We took a little drive yesterday. It was one of those spectacular cloud days. Big fluffy, sometimes dark clouds were everywhere. At times it was very sunny. Since we’re in the country with mountains off in the distance, nothing blocks the sky and the whole thing is just magnificent.
This area is not far from our house. This apple orchard – in an area full of apple orchards – is a well-known one hereabouts.
That’s our mountain range off in the distance. You can see the same mountains from our house.
We really do live in a beautiful place. We’re going to start taking short drives a couple of times a week. Winter will be here all too soon and the landscape gets rather bleak. We want to lap this up while we can.
The year of ‘repairs’ continues. Over the weekend it was rainy and cold and damp and I was really feeling it. We hadn’t turned on the heat yet, but Don suggested I get it going for a few minutes to take the chill off. The oil burner went on and immediately shut off. We tried again. Same thing. After three tries, the automatic ‘lock out’ was engaged. We had no idea about lock outs until we did some research. And of course, this happened on the weekend and it really wasn’t an emergency since it wasn’t wintry cold yet. We tried to find where the reset button was to no avail. So we left a message with our heating oil supplier – they installed the oil burner 11 years ago. In the meantime, we were able to find the reset button, but the same on/off problem happened again. The guys got here in the afternoon on Monday and found out it was a clogged supply line. Our oil tank is an older and sometimes sludge accumulates and clogs the line. They took care of that and now the heat is working again. We haven’t seen the bill yet, but I’m sure it will be somewhat hefty.
The refrigerator also acted up again, but it was a one-time thing and has gone back to normal. We’re determined to hang on to it as long as we can because it’s doing fine, otherwise, and appliances are so expensive nowadays.
I’m deep into The Running Grave by Robert Galbraith. Excellent and completely engrossing. I’ve also had the itch to work a jigsaw puzzle and one should be arriving today. It’s that time of year.
Stay safe.
Happy Wednesday.
Clouds are fascinating…and you saw some great ones…like a bunch of white cotton candy! I hate when appliances have problems…and new ones don’t last like the old ones, so it’s good you’re able to work some things out on your own or have someone come in, if it’s feasible. I’ve been turning the heat on in the morning for a bit, too, just to warm up a bit. Don’t think I’ll need to do that for a while…. it’s supposed to be in the 90s today and tomorrow.
That’s quite a change in temperature!
Stay safe, Barrie.
wow … those clouds and everything else are beautiful! thanks for sharing these paint-worthy photos. glad you and don took that drive and will enjoy more before winter weather may keep you indoors.
we go for rides nearly every day and love being enveloped by the beauty, seeing animals, driving on new or familiar roads that are quiet and (more often than you might expect for iowa) hilly and curvy, and being together. you obviously have a name for your sweet home. farms are often given names here. have seen some called “hilltop”, “sunnyside”, “green acres”, etc., but my two favorites are the sweet “button-hole farm” and the intentionally-mispelled “belly acres” … haha.
sorry you’ve had appliance troubles again! hopefully the bill won’t be as big as you might be expecting and that this is the last repair needed.
glad you have a good book to read and a puzzle on the way.
i had a wonderful surprise yesterday. my very sweet sister of course knew how sad i was to miss gino vannelli’s show near chicago last month. well, she secretly and kindly called the venue and made arrangements for someone there to ask if gino would sign something. he kindly did, they kindly sent it and it arrived yesterday! it is a promo poster and already at the frame shop. should be done in a month or so and i have a place picked out for it. :)
hope you all get a wonderful surprise or good news today, too, and stay safe.
kathy
Oh, how lovely of your sister! Perfect.
Stay safe, Kathy.
agree; my sister did a very lovely thing! she knows i’m not into autographs, but it was a possibility/the next best thing to being there and is much appreciated. haven’t decided, but it will either go on a wall above my cd player (yep … cds, on my desk/painting area) or by the radio in my kitchen. :)
kathy
I hear you about home repairs. We’ve got an old house and old plumbing with a significant repair issue at the moment with no way to call a plumber as we just had to pay the feds with a last-minute filing of the tax return. People have no idea of the rigidity, what it is for others in the retirement years on a fixed income with tight budget and inadequate savings. We’re the ones who get the blame for poor retirement planning.
