Sunday Morning Coming Down

 Ok, I'm not really coming down from anything, just heard the Johnny Cash version of this song and decided to use it for a title.

Yesterday I went to my mother's house. Quite the adventure. First off, I had let my oldest sister know that if mom had any running around or errands to do that she needed to have them done because I would be driving the truck and little old ladies shouldn't be trying to climb in and out of trucks. So sister #3 said she would drive her  car to mom's and if we needed to go anywhere then I could use her car to drive them around. First I stopped on the way and picked up youngest son and then we went to my mother's house.  Sister #3 text'd about 10 minutes before we arrived wanting to know where we were because she was already at my mom's house and couldn't get out of her car without help. She uses a walker and her walker was in the back of her car. This was her first time driving in almost 2 years. So we hurried up a little because if my mother saw her out in her car she would be trying to help her. So we sat around the kitchen table listening to mom talk about all the same stuff she always talks about. Then she got out 2 of her prescription bottles that she wanted refilled. So I called the automated system to have them refilled. But almost everytime I needed to answer a question my mom would start talking in the background and the recording would say "sorry, I don't understand your response". Finally made it almost to the end and my mom said something that made the system switch me to live person. Eventually got everything right and now my sister #2 can pick up the prescriptions this week as they are being filled in her town. During the conversation with my sister and mom my sister told us how she got up one night at 3:45 to go to the bathroom and she fell asleep sitting on the commode and when she woke up there was daylight coming through the window.

So then we went to watch cats and dogs on YouTube. My sister kept nodding off and on. Then we decided to go outside and pick up pecans. But first sister needed to go pee. So she went in the bathroom and after about 10 minutes she was still in there so I hollered and asked her if she was all right. She answered immediately and said everything is fine. Another 10 minutes goes by. I ask her again and tell her that her mother needs to go pee(it's a 1 bathroom house). She says she'll be out in a minute. Another 10 minutes. I knew she was falling asleep. So son and I decide to move the furniture around in Mom's room as it is beside the bathroom and hopefully the noise would keep her awake enough to get up and come out. So after we are done I holler at her again and she replies that she is fine. I don't think she realized how much time has gone by. Me and son and Mom go sit in the living room and I ask mom how bad did she need to go. She said that she had already gone, she had peed in a bucket while we were moving furniture. OK. So son and I go out to pick up pecans. He goes inside after a little bit to check on his grandma. My sister was still in the bathroom. So I decide to go in and check on her. I peek in and she is sitting on the commode with her head on her walker sleeping. I see she is breathing so I snuck back out. Send a text to my other 2 sisters to ask them if I should go in and wake her up or if that would be too undignified and should we call her hubby. (He was having a guys day and earlier sleepy sister had told me that he would be drinking-he doesn't get a lot of time for himself between taking care of my sister, his mom and his own health issues). So sister#2 got in contact with him and he said that my son could drive her home in the car(my son doesn't have a license) and I would follow them. So I decide to take the plunge and I go in the bathroom and wake her up and she is really out of it. That bathroom was so hot and her face was flushed. So I get her a couple of wet washcloths and told her I would be outside of the bathroom and to holler if she needed help. She needed a change of pants so my mom got her something to wear. I went in and helped her some more and she said that she could take care of it herself. So I once again wait outside the bathroom and soon enough I hear a thunk and she calls for me. So back in I go and help this half naked girl up and tell her that I am not leaving until she is put together and back on the couch. So eventually she got back out to the living room and I get everyone some lasagna that I had put in the oven earlier(I don't remember the brand name but that lasagna was very bland).  Sis keeps drifting off but is looking better so we decide it is time to go. My sister said that she must have taken her pain medicine too early and then later she realized that she had also put on a new pain patch without taking off the old one-this could have been so much worse. In retrospect, I should have went in and woke her up earlier instead of worrying about trying to preserve her dignity. She was in the bathroom for not quite 2 hours. She has her pain pills, the patches and a tens unit and still has pain spasms. 

So the son came home with me. He will be staying here for a little while to help with the log splitting and some other stuff. We are getting trees cut down starting on Wednesday, but they won't be able to start log splitting while the tree people are working. 

