Catching up to speed

[aadler]

So, since the last time we tuned in:

Susan has been hit with … not exactly Facebook jail, but lately she hasn’t been able to post anything there (and no explanation given). My initial thought was that someone at Facebook (or someone complaining to Facebook) had decided that her political beliefs were ‘problematic’. Reading up on it, that seems less likely, in that she hasn’t been blocked from Facebook, she just can’t post there. (I haven’t checked yet to see if she’s still allowed to comment on other people’s posts. That might narrow down the possibilities of what’s causing that.)

Me, I deal with Facebook by posting there maybe four, maybe five times a year. I pay some attention to what people I know are sending up, but mainly I just ignore it.

***

Last week my younger brother sent me a text: Call me as soon as you can. Bad news. I didn’t get the text till after midnight — and, frankly, I wasn’t looking to embrace bad news that late — so I didn’t call till the next day. At which point I didn’t get an answer. Took a shot at calling our youngest brother, but he’d got the same text and likewise been unable to reach our middle sibling. On my last try, I got through …

An elderly relative in another state had died. Frankly, I didn’t even know who my brother was talking about, I never kept up with that side of the family. I’d been thinking in terms of a cancer diagnosis, something with his wife or his daughter or one of his grandkids. This was a welcome relief (if not exactly good news), and he’s aware now that he needs to provide a bit more preliminary information in such messages. Yes, I called the last brother to let him know as soon as I had the low-down.

***

The home repairs continue, but for some reason they seem to have slowed down (as in, it’s been weeks since we’ve seen appreciable progress on the last couple of jobs). I want to talk about it with our handyman, but he never seems to be here unless I’m occupied with work, and I want to approach the matter tactfully so he doesn’t get annoyed and leave all these jobs unfinished. He’s done good work up to now, but the time scale is becoming increasingly troublesome. We still hope to get the house finished and on the market before too far into the autumn months, and that window is dwindling fast.

***

For the last several years, Susan and I have been on a fortunate pay schedule: each of us got paid every two weeks, but those weeks overlapped, so that every week there was something coming in for one of us or the other. Her most recent pay change has moved us away from that felicitous arrangement: now the state (she’s working for the nearest university) has decided to pay twice a month, probably the 1st and 15th of each month. Minor adjustment, but still an adjustment, and I did kind of like things the way they were. Too bad the decision wasn’t up to me.

***

During part of the house remodeling, things got moved while rooms were being worked on. I just located our bathroom scales the other day … and discovered that I had put on an extra five pounds in the interim (this after I found I was already five pounds over my previous maximum). Personal caloric-intake-and-exercise discipline to begin tomorrow in response.

***

I can’t believe tomorrow is September.

Comments

[aadler]

As far as the contracting work goes, our guy is spending more time on the current part (though Susan still wants him to finish the final touches on several other parts that got put off while the present big project was drawing all his attention). Our problem is that what remains — reflooring those parts of the house that haven’t already been done — is time-intensive and costly, and we’ve gone through the special funds already set aside, so we’ll have to come up with more for that purpose. Do-able, but not fun and somewhat annoying.