2.I saw
one outside yesterday and put some veggies out.
3.I’ve
been putting critter mix and peanuts out for the squirrels.
4.The
groundhogs seem to enjoy fresh fruits and vegetables, so I’ll start putting
those out, too.
5.The
batteries in the camera died, and we didn’t reset the time, so the time and
date are off. From what I can tell, the
groundhog(s) came back sometime this week.
6.I am
so happy they’re back!
7.I suspect
we may see some baby groundhogs at some point.
8.The
hyacinth from last week bloomed this week.
9.Here’s
another picture of it.
10.The
daffodils next to the carport look like they’re going to bloom very soon.
11.Some
other daffodils have bloomed a little more.
It was insanely cold last night and today, so I’m not sure how long they’re
going to last, but it’s nice for now.
12.Here's one more groundhog picture because they're just so cute.
13.A Thursday 13 doesn’t seem complete without at least one cat picture, so I’ll leave you
with this one of Theodore in the box he has claimed as his very own.
1.I think
a cat picture is always a good way to start a Thursday 13, so here’s one of
Caroline.
2.One of
our favorite local restaurants that flooded during Hurricane Helene reopened
recently, so we went for dinner last week.
3.They make
all of their own sauces, and everything is so good. The food is wonderful, but the sauces are
incredible.
4.When
we said it was our first time back since they reopened, they showed us where
the waterline had been during the flooding.
It’s a little hard to see in the picture, so I circled it.
5.You
can see why it took a little over four months for them to reopen!
6.In
happier weather-related news, we’ve been enjoying some warmer weather this
week. We’ve gotten almost up to seventy
degrees almost every day. It has been
wonderful!
7.I know
it probably won’t last, but I’m enjoying it for now.
8.So are
the flowers.
9.The
daffodils are starting to come up.
10.We
have a tulip just starting to come up.
11.We
have a hyacinth that looks like it’s very close to blooming.
12.I’m
hoping it won’t get cold enough to kill off the flowers!
13.A cat
picture seems like a good ending for this Thursday 13, so here’s one of Tara.
This week’s Thursday 13 is another one without a theme.
1.Mortimer
and Theodore don’t typically cuddle together, but Nick got this cute picture of
them hanging out together.
2.Theodore
is at that very active kitten stage where most of the pictures we get of him
are blurry or when he’s sleepy. Here’s one
of him napping.
3.We finally
got some good FEMA news!
4.As I
said last week, we were notified that we needed to submit paperwork from a company
detailing the damages and the cost of repairs.
Even though we had already submitted all of that before, we submitted it
again. We heard back fairly quickly that
we were approved for aid. Finally!
5.The
total amount ended up being just under half of what all of the repairs
have/will cost. After pretty much giving
up on getting any FEMA aid, we were thrilled.
It makes sense that they can’t fully pay for everything for everyone,
but getting significant aid is a huge help.
6.Ironically,
about half of the aid we received was for “immediate” needs, such as temporary
housing. I wouldn’t call February immediate for
something that happened in September, but we’re still very grateful to have
gotten aid.
7.This
is what the backyard looks like right now.
8.Remember,
once upon a time, it was kind of pretty?
9.We’re
still working on fixing the drainage problems.
Funding and weather have been the holdups. We’ve mapped out the plan for catch basins,
pipes, and dry wells. The red yarn represents
pipes and the orange plates represent catch basins/dry wells. I know it’s kind of weird, but we don’t
always picture things the same way, so something like this works to make sure
we’re actually talking about the same thing.
10.We’re
still waiting for a decent stretch of time when it’s not raining/snowing and the
ground isn’t frozen to be able to start on the drainage work, so we don’t have
a firm plan yet. We’re tossing around
the idea of hiring someone with equipment to do the digging, and then doing the
pipes, gravel, and catch basin/dry well installation ourselves. We’re hoping to find a good middle ground
between saving money and being realistic about how much digging by hand we can
handle.
