Tuesday/Wednesday Updates
Apr. 26th, 2007 09:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chochiyo_samaTuesday
Well,
I managed to write the letter of recommendation for Laurie (our special ed teacher who is hoping to get a job in an autistic program this summer)--and it was a darn good one, if I do say so myself.
I called the credit union about consolidating my debt and lowering my interest rates. The best bet for me would be a Home Improvement Loan because that would be only 9.24% interest and the monthly payment would be only $175 over ten years. I could certainly double or triple that payment since now the only payments I have are my regular bills (phone, electricity, gas, house payment). The car is paid off. Yay. There is no penalty for an early pay off, so I could potential save myself hundreds of dollars of interest.
However, I need an appraisal of my house--and I don't think I have enough equity in my house to get the money I need to pay off my credit card debt. The county is charging me taxes on a $66,000 home, and I owe $58,000 on it. Give or take a couple of bucks.
The other possibility is the Personal Loan--at 12.64% (fixed), I would pay $245/month for seven years. Again, I could pay more than this--I'm thinking I could pay like $500/month on either loan, whacking it down a little faster. There is no penalty for early pay off on this one either.
Shawn (the woman I spoke to at the credit union) said that They could do part of it as home improvement and part of it as signature, if I wanted. That would be okay, I guess, except that I'd have two payments to make instead of one. I think what I would do in this case is make extra payments on the personal loan till it was paid off and just pay the minimum on the home improvement one, since that one is tax deductable and the personal one isn't.
I'd love it if I could get the full amount in home improvement. I suspect I could be debt free in 3 years. Maybe less, if I keep getting raises.
I cleaned my bathroom thoroughly on Tuesday night--I even scrubbed some marks off the wall! I should take down the curtains and the shower curtains and wash them too--but--eh. Don't feel like it. Washing curtains is more of a summer job.
I checked my messages on Tuesday night--and as usual found the obligatory 4 or 5 messages from the stalker--all purporting to "have a question"--all lame excuses to call and bug the shit out of me. And I also had one from the Furniture Superstore, saying they wanted to deliver my new sofa on Wednesday at noonish. This could not happen, since I have my Wednesday meetings at school, and on of the things that really bugs Jay is when teachers take the Wednesday afternoons off for stuff like that--since we set aside these meeting times specifically for communicating with each other about the kids.
So, I called them up and told them that it would not be possible for me to be there. So they are going to deliver the sofa on Monday between 9 and 11--so I have to see if Jim will go to my house and hang out there to accept delivery. I'm sure he will.
This also means that I have to clean up my living room very good so that the sofa has a place to be once they deliver it.
I also had a message from the clinic from Sonia--who is Dr. W's nurse. Those messages always give me a little chill--I figured it was about the blood tests, and it was. My blood sugar was a little elevated--but still within the acceptable range. My tryglycerides, however had gone up like 50 points (or whatever those things are). I figured it would be worse than it was, since I have been eating sugar like it has been going out of style, and I have been eating hardly any fruits and vegetables at all, and I have been too lazy to cook, which means I have been eating sliders at McDonalds waaaaaay too often.
So, obviously, this means I need to shape up and start eating better again. And I need to start testing my blood every day again too. I've only been focused on doing better since Monday--and already my blood sugar has dropped significantly.
I seriously need a really grumpy NANNY to take care of me.
haha
Wednesday
I didn't really get much done at school on Wednesday--it was a short day--we finished watching Disney Cinderella. Now I have all their "viewing guides" to correct. Fortunately, they are not hard to do and they do not take very long. However, I need to get at them and get them done today.
We had our meeting--no bad things were said about any of my homeroom kids, so that was good.
After the meeting, I left school a little early and went to the theater where I saw In the Land of Women. I love Adam Brody--but the movie was not as fabulous as I had anticipated. His character was good. I had a hard time visualizing him as the boyfriend of a supermodel though--he is just too much a geek. And why did they choose to have him be a writer of soft core pornography? Yuck.
Olympia Dukakis was great as his gloomy, death-obsessed grandmother. And Meg Ryan was perky and appealing as the cheated-on housewife and mom next door who went through breast cancer while he was staying with his grandmother.
The kid from Napolean Dynamite (can't think of his name at the moment) had a bit part. I love that guy too. I wish there'd been more interaction between the two nerds.
Anyhow.
