.I also got some toiletries just to ensure free shipping.

I also brought a trunk full of heavy logs to the dump. I tried to help a senior citizen unload a very heavy tarp full of leaves from the back of his pickup, but it was super heavy. He was getting it slowly pulled off the tailgate, while I could barely budge it.

I already loaded another trunk full of logs in the car and will unload them tomorrow on my way in to work.

What I thought would be a quickie visit by AT&T U-Verse turned out to be several hours; they had to install an outside line and put a big box on the outside of the house.

While he was working on that, i decided I really would like to put my computer tower inside the cabinet that's made for it in my computer desk. I'm constantly kicking a pile of wires under the desk and I'm tired of looking at it. I never put the tower inside the cabinet before becus the cables/wires didn't quite reach. Now I have it all hooked up but the keyboard wire is too short; i will have to get a new one; luckily a wireless is not that expensive but for now I'm typing at a funny angle.

I think I can notice that everything does seem slightly faster with the U-verse. Even though it's the slowest speed U-verse, it's still 25 times faster than my basic DSL. I couldn't be more pleased about that!

So I boxed up the DSL modem I'd just purchased from them and put the postage free return label on. Not exactly sure if I'll get the full $75 back or $62, sans shipping cost. It didn't seem to be working (that's why I went with the U-verse), so I would think I should not have to pay for postage for a defective unit.

I had a wireless keyboard/mouse before but something stopped working and I never took the time to try to figure out if it was the mouse or the keyboard. (It wasn't the batteries.)

I also finally succeeded in emptying a two-drawer file cabinet that sat next to the computer desk and will bring the ugly thing to the dump tomorrow. It's a bit rusty,and it's scratched up my wood floors. It took up too much room. Now I've put the printer on the computer desk itself; everything all looks a great deal more compact, neat and tidy.

And just the other day, my little shredder stopped working. Strangely, the thing is coming apart at the seam and you can see all the wires and stuff inside. I don't know how that happened. I didn't drop it. It could be unsafe to use that way. I can't seem to get it snap shut again.

I hardly did anything else today besides vacuum the upstairs.

Tomorrow I'm going to do a product testing thing that involves lotion on my arms. This is the 1st trip; after the 2nd visit, they'll pay me $90. Since I'll be 40 minutes out of my way, I'll make a point to hit the BP gas station nearby,since all the ones around here closed up. I have 4 BP gift cards burning a hole in my wallet.

Oh, and talking about gift cards, I discovered I'd put a pile of what I thought were all infrequently used credit cards in a desk drawer and forgot about them. As I whiled away the time when the U-Verse guy was here, I was going through them and realized that one of them was actually a Kohl's gift card. I called the number of it and found I still have $19 on it, so maybe I can hit a Kohl'ls on the way back from the product testing thing. I'll also stop at the landfill to unload some cut up logs. There's still quite a pile in my driveway, leftover from the big pine that came down over the winter.

Thanks, everyone, for the kind words about my (non) job offer.

It IS very discouraging. I DO know what it feels like to just want to give up; I have to battle those feelings constantly these days. I try not to whine about it too much, but there it is.

When it comes to finances, I "did everything right" for most of my life. Thanks to frugal living and a prodigious savings rate, I was able to purchase my last two cars new, in cash. I put 45% cash down when I bought my house in 1995 (about $95,000). By my early 30s, I nearly always maxed out (to 15%) my 401k and IRA contributions, never incurred massive debt (not having kids helped) and then paid off a 30-year mortgage in 17 years, all on a single income that ranged, in the past 20 years, between $50,000 and $80,000. (OK, there was one incredible year when I grossed $130K.) But now I feel I'm being slowly, inexorably, undone by a stupid job loss just at a time when I was hoping to cap off my hard-earned retirement savings.

For years, I dreamed about a comfortable early retirement, at about age 60. I knew I would continue freelance writing on a part-time basis, but I wanted to live a lifestyle on MY terms, terms that would include lots of travel and unstructured free time to pursue my interests. A lifestyle not dictated by anyone else. I’ve always hated long commutes, fixed work hours and, most of all, office politics. The egos, the personal fiefdoms people build around themselves in reaction to the impersonal, ruthless environment that is corporate America.

Late last year, I was hired as a proofreader; I am sharing the job with another part-timer so the employer can avoid paying for our health insurance and other benefits.

They recently asked us to start making sales calls to customers who basically dropped off the face of the earth in recent years. I’m sure if they were truly valuable customers they wouldn’t have us making calls to them, but I guess they figured, what have we got to lose?

Umm, first of all, they haven’t offered us any commission if we make a sale. You see, they’ve discovered that you can get an awful lot done with a $12-an-hour, college-educated, white collar professional. (Maybe next week they’ll have us cleaning the bathrooms, helping out in Accounting or who knows what.) But hey! I don’t have a sales background, nor do I have an interest in becoming a sales assistant or sales anything. I was hired as a proofreader, dammit, not to fill in wherever you happen to have a labor shortage.

So about a half dozen of us were assigned a bunch of calls to make. All but the two of us proofreaders are salaried employees, and all of us normally do work that doesn’t involve sales. Making the calls involves a fair amount of upfront research using the company’s databases to see when the customer last placed an order, what they ordered the most of and how far away they are from reaching a certain purchase threshold that entitles them to certain discounts. We also have to inform them of various promotions we’re offering this month. There’s a whole sales script involved. No one’s really sat down with the two of us proofreaders to familiarize us with the software. (They had a meeting about the calls on a day I don’t normally work.) So the training consisted of about 15 minutes of looking over someone’s shoulder to see how she did it.

