A rust bucket for a wedding present

For a wedding present, I gave my friend Paul a rust bucket.

Almost literally.  I gave him a rusty metal bucket full of metal stuff, some of it rusty.

Oooh, and I also gave him a chest freezer that doesn't work.  Some wedding present, eh?

Paul is a guy who goes to our church who collects scrap metal.  For years, he used it to supplement his income to help pay for his wife's medications and medical bills; she was blind and wheel-chair-bound and had many other expensive ailments.  She was a salt-of-the-earth kind of person, and we were sad (but not surprised) when she finally passed away last year.

This winter, our chest freezer died on on us, and internet searches followed by conversations with repair people convinced us that repairing it (bad compressor) would cost more than replacing it via Craigslist.  Since a chest freezer won't fit in our Prius, we asked Paul to help bring the "new" one and take away the old one.

Which is when he told us that soon he'll be moving to Arizona.  He's getting married again.  So we told him this last set of scrap metal is our wedding gift to him.

I'm so glad for him, and I know his new wife is getting a real catch.  But I'm going to miss having him around.

(And now I have to find a new way to recycle scrap metal.  Dang.)

Plumbing with my son

One of my resolutions/goals/plans (whatever you want to call those things) for the year was to do a weekly house-fix task with J-son.  The reasoning was partly to take care of deferred maintenance around the ol' castle before my sabbatical ends, but also to give J-son himself some attention and care.  Time-In with Mom. Not to mention, Mad Skilz.

The nice thing about a goal like this is, even a partial victory leaves everyone better off.  Since January, J-son has gotten a lot of attention and skill-work from another direction (dad and boxing), so the weekly house-fix has been more like a monthly house-fix.  I dug post-holes and repaired the dog fence myself; I haven't gotten around to drop-ceiling repairs yet.  But at least J-son and I together replaced smoke detectors and fished toothbrushes out of toilets, so y'know, we're not at zero.

Here's the latest Time-In House-Fix: replacing a shower head.  I wrote a long time ago about how easy this is -- basically just like changing a light bulb.  The lesson of this little exercise wasn't so much about teaching the intricacies of plumbing work as showing J-son by example that the project is super easy.  

What happens if you get a new shower head and you don't like it?  Well, then, you just take it off and put another one on, silly!  The shower head that was in our bathroom was one I installed about 5 years ago.  After all this time, I decided I really wanted one with a hose, not because I need the hose attachment while I shower, but because having the hose makes cleaning the tub SO much easier.  So, I biked to the hardware store, found the most water-miserly hose attachment I could find, and biked it on home. (Cost: $37).

I handed the package to J-son and gave him some tools: wrenches and teflon tape. (It turns out he didn't need me to get him any of these).  He read the directions -- the little package in his hand is the teflon tape that came with the shower head.

He didn't need the wrench, either, it turns out.  Here he is removing the old shower head.



(Can you see the muscles?  Did I mention boxing?)  He got the old shower head off and the new one on so quickly that I didn't even have time to take good pictures.

Voila!

SpiderMan came to dinner at my house

Spiderman came to dinner at my home last night.

Why?  Well, it turns out all of the dinner guests were animals!

Giraffe, goat, zebra, turtle, tiger, peacock, spider, and "the right to arm bears".

Or maybe it's more like the right to eat bears?  Because last night was our family's annual Zoo Dinner.  

Per what has become tradition, all the animals (us) ate through the bars of our chair cages.

New on the menu this year was "hedgehogs" -- they didn't turn out as bristly as I hoped, so I'll have to figure out a better alternative for next year.

But some of our favorites were back.  We look forward every year to the "Boa Constrictor" -- a pesto stromboli-like dish.

And of course, there was a bowl full of "octodogs" (which are actually hexadogs, since I can't quite figure out how to slice eight legs by hand).

And since we mentioned the right to eat bears, we can't forget the ever-popular ham-bear-gers!  (With ground turkey instead of ground beef this year).

And finally, just for comparison purposes, here is a one-year-ago picture of the turtle.  My, how she's grown!

Rag Recycling

Here is a small success:  I found a place that recycles rags!  Finally!

It's a relatively nearby thrift shop called Community Aid.  Today I biked over there with my trailer; I got a screaming-good hill work-out on the way.  I dropped off three bags of clothes that the boys have outgrown (we keep feeding these boys, and so they keep getting bigger . . . )  I also dropped off two bags of tattered clothing that had gotten ripped or stained beyond niceness.  Because of helpful  suggestions from commenters on previous posts, I bagged and labeled these "rags".

And that's all.  Small success!

College used-clothing sales

Spring.  I'm reveling in the extra sunshine, the warmer weather, the robins that fill the baseball field on my walk across campus.  Spring.

And on my campus, it's not just the annual ritual of returning robins that has been catching my attention, it's also the annual ritual of casting off clothes.  I've found a group on campus to manage our annual and massive campus-wide yard sale that will happen once students leave, and we're gearing up for that.  Yay!

But elsewhere on campus, smaller sales are already happening.  I share this because it's possible there are similar things going on at campuses near other people.  To wit: the athletic department on my campus has a yearly sale on gently-used athletic uniforms.