When that was over, I went home and made supper. It was another one of those very bizarre suppers--hot dogs, one bun, some fat free pork and beans, potato salad, and cooked beets. For a beverage--milk. For dessert--cantaloupe. Yes, a very odd combination.
It's sort of a new "rule" I've made for myself that I MUST make the bed in the morning and I MUST do the dishes before I go to bed at night. They say if you do something for 21 consecutive days, it becomes a habit. Having those two things always done would help me to feel a lot better about my house. Like my "rule" about getting the mail every other day makes me feel a lot more secure about my finances. And keeps my post office phobia from taking me over.
Another "rule" is that I MUST spend 30 minutes cleaning my house after school (before or after supper) before I am allowed to turn on the computer. Thirty minutes may not seem like a lot of time, but it's kind of amazing how much you can get done in that amount of time.
I know it is kind of lame--but I bought a timer at Big Lots and I actually set it for 30 minutes. Sometimes I set it for 60 minutes, with the understanding that I CAN stop after 30 if I want to.
Yesterday, I HAD planned to clean the living room and dining room--but when it came down to it--I didn't feel like it, so I did my bedroom instead. I worked for 45 minutes on it before the phone rang and it was my friend Chrissie having a crisis. So, I put on my head set and cleaned out my main drawer while trying to calm and encourage her.
That took about an hour--then I was so tired. I checked my email, looked at one of the forums I follow, and went to sleep. I didn't even post on the forum.
That was my Tuesday and my Wednesday.
Well,
I managed to write the letter of recommendation for Laurie (our special ed teacher who is hoping to get a job in an autistic program this summer)--and it was a darn good one, if I do say so myself.
I called the credit union about consolidating my debt and lowering my interest rates. The best bet for me would be a Home Improvement Loan because that would be only 9.24% interest and the monthly payment would be only $175 over ten years. I could certainly double or triple that payment since now the only payments I have are my regular bills (phone, electricity, gas, house payment). The car is paid off. Yay. There is no penalty for an early pay off, so I could potential save myself hundreds of dollars of interest.
However, I need an appraisal of my house--and I don't think I have enough equity in my house to get the money I need to pay off my credit card debt. The county is charging me taxes on a $66,000 home, and I owe $58,000 on it. Give or take a couple of bucks.
The other possibility is the Personal Loan--at 12.64% (fixed), I would pay $245/month for seven years. Again, I could pay more than this--I'm thinking I could pay like $500/month on either loan, whacking it down a little faster. There is no penalty for early pay off on this one either.
Shawn (the woman I spoke to at the credit union) said that They could do part of it as home improvement and part of it as signature, if I wanted. That would be okay, I guess, except that I'd have two payments to make instead of one. I think what I would do in this case is make extra payments on the personal loan till it was paid off and just pay the minimum on the home improvement one, since that one is tax deductable and the personal one isn't.
I'd love it if I could get the full amount in home improvement. I suspect I could be debt free in 3 years. Maybe less, if I keep getting raises.
I cleaned my bathroom thoroughly on Tuesday night--I even scrubbed some marks off the wall! I should take down the curtains and the shower curtains and wash them too--but--eh. Don't feel like it. Washing curtains is more of a summer job.
I checked my messages on Tuesday night--and as usual found the obligatory 4 or 5 messages from the stalker--all purporting to "have a question"--all lame excuses to call and bug the shit out of me. And I also had one from the Furniture Superstore, saying they wanted to deliver my new sofa on Wednesday at noonish. This could not happen, since I have my Wednesday meetings at school, and on of the things that really bugs Jay is when teachers take the Wednesday afternoons off for stuff like that--since we set aside these meeting times specifically for communicating with each other about the kids.
So, I called them up and told them that it would not be possible for me to be there. So they are going to deliver the sofa on Monday between 9 and 11--so I have to see if Jim will go to my house and hang out there to accept delivery. I'm sure he will.
This also means that I have to clean up my living room very good so that the sofa has a place to be once they deliver it.
I also had a message from the clinic from Sonia--who is Dr. W's nurse. Those messages always give me a little chill--I figured it was about the blood tests, and it was. My blood sugar was a little elevated--but still within the acceptable range. My tryglycerides, however had gone up like 50 points (or whatever those things are). I figured it would be worse than it was, since I have been eating sugar like it has been going out of style, and I have been eating hardly any fruits and vegetables at all, and I have been too lazy to cook, which means I have been eating sliders at McDonalds waaaaaay too often.
