The Great Dig Out of 2011

It's finally done.
And I am wiped out.

I began the process of digging out #2 son's bedroom a week ago.  After slowly making progress during the week, this past weekend we did the "big push" to get it finished.

Yah  see, #2 son took over #1 son's bedroom when #1 went away to college in the fall of 2009.
#2 had the smallest bedroom(being the youngest)so he got the upgrade when #1 left home 2 years ago.

I had told #2 to take all of #1's stuff and put it into #2's old bedroom before moving his stuff in.
And I didn't check that he did before he put his stuff in there.
My first mistake.

Then I didn't inspect his room for 2 years.
That was my second mistake. 

Ok, I'd pop my head in and tell him to clean his room now and then(I have a duty as a mother to tell him that, right?),  but if things were off the floor and stuck under his bed or in his closet, I didn't see them.
I have a laissez-faire attitude when it comes to kids' bedrooms.
As long as their mess doesn't extend out into the hallway and doesn't smell like a sink full of month old food and dirty dishes, it doesn't concern me.
I give the kids some leeway on how they want to live in their bedrooms.
They want to live in a pigsty?  Fine.  Just don't expect me to clean it up.


But I really should have kept a closer eye on #2 son's filth.  He is after all, the kid who had a used ball of masking tape.....

I found this when I attempted to clean his room while he was away at camp 4 years ago.

I spent the week, off and on, going through what I had mucked out of the corner of his bedroom.....

And the bulk of the weekend was spent going through all this.....

The last 2 photos are what was under his bed.  Sorry, but I didn't get a shot of what was crammed into his closet.

I also removed a white shelving unit from the room.  Our family is "horizontal surface challenged".  Any flat surface gets crap piled on it.  #2 son would pile stuff on it until it eventually fell off onto the floor.
Then he would leave that where it fell and pile something new on the shelf, repeating the cycle.
No shelf and he has to deal with the stuff(throw it away or put it away).

And here is what under the bed now looks like....

And here is what we are throwing away.....

This doesn't include the dishes, silverware, glasses and soda cans or the items going to Salvation Army that he has outgrown.
8 Bags and 3 Boxes full of unmitigated CRAP.....plus another garbage bag full on the front porch.


And hidden among the normal garbage output that a 15 year old boy is capable of I found this.....

52 plastic spoons.
I dumped the bag I had collected them into on the kitchen table and just looked at him with that motherly "WTF is this??!" look on my face.
He didn't even crack a smile and said like it was the most matter of fact thing, "I was bored in the cafeteria at school so I took spoons."
Yes folks, your school tax dollars at work.....buying overpriced plastic spoons so some angst filled teen can squirrel them away like acorns for winter.

It was all I could do not to whack him upside his head.

I am keeping these spoons and making him use each and every one.
And then I'm washing them and making him use them some more until he gets the message.
You can call me Mommy Dearest if you want.
At least I'll have one clean bedroom in the house when they cart me away to Parent Prison.

Sluggy

Ten Years Have Passed

I had just taken possession of a storage unit down the road from our house on Sept. 10th, 2001.
I was up bright and early(VERY UNLIKE me to be up so early!) the next morning moving my stuff into storage..  It was Sept. 11th.

While I sat going through emails at my computer I had the tv next to me turned on to the CBS Morning Show.  I was half listening to the tv.
I was trying to finish emails so I could get my first load of stuff out to storage by 9 am. 
I was taking a swig of tea as the Morning Show came back from commercial to close out the show at around 8:50.
The camera was trained on the WTC and smoke was billowing out of one of the towers.  Bryant Gumbel was saying that it appeared that a small plane had gone off course and accidentally crashed into the WTC.
The hairs on the back of my neck raised.  Though it looked tiny on my screen because their camera was so far away, no small plane made what I was looking at!
My first thought was to the '93 WTC bombing.  (At our old house we were within the NYC network affiliates coverage area so I saw massive local NYC coverage of that event.  Back in Feb. 1993 I had a newborn baby and a toddler so I was chained to the house with the tv always on.)
I KNEW the plane was big and this was going to be worse than WTC '93(in damage and lives lost) but I had no clue of what was still to come.

As I sat here alone, staring at the CBS camera shot of the towers with Bryant Gumbel blathering on in the background, I saw on live tv the second plane hit.
I remember I sharply sucked air into my lungs and forgot to breath it out.
I sat paralyzed as the seconds ticked by.

Then I remembered to breath again.
And I started saying, "Oh my G*d....Oh my G*d.....Oh my G*d...." softly, over and over again.

I ran to the phone to call Hubs at work.
He already knew what had happened.  There is a large screen tv in the building's lobby and the security guard at the front desk had called upstairs after the the first plane hit was broadcast on tv.
The company had turned on tv sets on each floor and Hubs could see it from his work space.
I told him to come home.
He said he would as soon as he could.

