Short and sweet Friday

My sinus pressure isn't improving much. This morning I took one of dh's claritin to see if that helps. I have never tried that medication before. Not sure I'll see much relief from that today, as from what I read, it can take awhile to start working. 

DH got all his gas cans for the lawn mowers filled up yesterday. Then he went to fill up the truck but it stopped at $175 limit, LOL. But, that should be enough gas to last him for mowing and likely for plowing this winter. He has like 6 5-gallon cans he fills up. While he was filling up I went inside and got a couple of ice cream bars for us to eat on the way back home.

Thanks to Treaders(Anna's) recommendation to watch The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, I have been watching that and really enjoying it. I just started season 4. Good, funny show and while Midge is the main character, I have to say Susie makes the show. She's hilarious.

Ahhhh, Friday is here. And a 4 day weekend. Thank God.  And it's payday. Hard to believe it's July already tomorrow. 

My mom just called. She hasn't called me in quite awhile (I usually call her) but she sounded really good. I don't know why though, when she calls me she always says she can hardly hear me, so we hang up and I call her right back and the connection is fine. At least her phone has stayed plugged in.

Thunder and fireworks

At 7pm last night I get a text to me and the other neighbor that Mr&Mrs and the gang are going to be doing leftover fireworks when it gets dark. As almost every year, they do 4th of July in June or whenever they want. I did not respond. They are going to do whatever they want, anyway. They need no acknowledgement from me. It does not get dark here now until like 10:15pm. So, do I go to bed at my normal 9:15-9:30 and hope I fall asleep enough to not hear it for an hour or just stay up until it's done? Shortly after she texted there was a bit of thunder and wind. Might have even rained a bit. I decided to go to bed at my normal time and hope I slept through it. I also hoped that the reason they were doing it last night, instead of next Tuesday is because the family has decided they aren't spending the next week and a half here, as originally planned. Why else would they do fireworks last night, instead of on the 4th if they were still going to be here? We never did hear any fireworks, so I'm guessing the weather took care of that plan. I'm sure it'll be back on for tonight, if they are still here. Of course they can't do it on a Friday or Saturday night when none of the rest of us have to be up early for work the next morning. Of course that is going to happen with the 4th being on a weekday, but you expect to have to deal with that for one day, not two.

Part of the reason I wasn't to thrilled at the thought of listening to fireworks last night is my 2 day dull headache had turned into a full blown sinus headache. Almost every tooth in my mouth hurts as well as my cheek bones. I usually have some sinus OTC meds on hand, but I am apparently out. I looked and looked. It was hard trying to sleep last night and still going on this morning. Tylenol or advil doesn't help a bit when I have a sinus headache. Dh said he needs to run into town today to get gas for the lawnmowers, so I'll probably go with him to stop at the pharmacy and pick some up. It usually helps quite a bit, though usually my week of sinus issues is like in late Jan/early Feb.

Our retired friend stopped by yesterday afternoon for a quick visit.....on is way home from picking up his new 8 week old black lab puppy, LOL. She'll be a good dog though, as like his old lab he has, she will pretty much go everywhere with him. She's a cutie, but after he left both dh and I said we still have no desire for a puppy, so at this point we are still going to be dogless. $900 bucks for a puppy. About a month or so ago he had picked up a puppy that his daughter bought (small type dog) and took care of shipping it up to her in Alaska, so he had it overnight for a night or two. I think he got puppy fever, haha.

I had earned that $325 from opening a Wells Fargo checking about 6 months ago. To not have service charges I have left $500 in the account, but need to get it closed out. When I looked into closing it a few months ago it said you had to call or do in person, nothing available online to close it. At the time I just left it there to be part of my savings for paying my propane bill this summer. That should be getting filled soon, so I want to close it. There is a branch near where my mom lives so I'll try to stop in there on Monday and close it. Knowing me, I'll procrastinate and not take the time to do it. It would probably just be easier for me to transfer the money over to my other account and then call and cancel. But, if I do that I am going to wait and take it out AFTER my next monthly statement. I see the statements run the 7th of each month (assumed it would be the end of the month) so if I wait and transfer it out on the 8th of July and then get into procrastination mode, I'll have 30 days to get it done, LOL.

A little more comment on DAN's house still for sale: after almost 2 years the zillow listing shows 404 views and 8 saves (one is me, one is probably dh, LOL). For comparison there is a nice home that just went for sale in our area. It's been on the market a little over 2 weeks and has 1183 views and 123 saves.

I just found some sinus meds in my drawer, so hopefully that helps today.

Quiet except for thunder

As I was finishing up work yesterday we started having a thunderstorm. Holy cow, that was a thunderstorm! It was so loud and close it was actually making the metal art on my office wall rattle against the wall. And then it downpoured rain. One of those wine barrels we put at the corner of the shop with the gutter spout going into it? It was filled within minutes. I'm not exaggerating. Then it was time to go downstairs and make dinner. Lights flickering. So, I crossed my fingers and tried to heat up some tomato soup really fast before we lost power, LOL. We never did lose it, other then for a few seconds, thankfully.

We've made it 2 1/2 weeks with neighbors family visiting, 1 1/2 to go. Getting there! Hopefully with them moving to CA, it will be less visits here, haha. 

And still quiet for the past week and a half on DAN's lots. I regularly check their listing for their house they are trying to sell. Almost 2 years on the market. What in the world is going on with that? It's a nice house, in a very nice neighborhood of nice homes on like 1 1/2 acre lots with water view. Other than the lack of landscaping, it's a nice home. Landscaping can be added. My guess is between that and the price, and now the length of time it's been listed, it's just sitting there. It's a pretty rural area and my guess is their price is at least $100k too high. So not reducing the price, you'd think to yourself, ok they don't really need the money/have to sell it, yet now they have sat on these 2 lots almost 2 years, too, so if they didn't need the money from that house, why aren't they building here?

I'm pretty sure they need to sell that house in order to build here. Last May/June when they thought they had it sold and were going to close in August, he was all gung ho and out here measuring, and telling us his construction equipment was on the way...... and that is how we found about about the 10,000 metal building plans. Then the sale fell through and us awful neighbors sent him the letter. But, as soon as their sale fell through, nothing happened at these lots. The first thing people usually do on vacant land is get the well dug. Want to make sure you find water/have a water source before spending a bunch of money on site work and building. Still no well put in.

