retirement plans? what retirement plans?

Seems as though some people plan their retirement as meticulously as they plan their weddings or their families. For years, they’ve envisioned what retirement would be like: whether there will be travel plans and to where, whether they want to make time for the grandkids, for volunteering, or for having a newfound social life. They know how much money will be coming in from retirement benefits, pensions, and other sources of nonworking income, and they will have it earmarked: so much for this and so much for that.

Then there are the rest of us. We don’t have a clue what retirement will look like, how much money we will be bringing in to live on, or, really, how much we will need. We also may not realize what we will be doing day to day.

I am planning my retirement much like I did having kids, which means I’m basically winging it.

I planned to work till I couldn’t any longer. I had a half-time to three-quarters-time remote job that I enjoyed and that paid a decent hourly wage. I was able to fit it into my life very well, even when also watching my grandkids a couple days a week and amid other numerous obligations.

Then down came the boom, and I was let go, most likely a victim of the artificial intelligence (AI) movement. I’m collecting unemployment benefits while applying for work, but so far, no luck. At my age, despite my extensive experience, remarkable work ethic (I never took a single week off in the past four years), and excellent performance, I am very likely to not be hired anywhere.

In other words, I may have fallen into retirement by no choice of my own.

Since I consider myself still looking for work, I am not calling myself retired, though. There is always the prospect of getting freelance work if a steady job does not come through. Most of my life, I have worked on a freelance basis, so I’m no stranger to this platform. Still, it doesn’t offer benefits of any sort, not even unemployment benefits when a company suddenly (or not so suddenly) stops calling on you. If you get sick, you work through it. You don’t like the assignment? You take it anyway. In fact, you take everything that comes your way, whether you have the time or not. If you get into the habit of saying no (or do it even one time), you run the risk of being pushed aside by the 30 other freelancer who are an email away who will be happy to jump on assignments and whom the company will come to rely on.

With my newfound free time, I have been able to get around to little jobs around the house: putting in baseboards, wallpapering (I’m getting there next week, most likely), cleaning closets, cleaning drawers, decluttering, shredding old paperwork . . . in other words, all the things I couldn’t get to when I was working 30 hours a week.

I also have time to read, and read I have. I just finished my 38th book of the year today.

But to be honest, I’m getting a little bored. If I had my druthers, I’d still be working. And I’m learning that free time isn’t all that freeing: If you’re a person who likes routine, and I’m one of them, you need to stick to a fairly regular daily schedule, working or not. I do sleep in about 30 to 45 minutes longer than I used to when I was working, but I get up no later than 7:30 every day. I follow a breakfast and lunchtime schedule, I walk the dog one or two times a day, and I start making dinner starting around 5 p.m.

What I’m having trouble with, though, is feeling guilty about postponing or not getting around to certain chores or errands that I know I need to do. For example, I have procrastinated booking an appointment with a mechanic because, I swear, I have PTSD from having had so many repairs in the past go wrong or cost much more than the vehicle is worth. It’s a horrible feeling to shell out what often amounts to a lot of money; and many of us are at the mercy of our mechanics.

But I have found that the only way to get an unpleasant job out of the way is to do it. I promise to make an appointment next week.

I’ve been out of work for a month already, so having free time is still pretty fresh for me. By the time I actually do retire, I hope to have it planned out a bit better.

navigating unemployment insurance . . . and contemplating retirement

I applied for unemployment insurance (UI) about a week after losing my job. My position (there were three of us) was taken “in-house,” I was told, so I am eligible for UI since I was let go through no fault of my own.

Let me say that navigating the ins and outs of UI is not so easy, but I was able to apply, include all the pertinent information (including adding up all earned income over the past 18 months), and, today, uploaded a resume to the linked job board. (When filling out government forms, I always feel for the people for whom English may not be their first language or those with a limited education.) I will diligently look for work, but nothing looks promising so far. I constantly checked the job boards even when I was working, but couldn’t find anything in recent months that even came close to a job like the one I had had.

I have been watching YouTube videos of people who have recently lost their jobs, and those are not encouraging either. This is especially true for the people posting and commenting who are in their 50s and 60s. Of the couple jobs I’ve applied for, one firm has not responded, and the other rejected me in one day. These jobs were not perfect matches, so it’s understandable.

