Hi all.
I haven’t posted in a while so I will try to respond to multiple things that have been happening here. First, I am sad to see so many losses and unexpected news experienced by posters on this thread over the last few weeks, and my thoughts go out to each of you.
Re: COVID 19 and work—I’m “essential” and still working, and managing my workload plus managing employees fears, and a few employee to employee confrontations (and growing frustrations) that have occurred because some people at work that I supervise feel that others that I don’t supervise are not taking COVID precautions (like masking and social distancing) seriously has been exhausting. I am not complaining, as I am grateful to still have a job, but this week in particular was stressful. And now with Texas “reopening”, I am sitting here anticipating next week will be worse. I wish our county government had been more specific with rules and instructions for county offices.
On the debt dumping front, I got my stimulus check and paid it immediately on debt, which felt good. With my daughter home from her college doing this quarter online, my grocery bill has ballooned!! Dang these kids eat a lot when they are stuck at home all day every day. She had to quarantine per Texas rules once she flew home from California, but in the two weeks since she finished it, she has only left the house once to ride with me to get drive thru. I have paid as little as $1.07 for gas during the stay at home orders; on the way home from work yesterday I saw it was pretty consistently around $1.22. I think maybe our gas here is always a bit cheaper than most areas of the country??? There were A LOT more cars on the road to and from work this week, so I was not surprised that prices inched up a bit with more demand. Finally, in the biggest debt dumping (or not) news I have, I think I may have mentioned I closed on the purchase of my Grandmother’s home on March 6th, with the plan in mind to put my home on the market after I finish gradually moving and paring down from a 2600 sq ft home to a 1200 sq ft home. Now there are two problems with that plan—(1) I hate to even speculate what the housing market, which was hot for sellers here before COVID 19, is going to look like now, and (2) there is NO INTERNET at that little house way out in the country. Last month a company started laying lines for high speed internet in the area, but there is no timeline on when or if they might reach the area where my new house is. I can’t even use a cell phone as a hot spot, because I can’t get cell service there 80% of the time. My mom and brother live closer in to “town”, and their internet and cell service is Unreliable—last month they were out of all cell and internet service for 7 straight days. With my daughter doing her Stanford classes online, and who knows, maybe into the fall too, she has to have reliable high speed internet. With her heavy courseload and concerns about the virus, it is not feasible for her to drive the 20 plus miles into the nearest big town to sit in McDonalds to use their WiFi for hours and hours (and they haven’t been open til yesterday). So, for now we are staying put at my house in the city, and I have two houses. A little scary. On the positive side, I only had to borrow $45,000 to pay for the new house and it is at a great low interest rate. I had planned to pay it off quick with equity when I sold the my house, but looks like I will be carrying that debt a little longer than I planned.
Like many of you on this board, my usual stress relief is travel planning, but doesn’t that feel so fruitless now? Due to our cancelled Disney Spring Break vacation and cancelled summer Yosemite vacation and a cancelled Memorial Day weekend trip plus a couple of flights that I made and cancelled for my daughter when we were not sure when or if she would come home when universities started moving to a online format, I have sitting unused $950 in Disneyworld tickets (which were automatically extended by Disney to expire on December 14) and $1200 unused flight funds on Southwest and $580 on Alaska. My daughter has asthma and it does not feel safe to make any plans for later this summer that would involve flying or crowds. Her university (understandably) is considering multiple possibilities for Autumn quarter which may include not allowing students to leave and return for Thanksgiving week or winter break IF they have students on campus at all, so I don’t know if we will be able to get to Disney by December. Making any travel plans right now seems like chasing my tail in circles, ya know? Also, I was thinking— it would be really miserable to wear a mask at Disney in July or August heat. Yikes!!
