Bonus and ancestry

Busy morning with work. I haven't even jumped in the shower and gotten dressed. My boss has me trying to enter the bonus payroll batch. In the past we've done live checks, that the payments ended up getting added to the payroll systems after that fact. This time, since we know the info ahead enough time, we can enter it in the payroll system first and then all the payments will be direct deposited. I've never entered a bonus check run before, so I had to call to have someone walk me through the steps. There's lots of boxes to check and uncheck and most aren't very explanatory. I've taken notes, as the advisor walked me through the process, so next time I should be able to do it on my own. I'm glad for the direct deposit. I don't have to wait for the check in the mail and then I don't either have to take it into my bank (50 miles away) or mail it into my bank to get it deposited, as it's too large to deposit via mobile banking.

I've been doing some ancestry research again. It's been awhile and I was hoping maybe I'd finally be able to find something on my great grandmother's history on my dad's side. I could never find who her parents were, to try to go back any farther. I just know her date of birth, death, and that she came over from Scotland in 1912 with my grandfather and his brother to come live with my great grandfather who had settled over here 2 years earlier. I ended up spending about $20 US dollars and accessing the Scotlands People (or something like that) website and I was able to find my g.grandmothers birth record from the parish she was born/lived in. Well, turns out she was illegitimate (it says that below her name) in 1885 but did list both her father and mother's name, occupation and where they lived. Her mother had the same first name. I found that interesting and then as I was then able to find out more going farther back, this name was passed down from mother to daughter for quite a few generations.

From the next 2 census records, (when she was age 6 and 16) it appears my g.grandmother was not raised by her mother or father, but rather by another family. Who the heck is this family? related? In doing more in depth research I discovered she was raised by a great aunt and her husband.

What happened to her unwed mother? This I cannot find. I can't find her listed on any future census, nor that she may have ended up getting married or that she died. What happened to her after she gave birth to my g.grandmother in 1885? This the mystery. Maybe one day I'll find more information. I'm going to work on her father and see if I can find any more info on him - maybe that will give me some info on the mother, but nothing I can find yet shows they ever married each other.

I paid for a month of ancestry, so hopefully I can add some more to it. I also came across my dad/his father/his father, listed on someone else's family tree. In looking at her tree (she lives in the UK) we appear to share a set of 2nd great grandparents. I sent her a message, so we'll see if she replies. It appears she is about my age, as well.

We found out who is buying the other lot in our neighborhood - from the info we now have, it appears some 79/80 year old couple bought it. Again, my mind just cannot comprehend being 80 years old and wanting to build a house for a year or two. It's time consuming and stressful and even just the sheer amount of decisions to make wear a person out, LOL.

Mid week thoughts

I'm so relieved that my side job conversion to the downgraded version of Quickbooks is finally finished. My side job boss now has the converted file on her laptop and good to go. I emailed her instructions (with pictures, LOL) and told her to call me if she wants me to walk through it with her over the phone. Honestly I was so surprised when she texted me a picture of her screen and she got it done all by herself! She said she was holding her breath the whole process, LOL. Computers are not her strong suit.

Today looks very cloudy and gray out and maybe rain tomorrow, plus a drop of 20 degrees. That's ok, good for the lawn and plants.

We hadn't played any pool in awhile. DH has been kept busy with summer here and then he's pretty tired by evening, but we finally played again last night. Except I accidentally banged the knuckle of my left pointer finger on the side of the pool table. That hurt. It's bruised, sore, and I can only bend my finger about halfway.

The sales director for the lift mfg had told dh he'd try to make this delivery fiasco up. There is another part to the lift, that dh wants to get down the road (will be nice to have but doesn't have to have it to work the lift, I have no idea what it is, LOL) and yesterday he offered it to him at half off. BUT, the issue is it's big and heavy as well and you guessed it......needs a forklift to unload. He was trying to find somewhere he could dropship it in the city and pick it up there (they load it onto his pickup) but no luck. I think dh is going to ask the guy that runs our small town lumber store if he could have it dropshipped there. They could unload it from the delivery truck and then onto dh's pickup and he could give them a little cash for the trouble. I'm sure they would do that for him. They should - we've spent enough there over the years, LOL. Then I guess dh's plan to get it off his pickup is to unbox what he can from the bed of his truck or he can likely slide the box off in some fashion.

We've 3 more days until the end of the work month and trying to make our bonus goal. We're not going to make it by much, but we should be good for it. That should be almost an extra $5,000 to me, but often there is also a second bonus this is "discretionary" and I've always gotten some of that, as well. Keeping fingers crossed.

DD got a new haircut yesterday. It's so cute on her. She went quite a bit shorter, just past the top of her shoulders and kind of layered from her chin down to past her shoulders. Kind of a long layered bob, I guess.

I may have to find a new pizza dough. For years I have made a homemade pizza recipe I found using Rhodes Frozen dinner rolls for the dough. It's always been really good - until the past year. The dough just doesn't taste as good anymore. It takes 12 of the frozen rolls, let them sit out (covered of course) for about 3 hours until they are thawed and have risen a bit. Only now they barely seem to want to rise now and now the pizza just doesn't taste the same anymore. I'm bummed because it sure was an easy way to make the crust and it had such a good flavor and thickness to it. What the heck is going on with foods lately?

My assistant is kind of managing his summer schedule, until he's not, haha. He's supposed to work 5 hours a day, M-F. Only he didn't work last Friday. Then yesterday, while doing payroll I asked him if he plans to work the 5 hours per day the rest of this week and he said yes. Then this morning messages my boss he can't start until this afternoon and can only work 3 hours. He has some appointment for school. Like he didn't know this appointment yesterday and supposedly just found out about it at 7am this morning?? My boss told me in one of her "talks" with him about what employers expect etc, she outright asked him how he plans to be a lawyer and show up to court late? His reply?.........."I'll just get a fine from the judge". O.M.G. LOL. That boy is in for such a rude awakening. I told my boss, he'll be working for some law firm and they will fire him.

The day is starting out good

DH's mail order prescription shipped on Friday. I've been following tracking and it was showing to arrive this Friday. I'm like it better! He is out of pills after this Friday! Then when I got my USPS informed delivery email this morning, I see it is being delivered today. Ok, I feel better now ;)

I'm trying to forward an email from my personal email and it keeps saying "server unreachable". I'm getting annoyed. This is the last step in this long process I've been working on for my side job - I finally have the new converted company file and now I need to get it to side job boss, so she can download it into her Quickbooks on her laptop. I just need to forward the dang email, LOL.  

Dh did get the lawn work done yesterday, so he should be able to rest up now for a few days.

I had payroll to do today. Notice I said "had" and it's only 9:15am this morning. I am done and submitted already. It's a miracle. One of those rare times I had zero questions come up to check with my boss on (usually there are PTO's that don't match up with what we have on the calendar or hourly people who messed up their clocking in/out). I had done most of the prework yesterday, so this morning went super fast. It's a Christmas Miracle. Wooohooo!

Well, back to work. I still have to do our monthly business tax report to the state.

Long Sunday

Boy, that was a long day for the guy and his helper to install the lift. They showed up at 9am and didn't get done until like after 7:30pm, and that was with dh helping some on the forklift, etc. Plus dh had already unpacked it all before they got here. But, it's in now and dh is very happy with it. Cars went up, cars came back down, LOL. His $270 220 plug in worked, so basically the electrician savings paid for the installer. The guy had originally said it would take like 6-8 hours to install.

I kind of had a day to myself, haha. DH was out in the shop pretty much the whole day with them, other than to come in and get his lunch. I dusted and vacuumed the downstairs and got caught up on a couple of episodes of a show on Apple+ tv I am watching. In the morning I got all the flowers watered. Now I seem to have gotten myself into a morning watering vs. evening, so now I'm going to have to take a break from work here in a bit this morning to go out and water. I guess I'll have to get it back to evenings. I also watched an old movies from the 80's that I apparently never watched back then.

By the time dh got things cleaned up in the shop and had me drive my car onto the lift so he could test it out with my car, he didn't get dinner until like 8:15. I ate earlier, so I microwaved him a chicken pot pie (what I had). The first time I made these (from Costco) I did the oven method, which took 50 minutes (plus the oven preheat time) but decided to do the microwave method this time. Microwave method worked fine and they were ready in 11 minutes. 

I'm ready for next week - I'm only working 2 days that week and then a 3 day week the following week.

Wow - now here is some good customer service! I just got an email saying here's a $25 Costco shop card. I'm thinking this must be spam, but the email address seemed legit. Then I read the email with it. They noticed my eyeglasses order took longer it should have, so here's a $25 gift card for your troubles. I never once complained about it, so that's pretty neat that they did that on their own. I'm very impressed.

DH is worn all the way out. He looks completely done in this morning and he still needs/wants to mow the lawn today.