I know of people my age being out of work for over a year. No matter what anyone says, age discrimination is real in the job market. Of course, we are not asked for our age or date of birth, but subtracting a college graduation in the mid-1980s from the year 2025, for example, is pretty simple math.

If no job comes through in a reasonable amount of time, I will contemplate retiring. But with a meager SS payment coming my way and not a whole lot stashed away in retirement savings, my retirement income will not be what I am hoping for. Still, we need to pull the plug at some point.

The husband of a friend of mine has come down with a form of dementia. He’s 74 and was a medical professional. He was active and physically fit. He had retired back when he turned 60, and although that seemed young at the time, what an advantage that proved to be for him. Had he waited to retire until 66, 67, or 70, he would have had only a few symptom-free years instead of the 10 or so “good” years he’s had.

My best friend, who is exactly my age, has been retired for 3.5 years. She was a public employee who, fortunately, has a pension and will also be eligible for SS benefits. For her, the stress her work brought her and the fact that she had a decent pension made the choice easy.

So, it’s food for thought. No one knows what the future will hold; when to retire is a gamble: Do we hold out for a few more years of income until retirement and then more accumulated retirement benefits, or do we start Social Security early, taking in less per month but having more free time and getting our benefits sooner? It depends on what we think our lifespan will be and our other sources of income.

It’s a crap shoot for sure.

does rose have rosacea?

So, as I like to say, the hits just keep on coming.

I get used to a certain amount of pummeling on my body and, bam, here comes a left hook that sends my head spinning.

About four months ago, I started experiencing pimples on my brows and forehead. I had thought I wasn’t washing my brows well enough. Since they are getting sparse and gray, when they have no pencil on them, I look a sight. So, I would sometimes not wash all of my brow pencil off. at night before bed. Well, after I stepped up my hygiene routine, I saw some improvement, of course, and felt like needing to wash more thoroughly was all that it was.

But the pimples were also along my hairline. Then they started on my nose, and from there, I developed what I thought were psoriasis plaques below the corners of my mouth, followed by the right side of my mouth. The skin on my nose would sometimes peel because at times I would put acne treatment on it. So, I stopped that. But even without the acne care, I still was noticing some peeling.

I notified the pharmacy that dispenses my biosimilar for my RA so they can put this in their files. I was pretty certain this biosimilar, a drug that is similar to but not the exact same as the brand-name drug I was taking, was the cause.

I also informed my rheumatologist at last week’s appointment. She did a quick glance and said it looks like rosacea. I told her I’d never had that before, just acne in my teens and twenties (and thirties . . . ).

I had an appointment with my dermatologist for today, but yesterday, I had canceled it, thinking I needed to get some work done and that my skin was actually clearing up. Then just this afternoon, I started noticing red skin, not just pimples, but flushed skin, on the right side of my mouth, starting just under my nose. This is definitely something new.

I did a little research on it, and it most definitely could be rosacea. I learned today that the autoimmune pathways that trigger RA also trigger rosacea. My niece has a bad case of it, so I will let her know. Her uncle on her mother’s side has RA, and her aunt on her father’s side (yep, that’s me) also has it. Her younger sister is starting to get aches and pains, migraines, too, and I warned her to get tested when it gets bad.

Back to the rash: Since it is similar to a malar rash, I’m now wondering if it could be lupus. If you have one autoimmune condition, you’re very likely to get another. I was recently (maybe within the past year or just before that) retested for some of the blood markers for other autoimmune diseases, and lupus did not come up. But I still wonder . . .

I just went onto the web portal for my medical group and reinstated my appointment. It’s now for August, but so was my last one; the group has a very active wait list, and I will be informed when an opening pops up. I will take the very next appointment.

I’m finding that when you have a disorder like RA, you are never in the clear. There are so many new symptoms that can arise that you never would have thought had a connection to the disease, like rosacea and the spinal stenosis and hypertrophy I just learned I had in my cervical spine.

If it’s not one thing, it’s another.

ra, ra, sis boom bah

Having rheumatoid arthritis (ra): one person’s perspective

It’s been a while since I’ve written. Life is still hectic, maybe more so than ever. I watch my two granddaughters two days a week and work 25-plus hours as well (actually, more like 30-plus) from home.

