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Archive for December, 2012

how's the apocalpyse workin' for ya?

December 22nd, 2012 at 03:53 am

Well it is the great Mayan reset day, the end of Bak'tun 13. Yippee. Decided to not bother with the diet today. Big Grin. Nothing like being caught on a diet on the last day of the end of the world! And if the world goes on tomorrow, well, then I can get back on the wagon.

I haven't weighed myself and I think that I'm gaining, but I put on a blouse known to be 'tight' on me and voila, a bit of space. So perhaps the routine of nearly every night spending 1-2 hrs painting a wall or an hour setting up to paint said wall perhaps counts as exercise after all. Or if, as it was tonight, clearish skies with no rain .... the golden rule of the carless person: "buy something heavy and awkward that you don't want to be lugging when it rains". Such as tonight, when I laid in two more cases of canned cat food. Lugging that on the bus and walking it home counts as weight bearing exercise, probably about 20 minutes of kettlebell swinging.

I'm still settling in, but I'm going to try to cheap out in surprising ways. For instance, I'm going to hold out on buying household Internet and wireless as long as I can. Several coffeeshops and the library maintain wireless within a three block radius of my condo. Clearly I'm not going to be doing sensitive work in a public network, but it should be fine for blogging and I think I can do my banking at work. I'm finding value in that a non-wired home forces me to be in the present and really relax. Pet the cat. Actually watch and enjoy the DVD. Paint the wall. Carpet the floor.

Carpeting is done. I showed off my pictures to them and they were thrilled. The carpet tile people (Flor) called me an asked if I would like a couple of boxes of samples. Totally free, and they paid for shipping. Smile I said yes - I can make many bath mats, kitchen mats, entryway mats, and I have several friends who would be interested in what I come up with. So an opportunity presented itself.

Tomorrow will be the start of another big project - moving my stuff out of the old place. The ex is back with his family, and he flew out. He told me that I could use the car and that he would gas it up. I have a lot of stuff, but what I think I will do is just intensively get a slice of stuff every day for the next few days. for instance, tomorrow will be clothes and mosaic hobby stuff. Tomorrow cookbooks and a cooler of beef, etc. Then when ex comes back we take it room by room.

...as I was saying (long)

December 13th, 2012 at 08:50 pm

Well, this is the first post in about 5 months. My entry title is a take off on Jack Paar's first words when he came back to his Tonight show after a big long kerfluffle.

Anyway, what happened was not a mere storm to my routine it was a fiscal hurricane (apologies to those still coming back from ss Sandy). It was all self induced. Pull up a chair and let me tell you about it.

First of all, no more DH. Actually, just to be clear, DH was more a DP (partner). We never got married, but we were together for over 20 years. I fudged the legal aspects of the relationship to provide myself a hair more anonymity. And now, it matters little except for the fact that no marriage, no divorce.

I had been dissatisfied in our relationship for some time, but something good usually happened that I could go on for a little longer. Last July though, I just looked around and saw that DH (okay, DP) was not going to change and I was damned, if I continued, that I was going to spend my next 30 years picking up after him. I blew...for me I blew, and then while I snapped back I snapped back into a different place ... a different realization.

We broke up, but we did go to Argentina together. I did give him the option to not go (he took out trip insurance), but told him that we all did want him to come. I can't say what he thought about the whole thing. I know that strangely enough, it took the heat off of me. If he did something cringe worthy, I didn't think of it as a reflection on our relationship because there now wasn't one.

Next day after I snapped, I went to my credit union in search of a home loan. Which, if you look at my net worth, was easy to get. I had 20% and could qualify pretty easy for a 3% 15 yr fixed. Next I thought hard about what I really really wanted. I thought, wouldn't it be nice to have a real yard? Yeah, I suppose, but really yard work only appealed to me once in awhile, while plants in the yard grew relentlessly. And if I waited for Seattle home prices to turn reasonable, well I'd still be spending 30 yrs waiting for that. Plus, if I truly wanted to do yard work for a couple of weeks, I could fly out, spend some time with sister at the farmette, help her with the garden and weeding, and since I co-own the farmette, well, it helps me also.

After a bit of searching, I found probably one of the last sweet condo deals in Seattle, out in Lake City/Cedar Park, out at the northeast edge of Seattle. And yet the bus commute was 20 minutes shorter than what I'm used to (buses here are express, and I'm on the last stop before downtown), and the neighborhood itself sports a +90 walkability score. So I now am a proud condo owner.

With it, well I'm still spending money right and left. However, I'm buying quality and getting exactly what I want. New carpet, but carpet tile instead of wall to wall shag; new paint, but high end paint which means I can get away with 1/2 coats, only buying 1 gallon and taking only 1/2 sessions to paint a room. V.I. (kitty) has moved in with me and seems to have settled in well. Of course that litter genie could have helped much.

I can't rightly say that I'm saving money yet, but I am saving my sanity, resetting my routine, making new friends (I'm now closer to Spondilucks, who invited me to her New Year's party).

More to come, but as it is, while life is different, it is nicer for me than before.