So, obviously, this means I need to shape up and start eating better again. And I need to start testing my blood every day again too. I've only been focused on doing better since Monday--and already my blood sugar has dropped significantly.
I seriously need a really grumpy NANNY to take care of me.
haha
Wednesday
I didn't really get much done at school on Wednesday--it was a short day--we finished watching Disney Cinderella. Now I have all their "viewing guides" to correct. Fortunately, they are not hard to do and they do not take very long. However, I need to get at them and get them done today.
We had our meeting--no bad things were said about any of my homeroom kids, so that was good.
After the meeting, I left school a little early and went to the theater where I saw In the Land of Women. I love Adam Brody--but the movie was not as fabulous as I had anticipated. His character was good. I had a hard time visualizing him as the boyfriend of a supermodel though--he is just too much a geek. And why did they choose to have him be a writer of soft core pornography? Yuck.
Olympia Dukakis was great as his gloomy, death-obsessed grandmother. And Meg Ryan was perky and appealing as the cheated-on housewife and mom next door who went through breast cancer while he was staying with his grandmother.
The kid from Napolean Dynamite (can't think of his name at the moment) had a bit part. I love that guy too. I wish there'd been more interaction between the two nerds.
Anyhow.
When that was over, I went home and made supper. It was another one of those very bizarre suppers--hot dogs, one bun, some fat free pork and beans, potato salad, and cooked beets. For a beverage--milk. For dessert--cantaloupe. Yes, a very odd combination.
It's sort of a new "rule" I've made for myself that I MUST make the bed in the morning and I MUST do the dishes before I go to bed at night. They say if you do something for 21 consecutive days, it becomes a habit. Having those two things always done would help me to feel a lot better about my house. Like my "rule" about getting the mail every other day makes me feel a lot more secure about my finances. And keeps my post office phobia from taking me over.
Another "rule" is that I MUST spend 30 minutes cleaning my house after school (before or after supper) before I am allowed to turn on the computer. Thirty minutes may not seem like a lot of time, but it's kind of amazing how much you can get done in that amount of time.
I know it is kind of lame--but I bought a timer at Big Lots and I actually set it for 30 minutes. Sometimes I set it for 60 minutes, with the understanding that I CAN stop after 30 if I want to.
Yesterday, I HAD planned to clean the living room and dining room--but when it came down to it--I didn't feel like it, so I did my bedroom instead. I worked for 45 minutes on it before the phone rang and it was my friend Chrissie having a crisis. So, I put on my head set and cleaned out my main drawer while trying to calm and encourage her.
That took about an hour--then I was so tired. I checked my email, looked at one of the forums I follow, and went to sleep. I didn't even post on the forum.
That was my Tuesday and my Wednesday.
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no subject
Date: 2007-04-26 07:24 pm (UTC)It takes the minor decision-making out of life. . . and any stress out of my life is a good thing.
I don't think I'll ever be "not crazy," but I know I can minimize the impact it has on my life.
Nine weeks.
Date: 2007-04-26 11:58 pm (UTC)Get your house appraised. Just because that's what you're paying taxes on doesn't mean that's what it's worth. If it appraises lower, you can petition to have your taxes lowered. If it appraises higher, good deal. But don't borrow beyond 90% of the worth of your home. So if you owe 85% of it's worth, you can only borrow 5%. When I refinanced I didn't want to go beyond 80%, just in case the market dropped. Like now. Not a good time for a loan. I want to get a home equity loan for the same reasons you do...pay off the higher interest on the credit cards AND I want to do home improvments. But with the market so crummy I don't know if I can. I want to put up Photovoltaic panels. That's about $15,000-$30,000. I also want to redo the driveway and side pathway. Maybe...$7,000-$10,000. Have you peed your pants yet? Yep, it's a lot of money. But I've done well. Everything I've done to my house has paid me back and then some. I bought at $80,000. I've done at least that much in improvements. But the house last appraised at $465,000. So it's appreciated nicely. My house it over 80 years old, but the appraisals always say it's so well-maintained that it's the equivalent of a 30 year old home. Considering how poorly some of those homes were built, I think it's better than a 30 year old home.
Please post pictures of new couch. Can't wait to see.
I don't make rules for myself. They just drive me crazy and add to my stress. I have a few deadlines, but who doesn't. We all have to pay taxes and car registration. I have another paper due to my masters class this Friday. But I make the bed when I feel like it. And I use paper plates and plastic utensils when I don't feel like doing the dishes.