The biggest news is that in April of 2023, I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. For those who are unfamiliar with it, RA is an autoimmune disease, a condition in which a person’s immune system mistakenly attacks healthy cells. The immune system is supposed to work for us, but turns on us and works against us (kind of like the new administration in Washington, but don’t get me started).

The disorder I have, RA, mainly attacks the synovial lining within joints, although other body parts are also involved. There is no stopping it, but there are ways to slow it down, namely with medications. I am on an injectable immunosuppressant and methotrexate (MTX).

My disease is up and down. I had been seeing a rheumatologist for four years before my blood markers actually showed I had RA. For years, I had had symptoms of something: carpal tunnel syndrome in both hands, migraines, knee problems, TMJ (temporomandibular joint) disorder, and more. Many of these, I just chalked up to aging or as isolated events, although I had thought something more was going on, something bigger was behind it all.

In the winter of 2023, that something definitely wanted to be noticed and labeled. At that time, I would wake up stiff. My left arm was bent, my knees were buckling as I walked, I was so stiff and in so much pain that I had to take the stairs one step at a time while holding the railing (and I was still trying to be a caregiver to my toddler granddaughter).

I made a new appointment with my rheumatologist and asked for all the tests to be run again. She, and the doctor who was working with her under a fellowship at the time, agreed. My RF (rheumatoid factor) was 250, while normal is less than 15 units per milliliter (U/mL). But the clincher was my anti-CCP (anti-cyclic citrullinated peptide) test, which often puts the nail in the coffin, so to speak, on people with symptoms of RA who also have clinical presentations of the disease. Normal is 20 U/mL. Mine was nearly 1,000.

From there, I was immediately put on prednisone for a few weeks, which caused bloating and weight gain, but I looked at it as a miracle drug: Nearly immediately, it took away my pain and stiffness. I couldn’t believe it was possible. I was also started on methotrexate. I believe it was eight to 10 pills a week. MTX is a form of chemotherapy that is used at low dosages for autoimmune diseases. After a few months of experiencing side effects (namely, hair loss, a purpura rash, and heartburn). A few months later, I started a biologic. I had no side effects from that, but symptoms would still arise on occasion, such as trigger finger.

I also went to physical therapy. I had an excellent PT at a nearby facility. My knee and my elbow both improved tremendously.

I’m considering going back to PT because I have developed some new symptoms. A month ago, I started to get cervicogenic headaches. This head pain originates in the cervical spine (the neck) and travels up the back of the head to the top and behind the eye. I went to my neurologist a couple weeks ago, and my physician’s assistant gave me corticosteroid injections. (He’s a pro, having performed many injections on me when I had carpal tunnel syndrome. Incidentally, I had hand surgery with my orthopedist a few years ago: both hands, with surgeries being about a year apart.)

The shots, which went directly into my scalp and shoulder, helped with the head pain, but I still feel it in my neck and the traveling pain to my head hasn’t stopped completely. I mainly feel it when I lie back and a bit upright to read. Sometimes, I still feel it when trying to sleep. I bought a special pillow, which actually is helping.

I asked my PA about getting an MRI so we can see what the cause is. I had that on Monday and got the report back yesterday. In some of my joints, I have severe stenosis, as well as bone spurs and degeneration of the discs. Although I haven’t gotten a review of the report by my doctor, from what I can gather, the stenosis is putting pressure on the nerve that travels up my head. This is what I will need to go to PT for. My lower back is a problem, too, though, so I will have to learn how to exercise both areas, I suppose. I read that massage is also very good, which is the best part of PT, by the way.

I have had so many medical appointments, I feel like an 80-year-old at times. I see my rheumatologist tomorrow, my dermatologist next week (I have developed a rash with plaques on my face; it may be due to the biosimilar I was switched to), and I need to get a DEXA scan, as well as see my dentist in June. I had a tooth resorption, in which the bone deteriorates from inside. That tooth had to be pulled, and I now need a partial plate (speaking of 80-year-olds). Yet another symptom of RA, as is the cervical spine problem.

This is my life in a nutshell right now. I plan to keep track of my progress (or regress, if that’s the case) in these pages. Till next time, at which time I want to discuss my possible career downsizing, meaning I’m thinking of cutting back on work, which may be exacerbating my symptoms (so many hours spent upright staring at a screen).

earning less and being OK with it

Despite my name, I do not look at the world through rose-colored glasses. Perhaps my parents should have named me Prudence.