The other part-timer didn’t want to do it either and was procrastinating about doing so. She was hoping she could just say hey, I was just too busy with my normal work and I ran out of time. I took the opposite tack and just got through my (half-assed) research and calls as quickly as possible. I made one sale out of about 25 calls. When I approached my manager about needing something else to do, she then wanted me to do HER sales calls for her becus she was so busy and hadn’t had time to start hers yet. I told her politely no, I wasn’t comfortable with doing the calls, that sales wasn’t really my “schtick.” Then she’s like, well, then you can do all my research for me and I’ll make the calls. I said I’d really rather not do that, if that’s okay.(If more was at stake, I might have relented, but for this piddly job? No.) She got pissed when I said that and replied, “Well, it may NOT be ok.”

She gave me something else to do and then immediately walked into her manager’s office (that woman is a true sweetheart) and closed the door . Of course, she was discussing my insubordination, and I contemplated whether I would be asked to leave in short order.

That didn’t happen, and the rest of the day proved uneventful, though there was tension between me and my manager, someone who ordinarily is quite cheerful and nice, though she is a control freak who doesn’t allow you to think for yourself. Everything must be done precisely as she says and that, for an intelligent person, is really grating.

There’s a strong correlation between the degree of autonomy one enjoys in their work environment and the amount of personal job satisfaction experienced. While I completely defer to this manager on all things related to proofreading (tons of procedural stuff leave little room for interpreting anything), I also notice that she rarely takes any of my suggested edits when I’m asked to proofread a letter or something else. So why bother asking me to proofread it? Even when I back up my edits with credible/reputable online sources that explain why such-and-such shouldn’t be capitalized, why you don’t need a comma or why you should hyphenate, she often responds with, "But that’s the way we’ve always done it." But that doesn’t make it right! She actually showed me a letter that one of our clients sent back to her, all marked up and edited. She was embarrassed, but instead of taking it to heart, she found ways to rationalize and justify not making any changes to it.

So maybe you can see how defeated it makes me feel to work there; when I’m asked to do what I was hired to do, my suggestions are consistently overruled, and then they get pissed when I’m less than willing to do work that’s clearly beyond the scope of my experience or current job description!

The guy who interviewed me sent me an email today about it. I was very disappointed, but wrote back to say, "I understand" (even though I don't) and to express an interest in doing some writing for the website, as he'd mentioned in the interview they were looking for more writers.

The publisher/owner, with whom I'd also met, wrote back to say they were happy I was interested in writing for them, that they were "very impressed" with me and hoped that as the website grew, she could find a way to put all of my skills to work...or something to that effect.

Maybe something good will come of it, even if it's just a bit more freelance work, which I could always use.

The other job I interviewed for about 2 weeks ago was with an agency. After meeting with me, she submitted my resume to the employer but after all this time the company hasn't even had the courtesy to get back to the agency. I assume that job's a dead deal.

The woman at the agency told me yesterday there was another opening and did i want her to send on my resume. I said sure, yes, even though she could tell me nothing about it and the job is located further away than I'd like but at this point.....

I spent about 2 hours on the phone with AT&T about a replacement DSL modem I bought from them for $70 which keeps dropping the Internet connection. They explained that DSL is considered obsolete technology (then why do they keep selling DSL modems?) and suggested AT&T UVerse. Initially I said no becus i'm not interested in bundling anything, but I did change my mind since the price for the first year is actually $10 cheaper than what I'm paying now ($15 a month vs $28 a month) and it's supposedly much more reliable and faster than what I have, which is slow DSL at 768k vs. 1.5 MB.

(Interestingly, AT&T just increased the cost of my basic DSL service from $25 to $28; i have no idea why. I wonder if they do that to prod people like me to upgrade to a more expensive service.)

But after the first year of paying $15 a month for the UVerse, the price shoots up to $36, which I know I won't want to pay. But there is no contract, it's just month to month, so maybe by that time I'll either have a job which enables me to pay that kind of monthly fee or, if not, I'll figure something else out and get another provider at a better cost.

The technician is supposed to come out here Monday to set it up. It's still a modem, so I don't know why they're willing to send out a technician to set it up for free (and the modem's free too) while they don't do that for the DSL modem. I'm so distrustful of big businesses like AT&T that it makes me wonder if they do something to your connection so you're stuck with it or can't uninstall it yourself or something.

I also have a postage paid shipping label so i can ship out the DSL modem once I'm hooked up to UVerse and get a refund for it.

I'm feeling very discouraged and fatalistic right now. I was really wanting that job. I'm really afraid that at my age (54 this summer) I'll never get another full-time job again.

As usual, my To Do List is a bit of a stretch to accomplish. This morning I had a 10 am oil/filter change scheduled. It was cool to schedule it online at the dealer’s website. I was able to push it back an hour on account of our nasty weather here today. (I haven’t been using the dealer much lately becus I found a trustworthy mechanic who will do things more cheaply, but I had a coupon at the dealer for a $21 oil change and it’s more comfortable to wait for the car in their nice seating area. The other mechanic will only say he’ll call me when it’s ready, which can be a big pain as, without a car, it forces me to coordinate with my mother so she can give me a ride and hang out at her place until the car’s done, something I can’t always take the time to do.

The dealer informed me the transmission oil was really dark and did I want it changed ($79). Also, my rear brake light was out. So I had them do both since I was already there. Somehow, the $100 bill I envisioned was actually $131, even with my $18 coupon, after accounting for “labor” to change the back brake light and taxes. Sigh. They also told me I’d need to do the front brake pads next time I did the oil change; I remember the other mechanic telling me that 6 months ago, but I think my gentle driving habits prolong my brake life. (Just for reference, I asked how much to replace the front brake pads. $299, he said. RIDICULOUS. I'm sure my other mechanic will do it for less. At least I hope so.)