The wait is over

We finally got the lift delivered yesterday morning, around 9am. This installer is coming later this morning to set it up. The driver (not the same driver who supposedly broke down an hour after being told he could deliver it on Monday, the 17th, when we had the forklift here, and then was in our nearby city on Monday anyway? without the lift?) was very apologetic. DH told him it's nothing to do with him and said you know how to tell a dispatcher is lying? the driver replied "because their mouth is moving". LOL. 

Yesterday morning, in my Facebook memories showed up a picture I shared of my neighbor sharing her lovely peonies with me, that she cut. Then when I was outside, watering my flowers, she yells over to me to see if I want some peonies....same day a year later, LOL. Of course I want peonies and fresh flowers in my house!

My 2 peony plants, now in their 5th year look like this on the same day. Clearly I do not have the knack.

My lilac bush is growing and getting bigger each year, so at least that one is filling out

See that tree back behind it, on the right. We planted that 5 years ago and it's not much bigger than it was to begin with. Annoying, LOL.

It was a nice day yesterday and I was out in the morning watering flowers with Amos following me around. Checking out the bird bath after I added some more water to it

Enjoy your Sunday!

More papers

During my lunch break yesterday I made some more headway on the old papers. There was a smallish stack that I had grabbed out of my mom's filing cabinet (before it went to donation), to keep and go through later. I've managed to throw away most of it now. Most of it was very old tax returns (like 15-20 years ago) and old copies of her retirement account statements. There was an envelope with a few extra copies of my dad's death certificate, so I've kept that (not sure why, LOL). I have her more recent tax returns, as I have been doing them for years. I'm also keeping the extra copies of her death certificate I have and her will/estate paperwork, at least for now. Now that I've gone through everything I'm surprised there was nothing at all in paperwork she may have saved for my grandma, who she took care of everything for. Not even a copy of her death certificate. She passed in 2013.

DH prescription got shipped out yesterday, so he should have it by the end of next week, before he runs out. It's showing about $10 more than the lady on the phone told me it would. So, what I thought would be $5 savings is now $5 more. Oh well.

I'd say I have cut down on 2/3rds to 3/4th of the sugar and snacks I was consuming. One day (on a typical day of eating) I actually added up the calories of all I ate that day. Around 1100 and that seems to be a  pretty typical day now, or at least for 4-5 days a week. There other days aren't too much more. And I've gained a pound. That's pretty annoying. Losing a pound or two would sure give me some additional motivation to keep this up, right?! What, am I just adding calories breathing now? Geez, LOL.

The delivery of the car lift saga continues. The delivery driver called yesterday to say he was going to deliver Saturday. Dh said he was told it would be here today (Friday). Then in asking the driver where he was at that point and he also said he had a stop to make in Idaho dh was pretty skeptical he'd get here Saturday. And the forklift is going back on Monday - we're not paying another $750 to rent it another week, when they shipped this lift from the mfg on 6/11! Then dh talked on the phone quite a while with the sales guy (who basically acted like there's not much he can do) with no resolution either. It apparently took dh putting a bad review on their Facebook page to finally get someone higher up to get involved. Within minutes he had a DM, then a phone call from the Director of Sales. The lift is supposed to be delivered today. The guy installing it says he can still come tomorrow, then the forklift can go back Monday. The Dir. of Sales then emailed dh his cell# and told him to let him know if the lift gets delivered Saturday or not. If not he said he will give dh a full refund on the lift. 

It's just 8am, so I guess we'll see if it gets delivered..........or not.

Clean up

I managed to do a little computer "clean up" and got my hard drive space back up to almost 54GB available. At least it's not showing as RED anymore. My downloads folder was also pretty huge and after going through that and doing more deleting, I got the available space up to 55.4GB. My download folder is mostly all pictures, because I will send pictures to myself from my phone, to Messenger and then download to my computer to either send in a message, email, or use to post a picture here on my blog. I haven't deleted most of the downloaded picture files yet. I should. Obviously they are already on my phone and don't need to be both places.

DH's new shop door is installed. The 2 guys who showed up were really good workers. DH also had them replace the seals around all the other doors, as well.

One of our next projects needs to be re sealing all the concrete (you can see it's gotten pretty sad and tired looking). DH tried to find someone to hire but no luck. When all our concrete was originally done he did the sealing himself, with a roller (big job), but he's done some research and it's recommended to use a sprayer. That would be much easier, so his plan is to buy a good sprayer and do it. But, waiting a bit until it's not so much pollen in the air, so it doesn't all get stuck in the sealant before it dries.

Then at the last hour or so of working yesterday I decided to do some more clean up. I have a box of papers (well more than one box) I started going through. I put in 3 piles: garbage, shred, and keep/look into more before tossing. I now have a large kitchen garbage bag stuffed, a small pile to shred and a medium pile (put back in the box) to organize better. I also went through a couple of shelves in my bathroom cabinet and threw out quite a few things.

Guess who didn't get a 24 hours notice of delivery on the lift yesterday? Shocker, I know! I can't believe the total ineptness of this transport company. Not the mention they just don't give a damn. We rented the forklift for a week. It's supposed to go back on Monday. At this point, if they don't deliver between now and first thing Monday morning, dh is thinking about letting the forklift go back and when they call to want to deliver he's going to say, sure - rent me a forklift and I'll take the delivery or just don't deliver it and tell the dealer he wants his money back.

Doors and more

Our electricity shut down was for about 3 1/2 hours. DH was out mowing the lawn for most of it. I took a nap for half of it, LOL. The rest of the time we sat on the patio in the nice sunshine. I could tell from my phone when the power came back on because it switched from LTE back to wifi. I said to dh the power is back on and he's like how do you know? I just said because I'm psychic. haha.

Our big shop door is finally getting replaced today. That is sure an expense that hurt :/.  The door guy emailed me yesterday morning that the door is in and he wanted to come next week. I said anytime, just let us know. Then he called dh yesterday afternoon and wanted to see if he could come today.

I can't remember if I mentioned that on Monday I called Social Security again, on my mom's final payment. The lady said it's still showing in process, but that it's a long time to still be in process considering they've had the form I filled out since April 4th. I said yes, the first guy I talked to said it should be processed in 45 days from that date. She said she put in a request for a status update, so maybe that will help get it moving. I was telling my boss and she said she never could get the $255 death benefits out of them, for her husband that passed away almost a year ago. She finally gave up. Good grief! People die DAILY in this country who's widow or dependent is owed the $255. She's proven she was married to him. What a totally ridiculous system. Now I'm thinking I'll likely never see my mom's last payment (unless I just keep pushing for it), or it will be years before I do. 

Also, my uncle did finally get his inherited IRA transferred to his bank, so I don't have to hear about that anymore ;). Which reminds me, I'll have to give him a call this weekend, as then it will be about 2 weeks since we talked/texted and I try to check in with him (or he will with me, as well) at least once a month.

Getting dh's prescription transferred to mail order is getting annoying. After they got the order from his doctor (the 2nd try) it said "in process" last week. I just checked online to make sure it's been shipped. Nope. It says "on hold until 6/21". When they do mail it typically takes a week to get here. He will be out of meds by the end of next week. Just ship the damn med out, for goodness sake. I have my meds on mail delivery and when it's time for the refill they have always processed it and mailed it so I get it in plenty of time before I run out.

I noticed my computer's hard drive storage is about maxed out. I'm still trying to figure out what is causing it. I have deleted a few programs and files I don't use, but it barely helped. I know it shows Teams as 1GB, but my hard drive is 237GB. I'm sure the new Quickbooks Pro I added takes up some space, but I'm not seeing how much. I'll have to do some more checking on this. I really don't want to have to deal with getting an new computer right now. I've had enough headaches to deal with.  I just looked it up on google and it says QB Pro only takes up 2.5GB. I don't even have that many programs on my computer and even if 10 of them are as large as QB, that's only using 25GB out of 237.

Half day

I have about 90 minutes before our power is supposed to go down for 4 hours. My phone and ipad are charged up. I guess I also see a nap happening this afternoon LOL. I also left the dishwasher to be emptied to wait and do it while I have 4 hours of not being able to work.

DH sat all day yesterday with no update on the delivery of his lift. By that point it had been 2 1/2 business days of nothing resolved. His email back to the sales buy didn't even warrant a reply or call back from the sales guy. At 4:30pm he called the mfg, where is shipped from and said here's the deal. I want an answer as to when this will be delivered. I don't want to hear anymore that the truck broke down - that was 2 1/2 days ago. I want to know where it is and when it will be here, or I want a refund (this is NOT a cheap lift). The guy said he'll call him right back and he did. He said the lift is still at the transporters facility (where they took it after they picked it up from mfg) in So. CA, and will be on it's way Wednesday. He will get a call on Thursday for his 24 hour delivery notice and it will be delivered Friday. Considering the transport company's history, we are not holding our breath that there's any truth in this. They've known since last Friday afternoon this was not on it's way and it was still sitting there. I'm sure if dh hadn't called yet again, yesterday afternoon, it would still be sitting there.