Seeing the bright side of life is not me. I will not be tiptoeing through the tulips. Rather, I will tread lightly over the quicksand of life.

Given the chance, I always will choose to work to put another few dollars aside, which I look at as a safety net, over spending a few others on a good time. A penny saved is a penny earned, indeed.

So, when offered five more hours of weekly wages a few months back, I jumped at the chance. I knew it would be hard. I was stretched for time already, given my newfound nonpaying job of watching my baby granddaughter about 25 or 30 hours a week, but I can do hard things. I have done hard things. And I will continue to do hard things. I. Can. Do. Hard. Things. (This will be on my tombstone, no doubt.)

But “hard” is one thing. Squeezing the life blood out of me is another.

The extra money has been nice, but it goes into the bank, which is electronically transferred to pay my bills, so I hardly even notice the extra cash.

What I do notice, though, is that I’m working every day of the week—less on the weekends, but, yes, even on weekends. I also notice having to use a grocery delivery service (and paying for the service and a decent tip for the shopper), and I notice dust bunnies, clutter, and piled-up projects everywhere I turn in my house. How are those extra five hours helping me, exactly?

I literally just this morning (again) considered dropping back down. But would I do that? Having four kids spread out over a couple decades, I have had to take freelance/low-paying jobs and haven’t earned that much money at all. I’m almost heading into my twilight years (though I won’t admit it), and I want to earn a little something to lean on when I no longer can work. I am playing catchup.

Then, behold. Today came an email from my manager stating that the budget has been revised and we will all work a certain number of hours. Those hours will put me back down to what I was working before the five-hour bump up.

To say I was elated is an understatement. How perfect for me. I doubt I ever would have asked to drop back down in hours, but to be told this is the way it will be, I’m more than happy to oblige.

This may be temporary (as I was told it likely will be), but I’ll take it for now. Maybe I can breathe a little, have a moment of fun, or at least sweep those dust bunnies out from under the rug.

“the only thing certain is that nothing is certain”

To Do. Available. To Do. Available. To Do. Available.

I click on these buttons numerous times a minute, feeling like looney Alex from Fatal Attraction, sitting on the floor, flicking the light switch on and off. You know the scene: just before she slashes herself with the knife and tries to murder Michael Douglas. (Maybe I have the order wrong, but you get the idea.)

My great job, the one that was a steady 30 hours a week and paid a decent rate, in which work was plentiful at any time of the day or night, suddenly has gone dry. Because the company is shorthanded in the department that sends work to me and my colleagues, there is nothing ready for us to work on.

I quit a job to take this position. I rearranged the way I worked to take this position. For the past seven months, it was a steady job. Now there’s uncertainty of when or how much work will be available.

I’m a person who likes—thrives on, actually—certainty and security. Do not surprise me. Do not change plans last minute. Do not interrupt my way of life.

A few months ago, about five months into this job, I started watching my baby granddaughter four days a week, seven to eight hours a day. I continued working my job, as well. At first, it was a challenge. And that continued for a bit until I figured out a balance. Soon after, I was able to work my 30 hours as well as watch the baby 28 to 32 hours a week, trying at times to do both simultaneously.

I got into a groove, and, yes, that groove meant having to work several hours in the evenings and on weekends. But to help out my daughter and son-in-law and take care of the most adorable baby on the planet were worth working the extra hours on my “days off” with the baby.

Suddenly, a week ago today, in fact, the files of work I get paid to do were not posting on the platform as they had been. What was once a sea of files to choose from became a handful, and then none at all. I reached out to my (new) manager, who assured me he was aware of the situation and was trying to get information from the higher ups.

Just yesterday, he emailed me and my coworkers to say that more work is forthcoming, but there is no specific day when that will be nor how much work will be available when it does start coming in.

As someone who has spent the past 30 years in the uncertain world of freelancing, as well as taking additional part-time jobs, I was so pleased to finally find something that offered a flat number of hours and a paycheck that I could count on week in, week out. Having left a job I loved (although it paid less and offered fewer hours) to take this position was hard, but I knew I’d be helping with the baby and thought a remote job—even one that was double my number of hours—would work out better.

*Me, in a cloud of uncertainty*. (Getty images)

And it did. Until it didn’t.