My plan after getting the oil change was to hopefully hit Trader Joe’s, BJs and Shop Rite for various sale items or other reasons (5% in rewards points from Capital One if you charge at least $60 at Trader Joe’s), and then catch the 1 pm matinee of “Lincoln” at the $2 movie theater. However, it took longer to do the extra stuff to the car, so by the time I got out I had to make a decision to either go straight to the movie or do the food shopping.

The sleet and icy rain was still continuing, so I decided to bag the furthest trip out to Trader Joe’s (I can try to do it again next week) and just head home, but then I wound up at Shop Rite, and then since BJs is just down the road, I did that, too. I’d really like BJs to account for at least half of my overall grocery shopping this year since all my calculations show significant savings. It will be interesting to see if I squeak out any reduction in total grocery spending.

I was a little sad to miss the movie, as it seems I rarely do things for fun anymore! Maybe next week. They only have one weekday matinee, and that’s on Tuesdays, one of my days off from the proofreading job.

Today I was also able to mail out two return packages for about $50 worth of vitamins/supplements I’d purchased for the acid reflux, and a book I got from amazon on acid reflux diets. Since I’ve been liberated from that particular fate, I figured I might as well get some sort of money back, even though it cost me $16 to mail the 2 boxes at USPS.
I got back home around 2ish and wanted to make lunch but then saw I had some memo editing requests from one of my clients, so I did it and sent it out, then went to get a late lunch going. Then he called and asked me to quickly edit a 2nd memo, so my lunch got cold but that’s ok….he got what he needed in a more or less timely fashion.

I have to call a builder tomorrow morning for the next sales brochure I’m writing and for that reason am bagging going into the proofreading job earlier than my usual 1 pm on Wednesdays. It’s a matter of $12/hr vs. $50/hr. I try to do both whenever possible, but sometimes I seem to run out of time. Have to get the agent on the phone too, but I just want to relax a bit this afternoon so will leave that til tomorrow as well.

Wondering about that web editor job I interviewed for and if I’ll hear from them after turning in my 2nd writing assignment…….It would be HUGE to get that job, even without benefits, and EVEN if, as a one-year-old start-up, they go belly-up in a year. It would all still be worth it!!!!

OK, so today was my follow-up visit to the ENT doc to learn the results of my wholly unpleasant pH test. He told me that my acid levels were COMPLETELY normal and not a trace of acid reflux.

He seemed as surprised as I was. So he's referred me on to a pulmonologist. He said maybe I have something called "reactive lung disease," which is basically a condition where your airway is irritated by air pollution or sometimes by ongoing exposure to toxic chemicals, like on the job. The latter certainly wouldn't be me. The treatment is an inhaler.

Of course in a case like this, your first worry is, do i have cancer or a tumor somewhere that's causing my chronic cough? He said he didn't think i had that becus if so, i'd be dead already. (And besides, I've already had 2 normal chest x-rays.)

So I'm going to celebrate with a big steaming cup of strong black and yes, acid tea with a square of acid dark chocolate!! Yeah, baby.

I made the appointment with the pulmonologist, but earliest appointment I could get is a month away. I'm going to see if I can return the acid reflux book I just got from Amazon, and possibly even return some of the supplements I bought from Puritans Pride.

I guess this is good news, and am certainly relieved I don't have to give up on garlic, tomatoes, onions, strawberries or citrus fruits, but my chronic dry cough, which I've had for several years (at least 3) is somewhat troubling. I don't want to go on a wild goose chase to figure out what it is as i can't afford that in my current underemployed state. (Although I just checked to see what that pH test cost and of the total $1,000 bill, I only have to pay $23, not including the $45 for the office visit. I was afraid it was going to be a lot more becus I have a $1500 deductible and for some reason, going to an ENT (a specialty doctor) didn't require me to pay toward that deductible. I just don't get that..... but not complaining.

From what I've read online, reactive lung disease doesn't quite fit me. My cough is not triggered by exercise, and the doctor already had me do an asthma test, which was negative. So at this point, not really sure what this is.

I can say the air in my house is very dry in the winter. Years ago, when I had a new furnace put in, they guys persuaded me to disconnect the built-in air humidifier becus they said mold and stuff can grow in there and cause lots of problems. As a result of doing that, I have a VVERY dry house every winter, to the point of, if i don't run a humidifier in my bedroom, I wake up in the a.m. with a sore throat.

I'll go back to using that humidifier, but the fact is, my cough is year-round, so i don't think that's what it is.

So, I was sort of looking forward to a leisurely Sunday. That was not to be.

I worked a few hours on some take-home work from proofreading job. But then when I was just wrapping up, I got a surprise email from the guy I interviewed with for the web editor job last Friday.

He said you're one of the finalists, and by the way, here's a SECOND test editing/writing assignment (It was actually two.) I mean, an interview, a look at their portfolio and the first writing assignment wasn't enough to tell you about what they can do?

Sheesh. I've been through so many of these. I do hope I get an offer.

Tomorrow I go back to the ENT doctor to discuss the results of my pH test. I am very anxious to hear whether I have minor, moderate or serious problems. I don't feel it's that bad, but that's why they call it "silent" reflux. And I have had a cough for years.

My snowdrops are in bloom. They are so reliable and always the very first flower up around here, even when there's snow still on the ground.

I've been able to reduce my tea drinking to just one cup of caffeine daily, which is "allowed." The other cup is decaf but I recently got the Dropping Acid book from Amazon and she said that it's the tea which is acidic, as well as the caffeine. So tomorrow when doing the grocery shopping, I'll pick up some chamomile tea for one of those 2 cups.

I've also stayed away from tomato sauce and ketchup, as well as citrus fruit and juice. No onions and mostly no chocolate. I want to get rid of my cough and then very slowly reintroduce certain foods to see if they're trigger foods.

I've also started taking various supplements, and more are coming in the mail. Vit. C, B12, fish oil, slippery elm bark and DGL. I may still end up taking a proton pump inhibitor like Prilosec, but my plan is not to stay on it for more than eight weeks.

