Can't wait until my next payday, as it will put me past a big milestone in having saved over $10K in emergency funds.

Yesterday was a warm and mostly sunny day, so i was able to enjoy part of the day outside.

I started off on Saturday by going to a "Propogation 101" class at a local nursery. They have a slew of free workshops on all sorts of gardening topics over the next few weeks. There were about 20 people there, and i was fortunate to attend a class led by the owner of the nursery. The class was a little too basic for me, but i was intrigued by a few comments the nursery owner made about the challenges of running a garden nursery business in this kind of economy.

He said that based on how nurseries in the mid south are doing (their spring arrives ahead of ours) this will be a banner year for the nursery business, as a lot of people are planting vegetable gardens like the "victory gardens" of the Depression.

And i was also surprised to see the nursery; i had never really investigated it because my perception was that it was very expensive, although what i saw yesterday seemed reasonably priced. Plus he has a lot of greenhouses and quite a big operation. He's made the whole outdoor nursery and greenhouse nursery rather pleasant to walk around in, with a few antique cars positioned in front of some of the greehouses, a windmill that doubles as a chicken coop and lots of collectible type things, plus a nice kitty that enjoyed being petted.

After the workshop (which was free, by the way) I filled up my gas tank at the cheaper station in my area, then headed to a discount supermarket where i wanted to get most of my veggie seeds. Unfortunately, they didn't have yellow wax bean seeds so i'll have to get them elsewhere. (I want to be able to make a 3-bean salad with mostly homegrown ingredients, except for the kidney beans.)

then i headed to trader joe's, where i wanted to get their special canned cat food. Now that i have a new cat, i want to really try to improve his diet. My old cat, Sitka, was really hooked on dry food, and aside from the inferior nutritonal value, which i've learned about from my reading, it also made it difficult when she was ill; it could've been easier to give her meds and get her to eat if she'd been more willing to eat soft foods.

I am already adding supplements of brewer's yeast, cod liver oil and bone meal to Luther's food, but i want to do more. I can't help but wonder if Sitka's exclusive dry food diet was a factor in her developing cancer.

Anyway, my research at www.consumersearch.com (just like Consumer Reports, only free) told me there was one variety of Fancy Feast that was pretty good, as well as the Trader Joe's brand and the other top-rated brands were those expensive premium brands (NOT Iams or Science Diet, but Wellness and Natural Balance). This is mostly based on these foods not having meat by-products listed among the 1st four ingredients, no preservatives or food colorings, and not too much filler like cornmeal. Cats need protein!

The one Fancy Feast variety that is considered pretty good is Flaked Fish & Shrimp Feast. Of course, it's the Fancy Feast and Trader Joe's brands that are most affordable. My goal is to get the best quality food i can at a reasonable price, so i will likely stick with the 1 Fancy Feast variety and Trader Joe's.

I checked pricese at Amazon on the Friskie's by the case, but with shipping, it is not a bargain.

After Trader Joe's I headed home. I did some yardwork, which mostly consisted of disposing of some burning bush clippings from late last fall, and then clipping dead branches of butterfly bushes and sedums. Also filled up the bird feeder and did a load of laundry which needs to be transferred to the dryer now.

I also spent a lot of time researching prices on fencing for my veggie garden. Last year i used a cheap but flimsy netting, almost like a bird netting. It was lightweight but without a 2nd person, it got tangled up in the posts very easily.

So i finally settled on some "vinyl metal" fencing plus posts from a locally owned home improvement store. I should get away with spending no more than $175. Sounds like a lot for a garden that measures about 11.5 x 18', but the fencing comes in 50 foot rolls and by my measurements i'll need 59 feet. I could enlarge the garden a bit but run the risk of running into roots from the apple tree that fell over a few years ago. (The stump is still there.) The $175 is actually just HALF of everything comparable that i could find online, even with free shipping.

