Basement after 5 days of work

 So work started Monday. Monday and half of Tuesday was just cutting the cement floor trench to add the halIf bath.   Did not know that concrete cutting took that long! But then the next 3 and a half days - massive progress! Plumber did 90% of his work, electrician did over 50% of his work (these two contractors on just Thursday) and Brian framed the whole basement walls and 75% of saufets (sp?l on the ceiling. Just has half a saufet left and a grid for the ceiling left before ready for finishing electric & plumbing (half day) then drywall can begin.  

 I still don't understand the grid on the ceiling because it's drywall, not an 80's drop but whatever, we'll find out. We had the new water heater installed  yesterday which means today we're dealing with iron rust sediment in our water. So I couldn't take a bath this morning and I've now filled and emptied the tub 5 times cleaning out this red grainy sand like substance. He assures me it will flush out but like dude how long does this take? I'm tired of repeatedly cleaning it without the benefits of a nice long relaxing soak or you know - being clean. He also says it's not harmful so I could take a bath or shower but how can I feel clean with this nasty grit? Hoping I finish flushing it out tonight. 

He also still says 4 weeks total but we think he's under promise / over deliver as we don't see how with how fast it's gone so far that drywall, doors and trim can take 3 weeks with only half a day needed for the rest of plumbing & electric. I guess nothing but to do but watch and see.  But he'll be working week 3 while we're in Vegas so we won't see the progress then.  

I can't seem to add photos when doing this on my mobile phone so will try to remember to edit this tomorrow to add pics of progress.

Day Dreaming - European Trip

 So I've said for years we should take a trip to Europe for either our 15th or 20th anniversary.  (We'll be celebrating 12 years this summer so we're a few years off from either).  But when thinking of what I'd like that two weeks to be.... I've come up with a itinerary that might be overly ambitious but honestly I don't know.  But with a lot of my random thoughts I kind of want to put it down somewhere to remember it so here we go. 

First off I will say Jeff and I are both lucky in that we've each individually already been to Europe as teens.  I went to England and Wales as a 12 year old as well as having went to Hungary when I was 18.  My best friend is Hungarian and I saved for months working at JC Penney to pay for the flight and spending money (I remember I had like $400 for two weeks LOL) but we stayed in a condo her family keeps for relatives and food was seriously cheap there.  Plus some relatives feeding us here and there so the money lasted and that's all that mattered.  Jeff went between his Junior and Senior year of High school as part of a touring Team USA in soccer.  They went to like 3 or 4 countries for soccer tournaments over 3 weeks.  I've never heard him say that his team won anything so I'm guessing compared to the teams out there they were not that great.  But still; I'm married to an international soccer stud. LOL

That said, I've never been to Paris and would like to go.  Jeff has been as it was one of their stops and he has a picture of his team in front of the Eiffel Tower.  I figure Paris can be done (maybe not thoroughly but well enough in 3 days).  The obvious high points being the Louvre and Eiffel.  Walking along the Seine.  And eating lots of bread and cheese. If you figure we spend most all of day one flying over, day 2-4 in Paris From there I am thinking a train or flight to Nice. It's a six and a half hour train ride or a quick flight.  Either way I think and afternoon/evening in Nice is all that's needed.  But um, Monaco is 20 mins away.  And we like to gamble.  And I think at least one day in Monaco is totally required for us.  So depending on cost of hotel we might do two nights in Nice and just day trip into Monaco.  Or two nights in Monaco and spend an afternoon in Nice.  You get the point days 5 & 6 done.  So that leaves 7 to 8 days for Italy and flying home.   I'm thinking 2 days Venice, 2 days Florence and 3 days Rome.  

The main questions in my head are to rent a car, fly or train all the rest of the way after Nice/Monaco?  It's a 6 hour drive from Monaco to Venice.  but there are towns like Genoa or Verona (Juliet's balcony?) we could stop on the way.  But then that takes away from our time there for 2 days...so a flight that only takes 70 mins out of Nice seems the obvious choice.  BUT from then on, Venice to Florence is only 3 hours.  And then Florence to Rome is only 3 hours.  And these are the towns it seems best to have a car.  But you can also take speed trains and it's only 2 hours between cities.  So then it's - is enough stuff walkable or taxi? And how much to save for such a trip?  I figure $20k.  Flights, hotels, food money & spending money.  Yowza that's a lot of money.  But it's once in a lifetime trip.  Five cities.  Can we do it?  Will it happen or will it remain a dream?

