September 20-21

Monday, September 20

My workers returned today, early!  They got almost the whole east side of the house sided.  It clouded up and started to sprinkle around noon, and I watched very dark, stormy looking clouds building up in the west for about two hours before it started to thunder.  They packed up and pulled out minutes before the deluge began.  I was a little disappointed that there was not much thunder and lightning once the storm actually hit as I like a good thunderstorm.  Oh, well.

Just reading about the Fly Lady program must have wriggled a little motivation into my brain.  I cleaned out two medium sized boxes of stuff in my bedroom this morning, and when I was up and about, I started going through the crap in my medicine cabinet.  I had some ancient cough syrup and vitamins in there which are now in the garbage.  I got about half of the medicine cabinet cleaned out.  I couldn’t see any sense in keeping 10 year old vitamins and cough syrup, and I am sure no one else would want that old crap either.

In the afternoon, I had a very long conversation with Joel from PennyMac Mortgage.  I have decided to go with a refinance rather than a home equity loan as it will make a significant difference in my finances.  Joel was a trooper and walked me through the whole process, all done online.  The advantages to the refinance are as follows:

·       My interest rate will drop almost 2%

·       The mortgage insurance ($100 a month) which I had to take out to get the loan due to having to sell my old house on a short sale will no longer be necessary.

·       The (approximately) $68,000 I still owe on the house combined with  the $25,000 I am borrowing for this home improvement will be rolled together into one loan, and my monthly payment will actually DROP.  Currently, my house payment is around $730 a month.  When the refinance is complete, it will drop to $679.  I can pay more if I want to.

·       The payment will continue to be deducted directly from my checking account, so I won’t have to worry about getting distracted and making a payment late or waste money on stamps.

And, just as an aside, I discovered that my current credit rating is 740, which is pretty good, considering it was completely in the toilet ten years ago.

Even my mother had to admit that I am doing very well right now. 

It almost makes me paranoid for things to be going this well.  I keep waiting for something dreadful to happen to keep me humble. 

I ate the bowl of cabbage/vegetable soup that Tammy brought me on Saturday.  It had a lot of vegetables in it, including okra.  I am normally not a fan of okra, but in this soup, it was pretty good.  I was very hungry, and it was easy to warm the bowl of soup up in the microwave.  I really wasn’t expecting to like it, but it was much better than I expected.

I watched some random stuff on TV in the evening.  Nothing so impressive that it “stuck.” I did watch Mr. Brooks with Kevin Costner, which was about a serial killer who did not really want to kill people, but he was “addicted” to it.  And then he discovers that his daughter has inherited his addiction as well.

Personally, I cannot relate to such an addiction.  Even if a person only killed the worst kind of assholes alive, I don’t think I would be able to do it.  At their first sign of fear, I wouldn’t be able to continue.  I suppose if I caught them in the act of raping a two year old or bludgeoning an old lady, the fury of adrenalin might kick in and make it possible, but ugh.  I’d probably puke my DNA all over the scene of the crime as soon as the adrenaline wore off.

I suppose actual serial killers get off on the feeling of absolute power over their victims.  Yuck.  Never a fan of absolute power.  I have seen too much abuse come out of people who worship power.  Assholes.

I think Dexter had the right idea—I never watched the show, but I heard enough about it to get the idea.  Dexter was a talented serial killer, but he only killed other serial killers.  So he had a “moral compass” so to speak.  At least he performed a public service.

Well, that’s enough on that topic. 

 

Tuesday, September 21

Well, I did not have to wait long for bad karma to balance the emotional high I was on yesterday. 

I got up early this morning as the Culligan man was scheduled to come today.  I wanted to be sure he checked the salt in my water softener and lifted the five gallon water jug onto my water dispenser as it is very heavy and almost impossible for me to do it myself.  I can do it, but it practically kills me to do so.

I went into the breezeway to open the door.  Of course, I never wear shoes unless I am leaving the house, so I was just in stocking feet.  I have a cute little cat rug in front of the breezeway door.  I stepped on  that, and was instantly grossed out as it was soaking wet.  The water was very cold.

My first thought was that Peaches had peed on the rug.  She never does that—puking is her naughtiness of choice—but that was my first thought.  Then I realized that there was far too much wet on that rug for simple cat pee.  She’d have had to pee three times her weight to create this level of wetness. 

We did have a very heavy rainfall for quite some time yesterday, so I started looking around to see if the roof had leaked or if it had somehow come through the screen door.  I did not see any evidence of anything like that, so I started cleaning Peaches’ litterboxes. 

