Crystal G

We suspect another month or two and my father’s leg will be fully healed of ulcer wounds. We are likely going to continue the new drug to see if it helps more with the lack of oxygen that gets to his leg and maybe it will actually start to heal and not be purple all the time. (Putting the rest behind a cut in case people get grossed out)
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Taken yesterday afternoon:

I haven’t really had time (somewhat literally) to make any heart-felt journal post recently, so I’m going to try to sum up what I’ve been up to in a list for easy perusal.

• Dad’s leg has an infection again. He’s on antibiotics and special wrapping materials right now. I’ve also ordered some items that I’ve done research on that are supposed to help these types of skin ulcers. The next time he has it unwrapped, I’m going to take pictures for my own archiving purposes.
• Class is going well. It has a very laid back atmosphere, and I find myself asking questions which leads me to believe I’m actually learning. It’s a lot of material to go through though, and I’m studying almost daily to keep up. I’m going to try to switch to spending the afternoons on Sundays studying for the entire week so I have time for other things. I told a a friend of mine that they eventually teach us about tax fraud and the different methods people use to try and commit tax fraud. He says I’m going to be a Tax0r.
• The last 2 or 3 weeks I’ve been working 15 hour days between my full-time job and freelancing. One evening I was up until 2am (and still had to get up at 6am for work the next day), and am not sure if I went to bed before midnight for an entire week. It’s quite “taxing” on my brain and I’m glad things are settling down some. I can’t complaint too much because the extra money is more than welcome. (this is part of the reason I haven’t been answering emails, fyi)
• I had the Grove up to my abode last weekend. We were going to have a small bonfire out back and drum, but it rained so we stayed inside and ate food, drank Art’s homemade blueberry wine, and watched old bad movies. I’m grateful for having such wonderful people around me. And I’m also grateful for the two men that helped carry a new storage cabinet upstairs for me. (Thanks Art and Mark )
• Upcoming this month, I have to work for my full-time job on a Saturday all day. Several Grove events, some of which are pretty exciting. I’m going camping out near Berkeley Springs again, and am suspecting I’m going to freeze my ass off. And hopefully enjoying the harvest and season.
• My wisdom teeth healed fine, in fact during my follow-up appointment the doctor said they were healing beautifully. I’ve had absolutely no pain from the surgery, and no pain since the surgery, which leads me to believe the one partially impacted wisdom tooth was indeed causing me the jaw pain. The whole thing only cost like $250, and that came out of my HSA pre-tax money anyway. Very painless.
• Dad and I had either mormons or Jehovahs Witnesses stop by on Saturday, which I guess makes this officially our home now? I didn’t go outside because I was all henna’d up, but they did stop my dad on his lawnmower (rude?). I saw when they got out of the car that Bastian started jumping all over their nice suits and licking them, so I decided not to worry about bringing him inside. One of them was actually really scared of Bastian, and when they got back into the car I saw him using hand sanitizer Oh well, at least I have a pamphlet if I want to learn about God.
• Holiday shopping has started. I’ve got the sweetheart done, and dad started. I have a few more things to pick up for my dad and maybe my sister and I’ll be finished. Of course the money used for this is money I put away throughout the year so it’s not hurting my finances right now. The sweetheart and I are trying to decide whether to get dad a log splitter or a new lounge chair as his big gift. The log splitter would help a lot since wood is our main source of heat and I’m discovering more and more that dad needs things to be as easy as possible right now with his leg. I’m fine with splitting the wood myself, but dad is not going to wait until the weekend when I can do it. He’s that stubborn. The lounge chair is nice because it lets him relax, the one he has now is falling a part, and it’s his main seating place throughout the day. It’s fairly integral for him. I guess I’ll have to think about this more.
• Our well situation is finally fixed. We broke down and bought a new pump, since the one we got from our old house didn’t work quite right either. Now everything works fine, we have a new pump, new parts, new tank. Eventually we’ll need a new water heater, but I’m going to try and use this one up first.
• Speaking of planned expenses, during my trip to Berkeley Springs later this month, I’m going to stop by a wholesale tire place that has been recommended to me for years and pick up 4 brand new tires for the mustang. I’ve already got a quote between $80 and $123 each (includes mounting), depending on which tire I choose. So while I’m out that way I’ll use the money I’ve saved up for this and get some new tires before the winter.
• I got my car inspected for PA (where they told me I’ll need new tires before winter, which I suspected anyway), so I think I’ve completed pretty much everything to get myself officially transferred to PA now.
• I seriously need to downsize my rock collection. I started filling up the cabinet that my friend Caryn gave me, and it’s overflowing due to rocks. We are having a goods auction to support the Grove in a few weeks, maybe I will downsize then.
• Dad and I celebrated our 1 year anniversary in our new house on October 1st. Doesn’t seem like it’s been that long, but we’ve adjusted to it. I’m still not fully unpacked . Slacker.
• I had to call Comcast the other day because my “promotional” period ended and they raised my rates. I had to threaten to cancel in order to be rebundled to a better rate, but I’m set in stone for another year at least.
• Work had its annual party a few weeks back. I don’t think I played as well this year, but I had fun so that’s all that matters.

