Luther and Waldo caught a mouse last night. Well, Luther did. He was so bored for so long, I bet that mouse was just the ticket to perk up his spirits. He had brought it upstairs to play with, and then it apparently escaped behind a large wood cabinet in the dining room. Eventually, he got hold of it again, and as soon as I saw him carrying it upstairs, I got him back in the basement and blocked access through the cat door so he wouldn't bring it back up again.

I knew it would keep him busy for a while and then when he was ready, he'd be scratching at the door. Yeah, that's just what happened, so at 1 a.m. I had to get out of my warm bed and go downstairs to let him up from the basement.

Between that and a much stronger than expected rainstorm, I didn't sleep much at all last night. The wind was so gusty, it always makes me a nervous wreck about trees coming down on the house or taking power out again.

This morning dawned bright and sunny, but much colder than it's been. I don't know what happened to the mouse. I looked around for a carcass, but saw none. It either escaped, probably to die, poor thing, or it's somewhere dead where I can't see it. Sigh.

I've been remiss in failing to set any mousetraps in the garage this season.

Did about 5 hours worth of work on the contract job, and plan to do another hour or 2 tonight. I am getting positive feedback from them, mostly based on my usual speedy work habits. She also gave me another 25 listings to do, so right now I've got work to keep me busy probably into Saturday.

I got my first paycheck from them today. Not a ton of money, but it's something.

My mother sent me an email that said, this is for real, do you want to go with me if i get tickets. I read the email and it was from "Mrs. Michelle Obama" and asked for $3 to attend some dinner. Scam!!

I was really perturbed with my mother for being so gullible and i have to admit I let her know that. Mom, do you really think the president's wife would send you a blank email and ask you for $3 to go to dinner with her? Well, I didn't take the time to read the bottom of the email. It appeared to be a clever fundraising thing. $3 i guess wins you a CHANCE to have dinner with the Obamas. It's for his re-election campaign.

I haven't barely given a thought to Christmas,and I'm not sure when I will. I'm just so focused on earning income. There's nary a holiday decoration out. I did already buy just 1 small gift each for my mother and sister; that's what we agreed on. Maybe I'll try to do some cards this weekend.

There's also a local pottery show I want to go to. I've always had a soft spot for pottery, though much of it doesn't appeal to me because they fire with such boring colors. Dark browns and that kind of thing. I have a small collection of very turquoise nice pottery, purchased some 25 years ago at the Woodstock Crafts Festival in Vermont. I still love those little pots.

So, OK, here's my things to do this weekend list.

1. Put out a few selected Xmas decorations that make me happy.
2. Address some Christmas cards using up existing stock from last 5 years.
3. Continue contract job and bill them on Saturday.
4. Check out the pottery show at the library.
5. Set mousetraps.

I put in about 5 hours of work on the contract job at home today.

I should be getting my new Discover card ($150 cash reward). This will be my 3rd one.

I watched a very good foreign film tonight called The Crime of Padre Amaro, about the hypocrisy of Catholic priests in a small Mexican village.

I also got around to seeing The Help yesterday for $2. It was okay, but soooo Hollywood. So many scenes were so, well, scripted, you could see it coming a mile away.

I also rented Eat, Pray Love in the past week. Julia Roberts is not a great actress, IMO. Call me a cinema snob, but I think this one was also a little over-hyped.

My cats have been very bored, even with me being home all the time. Cus I don't have time to play with them all the time, and even when I do, we all lose interest in The String and the Crumpled Wad of Paper eventually. Sigh. Is it my purpose in life to entertain them?

I registered to get a credit from our electric company for having been without power for a week. It'll be between $100 and $200 and appear on my Feb 2012 bill. Less if more people sign up, more, if fewer do. Sort of the way a class action lawsuit works. Just so much money in the kitty.

It was annoying that we even had to "register." I mean, they know who was out of power for a week or more. And for those who were out just 3-4 days, they likely lost their food as much as someone out a week or more, so i guess they just lose out? Doesn't seem right.

It's been rainy all day and it's supposed to turn to snow overnight, although we've enjoyed a string of mild days for December. In the 50s. And all I can think about is how much that's helped preserve the oil in the tank! I should be able to get through the whole month of January before my next fill-up. Let's cross our fingers for a mild winter.

Well, I'm running out of things to say. Adieu.

I just got my check for $200 from Citi Dividend Card.

Well, you know what that means.

I applied for and was accepted for the Discover More card, which offers a $150 bonus after spending $1,000 in 3 months. Plus I got to pick a pretty daisy design.

It's all good.

Yesterday I emailed my contact at the publisher's to tell her i was done, and did they have more work for me. She emailed me back this a.m. and said I'll let you know. Haven't heard back from her since. This, on a project they're supposedly so behind on.

I suspect she knows very well whether there's more work or not for me but that her boss, the editor in chief, probably directed her to spend some time in reviewing the work I've done so far before they decide whether or not to keep me on.

So I still don't know. But sort of welcome the breather. So far I worked there 7 days and grossed about $830. Wondering if I should send in another estimated tax payment to IRS or risk a small penalty. I find it soooo difficult to determine what taxes I owe when I do contract work. Plus I sold a lot of mutual funds this year for the vinyl siding and prepaying the mortgage.

Today I ventured out and hit Costco (mainly for milk), Wal-Mart (mainly for cat food), the bank and the local newspaper (free 2012 calendar that I like to get each year, sort of an old-fashioned, retro look to it).

I must admit to buying an unnecessary item at Wal-Mart that I can hardly afford, given my situation. I spent $16 on a chocolate brown hoodie. I liked it becus it had a soft, warm, ecru fur lining inside.

I also saw some nice slippers there, just what my mother described wanting. They were a good brand, Dearfoam, I think. So i got a pair for my mother for Xmas.

When I got home, I decided to vacuum out my car, particularly the trunk which was filled with old, dried pine needles and stuff from all the tree branches I'd brought to the landfill.

Then, since I was already outside, I pulled the lawn mower out to mulch up some leaves on one area of the lawn, but it didn't do a good job cus the leaves were sort of embedded in layers on the ground. So I ended up raking them.

Then I said, what the heck, I really should clean up the garage a bit before it gets too cold. There were a bunch of leaves that had blown in on the floor, so I swept all that up. And I brought some stuff inside to the basement for winter storage, to make room for my car to fit.

I called my health insurer about my COBRA rate for next year and was relieved to hear the plan doesn't change til June, so I have time before what I'm sure will be another rate increase. God willing, I'll have a job by then. Or not.

I did as many online surveys today as I could. I was happy to see I got paid via Paypal ($15) by the guy who I edit emails for. Strange but true. Found him on Craig's List. He's an IT Director at a private prep school and I'm guessing he either has dyslexia or is ADHD so for the past month or so I edit the occasional email from him. Amazingly, I've always been at my computer when he sends an email. He always needs it done right away. The last one he sent was round 10:40 pm. Sometimes he sends them on Sundays. Hey, every little bit helps. I've made about $45 from him so far. Cus I only charge $20/hr for an email, and his are pretty short, so maybe 5 or 10 minutes. So I have to do a bunch before it amounts to anything.

I'm feeling like I need to do something for myself and I'm not sure what to do. My one friend usually goes shopping on Saturdays with her other friend, and altho I'm always invited, i don't usually go as i don't enjoy shopping like they do and they usually make it an all-day affair, running here, running there. I find it tiring.

I have another friend coming over on Sunday to help me with a garage door that doesn't close right.

Maybe tomorrow I'll go the library and pick out a DVD or 2. It's always such a pleasant place to go and doesn't cost me any money.

Maybe I'll bake a quick bread. Get some groceries. I haven't taken a real walk in a while. Take my camera with me.

I've put in about 35 hours already this week for that contract job. Now I've finished and am waiting to hear back if they have more work or not. They had originally said the work would last through year's end, but that was before they decided to hire 2 of us to do the job. So I don't know.

Tomorrow I thought I would treat myself to running some very ordinary errands. Costco, the bank, Trader Joe's and Wal-Mart. And to pick up a free calendar for next year, from the local newspaper.

Not a whole lot else going on.

Wish there was something interesting to make for supper.

I got a bill from the water company the other day that said you're overdue on the last bill from August.

Umm, what? I'm thinking to myself, well, I must not have ever gotten the bill. Later, I went rifling through a file I keep of utility bill statements and there I found the water bill. I filed it but forgot to pay it! Duh!

It got me worried, though, becus I was afraid that if the water company reported to the credit bureaus even this one late payment, it would zing my credit and I might not be qualified for all these wonderful bonus reward credit card offers I'm in the process of taking advantage of.