The sitting room project--this is the room where the hubs hangs out. It had old brown utilitarian carpet in it. The furniture was a sectional that we got third handfrom some neighbors in the old neighborhood. So we had it for about 10 years ourselves and it had at least 2 previous owners. It had rips and was very worn.  The only other furniture was a rocking chair and a cabinet that holds his sons ashes and some other treasures.  We are using the furniture from the living room in here now but it is too big. We were going to replace livingroom furniture. We have a new plan now.A few months ago I had painted the window frames and window latches and replaced the shades. This room is also open to a hallway. So here is what we have done in this room:

*removed heating registers from the old steam boiler that has been replaced. Repaired holes.

*covered up small sections of wall that previously had carpet covering. I will show pictures if I can

*removed old thermostat from old boiler system, repaired hole

*changed electric plug in covers X5

*in hallway, removed old doorbell housing that no longer worked, still need to repair hole from that

*in hallway, replaced 2 of 3 light switches with push switches, did not do 3rd one as that is connected to                another switch and the replacement switch did not match the old switch. Will put this on list for an                  electrician to do. Have not replaced covers as it is a 3 hole and only 2 have been switched.

*in hallway, painted 3 door frames and spray painted closet door hinges to brushed nickel(replacement                   hinges were $6 each, so this saved $18 minus cost of a little spray paint. The paint is the same I used             to paint the window latches.  Best part is, you can't tell they have been painted and look much better             than what was there.

*in hallway, installed baseboard

*replaced nasty carpet with new carpet and a high quality pad

*installed baseboards . 2 of the walls had had no baseboards as they had the heat registers mounted on                  them  

*painted walls

*used cord covers to hide the cords from the tv

So I selected a gray paint for the sitting room and hallway. My oldest son told me that was a bad idea as that would be very depressing. I told him that the dining room and hallway are supposed to be gray even though they look a little bit blue. He said that maybe that is why we are depressed. I said I didn't know I am depressed. So hubs and I decided we would paint the wall where the TV hangs dark gray and I chose a light colored paint for the other walls and hallway. The light paint had a little more yellow in it than I intended and I just did not like it. I tried, but every time I walked in this room I thought to myself that I really don't care for the light paint. So I had some gray paint left over from the living room from a few years ago. I have always thought that it was a little too light of a gray, so I added some of the dark gray and repainted those walls. I love it. I think it is very soothing and pretty. If being happy with the color of my walls makes me depressed, so be it. LOL.

We fully intended to put laminate flooring in the sitting room. It was already bought and paid for. But when I took up the carpet there was a surprise. This room sits lower than the rest of the house and has a cement floor. The edges of the floor where the heat registers had been was broken up and the main part of the floor was lower than the edges. So our options were to fix the floor(lots of $$$) or do what had already been done and cover it up with carpet. So we went with the carpet. This was an added expense which could have been offset somewhat with the return of the laminate, but we decided to keep it and use it in the bedroom which is the same size as the sitting room plus the size of a small closet. I had to install the baseboarding before the carpet layers came. I certainly didn't do a professional grade job, but close if I do say so myself!

We added an electric fireplace. I put it together and it took me almost 5 hours before I got that sucker done but it looks very nice and cozy.

We are buying 2 loveseats and a recliner to put in this sitting room. The couch and loveseat from the living room are too big. This furniture will return to the living room when the new furniture arrives in 8 to 14 weeks. 

I believe the only other thing going on in this room is to install a ceiling fan. It is already purchased but it will be on the list for the electrician. We will be saving for that. The only light in this room comes from lamps. Oh, also need to find some curtains-hoping to do that on the cheap, in the meanwhile the shades will have to do. If I can't find anything affordable, I could always take down the curtain rods and go without. Time will tell on this. All in all, I am very happy with the results of this room and the money spent on it. Even better, hubby loves it

The next project will be the master bedroom-stay tuned!!!

Plans for this day is to do some grocery shopping and laundry and the whole house needs some love as it has been in an upheavel for a while now.

Even though we have been spending money on our redo's, we are still paying on the debt and finding ways to cut back or make the best use of what we have.

And 4+ Months Later............

 Hello!!! Hard for me to believe that so much time has passed since my last post! Keeping busy with work, projects in the house, spending time with kids and grandkids and going to my mom's house. 

Debt payoff was going good up until about a month after my last post. We had managed to scrounge up enough cash by watching our spending and a couple of small bonuses to pay off my 401k loan. Paying off the loan gave us back $64 a week. But (there's always a but, isn't there?) the hot water heater needed replaced and the 4 window air conditioning units were not keeping the house cool enough even though they ran constantly. So we (or I) took out another 401k loan. Definitely not Dave Ramsey approved. 