So as not to waste the expensive Southern Calif water (which is always one of my highest monthly bills even when there is NOT a plumbing issue, as in a bad leak which my husband has tried at least ten times to fix himself), we turn it off at the curb/street level for most of the day and always at night, which means that there’s no municipal water coming into the house. This, or a multi-hundreds of dollars water bill from the City (it’s never less than $200 in any given month when life is otherwise ‘normal’). We can’t water our hillside and have already lost some of our plantings/landscape because the weather in October here is still warm; in fact, tomorrow will be one of our hottest days in a long time.
Anyway, try living like this, day after day, but it’s how it is for us right now, for a few weeks already. (Now I know what my ancestors went through, but I don’t have a stream or creek nearby like they did in the 1800s out on the farm.) Thank God when we turned on the gas furnace yesterday for the first time since April, it came on, which seems like a miracle to me as it dates from 1985 and I know it’s on its last legs. ‘They say’ we’ll have another active winter here so again we pray that the 26-year-old roof on the house will keep protecting us from rain. It’s the gnawing worry, constantly, of everything that needs fixing, updating, improving; how I can afford my medicine; etc. And the cost of living is so high. Both my husband and I need new eyeglasses so badly but we are making do. Our 20-something-year-old cars continue to hold up but that’s another iffy thing at any given time.
Between what’s happening in the larger world with worse news every day, along with the uncertainty and insecurity with which I live, it’s challenging to remain positive, have faith, curtail the worries, be upbeat, have gratitude; but I try. Gotta find the balance; need a hedge against the anxiety biting at my heels. The price of gasoline has finally fallen under six dollars per gallon here, so we try to take a once-a-week short/nearby drive, too, Claudia; is uplifting to get out.
In the meantime, I get inspiration from the natural world as do you, Claudia, and your cloud photos today and the little tour are so nice; really enjoyable; thanks for sharing. Apple orchards are something I never see where I live.
Sure happy you got that heat turned on, because your winters are a lot worse than mine on the other side of the U.S.!
I hope you’re having a lovely morning!
Vicki I completely understand everything you said. Retirement on a fixed income is not easy. Our roof was replaced 20 years ago and I pray it last for a long time.
We don’t have a have a house payment and I thank God. With everything else it would be very difficult. Our entire families live in Ca so I know how expensive it is to live there. Hang in there you are not alone.
I overspilled on my comment but I appreciate so much your vote of support.
I’m so sorry to hear of your struggles. Is there any assistance you can get from the local government? Seems like they have programs but I know those aren’t perfect either. I know several people that will be working well into their 80’s. Not sure if 401k’s are working out for people. I’ll pray for you!
I haven’t thought about outside assistance, Darlene, but thank you for your suggestion. You are so kind to think of me. Thank you.
I do live like that day to day, but I try not to talk about it here. It’s our problem and we have to live as best we can with it. We’re in the same boat. Bought a house later in life, mortgage payments are quite high. And we work in jobs that are basically freelance. We need to keep working, but Don hasn’t worked in over 4 years and now there’s a strike. I don’t have any work at the moment and I’m not paid very well for whatever work I do get.
And none of this includes a new roof, which we’ll need in the next year or so. Or repairs on our windows, drywall that needs to be repaired, etc.
We are house poor but we love it here and can’t imagine a life anywhere else. So I do know what it’s like to live like that day to day. Most of my thoughts at any given time are worry thoughts, though I try to control that and channel that energy into my hobbies and physical activity and whatever escape I can find.
Stay safe, Vicki.
I’m sorry to have shared too much of one of my problems but I just SO could relate to your worry about appliances and old-home fix-its.
My husband is planning to find a replacement for his part-time job (which he lost in August due to a company change) in January although he’s been looking all along; he’s limited by age (70s) and health and stamina although he’s pretty strong for just having had major surgery this past March.