However, I checked my credit score on both creditsesame and creditkarma and it doesn't appear my credit score changed at all. Sort of wondering why...

I mean, I used to write about this stuff for a living, and I remember that even a few late payments was a big, bad thing to do if you wanted to preserve your pristine credit rating.

I was all set to apply for the Citi Dividend card ($200 bonus) but MM convinced me to go for the Southwest Airline card, though I haven't flown anywhere for years. It's funny they don't specify any dollar amount for that one purchase.

Today was another in a string of unusually warm days here in the Northeast. Low 60s, I think they said. So I did more treework. I had a very tall and ancient mountain laurel on the north side of the house (2 stories high) that in the winter storm, heaved up partly out of the groud. The weight of the snow on the branches is what did it.

I wasn't sure what to do about it. It was partly keeled over, but i wondered if i could save the shrub, especially if i relieved some of the weight that caused it to keel. It was way too tall, I guess, though I sort of liked it. I was going to wait until it went dormant this winter before pruning it, in case it did survive, but I don't know, I'll have so much other tree work left which I can't handle that this was one of those things I could do something about, so I cut all those 2-story high branches off at about the 6 foot high range. I wanted to be able to walk through that area, underneath the mountain laurel and a nearby rhododendron, and now I can again.

Many of the shrubs around my house are unusually tall. It's really a function of the out-of-control deer population here. Deer browse what they can reach up to about 4 feet high, and often kill a plant by doing that, so anything that does survive tends to do so by growing taller, not wider.

I also swept a lot of debris off the back brick patio. I finally have some beautiful green moss growing in between some of the bricks. It looks so attractive, and much better than all kinds of weeds. I am hoping to coax along that moss, becus it looks best. I have tried buttermilk in the past to encourage moss to grow, but it didn't seem to work.

Back to work tomorrow, to the contract job to see if they fix my mac computer problem. Not really looking forward to it but will do it.

I just redeemed my Citi Dividend CC points for a $200 check. Should have it next week, just in time for Xmas! (Actually, it won't be spent on Xmas but will go straight into my checking account to pay for the usual bills. Nothing sexy, but it works for me.)

My next card will be a Citi Diamond Preferred, for another $200 bonus, thanks very much!!

Met The Author at a local coffee shop this afternoon so she could tell me all about her meeting with an agent. The agent asked her to bring an edited version of the first 40 pp or so of her second book and do a reading to her and 2 other agents.

So she's having me do that editing. I still have about 30 pp. to go with her 1st book, but the 2nd book is more contemporary (takes place in the 60s) and I think will have wider appeal, and the agent reacted very favorably to what she read her so far.

So more work coming from her, which is very nice.

Tomorrow's supposed to be as beautiful as it was today (what a sunset) so I'll be doing more..you guessed it, tree cleanup. That plus trying to edit those last 30 pp.

As it turned out, I couldn't continue with the contract job directory update becus the mac computer they gave me to take home on Wednesday was giving me problems. Well, not the Mac, but the Quark program would not allow me to open it up without getting a message that I had to "activate" Quark (by phone or online, no idea what that's about) and that if I didn't, then I would only be using Quark in demo mode and none of my work would be saved. Sure enough, after working for about 2 hours Wednesday afternoon after I ignored that message, my work was lost.

It's pretty annoying. I mean, I have to assume that the equipment provided me is going to be in working order. It's really not my job, and certainly not my forte, to be troubleshooting their computers. I had been eager to get off to a running start, and now this.

I was emailing my contacts at the employer back and forth, though i got the idea they didn't want to be bothered with it over a holiday weekend. (Neither did I, quite frankly.) But I was afraid that if I couldn't fix it (I couldn't, after running a disk utility repair and doing some other stuff), they might say well, then you have to come into the office every day to do the work. For many reasons, I'd rather work at home. But anyway, we agreed I'd come back on Monday with the computer to see if she could troubleshoot it. So there's still hope. Provided the mac gives them the same "activate" message it kept giving me.

I made a pretty good pumpkin cheesecake for Thanksgiving family dinner, but it would have benefited from being beaten by a regular mixer. (I mixed the cream cheese by hand, not easy.) I never replaced my old hand mixed several years ago when I sold it in a garage sale for a few bucks. There was nothing wrong with it, but it was SO old (like 30 years) that I didn't feel comfortable using it. So first I asked for one for Xmas, but then we all decided to really go easy this Xmas money-wise, since none of us has a lot of $$ this year. We put a $10 limit on gifts. This, after many years of excess, a legacy of my dear grandparents who spoiled us all.

My grandmother for years had a gold heart in her jewelry box. It had some angels engraved on it and 3 rubies. She was always fond of telling me the 3 rubies stood for the 3 most important people in the world to her: her husband, her daughter and her 2 grandchildren. (I guess she counted me and my sister as one.) Today, I have that heart in my jewelry box, and sometimes I wear it.

Back to the mixer....So then I realized that by grouping together 3 small Amazon gift cards I'd earned by participating in an online forum, that I could pay in full for a Sunbeam electric hand mixer with a retractable cord for $21, shipping included. It got extremely high reviews.

I do have a blender, but I find that if there's not much liquid in what you're blending, the food all gets jammed in the bottom and you run the risk of blowing out your motor. My small-sized Cuisinart, well, i seldom use it cus it only holds about a cup or two. I also have a whaddya call it, the long, thin gadget you use in soups and smoothies. I don't think its motor would be powerful enough to handle everything, like cream cheese. I don't bake often, so I didn't want anything fancier, or more expensive than the little Sunbeam.

I look forward to this holiday more than any, me thinks, though this year Thanksgiving has been kind of a blip on my radar.

I started the new contract job Monday, worked 3 days in their office and now have brought home their Mac to do the rest of the work here.

So, if you're curious...It's a small publisher, I'm guessing maybe 25 people? Or maybe there are more, but they're just working at home, too. They're located in a very small, rural town in the woods off a little side road, in a clearing next to a white steepled church. A quaint setting. The two story building must have been either a grand single family home at one time or possibly the parsonage to the church. Inside, it has a grand spiral staircase, but aside from that, the place is really dumpy. Everything looks like circa 1940s. Though of course, if my employer asked me, would you rather have us fix the place up or get a raise, you know what my answer would be.

The work itself requires extreme focus and is very detail-oriented. There are a million pieces of information you check or update within a single listing, and there are little rules about how to deal with each one, along with style guidelines about punctuation, etc.

Plus I was working on a Mac, which I did at my last job, but which I largely forgot. Also using Quark, which I don't know at all unless you count looking over a designer's shoulder.

So it was very slow-going while i was at the office, but yesterday afternoon when i worked at home, my productivity greatly improved.

They want you to find the right balance between accuracy and thoroughness on the one hand, and speed, becus it's an annual directory that must be done before year's end. They don't want you spending too much time searching for elusive info on a magazine website, so at some point you need to move on.

There was another contract person who started same day as me and i was a little puzzled becus she seemed to have few questions and seemed to just steam ahead without much problem. I know she had a Mac at home, but even then, I don't think that accounted totally for her doing better. I was questioning tons of things becus there seemed to be exceptions to many guidelines they gave us and there were all sorts of scenarios that would change the way you dealt with something.

But anyway. AT first i was wondering if I could stick it out, or even if they might let me go. Now I feel better about it...maybe becus I already earned $230.

My goal is still to work as many hours as possible in as short a time as possible (to make the loss of unemployment benefits worthwhile).

So today is a gorgeous sunny day. While I'm going to my mother's at noonish, I'm torn between putting in a few more hours at work before and after, OR doing more tree work. (The town still hasn't picked up the storm damage.)

I guess I'll do some more contract work this a.m. since it's a little chilly outside, then maybe after coming back from Tgiving, doing an hour or so of tree work, then more contract work.

I just hope I stay healthy. The woman training me at the job was coming down with a cold and the last thing I need is to get sick. Productivity,out the window. And she was touching my keyboard, my mouse and everything, driving me nuts, cus I'm a bit of a germaphobe.

I guess that's about it.

My focus has been, and will continue to be, the contract work and clearing more tree damage from the yard up until the point they pick it all up. (It's a one-time thing as my town doesn't usually pick up anything except recycling. The early winter storm was a huge anomaly and to qualify for federal grant monies, the town had to agree to help homeowners clean up the storm damage.)

I made a pumpkin cheesecake yesterday and i don't think it came out that well. I don't have a mixer and i think that's largely the problem, plus I cut sugar from 1 cup to 3/4 of a cup, which i guess i shouldn't had.