Our spending plan for this money has already been somewhat derailed. We discussed a budget of $5000 for tree work, however, the best quote for that job came in at $9000. We are having 3 trees cut down and about 12 more cleaned up. This job won't get done until next week, tree people have been extremely busy around here. We did end up using the same company that cut down a tree for us a few years ago and we were very happy with the end result. Our trees are very very tall. We will be splitting the wood  and removing the stumps ourselves as a way to save some money. It will be a relief to have this job done because every time the wind blows hard we are worried about the trees. We already have some gutter damage due to falling limbs. New gutters were one of the things we were hoping to accomplish but as of now I don't think it will happen.

My debt and payoff list is not completely updated. We did pay off my car. By eliminating the car payment and the old 401k loan payment, we are out of pocket $40 less per week than before. True to Murphy's law, while waiting on the title to arrive, my son-in-law forgot my car was parked beside him and he hit it while backing out and turning. That estimate to fix came in at $2800. He didn't want to turn it into insurance so he wrote me a check for that amount. My daughter told me she told him to write the check for $3000 and to keep the overage but he just wrote it for $2800. I didn't tell her and I won't unless the actual bill comes to more than $2800. I thought it was pretty funny that he wasn't going to let go of that $200. I am so ready to get my car back, we are using my husband's F250 and that is one rough ride. Daughter and son-in-law did offer to pay for a rental but I didn't want to make them shell out more money. 

As mentioned previously, the first thing we did with the loan money was to replace the hot water heater. This too came to be a lot more than expected. We had to have some repiping done. When we bought this house the inspector said that the water heater was 9 years past recommended replacement date and we have lived here for 6 years. The second thing was to have the AC replaced. Oh my, sweet relief. We also had all the vents in the house cleaned, this was not one of the original items we had planned on doing but we are glad we had it done. 

Another thing we did was to replace all the door locks. The front door lock was very hard to turn and we did not have a key for it, either. We replaced the back door lock, the front door lock, the lock between the house and garage and the garage door. They now all use the same key and they all match and it looks so much better. 

So, that's a little bit that has been going on around here. But I will be back with more updates on my doings around the house and debt payoff. See ya!!!

This And That

 Hello!!! It's been a little while since the last post. Life has just been busy, yet boring. The next few months probably won't be very exciting other than the normal pay down. So I will be continuing my blogging hiatus probably until fall. 

I do read some blogs, but I am not a faithful comment leaver. Mostly because I read at work during break on my phone and typing on it is difficult.

Life has been fairly monotonous lately. Just work and home and going out to my mothers. What a character she is. Always wanting to go somewhere. Running out of places to take a 90 year old that doesn't wear her out. Her favorite place to go right now is a little town that is about maybe 15 minutes from where she lives. She likes to eat at the pizza place, visit the "antique" store, visit the candy store(and boy is she disappointed if it is closed) and then there is always a stop at the Amish store. Life is better for her right now as my brother is once again a guest of the county. Poor guy, no one will bail him out, haha.

I splurged today. It is my oldest sons birthday. I am ashamed to say that I do not know what his favorite cake is. So I bought a small vanilla cake, a coconut cake, a cheese cake and a coconut cream pie. I am happy to help him try them all out, along with the 4 different flavors of Ice Cream I stopped and got at Aldi's. 

I have almost conquered the morning headaches I have been having. Not to say I never wake up with one, but they are not nearly as commonplace as they were. You buy enough different types of pillows you will hopefully find one that works. I have not conquered my Monster Energy drink addiction. Haven't really tried that hard either. But, I must. Today at Aldi's I bought a drink of Kombucha. One drink is as far as I could get. Nasty. It is supposed to be a healthy drink, but I am going to have to pass.

Yesterday hubs and I went to the company's free clinic for our annual wellness check that we have to go through to get the lower priced insurance benefits. Will go back in 2 weeks for results. Pre Covid they would have a company come in and get your height, weight, blood pressure and sugar levels and if you claimed to be a non-smoker you would have to test for tobacco. Just pop upstairs after work and 15 minutes later you are done. At the clinic they drew 3 vials of blood and urinalysis. I am sure when I go back they will want to address my blood pressure being high, as it was also high a month ago when I went in for an ear infection with a cold. I used to be on blood pressure medication about 8 years ago when I hurt my back, but once that got better(not completely, but better), my blood pressure went back to normal. But, I am older now and weigh more than I did than.