I need to keep working harder to channel the worry thoughts as do you, Claudia. I’m sorry we’re both in the same boat on it.
Most people in my age group and who I personally know do not have money worries, so it’s getting harder and harder for me to relate to their lives; in fact, I find I’m withdrawing from them more and more. It’s not that I’m not happy that they have well-funded and stress-free retired lives but our lives have become so different from one another’s that it’s a struggle to find commonality. They do anything they want, go anywhere they want, hire out anything they need, buy whatever they want or need; it’s simply impossible for them to try to understand that I can’t even call a plumber because I can’t afford the initial $100 consultation fee right now.
I make my friends and relatives uncomfortable; they’d rather I not talk about myself. (I need to watch that on a blog like MHC, too; sorry again, Claudia and readers both!)
There’s not a lot anybody can offer as a solution; again, it’s my problems, not theirs. Causes frustration and awkwardness between us. So, I don’t normally talk of myself; I divert. But that becomes pretty one-sided in a relationship.
As you said, it’s easier to just not talk about it. My husband and I really are trying to get along best we can; have made many changes in how we live to make ends meet; working hard to not sink into self-pity. Not asking anything of anybody else. But the worry does break a person down if not careful. (So, we’re careful!)
In the meantime, let’s all have a lovely Thursday morning! It’s a blue sky out there today!
You’re right. Most people don’t understand. They got married and had kids and bought a house and for most of them, the mortgage has been paid off.
We didn’t do things in the traditional way, so here we are!
xo
Well of course you and I have discussed this before, that you and Don and my husband and I are in so much the similar circumstances. I pray things get better for us old(er) people soon! And gee, guess what, the why of it always being something (but don’t want to sound like a victim in saying ‘why does it always have to be SOMEthing!), our garage door broke a spring this morning, so my husband will do his usual and scout fix-it videos on youtube in order to try to fix it himself but, in the meantime, the door is down and it can’t go up … and I have to have a soft-water tank delivered on Tuesday, the delivery of which we’ve missed over the past three weeks already, due to their driver problems and our schedule (water softening isn’t a luxury here; it is a necessity) … BUT it’s a beautiful day today, much cooler in the temps, blue sky and sunshine, no big winds; a day not to lose over worry and stress, so I won’t!!!
PS: I see you’re selling some of the McCoy; been going over that sort of thing in my head, too. My husband inherited a coin set and, for awhile, a long time ago, he would also buy what are called proof sets. So I see he has been unearthing that stuff because of course anything we can sell provides the means to fix something wrong with the house!
I guess I should’ve said the soft-water tank is located in the garage. Thankfully our car wasn’t inside. And we can enter the attached garage thru the house to get to the laundry equipment. So, the little things for which to be grateful!
I figured that out!
Exactly! We could use the money and I don’t need or want all of the McCoy anymore. Some of it, pieces I really love, I’ll keep. But the rest should move on to someone who will appreciate them.
xo
sorry for your worries and troubles, vicki. hope and praying you get relief soon.
if you want to share, are you and your husband still considering a move out of california to the midwest or elsewhere?
i feel like my worries are both similar to yours (retirement income, inflation) and the flip-side of yours (single, renting right now so no big repair bills but also no equity gained). either way, life is hard … but we’re going to make it alright! :)
hope you can do something fun today and every day!
hugs and prayers,
kathy
thank you, kathy; moving is still on the docket but not happening soon for a variety of reasons … I was so glad to hear of your signed Gino poster …!!…
i keep you in prayers, vicki. if there’s anything else i can do, please let me know.
sending hugs, too.
kathy
ps … thanks for sharing happiness with me about that gino poster … what a fun surprise! i am not in a super-easy place to spend money for something extra and not-cheap (like framing), but how could i not?!? it’s a sweet gift from my sweet sister. and it’s gino. :)
dear Claudia/Don — very lovely pics — here, seems like leaves have changed almost overnight, some are vividly colored while others will follow — amazing since we have had little rain — but really pretty right now. sorry re appliance issues — it is a nuisance to deal with — everything here is living on ‘borrowed’ time as refs, electric range, ovens were all purchased nearly 20 yrs ago — we have an excellent heat/air system that is younger — about 10 or 12 yrs old. do hope everything does not go dead at the same time — what a disaster that would be for us. stay safe
Luckily the oil burner is relatively new and Stella is in good shape!