I plan to fill the prescription at CVS and then switch it at the first refill to Walgreen's so I can get the $25 back for a transferred prescription.

I've been able to keep my weight down to 140, which feels pretty good after flirting with 150.However, I'd like to get down to 135, or even 130. I was at 135 about 5 years ago.

I had my interview this a.m. for a web editor position at a start-up news website. It's been around since last summer.

I think it went super. I impressed him with a writing assignment and also offered up a host of ideas for improving their website and promoting it better. Which was pretty darn good considering I didn't know this website even existed a week ago and he only asked me to do this the day before the interview. I do hope they don't just steal my ideas, though.

Would love to work there. No idea what the pay would be, but they are a very small group. It would be mostly work at home, writing my stories and editing freelancers' stories, then loading all onto the site. Would need to travel to the town I went to today, about a 50-minute drive. Maybe twice a month. I can do that.

I'm pretty psyched. This seems similar to my last salaried job, writing and editing for a news type website.

If I got it, with even a very low payscale, I'd end up with maybe $1,000 more a month than my bare minimum expenses. (Remember, I paid off my mortgage.) If I could save $1,000 a month for 15 months, I could buy a new car, which I really need. (I'm driving a 1999, which still runs great, but i do feel a little nervous going on the highway for long distances.)

This is a job that would put all my marketing and PR experience to good use. At the little p/t job i have now, i feel it's largely going to waste and I am doing mindless grunt work. Well, it's not really mindless, but it is tedious as all get out and quite boring to me.

The only thing that worries me a bit is how stable this job would be. With a bit less than a year under their belt, i consider them a start-up, and that can be dicey. I worked at a start-up before that went out of business. I would have no real job security, but then, I certainly have none now, either. What if the website didn't ever really take off, or what if their advertisers dried up? (That's how i'd be paid, according to the guy who interviewed me.) What if the 3 partners ran out of money or lost interest in the venture?

I'd still go for it and just try to squirrel away as much as I could in case the unforeseeable happened. What else can you do?

After a sleepless night, I got the tube thing out of my nose this morning, thank GOD.

I told the nurse I sure hoped this procedure was not for NOTHING, because the meter never read lower than 6.8 or higher than 7.4 pH. (A normal pH is about 7.) But she said most reflux issues happen overnight, so we'll see. I hadn't checked it overnight. I have another appointment to discuss results with doc on Monday.

So far, I paid $90 for the 1st office visit and the throat exam at that time. I'm wondering what this procedure will cost me as I haven't paid a deductible this year.... If it is acid reflux, I'll likely go on meds (more $$) but I really hope that with dietary changes i don't need the meds for more than 3 months.

Today's my last free day before returning to the proofreading job. I have to go in early tomorrow because I will be arriving late, around mid-day, there on Friday. That's because I have another job interview, the 2nd in 2 weeks. (Amazing.)

This one is for a Latino news website. They need a web editor and i did that at my last job, am familiar with content management systems used to post stories to a site, edited the work of a team of freelancers, etc. I'm putting my portfolio together today/tonight. I must say it always looks impressive, and since they're also a start-up, I can talk about different things we did to build traffic to the site.

It sounds like a really good fit but I have no idea what they might pay; I've researched the company and they just started last July and have a staff of just five people. It would be full-time, work from home (great!) but no benefits. I would have to occasionally drive to the Hartford area (a little under an hour) for editorial meetings. I'm hoping no more than once a week.

I'm also hoping the job would pay in the 30s (as in $30 something an hour), but again, they're new and very small so i have a feeling it will be less, like $20 or $25/hr. I'd try to get more but i would of course quit the part-time job and take it. Even at $20/hr, it would be $700 gross for a 35-hour week vs. the proofing job, which is $240 to $300 and dwindling as we approach spring until it dries up completely during the summer months. so if I got the job, it would more than double my income. My monthly gross would be $3033, about 1.5 times my bare minimum monthly expenses, now that i paid off the mortgage.

Also i would mostly not have to leave the house, which is an awfully nice thought when you think about snowstorms, or simply having to think about what will I wear today to look presentable.

Equally important, the new job is in my field and would actually use my skills and experience, whereas the proofing job is like sooooo boring and tedious. I can't wait to quit there. The people are very nice, perhaps even more so becus they know the pay is s*** and they want to encourage me and the gal I share the job with to stay. I know that if I did quit, I'm guessing they might offer the other woman more hours, but she's already told me she could never do the job full-time. So they'd have to re-advertise the job. That's what you get when you underpay.

It was a very trying time this morning as I drove in to get the tube thing stuck up my nose to measure the pH level in my esophagus.

It was a nurse, not the doctor, who inserted it. I was feeling very anxious, and told her so, and she explained how it all would go. However, it was extremely uncomfortable when she inserted it. It's supposed to be carefully positioned so the end of it hangs just slightly above your throat, so that you can talk, swallow and eat normally. Well, she announced it was in place and that she was now going to tape the tube to my face (the other end is attached to a small computer on a belt) and i told her NO cus it was like RIGHT in my throat and every time I swallowed, I felt it big time. No way could i deal with that for 24 hours, let alone eat.

She jiggled it around so more, which was the worst, made some adjustments, and then looked inside my mouth to see its location. It was bad enough I started to cry a little.

However, once it was in place, it wasn't so bad, and I drove myself home, trying not to turn my head too much becus it would tug a little on the tube.

I'm feeling better about it now, but will sure be glad to get this thing out tomorrow morning. I have to keep a diary and record "events" such as what and when I eat, when I cough and when I sleep. At the same time, I have to push certain buttons on the computer to record those events.

It's constantly monitoring my pH levels. Normal ph is about 7, and my ph has varied only from about 6.9 to 7.3, so I see nothing wrong with it thus far.