Every time I look at the calendar, I'm shocked that I still don't have a f/t job by this time. And I wonder how long I can go, scrambling to make a few dollars at these low-paying contract jobs and the more occasional, though better-paying, freelance work I do, plus the brain-draining online surveys and the occasional focus group/research study.

I'm rather surprised, but I got just about everything done today that I wanted.

1. Made a tray of lasagna for this week's lunches at new job.

2. Also made a delicious cranberry rice pudding in slow cooker. Really yummy and oh so easy. Recipe calls for coconut milk.

3. Cut and cleared and dragged to the curb even more fallen tree limbs. There's more to do, but this was basically the last day to do it since I won't have time once I start the job tomorrow. Plus, the town was supposed to pick it all this past Thursday/Friday/Saturday, which they didn't, so I have to assume they'll be here very soon, if not tomorrow. But the delay in pick-up gave me even more time to get more debris out of my yard. (If only I had 3 months to do the rest...)

4. A friend called unexpectedly and invited himself over to see if he could help me install a new doorknob/lock on my basement/garage door. He got it in, but said it's basically a cheap fixture that may or may not hold together. It's an exact duplicate of a previous door knob that jammed up on and prevented me from unlocking the door. It actually had to be pried open. I complained to the manufacturer and they gave me the new one for free. But anyway, at least now i can use that door normally.

5. I wrote the latest press release and sent that off to the real estate company, and I realized re-reading an email from Friday that they wanted me to send out another press release I was holding. So I did both those things.

6. Also did more editing of the book. I now have just 32 pages left. The Author, who has been looking for an agent for a while now, has gotten to know one agent who asked her to do a reading from one of her books at the next meeting with other writers. The Author wasn't sure which book to read from, so she sent me the draft of the 2nd book, which is much more contemporary than the 1st book that I've been editing, so I encouraged her to read the 2nd. It would likely have greater appeal to a wider audience than a Southern romance novel. Anyway, she said in one of her emails that she will only have me edit her books and that she feels blessed to have met me. She's very happy with my work.

So I guess I'm ready for tomorrow. Don't have to be there til 10 a.m. this first day, so I can stick to my usual morning routine.

When my friend was over here, he showed me his new color Kindle, which I guess just came out. What interested me was that he's not really using the Kindle to read books. He's using it to access email and the Internet by taking advantage of free Wi-fi at the library, Starbucks, etc. Although I just sent him a site, www.gutenberg.org, where you can download FREE books. Anyway, he got me interested in a Kindle, though can't buy it now. I think he said it was $200. I liked it becus like him, I don't want to have to start paying a monthly fee for internet access....don't think i'd use the kindle enough to justify that. But it would be fun to have.

I'm chuggin' along. Nothing terribly exciting.

Every day for the past 4 or 5 days I've been doing tree work, as much as I can, before the town crews come by to pick up the debris and then I have to figure out how to dispose of the storm damage myself.

So I've been pushing myself hard, and it seems like every muscle in my body aches. I've got to take a photo of the piles at the street.

When I'm not cutting up tree branches, I've been uber-editing The Author's book. I have about 35 pp. to go. I would love to have it DONE before I start the contract job on Monday, becus I want nothing to take my time away from that job, and by rights, I should have The Author's book editing done before year's end too.

I mentioned not getting paid for 2 jobs I invoiced end of September at my favorite/oldest client. I finally had to get on the phone with Accounting, and she told me they didn't have those invoices. Eventually, my contact at the company said no, that's not true, a different person in Accounting had it. Anyway, they're supposed to cut the checks on Tuesday.

I also finally got the $50 check from Global Test Market. It came from Vancouver, no wonder it took so long. I've got to see if they use Paypal. What a breeze getting payments is with Paypal.

Also in the $$ Department, I was pleased as punch to get a check for $175 for my day as a poll worker, when the town had told me originally I'd only be paid $140.

Sometime this week (I hope) i should be getting a $25 Sears gift card, which i want to use to buy a 50 lb. bag of black oil sunflower seed for the birds. I shopped around and this is a very good price. It's a hobby, but it's hard to justify any kind of discretionary money these days, but I will allow myself to use a gift card.

I have another press release to write, preferably this weekend, again, becus i want to clear my plate for the new job.

I checked in with the big financial services firm I interviewed with early November. They're still interviewing. I don't know how many people they might be seeing, but if it's, say, 8 people, my chances are rather small, even with my great qualifications.

I've been in touch with the UConn research assistant to schedule my final 2 visits in December, which will mean one more payment of $150. I'll be glad to wrap that up. Onward and upward.

I wish I could say I was going to relax and enjoy my Sunday, but no, it will be rather busy. At least I did 3 loads of laundry today. But tomorrow, I must:
1. Go to Costco
2. Go to Shop Rite for Thanksgiving Day food
3. Make a tray of lasagna so i have something to eat for lunch all week long at the new job
4. Make a cranberry/rice pudding in the slow cooker using a recipe i've been wanting to try
5. More book editing
6. More tree work
7. Fill up the car's gas tank.

OK, so the very first time I was pubished was when I was 12 years old. A magazine had a competition for young authors, and I won!

I waited patiently for the check in mail. When, after 3 days, it didn't arrive, I fired off an angry letter to the editor saying, "Where's my money??"

Believe it or not, I still have the handwritten letter the editor wrote back to me. (I will have it framed someday, along with the magazine story.) He started off the letter by writing, "Hold your horses."

Hmmm. Seems I'm still repeating the words, "Where's my money?" a lot lately.

AFter waiting seven weeks for payment on 2 old invoices sent last September, I finally called Accounting of one of my clients on the phone. She indicated she had no record of my invoices. Which means the gal who told me ages ago to forward my invoices to her for speedier payment, let the ball slip. And I had JUST sent her an email about this matter a week ago. She then wrote back cheerfully, "I'll make sure your payment goes out in next week's batch."

I sent her a note again requesting her to FORWARD MY INVOICES SO I CAN GET PAID. I mean, if I were a somewhat larger enterprise, it might be different, but as a solo practitioner, I have a select few clients, including this one, and I count on the income from them! I can't tell you how annoyed and put out I am. I wait, wait and wait some more only to learn she didn't forward to invoices to accounting. But I have to be careful what I say becus she gives me a lot of business.

It says "Net 30" right on my invoice but they routinely ignore that. I could start adding late payment interest, but I'm guessing they'd just ignore that too. I really have no way of enforcing timely payment; i have to play by their rules. Grr.

Also still waiting for a $50 check from Global Test Market of the online survey world. Sent then an email about it today.

Also overdue is an Amazon gift card from an online crdit card forum I particpate in.

Where's my money??

Today's accomplishments:
* Edited at least 30 pp of The Author's book
* Sawed and dragged a few more tree limbs to the curb, but it was raw and rainy out, so didn't spent too much time doing this.
* Sent off a completed survey to use and comment on a retailer website in order to qualify for a $25 Amazon gift card.

OH, I forgot to add: I got the contract job working thru year's end (about 6 weeks, f/t) for the small publisher updating one of their annual directories. I start on Monday. But get this: Using an online net pay calculator, I figured that if I work a 40-hour week, I'll only net about $135 more a month than I would from my regular unemployment benefits. Hardly worth it, except that it does stretch my unemployment since it's suspended while I work. So I'll do it.

However, she welcomed me working over 40 hrs if i wanteed, and i figured that if i work just an extra 10 hours a week (50 hours total), my net would be $572 more a month than unemployment. Not sure why there's such a discrepancy between 40 and 50 hours, but that's what I'll aim to do. I will stop doing the online surveys and editing The Author's book so that all available free time can be spent, these next few weeks, on the new contract job to maximize my profit. Luckily, everything but the first week will be work at home, so i don't have to spend money on gas.And it will be easier to work longer if I can just roll out of bed and into my desk chair.

With this in mind, I've spent all day on The Author's book and already sent her a big section I finished. I have about 65 pages to go in the book.

Sunrise at PatientSaver's place...



After all these years, I finally figured out how to turn the Auto Flash off on my Canon PowerShot.

This is a view from the front, shot through the window. If you look carefully at the large dark area below the trees, slightly to the right of center, you can make out the outlines of my neighbor's house.

I made it through the night but as per usual, didn't sleep much. Of course, the OsmoPrep didn't help, although I would say the bulk (no pun intended) of my runs to the bathroom took place before 10 pm.

I thought I was doing ok with not having eaten since yesterday morning until I caught myself looking longingly at the cat food bowls on the floor. Friskies Gourmet Grill, anyone?

I had planned on running to the post office to mail something this morning, before I started with the 2nd stage of the prep, but I think not. My stomach's still making all sorts of wierd complaints from having taken those horse pills at 5 pm yesterday.