Just like that the steady paycheck and the guaranteed hours each week have disappeared. Just like that my balance has been thrown off.

I’ll keep in touch with management and hope for a turnaround soon. I’ll even hunt down more work if I have to. But if straits become more dire, we may be eating rabbit stew for Christmas.

quick book review: The Cabin at the End of the World

Paul Tremblay’s *The Cabin at the End of the World*, 2018

The Cabin at the End of the World (great title, by the way) is a phenomenal read for the month of October. It’s fast paced, suspenseful, filled with details, and gives just the right amount of spook and awe to make you wonder: Is this the end of the world? Is it?

The book starts out innocently enough with little Wen, the adopted daughter of the men she calls “Daddy Eric” and “Daddy Andrew,” outside in the front yard catching grasshoppers in this uber-remote cabin in New Hampshire.

Wen is startled to hear heavy, quick footsteps. She knows she’s been out front too long, she knows she shouldn’t talk to strangers, but she engages in a conversation with the large man-boy named Leonard (I’m guessing it’s not by chance that he shares a name with the Of Mice and Men character) who wanders up the driveway. She takes a liking to him, but when she hears other voices coming their way, she becomes fearful. Before Wen goes inside, Leonard gives a warning that nothing she or her daddies have done have put them in this predicament, but they must make a dire decision that will affect many, many lives.

So begins Paul Tremblay’s 2018 book that, I swear, you won’t want to put down. I’ve read my share of Stephen King, but I wouldn’t call myself a fan of horror. And I wouldn’t necessarily call this book horror either, even though it’s been placed in that genre. I do love suspense, though, and a book that is heavy on plot at times, and this has both. To me, horror is the possible, not ghouls or possessed cars. This book has a foot in reality, and that’s what makes it so scary.

Yes, there is blood and there is sadness, and you will wince probably more than a couple times from the violence, but this well-written book also delivers a thought-provoking dilemma. Will you read it, or won’t you? You will have to decide which way you will go.

why can’t i have fun? Or, what makes me work so hard all the time?

How do you spend your days off? Do you like to read, take a nature walk, go to the beach, browse bookshops, binge TV shows, play at the park, see a movie, sail, go out to lunch, meet up with friends? If you do any of these things, you’re doing it right. So what’s wrong with me?

I currently have two part-time jobs equaling 36 hours a week, plus I take on freelance work when it’s available. I cook dinner six out of seven nights of the week, five if no one will be home but me. So why did I spend today, my day off:

purging five bags of sheets, bedspreads, and pillowcases from my linen closet
driving those donations to the Goodwill
grocery shopping at not one but two different stores
unloading the car of seven full bags
putting all the groceries away
making bread dough and stretching it on the hour, as needed
sweeping the entire first floor
mopping the entire first floor
sitting at my desk (eating lunch there as well) to do two-plus hours of paid work
vacuuming the upstairs bedrooms
shampooing the carpets in two of those bedrooms
cleaning the shampooer, which gets disgusting after use
and then sitting back down at my desk until I have to leave for church in a couple hours before heading back home afterward to make dinner, put it away, and clean up

I mean, who does this stuff? Who spends all week working, only to spend all weekend cleaning and running errands and doing chores?

According to Deepak Chopra, I am doing everything so wrong. I am not building “time affluence” (well, Deepak, all this work isn’t building me monetary affluence either, but I think I understand your point). Chopra thinks people should be structuring their days to have plenty of free time. In turn, we will be happy.

So apparently, that’s my problem: I don’t know how to enjoy life.

Here’s some background: I grew up in a tiny Cape Cod in upstate New York, seven people—eight when my grandmother stayed with us—in 1,200 square feet of space. My dad worked five, sometimes six, days a week in a blue-collar job. My mom worked as well, mostly part-time, while handling much of the household chores and making most of the meals. We rarely ever ate a meal out.

My dad helped out, too: He cooked on occasion and grocery-shopped, and he was very handy. So handy, in fact, that we never had a laborer in our house and never brought a car to a mechanic. No, things weren’t Chip-and-Joanna magnificent, but they ran again if they broke. (Actually, just the right amount of duct tape can fix anything.)

As a young child, I didn’t see the value in do-it-yourself. I envied families who hired people to come in and do work on their houses, believing they had more than we did, that they were special. So, I was very happy to come home one day from school and see a work crew in our front yard. What? I was so proud that my dad had actually hired out a job.