I’m keeping track of my payments towards my father’s debt reduction to kinda see the progress as we reach my goal of having his loan paid off by September 2009. So expect these posts monthly! Each month, seeing the progress should hopefully motivate me to stay on track with this.

• Starting Balance of Loan in January: $5388.14
• Starting Balance in August 2009: $493.62
• Total Payments in August: $527.17
• Total Payments YTD: $5516.41
• Total Finance Charges For August 2009: $2.35
• Total Finance Charges YTD: $97.07
• Starting Balance for September: -$31.20 (which will be applied to the next round of debt)
• $0 Goal: September 2009 PWNED

Notes for this month:
Well that did it, it took 8 months (actually longer than I anticipated because February was such a bad month), but my original goal was to have it paid off by September 2009 and I did it on August 14th. You can view all of the payments and notations throughout the last 8 months. My dad has had this balance for years and I conquered it in 8 months.

Now I will continue doing monthly posts like this as I meet two more big goals. 1. To pay off all remaining interest-accruing debt (about $2600 worth from me taking over dads tractor supply bill and getting his truck fixed etc). And 2. Paying back the last person who loaned us money for the down payment on our home ($5,000). The goal is to complete both of those by December 2010. It will take slightly longer only because after the interest-accruing debt is gone, I plan to start putting a little more away into savings again, so my payments will be smaller.

I will keep charts on my blog of my progress as well.

See also: July, June, May, April, March, February, January

I’m keeping track of my payments towards my father’s debt reduction to kinda see the progress as we reach my goal of having his loan paid off by September 2009. So expect these posts monthly! Each month, seeing the progress should hopefully motivate me to stay on track with this.

• Starting Balance of Loan in January: $5388.14
• Starting Balance in July 2009: $990.74
• Total Payments in July: $507.63
• Total Payments YTD: $4989.24
• Total Finance Charges For July 2009: $10.51
• Total Finance Charges YTD: $94.72
• Starting Balance for August: $493.62
• $0 Goal: September 2009

Notes for this month:
No news of note this month. Just anxiously, impatiently waiting for August 15th when the balance will be NEGATIVE (which just applies to the tractor supply debt anyway). I guess I should note that dad is no longer mowing the old neighbors lawns, so he doesn’t have any extra money coming in anymore unless he gets lawns up here, which he’s gonna try to do. The old women from the old neighborhood were kinda taking advantage of him and he had enough of it I think. So this is gonna put a damper on finances for a bit. Fortunately we’ll have all interest accruing debt gone this year besides the house.

I will note I also got a $6 rebate on my credit card, which I applied towards this balance.

See also: June, May, April, March, February, January,

Well I recently found out.

Dad had outpatient surgery on Tuesday where they just put a skin graph on the ulcer on his leg to see if it’ll help heal it. Before they’ve used pig skin for this, but apparently they also save the skin from circumsized babies to use as skin graphs. So now my dad has baby penis skin on his leg. That takes not being “wasteful” to a whole new level folks.

