Just wanted to stop by and wish everyone to have a very happy Thanksgiving weekend. Hope those who celebrate have a good "turkey" day with all the trimmings and those who are on the hunt for good deals - happy hounding on Black Friday. Sadly this year's turkey day for us has been postponed until Saturday as half of our guests are sick with flu. Hope they'll recover enough to be here on Saturday. Otherwise we'll be stuck with 19 lbs bird and tons of trimmings. I'm planing to cook for 8 people so if they don't show up we'll be eating leftovers all next week.
And once again this year no shopping for me on Black Friday or any other sales for that matter. Being still unemployed doesn't allow me much room for other than food and necessities so I'll have to skip all the deals, even though I would have dearly loved to renew my wardrobe or at least buy couple of nice pieces for the holidays. And as some of you might already have heard our bright congress passed a new "extension" for unemployment but forgot to fix the loophole that cancels it out - all extensions expire on December 31st so even if they allowed 14 more weeks we won't be getting that help after all. Oh well. I guess I'm grateful that it lasted as long as it did already but with no prospect of job the outlook for my future is very grim. But I'm keeping my chin up and hope for a miracle anyway. Things happen for a reason and I guess one of them was to get me back to "earth" and downsize and live on only basics once again like we did in Ukraine. Back to old roots sort of. So far I'm still covering all my credit card payments and can buy my food and pay 50% of our mortgage (with the help from my sister of course) so while things are not great they could be worse and I just keep saying it's not the end of the world. I'll be ok.
New house = new set of expenses
OY. That's probably best way to sum-up what I feel when I take a look at our new budget. I had no idea that having a house will be so expensive. Oh I definitely knew there would be higher bill for heating, electricity but it's everything else that we "need" right away. Ok, so some of it was really not a "need" but my DF went ahead and got some things anyway. Like a riding lawnmower and a snow blower and leaf blower.. and ok, some toys for my garden like rake and shovel and fencing materials and yet-to-be-bought wood for my garden boxes. At least I keep saying that they are one-time things and hopefully they'll last long time. And I know we didn't have to spend $$$$ on riding lawn mower - we could have taken cheap push type but with almost a full acre of property it takes him 1.5 hr riding it so with pushing kind it would probably be full day job and neither one of us wanted that. And a leaf blower he got after watching me rake back yard all day to the point that I couldn't lift my arms the next morning just to wake up and see it all covered again with leaves. As for the snow blower it's a toss-up. We hope there won't be any large snow storms this year but at the same time if it come - who wants to spend hours shoveling their driveway so they can get out? Hopefully it will turn out to be a good choice.
But there are also other expenses that I didn't count or didn't think right. There is no more "call your maintenance" when something needs to be fixed - we are the maintenance. Thankfully my DF can do most of the things himself at the house. But it still incoming expense for every little bolt and screw etc. Rusted leaky mailbox - had to buy it and replace old one ourselves so now mail is dry and secure. Part of the porch support gave out - had to get some wood to replace it. Got a fireplace and stocked up on wood but chimney needs to be cleaned as it wasn't used for a long time so need to be sure before using it again. And don't start me on the heating bill.. This is really one time when I seriously miss my 1bedroom apartment. I didn't have to pay for heat - that was part of the complex. And my old $4 electric bills? Forget about it! All appliances here are electric, he likes his PC to be up all the time, he wants to watch his TV when he's at home (don't start on what cable package costs here - he wanted it he gets to pay for it) and so on.
And can someone tell me why are we paying these huge taxes when we get absolutely NO service from the town? I mean if you pay over $9000 in taxes a year you'd expect something in return, right? Like maybe garbage being picked up, or recycling taken out once in couple weeks. Or maybe a local hospital so if we have emergency we can go there. Nope, we get NONE of it. We had to hire our own company to pick up trash and have to drive to the recylcing center to drop off what we want to recycle. Our nearest hospital is 45 minutes away. So much for emergency services. We're paying insane amount for nothing. I guess it's the "privilege" of living here. And we're paying for someone else's kids to go to school and have their sports games on the weekends that clog up roads for "fund raisers" so they can have school dance in the meanwhile. I know they say "it takes a village to raise a kid" but seriously this part of the village is sick of raising someone else's kids. If you choose to have one - then you pay for all their expenses including school and games.