I have to occupy myself until 12:20 pm when my neighbor comes to pick me up. The procedure's not til 2 but i have to be there at 1.

So....
I am very pleased with the progress I made on tree cleanup yesterday. I mostly dispatched with that apple tree limb except for a roughly 10 foot long piece of the main limb, which is about 8 inches diameter. It's so exhausting trying to cut limbs of that size with my bow saw, and it's probably a distance of about 200 feet to the curb, but it occurred to me that I should work smarter, not harder. Meaning, I can scroung around for a rope in my garage and fasten a slip note round one end of the tree. I think it would be easier to throw that rope over my shoulder, and drag it, wearing gloves, across the lawn rather than carrying it. I do also have a wheelbarrow, but that only works with much smaller pieces of wood or it would just tip over.

So, next chance i get, I'll try that. As soon as I research how to tie a slip knot.

I took a bag full of cat hair, collected mostly from cutting Luther's long fur this summer in an effort to keep him cool, and, after cleaning out the old wren's nest in one of my bluebird boxes, I put all the fur in there. I've often seen birds shelter in the nest boxes during the coldest parts of winter, and that soft fur would really help keep those birdies warm.

Uh oh, gotta run.

Ugh. I have a colonscopy tomorrow...(too much information???)

I had one just 2 years ago, but I did such a bad prep, the doc said, I have to repeat. The problem was, I was drinking that awful stuff the day before. Managed to get it down. Then, the morning of the procedure, I had another quart to drink of it and I Just. Could. Not. Get. It. Down. I was actually gagging on it.

So I gave up trying, and I guess the results showed.

This time around, instead of the chalky thick liquid, I got some horse pills to take with lots of water. Yesterday I started with a bottle of over the counter laxative. I guess becus my procedure is not until 2 pm tomorrow afternoon, I was allowed to have a breakfast of scrambled eggs and toast. I had eggs over easy and butter on my toast. Hope that's not a problem.

Yesterday, I know I goofed. I had some delicious Trader Joe's Rustico Bread which had seeds in it, and strawberry jam with seeds on top of that. I just wasn't thinking. Oh well.

I freaked out a little becus in yesterday's mail I got a letter from the place where I'm having the colonscopy and they said "as a courtesy to you," we called your insurer to verify your coverage and we were able to confirm you're subject to a $2,000 deductible. What??????? When I called my insurer, they said colonscopies were 100% covered and NOT subject to deductible or even a copay. (That's the only reason why I'm doing this now and not waiting until I have a job.)

Of course, I learned that was not entirely true becus i had to pay $43 for the prep. And now this letter. Then, later in the letter, in bold print, is a statement saying that they don't have access to information about certain riders that would waive your deductible. My insurance manual categorizes an annual colonscopy after age 50 as "health and wellness" that's 100% covered.

So why the heck send the letter out to patients? It just causes lots of confusion. If you only get part of the info, what good is it?? I think the purpose of the letter is not so much "a courtesy" to patients as much as it is to make sure you understand they will be coming to you for payment, insurance or no insurance. I will certainly let them know what I think of their letter. I'm so tired of everything being about money these days. And healthcare providers make great efforts in their PR and advertising to appear warm and caring, but really, a letter like this is pretty transparent. They just want their money. It's a business, like any other.

So, the last few days I've spent at least an hour daily working on cutting up and dragging tree limbs down to the curb. I have multiple large piles taller than me growing there. Pick-up is Thursday and I'll be out of commission tomorrow, so I'm trying to make the most of my time beforehand, becus after that, I'll be on my own as to disposal of the mess around here.

I've made good progress in the front yard and mainly have the large apple tree limb that came down. I don't know if I'll get to the back yard, which has 2 full-sized trees down and 2 other limbs that are just as large. We do what we can do.

In addition to doing more tree work today, I'd also like to do more editing for The Author (we met at a local coffee shop on Friday and she gave me another payment, plus a small pot of daisies to thank me for being patient with her her late payment), prep for my interview Tuesday at the publisher and make a few phone calls.

Tomorrow a.m., if hunger doesn't turn my brain to mush, before my procedure I want to try to interview someone on the phone for an assignment I got on Friday. I imagine I'll just want to relax Monday afternoon without any mental focus required.

My oldest client is late again in paying me $437 for some work I billed out on Sept. 30. I hate that they make a sole proprietor wait so long for their money. If might be different if I were a larger enterprise with multiple income streams, but I'm a solo practitioner with a select number of clients. So pay me already!

A few months back I applied for a perm job at a publisher that helps writers get published with courses, instruction and a variety of books and catalogs.

I got an email this a.m. from the editor in chief, who told me that while they filled the perm job (rats) she wondered if I'd be interested in a temporary, 5 to 6 week assignment writing and updating listings for a directory they do of magazines that accept freelance writer submissions.

I said "of course" and she called me a few minutes later, telling me that was the fastest anyone had ever responded to one of her emails.

She told me a bit about the job, just writing and doing a little research to update listings for an annual directory they sell. She said that after working on-site for about a week, I could probably work at home after that.

We arranged to meet this Tuesday. She sounded like it wasn't so much an interview as it was a meeting to show me in greater details what I'd be doing. Although she didn't tell me what they'd pay yet. I hope it's more than $10 an hour. I really have no idea how to price temporary jobs like this. But hey, it's work.

(Note: I predict it's about $12/hr. I'll let you know on Tuesday how close I am to what it actually is.)

I'm sort of wondering what I would do if I took this temp job and then next week I hear back from the big financial services company that I got that perm job. Obviously, the perm job would be top priority, but i wouldn't want to give the shaft to the publisher either and leave them hanging midway through that job as it's the kind of place where I could see myself getting more work down the road if i needed/wanted it. (Don't like to burn bridges.) I guess I'll deal with it if it happens. I don't know if i could tell the perm job place that I couldn't start there for a full 5 weeks, and i think the temp job place would expect me to work f/t until that job was done. While I would be willing to do that job on the weekends, it wouldn't be enough to keep up with a 5-day-a-week pace.

It's not rocket science, but if I did a good job with this, I would hope they would call on me for other projects.

You never know when something's going to fall into your lap. Just when you despair of ever getting anything remotely "regular" again. I was surprised she chose to call me, and then I retrieved my original cover letter to them and remembered that I (smartly) highlighted the fact that I once worked for a boutique publisher (now out of business) that specialized in financial publications. Although it never felt like a publishing company to me because we spent so much time doing newsletters and conferences as well.

So I am psyched. Best case scenario would be if they could deduct taxes out of my paycheck and treat me like a part-time employee instead of as a contractor. It would save me from having to pay self-employment taxes on the income, but more importantly, it would help boost my overall earnings for the year should the Dept. of Labor have to recalculate my benefits. There are so many "tiers" of benefits I've lost track of where I stand and they may well have to recalculate at some point.

It's also fairly local. It's just a 25-minute drive on back roads all the way. And I love work at home stuff...let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

In other news, my body is aching all over. I learned from reading Patch online that the town will be going around to pick up all the tree limb debris caused by the snowstorm last week. They don't usually do this, but it will be a huge help so I don't have to worry about dragging it to a far corner of the yard or having to haul it to the dump in my teeny Civic myself. However, I will still need to drag stuff down to the curb and becus it's woodsy in front of my house, I have actually very little space to lay the tree limbs down.

But I dragged a bunch down to the road this morning for about an hour. I managed to clear all the stuff that was sitting in my driveway and other stuff, too, but it's just a tiny FRACTION of the mess in my yard, eveyrwhere you look.

They will be picking up the stuff a week from today, so it behooves me to get as many tree limbs down to the street as possible before then, becus after that, I'll be on my own.

I already know I'll still be stuck with dealing with at least 2 full size trees that came down. I'll have to pay to have them cut up and since i don't want to spend the money now, they'll sit where they are. But there's tons of other stuff, including a very large apple tree branch I'd love to get rid of before the snow flies. Plus tons of white pine branches.

I was able to spend some time today editing The Author's novel. I let it go for quite a while, but we're walking together tomorrow, and i think she'll be giving me a check, so I'd like to have this next section done fairly soon. I have another 30 pages or so to go.

Tonight I'm going to another free dinner/lecture on reverse mortgages. My friend's picking me up in another hour or so for that.

My day started at 4:30 am yesterday when the alarm clock went off. I raced around to get dressed, feed the cats and so on, and then was out the door to arrive at the middle school by 5:15 am.

There were about 15 of us running District 1 polling center. Four of us were assigned as "checkers." The voter lists are organized by street name, and they divided up the alphabeticized lists among us. The voters step up and you just locate them on the list, check their ID (almost always a driver's license), cross them off the list and hand them a ticket to proceed to the ballot clerk who gives them the ballot.