Dh opened the door to let the cat in and didn't see he had something in his mouth until after he got inside. It was a poor little hummingbird. But I guess, thankfully it wasn't still alive or I have no idea how we would have gotten a hummingbird back outside!

The Pretender

There isn't a lot to do now with my side job, but a little bit of bookkeeping. Well, at the end of the week before last, I went to log in to work on it and the subscription for the accounting software expired and I guess it didn't auto renew due to them not having that business credit card anymore. I thought side job boss was taking care of it. Then last Monday I fell and was sore and achy for several days so I didn't try to work on their stuff again until Friday. Side job boss had sent me an email Thursday afternoon with some info I'd need for recording some checks and so I assumed that meant she took care of reactivating the account. I log in Friday evening and nope. Still not active, so I sent her an email about it.

She said she kept trying but could not get logged in and then forgot about it last week. I knew she did not want to deal with it (she's in I don't give a shit mode now, and I don't blame her), so I told her I'd work on it yesterday afternoon. I ended up in a chat online with customer service pretending to be her (she knew this) and they let me give them a cc# and reactivated it. All in all I ended up spending like an hour on it. Still can't get her logged in to manage the account, LOL, but at least the program is working again now. She said "it ain't easy being me" LOL.

I'm tired this morning. Trying to get payroll processed, but on hold waiting for my boss to figure out what an hourly employee is doing for pay with several days taken off.  It's only 10:30 and I'm just ready to be done with the day. I've also kind of had a bit of a headache the past 2 days, which isn't helping matters any. Well, back to trying to work on payroll. Apparently this is going to take up a good portion of my day.

 

Weekend wrap up

The couple did stop by a little before 4pm yesterday afternoon to see our inside of house layout. A nice young (well, probably early/mid 30's, young to me, LOL) couple with 2 little kids. They have done well with the local business they purchased a few years ago. 4pm was a bit late haha, since dh will talk your ear off and I'm sure they wanted to get back home for dinner, LOL. A couple of times I had to just get him to stop talking so we could move on with showing the house. It kind of sounds like he wants a 1 1/2 story, like we have, but she wants a rambler, so it was probably good that they could see inside to see what it actually looks like. I think she was surprised at how big the rooms upstairs were. She loved the dog wash and all the wood trim in the house. She was also smart enough that after we stood in our foyer for the first 15 minutes, just talking in general about building the house, she took the kids back out to their car and set them up to watch something on an ipad, LOL. He did not ask for our houseplans ;)

A bit quieter next door for the weekend. Saturday they apparently loaded up bikes and actually went somewhere to ride and were gone a good part of the day. That evening they *tried* to do a fire in their firepit.....to sit around the campfire....but it just ended up a huge almost bonfire, smoking mess and everyone seemed to ditch that activity pretty quick, LOL. Is it really that hard to throw a few pieces of wood and get them started to make a nice small campfire, to sit around and roast marshmallows? Our whole backyard was thick with smoke for awhile. They were also gone most of yesterday, so that was nice, too. Two weeks down, two to go........At least now, when they leave, because they no longer have that one barking dog, the other dogs do not sit and bark after they all leave, so at least we are not having to deal with that, like we always did in the past. Sure, it was great to have them leave, but then we'd just have to listen to 5 dogs barking for hours.

Looking at the calendar I just realized that next Tuesday is 4th of July. I also get Monday off. I was just trying to figure out when to go see my mom next (was thinking on the weekend) and since I have next Monday off, I'll just go in that morning and see her and get groceries. I also need to stop and get some chicken feed. The last bag I bought, I had to get a different brand than I normally get. That was about the same time that the chickens were coming out of winter and starting to lay again, but for the most part I have not got near the amount of eggs I got last year. I get about 1 per day now, total, from 3 chickens, some days none at all. I have read some articles the past year about lots of people saying their chickens are not laying much eggs and they think it's something changed in the brand name feeds. I have always used the feed store's brand, but they were out last time and I had to go with another brand. Hopefully they still have their brand in stock next week and it will be interesting to see if the egg laying improves once I get them back on that food. 

When dh had to walk neighbors dog down the street, to take him back, he got a chance to see the work DAN did to put his culvert in. He was kind of chuckling at that. He said the culvert is like 2-3 times as big as it needs to be, plus he didn't get it dug down deep enough, so it's actually making a rise to go over into his "driveway". Dh said that culvert is so big a bear could sleep in that! Neighbors culvert, and our culvert are both the same, normal sized under our driveways, LOL. DAN has not been back for about 10 days, so I guess he's done with that project and hasn't started on anything else, though his little mini excavator and sani can is still there. 

Speaking of the sani can. The truck came to clean it out the other day when dh was out front mowing. Rather than just pull forward a little more, after he was done, and turn into DAN's new cut in driveway, to get turned around, the guy backs up the truck to in front of our driveway and is going to back in at our gate and try to get turned around. DH stops him and nicely just says "hey, there's turn around just a little past that sanican you pumped" The guy is thinking dh means the driveway DAN just cut in and says there's a pile of dirt there (there was off to the side, but still MORE than wide enough, way wider than our driveway is) and dh said well, just a bit past that, still on pavement is a culdesac to turn around in. The guy says "oh, well that down there looks like private property. Dh says "buddy, this is all private property and I'd prefer my gate not accidentally get backed into" LOL. At least now the driver knows, for the next time he comes to pump, he can just easily pull forward one lot and turn around. Truck drivers in our neck of the woods aren't the best, most experienced drivers. We've had them accidentally go off the edge of our driveway entrance before. Best they just stay off it and use the actual turn around put in for  that reason.

I'm starting to hear tidbits that is making me think the economy is heading for a slow patch. DH was talking to some friends, who he worked with in the large metro area we used to live in, and they said work is slow (heavy construction industry). Sales where I work are way down. My boss said that the huge commercial construction company her dh works for is going to start laying people off.  

Well, our 52% increase in property tax assessed value officially came in the mail Saturday, so this week I'll be getting my appeal put in. It has to be done within 30 days. Because I was recently looking up appealing property taxes on Google, in my google newsfeed has been popping up articles about record # of appeals coming in. These were articles from other states. I think the first article was Nebraska. I can't remember where the other one was from.

Can I borrow some sugar?