The Culligan man came then, and I advised him to be careful not to slip as there was water on the rug.  As he headed to the basement to check the salt, he noticed the upright freezer door was not tightly closed.  Now, the last time I had opened the freezer door was when the Schwan’s man made a delivery on Friday.  I always check to be sure the door is tightly closed after putting stuff away.  No one else has been in the house who would have messed around with the freezer.

The only thing I can figure is that the men working have been hammering on the sides of the house so hard that dolls have been toppling off their shelves and pictures have been bouncing off the walls.  On Monday I heard a horrendous crash in the kitchen.  Upon investigating, I discovered that my metal cookie sheets which had been stacked on the dish drainer had fallen over and ended up on the floor.

So, the only thing I can think of is that the constant heavy vibrations caused one of my packages of frozen foods to tumble inside the freezer and hit the door hard enough to push the door ajar.  There was a large package of squash down at the bottom of the freezer which fell out when I opened the door.  Now, imagine an upright freezer packed so full that you could not squeeze another popsicle in there.  All the ice cream was soup.  I had a lot more ice cream in there than I thought I had.  All the vegetables were still cold to the touch, but all were thawed out completely. 

I felt my heart just sink.  Most of that stuff is going to have to be thrown away. Lily had called, so I told her about it.  I thought maybe I could offer the Stitt kids some money to carry the ruined food to the big dumpster that the workers have sitting on my yard to put all the old siding and other scraps into.  But I said I had to call Arlen, the contractor, to make sure he was okay with that. 

Well, long story short, the workers were afraid it would stink up the whole neighborhood. I was worried it would attract racoons and other critters.  Arlen said I should just refreeze everything and then, when they were done with the dumpster and ready to have it hauled away, we could dump the rotten stuff in it.

Lily had asked her friend Ed to come and help, but the decision had been made not to haul the stuff today.  I had already filled a black garbage bag with wet, ruined stuff—mostly ice cream boxes and fish, so Ed carried that out and put it in my garbage bin. 

I had tons of cardboard broken up and ready to recycle and had been sending out what would fit in my recycling bin every other week, so I asked if they’d be willing to load all of it into my car and take it to the recycling collection place.  So, he loaded it into my car and they went off to dump it.  I told them right where the recycling place was, but (SIGH) they saw a dumpster filled with cardboard between the bank and the fire department building, so they assumed it was the place, and dumped it all there.

I just hope no one saw them do it and took down the license plate number of my car.  Also, much of the cardboard was from Amazon and Etsy and had my address on it.  So, if there are repercussions, they will come directly back to me.

On a more positive note, Ed said he would be happy to come back and assemble my new desk chair and shower chair.  The desk chair is unbelievably heavy.  It was made for extra heavy users—up to like 550 lbs!  Way heavier than me, but nice to have something sturdy.  The shower chair is just awkward.

I was pretty stressed out in the beginning, but I felt much better once all that stuff was dealt with.

The workers were able to come around the north side of the house and practically finished the front of the garage.  The UPS guy delivered a couple of packages for me, and told me how much he liked the new siding.  He said it looked “classy.”  He is a nice guy.  I was happy to find that the delivery was the 2 boxes of Temptations for Peach—a very timely delivery as she had eaten the last of her Temptations treats yesterday.  She sure chowed them down when I put a few in her dish, the little piglet.  The small squeegee I bought to clean the walls of the shower and the furniture polish wipes I ordered also came.  I am trying to get the supplies I need to get this house back under control here.  I thought having furniture polish wipes would be a good thing for a quick sprucing up of the house between major cleanings.

I want to get some Windex wipes too, since one of Peaches’ favorite spots to puke is on the glass top coffee table.  I am sure I will be writing obsessively about my attempt to get back the control over my house, so I apologize in advance.

I watched some old cowboy movie with Jimmy Stewart and Audie Murphy as brothers on opposite sides of the law.  I don’t remember the name of the movie—but they both looked so young!

I made eggs, toast, and sausage links for supper.  Then I had the most delicious pear I have eaten in some time for dessert.  It was perfect in every way.  I have four more just like it waiting to be eaten. I hope they do not get overripe before I eat them.  They were as green as grass on Friday when they arrived with the grocery order. 

Not much else to report.  Except that Peaches just LOVED Ed. She made over him like he was her long lost sugar daddy, pawing his legs, rubbing her face against his hands, and wrapping her tail around his legs.  She did hiss at him when he tried to pick her up though.  She found that a bit forward for someone she had just met, I suspect.  Silly kitty.