Have you ever been to any of these places? Thoughts on "must sees" or amount of time are welcome in the comments - even you're complete strangers that stumble upon this page.  I'll need to start a bit of researching eventually but 3-8 years is plenty of time to learn more LOL.  For now, it's fun to day dream. 

Basement costs - OMG

 So were we BOTH waaay off. OMG this thing is gonna be hella expensive! I thought my husband was crazy insisting the walls, plumbing & electric would be less than we paid for our kitchen granite counter and travertine backsplash. But he was so insistent that I figured giving space it would cost $1k-2k more...so I guessed that would come in around 7-8k.  Nope! Double that shit. 

We've now downgraded from tankless to just a new tank water heater. And now we have to add couch etc since old furniture won't fit thru the door. 

Thankfully his bonus was really nice. And we should get the full stimulus $2800 this weekend. And we will probably end up charging about the $3k I said in previous post was my limit. So there are 4 possibilities on how to finish financing this project. We have enough to pay for all NEEDED items. The amount we'll be needing to charge and over is for the bar & couch and golden tee arcade game etc

Option one - don't buy the stuff til next year when we have full on cash for everything all at once (seems unlikely as who wants a new beautiful space with nothing in it?

Option two - buy $3k on credit and the rest use the money I have ear marked for a 12th anniversary get away in June and instead stay home. 

Option three - sell the stocks, spend 3k on credit and maybe still need to borrow some from anniversary trip.

Option four - we win big in Vegas and have no issues. 😂🤣😆 now admittedly last trip we won enough for this option but will lightening strike twice? 

My guess it will be a combo of coming home from Vegas with some, spending some on credit, and taking some from anniversary stash. We both agree we don't want to touch stocks unless absolutely needed. And we agree instead of paying interest on our current credit we can do a no interest for a year type deal wherever we buy the couch sectional from so it's not horrible.  

Work probably starts next week. Eeek! Will be complete to the point of ready for Jeff and I to paint, and install floors and trim ourselves (to save money) about a week after we return from Vegas. We hope everything is complete in time for when we host Mother's day to show off to the family.  Oh but the layout has also changed and now the cousin will be installing a back bar with sink. And the layout changes will help make the room feel larger/ not as sectioned off into areas. And he convinced Jeff on an actual ceiling- which I wanted originally. Getting real excited now that I've seen the chalk outlines on the floor etc and really laid everything out.

13 years ago....seems like a lifetime

 I feel like a meme from the Golden Girls "Picture this...Feb 19th, 2008...."

It was Democratic primary day in Wisconsin.  A Tuesday.  I was working as an account executive for a local ABC Television affiliate.  My only plan for the day aside from work was to vote after work and the following day Jeff would come up (he used to be able to "work from home" one day a week and he chose Thursdays so that he'd come up Wednesday night, work from my apartment Thursday so that we could have a middle of the week night together before driving down for Thursday night bowling and then I'd see him again either Friday or Saturday.  I think that's when I knew he loved me for sure- when he started doing that 90 minute drive in cold January Wisconsin winter in the dark just to see me for like 4 hours.)  ANYWAY - bam!  I was fired that day at around 4:30pm.  Man do I wish they had done it in the morning instead of spending the day working but I digress.  

Looking back, I totally get why they did it.  Back the previous summer US Cellular had gone national so I had lost them as my biggest regional ad agency client.  They brought in over $800 a month of my paycheck and over $325,000 a year to the station.  It was not my fault that they went national but I was told I would need to "step up" and bring in at least $50,000 in new business to make up for it (new local biz was paid at 20% commission so would be the equivalent in my paycheck of the 3% I got from US Cellular).  I needed to step up because to get by from the US cell move, they were supplementing my income from various places as a "favor" to this shock instead of my 100% commission just suddenly being $800 lower.  

