Good Things Friday (39)
November 8, 2019
***FYI: I am collecting donations for our Lakota families until Nov 17th. Details in the Giving paragraph of this post. Half of any proceeds from the blog during this time (see sidebar) will also be added to those donations.***
1. PiC bought a sack of bulk pumpkin seeds for my snacking needs. They’re low carb and yummy.
2. I filled in some gaps for our last two Lakota family’s needs with the last of our funding.
3. I spent Sunday in my version of quiet contemplation. It was the anniversary of Mom’s passing and I wasn’t sure how I’d feel but I chose to embrace being the only human around the house on this day and do whatever I wanted. That meant I organized two dresser drawers, the bathroom vanity, and our master closet. That felt soothing at the time but maybe it was just pushing off feeling the feelings in their right time and place.
4. I was eaten up by the bah-humbugs on Tuesday. That’s not the good thing. The good thing is trying something that seemed to work: not trying to force myself out of the mood but rather just letting the feelings be and working while I’m feeling it. I was practicing this with JB but forgot to practice it for myself.
5. I got a slew of catalogs from LL Bean, Amazon, Shutterfly and Tinyprints so I took this opportunity to tell them to stop sending us paper catalogs in the mail. LL Bean chat was the easiest, it took less than one minute! Amazon took longer but you can use this link to turn off postal mail for yourself. For Shutterfly and Tinyprints, I had to log into my account to turn off postal mail there.
6. Ah ha! I finally identified three of the many weeds dominating our yard that we need to get rid of: Star Thistle, Spreading Hedgeparsley, Prickly Lettuce. There are more and I’m trying to identify the most horrible one. It has cute tiny yellow flowers and spreads close to the ground with ferny leaves. Underneath the green and the innocuous flowers, it’s hiding ten thousand little stickers. I hates them, precious. I’m hoping this is the first step to correctly eliminating them instead of accidentally helping them propagate forever.
7. It turns out Seamus’s nightly pacings were anxiety over needing his family all in one place. Once that happened, he slept the deep sleep of the just.
8. JB asked me very politely to watch the beginning of a show with zir “because it is scary and I cannot handle it.” When did my child turn into a semi articulate person???
9. I’m thinking about adding VWESX to our portfolio instead of carrying on with VBTLX. Hattip to Nicole and Maggie for mentioning it. I only want to hold one of each type of fund (domestic stocks, international stocks, bonds) but I might consider an exception for this since it’s a higher yield.
:: How was your week?
Thanks for the link to that amazon catalog opt out! I was not happy about the extremely child-focused catalog, complete with no prices and stickers to mark what you want your parents to buy for you.
I think VWESX is still a bond fund, just a riskier/higher yield one than VBTLX. I got the recommendation off Bogleheads and I think it’ll be another way to diversify bond holdings. It’s weird being at a point where I’m thinking beyond the regular primary holdings people should start with. It’s a new world out there. One of these days I may need to buy munis or reits! (Though currently we’ve pivoted to filling up the 529s which will take care of our excess cash probably for the year. I wasn’t liking the me who wanted to buy All the Apple Products and this will put those spending impulses off for a bit.)
nicoleandmaggie recently posted…Ask the grumpies: Favorite apps for fun?
Now I regret recycling the catalog without at least extracting the stickers, I didn’t even bother looking inside!
Yes, it is still a bond fund, and I generally just want to hold one of each kind. So I have to decide if I want to sell VBTLX and shift or keep two bond funds.
Thanks for the amazon link! We got that same catalog nicoleandmaggie are complaining about and I was a little shocked / offended by it.
Yep that’s the one I got that prompted me to go figure out how to stop them from mailing me. Because YUCK, as if we didn’t know where to find them and as if that kind of catalog is what I want to put in front of my kid. Harumph.
[…] as a h/t to Revanche— if you got that super obnoxious Amazon catalog in the mail, here’s a link to get […]
I hate weeding the garden (probably the same distaste for raking), good for you for ID-ing the culprits in your yard. Sounds like you had a productive week!
I love having weeded, I don’t particularly care for having to DO the weeding when I have too many other things to do! Now I just need to figure out how to remove those weeds effectively and efficiently.