In May, we paid off $754 in consumer debt. This includes paying off the Fingerhut account completely, yay! That was a $50 a month payment. So now I am just hopefully going to let that $50 set in the account until it builds up enough to make a lump sum payment to the next debt. The next scheduled payoff is Care Credit #1 which now has a monthly payment of $49.12. This payment used to be around $24 and some odd cents but the last paid off account got snowballed into this account. So the last payment would be in December unless I can hang onto the extra $50 a month from paying off Fingerhut.

So, that is it for now. See ya in the funny pages.

Why George, Why?

 Spent another day at mom's cleaning/sorting through the tin building. My dad has been gone for over 3 months yet every time the building is mentioned my mom declares " I don't know why he had to buy that building, I didn't want him to". My sisters and I have been sorting through stuff in the garage, the lean-to, the shed, the tin building, the attic and the "beauty shop". (a little building that used to be a beauty shop, therefore still called the beauty shop). My dad(George) had a lot of "stuff". He liked to go with his friend to auctions and sometimes he came home with stuff. I am, however, my father's daughter and I fight the auction bug. Haven't been to one in ages. As we sort through his 10 gas cans someone will say "Why George, Why?. As we sort and gather together the shelf of 2-cycle oil someone will say "Why George, Why?" It's actually quite entertaining finding all the different items. Sister #2 and I started on the tin building a couple of weeks ago and made some progress. Today Sister #1 and I worked on it and sister "resorted" some of the same things we had already gone through. She basically just moved from one place to another, lol. Once we get everything sorted all the kids and significant others will put in a claim for anything we want and the rest will be kept for an auction eventually. Evidently Sister #1 and #2 have already helped themselves to some things-nothing of real value, though. Today I set aside a wick I found for an Aladdin oil lamp, a wooden tape measure that I remember daddy using. Of course I forgot them when I left.

I own several old oil lamps, one of which is an Aladdin that I got after daddy passed. The 3 sisters and mom wanted me to take it as they know I like antique oil lamps. My Sister #1 wants me to go up in the attic and look at some others and take what I want. 

I have learned that online ordering of groceries for pick up on a Sunday evening is not the way to go. I have been trying to shop every 3 weeks. So I decided to do a pickup after work. I had 11 substitutions, quite a few items were not available. Some of my meat wants were not available for curbside pickup so I went in afterwards and found a few of the things that were not available. I didn't get home to have supper until after 8pm. I do think I spend less doing a 3 week meal plan and grocery pick up. 

We went to KY last Wed-Fri to visit with hub's mom and step-dad. Thank goodness for good gas mileage as gas prices have really gone up. I now own 6 pairs of house slippers. One time when we went to visit I was wearing slippers and now every time we go down Hub's mom gives me a pair of slippers. While we were there I asked her if she knew how many Longaberger baskets she had. She had 28 just in the living room/dining room area. The next day she tells me to pick out which ones I wanted and I could have them. I gracefully bowed out of that, LOL. 

We got home late Friday afternoon and when we walked in the house smelled of cat urine. I am now paranoid that the house always smells that way and I don't notice it. Tomorrow i am doing a major clean up and then I will get someone to visit and see if they can smell anything.  Need to do a lot of laundry, also. 

We are thinking about how long we will stay at this house. It was going to be a forever home. Then we talked about just staying here until retirement and then moving closer to the grandkids. But now we are contemplating doing so sooner.  There are four new housing additions going in on our road. The traffic will be so much worse than it is now. A lot of things to consider.

Victories And Losses

 As the saying goes, win some, lose some. Previously I wrote about how our state taxes were intercepted for overpayment of Unemployment benefits. It was not how we wanted it to happen, though we were not totally surprised. I comforted myself with the knowledge that at least I wouldn't have to make my monthly payment this month. I was wrong. It was taken out of our checking account anyway. I do realize that eventually I will get it back, but a disappointment nevertheless.

We were supposed to get a small return on our Federal Taxes of $271. When I did my taxes on TurboTax one of the questions was how much stimulus money did we receive in 2020. I answered truthfully that we had received $2400. TurboTax calculated a credit of $1200 for tax year 2020. Well, the IRS has informed us that instead of getting back $271 we owe $929. $272 plus $929 is $1200. The stimulus that we were paid in January was supposed to be claimed on the 2020 taxes. So it was good that I still had part of my half of the latest stimulus of $1400, haha. We are still trying to save the other half for a carport. 

