Good Thing Friday (79)
August 21, 2020
If you’d like to join me in helping Lakota families and/or rural libraries this year, please read this post. Over 6 weeks in 2019, we raised $2669.94 for the Lakota families, touching 27 lives. What can we do in 2020?
Current total: Lakota, $1,713.62; Rural libraries, $321.62.
1. We finally caught the edge of a heat wave and part of me was really happy because it’s cold here 98% of the time. I appreciate what we have – we never have to worry about anything melting when we leave it out for example – but I do love a hot day or two once in a while to break it up. I bask in the glory of being too warm because it’s so rare.
2. The hot days also meant we could finally easily bathe the dogs! It’s so hard for Seamus to stand for long periods of time now. On a hot day, he can go for a bit of a walk and hang out and dry quickly. On a cold day, he needs to be blow dried and that’s just so hard on his arthritic joints. All credit goes to PiC on that chore.
3. JB is in really good spirits about the upcoming school year, no matter what form it takes. The nice thing about how hard it’s been up til now – it’s left us all with a complete lack of expectations (other than that it may be a circus). If it’s better than a disaster, great. If not, we’ll figure it out.
4. Speaking of PiC being great, he’s taking the whole first week of school off work so he can be there to oversee and assist. I definitely could not do that even though I had originally really wanted to take the day before and the first day off to be mentally and physically present. My staff needed the time off at the same time and since they booked it first, I wasn’t going to stress the rest of the team with my absence too. We have a lot of flexibility but we still have to get the work done and I have some bigger life balance goals to achieve in the long term so having PiC there instead should do the trick.
Challenges this week: The heat did a number on my hands, much as the rest of me enjoyed it. They were swollen like oven mitts! But it was a small price to pay. We also had another hiccup with the rental and the property manager and that ate up another precious couple of hours of my work time. I ended the week on a low note: with at least half a day of work that I’d have to make up next week or on the weekend. That was disheartening. I like to walk away on a Friday night and know I don’t feel any need to come back until Monday. Also can we take a moment to reflect that we’re five plus months into a pandemic, plus we have heat waves, plus rolling blackouts because PG&E stinks, plus wildfires. I had to shut all the windows that were letting in the cool air, thus avoiding the need to run fans, because of the smoke. There’s a fair bit of coping whiplash in our corner of the world.
5. I made the call to list our rental for sale. It stopped being fun years ago and while I’ve been learning a lot, the biggest things I’ve learned are that I don’t enjoy dealing with an investment that requires me to talk to people. Ever. I also don’t enjoy the people by and large. It was a grand experiment and I still do believe strongly in affordable housing but I also can’t be the one to offer it when we cannot easily absorb the costs of a wrecked property. If we were multiple times richer, that wouldn’t bother me but at this stage in our financial lives, that’s not a hit we can just shrug off without impacting our long term plans. I believe in prompt service and taking really good care of the property for the tenants and that didn’t align with my past sets of tenants. So I’m hugely relieved to have made the decision that it’s ok to end this experiment here and take a part time job off my plate. I don’t know how quickly it will sell but I’m crossing my fingers that it goes for a good price and smoothly and quickly. I’m ready to move on. And that’s ok!
6. We had a distanced and masked activity with a couple of friends. We have seen them a few times since March, just for quick porch and distanced drop offs of food gifts, but nothing like spending actual time together. We haven’t spent time with anyone in five months, really. I didn’t think it bothered me at all, and maybe it doesn’t specifically bother me, but the lack of fun times means I haven’t replenished my spirit in nearly half a year. I’ve just been coping day to day to day to endless day. I couldn’t believe what an enormous difference it made in my ability to breathe and be patient to have even distanced company for a while and be relaxed with friends and laughing over silly things. Even aching from head to toe with the unexpected physical exertion, I had reserves of patience for JB that I have been searching for for months. I both felt elated and bad that I can’t maintain that much patience normally but it’s just an honest indicator of how depleted I’ve been. Whether it was the fun activity or the company or both, we need more of this.
Selling the rental sounds like a good idea. I’ve often thought about having one, but wouldn’t cope with it being damaged etc. Good things this week – getting over an asthma flare and getting up to date with work. So feeling much better physically and mentally š
It’s good to know what will irritate you before getting into it š Glad you’re getting over that asthma flare!
Congratulations on your decision to let go of your rental! I admire your willingness to take it on as another experiment in living and let it go once the results are in. For me, knowing when to quit is often harder than starting. Best wishes for its speedy sale!
Tara Red recently posted…How to Increase Motivation to Initialize Financial Capability
Calling it quits can be a tough call! I debated for quite some time, but once I made the decision, it truly felt like the right one.
Making a decision to sell a property can be so freeing! Good work.
I’m worried about the fires, and all of the displaced people. It’s been a struggle to stay positive this week, with the fires on top of the pandemic, on top of the politics.
In good news, because I’m working on focusing on those wins when they occur, the first week of high school went as well as could be expected for my 14 year old. Hurrah! We had one major technical challenge that led to missing ~20 minutes of math, but otherwise, all was as good as you could expect from remote learning.
We’ve been more social lately: met a friend for a socially distanced hike, the kids are back in socially distanced (masked) soccer pods that follow the required safety protocol, and we are visiting neighbors tomorrow for a VERY socially distanced wine gathering. Looking forward to a bit of normalcy.
Hawaii Planner recently posted…Saturday happenings
Thanks! Just need for the process to go smoothly now, fingers crossed.
There’s just so much to worry about in the world I think my brain receptors are starting to shut down a bit. I’m aware of them but I’ve been numb for a couple days.
Hope the safe socializing is good for everyone!