The expanded garden will be quadruple the size of last year's garden. As you remember, i kept track of how much produce it generated and posted about it here; that small space generated well over 100 tomatoes, 35 cucumbers and a fair number of peppers, so i'm excited to do even more this year.

So anyway, the fencing i wanted was out of stock but i'm planning on picking it up on my way home from work on Thursday, when they're open late. I just realized i'll have to call them becus i ordered the 6 foot fence (tallest they had) with 6 foot posts, but since i have to ideally bury the posts at least 2 feet, i need 7 or 8 ft. posts.

I also called the town animal shelter to see if the cat "Lily" was still there. I had seen her photo in the paper a few weeks ago and she seemed very attractive to me, even tho it was just a b/w photo of her face. But she looked very cat-like in an unusual way. Unfortunately, someone else had already claimed Lily, who was heading over to be spayed soon. They said she had a bob tail, too.

Luther, at about 7 months and pretty much fully grown, size-wise, really needs a playmate. He is ALL kitten and has so much energy that when i'm home, i'm constantly getting up from what i'm doing to see what mischief he's up to, whether it's batting around the mini blind strings or climbing kitchen counters, etc.

I must admit the other reason i'm still thinking about a 2nd cat is becus Luther is not as affectionate as Sitka was. Although he's a good-sized cat, he's still very much a kitten at heart and just wants to play, play, play. He's not into being a mush or spending much time being petted. He'll stand for that for about 3 seconds, then in a flash he's gone to find his next adventure. I have to say that after Sitka's departure, i'm still missing having a cat that likes to snuggle.

Finally, in addition to my yardwork, i also worked in a bunch of crushed eggshells i'd been saving all winter; it's good for vegetable plants, tomatoes in particular. I also planted my snap peas, just in time for today's rain. I'm a little late in doing so; should have done it weeks ago. I don't have the fencing up yet, but i just put together a small triangle of space enclosed by some waist-high plastic fencing i have. Kind of make-shift, but it'll do for now, and the peas should vine up the fencing quite well.

Mid-morning I ventured out, but only to fill up my gas tank for the coming week and to drop off some donated books at the library.

Back home, I did another hour or so of yardwork, cutting up some much smaller trees. There is so much to do.

This afternoon i had sauteed onions and tomatoes from my garden with chicken livers over a 7-grain rice (ummm) while watching my favorite cooking show on Ch. 13, Lydia's Italy. This week she had had daughter on, who is the spitting image of her.

Just ended an hour long conversation with friend H. Also did some reading earlier this afternoon and even drifted off for a nap.

Nice way to spend a Sunday. Not really looking forward to the work week ahead. No work at home days this week.

My father arrived here around 1 pm yesterday, and from 1 to 5 pm we worked hard, loading his pickup with all the debris from February's ice storm.

Through it all i was worried about my dad, age 76, overdoing it, because he really has become very sedentary due to hip and back problems. But you can't tell my dad what to do; my strategy, as i mentioned in previous posts, was to do as much of the work as i possibly could before he came up, and then once he was here, to make sure i held up my end so that all the heavy work didn't fall on him alone. He expressed surprise at how much debris i had accumulated in the driveway when he arrived, like a forest, he said, i couldn't see the house.

It was unfortunate that my dad didn't come last weekend, as he'd intended; because yesterday, the day he came up, was K.'s birthday. (She lives with him.) I had told him on the phone he didn't have to come this weekend, he should do something with her on her birthday, but he said no, don't worry about it.

And if K. came up, they'd have to bring their 2 dachsunds with them, and i think they knew i wasn't crazy about them spending the night with the 2 dogs and my new cat. I had told my dad i wanted to treat them to a night at an inn just a mile from my house. It would be like a romantic little getaway for them and solve several problems all at once as far as the animals went, and they even accepted small dogs there. But he didn't accept the offer, probably not wanting me to spend the money.

