A couple of things fixed

I just placed my Walmart pick up order (for tomorrow afternoon) and checking out with Paypal worked correctly now, and it charged my paypal credit card. So, glad that is fixed, even if it took a chat and 2 phone calls.

I also got a couple of emails from customer service for the Optase eye drops. They are sending me a replacement bottle and some samples of their single use vials. He also had mentioned in the email before that about sending my bottle back to them, so they could test it for quality control. Not sure if he's sending info how to do that with this replacement and samples or not, but if he does I will send it back.

I guess I get to call the Social Security Admin again today. It's now been 30 days since I called and they told me it would be processed/pain within 30 days. Wonder what today's excuse will be, but I intend on calling repeatedly now, until it's resolved.

DH was feeling a little better yesterday, so he did go out in his shop for a couple hours and work on making those drawers for under his wood/sawing table. He's never made anything like this, so it's taking awhile.

My half-sis's step dad passed on Tuesday. That was a long battle he gave, after breaking his pelvis last summer and finding out he had cancer throughout his body. It sounds like he lived a good long life, though, and made it to 92. Now she has to deal with being co-executor of his will. I have a feeling it's not going to be a fun process for her. I have no idea how the Canadian will probate process works, but maybe it's easier/quicker than here in the U.S.

One of our neighbors dog's has been sick, poor guy. Mr has had him to the vet twice in the past week and he had to have some kind of surgery. I'm not sure how old the dog is now, but getting up there and also a large breed type dog. I think he's probably around 8 years old. I also can't remember how old their other dog (yellow lab) is now. I think he was 3 when they got him and they've probably had him 3-4 years now. 

Think it

I think I manifested getting myself a raise. A few weeks ago I started trying an experiment. I started envisioning that I had a higher salary. I even put a sticky note taped to the bottom of my monitor with the salary I wanted. This morning I logged into my payroll profile (because I was going to update my direct deposit) and there it was (I had to blink twice) - the new salary I had been envisioning! It's also perfect timing, as last night my side job boss texted me that this month will be the last payment to me for working for them. My salary increase exactly replaces what they've been paying me the past year or so, since they sold their business and have been winding everything down. My increase was 6.3%, which is very decent. But raises, the past 6 or 7 years have been pretty hit and miss with my company, so nothing is a given anymore. We used to have annual reviews and increases and they just sorta dropped that. A few years ago I went 3 years without a raise. The management has just been very wishy washy, but now seems to be trying to be back on track, which is nice.

I think my headache is sinus related, which I get around this time of year for about a week, so I'll take some sinus headache meds instead of tylenol (which does nothing for my sinus headaches). 

DH has been feeling pretty crummy the last 2 days. Feels like his pancreas, again. About a week ago he was feeling pretty good. No clue why it comes and goes. His phone consult with Mayo Clinic isn't until mid April.

Not much else new going on around here, so I guess I'll make this post short and sweet.

I'm squeezing wrong

How weird is this....that package I was sent via a Walmart (3rd party) order that said it was shipped USPS and put in someone's PO box on Friday.....it showed up Sunday, in Amazon packaging, delivered by an Amazon driver! I'm so confused LOL. I think this is a Walmart issue - this happened to me once before with something I ordered from Walmart online that was shipped by one of their 3rd party sellers. The tracking showing for the order was not for my order. That time it was UPS and our UPS guy was able to look up the tracking# and saw it was not even to my name or address, yet that is the tracking# I was given. Amazon delivery has been better the past month or two. They now seem to have one dedicated driver, who is in a white van. 

Yesterday we went to the get-together at our friend's house. Met a few other couples around our age, which was nice. We all ended up being way later than we realized it was LOL. By the time we got home it was 4pm and while we had some snacks there, we were hungry. We opted to just have a sandwich and call it dinner. Works for me.

It was a lovely weekend, weather wise. Cloudy today and possibly a little rain. Around here we call this time of year "mud season". The snow is melting, the ground is wet and muddy for a month or so. The Canadian geese are back and we now hear them honking as they fly along the river every day.

I woke up with a headache this morning. It actually started yesterday morning. I thought maybe it was because instead of my cup of coffee/caffeine yesterday morning, when I got up, I had decaf. I knew friend would have coffee to drink, and I can only have one cup per day, so I wanted to wait, so I could have some coffee there. I took some tylenol before we left to visit friends and that took care of it, but it's back. 

I just got an email back from Optase about the eye drops bottle. Apparently I'm supposed to tip it upside down and then squeeze into my eye.........who knew?! LOL. Of course that is how I dispense the drops. And then I'm supposed to turn it back upright and wait until it fills back up with air, before I do the other eye....so what? the next day? LOL. Because that's how long it take to fill back up, leaving the cap off! and I really don't think leaving the cap off (even though it's a very tiny hole the drop comes through) is very sanitary. I guess I just don't have the knack for this bottle, haha.