Stay safe, Linda.
Glad your oil burner is working again. Always something when you own a house. Your cloud pictures are beautiful. I especially like the first one. I think it’s great you and Don are planning little outings this fall. They give you something to look forward to in this age of uncertainty. Hugs, Elaine
Thanks so much, Elaine.
Stay safe!
I’m glad you started the heat instead of waiting too long and then have it not working. I turned mine on for a bit. Too early. I love your drive idea. It’s something I sometimes do. Rick hates being in cars (and I hate being in a car with him!) so I usually do it solo.
I was very happy we found out about it earlier rather than later. Ours is off again because it’s a bit warmer. As it is, this early in the season we keep the thermostat around 60 so it doesn’t kick on. If we do turn it on, it’s for about a half hour – just enough time to take the chill off.
Stay safe, Jeanie.
That autumn scenery you have going on there is so pretty! I don’t blame you one bit for soaking up as much of it as you can before winter hits. I love those big fluffy clouds. And the apple trees could have come right out of The Wizard of Oz. Though, I like winter too. I have no problem hibernating — books, projects, soups to make, gardening catalogs to ponder — winter isn’t so bad (as long as it doesn’t last six months).
I bought my house late in life too, but I did it as soon as I could! It’s hard buying a house in SoCal. Still, despite the mortgage, it is less than paying rent would be. The cost of rent just takes my breath away! And, like they say, it’s always something. The big thing lurking before me now is to get the bathroom redone, not for cosmetic purposes (wouldn’t THAT be nice), but for practical reasons. I’m saving my pennies and trying to live frugally to save the money. Plus, I plan to accumulate the materials over time, so that the cost doesn’t hit me with one great big punch.
I recently bought a bedframe from our friend Craig and his list. I’ve been looking for years, but anything I found that I liked was just too expensive. Stumbling across my find at Craig’s was serendipitious. I pounced as soon as I saw it. I’ve had good luck over the years — you might have the same kind of luck replacing your refrigerator. The people I bought the bedframe from were so kind. When it was determined that my vehicle wouldn’t accommodate it, they offered to deliver it. Wasn’t that amazing?
I read that All the Light You Cannot See is being made into a NetFlix mini-series. I’m not sure how I feel about that. I really liked the book — enough to read it again. We’ll have to see.
Pozole for dinner. Yum!!
Glad you found the bed frame, Elizabeth! Rents were high in California when we lived there and that’s over 20 years ago. I’m sure they’re astronomical now. Same here, though maybe not quite as much. I often comfort myself with the fact that living in NYC would be much more expensive and we wouldn’t have an equity.
Stay safe.
OH, you are so right; the house down the street from me (where I live in Southern Calif) just rented for $4,000/month and these are old, plain, tired-out, tract houses from the 1950s; just 3-bed/2-bath boxes. The neighborhood isn’t ‘all that great’ anymore either; nothing fancy, that’s for sure. The homeowner left permanently for out-of-state relocation with no rental manager, having no idea now(?) that the house appears to have more than one renter than the sole one who’d been mentioned to me (we saw at least four different moving vans for as many days; that particular home has a family room and a home office build-on which could be two-to-three extra bedrooms); so, clearly, the renter has sublet with likely the absentee owner now knowing, and there are multiple people already in the home (the number of cars also gives this away), which is the only way anybody could afford that kind of rent, and we’re not even a full-service town with nice amenities for anyone. Yes, my home mortgage payment is very high (a big hit every month), but it’s certainly not $4,000/month!