Well if you remember the economy in 2008 - you remember it was the start of the crash.  And one of the first expenses companies cut are things deemed "unnecessary" like advertising.  Especially locally.  So I after over 6 months I hadn't come close to pulling in the 50k in local business I needed.  And I was the only non-Wisconsinite sale person so I think they thought I always had one foot out the door anyway.  And I had been dating a man from my home town for almost 8 months now and it was getting serious.  So I was the easiest thing to cut for them to tighten their budgets during the downturn and forthcoming recession.  

That said.  It was devastating to me.  At this point I had worked in TV for over 7 years at three stations around the country.  I had more than tripled my salary in that time.  I had won an "employee of the month" at my first station for having the most new local biz in a month ever.  TV ad sales was my identity.  But truth be told I was burnt out for the last year even before US Cellular pulled its ads.  I was losing hair from the stress of the 100% commission.  I drove with a dictaphone so I could record billboards I saw or radio ads I heard.  I slept with a note pad next to me because I would dream of work and things I needed to remember.  I also developed a rare eating disorder called Night Eating Syndrome NES (if you're really curious, look it up but I dealt with this off and on for years during high stress and would eat up to half my daily calories in my sleep often waking 3 to 5 times between 11pm and 6am and felt the need to eat in order to fall back to sleep).  The stress was a bit all encompassing except for Jeff.  I slept thru the night on nights when he was with me.  So while we'd only been dating 8 months, he was my first phone call after filling a box and doing the walk of shame out of the building to my car.  Not my parents. (clue number whatever that he was my whole heart).  

The rare photo of me at work from back in those days. This was May 2007 at upfronts when I first started to really not like my job.  That is a fake smile and I've cut out the General Manager from the photo that I hated and the media buyer that was just an angry moron that I had to placate with schmoozing at events like this one of the aspects I really hated.  I thought I should be able to sell on facts, not what free crap I could get you.  Ugh, some of the evils of old fashion sales. 

I do not remember how quickly he said "lets move in together" as the next day, hell the next week or two, were a blur.  But I know he suggested it sometime that first few days because I learned I could get out of my lease, researched and found us an apartment (he was moving out of living with his parents to live with me), rented a Uhaul, and had my brother and a friend help Jeff and I get everything out of that apartment to our townhouse rental all in 17 days.  Looking back I was so worried (what if I'm uprooting my life for someone where it doesn't work out? Do I even really know him from 2-3 days a week?) I had never lived with a man.  Would my parents be disappointed I was quote "living in sin"?  Seven days later he proposed.  On March 15th it will have been 13 years since I said yes to my best future, I just didn't know it yet.  I couldn't imagine it at the time but really getting fired was probably the best thing that could have happened as it pushed me off a cliff I don't know what it would have taken for me to jump off of voluntarily.     

Sometimes we laugh about how far we've come from that first year living together.  Turns out we really are so alike that living together has been a breeze.  And the only fights we ever really had were those first few years when I was mentally adjusting going from corporate world (and making a hella lot of money) to being a part time hourly worker at various rando jobs.  Like I said, I used to think my job was my identity.  But it turns out when people say "do what you love" don't know that it can sometimes stress you out to no end because you care almost too much.  And if you lose it, then you lose yourself.  And instead- doing something semi-menial  that at the end of a shift I can completely forget about and live MY life.  Not live to work.  I had to find out who I was (or remember it was there all along since before I got the jobs).  Again, I know it's a privileged situation being that my husband's job and love for me lets me to this.  My mental health is so thankful for that love.  

Sometimes I miss the TV world.  Sometimes I miss having a job I was proud of.  Sometimes I still deal with "shame" of being an hourly employee somewhere.  But then I remember how good I've got it.  And just revel in the gratitude that this life thru a series of chance happenings stumbled into my lap.  

Edit to add:  The reason I remember the specific day (and I had to look up the actual date) was because after I was fired and talked to Jeff, I did call my parents next and my dad asked me "what were you planning to do tonight?" and I said, go vote for Barak Obama in the primaries.  And he said - "I really think you should do that.  It will make you feel at least a little better."  So I did.  I drove straight to my polling place, placed my vote and a little over 8 months later he became the best president of my lifetime.  So there's that too.  If had been any other Tuesday night I'm not sure I would remember aside from it was February.