I still want to know how this driver got dh's info, said he had it (as of 2:30 Friday afternoon) and was going to be in Montana by Saturday. Then supposedly broke down an hour later and the lift was taken back to Ontario CA (from wherever he supposedly broke down) and then on Monday morning, when dh calls this same driver back, he says he's in MT, but without dh's lift....??  Huh?

DH was chuckling a bit when he was relaying some of his conversation from the other day with the son and daughter in law of the couple buying the lot next to us. Being property on the river we have certain building rules we had to follow: we had to build back at least 25 feet from the edge of the bank and we could not excavate anything in that area. The guy says to dh, so what do they actually consider the bank? down at the river's edge? We are on high bank, meaning there's a very steep slope from the top edge of our property down to the edge of the river, but part of our 2 acres is this steep slope. We legally own down to the "high water mark" (a bit vague, LOL, but about 2/3rds to 3/4th of the way down the hill is the high water mark). Dh says no, the 25' you have to build back from is at the top of the hill. The guy says well you must have excavated out some of it to build your house? It looks like less than 25'. Dh says no, it's built back more than 25 feet, we did no excavation there. 

This is where dh was kind of chuckling - our back yard, between the house and the edge of the bank, is full of big trees - trees that have to be at least 100 years old, LOL. I don't think we excavated and then managed to get trees the size of these grown in 6 years ;) I mean - here's me looking UP at the trees outside my upstairs window

It's a nice day, the rain appears to be done with.

Circle of lies

It's amazing how people and business's just lie nowadays. And even when they are caught, they just stick with the lies.  This time it's regarding the car lift that dh is waiting for delivery. 

He ordered the lift through an authorized dealer of the lift mfg. The mfg is out of Southern CA and that's where the lift ships from. Last Tuesday he was told the lift was picked up and given the name of the transport company, their ph# and a tracking#. He was told to wait until the next day to call them to get an estimated delivery date. He needs this date as we have to rent a forlklift and have it here, in order to get the lift off the trailer and into our shop. He called last Wednesday and they told him some vague window of "sometime in the next 2 weeks". DH called back on Friday morning and said he has to have a delivery date, so he can order the forklift. He was then told it will be here next Wednesday.

An hour or so later a driver for this transport company calls. Barely speaks English. He wants to deliver it the next day, Saturday (which means he has to be getting closer to Montana, right?). DH says to him, I was just told an hour or two ago, by your company, it wouldn't be here until Wednesday. I have to have a forklift and I can't get that until next week now. Then the guy says "how about Sunday?" The driver says something about having to deliver an excavator to somewhere in MT on Sunday. DH says, no....I can't get a forklift here by then. He said I can call and see if they can get it here Monday. He called the forklift rental place and they said they could, but it would be later morning, but no later than noon. DH calls the driver back and tells him this. 

An hour or two later the transport company calls back and says cancel your forklift for Monday, the driver broke down. We don't know when we're going to get this to you. DH says I can't cancel it, the rental place is closed for the day now. I'll have it delivered Monday and it will be here now that the driver will be a day or two late....(dh knew that this driver just didn't suddenly break down and even so, get it fixed and back on the road, like what? down a day at most?).

Yesterday morning, 10am, the forklift gets delivered. DH calls the driver, tells him who he is/what town we live in and then asks the driver where are you at? He says he's in the city near us (so about 45 min away). DH says ok, well you're less than an hour away and the driver asks for directions. Dh gives him the directions and then the driver says "I don't have your lift on my trailer". Dh is like what?! The driver says ya, it got canceled when I broke down, so it's never got picked up in Southern CA. 

Wait a minute.......on Friday he wanted to deliver on Saturday and and now he's saying he didn't even have it loaded/picked up yet and was going to be in Montana the next day, all the way from So. Cal? BS!

DH calls the transport company and they say ya, the driver broke down, so the lift never got picked up. 

I told dh this is total lies and there is no way that 1) dh was given a tracking# if it wasn't picked up and 2) there is no way a driver for a transport company would have been given the delivery info of where it's going to and their name and ph#, if he hadn't picked it up yet and 3) if he didn't have the lift on his load, why would he have even called dh to try to deliver it the very next day?

Dh then called the dealer he bought the lift from. I told him make THEM deal with this. In my industry our customers don't deal with the transport issues from stuff they ordered from us - they make us deal with all the crap. They scream at us about it. Of course his sales guy wasn't in yesterday, so he talked to another one, who says he'll look into it and calls dh back and says "ya, well I guess the driver broke down and the lift is still at our distribution place". DH says they are lying. He says we'll look into and get back to you (no call yet).

A couple hours later he decided to call the actual manuf. of this lift, they are the one's that shipped it out, they should know if it got picked up or not. The lady tells him, yes it got picked up on the 11th, shipping with such and such transport and here's the tracking. DH then says well I guess I need to talk to a manager then and she asks why, so he explains the whole thing. That now the transport company is saying they haven't picked it up yet. She then says "and now you're paying for a forklift rental each day..." Yep. No one has called dh back yet, which is crap. 

So, who knows when this lift will get delivered. Or here's an idea! If the transport company/driver needed to deliver on a certain date, how about you coordinate this beforehand? Meanwhile the forlift rental is over $100 a day. DH rented it for a week, as the guy who will be doing the installing of the lift plans to come do it on Saturday (IF the lift gets here this week) and renting it for a week was almost half the cost of daily rental rates.

A week

I made it through the week trying to much reduce sugar and bread. My goals are twofold. I don't want as much sugar in my system as I was putting in before, and I'd like to lose a few pounds. I guess I helped the first goal. The second goal? I gained a pound. How does that work?! LOL. I ate fruits and salads most of the week in place of the sugar and breads. 

My takeaways:  It's hard to cut down, but I did reduce sugar quite a bit compared to what I was taking in. Apple slices with a little bit of peanut butter on them is the bomb. I've eaten that for lunch the last 3 days. I am going to be out of apples before my next shopping trip :(  I'm learning to be more aware of what I'm eating in a day and if I do want a treat, I try to make it on a day when I'm really having not much at all in anything else. Or like I did one day, I gave up having the bun with my chicken burger. I bake the chicken in olive oil with salt and pepper, so I don't mind having it by itself, at all.

I did make dh a banana cream pie, but it was not sugar free. It wasn't even banana cream pudding, LOL. I swear that's what I had bought (a couple of shopping trips before) but when I went in the pantry it was vanilla pudding (with sugar). Oh well. With the banana's mixed in, it was still a good pie and my small piece had the sugar free whip cream on it at least. (I've left off the whip cream on top and just add that when I cut a slice). I made dh a cheeseburger for dinner last night and I just had a bowl of the Fiber One cereal, so I didn't feel too bad about the little slice of pie.

We were outside a bit after dinner yesterday, as dh was rearranging things to get ready for the shop lift delivery and install. He moved his pickup out of the garage and moved some things from the shop, where the lift is going, temporarily into the garage. Hopefully they will call soon wanting to deliver (ie, the delivery truck is "repaired" {insert big eye roll}). The install guy is supposed to come next Saturday. Anyway, just before we got started someone pulled in a white pickup down to lot 5 (the furthest of DAN's 2 lots) and it looked like 3 or 4 people were walking around. By the time they left we were back inside the garage, but we saw them pull out and basically come to a stop in front of our gate for a few seconds and then drive by suuuper slow the rest of the way. They kind of did the same thing in front of Mr & Mrs place. I don't know why, but it always kind of creeps me out when people do that, LOL.

When dh talked to that young couple, who's parents are buying the lot next to us, he did give them our phone number in case he or is parents had any questions. Without dh even saying anything about DAN, they said "this seller appears to be an odd guy...." Yep.

Can anyone explain this? So, I have this steam mop I bought awhile back. It only uses distilled water to clean. Every time I use, dh says the smell is awful. "What is that solution you are using? It smells awful!" I'm like it's just water! He has always driven me nuts with things he can smell, so now I don't want to use this steam mop anymore, so I don't have to listen to him throw a fit and turn on fans. It must just be something from the mop itself that emits an odor when the steam is coming through it, I guess.