Finally, we were able to pay someone else to do the heavy lifting. Finally, I’d be like everyone else.

Turns out, the crew was from the city, putting in a sewer line.

I am very much my father’s daughter. Instead of hiring out a job, if I can do it, I will do it. Installing flooring? Check (even though my joints would ache for weeks afterward). Painting the cupboards? Check (even though it took me five weeks between my regular jobs to finish it). Drywalling to cover a gaping hole in the dining room wall after a plumbing leak? Check (even though I had to wallpaper over my handiwork).

But I’m nearing my 60th birthday, have a health condition that messes with my joints and nerves, and I wonder how much more of this I can take. Maybe it’s time to take it easier. But the work just never ends. As Roseanne Roseannadanna would say, “It’s always something.”

For instance, one of our bathrooms is in desperate need of a new sink and vanity. I painted the bathroom a few years ago, replaced the flooring a couple years before that. But the banjo-shaped sink and counter made of God only knows is crackled and disgusting. Dirt and gunk get in every crack. The plumbing backs up too. We’ve needed to replace it for a decade-plus. I haven’t done much about it because it’s a job I just cannot do.

What I can do, however, is measure the sink and countertop, drive down to the Home Depot or Lowe’s to buy a new one, and maybe even hire an installer to put it in. It’ll cost $400 to install each piece, if my memory serves me right, but that may be the best $400 (or $800) I spend in my life.

It may decrease my monetary affluence, but it surely will bring me much-needed free time. Right, Deepak?

Source: You’re Spending Your Free Time Wrong: Here’s What to Do to Be Happier and More Successful, https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/06/how-successful-people-spend-leisure-time-james-wallman.html .

major home reno fomo rears its ugly head again, plus what I will miss about the pandemic

Don’t get me wrong, the pandemic was a disastrous event, during which so many people lost their lives. I don’t want to downplay the pain and suffering of anyone in this post. But, if I may be honest, there were some good things to come out of it, namely that we were, for a brief period of time, equal.

What I mean by that is, we were all stuck in our homes, whether they be studio apartments, three-bedroom ranchers, or mansions in Beverly Hills. The world stopped for a brief period of time. We had to make do with what was in our cupboards, what was in our bank accounts, and what was churning in our minds. Nearly all jobs, no matter what they were, seemed to have stopped until we could figure out what work life would be like while a deadly virus spread worldwide.

That meant no one was out looking for a new home to buy or looking to improve the ones they had, unless they were willing to do the work themselves. No one wanted to invite strangers into their homes to fix a leaky toilet, finish caulking around the window in the den, or lay down new flooring. Every stranger came with the potential to make everyone else sick from this disease no one knew a whole lot about.

*“I sure wish we could hire someone,” said everyone last year.*

We were all hunkering down. And for the time being, I was satisfied with my vinyl floors, my ceramic tile kitchen countertop, and my permanently stained fiberglass bathroom sinks, with the barnacle-like lime scale deposits on the faucets. We were all just thankful to have a roof over our heads–even one, like mine, whose shingles warp in the sun and blow off every time there’s a stiff wind–because we were alive and well and able to plan for a time when the world would change.

Frankly, I was in my glory. No one I knew was getting renovations on their homes, which made me feel better about my predicament. But then it happened, a vaccine came to the market, followed by another and then another. We were getting out into the world more often, albeit in masks, but still. And people’s jobs were returning to a somewhat steady state.

I visited with a friend yesterday, one who lives in my immediate neighborhood and the only one I’ve seen since COVID hit. A few months back, she had a leak in one of her upstairs bathrooms that dripped into the lower-floor bathroom. After the plumber repaired the pipe, I thought she’d get some wallboard, like I did with a similar leak a few years back, and patch the thing herself (or hire someone, as is her schtick) since her insurance company was resistant to settle. All she wanted, she had told me, was the minimum, to repair the pipe and the wall–the leak and the damage done. That’s it.

Fast-forward to yesterday, and the “minimum” turned out to be two new sinks, quartz countertops, and vanity cabinets, new flooring in the bathrooms, new modern faucets, new shelving, and new decor. But it didn’t stop there: There was all new wooden flooring in the living room, the entryway, and the dining room. The stairs were re-carpeted, and the entire first floor and second floor open entryway were repainted. The new paint carried into areas not even close to the bathrooms. There was even new furniture in the living room! The minimum sure looks nice in her house.