In the past, I've gotten cheap jog bras and running shorts for myself here; I've gotten polos for my sons, and passed over awesome jackets only because we already have too many at home.  This year, I bought N-son two pairs of basketball shorts, $2 each.  (I also bought a board game that I can't name, for a sum I can't disclose, because it'll be a birthday present for someone who reads this blog.  Shhhh!)

Two books on my shelf, not for reading

I got a surprise package in the mail from my sister late last week: two books with a note.  The note reads:

Dear [Big beautiful sister], 

I'm passing along two books [our other sister] gave me when my anxiety got the better of me a few years ago. 

I'm not sure I actually read them -- but I did look at the cartoons in the "Dummies" book-- maybe it's enough to have them on your shelf and roll your eyes at the thought of having to read them.  That worked for me. 

I'm hoping you are passing them on to someone else soon (well; not that I wish ill on that next folk -- but you know what I mean).

Love, 

[Helpful younger sister] 

To which I responded,

Dear [young helpful sister],

Thank you for the books, which I'm very much looking forward to not reading! The note was even better than the books, really, and everyone in the house has read and appreciated it!

(Actually, I did skim one of the books quickly, and read through some stories of people who kept going back to the same hospital, convinced of imminent death, and thought, "ooh, just like me!" Reassuring, in a twisted way).

I'm definitely feeling better, and am constantly thankful for modern pharmaceuticals. Also, grateful for my nose, which I practice breathing through, slowly.

All of which says a bit about what I've been doing with bits and pieces of my spare time, recently.  Well, that and math and helping the boys with homework.

Last fall, I had a bit of a similar panic when some of my lab tests came back and I mistakenly thought my kidneys were failing.  (In my defense, that's what every medical website I could find seemed to say).  My doc prescribed anti-anxiety meds that I didn't bother to take, since reassurance that my kidneys were actually just fine seemed to be all I needed.

Maybe it's because January was stressful for both professional and family reasons, or maybe biology and chemistry were just using my body for their own organic playground purposes, but February brought me a few more mind/body disagreements.

I'm incredibly grateful to our local hospital for not treating me like a nut when I had heart-attack symptoms (twice, I might add).  I had people seriously checking me out inside and out, and confirming that whatever was wrong with me, it wasn't lungs, heart, or arteries.  I got a surprisingly relaxing overnight stay in a solo hospital room.  (Plus, can I say, I totally nailed the stress test the next morning and feel sort of extra-studly about that.)

I also have yet another reason to be grateful that K-daughter came into my life; for a few years now, I've gotten to learn how to rational-talk her out of her own panic attacks, and all that practice helped me do the same talking to myself.  Plus, now she gets to have the "Now you see what it's like" conversation with me, which makes her feel powerful.

Heart burn medication and a bit of anti-anxiety meds, plus time and sisterly/daughterly commiseration seem to have done their job at silencing those alarms.

Not to mention, it's sort of nice to have these books on my shelf now, where I can breathe through my nose and then roll my eyes at the thought of having to read them.  Thanks, sis!

Miser Mom's $8000 mistake

Almost two decades ago, a year or two after my husband and I got married, two of his bikes were stolen from our back yard, where we'd foolishly left them lying around.  We filed police reports, and then we called the insurance company.   One of the bikes was fairly pricey, and the other bike was really pricey.  We shelled out our $500 deductible, and the insurance company paid for the rest of the replacement cost, upwards of $2000.

Leaving two expensive bikes lying around on the lawn was our $500 mistake.

But ignoring our insurance policy was the bigger mistake.  Whoops.

I know (doesn't everybody who cares about personal finance know?) that it's a good idea to check over insurance policies regularly.  We do that annually, or almost so, with our automobile.  And I also know (ditto for the "everyone who cares about pf") that high-deductible policies make much more financial sense in the long run.  In fact, I make it a mantra of mine to refuse to insure anything I can reasonably pay for myself -- no appliance insurance, no extra car rental insurance, no collision insurance, no "tuition insurance".

So it's just a little embarrassing that I only realized last week that our home insurance policy has been carrying a deductible of only $500.  Dang!  Where in the heck has my head been?

It's not like that fact is buried in some fine print somewhere.  I got my new policy in the mail last week and looked it over, and it says right there on page 2:  "Your deductible is $500.  If you raised it to $1000, you'd save this much.  If you raised it to $5000, you'd save even more."   That's pretty clear, really.

We got on the phone with our insurance folks (who I really like, by the way), and asked to raise our deductible to the max: $5000.  The agent immediately suggested some other easy deductions:  Would we like to go paperless?  There's a discount for that.  Heck, yes! (says the anti-trash-nut in this corner).  Would we be willing to sign up for auto pay? Sure thing!  Added convenience for us, and even lower bills -- a win all around.

All in all, even without switching insurance companies or involving reptiles, this one little phone call reduced our home insurance bill by $500 this year.    If we'd done this 20 years ago when we got married [here, add the standard mumble-mumble about inflation and interest rates mumble], we'd have spent something like $10,000 less on insurance, although we'd have had to pay that $2000 for the bikes ourselves.  In other words, we'd be $8000 richer today if I'd just done this 20 years ago.

All of which is to say,  I sure feel silly about not actually, y'know, reading the first page of my homeowner's policy.  For twenty years.

Sheesh.