I had a 2-hour interview this morning and had an offer in hand this afternoon. After dickering back and forth about the rate of pay, we came to a tentative agreement.

What was the sticking point? When my friend the recruiter told me about the job, he said the pay was $35/hr. Then when the offer was made to me, it had dropped to $33/hr, and he didn’t really explain why. I kept asking why, who lowered the pay rate, was it his firm or the employer? He indicated it was the employer and said he’d try to push for partial work at home to compensate for that, but he wanted me to accept the job first, so that means no leverage if you don’t talk about work at home til afterwards.
I finally got him to agree to $34/hr. I mean, it would have been a $4100 drop in pay before even starting. The employer had said they’d been looking to fill the opening for a long time, so now that they found the right person, how could they justify lowering the pay? Almost like a bait and switch, if you ask me.

Still not sure if my friend the recruiter was being straight with me on all of that. It could have easily been his firm that figured most employees would agree becus they need the work. I am happy with the pay (it comes out to $70,000 a year, but with no benefits, no paid holidays, etc) although I have a LOT of concerns about the commute.

My friend the recruiter kept saying yeah, but you can always negotiate a higher salary when you get a perm job offer, but what the heck? If they’ve got an employee working on a freelance basis, why would they spend oodles of extra money on benefits when they really don’t have to? Unless the job market suddenly improved in a big way and they were afraid I’d jump ship for something better, I don’t think a perm job with benefits is in any way guaranteed. Hence my reluctance to cave too quickly on the rate of pay question.

As for the commute. I took the easiest way in there this am in terms of not wanting to get lost, and it was bumper to bumper on I95. You’d be traveling at highway speed and then all of a sudden traffic comes to a complete halt. Very stressful. Very long 1.25 hours. I really worry that I won’t be able to do that twice a day. Seriously.

I will try other ways to go next time. They want me to start day after Memorial Day. Once I get the offer in writing and paperwork signed, which won’t happen til Monday at earliest, I will give notice at p/t job and can give them a max of 1 week notice. What I’m really hoping is that since this is their slow time I can just leave. I need that time to buy a new car and buy new clothes. Luckily, it is casual dress, but still need a better wardrobe. I’ve been working in my jammies for a long time.

My 2 cats are in for a shock. I feel sad for them becus they are so used to me being here and as it is, they get so bored. That’s why Luther picks on Waldo and bites him too hard. He’s bored silly.

So, as maybe you can tell, I have mixed feelings about all of this becus of the commute, but feel I just have to take the job becus after 3.5 long, dry years, my unemployment benefits run out like, um, next week. I couldn’t have called it any closer!
All this time while I job searched, I never even considered jobs in Stamford becus of the long commute. I know a lot of people do long distance commutes, but I’ve always hated it. It sucks up too much of my personal time and exhausts me and all around lowers my quality of life.

So the plan would be to just suck it up and start the job, try to catch on as quickly as I can and maybe in 6 months, when I feel I’ve demonstrated my value and expertise, approach them about working at home 1 or 2 days a week. Preferably 2.

If they don’t go for that, my days there would probably be numbered. I’d try to stick it out for 1 or 2 years but I hate the whole lifestyle. Couldn’t go much longer. (I’m honestly not even sure I can do their style of writing. It’s much more abbreviated than what I’ve done.) Pithy product descriptions instead of magazine articles or sales brochures. Very different. And the quality of their writing there is already very good, so I’d have to work even harder to add value.

In the meantime, I already scheduled a test drive at local Ford dealer to drive a Ford Fiesta Saturday. May also test drive Hyundai Elantra and Honda Civic. Will probably go new again. I think I’m entitled since the car I drive now is 14 years old. I will sell a bunch of mutual funds tonight and the money will be in my checking account in 3 or 4 days. After I decide from the test drives which model I want, I’ll call all local dealers and ask for their very best price. I want to avoid haggling and will just go with the lowest bid.

My head is spinning. My lifestyle is really going to change drastically. I hope it’s worth it. Terrible to say that after 3 years and 8 months of p/t or underemployment and drastically scaling back my lifestyle, but I don’t know. Don’t know if anyone else goes through this kind of angst in this kind of situation.

I’m glad I didn’t do the poll worker thing today because it wound up being a pretty busy (and productive) day.

And I'm glad I stopped using that nasal spray that was making me feel so drowsy/groggy. I guess that means I'll need to proceed with the bronco provocation test next week to rule out asthma, becus I can't say the nasal spray, meant for people with post nasal drip, did much of anything to alleviate my cough.

