Spendy Me

Today my tres cher heater/cooler arrives. I'm having massive second thoughts about spending that much money on a space heater/fan... But, I knew I would which is why I bought it from Amazon... easy returns! If I don't fall madly in love at first use, it's going to get a round trip ticket.

My other big expenditure for the month arrives tomorrow. The new dishwasher will be here between 1:30 and 2:30. The old one needs to have no dishes in it. So do I wash them all and put them away or save them - dirty - to have something to watch my new washer do its stuff??? Oh the quandry!

Dishwashers are wonderful things.

Long long long ago (the summer of the Watergate hearings, as a matter of fact), I got my very first work bonus ever. It was something like $300. The country was in a giant recession and no one was spending any money. I had a kitchen full of dirty dishes. I lived in a tiny town in rural South Carolina. The only store was Sears.

That Saturday I marched into Sears and found the dishwasher I wanted and said tot he salesman "If I paid you cash money for this right now, would you deliver it today?" And he said "Honey, if you pay me cash money for this, I'll put it on my back and race you to the door."

By nightfall, that dishwasher had finished off every last dirty dish in my house. Heaven.

That one was on rollers and you hooked it up to the faucet every time you wanted to use it.

This one coming tomorrow has a steam function to run for burnt on crud and garbage disposal built in! Plus finally, I'll be able to wash plastic stuff cause I'll have a top level (my drawers only have one level and plastic stuff just gets beach balled). Yeah!

And then I need to stop spending money. Hopefully nothing will break and I can get back on budget.

Today will be swim class. Yesterday before I went to the pool, I found a youtube with some great deep water exercises I'd never seen or tried before. Today, my shoulders and abs are suggesting that today we go back to the regular stuff and then maybe ease into the new stuff next time. Owie!

today's basket

Oh crap oh damn - Dyson, the devil

My Dyson Hot & Cool arrived and sadly, I fell in love immediately. I cannot send it back. It's perfect for what I want/need. Crap. And, I cannot find any of the blemishes and marks that Amazon said were there (and so gave me the very handsome discount). The box has clearly been opened but I can find evidence of any use.

The big complaint on all the message boards is that it's too loud. Nope. No way it can compete with the construction - it's fine. It also goes from nice and toasty to cool breeze with a handy, tiny remote control that lives (via a magnet, I guess) on top of the unit.

And it looks so nice. Merry Christmas to me!!

Holiday Yarn Bomb - if you can think it...

The street outside my condo is the last of five blocks with dirt/curbed medians creating the main thoroughfare for our neighborhood - Pioneer Square. All of the other blocks have water and electricity available in their medians.

Our median is pitiful - a third world median.

We can't have plants. We have trees but we can't decorate them with lights.

Tija and Ann - my neighbors who both happen to be on the Historic Pioneer Square Board were, apparently bemoaning this state of affairs when Ann remembered the three sweaters we had in the park last summer.

Here's where the real meat is for me...

I loved those trees. I love the whole knit bomb thing. IF I had conceived of knitting trees for the holidays, I would have summarily dismissed the idea as too hard to pull off in this time frame. I would not have even given it another thought.

Fortunately, I was no where near Tija or Ann.

Ann had Tija "look up who did that on the twitter thing". They got the artist's name, contacted her, got a price, got the $$ from the decorating committee and, unless something breaks somewhere...

Our median is getting sweaters for Christmas!!!!

I love the idea and I love that they had it and put it into motion. I still have my safety vest from the clean up the neighborhood thing last Summer. I sent Tija an email and told her to sign me up if she needed volunteers.