11.Even
though I love to cook, we like leftovers a lot, and it’s nice to have a break from
cooking (especially during the week) without going out or getting takeout. Monday was a perfect leftovers night. I made tacos over the weekend, and we had leftover
taco meat. So, when I got home from work
Monday afternoon, I turned the leftover taco meat into crock pot chili. I added beans, tomato sauce, and seasoning. Like this.
12.A few
hours later, it turned into this, which was a delicious, almost zero-effort
dinner. I can’t really explain it, but it
absolutely delights me when leftovers work out that well.
13.Another
cat picture seems like the perfect way to end this Thursday 13, so here’s one
more of Theodore.
This week’s Thursday 13 definitely doesn’t have a
theme!
1.Theodore
is growing like crazy; he has been neutered, microchipped, and has gotten all
of his kitten shots. I think he looks
more like a big cat than a kitten in this picture.
3.A FEMA
inspector came to the house last week to look at the damage, which we thought
might mean progress.
4.It did
not. This week, we received a letter
that the FEMA inspector wasn’t able to fully assess the damage (which isn’t
really surprising since FEMA inspectors apparently do not go into crawl spaces or onto
roofs). They said we’d need to have it
inspected by an HVAC company and send that information for FEMA to review.
5.We
sent that information to FEMA in November!
It was a write-up from the HVAC company about the damage, how high the
water was in the ductwork, and what was needed to repair it. We’ll be resubmitting that and hoping that
someone actually reads it this time.
6.I
truly think they make the process as annoying and difficult as possible in
hopes that a lot of people will decide it’s more trouble than it’s worth and
give up.
7.There
are still near-constant reminders that, even with the damage we had, we were
still some of the lucky ones. A couple
of weeks ago, we helped some friends whose house was destroyed during Helene
move from their short-term rental into their long-term rental. They’ve been told it will be a year and a
half to two years before their house is rebuilt.
8.I’ve
been trying to crochet a little more, and I finished an ear warmer.
9.Here’s
the link to the tutorial if you’re interested.
(And here’s the right-handed version.)
It was very simple to make. I
used a thinner yarn than the pattern called for, so I had to do more rows, but
it was still easy to follow along with the video.
10.Being
cold is a powerful motivator to crochet an ear warmer! The heat was out at work during one of the
cold snaps. Everyone worked from home as
much as possible, but some of us had to go in on one of the days when we had
temperatures in the teens. I made the
ear warmer the night before that and wore more layers than I ever had
before.
11.Fortunately,
the heat at work is fixed now!
12.I
think cat pictures are a great way to end this Thursday 13, so enjoy this one
of Mortimer in the living room chair he has staked out as his very own.
We have a new family member to introduce.This is Theodore.
He’s about five and a half months old. We got him back in November.
Over the summer, our vet had two litters of stray kittens
born under her porch. The first litter
was in the early summer, and the mom disappeared before Dr. D. could catch
her. She showed back up with another
litter, which was the one Theodore was part of.
Dr. D. managed to catch the mom when Theodore’s litter was
still pretty young. She has since been
spayed, and Dr. D. has kept her.
Each litter had five kittens, and Dr. D. wasn’t about to
drop them off at a shelter during kitten season, or when the local shelters
were struggling after Hurricane Helene, so she adopted them out through her
office.
The kittens from the first litter were adopted fairly
quickly, but the kittens from Theodore’s litter took a little longer, so Dr. D.
agreed that her office would cover their first year of medical care. That makes it much harder to resist a sweet
little kitten!
I was at the vet with Tara and saw the sign about the
medical care and the descriptions of the remaining kittens. Of course, I asked to meet the orange
male. I had been without an orange kitty
for over a year at that point.
I was a goner as soon as I held Theodore. He purred and cuddled up to me right
away.
It took a tiny bit longer to convince Nick. Ultimately, we decided that even though it
had been a horrible year, and we were still in the middle of dealing with
hurricane damage, Theodore could be the one bright spot in the year.