But getting back to the productive day:

I spent all morning pulling my portfolio together for the Thursday job interview. Having worked all my life as a writer, I have a ton of writing samples, and I like to tailor my portfolio to the job. It’s something I can do because I’ve written soooo much stuff and in fact I have 3 file cabinets of writing samples in the attic! So I think about what kind of writer they’re looking for: business to business or business to client, retail, corporate, what field/subject matter, long form/short form, etc.

Also, as it turned out, I was finally able to connect with a realtor I was playing phone tag with for well over a month. Or shall we say, he wasn’t really trying to make himself available. Anyway, I got what info I needed from him and wrote up my thing, so that was good to clear my plate.

I also mowed the lawn, or did 40 minutes worth of mowing, which is about as long as the battery will last between charges. Tomorrow morning before I go to work (at 1 pm) I hope to wrap up the mowing.

My British neighbor also stopped by to pick up some heavy logs that have sat in my driveway since Hurricane Sandy. He’s been loading 4 or 5 at a time in his truck and taking them back to his house to burn for me in a big fire pit they have. How nice is that? The wood can’t be burned in a fireplace, as it’s pine, and it’s way too large to chip, unfortunately. It was a bit of a barter situation but I think I got the better end of the deal, as all I did for him was summarize some research I did on how to sell stuff on Amazon.

Once, a few years ago, before he had the fire pit, he was burning his own wood and the grass was very dry and caught on fire. The burning grass caused a TREE to catch on fire and apparently, the flames could be seen from the road. His house is set up on a hill, way back. So someone called the fire dept. It was at night and I remember the fire dept. was shining big spotlights up at my house and around here. I had no idea why at the time as I didn’t know about the fire.

My neighbor was burning the wood at night becus you’re supposed to get a permit if you want to burn a fire and he was trying to avoid that. Maybe not the smartest thing in the world. The fire dept. never did figure out where the fire was, becus my neighbor’s son was yelling at his dad about the fire and they were able to douse the tree with water from a nearby pond he built. It’s a good thing, becus he would have had to pay a fine plus cost of having 3 fire trucks come out.

He’s the laid off toy designer. He is working with the Chinese to start his own business. He conceives and designs, the Chinese will manufacture the products. It could be extremely lucrative. Anyway, their house is finally ready to go on market next week and he gets bored around the house so he’s been coming down to chit chat every once in a while. Since he has to stay away from home while the realtor open house is going on next week, he offered to come over and use his chainsaw to cut up a pile of pine branches that fell in another location of my yard and then use those branches to help get the bigger logs to catch on fire.

I keep telling him he doesn’t have to do all this, but he seems to want to help. I had gotten an estimate from a guy on what it would cost to chip just that one pile I mentioned. Since he didn’t OWN a wood chipper, he said the cost to rent one for a day is $350, so it would cost quite a bit more than that to have them do it. Way more than I wanted to spend. So maybe my neighbor and I will do it together. I’m just a little worried about ticks, cus it’s in a brushy area. I had wanted to invite him for lunch when he comes by next week to do it, but I sort of would rather not have him come in the house after working in the tick-infested brushy areas but I don’t think I can tell him that. He doesn’t think it’s a big deal. Maybe he’s immune, who knows? If I could get him to eat lunch in my house BEFORE we do the work, that would be good, but I’m guessing it’ll wind up being the other way around.

Last night I was just randomly looking at my gray hair in the mirror when I saw something black and I said OMG, could that be a tick? And it was. When I tried to brush it out of my hair with my hand, it really clung to my scalp but I don't think it was "attached." It takes 24 to 48 hours for them to burrow in and be capable of transmitting the virus. Anyway, it was DISGUSTING to find that thing. I flushed it down the toilet. Creeped me out as I HADN'T done much yardwork that day, only mowed the lawn. Every once in a while when I mow, a small tree branch may brush against me, and I remember that happening with a tree branch touching my head once or twice. Must've been how i got the tick in my head cus i wear boots and often spray them with DEET.

I just colored my hair, in preparation for the job interview. I still have more mental prep to do, but the portfolio is done. I can do it tomorrow night.
I also ran out to vote in the town budget today and stopped to deposit some checks at the bank. I watered my many potted plants and sprayed some poison ivy I saw.

So frustrating…yet another instance of Saving Advice eating my entry.

Short version here…..

Lo and behold, my recruiter friend somehow managed to get me an interview with this employer I was telling you about this Thursday. It’s an online retailer specializing in high end home furnishings and furniture. Retail. I’ve always worked in a corporate or journalism-type environment. But somehow he did it.
Frankly, while I appreciate fine design, I know nothing about it, so I really don’t feel qualified. And in this high unemployment environment, most employers can still demand a near perfect match for jobs they seek to fill.