I know it's just frustration in me talking right now and hopefully after everything settles in I'll start to relax a bit more. And it adds up to the frustration that I know I should be able to afford all these bills on my own and not think twice and yet I'm barely able to contribute 1/2 of the bills. I guess I should be thankful that my DF is better set with stable job that covers it all but somehow it's not really helping. I've been independent too long to depend on someone else now. Now I just need to be patient.
But there are also other expenses that I didn't count or didn't think right. There is no more "call your maintenance" when something needs to be fixed - we are the maintenance. Thankfully my DF can do most of the things himself at the house. But it still incoming expense for every little bolt and screw etc. Rusted leaky mailbox - had to buy it and replace old one ourselves so now mail is dry and secure. Part of the porch support gave out - had to get some wood to replace it. Got a fireplace and stocked up on wood but chimney needs to be cleaned as it wasn't used for a long time so need to be sure before using it again. And don't start me on the heating bill.. This is really one time when I seriously miss my 1bedroom apartment. I didn't have to pay for heat - that was part of the complex. And my old $4 electric bills? Forget about it! All appliances here are electric, he likes his PC to be up all the time, he wants to watch his TV when he's at home (don't start on what cable package costs here - he wanted it he gets to pay for it) and so on.
And can someone tell me why are we paying these huge taxes when we get absolutely NO service from the town? I mean if you pay over $9000 in taxes a year you'd expect something in return, right? Like maybe garbage being picked up, or recycling taken out once in couple weeks. Or maybe a local hospital so if we have emergency we can go there. Nope, we get NONE of it. We had to hire our own company to pick up trash and have to drive to the recylcing center to drop off what we want to recycle. Our nearest hospital is 45 minutes away. So much for emergency services. We're paying insane amount for nothing. I guess it's the "privilege" of living here. And we're paying for someone else's kids to go to school and have their sports games on the weekends that clog up roads for "fund raisers" so they can have school dance in the meanwhile. I know they say "it takes a village to raise a kid" but seriously this part of the village is sick of raising someone else's kids. If you choose to have one - then you pay for all their expenses including school and games.
I know it's just frustration in me talking right now and hopefully after everything settles in I'll start to relax a bit more. And it adds up to the frustration that I know I should be able to afford all these bills on my own and not think twice and yet I'm barely able to contribute 1/2 of the bills. I guess I should be thankful that my DF is better set with stable job that covers it all but somehow it's not really helping. I've been independent too long to depend on someone else now. Now I just need to be patient.
No more CVS trips
Or to be more precise no more going down the street anytime I want something from CVS. In the new area where we moved the closest CVS is 35 min away. Not a trip I'd take likely to pick up a $1.99 freebie. Their sales would have to be spectacular for me to get up and drive all the way to CVS. Otherwise it just doesn't make sense when you calculate mileage/gas and time it takes for each trip. Unfortunately there is no Walgreens in this area either. There is however RiteAid but I don't really follow their sales so it's not much help. Maybe later I'll be more attentive to what they have but their sale system leaves alot to be desired. It's not like CVS or Walgreens where you can get rebates in your hands in form of ECB's or RR right away. Maybe it's a good thing because I really needed to re-evaluate what I'm getting and where. For now ShopRite is my nearest store. And I really hope they'll have good holiday sales soon because I'm running on empty here and don't want to keep buying things at their full price.
Experiment Update
Just wanted to post an updated picture of my experiment with Maitake.
As you can see it's definitely getting bigger and it looks like I'll have at least 3 separate entities when it's fully grown. The ridges are more pronounced and I can't wait to see "leaves" when they start develop.
Snow in October? Seriously?
For the past couple of days I've been trying to break ground on my new garden area. Today my future SIL came over to help out. We expected some rain today and cold temperatures but it didn't stop her. I think it was just an excuse to get away from twins for half a day :o) but what we didn't expect was to work half a day in the middle of a snow storm. It started in the morning and didn't let up all day.
And as you can see it actually started to stick to the ground. Which would have been just fine if it was Nov/December. But in OCTOBER? Seriously??
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