It was a long, 15-hour day. Polls were open from 6 am to 8 pm. The checker sitting to my left was a senior citizen who was very chatty and kept up a running dialogue with me for the entire day. He's a retired schoolteacher who's very active in town, from the book club to Lions Club to his church.

The checker to my right was a young gal who, i found out, is a schoolbus driver. The other checker was a senior who, like me, thought this might be fun to do. She brought a full crock pot of pasta fazool (not sure of spelling), which was my lunch and dinner. It was a hot meal. There was also fruit and croissants, tea and coffe, and 1 voter gave us all girl scout cookies, which i thought was very nice.

I was a little surprised that there weren't more unemployed people like me taking advantage of a chance to earn some money. There were just 2 other middle aged women working the polls, plus 1 gal in her 20s and 1 teen. The rest were seniors.

I personally checked in about 400 voters. I enjoyed seeing the faces of my fellow hometowners, from all walks of life, doing their patriotic duty. There was the president of the local savings bank. (Bankers are always the nicest dressed.) Some very handsome cops. (For their security, their names are listed on the very last page of the list, I guess so they don't have to show their ID or reveal their ID among the public. You point to their name and say is your name on this list. A little extreme, perhaps?)

A number of other well-to-do businesspeople,rushed or distracted, the hard-working folks with dirt under their fingernails and splattered paint on their blue jeans. The moms with kids in tow. The couple I saw walking in, holding hands. A number of teens who were voting for the very first time with a parent accompanying them! The seniors...It all kind of warmed my heart. This was the face of my town, and I was very proud to be a part of it.

It was fun to greet and recognize neighbors, acquantances and others I knew in town. Truth be told, I never thought I knew that many in my town, but I guess there are a few. The husband of the woman I often see walking her beagles invited me to "stop in sometime." I was flattered that he remembered my name, and then I realized I was wearing a name tag. Then, embarrasingly, the talky checker to my left was checking in my one next-door neighbor with whom I DON'T get along (lots of noise issues) and the checker, who knew i lived on the same street as that neighbor, said, Oh look, patientsaver, this could be one of your neighbors, and i kind of kept my head down and said, he IS my neighbor. We don't get along at all, so i didn't want the guy to make a comment or something. (He didn't.) I've never really spoken to him, but it's his wife and his son that i've had dealings with. I also said hello to the contractor who built my sunroom. I saw in the paper that his wife,just 44, unexpectedly died a few weeks ago. I heard him telling the checker next to me that her name should be taken off the list and in fact, it already had been removed. I felt really bad for him and wanted to say something, but this was not the time to do that.

There were a LOT of people (like 1 out of 6) who showed up at our location only to learn (becus they weren't on our lists) that they were in the wrong location and should be voting at another school. Some were a little upset about that and some just walked out the door without checking at the moderator's table where they were supposed to go; they probably weren't going to bother.

The problem is that the local newspaper indicated where voters in each district were to go to vote, but they didn't state which streets were in each district. So if you only vote once a year, or less often, it's easy to see how a lot of people don't remember or don't know which district they belong to. It was a major kink in the system and I made a point to tell the registrar in the hope they make sure it's spelled out better next time.

It was a gorgeous day outside, in the 60s, like spring in November. I did slip out to walk around the school twice. The VNA was doing flu shots next door, so on impulse i stepped inside becus there was no line. They assured me that if i gave my insurer info later (I didn't have the card with me) the shot would be free, no co-pay, so i went ahead and got the shot, which i hadn't been planning on doing this year due to cost.

I was a little surprised that, given that most of the volunteer poll workers were seniors, that they didn't do more to make the long day a little easier. It might have been helpful if they let us rotate shifts mid-way through the day. They did have 2 "floaters" whose job it was to sit in for anyone who needed a meal break or restroom break, but none of us ever let a floater sit in for us for more than 15 minutes or so.

Anyway, it's now filed under my "Interesting Life Experiences" file. I should get my $140 in a few weeks time, and that could pay pay for my electric, phone, Internet and water bill this month.

In other shocking news, I learned through The Author that my sometime handyman was arrested and briefly jailed for lack of bond. He went to the police station to complain about some sort of unrelated harrassment when the cop he was talking to in the parking lot noticed a rifle/firearm in his truck. It was loaded, my handyman was arrested for that and becus they found some pot in his possession as well.

Geez. Makes me a wee bit nervous about using the handyman again. He's always been super nice to me, but i know from our last conversation he's beenhaving some serious $ troubles due to owing the town $12K in back property taxes. He often seems depressed to me and always very serious. I don't think i can remember ever having seen him laugh. He's the one i wrote about earlier, always struggling for $. Yet he feeds and befriends feral cats who live in the woods near his cottage.

It's a pretty quiet day, work-wise, so I went this a.m. to my mother's to collect the rest of my refrigerated food that I'd left there after the snowstorm. I also stopped at Stop & Shop for a few things.

Twice today I worked in the yard, cutting up big fallen branches (from the storm) and dragging them to a corner of my yard where you'd never see them. I worked about an hour each time. It's very tiring. I use only my little bow saw and a wood ladder I dragged under the crabapple tree. Work gloves are essential cus there's all kind of sap from the white pine, and I already wore holes in one pair of suede gloves.

Then I mowed just a portion of the backyard, to mulch up a bunch of fallen leaves.

Tomorrow, Election Day, I'll be working from 5:15 am to 8 pm at night, for just $140. Better than nothing, but it will be a very long day, and that's the chief reason I'm not looking forward to something I might otherwise quasi-enjoy.

I have to bring my lunch and dinner, or run out to get something quickly. I guess I'll make a tuna or chicken salad and bring a banana and then wing it from there. If I'm lucky, other poll workers will bring a crock pot full of something.

I'm having a colonscopy on Monday, so I also stopped at CVS to fill the prescription for the meds. Very annoyed that my insurer didn't cover it and I had to pay $40 for it. They tell you a colonscopy is 100% covered, but they neglect to tell you they consider the meds/prep as separate, even though you could never have a colonoscopy without it.)

This Thursday begins the countdown of restricted foods. I had a lot of trouble 2 years ago drinking the prep stuff, so this time i got a presecription of pills you just take with water, lots of water, plus i have to drink a whole bottle (10 oz) of magnesium citrate on Saturday. Oh boy, I hope I can handle this. I got lots of jello, organic chicken broth and apple juice for the liquid fast when I was at S&S.

I did a load of laundry and am trying to tidy up around here. For some reason, the mess got really out of hand for the actually 7 (not 6) days i was without power. Just too cold to do anything except go under the blankets.

Not much else to report. I did my October expense report and my expenses exceeded income by about $300, mainly due to my homeowner's insurance. (It's always something.)

Oh, I also vacuumed the upstairs, and did something I rarely do. I dragged the bed away from the wall so I could vaccuum in back of it and underneath it. It was a mess. I did it becus i noticed my older cat is still breathing kind of heavy, as if his allergies are bothering him. I know there's nothing outside now, so perhaps it's all the dust in the house. I tend to let the vaccuuming get away from me...often. So after the thorough vaccuuming, I also ran my expensive, energy-efficient air purifier, which I rarely use, but which is nice to have. (hmmm)

The thought occurred to me that i've got a lot of stuff in my kitchen cabinets that i rarely, if ever use, and i never have enough storage space. So I hauled out my well-used "set it and forget it" rotisserie chicken oven and i think i'll get rid of it. It works fine, but there's one thing i really hate about it: it's very difficult to clean, and you can spend a half hour scrubbing all the assorted parts. I don't know, I'm getting tired of that sort of thing, and i don't like handling raw meat much anyway. So if i have a craving for rotisserie chicken, I think I'll just pick one up already cooked at the grocery store and save myself the cleanup. And give myself a bit more storage space.

The critters tonight will have a feast, if they discover the food I put out for them. I decided I really didn't like the whole wheat and golden raisin loaf I'd baked, although I did eat the muffin versions. There was also some uneaten cat food and some red grapes in there. I like to feed the animals, especially in winter.

There was a woman I knew, she was actually one of the original group of people who developed the atom bomb, believe it or not, I met her when a group of Sierra Club board members met at my boyfriend's house in NY when I was living with him years ago. My boyfriend served as chairman or whatever the title was, of that particular chapter for a number of years, and so they all met at our house. The Manhattan Project, that was the name of the group the woman worked in.... Anyway she used to like to put out all sorts of food scraps for the critters on her back porch which was illuminated by a light and after a while the animals lost their fear of the light and they'd be scrapping with each other for all this food. Raccoons, skunks, possums, you name it. She was a pretty serious environmentalist...it would have been interesting to talk to her then about her earlier career, but i suppose it was all top secret anyway.