I sure hope this test is not for nothing! As it's going to cost me and I sure don't enjoy it. I really hope it's not inconclusive and they try to get me to do various other tests. I'm really worried about much this is going to cost. I'd like the doctor to work with me in modifying my diet and habits (like not eating 3 hours before bedtime) before the knee-jerk reaction to go to meds, which as I understand, don't really fix any damage done to your throat by stomach acids anyway.

Yesterday R. and I took a drive (with his dog) up to Madison, the town where I wanted to check out some detached condos. There were 2 open houses at this one complex. All the way up there (about an hour's drive) Ron is telling me all the reasons I shouldn't move there, which was frankly annoying. Well, he's always been that way; not one to withhold his personal opinion.

So I was quite pleased when we arrived and he had to admit it was a very nice and unusual community where the condos were really very nicely spaced away from each other with a fair amount of privacy and space and everything was very nicely landscaped.

The first one we looked at felt more like a home with a small, private yard (with an open meadow out back), 2 stories, about 1590 square feet. Very private little patio. However, the kitchen and baths were somewhat dated and I knew if I bought it I'd have to update the appliances and counters at least. $279,900 and common charges $330. Town water and shared septic. Built in 1977. It also had 3 baths, which i certainly don't need. One downstairs, and then one for each of the 2 bedrooms.

The second open house was at a smaller ranch unit, about 1290 sf and a smaller kitchen, more galley-like, but more updated and attractive. Its sales price was quite a bit less, i guess mainly becus of the smaller overall square footage, at about $249,500. This one had a nice 3-season sun room, very private. The only thing I didn't like about it (aside from the slab, not full basement which means it won't hold the heat as well) is that the entrance to another unit was nearby and perpendicular to it, making it fell vaguely like an apartment complex, while the first unit felt more like a row house.

Both units have electric heat and central air. the taxes at both units would be about $1,000 less than what I'm paying now with my house. I won't be buying either unit as my house is not ready to put on market, but i wanted to look and just see if seeing them in person would allow me to rule them out as real possibilities, or not. I have not ruled them out.

The complex is just about a mile from Hammonnasset State Park, which is right on Long Island Sound, so while we were there we checked out this rather large park. It was a nice day, so there were quite a lot of people there with dogs or jogging or just driving around like we were. They have trails, boardwalks, fishing piers, a huge nature center, sandy beaches. Lots to do. You can buy a season's pass. I could see myself taking walks there, or bicycling, 2 or 3 times a week if it was so close.

The town itself is also quite nice, old New England homes and nice shops, small downtown. Even the neighborhood where the condo complex is is also very nice, lots of old homes.

One other drawback is that if i ever needed to travel west, say to Fairfield County where I live now, you really only have way to go, and that's Interstate 95. Not a fun road to travel if you can avoid it. There's also Rt. 1, but that's just a 2 lane road with lots of stops and lights and traffic along the way.

I don't really feel that if i moved, I'd have a lot of reasons to drive back toward this way. Right now, both my parents are still alive, and that's a big reason why I might delay any move further away, for now. But aside from my parents, i have a few friends in town, and they are all moving out of state this year or next. Ron is to the east and maybe a move would put me a little further out from him, about 45 minutes, but I'm about 40 minutes away from him right now, so not much difference.

Part of me would like to move now. I wonder, too, though, whether moving when I don't have steady work would worsen things for me in that location as opposed to here. The way I see it, I've been looking for f/t work for 3.5 years. I can't see it being that much worse there if I haven't gotten a steady job here in all that time.

Moving out there would feel like starting over from scratch in a way, since I'd be leaving everything that's familiar to me here in western Connecticut. I've done that kind of thing before, but I was much younger, in my 20s, when I moved by myself to Cape cod, and then to Vermont.

It would be very important to reach out and join different groups in town to get to know people, or i could be very lonely. It's not the kind of thing that comes naturally to me but I'd need to make the effort.

I zipped over to BJs this morning and was able to return about $21 worth of foods I can no longer eat: cheddar cheese and pasta sauce. I had 5 large jars of the stuff (!) and only had a receipt for the cheese. I wasn't sure if they'd take it becus if you look at their website, they say they don't take food items back. Or maybe I'm just reading it wrong.

So, my monetary loss from getting rid of all these foods is now down to just 3/4 of a bag of navel oranges, which I'll give my mother, as well as 14 cans of tomato paste, which I've offered to my neighbor. Also, 2 onions. So maybe $12 worth of food. Guess I can live with that.

While I was at BJs I got more soymilk, salad greens and organic apples, all on my "safe" list.

I'm not ready to part yet with my 2 bags of small dark chocolate squares, or my sun-dried tomatoes in olive oil (1.5 jars). Maybe I can have these things occasionally after I get this thing under control. (No one's told me yet not to eat all these things, but I've just taken it upon myself to be informed.)

I also recently returned a sun lamp (aka happy lamp), the kind that's supposed to help with seasonal affective disorder. I gave it a short run (one week), and would have given it longer, but since it said on the box you could see results in just 2-4 days, I gave it up and became more concerned about getting a refund. I really didn't notice any change at all, so I decided to return it (value about $35) so I wouldn't have yet another useless thing around here taking up space, and so I can spend the money on something else more useful to me, which these days is either gas for the car, food or products to help me do home maintenance/repairs.

Of course, since Amazon overcharges on most everything except books, I'm constantly analyzing whether I'm better off buying something on amazon using free gift cards or if i should buy cheaper elsewhere and save the gift cards for something where I can get a relatively decent deal.

Along with my ongoing concerns over diet and what i put in my mouth, I'm also becoming more resolved to make healthier choices about toiletries. Most fragrances, shampoos, lotions and make-up are filled with unsafe chemicals. But since I'm not made of money, I decided I would focus on things that stay on my skin and are thus readily absorbed into my system, as opposed to things you apply to your body but wash off fairly quickly, like body washes, shampoos and conditioners.