I went back to the den and sat glued to the tv coverage.
As reports came in that a plane was missing and headed for San Francisco I thought of an online friend who lived near there.
Though I've never met her in person or spoken to her other than online, I called her to warn her not to go to work today.
She thought I was daft as it was just after 7 in the morning there and I woke her up.  But she lives near the airport so I was worried.

 I turned my attention back to the tv coverage.  By now they had reporters in the streets around the towers. 

Then the south tower fell. 
The scenes now on the ground were dark and smoky.  Panic stricken people running, paper and ash flying.  There were scads of alarms going off, like a chorus of chirping electronic birds on the audio coming out from my tv.  The news reporters didn't address those sounds but I knew what they were from the coverage of the '93 bombing.
Those were the firefighter signals that they wear on their gear.  It helps locate downed firefighters during a fire.  When you can't see for the smoke and blazes, you can hear that signal.
Tons of signals were going off.
There were no firefighters at that point to locate after the towers fell.
The sound made me sick to my stomach.

A bit later they started talking about other targets after the Pentagon was hit.
I thought about the nuclear reactor nearby.
Then I thought about the elementary school my kids were in....it is between home and that reactor.
I called the school.  The lines were jammed.  I found out later that panicked parents drove to school and were storming the place searching for their kids. 
I figured the kids were safely in the hands of the grownups at the school.

I kept myself from getting hysterical that no one was home yet.  After word came about Flight 93 going down between Pittsburgh and Johnstown I paced the floor and asked G*d to bring my husband and kids home to me.

My youngest was in half day Kindergarten and came home at noon.  The older grades were released and my other 2 were home at 1.
By 1:30 Hubs was home and I could relax a bit.

A call from SIL who's boyfriend lived in Weehawken, NJ confirmed that the BF was ok and hadn't been in Manhattan that day.  He was a freelance writer who often had business in the city.

Days later we got word that a few parents of kids my kids knew at school were missing.  We are an outer bedroom commuter community for the metro NYC area.  Though it's a 3 hour drive each way, people live here and work in the city (or NE NJ).  Some stay in the city during the week and come home on weekends so they can raise their family in a nicer area(with lower crime, lower cost of living, etc.).
We heard that the father of one of my oldest son's classmates in his parochial school(which he had attended the previous year when we lived outside of Port Jervis NY)had perished in the attack.  He was a NYC firefighter who's family lived in Milford, PA and he commuted in for his job.

My BIL lived in West Orange, NJ. There is a park on a cliff there were he said you could watch the smoke rise from Manhattan for days afterwards.

The hardest part for me was how to explain in an age appropriate way what had happened to a 5, 8 and 10 yr old.  2 of them came home very scared because older kids on the bus were saying outlandish lies about what had happened to try to get them upset.
So they were confused and upset once they arrived home.
Having to keep them calm and get things back to normal in their lives helped me to stay in control of myself.

Otherwise, I just remember being sad, very sad.
It was a sad time.
Empathy for all those people who were murdered while just carrying on with their daily lives.
Even more sadness toward the heroes/martyrs....the firefighters, the policemen/women, the passengers on those planes.

A certain amount of remembering and honoring that time/incident is good.  The coming together as a nation was awesome.
But that first year after wards, the media wouldn't let loose of it.  I thought how can people get past this bad thing if they have to hear about it incessantly?
And then every Sept. 11th since(and the weeks before and after)the media gets the "911 bone", drags it out and won't let it go.
Again, to keep flogging people with 911 is not good for anyone.
For those that were personally touched, let them experience their grief privately and no more parading it out in front of the nation.

Though I've been blogging for years now, I've never blogged about "that day" until now.
The 10th anniversary I just did.
And this will be the only time I blog about where I was, what I did and what I experienced personally.

It's time for this country to get past this wallowing in misery phase.
This is not the worst thing that has ever happened in the history of man, nor is it the worst thing that has happened to our country.
It IS the worst tragedy of our generation-dare I say so far?, especially because it involved private citizens and not the military during a time of war.

Previous generations would tell you that Pear Harbor was the worst tragedy of their generation.
And long gone generations would tell you that the Civil War was the worst tragedy of all in the USA.

Let's just hope that it's the last large scale tragedy and that future generation don't have to live through something like this, or worse.

Never forget but keep on truckin'!

Sluggy

Flood Update

First off, we are fine.
Honestly, if the river levels get to this elevation, then half of PA would be underwater.lol
We are on a mountain overlooking the valley where the big city sits.
We get flash flooding here when there is too much rain.
Once the rain travels downhill to the river, then the river overflows.