The pay would be great…$35/hr. It’s a full-time job, but a contract job. They already turned down several people the recruiter referred to them. Term is sort of unclear. I think at least through the summer. My friend emphasized more than once the possibility of it morphing into a perm job, but of course many recruiters routinely say that to entice job candidates when there’s really no suggestion of that being the case. Just a hunch on my part.

But since the recruiter is a friend of mine that I worked side by side with for nearly two years in 2008-2009, I don’t think he’d feed me a line if it weren’t true.

The biggest downside right now is the commute. One hour and considerably more in traffic. Funny thing is I will only need to travel on a total of 3 roads to get there: there’s highway #1 (a traffic-clogged 2-lane highway), then the Interstate (also notoriously traffic-clogged most of the time) and then the employer’s road, right off the highway.

I noticed they list their “studio” hours as being 10 to 6. Many employees in this city and in Hartford stagger their work hours to relieve some of the congestion on the main highways. It would also be great for me since I wouldn’t have to stagger out of bed at some unearthly hour. It would be so civilized, even if that meant I got home that much later at night.

If I got an offer for the contract job, I would quit my p/t proofreading job which I started in November. Even though it might not last beyond the summer, it’s a risk I’m prepared to take. I mean, we’re talking the difference between $1400 a week and $240. If nothing else, I believe it would also reset the clock for COBRA and allow me to get my health insurance that way through year’s end, until I started up with a new healthcare exchange via Obamacare. Right now, my COBRA is due to end June 30, at which time I’ll have to go on the state’s last resort plan and shell out even more per month than I’m paying now.

I wonder if my immediate manager has guessed that I’ve been doing a few job interviews here and there when I told her I’d be in late due to an “appointment” I had.

Another thing I'd like to do if I got this job is go ahead and buy that new car I've been thinking about. It's a lot of driving to do with an old car. But there probably won't be time to do it beforehand. Sounds like they'd want a fast start.

I had to cover up all my lettuce, peas and tomato plants in the garden as we’re expecting widespread frost tonight. I used an assortment of plastic sheets, buckets and plastic pots to do it. Kind of a big pain. I hope the many flowering shrubs around here weather the night ok.

I re-erected the bluebird box today in a new location after having taken it down when some undesirable English sparrows began nest-building. I hope they have since moved on and can lure the bluebirds back. It’s in a new location in the front yard that’s not quite so close to brushy, overgrown areas, which is good, but I can’t monitor the box from the front stoop, which is not so good. I’ll need to keep an eye on it to see who shows interest.

Well, for the past 1.5 weeks or so I've been taking this nasal spray medication (twice daily) to see if it improves my cough, which doc thinks is probably silent post nasal drip. I can't honestly tell any difference but i'm beginning to wonder if this is one of those situations where the meds are worse than the symptoms. I cough maybe an average of once an hour, which isn't terrible-terrible. But these meds really seem to make me groggy in the morning and sort of in a brain fog all day. Like, I can function, but I just feel like I'm struggling to focus and stay sharp becus of the meds, and I don't like it.

I had WANTED to give it some more time, only to be able to diagnose my cough issue decisively, but now with this job interview coming up on Thursday, I think I'm going to stop taking it now. I need to be alert for that interview.

Happy Mother's Day to all of you. We've already wrapped up our Mother's Day luncheon, hosted by me.

I made a cold salad with edamame, grape tomatoes, corn and black beans with a dressing and red onion as well as my cheddar/cauliflower soup and a homemade chocolate pudding for dessert (NOT out of a box). My sister brought her salad using violet flowers and kale flowers. Rather crunchy. She also brought a dessert made of chia seeds and coconut. I also had an appetizer of pear slices dipped in butter/cheddar and then ground up pecans. The pecans didn't quite stick to the pear slices, so i probably would make this again.

My sister brought a dozen eggs each for me and my mom, and she offered to cut down a mostly dead apple tree and dogwood for me. (She wants the firewood.) But maybe not til fall.

I spent most of the weekend creating a new Facebook page for myself as well as a Pinterest account. I did this not becus I have a real interest in doing so, or the time, but because I've known for a long time I need it for job prospects. Aside from the blogging, it might appear to prospective employers that I have no particular social media skills, and so many employers want a write who can do that stuff too.

So I spent hours setting up basic pages for myself which will become more robust over time with pithy comments and so on. I am not using my real name on them but will list them on my resume. The Facebook account will be thematic, centered around my interests in gardening. That's a nice, non-controversial and non-personal way to go with Facebook. The account I used to have was possibly hacked into as I could no longer log in and it kept asking me if I was "Simba." So I shut that down.