The freak winter snowstorm is far from over, but I already have more tree damage than I can deal with.

They're forecasting about a foot by the time it's through tomorrow morning. In the meantime, I already have more tree limbs down than I can count.

The worst is a half a sugar maple tree that grew on an upward slope in the backyard. Half of it came crashing down, at its base, and it landed in a smaller crabapple tree in the backyard while taking a good-sized branch of another sugar maple with it.

Now the tree rests, suspended horizontally above the ground and held in mid-air by the crabapple tree.

So it would take professionals to cut it up and remove it. Thing is, I'm in no position to spend several thousand dollars to remove it. My homeowners deductible is $5,000, so we won't be going there.

It's going to be a problem.

I will have my hands full just going around and dragging and cutting up other smaller limbs that came down. There's a large white birch at the foot of my driveway which is now bowed over the drive by the snow and blocking passage. It's touching the ground. I'm hoping that my shaking off the snow tomorrow, I can get it to rise back high enough to get my car through there.

I feel blessed to still have power, although a strange, transformer like sound is buzzing intermittently over by my neighbor's wires. I'm thinking there must be a tree branch on the line.

Although it is relatively calm windwise, they're forecasting winds up to 40 and now that it's getting dark out, that's when it gets scary: pitch black, windy and lord knows how many more tree limbs to fall.

I really wish I had a pickup truck. I'm so reliant on others to help me out, and really there's just one guy who's been over with his chainsaw and i haven't really encouraged the friendship. He's just not someone I really warm up to but he has been hugely helpful in the past cutting up trees. I just don't feel I can call him, once again, becus i haven't called him in so long. Surely he would feel used, andi guess i wouldn't blame him.

I'm going to have to fine new places to drag these tree limbs or spend several years cutting them up with my little bow saw, stuffing them in the trunk of my Honda and carting them to the landfill.

A doe and her two fawns, now spotless, have wandered through the back yard to the front, looking for thee small little apples still on the ground. I think they like the instant cover created by the fallen tree limbs.

Sigh. I still haven't finished cleaning up fallen limbs from Hurricane Irene. This is a constant problem.

Shot from inside my office, looking into the front yard.

I was a little late to be clued in that a major snowstorm would be occurring today, but it's here, in a big way!

gosh, we haven't even had Halloween yet and they're forecasting 6 to 10 inches. The flakes are huge.

The car is safely inside the garage and yesterday I put away the last of my outdoor potted annuals and a small wood bench on my front stoop that always gets knocked over by strong winds.

I was able to get my haircut this am at a "hair academy" where instructors work with the "student" who is cutting your hair.

I was talking to another customer waiting to get her haircut and she said she'd never had a bad haircut there, so I felt "safe." Actually, the gal did as good a job as I've ever had, and i actually liked that the instructor maybe 3 or 4 times checked how she was cutting my hair and spoke to her at length about how to go about it. It was kind of interesting and probably took twice as long as a normal haircut, but I rather liked that too. Felt like I was being pampered and cared for, and it was just $13. I will definitely return there. I had been driving down to the mall for a haircut at about the same price, I think, but that was a 15 or 20 minute drive, so this is much better as it's just a few miles down the street.

I finished off the last of my sweet potato pie and the rest of a really good soup i made in the slow cooker 3 days ago featuring pork, white beans, tomato and kale. It was really very tasty, I must say.

My daytime heat is set at 63 and I am SO conscious of the furnace kicking on and the using up of my precious (aka expensive) heating oil. Well, it can't be helped. It's 32 out there.

They are calling for occasional wind gust of 40 mph and up and power outages and downed trees with all the heavy snow as a result. I sure hope I don't lose power again. Not in these temps.


This is the white bench I dragged up from a small downstairs hallway and put in my office, mainly to entice my kitty to jump on it so he could look out the window.


A few days after moving the bench, he finally screwed up the courage to jump on the bench. But notice he's still not walking on the soft blanket I put there for his comfort! He gives new meaning to the phrase, "Scaredy cat!"


Catnip-induced silliness


These big white pines run along the roadside. Let's hope they remain upright.

I've been watching the Dow and one day last week when it had climbed to a relative high of about 11,880, I sold one of my mutual funds worth about $16,500. After receiving the money in my checking account, I marched over to my mortgage bank and presented them with the check.

I'm now happy to report my mortgage balance is just $10,582. She said it would still be another 19 months before I pay it off (assuming no prepayments), which is a bit longer than I estimated, but perhaps I can put some of my tax refund toward it.

I can't really consider selling a portion of my remaining taxable mutual fund becus it's an international fund and has been doing quite poorly amid all the hubbub about the Euro, Greece and Italy. I don't want to take a big hit when I sell the fund, so for now, I'm content to have chipped away at the mortgage to this level.

I asked the teller for two key pieces of info:
1. How much actual interest have i paid to date, over the life of the loan? (I'm in year 16 of a 30-year mortgage), and
2. How much interest WOULD I have paid over 30 years with NO prepayments?

Now granted, these numbers will change becus the loan still isn't completely paid off, but we're getting pretty near the end here and I just wanted to see.

She told me I have paid about $67,301 in interest over the 16 years I've owned the house. Boggles the mind, doesn't it? But if I hadn't been prepaying all these years, I would have paid, over the course of the 30-year loan....drumroll...$125,336.

So I haven't quite cut my interest payments in half, but pretty darn close. I'll revisit these figures again once I finally pay it off.

Yesterday I had my handyman come over and address the situation with the clothes dryer hose vent which my cat pried off and climbed through to get into the garage.

It was a pretty easy and quick fix, costing me all of $39 ($9 of that was for materials). He happened to have a large piece of plywood in the back of his truck that he wasn't using for anything and he cut that down to size to fit the size of the window opening. Then he cut a round hole in it the exact diameter of the vent hole, about 4 inches. Then he bought a dryer vent, the kind that has a flap that closes over the hole when it's not in use, and he screwed that into the old window frame that was already there.

So voila. Problem fixed. Now if he wanted to, the cat could still scratch at my somewhat flimsy dryer hose and tear more holes in it. Then I'd be forced to spend money on a better hose, the kind made out of solid metal, but I'm really hoping that doesn't happen becus then I might have to have the handyman back here again to re-affix the new hose.

I got 3 new freelance writing assignments for marketing materials for an upscale new subdivision (6 homes) in an upscale Connecticut town. They're actually 3 different pages of what will become the marketing brochure, but they like to give it to me broken into smaller components, like the builder bio, the town write-up and the write-up about the community itself. It's fine by me. I interviewed the builder yesterday and also talked to the sales agent, enabling me to write about a place I've never been to.

Last week I went to a free dinner lecture at Masonicares rehab/nursing home on Medicare. It's open enrollment time now and it can be very confusing which plan is the best. So I went to the lecture (mainly for the free meal) and the speaker was great. Not only that, but he will meet with seniors one-on-one to discuss their particular situation and advise as to the best plan(s), whether it's A, B, C, D, E, F, G, etc., or some combination of them all.

I gave my mother his contact info and urged her to call him. She didn't want to drive out his way but happily,he's coming to her home and she wanted me to be there too cus she doesn't know the guy, so that's what I'm doing later this morning.

Before coming back home I'll hit Costco for some milk and cat litter. Costco is raising its membership fee and I've decided it's no longer worth it for me to be a member, so when my membership comes up for renewal in December, I'll let it lapse. But in the meantime, I am stocking up on enough cat litter to last me all of next year. Their price on cat litter ($7.35 for a 44 lb box of clumping) is far and away cheaper than anywhere else. I think I go thru about 1 box of litter a month for the 2 cats, so my goal is to have at least 12 extra boxes in December, and I'll plan on renewing the Costco membership in Dec. 2012 after skipping a year.

The boxes are super heavy and i can barely lift them into a Costco cart, but i hope to get one of those flatbed carts and buy 3 or 4 boxes today.

I wish I could do the same thing with the milk, but I can't. Too bad I didn't have a freezer.

I feel bad for my handyman. He's struggled financially for as long as I've known him, although he does pretty good work. There are 3 reasons for this that I can see, but I can never tell him one of them.

The first reason is that he really underprices his work. And he doesn't charge for his time spent picking up materials,nor does he inflate the price of materials he buys so he doesn't profit off them, as most contractors do. I know this becus he gives me the receipt after he buys materials so i can see exactly what it cost. He must be the only person in the world who does that.