More cost increases

My cell phone bill with Verizon went up $15 a month starting this month - except it's really an $18 increase. Taxes and surcharges on the $15 I assume...though 20% tax seems absurd. I haven't looked at the bill to get to the nitty gritty. I am going to have to ask our neighbors which carrier they use. I've just always liked Verizon because I pretty much seem to get service everywhere. When we were building (and living here) the subs would come out to work and some of them, depending on which carrier they used, couldn't get service or it was very spotty. But $120/mo for 2 cell phones on their smallest data (only 3gb) plan seems pretty ridiculous.

My new 4-letter word is becoming "staining" LOL. These are the posts I had to stain yesterday. 

There were 4 of them and it went quick, as I was only staining about half way. The other half is going in the ground. DH put some sealant type stuff on the half that is going in the ground. He's got 4 spots on our property where he had pre-planned for possible electrical needs and there is conduit sticking up out of the ground, with a little box on top. He wanted to add the posts next to them, to keep the conduit from accidentally getting broken off. While it didn't take me long to stain at all, I then helped him for about an hour getting the black goopy sealant on them. 

I noticed dh repaired his old saw horses with some new boards. These are his dad's old saw horses that he has had for years and they finally got so wobbly he had to put some new boards on them. They just have sentimental value to him.

As you can tell, I really do not enjoy spending half of my weekend day out in the shop on his projects....every so often is fine, but this seems to be turning into every weekend and it's cutting into my time to clean house and do my chores. Plus, I really don't enjoy spending time in the shop - it's tooooo full of stuff, stuffed to the gills. Too claustrophobic, even though the ceiling is very high. It's never going to change, so the less time I have to go out there, the better.

Yesterdays temp got to 62. This morning when I got up it's 22. Daytime wants to be spring - nighttime wants to be winter.

I have a strange thing going on with an order from Walmart I did. One of the items was shipped separately and says delivered to me USPS on Friday. We didn't get it. Tracking is very odd. The tracking# Walmart has for it is not showing up in My Informed Delivery, yet it shows being put into a PO box at my town's post office. I don't have a PO Box and even if by accident they put it in someone's PO box, why didn't the tracking # show up in My Informed Delivery? If you look at more detail via USPS on the tracking history it also makes no sense. On Thursday it shows originating at a little tiny town up in the northwest part of our state (not likely at all). Then on Friday it shows leaving PA (more likely) and somehow got to MT the same day and put in a PO box? Makes zero sense. I'll give it a few more days this next week and see if it shows up, before I report it as not received.

Well, dh wants me to wake him up at 8 this morning, so I need to get back downstairs and do that and make breakfast. We are going over to the friends at 10:30 this morning.

 

My newest complaint

Are you kidding me? I have to do more wood staining?! LOL. Good grief. Now he's decided that he will use up a few posts for another project and needs those stained LOL. It'll be quick, but dang, it's never ending ;)

Last year my eye doctor recommended some eye drops for me called Optase Intense. They are really great - their product container/bottle, not so much. The bottle is just too soft and when trying to squeeze drops out, it just collapses. I have a full bottle that I just started using and this is what it now looks like after trying to use it a few times

This makes it almost impossible to squeeze now and get drops out. It also seems like this bottle is worse than previous purchases. At least with my previous purchases the bottle did not start collapsing until it got about halfway down with the solution left inside. Then I'd end up wasting a lot of it, when it got down to about 1/4 left because there was just no way to squeeze it anymore. There's also no way to get the top off, to try some other method (eye dropper?) to get to the solution. This stuff is too expensive to not be able to use much of it. It's about $24 for this little bottle. I found Optase's website online and was able to send a complaint message. This stuff works great, but not with this bottle they put it in and I'm not spending that kind of money on it anymore and told them so. Every other eye drop I have ever purchased has a bottle that is firm and able to squeeze drops out and holds it shape and they should be able to make this usable.

March 1st today. Spring will be springing now that we don't have much snow left. Of course it still will likely snow again, but it won't last long with the temps now. Also curious to see if we will be seeing some building start on the 2 lots next to us. I have talked to the guy that owns the 3rd (farthest from us) lot, but they are not starting until September. They will likely only be able to get site work and a foundation dug before it's too cold, so their house most likely won't be finished until mid 2026. But, potentially this summer/fall there could be 3 houses being built on our street. That would be crazy, LOL. 

It's another blue sky sunny warm day on tap. I'd better enjoy and appreciate it, because starting tomorrow it gets cloudy and a little cooler again.