Neighbor news

We now have info on who bought the lots next to us. It turns out DAN ended up selling each lot separately. DH went outside last evening to put out some peanuts for his raven and never came back inside, LOL. I was watching something on my ipad and just assumed he had gone out to his shop to fiddle around. Turns out he was out there, standing at the fence talking to people. When he went out he saw a car in front of the lot next to us, but didn't see anyone, then as he was going up to our side lawn he saw a young woman and said hi, did you just buy this? She said no, her mother in law did. Then her husband walked up and dh being dh, he talked a lot and got lots of info from them :)

The guys parents live part time in Illinois and part time in Texas and now they want to live part time in Montana and part time in Texas and tasked the son (who lives about an hour away from us) with finding them some property on a river or lake. They inquired with the realtor about just this lot and was told "it's one lot, 4 acres". They said well the ad says it's 2 separate lots, so we wanted to see if the seller was interested in selling one lot. The message from DAN was, if he's selling the lots separate then the price is $250k and their lucky he doesn't make it start with a 3" (told you he was a Douchebag Asshole Neighbor). So, they passed and continued their search. Then a couple weeks later the realtor called and asked if they were still interested, as apparently someone else now wanted to just buy lot 5. At this point they said they also got the impression that DAN was needing the money (which we also gathered since he lowered the price of his house for sale 2x in less than a month).

So, this couple purchasing it must be around our age, as their son and his wife were about my dd's age. DH brought up the covenants and he said his parents live in an HOA now with no problems and they have totally read the covenants. They will also just be summer residents. He also said his dad is very meticulous.

So, we at least have some hope now that we will end up with some decent neighbors. We are still hearing that it's like a year wait to get a well dug, so my guess is there won't be any building started this summer (they are supposed to close on the property next month). Next year could be a busy year in our neighborhood as the couple that has owned lot 6 for 4 years, plans to start building next year. We don't know who purchased the other lot, yet.

Day 7

Whoever suggested apple slices with peanut butter - that's really good! I love peanut butter, but rarely eat apples, so I don't think I've ever had this combination before. I will definitely be having this again. I had that for lunch, along with one of the clementine oranges.  I'm not going to lie - it's still hard to not have a sugary treat. I caved and had 2 (before I would have 4) of the reeses covered animal cracker cookies. For dinner dh wanted the chicken burgers again, so this time for mine, I just had the baked chicken, no bun. Figured it was somewhat of a swap for eating the cookies, LOL.

And to whoever said they've had problems with Express Scripts (I haven't before) - welp, somehow they didn't get the prescription that dh's doctors office sent to them on Tuesday for the 90 day supply refills. Geez! I hadn't heard anything that the order was processed or shipped. I got online and dh's account was still showing no prescriptions. I called again and it took the lady even forever to find that they had put in a request to his doctor on Tuesday for a new prescription. So, I had to message dh's doctor again, apologizing, but somehow they didn't get the prescription order at Express Scripts and asked them to send it again, which I got a reply back not too long later that they sent it in again.

DH was able to get the 220 outlet added in his shop himself yesterday. He was pretty nervous and grumpy the whole time. He doesn't like working in electrical panels. But he got it done for a cost of materials of $270 and saved almost $1000 from having that electrician do it. He's also getting frustrated with trying to coordinate the arrival of the lift, having forklift here for that, and then scheduling the installer asap after that, so we don't have to have an expensive rented forklift sitting here for days. The trucking company was being very vague about when it will be delivered. He called them again (it shipped out of California like 2 or 3 days ago) and said listen, I have to have a narrower window delivery from you than "2 weeks". Now they are saying most likely next Wednesday. He will call them again on Monday for updated delivery time.

He didn't accept that answer and yesterday morning they told him it would likely be Wednesday. Then in the afternoon the driver who has the lift called and wanted to deliver it Sunday. Dh could barely understand a word the driver was saying. Something about he has an excavator on  his truck and will unload it. Dh is trying tell him you are not using an excavator to unload my lift and set it in front of my shop! You can't delivery it Sunday, because I need to order a forklift. Then dh called the dispatch company and says ya, you guys told me it's coming Wednesday, the driver is calling me saying he's coming Sunday and I can barely understand a word he's saying, and he's not using an excavator on my driveway, and I've been trying to get a specific date from you guys so I can coordinate having a forklift here, because they need 2 business days notice! The sooner the forklift can get delivered is later morning on Monday, so dh called both the driver and dispatch company back and told him the earliest he can deliver it is noon on Monday. Geez Louise.

Then, about 2 hours later the dispatch for the trucking calls and says cancel your forklift order, the driver's truck broke down and he won't be delivering on Monday.....dh was like ya sure it did. So, who knows when it's coming. DH said boy, trucking sure has changed from many many years ago when he was a long haul driver. He had a delivery day right down to the time he was supposed to delivery and he had to make it.

Later I figured out that dh's Express Scripts info is with my login (since he's on my insurance, I guess) and saw that they did now get the prescription (2nd request) in process, so now it should be on it's way soon. I don't know why it doesn't show up for the login I have with him. It's showing the same insurance ID number. But, glad it's resolved now. I've never had an issue with them shipping my refills out (I have them set up on auto refill) to arrive in plenty of time before I run out.

We had a nice week of weather, but this weekend is cold, cloudy and rain and in the 50's for the high. They are saying maybe snow up in the higher elevations.  This morning I need to walk down to the mailboxes and mail a birthday card (with gift card) so son in law and also mail in my form I had to fill out for jury duty.

My plan today is to make a mostly sugar free banana cream pie. The banana pudding mix is sugar free and I bought sugar free cool whip. I had kind of wanted to make one for dh's birthday but we didn't have any bananas that were usable at that time, so I guess this is for Father's Day.

DD and SIL are working on getting the permits they need to eventually get started on building on the property they bought awhile back. They had to do some test and dig 3 big holes (different than a perc test) and have someone from the county there that measured how long it took the water (from a big water truck they had to hire). Some company wanted like $4000 to do this test, so SIL just rented a small backhoe and dug the holes himself. While they were at their property (5 mostly wooded acres) all day they saw a momma deer with 3 fawns. DD was sending lovely pics, but the pics never had all 3 fawns in them, she just said she counted 3 of them near the momma. Very trustful deer compared to the deer around our house.

Branding

DH and I had a brief conversation the other day about cattle brands. I remembered part of my grandpa's cattle brand. I knew it had a Bar and a Lazy T, but I couldn't remember what else it had/how it looked. In one of life's funny coincidences I get an email from Ancestry yesterday that says I have a new hint on my grandpa. I open it and it's a picture of his gravestone. And there was his cattle brand on it! I was so excited. Mystery solved. Sorta. The other letter is a V and I'm not sure of that significance. My "educated guess" is the brand very likely belonged to my great grandfather first. The T is for his last name and the V could be because he had 5 children.

I'm going to have something made for the house with this brand, to remember my family history in ranching. Either have something made or have dh carve it into the bonus room bar countertop or have it carved into a table, if/when we have one made for the bonus room. I also saw some cute custom coffee mugs on Etsy where they will add a cattle brand, so I may order one for me and one to have shipped to my half sister. 

I bought a bag of those small clementine oranges. I'm not sure I've ever had them before. So yummy and sweet and the perfect size. I can never eat a whole orange and often they seem sour to me. This was a great sweet snack to have yesterday afternoon. I don't think we'll have any problems eating these up.

Dinner was chicken burgers, corn on the cob and watermelon. I usually buy (though not often) the precut watermelon. I've noticed the past year or two that it has zero taste anymore. I decided to try getting one of those small "personal size" watermelons. Much better! While the chicken was baking in the oven, I got the watermelon all sliced up and put in a bowl that has a lid. There's a lot of watermelon in one of those. $3.97 and I ended up with a full big bowl. $3.97 in the pre sliced watermelon would have got me a small bowl, enough for one serving for both of us. We're going to be having watermelon for several days now and it's red, juicy, and has taste.

8pm also seems to be one of my times I want a little snack, so last night I just grabbed a few grapes out of the fridge.

We are on the home stretch for getting my side job boss up and running with the new Quickbooks version. It's been a bit of a chore, that's for sure. One, is she is not very computer literate so it was a job just getting the program downloaded to her laptop, LOL. Not her fault, but she was getting a message she needed admin rights to install the software. She ended up having to get someone from their IT company to help. I guess she was explaining to him what we were doing (downgrading from a higher version of Quickbooks) and he was telling her you can't downgrade. I told her that's what most people think, but it's not true and the Quickbooks people have been great to work with in converting our files to the downgraded version. 

She was then able to get the new version of QB installed on her laptop. Then after dinner last night I called her and was able to walk her through uploading the company file to the portal QB set up for me. That took twice as long as it should have....First time she uploaded the wrong file (I even asked her twice if the name of the file said Xxxxx)  and second, because she was typing the password wrong, LOL. Now I will email the QB guy back and let him know that file is now ready to be converted.

The side effects from the second shingles shot weren't too bad. I never got as tired as the first one, but when I went to bed last night I was cold and couldn't get warm so after a couple hours I got up and put some socks and pj bottoms on. Then I had a headache, so I got up to take Tylenol. Finally then I went back to sleep and slept good the rest of the night.