From what both he and K. told me separately, she was kind of upset with him not spending the day with her, and his reaction was that he lives with her 365 days a year, what's the big deal. Hmmm. I realized now that it doesn't matter if you're in the 70s or your 20s, women think about things like birthdays very differently from men. It's not an age thing, it's a gender thing. He couldn't understand why she was so upset. He asked me if i would be, and i told him yes.

When he was chainsawing the logs, i was scurrying back and forth with the wheelbarrow, toting 2 or 3 log chunks at a time, over to the driveway. He kept telling me to slow down, but really, i wanted to take as much of the work off of him. And here he was just trying to help me.

I was going to spray his pants with Off becus the ticks are out now. It was exactly this time of year when i was relishing all the yardwork, bug-free and no foliage out yet, when i got Lyme Disease. He doesn't take it that seriously cus it's not as epidemic in NJ as it is here in Connecticut. But he was out there chainsawing before i had a chance to spray his pants legs.

So i implemented "Plan B." When we were all done Friday, i told him to take his pants off, in fact, to take all his clothes off, in the basement, and throw them in the washing machine, where i'd already thrown my clothes. I was surprised he didn't dismiss my admittedly paranoid concerns; he threw his clothes in there. But hey, if you walk through my yard, you'll step on deer poop every 6 feet, no exaggeration.

Running the clothes through a washing machine cycle doesn't actually kill any ticks that might be on there. (At this time of year, they're in the nymph stage and are the size of a dot on this screen...you'd never see them.) What does kill them is running them through the dryer. Ticks thrive in damp, moist habitat, like under decaying leaves; dry heat will kill them.

We also had to make a quick side trip to the hardware store to get chainsaw oil. We filled the pickup bed to the very top. In all, we made 4 trips to the landfill; in the last trip there, we brought the heaviest, largest stumps, and i asked the guy at the dump how much I'd need to pay. (Anything over 4 inches in diameter, they charge you.)

I'd like to say i flashed my winning smile and he said "no charge," but actually, he was just a real nice guy (all the guys at the dump are, for some reason) and he said "don't worry about it." Pine chips more easily and it's not a big deal, he said, even though i had a dozen large stumps. Hardwoods are more problematic, i guess.

We ate our dinner and our breakfast at the same diner. My roast chicken was dried out and my dad's spaghetti was watery/runny cus they didn't drain it well. We ran into my neighbors there on both days. "I guess you're a regular here," i said to Cliff.

Anyway, in between all the very hard work, we had plenty of time to talk. Over breakfast, my dad startled me by asking me if I knew that my grandparents (his parents) had purchased three extra burial plots for us. I'm not sure if they intended them for my dad, me and my sister, because i would think they'd assume my sister and i would get married and perhaps end up somewhere else, but who knows. (As it turns out, my sister and i both remained single.)

But what a strange feeling it was to hear this bit of news. It was as if my late grandparents, dead these many years, had reached out beyond the grave to extend one last act of kindness.

My dad said we should probably have a family meeting to talk about this stuff. I told him i'd had no idea about those extra burial plots but truth be told, it was a comforting thought to know that if i wanted, i could choose to be buried alongside my grandparents.

I hadn't even known where my grandparents are buried. That may strike you as strange. I have never visited the cemetery. My dad informed me they are in Paramus, NJ. My grandfather died when i was 16; i'm 49 now. My grandmother outlived him by nearly 25 years, but when she died, my dad told me she did not want a wake or funeral, she just wanted to be buried, so my dad was the only person at the burial. I thought it very sad at the time, because perhaps she didn't realize she was depriving her family of the chance to grieve for her, at least in the traditional way that families do.

Once my dad left around noon, i stripped the bedsheets off the bed my dad slept in and ran all that through the washer and dryer as well. You can't be too careful.

I was quite miffed (!) that my new cat, Luther, chose to spend most of the night in my comfortable bed with my dad (!!!) rather than with me, on the floor of my office. Well!