So I did select one or two Burt's Bees hand lotions for my amazon cart; a quick comparison to the same items' prices at Walmart showed me they were just a little more money. My hands get very dry in the winter but I no longer want to use things with ingredients I can't pronounce that disrupt my hormones or may cause cancer.

I really need to address chapstick-type products. It's another case of me having a ton of supplies that I'm reluctant to part with since it saves me money to use them up first, but lip products especially trouble me. If they wear off your lips, you can be pretty sure you're swallowing the stuff.

The more you think about it, the more crazy it seems. Like, a year or so ago I bought an air purifier for the bedroom. I don't have allergies, but with 2 cats in the house and a forced hot air heating system, there's usually a lot of dust around. I love my Airstream purifier, but it seemed so counter-productive and a little disappointing that a company in the business of "purifying" air would include 3 packets of "air freshener" with the air purifier. The air freshener packet fragrances were lavendar, lemon and citrus, I think, and while the latter 2 smelled great, you know obviously that what you are smelling is not real lemon or orange but pure chemicals.

I emailed the company a note asking for the ingredients and a rep replied that they were "nature-inspired" or something like that, which basically answered my question. When I pressed her again for the actual ingredients list, she never responded, I think becus she know this consumer wouldn't be pleased.

Also over the weekend I took advantage of a Staples offer for a free after rebate ream of paper and photo 4 x 6 paper. It's so easy to process the rebates on their website; everything you need to know is on the receipt.

Have to be at work at 1 pm today. I've been asking if she wants me to come in earlier in the a.m. for the past or so, and each time she says yes, cus there's work, but hey, if she doesn't reach out to me i don't think I'll bother, becus when I go in early, it's a real pain to work because my counterpart with whom i share the job is at our work station and I have to sit in other locations where i have to use remote web email (doesn't have my folders and saved templates that i use all the time) and sometimes i sit somewhere where there's not even a phone and i have to walk over to an empty office to make a phone call. (Wow, that was one really long sentence.) Don't really like to do my job that way so I think i'll try to stay an hour later each of the next 3 days but pass on the wandering employee routine.

For lunch today I think I'll make a fritatta with feta cheese, mushrooms and spinach. guess I'd better get started on that now.

In my last post, I wrote about my ENT visit and the likely diagnosis of "silent" acid reflux. While I still have to go back on Monday for an unpleasant pH test, I already spent a few hours last night researching foods I should and shouldn't be eating now, as dietary management is apparently very helpful and could even get rid of this condition entirely.

So that's why I say it could be a scary new world, cus many of the foods I thought were "healthy" were apparently exacerbating the silent reflux. I need to cut back if not eliminate at least some of these foods.

One thing I eat quite a bit of, for instance, is jarred pasta sauce (Classico/Prego) over pasta, sauteed onions and garlic and a fair amount of tomato paste which I use to thicken up my homemade soups.

After reading a few very interesting diet/nutrition books over preceding months and being especially interested in Robert Lustig's Wheat Belly, I had already embarked a few months ago on a quest to lower the overall amount of whole wheat and sugar in my diet.

As part of that effort, I cut back (but did not eliminate) pasta. I also began eating more fresh fruit, and lately I'd been on a pink grapefruit kick. I was really enjoying them and eating a whole one every other day after getting a big bag at BJs. Then I moved on to the navel oranges....

And of course I'm a big tea drinker, though I rarely have more than 2 cups a day. Caffeine is not good for silent reflux; although there's always decaf, I don't know if I could entirely give up that great caffeine kick I get in the morning and then again in early afternoon when I'm feeling ready for a nap.

Other foods that aren't good are fatty meats (don't eat these much), full fat dairy like milk and cheese), chocolate (is 1 small square of dark chocolate really all that detrimental?), cranberries and soda (gave that up for the most part a few years ago).

So the whole idea of acid reflux kind of flummoxed me because I'm not a soda drinker, I don't eat too many sweets and I do make a lot of my own meals.

Now truth be told, until I get the results back from the pH test (doc said he wants me to do a barium x-ray as well to check for damage to various tissue), I don't really know how bad my reflux is. So I may be jumping the gun somewhat on all the dietary stuff and I don't know if the stricter regimen advocated by Dr. Jamie Koufman in her book would be required or if following her less stringent "maintenance diet" would be sufficient.

Anyway, I'm going to get her book called "Dropping Acid...." It's all about the acid/alkaline balance in our bodies and from what I've read, there's an epidemic of acid reflux in this country because many of the foods we eat are high in acid. Manufacturers are required by law to line the insides of bottles and jars with acid, yes acid, to better preserve foods. (Another reason to eat fresh, not processed.)

I do already do a lot of my own cooking but there are certain processed foods I admit i rely on. And one of my favorite meals for many years was a big, and I mean big, bowl of pasta with Prego sauce.

The only time I experienced ANY acid reflux symptoms aside from this cough was when i had a big bowl of pasta a little late at night, in hindsight, too close to bedtime. Then I would wake up and feel that sour taste in my throat which I knew was reflux. This happened maybe a total of 5 times over the course of the past year or two.

It's supposed to be worse than the usual heartburn many experience because the throat is much more sensitive than the stomach. Oh well. Left untreated, acid reflux is more than just an inconvenient nuisance since it can make you susceptible to esophagus cancer, which has a high mortality rate. Oh well, Didn't know these things.