Theodore has absolutely been a bright spot. He’s extremely friendly and outgoing. He’s positive that anyone coming to the house
is here to see him.
All of the big kitties have warmed up to Theodore to
varying degrees. Charlie and Theodore
have become cuddle and nap buddies.
I’m hoping to get back to a somewhat regular blogging
schedule, so there should be a lot more Theodore pictures coming soon.
Happy (belated) New Year!
Since I haven’t blogged in a while, this will be a catch-up post to wind up 2024.
First of all, we have heat. I initially wrote this post (the part below in green) when our heat was first fixed.
We have heat,
we have heat, we have heat!
I wasn't going to go under the house to photograph the furnace, so enjoy this picture of Mortimer.
Okay, I promise
the whole post won’t just be the same three words over and over again. It’s just so wonderful to have heat
again!
They finished
installing the new furnace/HVAC system around 3:00 the Wednesday before
Thanksgiving. It didn’t make my
Thanksgiving Thursday 13 because I wrote and scheduled that post ahead of time.
We’re still not
finished dealing with everything. I
think I finally managed to successfully update our application with FEMA. I received an email last week about updating
our application if there was additional damage.
We’ve only been trying to do that since mid-October.
Anyway, this
time, I was transferred to a different department that I was told is the one
that handles application revisions. I
started off as caller number 207 and spent about an hour and fifteen minutes on
hold. Oddly enough, that gives me some
hope. A lot of people have had to revise
their applications, so waiting makes me think that maybe, this time, I talked
to the right department. We shall
see. In the meantime, we aren’t getting
our hopes up too much.
We’re still in
the process of getting the HELOC loan.
It’s taking a long time because they’re backed up because so many people
are doing HELOC loans to pay for Helene repairs due to not getting any or
enough FEMA aid and no SBA funding. It’s
like a never-ending loop of delays and problems.
We were lucky
that the cold weather held off as long as it did, but in looking at the
extended forecast, we knew we were running out of time. So, we made the difficult decision to put a
large portion of the cost on a credit card while we wait for the HELOC
loan.
Putting that
much on a credit card is a sickening feeling!
And it may sound irresponsible, but it really seemed like the best
option. We’re 14 years into a 30-year
mortgage, and our house has more than doubled in value since we bought it, so
getting a HELOC isn’t really a gamble.
The biggest
issue so far is that the credit union won’t underwrite a HELOC loan for a house
with no heat. That’s another thing that
has been very frustrating. Ordinarily,
that seems like a very reasonable rule.
However, people here aren’t getting HELOC loans for anything fun or
frivolous. We’re getting them to repair
the damage from a natural disaster that was so unlikely to happen here that no
one could even get insurance for it. I’m
normally very much a rule person, but this has just added one more problem for
people to deal with when everyone is already at their breaking point.
So, we paid for
what we could, used the money generously donated to our GoFundMe, and put the
rest on a credit card. Now, we’re
desperately hoping that the HELOC closes before interest begins to accrue. Even if we do end up accruing interest for a
month, we still think it was the best decision in the circumstances we’re
dealing with. We’ve had days of the
temperature dropping to the low teens and not getting above freezing, and we’ve
had our first dusting of snow. We were
concerned about the potential for pipes to freeze and create yet another set of
problems to deal with. The new furnace
was installed just about 24 hours ahead of a big temperature drop.
I know I’ve
shared a lot of personal information in this post, and I’ve written, deleted,
and rewritten it a few times.
Ultimately, I decided to go ahead and share details since so many people
(and before September 27th, I was one of them) don’t understand how
long and complicated the recovery from a natural disaster is. I know I’m paying a lot more attention now to
how representatives vote for things like funding SBA loans and disaster
relief. It wasn’t that I didn’t care
before. I just had the very mistaken
idea that between insurance and FEMA aid, people were at least able to begin
the recovery process fairly quickly.