In any event, it was good for the cat to become accustomed to another person here besides me. (My other cat only warmed up to me, and that proved to be a disadvantage and harder on the cat at times when i was traveling and having someone else look after her. She wouldn't let other people approach her.)

All in all, it was a productive day-and-a-half, and i'm glad i got all that taken care of. Now i can focus on readying my vegetable garden for the new season. First order of business before anything else is erecting a new fence around it.

But i'm too tired today. It's a beautiful day, but no energy left. Tomorrow i'll do more yardwork and maybe think about heading to Agway for fencing supplies.

I can already tell March will be a big income month, probably the biggest of 2009. It was thanks to my 2008 bonus and IRS tax refund.

I kept my promise to myself and put the entire net bonus, $4500, into my Roth IRA. I'll fully fund the remainder that I'm eligible to contribute, $1,500 in monthly increments of $165 starting April 1.

I checked my bank account online and happily found the IRS deposited my tax refund, the first i've gotten in about a decade, in the amount of $624. So I've already transferred $600 to my emergency fund money market account, boosting that balance to $9,600. Sweet!

I love paydays, not because I look forward to spending, but because I look forward to saving. Pay day triggers a number of tasks for me including a $350 transfer to my emergency fund. And the tax refund and bonus really turbo-charged my savings efforts. Once I add to my various goals, i get to update my progress here, and it really serves as a great motivator to always see it there in writing.

Today I'm taking off the second of 2 personal days I'm given at work. My dad is coming up to help clean up the fallen tree branches from that January ice storm. (His plans to do so last Friday fell through, but i took the day off anyway.) If he gets here by noon, as he said, we might even have time to get to the landfil today, as i think it's going to be 2 loads, not one. We can do l load today before they close at 3 pm, and another tomorrow.

(I always make a point to use up my personal days first, before vacation days, because in the event i was laid off, I wouldn't be reimbursed for unused personal days, so i might as well use them; I would be reimbursed for vacation days.)

I've got everything in the driveway, ready for loading in his pickup. I only left 3 large pine branches of about a 6 inch diameter that i couldn't cut with my bow saw. They're quite heavy.

He told me on the phone last night he'd packed his sleeping bag. I told him there was no way i would ever let my father sleep on the floor, so don't even think about it. He laughed. But really, my 76-year-old father sleeping in a sleeping bag? I'm giving him my bed and I'll take the sleeping bag and a pillow and sleep on the floor of my office. It should be interesting to see what the cat makes of it. Will he pounce on my father? Crawl in the sleeping bag with me?

Stay tuned for the next episode of The Flying Trapeze Cat.

I tried to make the most of my much cherished one-work-at-home-day-every-other-week.

Before our official office start time, i scooted out and did a landfill run, then hit the post office and got $84 worth of forever stamps.

I used my lunch hour to continue work cutting up tree branches, hauling the smaller ones to brushy perimeter of yard where they can rot away, and dragging larger branches to the driveway for eventual disposal at said landfill.

Luther, the 6-month-old kitten i recently adopted, is SO full of energy and just wants to play, play play all day long. He is always getting intro trouble in a way that my older cat never did. Or at least i don't remember her doing that, but she was much older. I still daydream of getting him a companion. I saw a very pretty cat, just her face, in my local paper. It said she was very friendly and outgoing. I just liked the look of her face, very cat-like. If i have time, i may stop in at the shelter this weekend.

I have updated some of my savings goals to the left. Well, the goals remain the same, but i've outlined my strategy in more detail, and until i did the actual calculations, i had no idea how much i was really saving from a % point of view. I am in Super Saver Mode, to be sure. Saving 46% of gross income is DAMN good.

Now if i can just keep it up and stay the course. Of course, that's the thing that trips up a lot of people. You start out with the best of intentions and then your plan falls by the wayside. If i can just hold onto my job and keep my goals uppermost in my mind, i can get there.

