hqueen's collection of Far From the Usual stuff.

[hqueen13]

Yesterday was not the kind of day "off" I really wanted. I left the house at 8, headed to Cowboy and Coyote, then over to the barn to take care of the horses there. Accidentally brought one of the wrong horses in when I went to fetch the 2 that I needed from out on the hill. Had to make the hike BACK out to the hill to get the correct horse (and other solo horse left in the field). Not pleased about wasting the time, nor getting twice as hot and sweaty as I needed to be. Left there, ran by the mill and got bird seed with a coupon, then over to the office (mostly cooled off and hopefully not too stinky... masks are actually useful in this case!) to help them get some things set up (yay for an hour of extra time), and then to the grocery store and then to BJ's for a big shop. Stopped at chickfila on the way home to use reward points for lunch, and finally got back at 1:30. Brought in the cold stuff, and the important stuff out of the car, and then ate lunch, with all the not cold stuff still piled around because I was starving by that time. The BF texted to say he was on the way home, surprisingly, which was nice, though he didn't feel all that great, which wasn't good. He mostly relaxed for the afternoon. I got the bed remade and put a few things away and then headed back to Cowboy and Coyote again. Got home again, finally, got in the shower and then worked on some business stuff for a bit before we made dinner. Not at all how I would have liked to spend my day (at home!), but things needed to be done.
I'm pleased I did get things done on my business stuff, so I'm still making progress on that. I've got more to do today, and of course I'm supposed to be working, so we'll see how much I can get done.
A good friend and his partner are coming over on Saturday, so I want to make sure the house is really clean before then. Thankfully I won't have any horses to care for on Saturday, so I can clean in the morning before they get here, because it doesn't look like I'm going to have any time to clean between now and then (That's what I would have rather been doing yesterday, but oh well). The forecast today said pretty bad storms were supposed to come through, but every time I look at the hourly it is later than it said before. That's a little annoying, but at long as it keeps moving backwards so that I can go back to Cowboy and Coyote without getting drenched I'll be doing good!

 

[91Z5S]

Hqueen
Had to change my sign on because I kept getting “Forbidden “ which I think was a virus put in my router by so paki’s who got me for a ransom ware hit a while back. I tried for the last three days to sign in but couldn’t.
I’ll bet you and yours are glad to have your own place.
SDAK is a wonderful place. I love it here.
Had a lot of “ups/downs “ from my “old life” on the east coast.
Got my farm working well. Built a milking parlor fo my Jersey. Been milking since November 2017.
Lots to tell
No time left today.
Hope you’re well and happy
Trim sends

 

[hqueen13]