Day 5

I caved a little bit yesterday. After I got back from the doctors office, I had lunch of a slice of whole wheat bread with a little peanut butter. Mid afternoon I had a snack of some grapes. Dinner was a big salad. We were sitting out on the front patio, enjoying the warm weather and I went to get dh an ice cream bar from the freezer in the garage. I had also bought myself some No sugar added Klondike bars to try. They weren't too bad. I ate half of it and wrapped it back up and put it in the freezer to eat the rest another time. Half the square bar is 2.5 grams of sugar, so not bad at all.

This morning my coffee was back to decent, at least, LOL. And no sugar in it.  In TMI, Tues and Wed I had diarrhea. I have now read that that can happen getting off of sugar, as your gut microbiome is resetting. It will be hard today to see if what I am feeling is from the less sugar or the 2nd shingles shot.

My blood results are back and the hemoglobin and hematocrit as still slightly elevated, but a little lower than 6 weeks ago. The doctor said she is going to have the lab do a "smear test" on my blood to see if they see anything else concerning. She said she's not sure what could be causing it, since I am feeling well. She said it could be mild dehydration (though I have really been trying to drink lots of water of late and especially did yesterday) or undiagnosed sleep apnea...She said if this extra smear test doesn't show anything, she wants to retest again in 3 months.

Well, DAN has his lots under contract, as of yesterday. No clue who is buying it. While we were outside last evening watering flowers, a pickup pulled in (that dh had seen here awhile back and the only one he's seen look at the property) and parked down in front of the farther lot. We were outside for like an hour and never saw the guy walking the property at all. Weird. You'd think if you just went under contract you'd want to walk all over the lots, haha. I guess we'll find out eventually. DH's guess is it's a builder/contractor who bought it. If a couple had bought it to build a home, a wife would be with him and both times it was just the guy by himself. We're just blown away that someone would actually pay that much. There go up our property taxes again next year.

Here's my PSA - if you want to keep a house in the family after you die, please do not put it in a reverse mortgage! It's fine if you heirs are just going to sell it, but not if it's something everyone wants to keep in the family. We have some friends going through this. The property and house has been in the family for generations. The lady willed that to her granddaughter, only it has a reverse mortgage on it and the granddaughter was going to try to get a mortgage so she could keep it (a lot of stress on her). Before she could do that the granddaughter passed away. Now it's even more of a mess for the remaining family members to try to keep this in the family. Sad. I don't have anything really against a reverse mortgage, especially if it helps keep a person in their home, but don't do it if you expect your family to keep the home after you die.

Mid week

Day 4 - my headache held off until about 1:30pm. Breakfast was Fiber One cereal. Lunch was 2 hard boiled eggs. Once I got the shells off. I was reminded why I so seldom make hard boiled eggs, LOL. I was getting my online Walmart order placed and in the ice cream "section" and was having some serious cravings for a few minutes, there. DH has been chatting off and on with neighbor kid the past few days (he's out of school now) and he asked dh if he had any otter pops. Every summer dh has had me get Otter Pops to share with him (and now his younger sister, who is old enough to visit), so I got this added to my order to pick up tomorrow. I don't like these things, so no temptation for me to eat them, LOL.

Around 2pm I got a sweet craving pretty bad. I can't even open the pantry door. I'll see those dang Hostess cupcakes or twinkies. Around 3pm my head started getting fuzzy again. My brain was telling me, just go have a snack....a sugar snack....you'll feel better....I resisted and got myself a slice of ham and a slice of cheese. Between the tylenol and the snack, the headache went away quickly.

I also haven't noticed being super tired as I usually get after lunch, or mid afternoon. But, that could also be because I've been really busy with work the past 2 days and I'm just powering through it. I'll need more days of this to see if it's something new.

I called Express Scripts to ask how to transfer dh's prescription to mail order. The lady was very helpful and was going to transfer it right then, but apparently because the prescription his dr office sent to our local pharmacy was 30 day supply, they needed the dr to give them a new prescription for 90 days, so right then she put a message into the dr office to send them a 90 day supply prescription and suggested I contact the dr. office to tell them it needs to be 90 days. So, I just logged into the patient portal and sent a message and got one back not too long later from the nurse that she submitted a prescription with the mail order for 90 day supply. This will make life a little easier, plus the Express Scripts lady told me the 90 day supply price and it's around $5 cheaper than we were paying.

The price that tradesmen are charging for their services these days is just insane. How are people affording to build a house, upgrade a house, or even have repairs done? DH needs an outlet added to the shop. He'd do it himself, except it needs to be 220v and that's out of his base of experience to want to do that one himself. Based on watching our electricians do our whole shop and house, he knows this is a VERY small job (and simple job for an electrician). Like an hour of time? Even if the wiring and outlet cost a couple hundred, it's still ridiculous. Yesterday he contacted the electrician we used to build our house. Figured this might be $500 at the most. He sent the guy some pics of where it's going and where it is in relation to our electric panel (not very far). The quote came back via email this morning............$1250. Like I said, insane. Our WHOLE shop was done for like $3500. The sad part is dh planned for adding a lift to his shop one day and had the 110 outlet put where he'd need it for the lift to plug in. Well, now 5 years later, the lift he wants changed the kind of motor they use and now it requires 220. Dang!

Dh also needs to rent a forklift again. Their rental price has gone up 10% since a little over a year ago.

Got a kudos from my boss. Last week she had emailed me to set up a check to print for a retainer with a law firm. As I was doing it I realized we paid this law firm a little over a year ago and it was also for a retainer. Apparently we didn't need to use them after we sent the retainer and now are trying to use them again and both my boss and the law firm apparently forgot they already had a retainer on file for us. They are voiding the check we just sent. 

Later this morning I have to go into my doctors office at the city for my 2nd Shingles shot and also have my blood drawn again, to recheck the levels that were a bit high 6 or 7 weeks ago. I'm going to make sure I'm very hydrated for this blood draw, and hopefully that was the issue.

Sugar Day 3

Day 3 the headache arrived around 10am. A couple of tylenol seemed to fix most of it. For breakfast I had some Fiber One cereal, no sugar in that, other than what's in the little bit of milk I used. I'm ok with the milk sugar, it's not added sugar. For a later morning snack, I had some cheese.

Lunch is a bit harder, as I haven't been able to get more groceries (tomorrow) that are better alternatives to sugar added stuff. While I was waiting for dinner to cook last night I made some hard boiled eggs. Honestly, now this morning I can't remember what I had for lunch yesterday! LOL. Oh, ya, I ended up having a couple spoonfuls of peanut butter and I "stole" some peanuts out of dh's bag of peanuts for his raven, LOL. And I downed a bottle of water.

The tylenol started wearing off around 4pm and the headache was back. A little bit of brain fog, as well. I guess all part of the detoxing from so much sugar, LOL. Having dinner got rid of the headache. Dinner was the orange chicken with rice, which I tried to adjust for less sugar. It's the orange sauce that comes with it that's full of sugar, so I separated out mine and dh's chicken. I did a taste test on the sauce that it comes with compared to that sugar free orange sauce I bought, and hadn't tried yet. Of course the Costco was sweeter. The sugar free stuff wasn't bad, just a bit more "ginger-y" than I'm used to. For my part I just drizzled a tiny bit of the regular sauce on my chicken and the rest I added the sugar free. I also added less rice to my portion. So, I still got some sugar in the rice carbs, but definitely a reduction, since I was more mindful of it. I also had a very small glass of milk (which is what I usually have with dinner, just a very small glass of milk).

After dinner I did not want a sweet, so that was new. The rest of the evening I was ok. I went outside around 7:15 to water flowers and ended up staying outside for about 45 minutes. When I came in and realized it was 8pm and no sweets craving, so that was good. I also slept fine last night.

In other news my half sis is going to be my assistant come mid July! Yay!!! Everyone's excited. I think my boss is happy she now doesn't have to try to find/interview someone. My current assistant is supposed to work 25 hrs a week starting tomorrow, but we'll see. My sis wanted to wait until at least July 10th to start. She just started a small p/t job, but is in the learning stage, so she's having more hours until she gets ups to speed and then the first week of July she has her older sister staying with her for a week. Plus I want to take off a few extra days around the 4th of July, so I end up with a week off, then (we get the 4th and 5th off). It will take me at least several weeks to train her, so by the time she starts getting in the swing of it, it will be close to the time for the other guy to start law school.

This is where I spotted Amos last evening, apparently contemplating life on an old log perched over the river bank.

I was trying to get closer, for a better picture, but he's a cat.......he moved.

I'm feeling pretty optimistic this morning, starting day 4 of my sugar reduction, but we'll see. I know it can take a week or more for the cravings to go away. I guess I have 2 goals with this - to cut way back on sugar and it's effects of having too much on a daily basis and also hopefully to cut down on the extra fat/pounds I'm gaining as my sugar consumption was going up and up lately.

