The Daily Rave

[iris lilies]

Me too… I used to clean for 30 minutes to 1 hour and read for 30 minutes as a reward. I set a timer. It worked well. Lately there has been too little time for reading though.

Not sure if this is a rave or a rant… I have 9 things coming next week! I have been spending money hand over fist trying to get our place completely fixed and decorated. My goal is to have everything done by the end of the month. Everyone is telling me there is plenty of time. I hate shopping and just want it over with. Will call next week to see if I can get a few rooms painted. We were going to do it ourselves but decided to make it our anniversary present. I will be so happy to have everything done and get our lives back to some semblance of normal. It bothers me to have disarray.

good for you in hiring it done. At this stage in life if we have the cash, hire it done! That’s my motto.

[nswef]

IL and frugal one, I too am in the "if I can afford it, I'll hire it out to be done." Last week our shed was painted in 3 hours by two painters!!!! I drank coffee and sat on the porch with my friend!!! It's hard to get the husband on board sometimes. But, what a great feeling to have that job DONE! Also had a tree trimmed. And we're getting new windows and storm doors.

[Klunick]

Got a good jump on my Christmas shopping. Husband is done unless he comes up with more suggestions. Several things bought for one son. One thing about for my mom. Youngest son always waits until the last minute to give me suggestions.

[iris lilies]

IL and frugal one, I too am in the "if I can afford it, I'll hire it out to be done." Last week our shed was painted in 3 hours by two painters!!!! I drank coffee and sat on the porch with my friend!!! It's hard to get the husband on board sometimes. But, what a great feeling to have that job DONE! Also had a tree trimmed. And we're getting new windows and storm doors.

swap out “I drank coffee and sat on the porch “with “I drank wine and sat on our deck “and yes, that is now my dream. Sit and watch the little worker bees do the work.

I am there. DH is not there yet


But we are limited of course by the unavailability of workers to do this work.

[nswef]

Yes, IL it is always hard to find someone. We were lucky with the painter- he is the retired custodian from the elem. school where I substituted and then volunteered after I retired. He retired a few years ago and we saw him doing painting around our little town. He had also plowed our driveway once. So I called him and he came fast! So now I need to see what else he does. We have figured out how to vaccuum the gutters without a ladder, so that's been done by us. There are many other jobs...and figuring out who to call is tricky!

[catherine]

But we are limited of course by the unavailability of workers to do this work.

That's our dilemma. DH swore he would never do his own plumbing, but he has had to on occasion. I won't let him do his own electrical work, so we ask a retired master electrician how to do it, and then he helps us out with small things. Last time I asked a local electrician to add a light switch to our pantry, he told me, "You don't want to do that. This isn't a real house. This is just a cabin." People up here pick and choose their jobs, and they never choose my little requests.

[iris lilies]

That's our dilemma. DH swore he would never do his own plumbing, but he has had to on occasion. I won't let him do his own electrical work, so we ask a retired master electrician how to do it, and then he helps us out with small things. Last time I asked a local electrician to add a light switch to our pantry, he told me, "You don't want to do that. This isn't a real house. This is just a cabin." People up here pick and choose their jobs, and they never choose my little requests.

That’s just it—I could find someone to paint my entire house. I can’t find someone to paint a closet. They don’t take the small jobs.

But those small jobs are what husbands are for. Unfortunately, my nearly 70 year old husband also slaves away at the BIG jobs.

[SiouzQ.]

Got my 2008 Suburu Forester (159,200 miles) sold today to a local friend. I think I was a little over-ambitious on the price, which started out at $5500. In my mind I knew I would never get the $5500 but was really wanting to get at least $5000. Then I lowered my expectations to $4800. Three weeks of dealing with various locals and people on Facebook Marketplace (trying to sell a car that way was a total dud - so many people asked if it was still available, I'd say yes, and then I'd never hear from them). Then I had a young local woman really interested in it for her first car and you could tell her parents were teaching her how to buy a used car. She definitely did her due diligence - I let her take it to their family mechanic in Santa Fe yesterday in which he gave her a HUGE laundry list of what was wrong with it to use as leverage on the price. I think she basically subtracted the total cost of the struts (over $2000 for those alone, plus another couple thousand for all the other things he deemed needed fixing) that he said needed replacing immediately (which I didn't quite agree with, as my mechanic had checked it out recently and never said boo about them). She only offered me $2800 for a car that was perfectly drivable for quite awhile. I told her that someone else had offered me $4000 for it the day before so that was that.

Finding an immediately drivable decent used car these days for under $5000 is pretty rare now. I am going to put $2000 in my emergency cash stash. Then I gave $1000 to my husband for my share of some home repairs we recently got done, and the final $1000 is going to go for a new laptop I need for business purposes and then I'll put what is left in my money market account to pay down bills.

I needed to get it sold by next week or else I would have had to renew the registration for it.

[Tybee]

Wow, I am impressed; that could be in the frugal thread, Sioux!
I need to get my car ready for winter and then tuck it away in the barn as yesterday we had snowflakes.

[iris lilies]

We saw Craig Ferguson in his stand up act last night. That guy is very good. His show was 1.5 hours of him talking. No opener, just Craig. He is quite physical in his comedy, moving around dancing, singing, waving his hands, kicking his legs.This is quite a change from all the other comics I watch who are purely “stand up” (or perch on a stool ala Chappelle)
and talk.

He opened his show with the recorded song “Everybody Dance Now!” and he ran out on stage playing bagpipes to that tune. Hilarious!