There's been quite a bit happening, but I don't really know where to begin.
Things did not end well with GH, she and I had a lovely lunch, and we were finishing when I brought up the discrepancy between what they have paid me for and what I've worked. She sort of lost it, which I should have known based upon the stress she was telling me they've been under. I get it, I lived through that kind of hell when we had to leave the farm and found our place here. She was complaining about how they hadn't gotten paid for so many months, and they were so tight on funds, and all of this, and I'm like yeah, and I'm sure my budget is probably a quarter, or less, of what yours is, so I KNOW what you are dealing with, and I've LIVED it for months and months on end, if not years. Yeah, I GET it. AND, I've also done more work for you that I deserve to be paid for. The whole thing really rattled me, and I was really upset for over a week. I talked with my biz coach about it, and I'm going to compose a letter to send to SH, which is probably what I should have done in the first place, I know GH is much more emotional, and to her credit she really didn't completely know how SH and I had arranged things before. I'm trying to have compassion for them, and for her, but it's challenging not to be bitter over the whole thing. I'm SOOOOO grateful to my budgeting program, without that I don't know where I would be. I had October's bills all lined up, so at least I don't have to worry about this month. All the income that comes in this month is going towards November, so I'm mostly set.
I'm still trying to work out a place to move Storm to. I spoke with RO on Tuesday, and he's going to talk to his wife. They still do want to get a 3rd horse for themselves, even after the mess with Johnny, so he said he wasn't sure what they would do at this point. He does have his new pasture fenced, but he's waiting on the contractors to get the water line run up there (he's putting in an automatic waterer, thank goodness!) and a shed put in so there will be shelter. They are going away this weekend, so I'm hopeful that I can get an answer from him when they get back. I do have a friend that I'll ask if he says no, but it will bump my drive up from 30 minutes to 45-60 if I go to her place. That will be hard, but at this point he needs to be OUT of where he is. It's not healthy for him, and I can't keep paying for such a crappy place for him to live, that I have to work at as well. I could write it off a bit more if I didn't have to be there so much, but it's not helping me to have to work so much AND pay her for a crappy place. If the place weren't falling down around them, it might be different. At any rate, when I asked RO I had seen all sorts of signs that day, like license plates with triple digits on them, and then we saw an Eagle while we were chatting about it, and then I saw more triple digits and 3 tesla cars on the way home. I have no desire to own one, but they are my 'lucky' car, so that was all a good thing. We'll see how that works out.
HR went away for a quick trip for her birthday, and thankfully I already needed to be over there, so that didn't cost me any extra gas. Then RO is going away this weekend, and TW is going away next week for a while. So that's all helpful, even though I am really liking the time at home and the gas savings! Hopefully between all of that, and the farm work I do for SR every Friday that should get me covered for November.
Still bugging my boss about a raise. I'm going to talk to him again today, if he actually has time. The past few times I've been in the office he really hasn't made time for me, and that's annoying. I texted him Tuesday and asked and he was like we'll make it work, and I was like well the past few times I've been there you haven't made it work, so I just wanted to be sure. We'll see what he does today.
Other than that, not much happening. The BF has started his ground school, and he's doing ok with that. I don't think he's as excited as he was before, but we'll see where this goes. I keep reminding him that being passionate about something doesn't mean it's easy, and it doesn't mean that you want to do it every day, but that you still can work for it. I certainly don't want to go out and feed horses every day, even when I get paid to do it. But I'm still passionate about it, and a bad day in the barn beats a good day in the office.
I don't think the neighbor is going to come through on the new boiler. We also talked to a guy from the power company who showed up on Saturday morning to fix the leak in our gas meter, finally. I was surprised to see him on a Saturday, but glad that he finally fixed it. He also put in a new shut off for us to make it easier to turn the gas off when we work on it. When he was done he came in to make sure that our hot water heater was relit properly, and we talked about the boiler, he said that the combo unit can actually use MORE gas because the start up BTU's are high because of the boiler side of things, and that it uses the same start up BTU's even if it is only heating hot water for the house. So we'll have to do more research on that. The BF and I have talked and he doesn't want to do much right now, which is fine with me. We'll just wait on using any of that money for a little while and see what is inspiring/needed. There's certainly no lack of projects that we COULD do, it's just a matter of which one do we WANT to do, and are we prepared if any one of them become emergencies. I also told him that the windows were going to cost a fair amount, so it might be good to hold onto those funds and wait to get the tax returns this year and see how much we get back, and maybe we could put some of that towards new windows, which would help lower the heating bill in the winter anyway. It won't do anything about the lack of insulation in the walls, but at least the windows won't be leaky, too.
I did order some hardware to try to make new thermal curtains, so we'll see if that project works or not. That will help with the leaky windows a little bit at least.
We did use the "extra" paycheck in October to buy a log splitter. We put it on a zero percent interest promo, and we'll just hold the cash in the account and pay it monthly. I didn't really want to do ANOTHER one of those, but the BF went to bring home the log splitter from work and every single one in the region was already booked for rent for the next month. That ticked him off, so he decided we should probably have our own. We didn't get a super big or fancy model, but it's working well so far. Between the cherry tree that came down at the neighbors, and the poplar that he's getting from his dad, plus the giant tree that we need to drop that's dead standing in our woods, that should be enough to keep us warm for the winter. The only trouble is where to stack it all! We have a wood holder, but it's way too small to hold all of it, so we're trying to figure out how to organize stacks else where that we can move up into the wood holder as needed.I'm beginning to think it would be smart to divide the wood holder in half or something so that we can load half and it will be easier to use the older stuff first. The BF wants to add another section onto it, it's only 4' x 8', and about 6' tall, so if we doubled the square footage that would help quite a bit. We could use some of the funds for that, but dang, lumber is expensive! Everything is expensive, and I've gotten rather fond of seeing high(er) bank balances!
Oh, the BF's company did announce that it will be giving a flat 2% raise to everyone this year. That is better than nothing so I'm grateful for that. That started this month, so hopefully we'll see a tiny up swing in his checks.
That's about all the news from around here I think....

 

[frustratedearthmother]

Wow - as usual - lots going on. Sure hope you get the money that is owed to you and that you can find a great place for Storm!