However, I am a mortal human being. At this point, I think I can realistically make the following changes in my diet:

1. Reduce caffeine intake from 2 cups daily to 1 cup daily; the other cup can be decaf.

2. Just knowing my own diet and what I tend to eat the most of, i think it pretty important to pretty much eliminate pasta sauce. It's concentrated tomato. I plan to give my sauce and most of the paste away to family and neighbor. HOWEVER, I think it would be relatively safe to eat fresh tomatoes on occasion, and I'm thinking in this spring's vegetable garden I would grow just cherry tomatoes for my salads. Freezing surplus tomatoes was always such a big deal to me,for use over the winter in soups. I don't know if I should still do that.

3. I can also cut back on sauteed onions quite a bit as i seem to put them in everything, from pizza to soups to you name it.

4. After cutting back sugar elsewhere in my diet (orange juice, Kozy Shack rice pudding and sometimes chocolate pudding) and occasional cookies, I had allowed myself sugar in the form of beneficial dark (60% cocoa) chocolate, 1 or 2 squares on most days. I'm reluctant to give this up as i don't really think the quantity was enough to cause much harm, but i will read the book once i get it and see what they have to say.

The problem is, there are tons of articles and food lists online, but many of them say don't eat such and such without really explaining why, and often certain foods are on different lists depending what website you're visiting. So for instance, a lot of sites said don't eat eggs with no reason given. Then I found one site that said it's really all the butter or other fats you fry the egg in that are detrimental. So now i'm thinking that a hard-boiled egg, maybe sliced in a salad, would probably be ok but eggs for breakfast, easy over, maybe not. (I use coconut oil.)

So as you can see i still have a lot of questions about the dietary things. Apparently goat cheese and feta cheese are ok, but "high fat" cheeses aren't. Lean meat and fish ok, fatty meat no. Nearly all fruit and veggies are ok, but i saw something about strawberries and possibly cucumbers (and of course those onions/garlic).

To think that while I was sick with that middle ear infection I was eating multiple cloves of raw garlic daily, for their infection-fighting capabilities.

The more time I have to think about it, the less I'm looking forward to my return office visit Monday. They will rig me up with a tube up my nose, about the length of a piece of spaghetti. It will be attached to a small computer at my waist and I'll have to somehow live with this think for a full 24 hours, including overnight. don't know how I'll sleep. Before the doc jammed that tube up my nose in his office, they sprayed my nose with something that numbed me. But how will it work when i have it in for 24 hours? Won't it become sore? When the doctor inserted it, it was uncomfortable, and borderline painful, although that could have been for just while he was inserting it; maybe it won't really hurt once it's in place.

Thank you to FreeMe Journey for your kind words. I welcome your feedback!

OK, so I’ve had an “unexplained cough” for a long time now. Several years, in fact. Each year at my annual physical I would tell my PCP (an APRN) that I still had “that cough.” They had done a chest x-ray (normal), a breathing test to rule out asthma and then I was in Prilosec for just a week, to see if I had acid reflux. I was really supposed to stay on it for at least 2 weeks, but I stopped after 1 week with no difference.

I had some extremely infrequent instances of acid reflux, nearly every time after I had a big bowl of pasta…with lots of acidic tomato sauce…. for dinner.
So, as I said, I would dutifully report the cough each year, and each year she’d do one test and then never follow up with me, and truth be told I wanted to forget about it so I didn’t call her. For some reason I had it in my head that diagnosing the source of my problem would be a long, drawn out affair with lots of diagnostic tests which, even with health insurance, I feel I can ill afford (haven’t met the deductible this year).

I finally went to the ear, nose and throat guy today, who she’d finally referred me to last year before I got that middle ear infection.

I told the doc my issues and lickety split, before I could say I don’t want that long tube thingy up my nose, well, he inserted a long thin tube thingy up my nose. He said it was definitely inflamed and suspected “silent” acid reflux but wants me to do another unpleasant procedure next week to determine for sure.

The unpleasant procedure is to have them insert another tube, about the size of a piece of spaghetti (not sure if that’s width or length) up my nose while it’s connected to a mini computer attached to my waist. I have to go home with this thing and sleep with it overnight so it can record the acidity in my stomach! Then I return the next day to have them remove the tube. Ick. Ugh. Gag.

If that’s in fact my problem, I have to go on medication. Not clear how long. Could be a few months or forever. Also, becus I’ve had this cough for a long time, he wants me to go to a GI guy for a barium x-ray to make sure there’s no damage to my esophagus tissue or whatever. Happy, joy, joy.

I do feel somewhat relieved to know this is probably what it is. My other fear about this thing was that it was a cancerous tumor in my throat, and I was taking a rather fatalistic approach to it all. (I tend to self-diagnose the worst case scenarios all the time.) Silent acid reflux can be somewhat helped by changes in habit and diet, meaning, don’t eat 3 hours before bedtime and avoid things like tomatoes (love ‘em), chocolate (oh no), alcohol, caffeine (no!), cheese and eggs (uh oh).

I’d just like this cough to go away. It’s gotten to the point where people notice it and ask what’s wrong, and it’s also frequent enough that I worry I’m gonna start hacking away during at an inopportune time, like a job interview. Which I had scheduled for this a.m. until they called and said it was cancelled cus the woman was sick.

So I go back on Monday to have the tube inserted. I have Mondays and Tuesdays off from work, so that works fine and I won’t lose any work time. But I’m already feeling nervous about it.

I see that Chase is offering the Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards Premier Card, which awards you 50,000 bonus points after you spend $2,000 in the first 3 months, good for 2 roundtrip flights. And you get 6,000 bonus points after your one-year anniversary. While I haven’t traveled much lately and highly doubt I will anytime soon, I’m interested in the card because you can also redeem the points for $500 in gift cards from Wal-Mart, Lowes, Home Depot or Amazon. However, the card does have a $99 annual fee. Bummer.

However, Chase has a very similar card, the Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards Plus Card, which offers the exact same benefits except you get 3,000 bonus points on your anniversary instead of 6,000. And this one has a $69 annual fee. Since I’m mainly interested in the rewards and wouldn’t plan on keeping the card for a year, I don’t much care about the anniversary points anyway.