I think i'm different than most in this regard. It's not that i have oodles of money. In fact, i've always had a modest income. But I am extremely disciplined and self-deprivation is something i don't mind doing if the long-term payoff is there. And for me, financial independence is the ultimate goal and something worthy of deprivation in the short-term.

Today i worked on cutting up the white pine branches with my little bow saw and loppers, then hauling cut up stuff in my wheelbarrow to the driveway, where the stuff will eventually make its way to the dump.

I've had all day, but the problem is, i'm apparently so out of shape from a largely inactive winter that i can only work out there 45 minutes to an hour before feeling totally exhausted. So i worked an hour around noon, then again around 2pm, and am sipping hot tea, waiting for the caffeine buzz to kick in so i can work out there once more today.

Each time i come in from that work, i peel off my sweatpants and sweatshirt and leave them on the washing machine in the basement, in case there's a tick on them anywhere. And i won't allow myself to lounge on my bed until i'm done for the day and can soak in the tub. It was just this time of year one year ago when i was doing a lot of yardwork, taking advantage of 1. No bugs, and 2. No leaves on trees to do a lot of cleanup, but THAT's when i got Lyme disease. So i'm constantly checking my skin when i feel an itch. I have too many darn freckles.

Had dinner with H. last night at local pizza place/restaurant. I had an omelet with broccoli, onion and cheese, first omelet i've had in about 10 years. For many years i avoided eggs completely becus i believed that an allergy blood test i had indicated i had an extreme hidden food allergy to eggs (so-called hidden becus i had no symptoms) and supposedly according to something i read it could affect my MS.

When i was dating my last boyfriend Bob, a few years ago (the neurologist) i ran the test and the article and everything by him and he didn't put too much stock in it, so i decided to reintroduce eggs back into my life as i really do like them.
My back and shoulder blades are killing me.

I also made chocolate chip/oatmeal/walnut/whole wheat flour cookies.

OK, tea is gone. Time to go back and play Paul Bunyan.

I scheduled today as a personal day cus i was expecting my dad to come up but he's not, as it turns out. No biggie, i could use a mental health day, so i started off with a trip to Macy's to use a $25 gift card i just got from my employer for participating in a little study of one of our competitor's websites while other employees sat in a separate room and watched my keystrokes (and me) via videotape. Interesting, huh?

Macy's used to be one of my favorite stores, but truth be told, they don't have much that i want. I really didn't want to spend much over the $25. I browsed the lingerie area, but ended up wildly overpaying for a Scandanavian garlic press (I usually chop my garlic and am hoping the press will release more flavor) and then 2 small juice glasses, a very pretty green with bubbles in the glass.

When i pulled into my space at the parking lot, i noticeed a woman sitting in the car next to me. A beat up old car filled with "stuff." It occurred to me she could be living out of her car. I was sort of thinking about it when i went inside the store and considered striking up a conversation with her when i came back out, but while her car was still there, she was gone. I took a closer look inside the car. There were a lot of empty soda bottles that i supposed she was going to recycle, but there also seemed to be a lot of mail. I mean, piles in the front seat and the back. I saw one phone bill. Again, these thoughts take a while to circulate in the old noggin, but as i was getting back on the highway, I wondered if it was her mail or if she was possilby stealing mail to commit identity theft. The thought occurred to me becus ID theft is one of the big topics i write about at work. I guess i'll never know.

Stopped at Trader Joe's and got some essentials for me: the california dried "slab" apricots (getting priceir all the time but oh what a treat), a bag of organic pears, 2 containers of steel-cut oatmeal, some cereal and cereal bars and some organic jams.

Then, my final stop, Costco. I actually stood in front of a nice compact 22" LCD HDTV for $299 and considered getting it, then giving my small kitchen TV, which works perfectly fine, to my mother. I had to give myself a mental kick in the you know what to move on. Spending $$ is too easy at Costco.

I also rolled up the $400 wool rug i just bought and put in the dining room and hauled that baby up to the attic. It was very heavy and i could barely get it upstairs. Then i unwrapped the replacement bamboo "rug" (purchased so i wouldn't have to worry about the cat scratching it) and laid that down.