This afternoon is free and I'm thinking I should continue weeding and prepping my vegetable garden. I need to plant zucchini.

My sister told me she was a garden nursery recently where she noticed a sign that said they would come and dig up any unwanted pachysandra and tidy up the place when they left. Possibly even pay for it. I have OODLES of pachysandra here I'd love to get rid of so this place could be heaven-sent. I am calling them tomorrow!!!!!!

I have long said that May is the prettiest month here, and 2013 is no exception.


My 6 white dogwood are in bloom now. This one is just outside my office window. In fact, I leaned out the window from inside to snap it! There is something so ethereal about dogwood flowers...maybe because the trunk of the tree is so slender that it often appears to me as if the flowers are floating, suspended in the air.


This is the view south. Most of what you see here, actually, is my neighbor's property. There's a stone wall that divides our property but it's pretty much shrouded in green already. AT the very bottom of the photo you can see a sliver of my driveway. I also shot this out my office window. The view is made possible due to the fact that a humongous white pine that previously blocked part of this view came down during Hurricane Sandy. (I'm still cleaning up the remnant logs from that.)

I got an email today from an address I didn't recognize, yet this person seemed to know a fair amount about me. But the email wasn't signed. It was a job offer. I was pretty wary about it until I checked the phone number from NYC online and realized it was a friend of mine, a fellow writer and someone I worked very closely with for 2 years at my last full-time job.

He was laid off a year before me and eventually found new work as a recruiter. He's very much a people person and a really great, all-round guy. Truth be told, we flirted a fair amount and I dare say if he weren't married...

Rest assured, nothing happened beyond friendly conversation. We shared identical jobs and sat next to each other, so of course we talked a lot. Sometimes, we even escaped the office and took a half-hour drive without telling anyone! He was very unhappy there, I think partly because he always struggled as a writer and I don't think that's his natural vocation.

Anyway, we lost touch during the past few years, but he was reaching out to me now with a contract job that could turn f/t. I think it's f/t and he said it would "only" pay $35/hr. I sent him my resume and some links to writing samples and he was very enthusiastic about it, saying he "had a good feeling" about it. I personally think it's a long shot becus the job (writing) is in a field I have no experience in: retail, modern furniture and accessories. However, I have done a lot of copywriting about high end real estate and design/construction trends, so who knows. The other problem is that it would be a very long drive, over an hour, and that's what most concerns me.

However, at this point, I may just go for it, even if I don't stay forever. Maybe I could just stick it out for a year or two. I need to get out of this financial rut I've been in. There's always the possibility of a partial work-at-home deal.

So guess we'll see if I get any feedback early next week. I'm afraid to even dwell on it too much becus as I said, I don't feel I'd be the very best candidate they could likely find for this particular job.

On Tuesday I will be working 5:15 am to 8 pm as a poll worker. $175 cash for a very long day, but I do also enjoy seeing all my fellow townspeople file in to cast their vote on the town budget. It's old-fashioned New England politics which I am so very familiar with. For years I covered things like this as a news reporter. I guess I know a fair number of people here in town, even though it usually seems like I don't.

I just finished planning the Mother's Day menu, which will be here at my house. Just a lunch, not dinner. My sister will bring a salad and dessert, while I've decided on an appetizer of pear slices dipped in a mix of cheddar cheese/butter/lemon juice and then finely ground pecans. The main course will be creamy cheddar-cauliflower soup and a cold salad consisting of corn, black beans, grape tomatoes and edamame beans with a dressing. I'll make an easy dessert, too, a real chocolate pudding using dried cocoa, almond milk and bittersweet chips.

I came across mention of a book recently, a first-person account of a woman and her therapy dog who visit nursing home patients. I looked it up on Amazon and just had to get it for my dad's longtime ex girlfriend, who has two dachshunds which are certified therapy dogs. They visit the local hospital, patients in their homes and hospice patients.

Then Amazon's clever marketing reeled me in as I saw on the order page they also had a book written by a man who owns 3 dachshunds, and the "life lessons" he's learned from them.

Ordinarily, I wouldn't do something like this since K. is an avid reader and who knows if she already had read the books, but both of these are new releases due out in mid-May. I could have waited til Christmas (I missed her birthday back in March) but again, I didn't want to run the risk of her getting the book before I had a chance to ship them to her.

K. was a nurse for many years, before she retired, and she's very devoted to the whole therapy dog thing. It's a big part of her life. And, she is a dachshund lover. So how could i NOT get these books for her?