Did I finally get that cheesecake made and enjoyed? No, I did not! OMG. I got out the cream cheese to get to room temperature. Then decided to make some hummingbird nectar and realized there was hardly any sugar left in the canister. Go to the pantry and there is none. I'm not sure how I missed that when doing my shopping lists lately. Oh well.  There wasn't enough for cheesecake but enough for hummingbirds, so they got fed.

Dh removed the ribbon across the street about 1:30 in the afternoon. It got driven on around 4:30pm so it got over 24 hours, at least, before a car was on it.

I read everyone's comments and suggestions yesterday. Thank you for the support, understanding, and commiserating with me. While I've fantasized about some of the suggestions we could do to be equally crappy neighbors, that's just not us, at all. I will not 100% fence my property in. We are fenced in 3 sides. If I fence across the back of my property I ruin my river view. I will not do that. And even if we did that, our big wood gate at the main entrance does not go all the way to the ground. The dogs just crouch down a bit and go right under it. I will say I have fantasized about next time that hyper whining dog comes down here again, putting him in the back of our pickup canopy and driving him about 2 states away and leaving him at some shelter, saying we found this lost dog. I highly doubt he is chipped. I doubt they have even ever taken him to the vet or had vaccines. They don't even feed him dog food. He lives on their table scraps. 

I did get the house dusted and the upstairs all vacuumed yesterday, as well as some laundry done. I also made peanut butter cookies. After dinner I went outside for awhile and cut all the dead iris blooms off. Then I watched some tv the rest of the evening.

I'm assuming the local couple that wants to see our house is still coming by this afternoon. He said he would message me to let me know what time and I haven't heard that they are not coming, LOL. I still need to get myself ready, as well as vacuum downstairs and at least mop the kitchen floor. I also need to clean out the litter box. DH wanted to mow before they got here and depending on what time they end up saying they are coming, he may get to do that.

Well, that's all I've got for this morning. This poor couple doesn't know what they are in for haha! DH gets started talking and won't stop, LOL. I have signals to let him know when he needs to reel himself in, LOL.

After the downpour

Hopefully our asphalt sealant survived. Two hours after they got down we had a total downpour of rain that was not in the forecast at all. The guy said it should have had enough time to "flash off" and be ok with the rain, but just will likely take longer than the 24 hours to finish curing to actually drive on it. Let's hope so. They emailed back after we told them about the rain and she said if there are any issues or spots that need to be redone, just send them some pictures and they will come back to fix.

And just a few hours after it got done, Mr&Mrs let their dogs out to run loose, and of course they came to our yard, as dh saw it on our game camera. Obviously purposeful, at this point. They certainly didn't let their dogs out of their kennel right after they had theirs sealcoated.

I'm finally going to make a cheesecake today. I can't wait to eat it, haha. Now that dh realizes it's good, I'll have to share and I have 2 choices of toppings: strawberries or caramel sauce.  

Based on Treaders recommendation I started watching The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. I'm on episode 3 and enjoying it so far. 

I think our property tax assessment came in the mail yesterday, but we didn't go to the mailbox due to the sealcoating. 

I think it's easy to advise "just move" but it's really not as simple as that. We've already moved twice in the past 7 years to get here. To find an equivalent type of home I'd then have to get a new mortgage at whatever ridiculous rate it is at now. Certainly not my 2.5% I have now. DH is finally getting all his shop stuff unpacked! The thought of packing all that up again is a sickening thought. I woke up this morning and thought, if neighbor is unhappy and thinks there's always a fucking catastrophe going on in this neighborhood THEY can move.

I'm just done with neighbors

God, why is it so damn hard to be a decent neighbor?! At 10:30 this morning I sent a group text to both our neighbors that the asphalt sealer was arriving a little earlier than expected to get started and would be here in about 20 min. Got a thumbs up reply from neighbor down the street. A half hour after the crew gets started her damn dog is out running around! Of course (as always) he comes straight to our place - where the guys have sticky black sealant getting spread out. Are you freaking kidding me?!!

So I send another group text (just so Mr and Mrs can see that we also deal with BS from this neighbor, too and partially because it was quicker than trying to find her in my contacts and start a new text just to her) and say "J - can you come and get your dog, please?". She replies back with a Yes! :(

DH has a hold of the dog. He just happened to be outside and grabbed him as he came running into our yard, before he got to the sealant being applied. He was literally 6 feet away from running through it. DH walked him back to the street (they crew had started on our driveway) and stood there for a half a minute (you can't see their house from standing in front of our gate, it's kind of a long way down there that slopes up and bends a bit. So dh started walking the dog down there. No neighbor coming to get her dog. She didn't open her front door until he got almost all the way there. She says "sorry" and dh, word for word, just said: "it's ok - we avoided the catastrophe". Her reply? "It's always a fucking catastrophe in this neighborhood". DH just said yep and turned and walked back to our house.

Again, are you freaking kidding me?!! SHE is the one who was causing the problem, not US! We're just supposed to let her hyper dog run all through the sealant and ruin the $2300 job we are spending money to have done, LET ALONE he would then have run all across our stamped and stained concrete area to get over to the other neighbors dogs (where he always goes) and gotten it tracked all over our concrete. But we're the ones in the wrong. That dog was literally 6 feet from running through the sealant, when dh grabbed him by the collar. The work crew was freaking out that the dog was about to run through it. If the situation were reversed and somehow my dog got loose and she texted me, I'd be out my door so damn fast to go get my dog and be so apologetic.

DH got back and was so mad and upset. By the time we were done talking about it he was almost crying. He's ready to just give up. Just so so sick of it. We do absolutely nothing to get in our neighbors way or annoy them. We keep our property immaculate. We are so quiet. We drive our vehicles in and out of the neighborhood very slowly. When we had dogs we didn't let them run loose. We didn't let them poop in neighbors yards. If by chance one of them did, dh would pick it up! We never let our dogs bark non stop. All's we expect/ask is that they stay out of our space and abide by the covenants. That's it.

I am so done with neighbors. In the past week we've have one tell us they will only accept communication from the men of the property owners, another think it's ok to ride an ATV back and forth out front of our house (and you know if it's ok for them to do it in another couple of years the other neighbor kids, who actually live here, will be doing it all the time then), and another who thinks it's ok for her dog to be out running through our property while the driveway is being sealcoated and we're the assholes for wanting her to not let her dog do that.