Of course, being me, I was happy for her but also extremely envious. This is one friend who is even tighter with money than I am. I suspect she and her husband do much better than we do financially. Let’s say, at least, that their circumstances would warrant it. But my friend can have a hard time releasing the Benjamins much of the time. Until now.

I walked out of her house feeling crappy and depressed about my house and myself. Every other day, I have to scrub cat barf off the 30-plus-year-old carpeting upstairs, scrape my foot along a piece of vinyl plank I couldn’t adhere well enough to the floor, and scrub bacteria from the grout on my countertops. I look out my second-floor, leaky, aluminum-framed windows at my aging roof below, pick up dog poop from my barren lawn, and walk under the thin, broken bars holding up my Target-special gazebo of six years with two holes in the canvas cover, an Amazon replacement. I sit on baggy-slipcovered living room furniture that’s over 30 years old, including an extremely cheap-at-the time Montgomery Ward sofa ($199, I believe), whose cushions I had to make myself to replace the originals that had shrunk.

Needless to say, I didn’t sleep well last night. I kept thinking about all the projects we have to do in our house but keep deferring, things like putting in windows that don’t leak, fixing that roof, replacing the countertops, putting up a patio cover, and getting those two disgusting sinks and faucets out of here. These are jobs that go undone because I am the one in this house that does handiwork. If I, at 5′ 1-3/4″ with a 36-hour-a-week job, joint problems, and many more years behind me than in front of me, can’t do them, they don’t get done. Period. End of sentence.

Sick of my own complaining and motivated by my friend (little does she know), as soon as I got home, I cleaned up a room that was bothering me, getting rid of anything I don’t need. I then started retouching the grout in the kitchen with a white paint-like product that I saw someone I follow on YouTube use. Because if I can’t replace the countertops, then I can at least disguise that they are white ceramic tiles by making the grout match. Today, I continued on an adjacent counter.

Then, near the sink, I pulled up 20 tiles where water had seeped underneath, causing mildew to form. I stuck 20 new ones down with some Locktite (these tiles are nowhere available anymore; fortunately, the previous owner had left some spares in the garage) and just regrouted them. When the grout dries sufficiently, I will touch it up with the white grout resurfacing product. I still have another counter to go, as well.

*Maybe my counters will look this nice when I’m done. I can live with that.*

It’s a hard job, and I wish I had the wherewithall to hire someone or ask my husband or adult sons to help, but that ain’t me, babe. I wish it were. I’d probably sleep better at night.

the importance of key words and seo in a job search

Just a quick post to examine how key words and SEO, or search engine optimization, are king in recruiting and finding a job to match your skills these days.

^{Photo by Sydney Troxell on}^Pexels.com

^{Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on}^Pexels.com

I have been applying for a job as a copy editor for months. One of the recruiting websites–a big player in the game–sent me a job link I’d “be perfect for.” It was with a company called Pizza Press that is looking for a Pizza Editor. I thought the company name and job title sounded odd to begin with, and then I read the job description. “Pizza Press” in not a publisher–not even a cookbook publisher–and “Pizza Editor” is not a job in revising copy–not even copy about pizzas. Rather, Pizza Press is a pizza joint and the Pizza Editor makes the pizzas, packages them, chats with customers, does the dishes, empties the trash, and cleans.

Now I make a pretty mean pizza, and my many years as a mom have made me nearly professional-grade level at doing dishes, cleaning, and putting things away, but I don’t think this is the job for me. Sorry, Glassdoor.

What this is, though, is a prime example of how job posting companies and job recruiters use key words and SEO to not only find jobs to post but vet candidates.

Usually Glassdoor, as well as Indeed and LinkedIn, get it right and I’m sent job postings that are a close fit for me (although some of them don’t seem to understand the difference between copywriting and copyediting, but that’s a post for another day).

In fact, just last week I was alerted to a few jobs that I finally got called up for, one of which I accepted. But once in a while job posters get it woefully wrong and end up with egg–or in this case, scrambled egg pizza–on their faces.

rose in real life

getting through real life one day at a time

Author: rose in real life