Wilkes-Barre, the big city, is a mess.
Word here is that the Susquehanna crested within the last hour or so.  It topped 42.6 feet.  This is higher than the flood in 1972 from Hurricane Agnes. 
But there is a levee system this time around although the flood gates only protect to 41 feet.
A system to protect the big city but if you are in low lying outer areas beyond the big city and it's 'burbs you are out of luck.
Places like Shickshinny, Mocanaqua, West Nanticoke, Pittston.

The drive-in where we do the flea market is in Shickshinny.  We had hoped to do the flea market in 2 weeks.  That might not happen now since it is underwater now.
Here is a photo of a grocery store I have a gift certificate to that is nearby the drive-in....

Here is a house down river from the drive-in, in a little town where a childhood friend of my oldest son lives.  This isn't his family's house but the whole town is swamped.  Note the valuables put on the roof for safekeeping....

Here is an aerial shot of the town where Daughter's boyfriend lives....

I called Daughter off at college.  She says BF's family is stuck in their house since they didn't evacuate yesterday as ordered.  The basement is filled and there is a foot of water on the 1st floor.  They have flood insurance thankfully but it's going to be a big long mess to get the house back to habitable.
Daughter said BF told her houses were floating by them down the river.
Another shot of his town....

And at the border between his town and the next....

Here is a shot of a town north of Scranton on the river.

Yesterday a part of I-80 was closed outside of Bloomsburg(it's west of us).  Today I-81 north of Clarks Summit is closed.

The Redner's grocery store I wanted to go to this week is swamped.  The whole shopping plaza is underwater.   The flood gates Redner's and KMart put up were worthless this time.  They just showed a live shot and it's all underwater.  The flood gates  at the Market St. bridge are leaking.  Water is running down Market St. toward the square in the center of Wilkes-Barre, but the pumping stations there can handle this amount of water.

Hubs friend at work can't leave his house.  He's in Tunkhannock and his county is under a state of emergency.  His house is on high ground but his small town is underwater.

Hershey PA is having massive flooding as well.

The sun is finally out here and the river is going down.
The coming days/weeks here are going to uncover quite a mess.

Watch out Mark.....things haven't crested yet down your way!

Sluggy

I Knew I Should Have Built That Ark!

First we got 8 inches from Irene.
Now Lee has dumped days worth of rain on us.
It has not stopped raining here since Sunday.
The forecast is for at least another 5 days of rain.

5 major rivers in PA are at or near flood stage.
1 of them runs through Wilkes-Barre, which is right down the mountain from us.
They say this 'rain event' will cause historic flooding, not seen here since Hurricane Agnes in 1972.
Incidentally, the first time I ever heard of Wilkes-Barre PA growing up in Virginia Beach, VA was in 1972, when I read the local newspaper about the devastating flood caused by that hurricane.
I find it very strange that I ended up in this area in my adult life.
If you would have asked the younger me if I would be living in northeastern PA as a married mother of 3, I would have laughed and called you nuts. ;-)

This place and who I am now was NOT what I had planned for my life.

Yesterday the school buses here had to reroute.  A local stream and lake was over it's banks and on the highway.  The development next door's entrance road was under 3 feet of water from the creek next to it.
Yes you idiot developers, there was a REASON that area had been a wetlands for eons!  Thanks so much for putting a road there and building all those lovely houses in dangers way.....



The Susquehanna is rising fast and there are 5 more days of rain forecast.



They have already put the flood gates up last night, cutting off travel to the grocery store I was planning to go to tomorrow.


The valley below us will be in deep doo doo soon.  There was a big creek flood back in July in a town next to Wilkes-Barre....




Yesterday the regions amusement park got hit too with flooding like they saw in 2006....


Of course that place gets flooded out every few years.  It also saw flooding in March of 2011.
I am assuming another of the local flooding suspects, The Bloomsburg Fair Grounds will be inundated with water from Fishing Creek if it isn't already. (You know it's gonna, right Judy?lol)
I hope they can get it cleaned up by the last week in September for the Bloomsburg Fair.
Bloom Fair is seriously bigtime around here.  Heck, the local kids get excused from school to go to the fair because half the families who are in power around here have food concessions at the fair.
Yes, another symptom of corruption here in the Capital of KIDS FOR CASH LAND......

If y'all don't hear from me for a few days I am just trying to keep my head above water.....LITERALLY!lol

Sluggy in the land of the wet


**UPDATE**
Wilkes-Barre has mandated evacuation by 4pm today for all the areas that flooded in 1972 by Agnes.  That's about 70,000 people living in that area.  There is 1 bridge over the river that is still left open and that has been jammed all day with people trying to get to one side of the river or the other.  Many shelters are opened and the Salvation Army store has been turned into a shelter.  

The river here is at 38.5 feet over flood stage.  It is projected to crest at 42 ft. by tomorrow night.

$32K Savings Challenge for 2011.....AUGUST RESULTS

Ok, here is my Savings Challenge Update post.
Yes, the one where I piss everyone off.
Seems like folks don't want to hear about what I save, besides a few blogging friends who I cherish their cheerleading and constant support....you know who you are! ;-)
This post is NOT about bragging or showing off.