Friday is going by fast

My worry wort dh is, of course, convinced the asphalt sealers will be a no show today. They said (a week ago) they would be here around noon to 1pm, so we still have a couple hours to wait and see. He's like they could have just texted or emailed a confirmation yesterday that said "see you at noon tomorrow". LOL. Then he's like are probably just a scam. I'm like how are they a scam?? we didn't give them any money up front LOL. So, he won't relax until they get here. At least the weather is sunny and blue skies, so no excuse there.

After mentioning it to me several times (over like the last year! LOL) I asked my boss again about that side bookkeeping job she has mentioned for the non-profit our company is a part of. She said yes, she didn't want to overwhelm me if I was still dealing with my other side job, but I told her that has wound way down to very minimal time, so maybe now that job will get started soon. It doesn't sound like it will be much time each month, but a little bit of extra money is extra money.

So, I just got an email from the lady who runs the asphalt sealing company. They got done early at their other job this morning and will be here in about 20 min. Good! Now dh can stop worrying about that! And nice that a contractor finally is doing what they said and when they said. They have arrived and getting started. At least we won't need this done again for at least 4 years. Dh says he really doesn't plan on having it done again at all, or maybe way down the road, so that would be good (for the budget)

Misc Thursday stuff

I really hope at some point DAN wants/needs to email me about something (he doesn't have dh's email address or ph#). He's going to get an "automated" response back that says: Delivery notification failure. The party you are trying to reach does not accept requests from assholes". LOL. or: The party you are trying to reach is a woman and therefore, unable to take your request.

Treaders comment about what if Lot 6 had just been a single woman owner, how would he have managed? LOL. That reminded me of who owned our lot before us.....a lesbian couple! HAHAHA! He would have had a stroke, LOL.

My company's is having their mid year company meeting on a Monday, July 10. Apparently it was just going to be a meeting to attend for those who work out of the office and the remote staff could just watch via Teams. Ok, fine by me, I don't have to make a trip over there. Then this week my boss emailed those of us out of the area to see if we were interested in coming, short notice and not mandatory, but she'd get the travel arranged for anyone that wants to come. I told her I will come, but since it's summer (and I have a good new car) I'm just going to drive over for it. It will take me about 6 1/2 hours and by the time I fly over, I have at least 5 hours into the trip, plus dd's time to come and pick me up at the office (to stay at her place) and drive me back to the airport. Flying home would be a weekday and I don't want dd to have to take time off to get me to the airport. Plus, it's like an hour and 15 min drive from her house to airport, then get there an hour and a half early to allow for TSA line time. I can be halfway home, driving by the time my plane would take off. I'm just going to drive over to DD's Sunday morning and spend the night. I'd go Saturday, but they have plans all day/eve on Saturday. Drive to the office Monday morning and then back to dd's in the afternoon and then I'll drive home Tuesday morning. 

I'm highly doubting there will be any mid year bonus, which is most likely why the meeting wasn't made a big deal and everyone has to come. Our sales are way down and a little over half what the goal is, but our commission rate on those sales is way up and almost whats budgeted, so that is really (in my opinion) the goal marker. That is our income. My guess is there will be some discretionary bonus's going out to select people (there is usually that on top of our regular bonus) but no overall bonus for everyone.

So far so good on the weather for tomorrow's asphalt sealing. Let's hope they show up and get this done. 

I've noticed over the past several months I'm occasionally dropping things. It just slips out of my hand. Usually the milk carton (ugh! but it is a half gallon with no handle and my hands are very small to wrap around the carton). It's happened like 3 times in the past few months. A couple months ago I dropped a glass emptying the dishwasher. Of course online medical diagnosing myself ranges from Parkinsons, stroke, tumor...to effects from carpal tunnel (which I totally have) to Cervical myelopathy, which I most likely also have, from my neck injury years ago. If it's from the carpal tunnel, it may be beneficial for me to try using my gyro ball again, which I will give a try and see if there is any improvement.

Looky Loo's

36 degrees this morning.

DH is always looking at Zillow's map and listings to see what goes for sale in our area. As he was looking at it this past weekend he see's one of the for sale "pins" is at our house! When you click on it, it's actually for a house that just went on the market last week that is about 8 miles down the road. Oh yay, now people wanting to drive by to see that house for sale are going to be pulling up to our house and then realizing it's not what the ad/listing looks like, trying to get turned around.

So, Sunday morning some Hummer pulls in, stopping out in front of our place...then trying to get turned around (because no one knows there's a turn around down at the end). DH saw them out his den window, backing up, pulling forward, backing up, trying to get turned around without running into anything. We figured it was someone trying to find that house for sale.

Well, then Monday I get a Facebook message from a local guy. He and his wife own a business in town. We know who they are, have been in their business, but don't know them. He said they had driven out by our house Sunday, because they just love the looks of it, and they will be building a house soon and wanted to ask who our builder was. So, I'm sure it was them who dh saw, LOL. 

I replied that dh designed the house and shop and while we aren't unhappy with the quality of work our general contractor did, we were very unhappy with his time delays and overages (and we didn't add/change anything to cost more money), so when it came to building the house dh basically became our GC and ended up finding most all our own subs. He then asked if I could send him our house plans so they could see the layout.

Umm...no, not sending you our houseplans for our custom home, LOL. I just replied that they are more than welcome to come over and see the inside layout of our home and likely dh can share lots of building tips. Then that evening he replied back that they hate to impose, but would love to see the inside layout, so they will be coming over Sunday afternoon for a visit.

I took a fall on Monday. Crash and burn! Our 2 new dressers for the closets delivered and dh was in our foyer area unboxing, leaving the big flat pieces of cardboard on the floor. I came downstairs to help him stepped on top of the cardboard and it slipped and I slipped and also somehow caught my other foot on the edge of it and crashed down on my elbow and hip. And of course twisted my back. I'll live, but bruised and sore. My elbow is really bruised, but oddly doesn't hurt at all to use it. Hip is only sore due to the bruise, but mostly it's my back, which sucks. Always dealing with my back.