Absolutely beautiful for $189, free shipping. I can't recommend www.naturalarearugs.com enough. This is my third bamboo mat. It's the perfect solution to cats scratching carpeting, it's priced GREAT compared to regular rugs and looks beautiful. My only small complaint is that it isn't too hard to leave scratch marks on the bamboo if you don't, for instance, have leg pads on your chair legs.

Meeting a friend for an early dinner tonight around 5.

I did get my bonus, and it's already invested in this year's Roth IRA. The remaining balance is about $1,500 so i'll make monthly contributiosn of about $185 for the rest of the year and just consider this as just another "bill." I should be able to manage it.

Well, in my last post i mentioned how my dad wants to help me clean up all the white pine branches that fell in that big ice storm we got.

If the weather's decent next weekend, he'll be up Friday night.

Dad wants to help his daughter, but daughter worries that the work is way too physically taxing for a 76-year-old man to tackle.

So daughter devoted today to doing as much as possible.

There's still a ton of work to do, i'm afraid, but i made a dent in it. I pushed i don't know how many wheelbarrow-fulls of branches to the driveway, where they'll be more easily loaded into the back of my dad's pick-up.

And i cut up dozens of larger branches and hauled them to the driveway too. At least they're off the lawn.

Maybe with daylight savings time kicking in, i might squeeze in a half hour of work out there each weekday when i get home. I don't get home til 6:30 pm, so i don't know if that's realistic. The light will be fading, to be sure.

After a largely lethargic winter, i felt tired after just a half hour of work, so if that's how i feel, my dad will be in even worse shape. Maybe it would be better if the weather were bad so his trip is delayed another week. He seems intent on helping me, and truth be told, i could use his help cutting up the really big branches with his chain saw, but i don't really want him doing much else.

That was pretty much my day. I watched a very sweet Netflix movie, Cave of the Yellow Dog, about traditional Mongolian life, by following one family. Very touching. It was fascinating to see the inside of a yurt. It looked very cozy znd comfortable.

I finished up my leftovers from my dinner with dad last night, the cream of mushroom soup from the german restaurant. Very delicious.

It was so warm today that i turned the heat off and opened the front and back doors so Luther could enjoy the outdoor views through the storm doors for the first time.

I had to tape those square pieces of paper all over my storm door windows becus a lot of birds used to fly into them and die. It took me a while to figure it out and i felt really bad about it.

I never did my grocery shopping this weekend and so i have really have little to eat for dinner in the house. I may go to Stop and Shop on my lunch hour to save myself time. Note to self: Also need to fill up my gas tank.

I have plenty of milk for my breakfast cereal and a bunch of cheese and yogurt and the ever-present pasta and sauce, but that's about it. Well, there's always canned tuna and canned chicken i guess, plus a few frozen dinners. And some granny smith apples.

Ugh. I took a look at the March 1 statement for my mutual funds and i'm just hemorraghing lossese. I'm down $19,000 just since Jan. 1. I've lost so much in stocks that it's time to rebalance again, so on Monday I'll be moving $10,000 from my bond index to my stock index, gritting my teeth as I do so because it sure feels like pouring money down a fast moving drain.

Yesterday a.m. i got out bright and early and ran to the landfill. I also got the emissions test on my car done, washed my car, vacuumed the car and vacuumed he upstairs.

I feel like my family did their share to stimulate the economy yesterday.

The 3 of us had a nice lunch at the Good News Cafe yesterday for my mom's birthday. I guess I'm not used to paying for meals out so it's a little bit of sticker shock when my sister and i got the bill, which we split between us. It came to $85 with tip for 3 people! That's lunch!
When i got home from lunch, i felt so tired that i ended up lying down and taking a light nap. Then around 4 i had groggily forced myself to get up and have a cup of tea. Then i heard banging on the front door. It was my dad. He made an "impulse" visit, which is kind of funny since it's a 3-hour drive. He'd already been to see my sister and so we sat around with a cup of tea and thenhe wanted to go get dinner at the same German restaurant we'd been to last time he was up, about a month ago.

