My work friend died Saturday. 
I knew it was coming with absolute certainty, so the pain has been kind of diffused over several points: when I found out what she had and read about the survival rates online; when I heard she'd gone into hospice, and then when I heard she'd died. But it still hurts. Hard to believe such a lively, constantly moving, super-bright woman could decline so quickly and be gone from my life. The workplace is subdued, but luckily it's being faced head-on: the office is closing early Friday so we can all go to her funeral.
The second maybe-interested buyer backed down from making an offer. This time the reason was association dues too high in the city, going to buy a place in the suburbs instead. Can't argue with that. There have been two more showings, Saturday and Monday, both from a single agent but can't tell if it was one buyer coming back for a second look. No feedback from those.
No word on the WV deal. The option expires Saturday. No idea what they're going to do.
No word on NT's raise. He's bugged his manager again to talk to the person she needs to in order to get the promotion and raise made official. She tends to drag her feet for ages, so who knows if/when this will happen. But she's lost a good worker by ignoring his needs, so hopefully she's learned somewhat of a lesson and won't try to play games with my husband.
Other than that, things are steady. Just some really sad news and some frustrating lack of progress on some fronts. Nothing we could control. Everything we *can* control is working out nicely. We've managed to hang onto about $600 of the $1200 that NT's mom sent us, so we have some for must-have repairs and urgent wants. The rest was spent pretty sensibly on equipment repairs and various winterizing and storage type things.
NT's mom's boyfriend sent us some lottery tickets he'd bought in the U.S. and we cashed them out; $15. We spent $9.50 on a buy one get one free costume deal at Target.
AS has $25 gift card coming from MyPoints that she gets to keep or trade in for cash by giving it to me for grocery money. I've completed the pedometer challenge at work and will get a gift card for it. NT used some Pinecone money to offset a pair of used boots from eBay. I'm going to try and make do with all my winter stuff from last year, and we'll see what we have for the girls before we buy them anything from a thrift store. I'm close to earning $100 in CC rewards from USBank, which means we'll also get an extra $25 for waiting until we'd accumulated $100. All the little stuff adds up and helps us stay on track during this very tight time. That means I've been able to hold onto $2K from my raise, and that NT's raise (if/when it comes) can go toward helping us get out from under the condo mortgage.
AS has less than $5000 to earn to finish making up for her paychecks and healthcare through January. Once she's done I can start saving up for taxes and putting some to her retirement. She's got three or four prospective and/or definite jobs that will probably put her over the top; we just don't have exact dollar amounts so I can't count them yet. So far it looks like freelancing will pay way more than the job she left; not sure how much more after SE taxes and self-funded healthcare. But at least she's happier and doesn't work quite as much as she did, so that alone makes it worthwhile.
So things are going pretty well. Even though I'm feeling sad and stuck, we're actually doing OK.
Just dragging along
October 8th, 2014 at 02:32 am
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