My husband picks up stuff on craigslist a lot. He just scored enough brand-new tile still in boxes to handle the floor of one of our bathrooms, whenever that project ahead can happen. Only expenditure on our part was to drive the mile to go pick it up, from really lovely people in a lovely home who were helpful and so glad that someone could use their leftover, unused tile. It’s good-quality tile made in the U.S., not exactly the colors I’d have chosen for myself, but it’s a neutral and soft whitish-gray; will work just fine! Another time, I saw a (somewhat battered) large-breed dog igloo (insulated dog ‘house’) as freecycle on someone’s sidewalk curb but the homeowner must have been watching that I was struggling to get it into my too-small car. He said, “You have a big dog?” I said, “Yes, but this is actually for feral cats from my hillside who need shelter for winter from the cold.” He said, “Look, I’ll put it in the back of my truck and get it to you.” Sure enough, the next day, here it was, sitting on my driveway. There really are a lot of very-nice people out there in our world, and we have to remember this!
My typos (these old[er] eyes!) — I’d meant to say that the homeowner who rented out her house (she’s now on the other side of the U.S.!) likely does NOT know that her renter has sublet and brought in other people to help with the rental cost of the home. It’s hard on an old house when it has that much foot traffic, like many more people using the bathrooms (old plumbing; old infrastructure here). On the other hand, maybe as long as she gets her $4000/month in rental income, the homeowner just doesn’t care.
We had this happen once before and somebody in the neighborhood (wasn’t me!) reported a homeowner for having too many people living in his home and also too many of their cars parked on the street (the homeowner even had somebody living in the garage); but, with rents so high, this sort of thing will be happening a lot, because such high rent is disproportionate to most people’s incomes. And it DOES cost more money to live in Southern California for a lot of things; like, my homeowner’s insurance is nearly off the charts now, cost-wise, due to past years’ wildfire risk. Gasoline has finally dropped under $6/gallon but of course everyone-anywhere is also feeling the high cost of food.
My husband and I are seeing more and more people ‘living’ at the beaches. Beat-up motorhomes and vans as their residences. Even in the actual beach parks (any of these places are free to the public; there are no fees in most parks), they can park from about 6am to 8pm before getting pushed out by patrolling County authorities. We see the same vehicles in the same places all the time. Makes you wonder where they hole up at night. Where do they find a safe place?
There’s one couple in probably their late 40s or early 50s (could even be older) who have a utility-style/passenger van and they use the one park which has outdoor showers and nice bathrooms, outside drinking fountains, unlimited poop bags for dogs. I’ve seen the woman filling up numerous plastic gallon-jugs with water at the fountains. There are BBQ grills where they can cook. They can walk the beach for exercise. There are lots of picnic tables, chairs and benches if they don’t want to be in their cramped van all the time.
I talked to one of the rangers about these people (this couple is always parked where my husband and I want to park; they took over ‘our place’ [ha!]; as a consequence, I can’t get to my favorite lookout points with them there; so, it bugs me, although I try to have understanding about it [and not be so petty!]) and the park ranger said they can’t do anything about it even though these people are regularly using the water, toilet paper, paper towels, etc. (if you want to be really crass and think about it in such a way rather than to feel better human emotion). He said that this particular couple is ready at the gates of the park every day at 6am, waiting to drive in; they voluntarily leave as the gates are closing at night.
But, month after month, day after day, they come back, parking in the same place at the end of the lot. And this is how they live. (Don’t know if I’m being naive, but I’ve wondered if maybe they work the night shift somewhere, like for pay. Because they have to eat and be able to gas up that van, even if they’re not able to afford rent/conventional housing.) I actually think she washes out their clothes with the jug water she collects, as I’ve seen clothes hanging from the van’s exterior in the heat of the midday sun, although where they perch at the end of the parking lot, it wouldn’t be visible; they’ve claimed that corner and you can’t really see or you’d be disturbing them, and you get the distinct impression they want to be left alone; the guy is somewhat menacing to me, so we give them their space. (Although they took OUR space! Grumble, grumble. We only get out every week to ten days for a short drive to the beach; it was one of my little happy places.)
Anyway, I say to myself, “There but for you go I.” Don’t throw stones. It’s tough out there. Home ownership is killing me right now, but at least I have a home. As long as the roof doesn’t fall in before I can replace it!
Exactly. We have to remember to be grateful for what we have.