To pay for the books, I used up most of this month's Amazon gift cards I earned for my participation in 2 online forums. I know she will enjoy them both.

The saga with the range hood continues. As you may remember reading here earlier, it was supposed to be installed yesterday, but it came out of the box with a big dent on the front, so they had to reorder. He had told me if it rains, I can do it tomorrow (today) morning, which would have been perfect as I don't have to return to work until 1 pm. But the shipment hasn't arrived as anticipated so now we're shooting for tomorrow morning, 9ish, which means I have to arrive late for work. I hope to stay after 5 to make up the lost time. If...and that's a big if, the guy gets here on time, it will only take 15 minutes to install. He already took the old one away, so now I have a big hole in the wall to the outside. It has only a flimsy vent to keep out the bugs, plus a towel I stuffed in there.

I have someone coming over in a little while to give me a price on fence repair/replacement. Hopefully it will be more the former than the latter, as I don't really want to spend more than $100 or so but I may have to. Plastic fence would be nice, but that would be even more money, I'm sure.

It's been raining intermittently, which is very good. We so needed the rain here.

On my way home from work I'll stop by Stop & Shop to pick up organic green pepper and celery so I can make my pasta/sun-dried tomato salad to serve as lunches for the rest of the week.

I was running around like a crazy woman trying to get stuff done before the rain comes, late tonight. It's supposed to linger for a while.

I finished mowing the lawn. Check. I planted cucumbers, yellow squash, sunflowers and soybeans. Check. I ran to Home Depot to pick up my new mower blade and also 3 tomato plants. Check. Planted the tomato plants, put newspaper down around them and then put the lawn clippings over the newspaper. This is important, since without mulch, dirt splashes up on tomato plant leaves and causes that black spot fungus to spread, I put a healthy dose of ground up eggshells in the bottom of each hole, but I forgot to put a tinfoil collar around each stem to protect against cutworms.

The only thing i forgot to plant was zucchini squash.

The guy came to install the range hood. He got the old one out, brought the new one in, still in its box. As we took it out of the box, we saw there was a big dent in the front of it. Damn. No range hood today. However, he called into the office and that guy reordered the hood and should get it tomorrow morning. Since it will be raining they won't be installed the central air, which means he should be able to come and install my range hood. Cross my fingers.

I went to the dump and got more wood chips. The pile is really dwindling. Didn't have time to spread it.


This corkscrew willow is finally starting to take off. Its growth habit is very similar to a Harry Lauder's Walking stick except its a willow.


This is a shrub variety of a magnolia.


The crabapple are in bloom. I have three.




These are actually the flowers of two different crabapples that are side by side.


Tiny clusters of flowers are starting to form on the lily of the valley.


My peonies are also coming along, though no flowers yet.


I'm trying to grow lettuce in pots this year, as well as in the garden.


The strawberry plants I potted up two years ago finally have tiny flowers. Could I possibly get a berry before the birds??? Maybe so, since I keep these pots in my driveway. Have to watch out for chipmunks though.

The “good news, sorta” refers to an email I got today from the woman I share my job with, that our employer has decided to keep us both working 20 hours a week through the summer.

The original plan, as spelled out to us when we were hired, was that we’d be furloughed for the summer months and brought back in the fall.

So at least my work hours/income will be reliable; I’d been wondering what was going to happen when this particular source of income dried up in the summer, especially given that my unemployment is due to finally end in 2 weeks time. I guess they discovered they get an awful lot done with two $12 an hour people.

Do you sense the ambivalence? The job is a snooze and bores me silly. And my immediate manager annoys me. But it’s helping me get by. (Never had I thought I’d be here this long…about 5 months now….but anyway….)
Speaking of income…

I spent the bulk of today at Yale-New Haven Hospital to take part in a clinical study looking at gender differences in how people respond to food cravings. I had to be there at 7:30 am without having had breakfast. Basically, they starved me and then put a bunch of tempting food in front of me while I was very, very hungry, didn’t let me distract myself by watching TV or doing anything, and then wanted to see if I could keep from eating when given a financial incentive to do so (of course I could, I’m a Saving Advicer!)

They were drawing my blood every 15 minutes for a 2 hour period and had me answering questionnaires about how I felt. It was very boring. They said my blood pressure was very good, and in fact it kept dropping while I was there. But I earned $145, plus they paid for my parking, which is a real pain in New Haven. Between that and the one-way streets, I keep forgetting why I don’t like driving in there.

While I was there, I remembered how the last time I stayed at Yale New Haven…a world-class teaching hospital, mind you…I was there for surgery and wound up with an infection that extended my stay. Of the dozens of nurses, aides and other assorted personnel who made their way to my room, I remember that only ONE washed her hands at the little sink just inside my door, despite prominent signage there that all should do so.

