back on track

Now that the mess with the car is finally over, we can start concentrating again on things around here. That whole situation had me worried, and I lost touch with everything for a week or so, so nothing really got done at home....now back to it.

This weekend will be spent for the most part on getting Lisa's sewing room put back together. I have to clean and scrub the downstairs bathroom, repair some shredded drywall, replace some scratched-to-hell wood trim, and paint before we start moving things back in. ( NEVER EVER again will there be a cat in this house!!) She has a LOT of things to go through and set up since she does so much-sewing, quilting, rubber stamps, candlemaking, painting, crocheting, beading, jewelry.....TONS of stuff. She plans on going through things box by box as I bring it out and thinning out her surplus, though I don't see much going out the door lol she just can't get rid of anything....I can't laugh really since I'm guilty of the same in the garage, and the two 4x8x1 foot shelf units of coffee cans full of nuts, bolts, washers, screws, nails and other hardware proves it.hahaha It's going to take a while to get her back into full-swing, but after it's all said and done, she'll have her own space back...all 14x26 feet of it.

With all that's been going on, the cold frames never got anything planted in them, so I'm just gonna write them off for this year and plan on planting starts in it in the spring. I was hoping to get some cool weather greens going in it, but life interfered. No biggie, at least it's built and ready for spring. I still have to rake the leaves (as you can see, there's a LOT) and put them on the garden space. The John Deere needs winterized and put into the shed, the Lowboy needs the snowblade mounted and tucked in front of the garage so it has easy acess to electric. It runs on 50w and needs a block warmer to even attempt to start it when it's cold, otherwise it's like trying to turn over a motor filled with frozen molasses. I need to cover the cooker, dump the composters, clean and oil the garden tools, bring in the 2 footlockers with the tents inside, cover/ replace the 2 broken garage door windows, hang the chicken feed hopper, and run lights with a timer to the birds.........can you say busy weekend???? With the change in the season, and the time change, I barely have an hour from when I get home till it gets dark, so time to get things done is really limited. We already lost Monday night since we had to go to the dealership, last night I was tired and grumpy (cut my smoking in half over the past 3 days), and tonight I have to return my uncles truck. I need a vacation, lol.

We somewhat started planning next years garden already, though nothing is set and on paper yet, it's still all just talk. We do plan on socking away materials little by little over the winter to build a coop and get more chickens in the spring (meat birds), since I never have enough projects anyway, haha. Slowly but surely, we'll get where we want to be. It's just taking time. At the very least, taking this path has taught me patience, which is something I really didn't have before. But with every little step is a sigh of relief and a great feeling of accomplishment....I love it.

Back from the dead.....sort of

Last week was AWFUL with the mess going on with the Saturn, I didn't get online other than to read emails.

As I said in a post before, the transmission went out in our '03 Vue. It turns out that this tranny is nothing but problems, and they are doing NOTHING to adress it. We had it towed to a tranny shop, who can't get parts or a rebuilt one, and their quote was $5800. Another found a used tranny with NO warranty for $3000, or could get me into a new one for $4900. Last and surely not least, the dealer quoted us $6100 =tax and labor.........are you kidding me??????? I was wrong on the payments, we owe a little over a year on it, so adding that with the cost of any of these quotes doubled what the car is worth, really NOT an option.....

Now comes the fun part.Hi mr car dealer man, I have $1000 cash and a 5 year old car with a blown transmission, and by the way, our credit is shit right now....so will you sell me a car???huh???? Saturn only offered us a '06 Vue with a 5 speed, and Lisa doesn't know how or want to learn how to drive a 5 speed. Another dealer offered to get us into a new Ford Fusion, but our payments would have been $550. 2 others couldnt help. Finally the last one Lisa talked to called back and had something. We couldn't get too picky with our situation, but we almost had to have an SUV or truck since Lisa has a bad back and is currently having knee problems.

We ended up with a '06 Pontiac Torrent. It's very close to the Vue style-wise. It's a 6cyl all wheel drive, lots of options, and fairly low mileage. Lisa loves the color, I love the price lol. 2 weeks of jerking around and a bizilllion phone calls and FINALLY something we both like. When it was all finalized, it was 5:00 on saturday, so not all the papers could be signed or get the Vue there, (the tranny shop isn't open weekends), so we're going today to sign our life away for another 5 years....ugh. We were hoping to do away with car payments, but not much of a choice. At least the stress is over, and Lisa had a dependable vehicle. Maybe now I can get my head screwed on straight and get back to concentrating on things around here.......yay.