I was still feeling stuffed from lunch, believe it or not, but I did have a German beer and a most delicious bowl of cream of mushroom soup. The best i've ever had, in fact. Dad had sauerbraten.

It was nice to see that the restaurant had a full house, even amid this recession when so many other places are going out of business.

the place we had lunch at was pretty busy too. My theory is that the good restaurants with good food will survive. Becus people will still want to go out on special occasions, like to celebrate someone's birthday/anniversary or whatever, but i think when they do go out they'll be choosing where they go more carefully, becus they want it to count.

So if the weather's decent next weekend, my dad'll be back up on Friday night, spend the night and then we can get an early start on cutting up all the tree branches that came down in one ice storm. It's a major mess. The idea would be to get it all done before 3 pm so we can bring it to the dump in his truck before they close.

My dad will bring his chain saw, which is kind of needed, but in truth it makes me rather nervous to have him using it. He is 76, after all. I don't like to see anyone using a chain saw. It's electric.

So that's why i plan to devote a good part of today to cutting up as much of the stuff myself as possible.

Mr. Adorable, and Savings Advice on the computer!

Damn.

My boss took me aside this week and told me the 2008 bonuses finally came through. I'd be getting my full bonus, and then some, because the company exceeded last year's revenue goals to the tune of 115%.

So the good, no, the really GREAT news is, my 08 bonus is $7,400. So that means my 2008 income (not including freelance) was 28% higher than my 2007 income at my previous job. In other words, my layoff from my old company was really a blessing in disguise. Them and their 3% annual increases all the 3.5 years i was there.

I was just sorely disappointed becus my boss told me it should be in this week's ppaycheck and when i went online to check just now, it wasn't there. So I'll have to wait another 2 weeks.

I'm not sure what the net will end up being, but whatever it is, it's going straight into my Roth IRA and since i can contribute $6,000, not $5,000, i'm guessing that will take care of the whole thing, pretty much.

It's just super-annoying not to have it when they said i would.

On the cat scene, i have capitulated.
I have seen the early signs of scratching issues on an upholstered chair and a brand new $400 wool rug in my dining room despite spending $130 on 4 scratching posts, only 1 of which Luther's used. So i have already ordered a bamboo mat for the dining room. The rug will be stored, flat, in the attic, to serve as some very expensive insulation. Maybe, someday, like a decade from now, i'll be able to enjoy that rug. Maybe i'll never be able to enjoy it.

But bamboo mats are worry-free when it comes to cats scratching them. They just don't. They're quite attractive (www.naturalarearugs.com) and i already have one i use on the screened porch and in my office and, oh yes, in my upstairs bathroom, but i had felt a rug would be nicer in the dining room. But scratch that.

Right now, the rug's been protected by long strips of tinfoil covering the entire 8 x 10 feet of it. Lucky for me i bought a huge roll of tinfoil at Costco, had to be at least 5 years ago. I'm not a big tinfoil user, but i did use alot to protect that rug.

When i take the rug up, i won't throw the tinfoil out, either. I will use it.
As for the chair, for the time being, i'll be put tape on the spots where he might scratch.

I still daydream of getting a second cat, but i also realize a 2nd cat will just increase the likelihood of further scratching issues so i think despite my inclinations, i may have to settle for just one cat. (Declawing cats, BTW, is cruel and inhumane, if you ever read up on the procedure. It involves removing a portion of the bone, not just the claw, and sometimes causes more problems, behaviorally, later on.)

Damn, all i can think about is that bonus.

Well, thank god it's the weekend. i get so pooped by the end of the week.

Tomorrow my sis and i are taking my mother out to lunch at a restaurant she's wanted to try, for her birthday.