DAN has not been out to do any more work on his property since last Friday. At this rate it will be very long time before anything gets built there. Maybe Excavating guy is right - he is just doing a little bit and then going to sell. But that doesn't really make sense to me at all either - why put in a culvert and a driveway to sell it? Someone else would just as likely want to have their driveway in a different spot, depending on where they placed their house. Also, the other interesting thing is these lots were set up in the short plat that lots 5 (he owns 4 and 5) and 6 would share a well. He would also have the option to do a well of his own on lot 4. Of course doing the shared well with lot 6 would save half the cost of digging a 160' well, but then he'd have to work with the lot 6 folks....or I mean he'd have to work with the man of lot 6, LOL. I can't remember now what it cost us to have the well dug and put in. We did it out of pocket back in 2017. I'm thinking it was $10-15,000. Likely costs more now. I also know it's day 631 of their house being on the market. Why in the world won't he reduce the price? He really is nuts. I'm guessing at this point his realtor is just like....whatever....LOL.

Property tax assessment

Has any of you appealed your property value assessment before? Tell me about it and any tips you have for doing so. It appears I have 2 options for appealing. I can appeal to the County Tax Appeal Board or I can file a request for an informal review with the Dept of Revenue. I'm not sure yet what the differences are or which one would be better to do. I do read that if I don't agree with the County Tax Appeal Board I can then appeal to a State Tax Appeal Board.

In our state the property is assessed every 2 years. They just increased our property assessment by 52%! We have done no improvements in the past 2 years. There is no way our value has increased 52% and especially not in this rural area. According to info I can find online from May of 2021 to 2022 property in our zip code increased about 29%. From May 2022 to May 2023 it decreased 1.3%. Overall increase over 2 years of 28%.

Our state has a website where you can click on any piece of property and see who owns it and all the info on it, including the prior assessed values for 2021/22 and the newly released 2023 assessment. They break it down by land and buildings. Our land went up 113% since 2021 assessment. Give me a break.

The first 6 lots here are all 2 acres and are valued the same, went up the 113%. Lot 7 is 3 acres, but for some reason it *only* went up 106%.

Lets compare lot 7. They built the same year we did. In the 2021 assessment they did not have their 2 garages added. The garages now show being added with a 2022 date. For their 2021/2022 assessment their building (just the house) was valued at $310,620. They added 2 garages which total 1772 sf (our shop is 1743sf). Their 2023 assessed building(s) value is now at $428,900, an increase of $118,280 (38%). Makes sense...it should go up based on the cost/value of the 2 garages as well as market value on their house would have went up some. Their "buildings" assessed value went up by 38%. Not sure of that 38%/$118,280 what is considered cost/value of the garages and what is increased house value, but seems somewhat reasonable. (the land at 106% increase, does not).

Our "buildings" went up 44.25%. We have done nothing additional in the past 2 years. Nothing added or improved since our 2021/22 assessment. How does ours go up 44% and lot 7 went up 38% and we didn't add a damn thing?

Mr and Mrs just have a house. Nothing has changed for them either, since last assessment and their building value only went up 29%. How does that work? (Also, how is it that they have a completely finished daylight basement of 2556 sf, yet are only taxed on the first floor of 2556 sf? Their house is 5112 sf in total)

Edit to add about Mr and Mrs place: That 29% increase is in total for land and building. Separate them out like I was doing for ours and Lot 7 - their land increased the same as the rest 113%, BUT their "building" value only increased 17%!! Why did our building value increase over 44%?! They didn't add or improve anything, we didn't add or improve anything.

There are a group of homes that are 2-5 acre lots, high bank on the river, just like ours, about half mile down river. All of those lots went up 58-64%. Their lots and location is no different than ours. Why are all our lots double that? I looked at other lots all along the river in our county. Another neighborhood was also in the 65% increase range. There are 4 1-1/4 acre lots about a mile up river. Each of those lots went up about 65%, as well.

I will be appealing. Never done it before, and was just wondering if any readers have and what their experience was.

What I wanted to say vs. what I did say

This is what I wanted to say to DAN:

DAN,

It wasn't a request, it was a simple neighbor notification of planned road maintenance. I couldn't care less which one of us is allowed to communicate with you. As a property owner, I will manage my property and responsibilities to my neighbors as I see fit. You and your pathetic request can just f--k off. I guess you will have to be on your own to figure out how to get a community notification from us, as neither (my dh name) or I take requests from assholes. I know you don't like taking advice from anyone, especially a Matriarch (seriously?!), but my solid advice is you don't want (DH) coming over there to communicate requests with you, unless you'd enjoy having your misogynistic ass rolling down the river bank on your mini excavator. As for your communication rules for the other neighbors, tell them yourself. I am not your secretary. 

This is what I actually replied back:

It wasn’t a request; it was a simple neighbor courtesy notification of planned road maintenance. As for your communication rules for the other neighbors, tell them yourself.

Yesterday I sent the email to my dd. Her reply was "you are joking, right?!" Nope!  I sent it to my boss this morning. She was like OMG! Did you want to lose your mind? I liked her thought on a reply:  I would have wrote back:   I appreciate you letting me know but I don't take direction from arrogant, judgmental, manipulative people.  

Let's see, in other news I received my annual property insurance bill in the mail and was surprised to see it was the same amount as last year. No increase, so that was a nice surprise.

The dressers for our master closets are delivering today, finally, so that is also good news. They should be here in about 30 minutes, from a text I just got.

The other neighbors with the visiting family are just as rude and inconsiderate as always. I totally get that they want to enjoy their time and will do it loudly. I get they want to ride the ATV. We also want to enjoy ourselves, on our property and in our home, so I don't think it's too much to ask for a compromise that they leave the ATV riding to their 4 acres, or the 20 acres of state land on the other side of them, or the thousands of acres of state land and roads and trails across the road. We don't want to listen and watch it back and forth every 30 seconds in front of our house. Are we not allowed to enjoy our space as we'd like to? Apparently not. Oh, and we also found out they will be here at least 3 more weeks.

 

What year is this??

So, I'm just speechless, LOL. This is the email I sent DAN (he's really living up to his name!) on Thursday when we confirmed our asphalt sealing date/time:

We are having our section of XXX Lane, along with our driveway, resealed on Friday, June 23rd. They expect to start around noon and the street will be closed to use for 24 hours, until Saturday afternoon, June 24.

 

This is the email reply I got back from him this morning:

 

Appreciate you letting me know.  However, in the future, please have (my husbands name) interact with me as I will not take requests from the Matriarch of the families.  Please pass on to the other association members.  Thank You

D.