Day 2

I'm 48 hours in with very little sugar. I did have a slice of bread (that has 4 grams of sugar) in it, with a little peanut butter, for lunch, but that was the only sugar for the day. I seem to get through the day ok (compared to I used to grab at least a snack or two with sugar) but the hardest time seems to be right after dinner. I want something sweet, for some reason. Then I'm ok until about 8pm and craving again. I just drank more water, LOL. 

I didn't sleep very well last night. I slept ok for the first couple of hours, but right before dh came to bed I woke up and my heart was beating fast. After a bit I got up, had some water, and then I was ok not too long after that.

My coffee tastes like crud, LOL. I only have one cup a day, I love having my cup of coffee all sweetened to perfection, first thing in the morning. I'd say this part is the hardest. I'm tempted to just go back to my sugar free french vanilla (Great Value brand) creamer. I gave that up 6 months or so ago, because I was trying to get away from the processed stuff in it, but the only thing I've managed to come up with that tastes good to me, was the white chocolate sauce. Right now my creamer is organic heavy cream, monkfruit and vanilla extract. It tastes good on it's own, but added to my coffee doesn't seem to have the flavor. I wish I could be like my dd - she hardly sweetens her coffee at all.

For the orange chicken, I remembered yesterday that I had bought some sugar free orange sauce to try, so I will try that next with my part of the chicken pieces. I guess I'll have to give up having the white rice with it :(

Here's a funny from our little neighbor boy, who just turned 7. He was chatting with dh, about motorcycles and Harleys. DH said he likes Harley's. Boy told him he's too "elderly" now to ride a motorcycle" 😂😂😂

Sugar, sugar, sugar

Bear with me, the next days, hopefully weeks. I'm attempting to cut way down on sugar and try to eat very little bread. Today is my first full day.

In my recent (well several months ago) attempt to change to a more healthy coffee creamer (and one that I actually like the taste of), because I wanted to get away from the highly processed (sugar free) creamer I had been drinking for years, I ended up probably worse off than when I was adding that to my coffee! I then recently discovered I could buy bottles of white chocolate sauce. Seemed ok...not a lot of additives. Only I didn't look at the amount of sugar in it. Holy moly! Two tablespoons has 23 grams of sugar. I don't know exactly how much I've been adding to my daily cup of coffee, but at least that amount. Probably like 3 T. That's almost 35 grams of sugar in my system right off the bat. Then add in the ridiculous amount of sweets I've been eating lately (thanks to Costco snacks, LOL) and my sugar consumption has gone off the charts.

After I drank my cup of coffee yesterday morning and then looked at the label on the chocolate sauce, it about make me sick. In a typical day, I would go on to have a slice of bread (or two) for lunch, some cookies as a mid afternoon snack. Then dh wanted a big tub of licorice last trip, so I was eating those (thankfully we've finished that off and it's gone). If we have ice cream, I'll eat that. Basically just craving sugar all day long.

And somehow I never realized that foods like bread (oh, I love rolls and bread) turn into sugar in your body. And slowly the past 6 months or so I've added pounds. Pounds I've never had in my life.

So, after that cup of coffee yesterday morning I forced myself to not have anything with added sugar the rest of the day. I made it through the day. Even after eating most of that enormous steak for dinner (very delicious, by the way) - I was not hungry one bit, but found myself wanting to go into the pantry for a sweet. I resisted. Even at 8pm, I looked at the clock to see what the time was (wanting a sweet) and told myself I can make it another hour or so until I start getting ready for bed. Before bed, I took my carton of organic heavy cream and poured it in my glass bottle, along with some monkfruit and vanilla extract. While it's not as good as the processed store bought kind, I used to buy, it's zero sugar.

That's what I'm drinking this morning. Not anywhere near as delicious, but I'm not dumping 35 grams of sugar into my body right off the bat, either. I made it through the rest of yesterday without, but I'm not kidding myself that getting off this sugar addiction is going to be a cakewalk. I'm just going to have to take it day by day and while I likely will eat some things with sugar in it (like the orange chicken) I'll have to be very mindful of keeping it as less often as possible. That orange chicken sauce that comes with it is very high in sugar. And then I've been making white rice with it, which just turns into more sugar. I think next time I make it I will separate out my serving and just lightly drizzle some of the orange sauce and keep it to a minimum and not add rice for me.

And if you think my sugar consumption is bad - dh's is beyond bad. He also drinks 3 Mountain Dew sodas a day. He was also drinking sweet tea (premade in a gallon jug) but at least several months ago I tried their sugar free version and he was fine with that, so no added sugar there, at least. And he eats bread daily (an egg on english muffin for breakfast, and a whole grain sandwich for lunch) and sugar snacks. I should probably add up how many grams he gets in a typical day. But, I've mentioned to him many times he has way too much sugar and the detriments to his body and he has no desire to make any changes, so that's on him. I can only try to change myself and if I am successful, maybe some of that change will rub off on him.

So, basically I've gone my first 24 hours without much sugar. There is a little bit of natural sugar in the organic milk I drink, but that's not processed, added sugar and it's an amount that our bodies are supposed to be able to process.

I'm sure at a minimum, the next few days are not going to be enjoyable, at all.

Sunny Saturday

I almost got my work goal finished by the end of yesterday. I just ended up with a couple of other things I had to take care of, but I'll be able to finish it off first thing Monday and get my week started on working on the next month's numbers.

I'm trying to figure out how to transfer dh's pharmacy prescription to our insurance mail order plan. I've spent the last 20 minutes, but I'm not getting anywhere with it. It's through Express Scripts and I have a log in for him, but it doesn't show his medication. I was thinking I'll bet this Express Scripts log in is from an old insurance plan. I logged into our insurance plan and  through that it had an option to sync your prescription info to Express Scripts. I tried that (using his existing log in) and still nothing shows up.  I guess I'll have to call Monday.  I might should have tried to sync it with a whole new email/log in, but when I go back to try that way again, it's already assuming now I want to use that original email/log in. Why it's not syncing, I have no idea. Maybe I'll try it through a different browser and see.....Nope that didn't work either. And verifying the member ID Express Scripts is showing, it is our current insurance ID, so why his prescription isn't showing up, I don't know. My understanding is even though it's being filled by a local pharmacy, it still gets run through Express Scripts for the Rx.  Whatever, I will call Monday. You'd think they'd just make it easy and have a link for "transfer existing prescription".

Amos keeps digging in my big whiskey barrel planters on the front porch (ie using them as his litter box), so I need to figure out something that will keep him out of those! I tried coffee grounds, but that hasn't seemed to work. I also just read that deer repellent might work, so I'm going to spray that this morning after I do my watering. If that doesn't work, I see there is cat repellent spray you can purchase. 

I took two of the steaks we were gifted and have them thawing in the fridge, hopefully thawed enough for dinner tonight. They are pretty thick, it may take awhile to thaw (I took them out of the freezer around dinner time last night). These steaks are from grass fed, free range, and antibiotic free cows.

At least for now, the community seems to have calmed down quite a bit now that the primary election is over. While having opinions and voicing them is a great way for people to get their message out, the amount of rudeness and vitriol from folks in this little community was pretty disgusting. Sadly, we seem to have to go through it every 2 years now. But, there's always a silver lining and out of this we have added some new friendships with some very nice people.

It's another gorgeous day outside. Yesterday got to mid 80's. I think this is likely a lawn mowing day again.  DD and her dh our at a car show today and already messaging us photos. Looks like a beautiful day where they are, as well. They have 2 Mustangs and have put both in the car show.

Beautiful Friday

I see DAN has lowered his price on his house for sale by another $25k. That's twice now he's lowered it in less than a month. He hasn't lowered his lots for sale yet. Those have only been on the market 6 weeks (whereas his house has been over 2 1/2 years).  I still think he probably $100k too high on his house. I did a google search of zillow estimates of houses in his neighborhood. Nothing is as high as he's trying to get. There are 2 homes that are valued at $25k and $50k less than he's asking and they are both almost 2000 square feet bigger than his home! The rest of the homes in his neighborhood are about $150k less than he's asking. Crazy.

Another beautiful blue sky day I am seeing out my office window this morning. And it's Friday!

A rancher friend stopped by yesterday with some very nice steaks from their cattle. So, I think tomorrow night we'll be having some steak for dinner :). He dropped off 2 ribeye and 2 t-bone steaks. Plus we had a nice visit with him. 

This week I had to do my assistants work so that I can get March work finished up and the financial reports created. Hopefully I can have the report done up by the end of today. That's my goal anyway.

Another week passed and I still haven't received the social security payment for my mom. Almost 5 months since she passed. They sure don't make anything easy, do they?  

Back to work and see if I can get my goal accomplished today.