So this time I’d forgotten to check to see if my nurse was following protocol. When she left for lunch, a 2nd nurse took over, and this time I made a point to see what she’d do. The door to my room was closed. I noticed when she walked in that she was wearing gloves and she came over with her little tray and prepared to take my blood. I said, aren’t you supposed to put on a sterile set of gloves before taking my blood? She said, oh, I just did. I said yeah, but you had to touch the doorknob. She didn’t say anything but she didn’t look happy. She complied. I explained how I’d gotten an infection years earlier at Yale-New Haven and so I was probably more aware of the problem than many. She said, “Understood.” But I mean, c’mon! Patients should not have to tell nurses why it’s important.

After that, I made a point to check what she did, and then what my original nurse did when she returned from lunch. Each time, they put on their new gloves in front of me, so I was satisfied. (Although one time the first nurse put on the gloves and then proceeded to write something with a pen with the gloved hand, which I’m sure contaminated the glove.) You can’t be too careful! Especially when I remember reading in the fine print of what I had to sign to be in this study was that if I was in any way injured during the study that they would treat me, but that the cost would be on me!

When I got home from Yale, I got a call from the registrar of voters, who wants me to work next Tuesday in our town’s second budget vote. I wouldn’t have bothered to call her if she hadn’t called me, becus this is another thing I’m ambivalent about. Because it’s an incredibly long, 14-hour day, from 5:15 am to 8 pm at night! But again, I hate to pass up a chance to make money. From this I’ll make $175. It comes out to about $12 an hour.

I mowed the lawn this afternoon, knowing we’re in for a period of rainy weather (much needed) starting on Wednesday, after which everything around here will really start sprouting.

Tomorrow’s chores mostly revolve around yard work. I need to pick up a new mower blade at Home Depot. Need to finish mowing, and then do weed-whacking. Need to finish planting the rest of my veggie seeds and run to Agway to get tomato plants. Would be very good to get everything in before the soaking rains expected for rest of week. I’m also supposed to have my new range hood installed, though I’m annoyed they haven’t called to let me know when tomorrow. So I’ll have to call them. And work the rest of my schedule around it. Want to get more free mulch from dump while supplies last.

So, since my visit to the pulmonologist, I've been doing a prescription nasal spray twice daily and a real adventure: a nasal wash. AKA, a netti pot, or in my case, a netti bottle.

It sure is a strange sensation to squirt 8 oz. of saline water up your nostril and have it come out the other nostril! Hope that's not "too much information," but I had never heard of such a thing.

The doc suspects I have post nasal drip (even though I feel nothing), and this is one way of seeing if he's right. If, in less than 3 weeks, the combo spray and wash lessens my cough, then I can feel free to cancel the spirometry test. (I think that's what it is.)

If it's not "silent" post nasal drip, he said, it could be a mild form of asthma.

This could be one of those cases where the treatment is worse than the symptom. Just for the heck of it, I've been keeping a "cough diary" to record how frequently I actually cough, and to see if it lessens over time. I do seem to cough more in the a.m. than p.m., which again would indicate post nasal drip since i guess all that stuff collects overnight.

Despite the wierdness of it all, I prefer the nasal wash becus it's relatively benign, vs the nasal spray which comes with a long laundry list of warnings/possible side effects. However, it's a nuisance to prepare becus you're supposed to use distilled water or absent that, boil water and then let it cool.

I've been watching the hummingbird feeder but still no sign of the hummingbirds' return. The same ones return to the same summer spot year after year, and their absence makes me wonder if they died. Hummers live for a few years in the wild.

I also put out my copper bird bath but I believe the solar pump is kaput. It was always rather fussy and easily clogged. It is lovely when it runs, though. I may get a new one if I can remember/figure out where I got it from.

I planted some more basil today, and the lettuce and peas are coming up, but very tiny. Our frost-free date is not for another 1.5 weeks, but I've check the weather report and there's no sign of nighttime frosts so I think we're home free. Tomorrow I'm going to plant my beans, squash, zucchini, cukes, etc. I may also go to Agway for tomato seedlings.

I made a double batch of berry bread today using frozen organic berries I get from BJs. I saw English sparrows nest-building in my 2nd bluebird box so I chased them away and took down the nest. It needed a good washing anyway. I hope that by keeping it down for up to a week, the sparrows will move on and then I'll try re-erecting the box in a more open area of my front yard. I just don't have that much room, but I think it was too close to a brushy area before, so it always attracted wrens.