What year does he think this is? 1823? He'll only deal with the men? OMG! 

What does one even reply to this?! I have sooo many ideas, LOL.

24 more days

With the damp rainy weather yesterday we thought we made it through Day 6 of the invasion ok...until around 5pm, when it cleared up. Then we had a quad going back and forth in front of our house every 30 seconds for almost an hour. We also found out they will be here for a month and apparently when they are here, because "it's our grandkids!" they will have free reign in the neighborhood.

A couple years ago I probably mentioned about a 300 ft cell tower going up across from us with a light on it, of course. Our bedroom faces the river. We have total privacy, so no need for blinds or curtains and the wall is windows and 2 french doors. The french doors do have built in white mini blinds, but we never use them. When dh lays his head on his pillow he can see that cell tower light through the patio door window.

Well last night for who know why, the light was a flashing strobe. ALL NIGHT! What the heck?! I could sit there in the dark bedroom and dh's pillow (he hadn't come to bed yet) had the light from this shining on his pillow and blinking every few seconds. He tried to close the blinds in the door - it actually just made it worse because then the whole door of blinds lit up and was flashing. OMG! Why?!We live where there is no lights so we get to see all the stars with no light pollution whatsoever...with that light flashing all night the whole sky was lit up. So weird.

I got a loaf of banana bread made yesterday and it's yummy. I don't think it's going to last us long, haha.

Well, this is short post for now. I need to get in the shower and get ready to go see my mom this morning and pickup groceries.

Rainy Saturday

Yesterday was lawn mowing day for dh. He doesn't usually ever get started too early because we have to wait until the grass dew dries off, but he also likes to get out there as soon as he can, before it heats up and is too warm outside. I think it was around 10:30am when dh got started. Apparently he was interrupting neighbors DIL quiet time, sitting outside by herself in front of the garage drinking her coffee, LOL.

Ok....neighbors house? it's NICE. Like I said, it has a HUGE, all the way across the back of the house upper patio/deck and one below it on the ground. Completely private from us seeing them or from having to see cars drive by out on the main road. WHY do they like to sit in a lawn chair on the concrete in front of a garage door? I think I also mentioned that their garage is a side facing garage, so it faces our property. Their front door entrance area is kind of set back a bit. Mrs even has this lovely little landscaped area near the front door with a cute little bistro table and chairs. Very private and seems like it would be the perfect spot to sit and drink a cup of coffee, no? The back patios, upper and lower, have lots of seating and tables to use.

So while dh was mowing behind our shop, all alongside our property line/fence with neighbors her dh comes outside and dh could see out of the corner of his eye them having a discussion about something and him kind of shrugging and holding his arms up. Then she went back in the house. One can only hope they were having a discussion of when they are leaving, LOL.

I'm loving the suggestions for a new name for Construction guy! (that's too long to type out all the time, LOL).  To keep it as an apronym, I think I'm gong to call him DAN (also kinda close to his real name)....Douchebag Asshole Neighbor....

DAN has been having our old Excavating guy (the guy we used for our build) bring him a few loads of gravel this past week. As Excavating guy was pulling out yesterday while dh was out front mowing he stopped to say hi to dh and they chatted awhile. E-guy says "he's just harmless". DH said no..he's an a-hole and told him about him wanting to build a 10,000 sq ft metal building and the fight the neighborhood had with him over it. Then E-guy said something interesting....that he thinks DAN is just putting this culvert and driveway access into to the property and then he plans on selling it. I wish dh would have asked "Did he tell you that??!", so dh isn't sure if E-guy was just making an assumption or it's something that DAN actually said to him. PRAYING that this is what will happen!! But not holding our breath, that's for sure. But it is really interesting, I think, that he has not had his well dug yet, after owning the property now for almost 2 years.

I was planning to go outside and cut all the dead iris blooms this morning, but it's raining. I'm glad I didn't chose this morning to go into the city, but tomorrow's weather doesn't sound much better. I have some old bananas, so I think I'll make a loaf or two of banana bread today. We sure haven't had our usual hot sunny weather this month.

Just neighbors

Yesterday I sent a text to our 2 neighbors letting them know about the resealing next Friday. It doesn't really affect our neighbors before us, on our street.........but you know....the son/dil and granddkids and dogs, all who don't know boundaries. "Oh, lets ride our bikes now!" Mostly I wanted to let our neighbors who live down at the end of our street know as they are the one's who won't be able to drive in and out for 24 hours. I also sent (separate) emails to the other 2 property owners. The nice couple who own lot 6 aren't likely to be here, but just in case. Then I just sent a short, to the point email to Construction guy (he needs a better name, LOL) that it will be closed for 24 hours/date/time. 

Anyone read the "Murderbot Diaries" by Martha Wells? (funny scifi books, btw) The main character calls the ship (who can communicate) by the apronym "ART" which stands for Asshole Research Transport. I need an apronym for construction guy ;)

Yesterday afternoon, for I don't know how long/how many times, neighbors DIL was out on her phone and walking. And I kid you not - back and forth in front of our place. Their driveway is just on the other side of our property line. She walked to their driveway, turns around, walks back down to the other end of our property line where our driveway starts and turns around. Back and forth, just in front of our place.  At first I thought dh was exaggerating, but no. Back and forth, back and forth. DH's den faces the front/street so while he's sitting at his desk watching a video or reading something on his computer he has to see out his peripheral vision someone going back and forth 100 times. It's just annoying and rude. The length she is walking back and forth is as long as their driveway - why can't she just walk back and forth in their driveway length? Why? because her 4 kids are freaking noisy and she wants to talk on the phone! I honestly do not care how much noise and activity they want to do over on their property, but I don't appreciate them encroaching on our space. Just rude. Day 4.........Mr was out mowing/doing yardwork earlier yesterday - no help from son, of course.

DH got the car up to the dealer yesterday and all fixed. It only took the 2 hours they estimated, so he was only gone about 4 hours (darn, LOL!).  Between the family from hell visiting next door and Construction guy now here, it's all a bit much for dh. He's feeling a bit squeezed from both sides and then to have the DIL pacing back and forth out on the 3rd side/front, was just a bit too much.