Slow week

I am almost done with the side job's transition to the downgraded (ie cheaper) Quickbooks version. I got a call yesterday from the support person who was doing the file conversion and said he'd have it done by the end of the day. He emailed me a link to upload the converted files and then he called and walked me through it. I have to say this version of Quickbooks, from what I've looked at so far, seems exactly the same, at least for what we need it for. And the file conversion worked. What it didn't work for was the other company file I was also trying to have converted. So, my side job boss/owner was keeping track of the income and expenses for the commercial building they own. I assumed the file I found, on their old server, with that company name was the correct file, but the last time it was updated was Feb 2021 and only has like a couple of transactions entered. So, I'm not sure where side job boss was using/accessing QB for that. She's going to have to figure that one out and find the file. Then we can get that converted for her. I'm just super relieved my part is done and working. And now that the software is just on my computer, I won't ever have to log into their old server again and deal with any of those issues. All the support people I dealt with at Quickbooks/Intuit were awesome and I can't complain one bit about their service for this transition.

We've been seeing lots of magpie birds in our backyard. I don't think I've ever seen them this close by. Only seen them sometimes when we've been out and about. Makes you wonder what's changed to bring them around the house, LOL. When I went out the back door yesterday afternoon to take some bread pieces to my chicken, a magpie had been on the grass just in front of the coop and then flew off. My chicken was standing at the edge inside the coop, like they had been visiting each other. I gave my hen the bread and then dropped about 4 pieces outside on the grass where the magpie had been, thinking maybe it will come back. No....dh's raven was there in seconds. Stuffed all 4 pieces of the bread in his beak and off he went. LOL. 

No clue what my assistant did for the 3 hours he clocked in for yesterday. He messaged me and my boss he was working. Then a short time later messaged me that he was having trouble getting his remote connection to work and had a call into our IT help desk. I then let my boss know this, as well and went on with my day. At the end of the day I check to see if he got the one report done I needed him to and nothing. I could not see that anything got done - so what did he do for 3 hours? He certainly wasn't on the phone with our IT for 3 hours! I let my boss know and she said she was going to call our IT and find out from them what his IT issue is and how long they spent with him on it. My boss just messaged me that IT told her they got a call from him at 10:45 (a half hour after he clocked in to work), but they didn't get back to him until like 2:45 (and he had clocked out at 1:20). So, what the heck did he do for 3 hours? Now she has to contact him and ask him about that. Ridiculous.

I'm working on seeing if I can get my half sister to take this p/t job. My boss is all for it. The only thing that was making my boss leery of it, is having a Canadian employee - we've done that once before and it was very costly, in terms of payroll fee costs. In chatting with my sis, she mentioned she's doing a p/t job right now, as contract labor and a light bulb went off in my head. We could just pay her like that, instead of as an employee and we'd save money and she'd make more money. She and I chatted for awhile on it yesterday and I explained what the job entails and she's pretty interested. We just need to figure out how it works for her, tax wise. She's still a U.S. Citizen, but a Canadian permanent resident. I think we'd have to 1099 her and it's also my understanding that as a US citizen she's supposed to be filing an annual tax return anyway, even if she doesn't make income in the US. The crappy part, if she takes the job, is she'll be paying into US Social Security, but she'll never see that (well, unless she worked for 10 years, LOL). It does sound like she can take a deduction for US taxes paid on her Canadian tax return, so at least she'd be able to recoup some of it, by lowering her Canadian taxes.

This week seems to be going slow. I got up like a half hour early this morning. I was awake so figured I might as well get up. 

We had to check on Mrs. Neighbor yesterday. Mr is gone for the week. Later morning/close to noon their dogs started barking, but one of the dogs was just freaking out, barking and growling (not like him) for like over a half hour and kept standing at the corner of their kennel where the walk thru door to their garage is just on the other side of the fence. Something was really upsetting him. Dh got worried - he didn't now if Mrs was home or not, but what if she was home (by herself) and something happened to her? Maybe the dog was trying to alert. I tried to call their house number, no answer, so I tried her cell and got her voicemail. I left her a message why I was calling. I didn't want her to think we were calling because the dog was barking, I wanted to make sure we were just checking on her to make sure she was ok! She did call me back shortly after and she was in the city, doing some errands. When she got home last evening we were outside watering flowers and she said she thinks the dog was freaking out because a package got left at their front door! LOL. We again told her, we had just wanted to make sure she was ok. 

Looking forward

I had a phone chat with my boss yesterday afternoon. It sounds like the plan is to let the assistant work whatever he can work through the summer (and we still don't know what his plan is for that. He's supposed to let her know next Monday) and start looking for a replacement person that can work like 24 hours per week and be consistent with working this amount of hours every week. Even if we have some overlap between the 2 positions for a bit, that would be ok. His lack of work the past 2 months has now gotten me behind 2 months from where I want to be. Then at the end of summer she will let the assistant go. 

I've been happy and relieved I haven't had any slow internet issues for a couple weeks now. Hoping it stays that way.  

My uncle finally got his inherited IRA money. Well, so he said in a text yesterday. Then he called me and said to get it set up he needed mom's info, date of birth, SS#, address, date of death. So, I just emailed him a copy of her death certificate and my address. I'm assuming this info is so he can get it set up as in inherited IRA with his bank for the tax purposes. It never seems to be over, LOL.

Our state primary election is over. Thankfully that lying, smarmy guy in our district trying to get in, was in last place out of 3 running. Not to mention he's a total bigot, which he was really starting to show his colors on that the last few days. I think my dh had a pretty strong hand in his loss, mostly behind the scenes, but also as a vocal (mostly written) voice. Even our Mr. Neighbor, who's part time job has him out and about seeing people all the time, said he was telling everyone he came across not to vote for this guy. 

It looks like DAN will be burning his huge brush pile today, or soon. He had a water truck delivered later yesterday afternoon and it's parked there. He has no well/water, so hence the need for the water truck. That pile is too huge to try to burn without a water source available. Plus, we've been having lots of strong wind gusts the past several days.  

Mr Amos showed up at the back patio door last evening .....with a dang chipmunk in his mouth! He has never even come close to getting a chipmunk before. It was dead and dh is wondering if Amos found it that way, as it was missing part of it's tail. Anything I've seen Amos catch, that's alive, he will, of course play with it for quite awhile and he wasn't out long enough to even have some play time with his "catch". It was another reminder of why we opted out of having a pet door on the house, LOL.

Dreams and coffee

DD messaged me that she had her first very vivid dream, now that they are sleeping on the grounding mat. She's like me, in that she very rarely remembers her dreams. I told her for me those very vivid dreams lasted about 2 weeks and now they are less vivid and I'm remembering maybe half my dreams now.

Amos was driving me crazy starting around 4am this morning. Up and down. When I got up at 5, to use the bathroom, I booted his orange butt right outside, LOL. I had a good sleep for the next 2 hours until I got up.

I tried about 2/3 regular white chocolate sauce to 1/3 sugar free white chocolate sauce in my coffee this morning. Nope. That sugar free stuff is going in the garbage. It's not even the same color or thickness. When I was trying to make some sugar free vanilla coffee creamer awhile back, I bought some of the Torani sugar free vanilla syrup. The creamer never tasted quite right, and now I'm wondering if it's because of it being sugar free. But, now using the white chocolate sauce and just a little bit of cream, I don't need a vanilla creamer anymore.

I never did hear from my boss about how her meeting with the assistant went. I thought she would at least update me on his schedule - if it's going to stay the same or what. If this is all he's going to be working per week, I'm going to have to start doing at least half of what we've been having him do and there goes my time working on other tasks we're trying to get to.

My side job boss texted me last night that she sent the additional $500 she is paying me, so that was nice to hear. Between that $500 and the almost $400 I won at the raffle, I had a good week of extra money I was not expecting.

It appears tomorrow we start summer weather :)

 

 

 

Well, it's Monday

I'm not feeling getting to work yet this morning. I guess I still have 20 minutes to get my mind right, LOL. DH was up at 6am, so when I got up he told me he already made himself some breakfast, so at least there's that :) Though, since that was so early, what do you want to bet when I go back downstairs to get my breakfast (I usually wait until like 8:30, I have my coffee first) he will want a second breakfast, LOL.

When I ordered the shop stool for dh's birthday gift, last week, it said delivery would be like a day or two prior to his birthday. Well, it's was apparently on the fast boat and is getting delivered today. DD said oh well maybe you can get to it and and hide it before he sees it. Nope, haha. He will know FedEx is here before me, plus there's no way I could go out and get it without him knowing. And most likely the box has the company name on it, so he'll know. I guess he's getting his present several days early.

Dh didn't mow the lawn yesterday and it's not happening today - it's steady rain. Neither of us did much yesterday. I started a book, but even with my new glasses, while it's better, I still have a really hard time reading books. The print is just too small. The book seems good, so far, so I have it in my library e-book queue, to borrow and finish reading it that way, instead. I actually find it better to just take my glasses off and read with the book a little bit closer to my face, but this book is so thick and heavy, I get tired of holding it, haha. 