Tomorrow, mid morning, we are going to some friends house for some coffee and baked goods and a visit. Friend said they will have Mountain Dew for dh LOL. I think they are just trying to attempt to start inviting some folks, get to know each other better, get a better sense of "community" in the area (it sure needs it!). Maybe it will turn into something more regular and we can do a turn at hosting in the future. Anyway, it will be nice to get out of the house and enjoy some nice (and intelligent!) company.

Let's call February a wrap

Happy Friday :) Two months of 2025 done already. I feel like I am trying to be more mindful and appreciative of each day, but they sure do have a way of passing fast, most of the time.

I got a call from Harbor Freight yesterday afternoon that the dust collector/vacuum dh ordered (and we pre paid for) was already in (they had said mid March). We were hoping to time the pick up with our next grocery run, but he didn't want to leave it there and chance them selling it out from under him (they all seemed a bit confused on how they handle these orders when we were in the store) so he decided to drive into the city himself yesterday and pick it up. 

He had to get gas. For the past few months he's been keeping track in his phone notes what the price of gas is per gallon. It was like .20 cents a gallon higher than a month ago. So much for our costs going down..... He also stopped by the town lumber store and picked up what he needed to get started on the drawers he wants to make for underneath his big wood work bench.

Four more days and the 30 days is up that SSA told me the payment would be processed. Do you think I'll see the money in the next 4 days? LOL. I will be calling again on 3/5, I'm sure. Nothing has come in the mail about it, either, if they have come up with some reason not to process it.

Last night I watched the newest episode of Severance. What an episode! The whole time I was just like "What the....??!" It's an interesting show and having to wait a week in between episodes makes it even  more suspenseful. There's only 3 more episodes of this season left. 

Work today feels like we (my boss and I) are getting a lot of various small issues resolved. So, it feels like we are making lots of progress today, LOL. On the flip side, it's a lot of emails and messaging back and forth to deal with. It's not being a quiet day haha.

Another super nice day - blues skies, sun and high 50's.  

Fixed a problem on a sunny day

I think I have resolved the issue with PayPal and my PayPal credit card not getting charged when checking out with Paypal, as the payment method. It took a bit of time. First I was on a chat with support and they were looking into it (over 2 days). They told me they couldn't see my PPCC in my PayPal wallet. I was then told to call the customer service number on the back of my card. I knew that wasn't going to work. The credit card itself, has nothing to do with my PayPal account/wallet. It could have been a totally unrelated card that I had set as my preferred payment method and they certainly couldn't control what checking out with PayPal uses as my preferred method. He, of course, instructed me to call PayPal support back and gave me a number.

That person was apparently more knowledgeable than the chat person. (I started to type "more helpful" but no, the chat person was just as helpful.) He could see the cc in my wallet. I'm not even sure I can explain what the issue was, but I did understand what he meant.LOL. Even though you can have a preferred payment method set, there are still other "payment settings" set up, per company you are purchasing/have purchased from in the past. Apparently these settings override. He went into those setting and fixed Walmart so that the payment will go on my cc. He also sent me an email with instructions on how I could could access this in my paypal account myself and look for any others I might want to update. Who knew?! It's buried in a payment setting called "Automatic Payments", even though he explained to me that name is misleading. It could be a setting for a one time purchase, not something you have set up to pay monthly. Next time I do an online order and do Paypal checkout, I guess we'll see if it works now. At least neither of the 2 times I called did I have to wait on hold at all, so that was nice. I'd say any time I have had to call Paypal over the last 15-20 years I have had an account with them, it's never a long wait to get to talk to someone.

We had a beautiful, sunny 50 degree day yesterday and another similar day is on tap for today and even a bit warmer. It's still around freezing at night, but once the sun it out it warms up quickly.

DH spent part of the day going through his big stack of wood scraps of all kinds and now has a separate pile, to be burned this spring. A few pieces were long, so he cut them up into smaller lengths that will be more manageable to put on the fire.

Today I have a quarterly phone meeting with my guy who runs my inherited IRA. It sure doesn't seem like it's been 3 months already, but I guess it was November when we last chatted. It's also hard to believe that in a little over a week, I will have now had the account one full year. The plan I have with the money is still the same - pay off my mortgage, so it's fully paid when I retire. Since I don't plan on retiring for another 6 years and want to spread out my distributions over the years, so that I'm not at the highest tax bracket, I'm letting most of it stay invested as long as possible.The calls are usually only 10-15 minutes. My work's 401k advisor is also offering their annual meetings, but I think I'm good on that. I talked to them a year or two ago and still want to keep the investing at it's current settings.