 

[FarmerJamie]

Holy cow...lots in flight

 

[hqueen13]

Yeah, no real updates at the moment, everything is still pretty much the same.
We did manage to get all of the wood split and stacked that we had, so that's a good thing. Only part of that will be ready right away, but hopefully enough will be ready for this winter that we won't have to go hunting for more. There is a standing dead tree that needs to come down, now that the wood is split and out of the way the BF can do that, probably with the help of our neighbor. He said it's leaning in the right direction, so that's good. It makes me nervous to think about them doing that themselves, but they are experienced enough that they will do fine. Then we'll have to clean up all the slash and then get it cut and split. It should be fine to burn this year, it's been dead for several years. If we can bring that down then we should have plenty for this year, and hopefully into next year.
Like I said, not much else to report. Just trying to decide if/which project to do next. Things have sort of stalled out a little bit, and we are both feeling a little frustrated with not being able to have clear direction, but that's ok. I'm sure it will all settle out eventually.
Still need to clean up the garden, the tomatoes are still hanging on, not that they are producing much that's worth eating, but they're still green. That will probably change this coming week since the highs are only going to be in the low 60's for the most part. No official lows below 40 yet, but I'm sure that's coming.
I bought hardware to redo the roll up shades in the windows, and replace them with a thermal shade, now I just need to figure out the rod and how that will work. I'm hoping I can deconstruct the old ones and use that rod, but I'm not sure yet. I need to get to work on that, though, so that I can have them ready for the cold weather, too.
Lots to do, it's finding the time and motivation to do it!

 

[frustratedearthmother]

Glad you've got the wood supply figured out for winter. That's got to be satisfying.

 

[hqueen13]

YES! It's very satisfying, FEM! That makes me feel so much better. The BF seems to think it's enough, I'm not totally sure, but then again there's more wood at his dad's house that he has to go get. W was over this weekend working on the table that they still haven't finished, and he was really amazed at how much wood we have, and the BF was like wait until we split everything over at dad's... I'm ready for them to get that done so that we can bring it home and get that stacked, too (where, I have NO clue, but we'll have it!).
Not a whole lot going on. TW is probably staying out of town until the end of the week, which is extra money, so that's good. With the other things that I have on the burner for this month that puts me pretty close to having November's bills funded, so that's a good thing. Still working on getting my new program launched for the other part of my business, and trying to get Storm moved somewhere else so that I can stop paying board, but it's all in the works.
Speaking of the barn, TM had told me that we were switching back to the winter schedule again, so the horses will be in over night. I'm glad that she was able to wait longer this year, and I figured it was coming eventually. She had originally told me I could keep my days since there was no way I would be able to do the barn chores on Friday morning while working on the veggie farm, too. Then RW and I were texting about some things and realized that I can't keep Wed morning because she has Wed evening, and that would mean both of us were doing the same chores, and that doesn't work. We brought it up to TM, and she was like, oh, sorry. So that meant I had my choice of Thursday or Tuesday. I can't do Thurs since our office meetings are on Thursday mornings. So that leaves Tues, which means I'm at the barn Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday mornings. I told TM that there was no way I could put enough hay out for Storm to keep him covered from Tuesday through Saturday, so she agreed to help. I'd rather she not, but then again, I'd rather not heave to deal with hay in that manner at all.
I texted RO to see if he wanted a lesson this week, but he hasn't texted back. Once I figure that out, I'll see if he talked to SO and then if they say no, then I'll go talk to another friend of mine. She's a lot further away, but at this point I don't care. I need a better place for him and I need to stop paying board and having to work.
I still need to wrap things up with SH, I have not written the letter yet, so I guess that needs to be a priority this week. Not excited about that, but I guess at this point I've pretty much lose the relationship (at least until something is resolved) so it can't get much worse than it is.
I think we're going to use some of the funds that we've been sitting on and replace the basement door and the kitchen door. They both have glass windows in the top part, and they are just a single pane of glass, which is not good for insulation at all. I'd like to get the kind of door that has the blind in it so that I don't have to attach blinds to the door, but we'll see what's available and the cost. I think the doors themselves shouldn't cost much more than $300ish or so each, but we'll have to see what the options are. The BF and I were talking and there are about a dozen different things on the list that need to be done to help make improve the thermal regulation in the house, and none of them alone will make a bit difference, but each one will add up. It probably won't be a big dramatic difference to replace each one of them by themselves, but they are all important to do eventually. So we'll just keep doing what we can whenever we can. Doing the doors won't take up all of the money that we have set aside, so we'll still have more funds when we get the tax returns this year, too.
That's the scoop from around here. Just trying to get all the fall stuff done before it gets cold again.

 

[frustratedearthmother]

Really hope you can find a great place for Storm. It'll be nice when that stress is off your plate. You're moving along on all the house stuff and you're right that all the little changes will add up to big help!

 

[Icu4dzs]

Well, you COULD keep him here but then feeding him might become difficult with the snow and all we're having...