The 2nd reason he's always broke is becus he doesn't advertise his services anywhere. The one time he posted his services on a local bulletin board in town, someone from the town called him and was asking all kinds of questions becus they wanted to start taxing his business assets, like his truck. He also doesn't advertise becus he doesn't want to get caught doing handyman work without a license, which is an expensive annual cost. We were talking about it all after he finished my job, and I suggested that he try advertising again, but in surrounding towns, not this town. That way, if a local town official happened to read it, chances are, they wouldn't bother calling my town to report him, and it wouldn't matter to them since the handyman works in my town, not their town. He thought that was a good idea.

The 3rd reason he's struggling is becus he never works steadily enough. He now has a p/t job that's a regular thing, but he's only guaranteed 12 hours, altho sometimes he works as much as 25 hours a week. Not enough to live on!So he had been renting a small (900sf) lakefront cottage for years. He always had trouble paying the rent. Then he had a very bad accident with his motorcycle but collected about $145,000 from it. You would think that would have solve all his problems. Well, yes and no. He had been renting with an option to buy. The house isn't worth much by itself. It doesn't have a septic system, just a cesspool, it has no water source itself but he uses a community well, whatever it is, it's on very steep land, though it's 1/2 an acre and it doesn't have a foundation. But it's very private and it's waterfront. So he bought the house, paid in cash.

So that alleviated that financial pressure, but yesterday he was telling me he's way behind on paying the town property taxes. For his little place, the taxes are about $3300, and he now owes about $12,000. I urged him to challenge the assessment with the Board of Appeals, given all the shortcomings of the place but he seems pretty skeptical. He's kind of a loner/hippie type, with long hair he keeps in a ponytail. I feel bad for him. He's afraid he's going to lose the house.

I have been using my paypal account now. I've had it for a while but never used it. I've used it to get paid by the guy who's having me edit his emails, as well as getting paid by the online surveys. It's just a few dollars here or there, but it sure beats waiting 4 weeks to get paid by the online survey places! What an improvement! I have it linked to my local checking account and transfer money immediately when I get it. I had been leery of using Paypal when I first heard about it, but it's been around so long and so many people use it, I finally caved in. Just like I caved in about doing online banking or using more big bank credit cards.

OK, I did it. I left what was probably my favorite healthcare provider and made an appointment with a new dentist later this week.

When I called to cancel the appointment I'd made with my old dentist, I made a point to explain why I was cancelling the appointment. She said she'd pass it on and sounded like she completely understood.

Still out of work, it's getting harder for me to justify spending $150 for a routine teeth cleaning every 6 months. Don't get me wrong, I feel it's very important to have the cleanings and believe it's one reason I have a pretty healthy set of teeth....no wisdom teeth extractions, no crowns, dentures or anything aside from a bunch of fillings from when I was much younger and had a sweet tooth (still do).

So I responded to an ad by a dentist who was offering a "fall special" for new patients. Exam, x-rays and cleaning for $90. That's a $60 savings over my current dentist.

The woman on the line said the price would be the same without x-rays, which I don't plan to get. (Until about 10 years ago, I would always get the annual set of x-rays, per dentist recommendations. But not ONCE in all those years did those x-rays ever show anything. I suspect the x-rays helped put my dentist's kids through college, but didn't do much for me except douse my body with a whole lot more radiation than I needed.)

The woman at the new dentist said his normal price was $174, so unless he extends his fall special, I will have to return to my old dentist 6 months from now or find someone new. But even then, it still saves me $60 right now.

I do this with great reluctance because there is no other healthcare, aside from my gynecologist, that I'm more attached to with my current provider. I don't often see the dentist himself for more than 5 minutes as he gazes into my mouth. He did one filling for me a few years ago and he did have an incredibly gentle touch. I was amazed.

The hygienist who cleans my teeth is about my age and is so pleasant and talkative, that I feel like I'm going to see an old friend, one who just happens to be cleaning my teeth. I've been going to her for 16 years now, so it's hard to try someone new, but money is the issue.

I understand if dentists, like most self-employed healthcare providers, want to make sure their income stays the same or even increases. But most of their patients are seeing their income stagnate or decline, sometimes dramatically, as in my case. So while I'm not yet willing to forego my twice a year cleanings, I will take steps to reduce the cost.

it reminds me of my primary care doc, who has now sent out a second survey to his patients asking them what they think of his going the concierge healthcare route, meaning, they charge patients several thousand dollars a year and in return you get immediate access to the doctor and get all kinds of other perks. My doctor is obviously trying to eliminate the hassles of insurance paperwork while boosting his income. I wasn't thrilled with the idea. Why should I pay more money for things like on-time appointments, which I should be getting already?

The day's accomplishments:

1. Lots of online surveys in the morning with a steaming cup of green tea.
2. Rearranged some furniture which always gives me a "wow" moment, as if I have a brand new room! All I did was haul an old barnboard cabinet (Sundance catalog, muchos dineros at a time when I had money) and put it downstairs against a window in a little back hallway. The white storage bench I had in that location came up to my office.

Why did I do this, battling the stairs heroically as I went? Because I thought my scaredy cat would appreciate being able to jump on the lower bench and look out the office window. He is too insecure to jump on any household furniture except my bed, the built-in benches in the sun room, and the couch.
3. Swept a ton of pine needles covering my upper driveway and deposited them in the blueberry bed. Blueberry bushes love acidity.
4. Raked more pine needles off an area of my front lawn where they always collect under a big row of mammoth white pines.
5. I actually did some paying work for the guy I found on Craig's List who has had me edit some of his emails. I earned about $10 for a half hour of pretty easy work.
6. Read the Sunday paper (and saw my mom's photo in it, related to an art exhibit)
7. Organized myself for Monday chores which include groceries, a bank deposit, a dump run and Walgreen's. Handyman Billy is coming over in the afternoon to assess what he can do with the dryer vent hose/Houdini hole.
8. Vaccumed the upstairs.
9. Filled the bird feeder.
10. Picked out a slow cooker recipe (pork) which I hope to do tomorrow if I get back early enough from grocery shopping.



By the way, I'm amazed at how big name Hollywood stars...I'm talking dustin hoffman and george clooney....can still put out some really lousy movies. In the last 2 days I watched george in Men Who Stare at Goats and Dustin in a love story with Emma Thompson, and they were both were mediocre. Not sure what it was, maybe it was just the story line.

Oh, what a lovely thing...a check for $200 from Chase Freedom credit card. The easiest $200 I ever made....

I've already started using my next card, Citi Dividend. I discovered to my delight that I can charge my homeowner's insurance with no fee (Met Life) so I put $691 on the Citi card, automatically fulfilling my minimum spending requirement for my 2nd $200 reward.

Life is good.

Also got paid $180 by the money manager today, and got another check for $50 from a focus group.

October has turned into a pretty good month moneywise. The extra income has allowed me to pay my homeowners insurance, a pretty big once a year bill, without exceeding income this month.

How could a cat of this size fit through a four-inch-wide opening?

I'm still shaking my head.

I got my Citi Dividend World Class Master Card in the mail today and activated it. While I had the rep on the phone, I figured I'd confirm the $200 cash back offer (if you spend $500 in the 1st 3 months) as it's not stated anywhere on the application or on the website, which makes me nervous.

Actually, the website says something entirely different: $150 cash back if you spend $750 in the 1st 3 months. Well, which is it?

Sure enough, the rep said oh no, but she proceeds to tell me that "my" offer is for $100 cash back. I pointed out that their website which i was looking at as we spoke indicated there was a $150 cash back offer.

I wrangled with her a bit, and then she put an account manager on the phone. I usually bookmark credit card offers, but i think i stopped doing that becus if the offer expires later, the link could then be dead and i'd have no proof of the original offer. So i started taking Screen Captures and saving it as a jpg, but i couldn't find the Citi card anywhere.

So i did a simple online search and found multiple $200 cash back offers for this card. I told him I was on one in particular, and i said, can i send you the link. He said,no, we don't have email here Can you fax it? You don't have email??? I don't own a fax; they're practically obsolete.

So i gave him the web address and walked him through finding it online. He finally got there and after reading the terms and conditions, saw that the offer was still current, so he said he would do whatever needed to be done to ensure I got the $200 offer, and that I'd get an email confirmation of that in a few days. (Let's see how that goes.)

But I mean, C'mon! Why should i have to renegotiate the whole thing? He kept saying, there are hundreds of offers we have out there, and they're all different. Well, gee, is it any wonder you get disgruntled customers when they learn that other customers are getting better deals than they are? I mean, the offers aren't even based on anything logical, like credit scores; they're simply different deals and if you find a better one, god bless, otherwise, too bad.

So he keeps saying, by way of excuse, that Citi has hundreds of offers out there and it's hard to keep track of them. I mean, you would think if anyone should be able to keep it straight, it would be the company making the offers. But no, he had to put me on hold, yada yada yada.