From some of the comments on some of my other posts, I don’t think I was
alone in thinking that. So, even though
my blog isn’t huge or popular, I think it’s important to document what average
people are dealing with after Helene.
And, I want to
say thank you again and again to everyone who donated to our GoFundMe. It means so much that people, in some cases
people we’ve never met in person, helped us.
Thank you.
Unfortunately, it has gone out so many times since then
that I’ve lost track, so I took the post down.
We think we’ve finally addressed all of the urgent issues, and are
hopeful that it won’t go out again for a very long time. In addition to the entire HVAC system and all
of the ductwork, we also had to replace the sump pump, replace the crawl space
door (it was destroyed in the process of getting the old system out and the new
one in), have some electrical work done, and work on some drainage issues. We haven’t finished everything with the
drainage project since the ground has been mostly frozen, but it’s something we
will have to take care of before the house is back to its pre-Helene
state. We haven’t started on replacing the broken
screen door because there have been bigger issues to deal with.
We closed on our HELOC loan right before Christmas and were
able to access the funds right before New Year.
We’re still waiting to see what happens with FEMA. Honestly, at this point, I don’t think we’re
going to get any FEMA aid.
Since my last post before this was right before
Thanksgiving, here’s how the rest of the year went.
Thanksgiving was a little different. For the first time since 2016, we didn’t take
Thanksgiving dinner to the hospice house.
I still feel a little bad about that, but I also think it was the right
choice. The HVAC company was here all
day the Tuesday and Wednesday before.
The breaker box is in the kitchen, so I really didn’t have access to the
kitchen until Wednesday night. I barely
got everything made in time for our Thanksgiving. We still hosted a big crowd at our house; our
neighbors and several other friends. It
felt normal and good, which was absolutely wonderful.
Christmas was also a little different. We normally go to my sister and
sister-in-law’s, but Nick and I were both sick with what we’re pretty sure was
the flu. Obviously, we stayed home
rather than share that. Our awesome
neighbors dropped tacos off for us on Christmas, which was really sweet.
We were both feeling better by New Year’s Eve. We never go out for it, but I made a lot of
little appetizers and snacks for dinner, and we burned the 2024 calendars. We started burning calendars in 2016 anytime
the year had more bad than good. It
feels good to watch the calendar from a not-so-great year go up in smoke. Here’s a video of the calendar burning.
At my job, our vacation time (over 240 hours) rolls over on
January 1st, so there’s always a big push to make sure all of our
time is entered and up-to-date by the end of the year. We’re encouraged to print out time statements
to make sure everything rolls over properly.
We also aren’t paid overtime, instead, we earn comp time. I worked on some extra projects and worked a
lot of overtime in 2024. So much,
that, for the first time ever, I didn’t use any of my accumulated vacation
leave. I did take vacation time (close
to four weeks total throughout the year), but I had enough comp time to cover
all of it. And I still have some comp
time hours left going into 2025. I’m
hoping not to do that this year! I
didn’t lose the accumulated vacation time.
It rolls into sick time, which we can use to retire early if we don’t
end up taking it as sick time. And,
speaking of retirement, I’m officially halfway (without using any accumulated
time) through my 30 years for full retirement.
I’ve only been in my current job for five years, but the ten years
before are part of the same retirement system.
Realistically, I can’t imagine that I will stop working in 15 years, but
it’s kind of weird to think that I could retire (at least from this job)
then.
Some other 2024 numbers are:
I read 27 books, which is a little embarrassing; my goal
was 52.
It was my second-lowest blog post year since I started in
2012. 2021 remains the year with the
lowest number of posts.
I posted more videos (74) and shorts (23) on YouTube than I
ever have before.
I didn’t crochet much in 2024. The biggest project I finished was making
little purses for the neighbor girls.
So, how was 2024 for you?
I hope 2025 is shaping up to be a good year for
everyone!
