No More Crazy Lady

Dave and I have officially resigned our caretaking position, effective March 1. We'll still, obviously, live in our current place until we buy a house. But now we no longer have to clean up after our rude and careless neighbors (honestly most of the neighbors are nice, but three of them cause at least 90% of the work). And we no longer have to "work" where we live, which means no more dealing with unexpected emergencies, no more knocks on our door at 2am, no more dealing with tenant complaints/issues, no more being on call, and -- best of all -- no more of us having any contact with the screaming, verbally-abusive crazy lady who has been the bane of our existence since we moved in. I could go into all the various ways and reasons we hate this woman, but I'm just letting it go. As of March 1 she simply no longer exists to us.

The caretaking has saved us about $40,000 over the length of our service, and it was a great deal. Despite all my complaints above, it usually was not that much work compared to the money we saved. It allowed us to pay for our wedding and honeymoon out of pocket, go on a few trips, pay off all our debt, live on a single income after Dave quit his job to go back to school full-time, and has now allowed us to save a nice chunk for a house. The demands and frustrations of the caretaking was definitely worth it, considering what the savings allowed us to accomplish. But with both of us working now and with our goals for the most part met, we don't really need the extra savings. At least, we don't need the extra money as much as we need the extra time. As early as September we were talking about quitting, but decided to hold out as long as we could. Now with spring coming up -- and all the annoying duties that comes with that -- we decided now was the time to pull out.

It will seem a luxury to just come home from work and not need to even think about when/if the building needs to be cleaned. I can't remember a weekend where we didn't spend our Saturday doing some kind of caretaking. And how nice it will be to enter our unit and know for certain there will not be a little note under our door alerting us to some new problem or issue that needs dealing with. How amazing it will be to actually feel comfortable spending an evening at home, knowing that our movie or dinner will not be interrupted by a knock on the door. And it will seem blessedly odd to not have to shovel snow or mow the lawn...and to be able to go out of town without making complicated arrangements to cover our duties while we're away. We won't have to police the landlord's policies and deal with the consequent arguments, complaints and (in case of the crazy lady) threats. It's been about 6 years since our home has just been a home, and not merely another place where we work.

So, financially this means less eating out, less spending money, and more strict adherence to our budget. But personally this is a big step toward us taking better care of ourselves and focusing on what's really meaningful right now. So goodbye caretaking! Thanks for everything you've done for us. Goodbye tenants! We'll see you in the hallways, but we no longer care if your toilet doesn't flush or if your neighbor is being loud. And goodbye crazy lady! We never have to speak to you -- or your case worker -- again!

Dave's birthday is Monday and he said quitting the caretaking is the best gift he could receive. Which is good, because now we'll have a lot less money for gifts :)

That said, we're still caretakers through Saturday, and we promised we would clean the building one final time, and sounds like the giant snowfall is not going to wait until our duties are done. Why can't it just wait until next week? So looks like there'll still be shoveling to do. But it will be much sweeter knowing the next time we're shoveling it will be at our own house, and not for people who don't even wipe their feet when they come into the building. And how nice it will be when Dave and I can be the people who don't wipe their feet!!

Valentine Spa

Dave is so patient with me. So, for Valentine's Day we didn't really have specific, directed Valentine's Day plans. But I thought..."hey, wouldn't it be FUN to give each other facials?" All my girlfriends are thinking "totally!" and all my guyfriends are thinking "I could come up with a million things that would be much more fun." But Dave wants me to be happy and is willing to put up with just about anything if it puts a smile on my face. So I gave him a Lush blueberry facial:



During facial (skin tired and worn out, plus general unhappiness about having blue stuff on his face, despite my attempt to convince him he looks like a warrior from Braveheart):

After facial (skin refreshed and renewed, plus general delight that the facial is over and he can get on with his life!):

I had one too, of course. We also had brunch at W.A. Frost's on Sunday, exchanged gifts (I made a small book for Dave, and he gave me unnecessarily expensive diamond earrings even though I particularly asked him not to spend too much money on me), and we watched the movie Sweet Land. Overall it was nice, although we do need to do something to cease the "unending-chore" quality of our weekends. Maybe we need to stop with the caretaking finally.

I also did some work on HP. I'm very happy with the changes I've made. Slow-going as usual, but as long as it's going in the right direction I'm happy.

OMG...I'm NOT Writing!

I was doing so well....and now, not so much. Things get busy. People need one's help. American Idol starts sucking one in to its evil maw. One falls prey to seasonal affective disorder and decides to sleep for an entire month. You know, the usual things. No more excuses, though. This weekend I'll revise and conquer another chapter...and one that requires extensive rewrites at that! Take that, Book! Ha!

I'm looking into all the various methods for self-publishing. Self-publishing is quite the business, I'm learning. Now Amazon has something called BookSurge, which sounds interesting. It would be nice to avoid the whole "trying to sell myself and being repeatedly rejected" thing I would naturally face with traditional publishing...but then again, if I self-publish nobody will ever read my book because I am the worst networker ever and would never sell any copies because I hate selling things in general. Even things I like. But it would be on Amazon.com, and I could publish under a psuedonym and just email people and say "oh, hey, look at this random cool book!" and then it wouldn't be like I was pushing my own book on people. I'm not writing this to make money, but it has taken a big chunk out of my life and it would be nice for something to come of it beyond just being able to smugly say at parties "oh, yeah, I wrote a novel".

That's all I have to say about HP.

Hope everyone has a happy Valentine's Day. Dave and I are celebrating on Sunday with brunch at W.A. Frosts, gifts, and a romantic afternoon of dusting and vacuuming our building. We may also watch Amelie, which is our official Valentine's Day movie.

And happy birthday to my brother Andrew, who doesn't read this blog but deserves a blog-mention nonetheless.

And happy birthday to Abraham Lincoln, too. What a cool guy he was.

And hey....remember summer? That was cool too.