So….while spending $2,000 in 3 months was a stretch for me last time I did it (there’s always more grocery store gift cards), it would be nice to get $430 in gift cards, which I could surely use at Home Depot for all my home maintenance/repair needs. (Amazon would never be my first choice for gift cards as their prices for anything besides books is much higher than you can find elsewhere. And now they charge sales tax in Connecticut, so that little cost savings is gone.)

I may wait until I think it’s October when both my homeowners and car insurance are due. That would be a quick $1,000 spend right there. (I’d been meaning to ask my agent if I could separate these two bills so they don’t both come due at the same time cus it’s one big bill, but for purposes of earning credit card rewards, it works well.)

In the meantime, I’m $50 shy of having earned a $100 reward from Bank Americard.

As always, I'm so glad when the weekend is here. The next 4 days are mine. It's not that I'm not still working...far from it...but my time is my own and I can decide when and how with my freelance work.

I've got a slew of things to do in the next 4 days. They're expecting possible snow flurries Sunday, and my mother's arthritis is acting up, so she's said maybe her birthday lunch on that day wouldn't be best. So we've rescheduled for next weekend, which is actually better for me anyway.

Today is my running around day. I have a lot of store returns to make, at Christmas Tree Shop and Home Depot, then I want to hit BJs and the, though it's out of the way, my sister has fresh eggs for me.
I want to finish grouting in the bathroom.

Sunday I think I can now devote to ghost-writing an article about the Connecticut housing market; it'll be in Connecticut Builder Magazine. I've written 5 or 6 of these already.

After a doctor's appointment Monday, I have an interview in the afternoon with an agency for a temp content writer job. I don't even know how long the job would last, nor whether it would make sense to quit my proofreading job to take it.

I'd probably quit to take a f/t job that paid at least $30/hr if it lasted for at least 3 months. That'd be roughly 2.5 times as much pay as I'm making now, plus I think I could switch over to the employment agency's health plan. While I wouldn't expect to save any money doing that and it's still very pricey, I believe it would reset the clock as far as COBRA goes, and after 30 days of employment I believe I could start a new 18-month period (or whatever it is), which would carry me through until January 2014 when I would probably switch to the new state health co-op.

As it stands now, my COBRA expires June 30 and without something else, I'll have to go in the state plan.

So anyway, I spent over an hour last night printing out selected writing samples for my portfolio, which I always customize to the prospective employer. This one is a consumer packaged goods company that needs someone to do internal communications and work with HR. Haven't done a ton of that, but if you work long enough as a writer, you're bound to delve into various things that aren't your primary responsibility. So I did for a time serve on my last employer's corporate newsletter committee and I was the person who wrote it after we determined the direction/theme of each issue. I've also written a lot of internal bulletins, or news updates to keep employees in far-flung locations (mainly salespeople) abreast of what was happening in the company.

The agency mentioned experience with charitable events. Not sure what exactly they'd be looking for, but again, I've written a ton of press releases for all sorts of fundraisers and special events, so I printed those out too.

Let's hope it all pays off.

Lots to do! This is good. I have yet to see the money trickle in, but there's always a 6 week delay between the time I cut the invoice and when I get paid. I have tallied up all work done year to date, whether or not I've been paid for it yet, and I've already exceeded my modest monthly income goal with still a full month to go.

At the proofreading job, the work is feeling a little easier as I'm getting the hang of it more. It's not at all an easy job despite the very low pay. Everyone in marketing, the area in which I work, seems to get along pretty well, although recently one of the women was in charge of training a new p/t hire. The job would seem simple enough: running huge print jobs off on their humongous color printer. However, the person doing it would need to be somewhat computer savvy as the way these jobs are controlled.

So the person arrived for her first day; she seemed nice enough, and I overheard her saying how happy she was to have a job, even a p/t one, cus she’d been out of work a while. A., who was training her, seemed to be getting very impatient with her becus she wasn’t catching on instantaneously. You could hear it in her tone of voice. She was getting testy and really put out. While the new hire was still there, she went in to her manager’s office, which is right next to my cubicle. A. didn’t even close the door, but she was talking in hushed tones to her manager, complaining mightily about how slowly the new hire was catching on.

I thought it was not a very kind thing to do, nor very professional, when she could have just waited for the part-timer to leave for the day. Then, the part-timer actually walked up to her while she was talking about her (!!) because she was in fact getting ready to leave, and she said something to the effect of, I hope I catch on quickly. So maybe she did overhear her.

The next day was pretty much a repeat of the first. After the part-timer left, A. continued to badmouth and complain about the new hire to at least 3 other people. Anyone who would listen. All. Day. Long. I mean, she’d only been there two days; give her a break! With all of her complaining, she managed to get a closed door session with her manager and the HR manager.

I only work there 3 days a week, but by the time I returned the following week, the new hire was already history. I felt bad for her; imagine yourself in that position, feeling hopeful and excited about a new job, and possibly never realizing you could so quickly be done in by the very woman who’s supposed to train you.

So the woman, A., who got her fired, I sort of got along with, but I was always a little wary of her, I guess because I've run into her type before. She’s got a big mouth and always speaks her mind. She’s the type of person who can dominate others and sway a group’s opinion to her line of thinking. I’m quiet and soft-spoken. Some people feel intimidated by a quiet person because they don’t’ know what they’re thinking. She’s been somewhat nice to me, but I’ve also noticed she makes sarcastic comments a lot when it’s really unnecessary. So to me she’s a mixed bag. But she’s seemed nicer to me since after the firing of the other woman and also since I spontaneously shared some of my homemade soup with her when I ran into her in the kitchen.

You may do your best to avoid office politics, but it’s nearly impossible to avoid unless you work remotely.