|
|
Post by RichardInTN on Dec 31, 2023 0:02:55 GMT -5
As a year, for me, you generally sucked... but I will still wish you well as you depart.
|
|
|
|
Post by tarynwithat on Dec 31, 2023 20:07:15 GMT -5
2023 was a very weird year for me.
Spent the first 3/4 of the year trying to save DH's City job. Very long story short, a threatened wrongful termination. He was on paid leave during an "investigation." Discovered that there are no employment attorneys in the area willing to "fight City Hall." So I did a lot of pro se work on that.
Figured out (after several doctor visits, many chiro visits, and a round of physical therapy, all with no result) that my back pain was due to the extra weight I was carrying. So I lost 50 lbs. No more back pain. Shame that nobody else could have figured that out sooner, really, including me.
Daughter got engaged. Wedding date set for next October. They haven't known each other long and it was, frankly, a rebound relationship after her breakup with her five-year partner last fall. But we do like him and it is her life, her choice. This will be her first marriage.
Fought endlessly and futilely with landlord and adjoining horse property tenants over their total inconsideration. Constant traffic up and down our rock driveway at all hours at high speed, blowing white dust over everything. Lost all the privacy we had enjoyed for five years and gained a $300 increase in rent, with a promised additional increase coming in 2024.
Then…
Bought a house. Still can't believe I did that. We had been "looking" and I had been saving money for a down payment for years, but the housing market over the past three years had made it impossible to find anything affordable that would fulfill our criteria. I had searches set up but there was rarely anything that was even near what would work. Then one morning I saw this house that had just listed, and it was so intriguing I had to look at it. They were having an open house that day. We went, looked, could not resist, and put in an offer seven hours after it was listed. Amazingly, the offer was accepted and the house-buying ordeal began.
The house was built in 1858, it is 165 years old (almost 166 now!). Sits on one acre way out in the country, about 20 minutes from where we were. It is what I have always wanted. Of course, it has issues that you would expect from a house this old. There's a price you pay for getting what you want.
So that whole process began, and almost immediately DH ended up in the ER with heart failure. Afib. He was in hospital for five days. Is now on all these meds that are causing all sorts of side effects, memory loss and personality change being the major ones. I have tried to get all that addressed to no avail. I finally found a new cardiologist who I think might help, we have an appointment Tuesday. But living with that has been...not fun.
Then the next week, he was officially terminated from his job. In the middle of the house purchase. He had taken another job with a friend paying half of his normal salary while on leave, but the loan papers had already been submitted from his real job and approved. So hoping for the best and that he can find a new job with his normal income soon, we let it go on since we had already terminated our lease on the old house and pulled our investments and paid the earnest money and it seemed like we were stuck.
Then there was the closing and the move-in date was set for November 1. Hired a moving company because DH was not supposed to lift over 20 pounds. I only hired them for the moving part, figured we could do the packing to save money. Well, that was around when I discovered the side effects from DH's meds. I ended up doing about 90% of the packing and getting a moving sale organized, like eighteen hours a day every day for three weeks. My daughter and her fiancé helped out the last week, I am so thankful for that because I never could have done it by myself otherwise.
Then it turned out that the moving company, which was referred by DH's friend and I chose after researching and getting quotes from several others, was a big mistake. HUGE. It took them all day and two trips, and twice the estimate. And so far I have 27 claims for broken or damaged things, including the glass door to my antique curio cabinet ($500) and a completely destroyed sewing cabinet ($750). I discover more all the time as I unpack. They also apparently could not read the labeling on the boxes for which rooms they went to, so about half of our stuff ended up in the wrong place, including some furniture that I couldn't move to the right place by myself. We moved in two months ago and there are still many boxes unpacked and things I can't find, furniture still in the wrong place, only three rooms out of twelve are "done." It has been an ongoing nightmare dealing with the moving company. AB Moving, for anyone who has them in their area.
There were definitely some good things. I am grateful that they caught DH’s Afib before he had a stroke. The Rangers finally won the World Series! Out of the blue and completely unexpectedly I inherited some money from my stepfather (who had disowned me, but forgot to take me off one of his job policies), enough to pay for the desperately necessary window replacements on the house and keep us from incurring any more debt. Made enough money from the moving sale, plus some, to buy a greenhouse for my plants instead of having to sell them and close down my Etsy shop (not only did it rain our moving weekend, we also had a freeze, so most would have died), a greenhouse I was able to find right at the moment, cheap, and get put up just before the freeze hit. I am grateful that my back pain is gone and that I am still strong enough to be able to do so much physical work during the move.
But, again, it has been a very weird year. I am happy to tell it adieu and to hope for a better and less weird new one.
Happy New Year!
|
|
|
|
Post by RichardInTN on Jan 1, 2024 0:24:00 GMT -5
|
|
|
|
Post by tarynwithat on Jan 1, 2024 11:11:28 GMT -5
Understatement. But I try to look at it as better than being bored. |
|