I did a bit more mulching today using free mulch I got at the landfill. The yard looks great, but it's very early in the season. I need to get more mulch at one time or make more trips to the landfill, but they're not open again til Tuesday now. Once a week is not cutting it; I'll be mulching til Labor Day at that rate! I can bring home about one wheelbarrow full in my car at one time.

My daffodils are already spent, and the tulips and hyacinths are not far behind. The dogwood (I'm down to 6 now, all white, sadly) and lavender ground phlox are in bloom and the azalea and crab-apple look about to burst open.

Last year I remember reading about how vicious wrens can be, but until today, I hadn't really witnessed it.

First off, I like wrens. These are the common everyday house wren I'm speaking of. They have such a melodic call.

They nest in either or sometimes both of my 2 nest boxes each year, although in recent years, I've had bluebirds who occasionally get to nest in one of them, like last year. I would say 80% of the time its wrens that end up with the boxes and 20% of the time its bluebirds. (Once I had an English sparrow but I took the box down rather than have them nest there.)

I have a decent view of the box in the backyard from my sunroom. I was just out there when I noticed a wren popped inside and kept sticking its head up and out the hole, with a small piece of straw in its bill, which it unceremoniously dumped each time. It was clearly trying to clear out another bird's nest, something that didn't surprise me as I had seen a male bluebird hanging out around that box just yesterday.

However, I know that many male birds begin building more than one nest to entice the female; the female will ultimately choose which one she wants. I figured the bluebirds could still take the box in in the front yard.

Then I saw the wren fly down to the ground below the box and raise its head up and down rapidly in a staccato movement. I saw a flash of blue. I jumped to my feet and ran out to scare it off. But it was too late. The wren had pierced a bluebird egg with its bill. I saw the shell of what must have been a second egg on the ground.

The male bluebird was by minutes later; it must have seen the broken shells on the ground because I heard a distressing, chattering call as it flew away.

I chased the wren away twice more when it returned to the box, but obviously I can't keep that up and if the wren wants to nest there, I guess it will.

Very sad. I have no shortage of wrens around here, but it is a pure pleasure and a privilege to see flashes of brilliant, indigo blue around my yard all summer when the bluebirds are nesting.

As for the front box, I had noticed bluebirds in that area quite early on but I wanted to insert some fine mesh wire on the bottom of the box to prevent a certain kind of flying insect from laying its larvae there. The larvae crawl up and attach themselves to the baby bluebirds' legs and are parasitic, sometimes causing the death of the baby bluebird. The wire mesh prevents the larvae from crawling upward to the nest. When i went to insert the wire mesh, I was surprised to see an already half-built bluebird nest, and I'm afraid I partially destroyed it when I inserted the wire mesh. I haven't seen bluebirds there since. So inadvertently, I may have scared off the bluebirds from that box.

I was thinking of moving the nest in back so its further away from the scrubby, brushy areas that wrens favor, and more in an open area, which bluebirds favor. But there aren't many open areas of my yard where i don't have to mow weekly, so that would represent a disturbance to the bluebirds. And, I'm not sure if there are any more eggs in that box. If so, I don't want to move the box as the bluebirds might not return to it, but as it is, the wren will likely dispatch of it anyway.

I have made this for years. I love lamb, and this is a great recipe. If you try it, let me know how you like it.

The recipe is super easy, and I'm going to give it to you from memory. There are only a few ingredients.

Slice up 2 cups of carrots and 2 onions and saute in olive oil for a few minutes. It's not necessary to brown them.

In the meantime, prepare a pound or so of lamb stew meat, cut up into chunks, with fat removed. Actually, any kind of lamb will do, but the lamb stew chunks you buy at the store are easiest to prepare. Put them in a plastic bag with 2 tablespoons of flour and a tablespoon or so of rosemary, salt and pepper. Shake and turn upside down to distribute the flour and coat all the lamb chunks with the mixture.

Use a slotted spoon to remove the carrot and onion from pan and use a bit more olive oil over medium heat to sear and seal the lamb chunks on each side. This should only take a few minutes.

Add 1.25 cups of chicken stock to the pan and return the carrots/onions. Bring to a boil, then transfer to oven to cook at 325 for 2 hours.

That's pretty much it! It's hard to mess up this recipe and I often adjust it according to what I have on hand as far as quantities.

Well, I thought this could be a mostly relaxing day of yardwork in this fine spring weather we've been having, but...not exactly.

In the morning, I did some miscellaneous yard work. I started laying down the newspaper and then the mulch in one perennial bed.