We still have only seen one person (maybe) come and look at the lots for sale next door. Obviously no one is jumping at the chance to buy them up. When these lots were for sale (as 2 separate lots/listings) back in the summer of 2021, almost all the people that came to look at them (and there were quite a few) were from out of state...back when everyone was looking to move due to Covid. Apparently, that has all died down, eh? 

One more day until we get this awful local politics primary over with. We've got 3 races going on (county commissioner position and a state senator and state legislative rep) and this primary has been extremely ugly in our little county. Even our retired friend, who stops in for visits all the time, mentioned how sick of it all he is and he never talks politics. He had a good "saying" someone told him once. "If you want to talk religion go to church. If you want to talk politics go to hell" LOL.

My boss is having an in person meeting with the assistant later this morning. I have no hope that anything with him will change. It's been a year of this and even my boss said in a message to me on Friday that this is on her - she's given him way too many chances. But, I know she will most likely continue to do so. I have a feeling he is one of those types of personalities (I'm sure there's a name for it) that is great at manipulating people - making them feel sorry for them and doing such a great job convincing that they will change/start doing it right, etc. I'm sure he's going to give her a big story on why he's only been able to work 5-7 hours per week, and "oh, I'm done with finals this week and can start working lots of hours next week!". Mark my words.

A fun Saturday

I didn't get time to post yesterday. We went to a car show in town, that we go to every year. It was super cold out in the morning, but got warmed up to almost 70 for the day. I bought some 50/50 raffle tickets and I won! $383. Heck ya! That was a good investment of $20. The car club uses the money towards scholarships they give local senior kids.

My order of more Torani's white chocolate sauce finally arrived yesterday. I was happy to see the box delivered when we got home and really happy to have a delicious cup of coffee, again this morning. I went straight with all regular sauce this morning, but I will give using half of it and half of the sugar free a try, to see if I can use it up.

I also had ordered this little cheap (I think it was like $4) tool that pulls up cat hair off of furniture/fabric. It works great. I used it on the fabric seat cushion in a rocking chair I have in our bedroom. The cat loves to sleep there and it's always covered in cat hair and while my Shark pet fur attachment works well, this little tool is so much quicker to get it pulled off.

It's supposed to rain again today and tomorrow. Hopefully dh will be able to mow today, it needs it again, already.

I supposed today I will work on some house cleaning. I need to vacuum upstairs and do some dusting everywhere. 

Interesting - we were chatting with a friend yesterday we hadn't seen or talked to in quite awhile. His wife is the one I got the chickens from, 3 years ago. He said just recently 3 of her (6) chickens started acting weird, laying down, and just died. We said the same thing just happened to two of mine! 

I also need to get outside soon and get the flowers watered that won't get the rain coming. The baskets and pots under the front portico, as well as the pots in front of the shop and garage that don't get the rain, due to the roof overhang.

Awhile back we had decided we want to work on keeping some cash on hand, in our safe. When we sold the old safe, for $700 we started with that. DD had just given me 2 $100 bills to chip in on her dad's birthday/fathers day gift and then I have 2 $100 bills from the money I won yesterday, so I'm going to add that to our "emergency" cash stash. The smaller bills from my winnings I'm just keeping in my wallet. They eventually get used for something here and there.

I was going to turn the dishwasher on this morning, before I came upstairs to drink my coffee and look on the internet. I realized I just forgot. I also need to get some english muffins out of the freezer in the garage. I suppose it's time for me to head back downstairs anyway, I need some breakfast.

Cruise savings

I'm not sure if I mentioned it, but I found a way to save another $200 on our cruise, that is coming up in September. Back when we booked it last October, I had to put down $500, the balance due mid June. All of our shore excursions and on ship activities we wanted to do have already been booked and fully paid for. When I logged into my cruise account, to pay the remaining balance I saw a spot to enter a gift card or gift certificate code. Hmmm...wonder if I could find a discounted gift card for Royal Caribbean? Well, I found I could get them 10% off through AARP. I had to pay like $9 for a year AARP membership (and I'm also getting a free gift of a foldable truck organizer caddy type thing), but I was able to buy 4 $500 gift cards for $1800.  There was specific instructions (before ordering) on how they worked/would get applied and my situation fit their conditions/terms.

Then it got scary. I started finding these AARP customer comments that said they purchased the gift cards, but Royal Caribbean wouldn't apply them, said they weren't applicable to their cruise . The instructions had said to email copies of the gift cards (I had e-copies received in emails) to a RCC specific email for gift card redemption and you would hear back from them within 12 days. So, I waited, nervous, day after day. But then this week I got an email back saying they received my gift cards and would be applying them within 10 days. This morning I logged into my account and the gift cards were applied to my balance. Whew! I guess saving the additional $200 was worth the stress of the past week or so ;)

We had frost last night, so I'm glad we put the flowers in the garage and covered up the one's we couldn't move. Hopefully we are done with that nonsense! It is June tomorrow, after all.

Timber!

Last evening, after dinner, we suddenly got some super strong winds for just a couple of minutes. I thought I heard something, but just figured it was the wind rattled something. A little later dh was out on the back patio and realized a tree went down! It was near the property line between us and DAN and fell onto his lot. DH got out there this morning and now has it all cut up (took him all of 10 minutes) and is now getting it all moved into our firewood pile.

I guess DH will just have to have a trespasser today, LOL. It was a dead tree, so at least there's that, and glad it fell that way and not towards our house. Also, we had looked into running our side fence all the way to the top of the bank and that tree would have knocked it down, so now glad we didn't end up fencing there. (the fence guy wanted way too much money for a short section of fencing).

I had made dh's dr appt online and a few hours later someone from their office called me that the dr really didn't have that appt. in June available, and the first opening is August (he's semi retired now, I guess), so I took that appt. for him. Also, when I was getting rescheduled to August, I told the girl he also needed to have a lab test ordered. She tried to tell me, well, he can come in for his appointment and if the doctor needs the test he can put in an order. I said, no. He definitely needs this test, based on his previous history and we want to have the results when we see the doctor, that is part of the reason for the visit, in the first place. So, then she had to transfer me to the nurse, who was completely ok with that and will put in the order with the lab at our local hospital. I also got her to call in a refill on his prescription. I just called the pharmacy in town to make sure they got it and they have it ready to pick up, so I will run in there around lunch time to pick it up.

DH's birthday is coming up, so dd and I are going in together to get him a rolling stool for the shop he's been wanting. They are very expensive, so that's why we decided to join funds and it's also her Father's Day gift, LOL. It's definitely not a cheap Harbor Freight stool (though not knocking HF at all, they have a lot of very good stuff for great prices) and should last him forever.

It was supposed to maybe freeze last night, so we ended up bringing in all the flower baskets and pots we could, into the garage and covered the others. I don't think it quite froze, but when I got up it was 37, so we probably didn't need to go to all that trouble, but like dh said - we spent hundreds on these flowers, lets be safe than sorry. It's also supposed to get down to freezing again tonight, so one more night of it. Good grief - it's almost June!

Slogging through today

I'm not having the best morning, so far. First I had trouble sleeping last night. I woke up with stomach issues. Today the upstairs bathroom, which is at the other end of the house from my office, is feeling far away, LOL.

I'm also waiting for a call from our in-house IT help guy to change a setting for me in a program we use. It somehow changed how I can view pdf's and I can't find where the setting is to change it back. I think he's forgotten about me...

The IRS refund check for my mom, that had my last name spelled wrong, got to my bank yesterday (I had mailed it in) and deposited with no issues. Now I am just waiting on her Social Security payment and then other than filing her fed and state tax returns next year, everything will be done that needs to be done, for now.

We tried the chicken melt sandwiches from Costco for dinner last night. They were ok - nothing great. Probably not really filling enough for a dinner, but will work when we just feel like having a really light dinner. The chicken and cheese was good, but I found the pita type bread a bit chewy. I think tonight we'll give the mini chicken taco's a try.

It's pretty windy out today. My wind chimes are really playing lots of musical notes. Very pretty sound. These Corinthian Bells chimes are still one of my favorite things.

I've made dh an appointment to go get his prostate checked again. It's been 18 months. I've been trying to suggest he go back, but of course he listened to a friend and finally decided he needs to do a follow up. At least he listens to someone, LOL. The soonest appointment with his urologist is June 20, but that's only about 3 weeks, so not bad. I thought his urologist had retired, but apparently he's still working part time and still taking appointments.

I'm working on some retirement/Social Security numbers scenario that is showing to be very eye opening. Almost too good to believe. I'll share the info in another post, once I confirm my spreadsheet calculations are correct.