I cannot find my file folder (a real one, not computer one, LOL) where I was putting my 2023 medical receipts. What the heck?! After I had tossed really old files from my file cabinet and made room for all the one's sitting in a stack under my desk, I thought that file was now in the cabinet. Nope. Here I was trying to get more organized and now I'm not :(  I wanted it to try to help figure out this billing I got for medical imaging services. I don't know where it could be - there are no more files hanging around loose anywhere now. I know when friends were coming for their stay, I grabbed some non paperwork crap from my desk/office and put it in my storage bin in the closet, so I thought maybe I picked it up with that stuff, but it's not there either. 

As you can tell, it's going to be a long summer, with neighbors, so I'm going to be complaining LOL. If you don't like it I suggest you find another blog to read. I'm not even going to reply to anyone who complains about my complaining, haha. I've never deleted comments (other than spam) but I'll probably just delete. My sandbox, my rules.

Fired and hired

It has been over 2 weeks since we hired the asphalt resealing guy to do our job. He had said he would do it last week and never showed up and never called. Dh called him last week and left a message, no call back. He called again Tuesday and again, no return call to communicate to us what his plan is. Yesterday afternoon we got the bid from the couple that showed up Tuesday. It was in between the 2 bids, closer to the higher, first bid we got, but he also does it via a better method according to dh. It will seal the cracks better/longer. DH wanted to hire them now, instead, but I could tell he was stressing about telling J we're moving on to someone else, since he didn't show up and hasn't called. I said I would call him and do it.

So, I tried calling the other guy and again got his voicemail. I just left a nice message that said who I was, that we had expected him last week and dh has also tried to call him twice and since he hasn't returned his calls I'm canceling our agreement and we're going to move in a different direction for getting this done. You know he likely listened to the voicemail and we did give him the rest of the afternoon until 6pm to call back, but at 6pm dh called the other company and told them we want to proceed with them. At first they had told dh it wouldn't be until like July 6th until they could get out here, but she said she thinks they now have an earlier date. She emailed later last evening that they can come next Friday on the 23rd, so that sounds good. It's also good that it's a Friday, since neighbors past us will have no access for 24 hours and he doesn't work Saturdays. If they get it done Friday morning, it will be ready to drive on again Saturday morning.

Today dh is taking our car to the dealer to have the warranty work done. They said 2-3 hours so he had planned on just waiting up there. Then yesterday he thinks maybe he'd rather me follow him up there but I said for 2-3 hours he can wait. All's we together would do is wait, LOL. He's like we could go take a drive....still it's waiting, LOL. So, He's leaving, by himself, haha, in about 10 minutes. I also packed him a lunch. The dealer is about an hour away, so between that and the wait to fix the car, he should be gone most of the day. 

It is so gray and dark outside this morning. We sure aren't having much of a summer yet. I need to get a grocery list put together and order placed. I think I go in on Sunday and do it and will see my mom first.

I have 2 more episodes to watch of a show I am watching on Apple tv. My current month's subscription goes to July 14. I just cancelled it, since after this show it's unlikely I'll watch anything else with it for awhile until some new seasons come out, which probably likely isn't going to be for quite awhile. One of the shows I watch early 2022 says season 2 won't be out until early 2024. Two years!

Wishy washy Wednesday

Dh tried calling the asphalt sealing guy again yesterday. He didn't leave a message this time. The guy knows he missed a call and it shows the number. A couple days ago an ad showed up on Marketplace or somewhere dh saw for asphalt sealing by someone from a couple hours away, but advertising in our area, so dh messaged them. They said they'd be out Tues afternoon to measure and they were. They are to also email the quote, so again, waiting on that, but not holding our breath it will be reasonable. They also said they can't do it until July (later July I think dh said). 

As dh saw them turning into our street he opened the gate so they could pull in, but they just parked out along the edge of the street. As dh is standing there talking to them, out of nowhere come the neighbor kids on their bikes...and oh hey...the gate is open so that means they can just pull in and turn around on their bikes! This is with an adult who was walking with them, too. Two days down.........

Dh sent the fence guy a text that thanked him for coming out and giving us a quote, but we're going to pass, as it's out of our budget of what we were expecting it to cost. Dh did some online searching about costs and for a fence like ours "per post" it's like $65 a post (on the high end of the scale). This guys bid works out to 4x that per post.

I received a medical imaging bill from my mammogram and the needle biopsy visit. It said insurance processed for the 2 claims and I owe $137.24. I logged into their payment portal to pay it and it shows my balance owing is $169.99, a difference of $32.75 but I already sent them $32.75 back in May and they show receiving that. That first claim was a balance of me owing $51.48, so why would I have only paid $32.75? It was too early in the morning for me to figure out, so I'll look at it later. I need to get out my file of medical bills and EOB's and see if I can figure this out. But the weirdest part to me is why does their statement show less than what is online, as owing.

I finished watching Manifest last night. An ok ending. It was a happy ending, but did still leave me a bit feeling like the "why of it all" question wasn't really answered. 191 passengers go through all that for 5 1/2 years (really 10 years) and then end up back to the beginning and life goes on as it was supposed to, other than now only they all know each other and what to expect somewhat of the future. To the rest of the world it didn't happen. It was still a good show, though.

My mom's investment portfolio has 170 shares of Nvidia and that's sure paying off right now, LOL. She's almost tripled her money since her investment guy bought the stock. And hmmm....she has a few thousand more dollars in total as of today, than she had October of 2019, when step brother told me she only had 8-10 years of money left to last. I know I say this all the time, but every time I compare, it makes me just shake my head at his statement.

I sometimes wonder about he and his wife's life. It's literally been the same since they were married, if that makes sense. They were married in their late 20's (so have been married like 40 years now). He's 69 and she's 70. They never had children. Right after getting married they bought a new house in a neighborhood and have lived there ever since. She worked for the same company all the years until she retired. He had a couple of jobs, but his last job he was at quite a few years until he retired. Both had decent white collar jobs, but not in management. They were able to retired at like 62. There has just never been any changes in their lives at all, it seems. They don't do social media. Two of his siblings (my other step siblings) also did not have any children, but they have had changes over the years. One had jobs (or rather his wife did) in different countries over the years. The other has been married twice and when she and her husband retired they moved to a different state. The other one has 2 kids, but he has also seemed to live a similar, non-changing life for the most part. He and his wife have lived in the same house since getting married 25 years ago. My dh and I live a boring life, too, haha, but we have at least made/had some major changes over the course of 40 years. 