It's about the results of what you can do financially if you tighten your belt, stop buying CRAP and be persistent with keeping track of where every dollar goes(well, most dollars if you have a less than motivated spouse).

On to the August report.....

I have posted my AUGUST End of Month $32K $AVING$ CHALLENGE Totals.
Check out the side bar to your right for the specific numbers.

I have 2 goals each month.....
The 1st is to actually finish each month in the black and not the red.
The 2nd is to hit the targeted savings amount of $2,666.67.

I have to report that we finished up August in the black!
The extra cash amount we ended the month of August with.......$1,779.83.

Income
We had $1749.47 left over from our income after our monthly expenses were deducted.
Add in $28.38 of Rebates applied against the food expenses and $1.98 in Interest on the Checking Account toward the Savings Challenge for a total of $1,779.83

I didn't count my $20 Toluna payout since I am keeping it to spend on myself. ;-)

Our monthly target is an average of $2,666.67 to reach our Year End Goal.
Obviously we didn't meet that target.
But we got a lot closer than I thought we would.
August was a big "money flowing out" month here.

Outgo
As for the expenses in August....

HERE are the GOOD THINGS
* We paid the Sewage bill for the year a couple of months ago, so no quarterly payment this month.
* The water bill held steady.
* I just barely went over the food budget.
* We made $335.50 at the Stockpile/Garage Sale.  This money was used for college necessities & gas to take kids to college so I didn't have to dip into the regular income for that.

HERE are the BAD THINGS
* The credit card bill was almost $1000....and it didn't include the cost of Daughter's new laptop.
* The semi-annual car insurance bill was due.  We've got 2 teen(next year will be 3 teens)drivers on that. We already pay almost $2500 a year for car insurance so I don't want to think about having another teen driver on our plan.  Oy!
* The electric bill was up $18 from July.
* The WAM & cash withdrawals were MUCH higher than usual.  As usual Hubs won't track his spending and get receipts so I have no clue where some of that money goes....sigh.
* I had to pay $316.47 to a local college for classes Daughter took while in high school last school year.  The program that covers the tuition expense only covered half of the cost so we are on the hook for this much.  I'm not complaining about this as it was a great rate and the credits transferred to her current college so that's a few credits less she has to take at the full rate there for a degree.  As I also just got done paying out over $16,000 in August for oldest 2 kids fall semester tuition, room and board and books, the timing of receiving this bill couldn't have been worse in my mind!  We now have 2 in college so the financial trauma to my constitution is doubled each semester.
While the college charges didn't come out of our monthly income, seeing all that money fly away sure takes my breath away.
Yowza!


The Food Budget costs for August are in another post, which is located HERE.  The actual Food/Toiletries spending in August was almost on budget when rebate checks were applied toward the food bill.  "Missed it by $2.02!" ,  she said in her best Don Adams voice.
But close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. ;-)

What's ahead for September.......
There are the usual suspects: electricity, water, phone, cable, credit card bill, food cash, etc.

We will have more Marching Band associated expenses in September since it is Marching Band Season.
We will have the $2000 school taxes bill to pay.
The credit card will be killer this month.  It's already up to $1600(half of that is for Daughter's computer)and the billing period doesn't close until Friday.  meh.

YEAR-TO-DATE TOTAL.....
With 8 months behind us, our Savings total to-date for 2011 is $22,560.85.
We are just over $1,200 ahead of reaching our final goal at this point in the year.  If we end up having a really bad expensive month at some point in the next 4 months, this will help us to overcome it and still finish the year reaching our goal.  It's like a little "get out of jail free" card for our Challenge.  Having that little extra takes some of the pressure off me. ;-)
Plus we are due another extra paycheck in December....sweet!

So we have less than $10K to reach our goal for the year.  That means just under $2500 per month.

So how are your savings growing so far this year?
Do you have an emergency fund of 6-8 months worth of expenses!  You really should, you know.
With the current financial climate in this country, you should try to put away into savings as much as you can each month.

So come along and Challenge Yourself to Save Money each Month Toward a Realistic for YOU Savings Goal!

Not everyone can shoot for $32K, I fully get that!
But everyone can shoot for some number, right!?

Find a money goal that works for you and put that number out there for everyone to see.  It will help keep you accountable to your goal if other eyes are on you.
Ooo, that sounded kind of creepy didn't it? ;-)

So how was your August financially?
Did you spend less than you made?
Did you stay within your budget or not?

Leave a comment and share with us what you did with your money, both the good and not-so good.   Do you have any tricks or tips that help you to end your month before the money runs out?    Let us know!
If you posted your financial progress on your own blog, leave a link in the comments so we can go check you out too!

Sluggy