We got about a foot of snow. Had already arranged to work at home today, not becus of the weather, but becus i had a dentist appt. at 5 pm.

as it turned out, dentists' office called and wanted me to come earlier, so i went over there at 12:15. It's only a mile away.

So i'd been working at my desk for 3 hours (!) before my boss emailed me to say our office was closed, that he had wondered why no one else had been coming in, and consider it a day off. (He'd forgotten to check and call our toll-free number to see if they would announce an office closing. I've checked several times when we had very bad weather, and they didn't do it, so i figured nothing would ever make them close the office. The problem is that my office is 45 minutes south of me, on the CT shoreline, and temps are always more moderate than where i live, which is inland and gets more snow.)

I had been hoping to make a dump run and get the emissions test on my car done, but the roads really were pretty bad and my snow tires are on their last legs. So back home i went after seeing the dentist. Disappointed to learn one of my fillings is cracked and will need to be replaced. It's been a long time since i had to have anything done besides cleanings, and i don't relish the novacaine. I have toughed it out in the past without it, but i don't know. Maybe i'll try the laughing gas.

So i scheduled it for exactly one month from now (on another work-at-home day) for April 1.

I've been going to see my dental hygeinist for many years now. In fact, i followed her to a new dentist she started working for a year or so ago after the old one retired. She's on my town's underwater search and rescue team, and if she happens to get a call on the scanner of some sort of accident or emergency, she may just leave you in the middle of a cleaning. It's never happened to me, luckily. And she told me she thought she led a boring life.

I still need to schedule trip to the optometrist and my very first colonscopy. Lovely. Doctors' appointments seem to take all year long to get through, even if you're "healthy."

As the winter has worn on, the indoor temps here have crept up. I seem to be less and less tolerant of a cold house. I think i started at 55 last fall, but the minimum is 59 now with a high of 64 on weekends and 59 feels freezing to me.

March will need to be a very low spending month for me. I see my checking balance is pretty low, below $2,000, thanks to my February purchases.

I refigured my hypothetical based on revised unemployment benefits with an extra $100 a month and the 65% subsidized COBRA. (I like to be prepared.) Nearly all my routine expenses would be covered except for heating oil and home maintenance, and of course if i lost my job, i'd have to eliminate dining out, entertainment (yes, including Netflix), clothing, gifts). More importantly, i'd have to immeidately stop prepaying my mortgage, contributing to my emergency fund and my retirement savings, so let's hope a job loss never comes to pass.

So when i calculate (in my profile here) that my typical month's worth of living expenses is $3,000, it actually would be about one-third of that with unemployment benefits. So you might say i have nearly 6 months worth of living expenses covered, which is nice to hear, but that won't keep my from continuing my emergency fund savings. Better safe than sorry.

If i don't spend that money to live on in case of job loss, i might end up spending it on a new car a few years from now. It's gotta come from somewhere and better not to sell my taxable stock funds while they're in the tank. I haven't looked at my february statement yet. I know it will make me feel very poor. DJIA fell under 7,000. Still looking for a bottom, as they say.

A foot of the white stuff's on its way. Don't put away that snowblower just yet.

We've had flurries on and off all day, but the serious snow will be coming after 6 pm tonight.

Lucky for me I'm working at home tomorrow, though i do have a dentist appointment late in the day.

I saved $86 on my homeowners insurance policy by increasing the deductible from $1,000 to $2,500. It would've been more, but i was part-way into the one-year term already; next year, the annual savings will be over $100 as i recall. $825 is a ridiculous amount to pay, year after year.

Got paid for the only bit of freelance work i've done in 2009, $133, thank you very much.

Went to an interesting, town-sponsored 3-hour forum (free) on Sustainable Landscaping yesterday with M., a friend in town. There were 5 speakers. Pretty good; i wish they had more of these types of workshops.

Am roasting organic red potatoes now and will have them with sauteed onions and 2 fried eggs. Mmmm. I need to eat more veggies, though.