I decided I should do my mother's housework today. I had plans to vaccum her entire condo, dust and mop the floors, but truth be told, I pooped out after doing the dusting and vacuuming. The vacuuming was quite tiring as I had to keep lifting and moving things out of the way, and I also had to keep bending down to vacuum where the carpeting meets the baseboards. Very dirty. The carpeting is shot, actually but my mother has SO much stuff in there I can't imagine being able to replace that carpeting.

My mom has a show coming up in Litchfield, so 60 pieces are gone and out of her place. I couldn't tell the difference myself. The show lasts 2 months; hopefully she'll sell some art.

After doing the housework, I ran off to a doctor's appointment. A pulmonologist. It's been a bit of an odyssey to try to figure out why I have had this unexplained cough for 3 or 4 years, at least. PCP ruled out lung cancer with some chest x-rays. She also ruled out asthma. Then she referred me to an ENT guy, who after having me do the overnight pH test, ruled out silent acid reflex. The pulmonologist is leaning toward a post-nasal drip issue even though I can't feel any drip at all in my throat. He wants me to try two things, a nasal spray and the equivalent of a netty pot, if anyone knows what that is. Supposedly the 2 together will really clear out your nose and sinuses. Then I have to get a spirometry test done in 3 weeks, unless I see such great improvement with the cough before then, due to the meds; if that happens, then I can cancel the test. I hope I have the discipline to do both meds; the one involves breathing in liquid and doesn't sound so pleasant.

I came home after that and got my lamb stew going in the oven. Then I finished mowing the lawn. Then, because they're warning of frost tonight, I put about a dozen heavy pots of lettuce and annuals back in the garage and covered my tulips with a tarp and covered all my little pea plants and lettuce in the garden with an assortment of pots to protect them from frost.

Hopefully this will be the last time this happens.

Tomorrow it's back to work. On the way there I'll deposit some checks, pick up those meds and collect more free mulch from the landfill.

Yesterday I made good progress wrestling small portions of my yard back from Mother Nature who, if she had her way, would entangle the entire 1.5 acres in a thicket of impenetrable greenery.

The birds would love it; I don't.

I have an elongated island in my front yard that contains exactly this: 5 peonies, 1 birch tree, 1 wiegela, 1 butterfly bush, 1 beauty berry and an assortment of smaller perennials including sedums, blue milkweed, lamb's ears and clematis. Right behind the island I planted some gray (silky) dogwood and a nannyberry.

All great plants if you want either color or berries (for the birds). However, the gray dogwood was a poor choice for a suburban yard. Once it's settled in, it happily spreads by underground roots. And so it began doing its thing. Long, thin sprouts began popping up all over the island bed. It's attempting to colonize the whole island. So I had to make a hard choice...I sawed down the tree and pulled up a bunch of those seedlings. Those seedlings are all attached to long underground roots, so I'm sure I haven't gotten them all and they will return, but I had to make a decision about the source of my problem: the mother plant.

It's all about trying to turn a high-maintenance yard into a low-maintenance yard. I brought this on myself.

I also hacked away at a large burning bush I hadn't had time to cut back last fall. Everything was getting so bushy and overgrown in this island bed and I need to be able to mow around it. I also pulled out a large bittersweet (invasive) vine that had ensconced itself in the wiegela, and I also see a large bramble shoot in there that I somehow need to get to without hacking away at the wiegela.


These docile-looking tulips often distract me from the more menacing plants that call this place home.



If ticks didn't exist, I'd just lean in there and let my head and body be brushed by assorted branches as I pulled the thing out, but having had Lyme disease 3x now, I am extremely careful about doing that sort of thing. There is deer poop all over my yard, and deer (as well as mice) are primary carriers of deer ticks that carry Lyme disease.

Yesterday I also saw a woodchuck dive into a burrow close to the house. I have to dump cat litter in there again. I haven't been able to properly bury that burrow because of its location at the corner of my rectangular picket fence, where all the gooseberry with thorns grow. Sigh.

The clock is ticking. Every day, plants in my yard grow another 12 inches. There is no such thing as leisurely, civilized gardening around here. It's a war I'll lose if I miss a single day's opportunity to weed, hack down and mulch heavily. AT least that's how it feels...and it's only April!

Now is the very best time to get a handle on some of this stuff because it's not brutally hot, insects are not a problem and you can better see what your situation is when not everything is leafed out yet.

I have a relatively open schedule today. I want to get a haircut with a $6 coup at Great Clips, but after that, I'm free. I will walk out there and Do Something. I have only to look around and dozens of jobs present themselves to me.

At least yesterday I got the rest of my lettuce and peas planted, as well as some basil.

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.