I only got the $200 offer because i was able to walk him through finding it online to verify. If I had taken the first rep at her word, I would have gotten only $100 cash back.

Buyer beware, and be your own advocate, and take screen captures of everything.

Thinking back about the 5 cats I've owned during my adulthood, my Maine Coon has been, by far, the most destructive and fearless cat I've owned (and also, the best looking).

Yesterday, inexplicably, he was evidently "exploring" in the basement. Although he's made his home here with me and Waldo for over 2 years now, he apparently just discovered that by jumping up from the basement floor to a two-inch wide ledge about five feet up on the basement wall, he could then walk along the wall and hop on top of the well water tank. From there, he had easy access to leap to a small basement window well. Before my attached garage was added to the other side of this wall, this was an outside wall, hence, the window.

When I bought the house, the previous homeowners had rigged up an insulated frame that fit inside the window well against the window. Inside the insulated frame and the glass window it sits up against, they had an approximate four-inch diameter circle cut to fit the diameter of a standard clothes dryer hose, and this is where I've always vented my dryer.

The washing machine and clothes dryer were at one time against the back wall of the house. I know that because you could see the old dryer vent on the back wall, but that has since been covered up by my new vinyl siding. So the little window on the shared wall between basement and garage is really the only option I have for venting the clothes dryer.

it's not a good idea to vent anywhere but outdoors, cus that's a lot of humid, moist air and I have noticed that if I don't crack the door open in the garage regularly when i run the dryer, tools rust.

So anyway, the cat somehow discovered that by clawing at the flimsy dryer hose, which is not attached to the window, just placed in the hole, basically, he could pull it out. (He's already become quite dexterious at prying open kitchen and bathroom cabinet doors.) Once he did that, he saw the opening, and like a little mouse, he managed to crawl through the cut glass opening plus lots of fiberglass insulation (great) to find himself in the garage. He had to leap about six feet down to a hard, concrete floor.

Yesterday morning, I couldn't find him, which always makes me nervous. I went into the basement calling for him but didn't see him. Then I spied the dryer hose no longer inside the little opening in that old window and I thought to myself, could he have CRAWLED through that tiny opening? I went to the garage door, which opens to the basement, and Luther scooted right in. He'd apparently been trying to get back in for a while, because he'd totally ripped off a rubber door sweep my handyman had put at the bottom of my metal door for drafts. More damage.

I kind of freaked, because all summer long I've often kept the big garage door open, often overnight. If he'd happened to make his tunnel-like escape at that time, he'd be gone. I also have another side door to the garage which I've been unable to close since they put aluminimum trim around the door frame. I don't know if the door warped or what, but even with substantial chiseling and sanding of the door, it still won't close. If he had investigated that door, he could have easily pushed it open.

So yesterday morning, as a short-term solution, I began to barricade the window. I say short-term because I'm not going to want to dismantle it each time I need to use the dryer. I jammed a variety, lumber against the window, but I can't nail or screw it in place, it's all concrete there so I just tried to wedge it in place, Then I put up other obstacles that I hoped would keep Luther from pulling the same stunt again.


The window is in the top left part of the photo, and is covered with the white sytrofoam I had on hand. The large black pipe is my septic pipe which goes straight into the floor of the basement and basically prevents me from moving the washer/dryer closer to the window. There are also several poles in the way, plus the well water tank itself.

Not five minutes later, he had done it again! I was flabbergasted. I had to bring him back inside from the garage. I did more barricading, and later when i went upstairs, I could hear him scratching at something down there, trying to get through. The little escape artist was now obsessed with his new taste of freedom.

I made it clear to him that was very, very bad and chased him round and round the housewhen I caught him trying to get through the hole again. I needed to nip this in the bud.

We survived last night with no further garage forays, but I see he did attempt another adventure because a few things were knocked down out of place.

I really don't know what I'll do moving forward, as I need to keep that window free for my dryer hose. (As it it, the cat put a few holes in the hose as well.) I know I can probably find the more expensive dryer hose that doens't have the coils/ribs, is just hard metal, and that kind is much safer anyway as dryer lint can't collect between the coils/ribs. But there's no way right now to secure it firmly through the hole in the glass.

I'm thinking maybe i can get my handyman to build something the same size as the glass window, but made of wood, and maybe then it if was wood a sturdier dryer hose could be attached to it permanently.

I wish I could be more gracious about the whole thing, but I was feeling pretty cranky about my wasted day today.

I had told my neighbor I'd take her to the hospital (not the local one) for her colonscopy today. I figured it would be a few hours so I brought 2 magazines to read. It ended up being a total of 7 hours from the time I picked her up (8:15 am) to the time I got home (around 3 pm).

I try to be helpful, but one thing I am most definitely not good at is waiting. Waiting, waiting, waiting. Climbing walls. I asked the nurse finally if my neighbor was done, and she went ahead and brought me to where she lay in bed. She looked pretty groggy, but gosh, I'd already been waiting quite some time by then, so I said, wake up, sleepy head. My neighbor said, oh, it feels good to sleep. I didn't want to rush her, so i said, take your time, I'll be waiting in the lobby, and i left her. Well, i guess she took me at my word, and must have gone back to sleep again. Geez. Then an hour or so later the nurse tells me to pick up my car and wait out front, which I did. Then I waited another 45 minutes in my car. They later claimed they looked outside and didn't see me there and waited around 20 minutes, but obviously, they didn't look very hard. There were at least a half dozen cars lined up in front of the hospital, all waiting to pick people up, and I was just one of them. Oh well.

I will get my SWEET REVENGE in 3 weeks when it's MY turn to have a colonscopy and my neighbor drives me! However, once awake, I would not linger in bed knowing that someone was waiting for me. And I'll be going to the local hospital.

So it shot most of my day. I just felt grumpy about that.

It was very upsetting to read about that guy in Ohion who let all his exotic animals loose before killing himself. What was upsetting was hearing about how law enforcement found it necessary to kill most of those animals. Why they couldn't simply tranquilize them, I don't know. Very sad. They got a taste of freedom and then their lives was snuffed out.

I spotted this little lady outside my window yesterday as I was holding Luther on my lap...



I always felt that seeing a praying mantis in the garden was a very lucky thing. I haven't seen one of these in many, many years. Maybe it means I'll get that job!

Don't know how she got up as high as my second floor window, especially with a fairly slippery surface (vinyl siding and aluminum trim). Praying mantis' fly, but they usually don't. Of course seeing her there prompted me to do some quick research online. It seems that this is the time of year they mate and the female lays eggs, dying afterwards once it freezes.

I considered taking her inside just to get her through the winter, as some people keep them as "pets" and feed them crickets and things, but I'm fairly squeamish about insects and this one ranks high on the "squeam" scale.

I guess it's a sign of a health ecology in my garden, although I did have it sprayed with some sort of pesticide in the spring as part of a Lyme Disease study. Well, actually, I don't know for sure they sprayed the pesticide; it could have been just water. I will find out later this month, but I was convinced they had sprayed with the chemical becus for the first time in years, my home has been free of carpenter ants.

I'm not going to get much done tomorrow, as I'm driving my friend to her colonscopy. I have to go get her at 8:15 am and schelp down to hospital in the rain. As you may be able to tell, I don't really feel like doing it, but of course I will. She's going to return the favor when I get a colonscopy next month.

I caved and turned the heat on tonight, for what will be just the 2nd night with heat this season. I hope to keep turning it off when I get up in the a.m. and just have it on nights, for a while.

I had a very enjoyable 75-minute walk around the back roads of my town.

Come with me...



There are a fair number of dirt roads in town.




I liked the dark form of these tree trunks.


This used to be an old, ramshackle garage, but then they fixed it up. I love how they did the stonework. Now that I've done the siding on my house, I'd love to do all the cement on my garage the same way.


This has always been one of my favorite houses. I can't help but stare at it as I walk by. It's small enough that I could picture myself living in it. It has a good amount of land, a great, open air porch on the side, nice landscaping and that cool fountain in front.


A flag in the cornfield. Usually, it's very peaceful when I walk by the farm. But this weekend they were having their autumn pumpkin festival and were giving pony and tractor rides and they have a corn maze. They even had live entertainment this year.


I had been thinking, gee, there doesn't seem to be a lot of color in the leaves this year, but then I saw this photo I'd taken on my computer and I thought, "Wow."


Every farm must have a tractor.


Luther and his mouse.


There's something about the morning sunlight that makes Luther look so regal.


This looks funny, like he's trying to bite someone maybe? It's actually the tail end of a yawn.


'Til tomorrow...