I did pay off the Credit One and Sam's Club debts. That felt good! So personal and 401K loan paid off in March was $786 and consumer debt pay off was $1184. Not as much as I wanted to do, but better than a poke in the eye......This leaves 13 accounts that I track on here. When I checked my Discover account I found out that my special payment arrangement had expired. I paid $94(the agreed upon amount) but my interest charges were $101. My monthly payment will now be around $120 and about $25 of that will actually go to principal. I did pay an extra $200 on the principal after I found out about this. There are no special payment arrangements available until sometime around August. Any extra monies will probably go to Discover. I have called all creditors excepting one and had the account that my payments go to changed to another account. I will get the last one changed this coming week. I also changed the payment dates from the last day of the month to the 20th so that by the last day of the month all payments will have been cleared. I had already increased my monthly payments to CareCredit before I found out about the Discover card.

We also sold some vacation time and I was able to pay all household bills and assign monies to different checking accounts. One account will fund my car payments and a sinking fund for annual registration. One account will fund all other debt payments. One account will fund mortgage, electric, gas, cable, telephone, auto insurance and sinking funds for semi-annual garbage service and annual street light bill. The last account will fund groceries and misc spending and that is the one that will be variable and low most of the time:)

These changes should allow me to know exactly how much I have for groceries and other things.

So, even though things have not gone as planned, we are coping and still making progress. We are indeed fortunate.

And Another One Bites The Dust!!!

 The last Barclay payment came out of my account today!!! This one took me 2 years to get paid off!! Well, actually, I still owe 1 cent, but they just told me they would write that off and in 30 days I can call and request a proof of pay-off letter. That payment was $128.07 a month!!! I have been counting down the days on this one!!! Woohoo!! One less payment to worry about every month.

Today I have been painting on some of our door frames. This has been an ongoing project. I may get them done in another year or two, LOL. That's just the way I roll.

Here in a bit(if I can get out of our addition, it has rained ALOT and our street is flooded) I am going shopping for pillows! I have been sleeping in a recliner and not waking up with a headache and that is so nice!! 

I do believe I am going to go wild and splurge. I am going to drive to Greenwood to shop and run into the mall and bring home Sarku Japan for supper. Chicken Teriyaki special......ummm ummmm ummmmm! It's about a 30-40 minute drive, I believe. Fortunatley I can enter the mall right by the food court where it is located and avoid the crowds. I will first go to Old Time Pottery to look at pillows and if necessary I will go elsewhere, but this a good excuse to go to OTP, which I love, and I haven't been there in soooooooo long. Still have 

Still have 12 days before we get our 2nd Covid shot, so I am not going to anywhere else to search for the pillows unless I have to. 

I'm excited!!! A debt paid off, new pillows and Sarku Japan all in the same day!!!

Woohoo!!!

Well, That Takes Care Of That!

 Our federal and state returns were both accepted on Feb 11th.  Our federal was estimated to be deposited on March 4th. Still haven't received and the IRS website shows it as still being processed. The state was the same story until yesterday. We were expecting a return of $796. I kind of wondered if the hold up was because of the overpayment of Unemployment that I received. But, I thought that since the return was filed Married, filing jointly, it could not be held for what I owe the state. Guess I was wrong, haha! I was overpaid $1254 in unemployment( I filed my unemployment correctly, the overpayment was their error) and I have been making a payment of $85 a month. I was down to owing $574. The state is taking that $574 out of our return leaving us with $222. It was kind of disappointing, but, on the other hand I don't have to worry about coming up with that $85 every month any more. Yay!Yay! In truth, it is a good thing.

The dryer has been repaired. Hubs just couldn't deal with it, LOL. I had told him that we would just use our tax return to buy an INEXPENSIVE dryer but until then we would just make do. Nope, couldn't do that. However, the money came out of funds that he has been trying to set aside forever for building a carport. I told him if he wanted it repaired he would have to find a repair person and he would have to be the one here when they showed up. So the dryer got fixed and when all was said and done it would have not cost much more at all to just buy a new inexpensive dryer.

Our stimulus money was deposited today. Though I am glad to get it, I feel like the country is worse off with the passing of the stimulus bill. Sigh. We are setting aside half of it for hub's carport materials/labor. I will be so glad when that is done and he can quit worrying about it. The other half will be used to catch up on bills(my paycheck will be short next week because I called off from work yesterday). A little bit will be used for some lawn care and I am hoping to pay off a few more debts!!

By paying off a few more of these debts, I will be that much closer to our outgo not being more than our income and eventually I might really to actually start snowballing the remaining debts. 