Neighbor guy was back today, having some gravel type stuff delivered to fill in his ditch area with the culvert. Dh is just shaking his head. Why would you spend $ to have gravel brought in when he's going to end up with a bunch of dirt and gravel from excavating for his building site? The guy has the equipment to dig some out. It's been interesting, so far, to watch his process and progress....once a week, LOL.

We're going to pass

Another day of nice sunny mornings, with rain expected in the afternoon. I was telling a friend that this time seems harder with the neighbors son/family visiting as we have no end date that we can at least tell ourselves well, they will be gone on such and such date. I always find it so odd that their place to hang out is right out in front of the garage. Like here is this 5200 sf house, on 4 acres. The complete back of the house, with huge backyard and river view, has a huge nice patio at ground level and at the upper level, both all across the whole backside of the house. You'd think that would be the nicest place to spend time, LOL.

The other neighbor has not been back since his little bit of work he did last Wednesday. So odd. And while we have had rain, most of the days the morning and early afternoon are nice and sunny and then the afternoon/eve it rains. Saturday was no rain. 

We finally got the bid from the fence guy on the extra gates at our piers and extending the fence. Ridiculous amount of $3400. He's charging half of what we paid to have the whole fence, a small gate and a big double metal gate at our shop entrance driveway. This bid is for 2 small gates and adding 60' of fence. We also still have not heard back from the asphalt sealing guy. Granted weather is playing a huge role in this job, but he could at least return dh's call. Contractors just make me want to throw up, at this point. Dh said no way on what that fence guy wants to charge. He said no one is worth $2500 for one days worth of labor for 2 guys. I don't make enough to cover wages like that to someone else!

Last night I remembered the final episodes of Manifest are on Netflix now, so I started watching that. Because I've got to know the why behind it all. It's been a mystery for several years now, haha. I'm finishing up one show on Apple tv and then I'll cancel that until some new seasons of all the shows I just watched come back on, which likely won't be for a year. By the time Severance comes back on, expected early 2024, that will have been almost 2 years wait. That's annoying. 

 

They came early

Mr and Mrs Neighbors son and family arrived late last night - 4 days early. No idea why, LOL. Mr also told dh, the other day, he has no idea how long they are staying. We've made it through day one of their invasion ok - only because while they were outside, until just now, it started pouring down rain and they all had to run inside. 

Dh had been out in our garage at his worktable installing the mulching blades on his lawn tractor, so he had to have the garage door open. All the while the 4 kids just over there screaming their heads off as usual, riding bikes and playing. Then sitting in lawn chairs out front with their parents. The son must think he's hot stuff (he's like 40) as I don't think I've ever seen him with a shirt on when they are here during summer months and so of course the 4 boys have to be like dad. When dh got the mulching blades on he decided he'd give them a try and was mowing some of the front yard, until the rain started dumping. The family all started running to get their chairs and bikes inside the garage. I saw one of the youngest grab his little child sized lawn chair and run with it into the garage and just throw it on the floor into the garage. Now we have rain and thunder that is supposed to be for the rest of the day (again....LOL). We should be safe from having to listen to all of them for the rest of today, at least. Hopefully a few of their days here they will leave for the day for some activities.

All this bad weather seems to have put a stall on the other neighbor being out here working on his property. We haven't seen him since that day he was out here last week (Wed or Thurs, I can't remember now which day it was). But, Saturday was a decent weather day and he didn't come out that day either.

Last night, after I was in bed, dh thought his computer crashed, but then it came back on. I haven't backed it up in awhile and honestly, backing it up to an external hard drive is kind of a pain. Awhile back I got an online backup account through iDrive. It took forever (like 24 hours or so) to back up my computer the first time. I did this like a year ago and I think what I ended up doing was pausing the backup while I was working because it slowed our internet down and I just had it working during the night. If I recall it took several days, that way, to get done. Well, I started dh's this morning before I came up to start working and my connection has been slow all day and our internet speedtest is slower than usual, too. I'm sure it's from backing up dh's computer. If it's not done by tomorrow morning, I'll have to pause it. Once that initial back up is done, then after that it's always been a quick back up on my computer as it just looks for any files new or changed/updated.

It's been pretty much a non eventful day today. Now the work day is done and time to go downstairs and figure out something for dinner. 

 

 

 

 

 

A Saturday drive

The weather ended up pretty good yesterday. With rain and thunderstorms in the forecast we just decided to do a short day of going to the used bookstore and a visit to this historical thing at a state park. After the bookstore, on our way to to the next place, we realized the weather was ok, so we ended up doing dh's original plan.

He wanted to visit this logging site just over the border in Idaho where he spent 3 years of weekends as a teenager at, cutting and hauling logs and firewood out. This is what he grew up doing for his dad. His dad had a full time job in construction, but this was his other full time job, to feed his family of a wife and 5 kids. Dh hated it growing up, but of course now that he's older has learned to appreciate what all his dad taught him. Anyhow, when we first moved here we tried going up there, but hit snow and never made it all the way up.

This time was a success. 43 years later, dh had a fairly good memory of how far along the logging road the landing was. He remembered another road shot off to the right and not to far down was where they worked. The steep forest had been logged via helicopters and at this landing they dropped the stuff they didn't want. The forest service put it out for bid to take out. I guess they and dh's dad thought it was just firewood stuff and dh's dad bid $200 for one season and got it. Turned out it ended up being a whole bunch of logs that were big enough for log homes and there were several log home building places where they lived, so they hauled it out and sold it to them. The rest was cut up and sold as firewood (their normal side business). For 3 years! So for $200 dh's dad made a good profit margin.

It's up 6000 feet in elevation. This offshoot road had a gate now. The road was still there, but a little over grown. We got out and started hiking and it was about 3/4 of a mile to where the spot was. 

Dh is very sentimental, so this meant a lot to him, especially close to Father's day. 

It was getting late by the time we came back over to our side and we were only a few miles from the restaurant so we decided to do that for dinner, instead of me having to make dinner at 7pm.

The evening's sunset was also very pretty

The kids left around 1pm. Their 2 mornings here were with cups of coffee and playing checkers on my marble chess/checker board sitting up in my loft area.