I called off work yesterday because I woke up with a killer headache. I had a bad day at work Monday and I think I was still in recovery mode. I usually wake up with a headache every day but it will slowly ease up and be gone in a few hours. I think it is more a neck ache which causes a headache. Yesterday was really bad. I had also reduced the amount of Monster Energy drinks I have on Monday(trying to break the habit because, well, they are expensive and so bad for a person). I also need to get new pillows, I just can't find any that doesn't feel like my head is resting on a cement slab by morning.  On my call off day I took a nap in the recliner and did almost nothing until time to make dinner. I also had 2 Monster drinks during the day because my son had brought me some for my birthday which was on Monday.  I also slept on the couch recliner last night and guess what-no headache this morning. 

I think I will go shopping for new pillows later. Right now we are waiting for a coworker to come and pick up an old scooter of my sons that we want to get rid of. My son tried to be a mechanic on it and that did not go well. At this point it would cost too much to repair. The coworker that is supposed to pick it up is a guy that I tried to train at work a few months ago. He is the one that reminds me of my stepson that passed away in 2019. I felt so bad when I had to tell management that he was not cut out to do the job. We didn't set a time for him to come pick it up but I figured he would be here by now. That will be nice to get rid of one more thing that hubs complains about. Even though the trashy looking areas of our outside are mostly due to hubs and his not being able to get rid of anything.

We've had some improvement in our work environment. All little things but it works out. The first thing is that about 6 months ago the company switched out our water cooler supplier and the old company came and took away all their dispensers. Well, the one on one of our lines(the line that is always about 20 degrees warmer than the line below it) they did not replace the dispenser with a new one. The new ones had foot pedals so that they were hands free. I talked to the guy who was with the old company when they took them away and he said he thought all the dispensers had been replaced but he would check it out. I asked him about a month later what the status on it was and he said that it had been replaced. I said that not unless it happened in the last 10 minutes because I had just come from there. Evidently he thought I was talking about the line below the line I was talking about. Another month passes. I ask him again. He said he would talk to the safety manager about it. Then he started avoiding me. So during the training I was in I mentioned it to the Superintendent and 3 days later we had our new water dispenser!!! How easy was that! One other thing is I asked if we could get some light in the "611 poly deck area". It used to get light from the level above but they installed movement sensitive lights up there and most of the time they were not on. I specifically said" we just need 1 light up there and it would be great if the light wasn't a runway light because it is hard to see when the light is that bright" So what happened? They installed 4 lights in that area and 1 in the area below that. I'm thinking the light bill probably went way up. We can't even turn them off as they are hardwired. It is better than what we had but we thought it was funny with the overkill. Another issue that we have is that we are constantly asking our supervisors for "tally sheets". We can't get them ourselves because only certain people are authorized to use the printers. Sometimes we have to ask several times a day before they bring them to us and them they only bring a small amount. We use anywhere between 20 to 40 a day. I asked if we could just get several hundred printed up so that 1. we are not bothering the supervisor all day long to do their job and 2. so that we could have the supplies to do our job. Easy as that they called a printing company and now we have these at our fingertips. Another issue was certain supplies can only be got by the supervisors and we again are constantly calling and asking for these things. It is irritating and discouraging to us and probably the same for the supervisors. So they did authorize us access to pens, markers, white-out, utility knives and a few other things. It is amazing how much easier our mornings are without having to depend on the supervisor to get us our supplies. 

My mom is doing well. Evidently she is a little confused about the birthdays this month. Mine is on the 15th, my brother's is on the 16th, my nephew the 17th and my son is on the 20th. She apparently was trying to figure out how my brothers birthday could be on Tuesday but Terry(that's me!) hadn't had her birthday yet. My sister explained to her that today(this was on Monday) was Terry's birthday and tomorrow was my brothers. She couldn't quite grasp the concept!! She is still worried about spending money. But then she comes up with something new that she needs, LOL. She finally got her new stove and refrigerator. Sometime soon work should start on putting in the new shower. I believe that will have to involve somewhat of a bathroom makeover. She is getting new windows. I asked my sister why new windows I thought Daddy had put in new windows not long ago. It was longer ago than I thought and evidently some are being held in place with duct tape-yeah, it might be time to replace or redo those windows. She also wants a new front door. She says that after that she is not spending any more money, that money is for you kids. We just keep telling her that if she needs anything she has enough money, that's what it is there for. She was telling me about it the other day and I told her- "come on, your a widow now, live it up a little, old lady". She laughed.

So, I think this month will see some debt payoff progress. Even though I still have a lot of payments to make every month, it is so much better than what it was in the past!