I can see the jokes now…… “….waking up with a stiff leg.”

He has to rest and not bump it for a week or two, so I’ve had to take over some of his chores as well. Fortunately I have a three day weekend coming up where I can get a lot of things done around here.

I updated my pictures from yesterday with updated deck pictures from last night, as well.

I’m keeping track of my payments towards my father’s debt reduction to kinda see the progress as we reach my goal of having his loan paid off by September 2009. So expect these posts monthly! Each month, seeing the progress should hopefully motivate me to stay on track with this.

• Starting Balance of Loan in January: $5388.14
• Starting Balance in June 2009: $1509.77
• Total Payments in June : $527.17
• Total Payments YTD: $4481.61
• Total Finance Charges For June 2009: $8.14
• Total Finance Charges YTD: $84.21
• Starting Balance for July: $990.74
• $0 Goal: September 2009

Notes for this month:
Finally got the balance under a grand. I may have it paid off by the end of July if my side work money comes in. I put a little extra on this month because I thought it’d be more motivating for me to see it in the triple digits.

See also: May, April, March, February, January,

1. My dad worked concrete for 40 years. I consider him one of the “blue-collared” Americans.
2. Because my dad was in construction, the guys were always trying to top each other on who was strongest. My dad always won.
3. My dad could carry 16 8-foot 2×4’s uphill, that was one of their “strong” tests. The next guy down could only do 14 of them.
4. My dad could also do this while jumping into a ditch, which is partially why he has such bad knees now.
5. My dad was hired by nerds in highschool to protect them. One guy paid my dad $20/week to keep the bullies away from him.
6. My dad used to drag-race his 1969 roadrunner all over Baltimore and Harford County. One time in the middle of the night they were all set up to drag-race over this bridge, and when the cars were going by, some idiot threw a gas can on fire under the cars to be funny. My dad walked over, picked the guy up, and dangled him over the side of the bridge with one hand.
7. My dad used to do push-ups with me on his back to help with strength training.
8. My uncle says my dad could reload a black-powder faster than most men can reload a regular rifle.
9. My dad’s 1969 roadrunner was so fast, cops had to set up a road block in order to stop him at one point.
10. My dad used to be a heavy drinker before I was born, and had a rope tied to the stick-shift in his 69 roadrunner that his friends could hold onto to prevent him from shifting it out of 2nd gear if he was drinking.
11. My dad had a stroke November of 2000 that left half of his body paralyzed (which is when I decided to move back home from the naval base). When he had the stroke he also fell off a roof and landed head-first onto a metal beam, cutting his head open. He made a full recovery of both.
12. I met some of my dads friends that he used to run around with, they quoted him as the “John Wayne” of their generation. Not only because he was a bear, but because he never let people get pushed around or be mean to women.
13. For instance..dad and mom were at a gas station, and there was a group of women there (I don’t know if they were friends with mom or what), and a guy was standing around bad-mouthing and cussing people. Dad told him to stop and he wouldn’t so dad said he just got tired of it and knocked the guy out. Mom tells me she felt the wind as my dad’s fist went by.
14. A girl was staying with the family who had left her ex-husband. He showed up one night and was giving my grandmother (dad’s mom) a bunch of grief and my grandfather and my dad both chased him off and drove after him. They caught up with him at a stop-sign and my dad jumped out of the car and ran over and knocked the guy out. No one cusses out grandmom.
15. My dad has the most awesome fumanchu-like mustache. He always get compliments on it.
16. At our old house, my dad’s nickname was the “Salem Bottom Angel” around the neighborhood because it’s a mostly elderly neighborhood and he’d help everyone out with keeping things in order and fixed.

Today we are celebrating father’s day with just a meager cook-out out back, just me and my dad. We have buffalo burgers and he wanted hot dogs. I made brownies yesterday just to use up what was left of my brownie-making supply. And hopefully the weather will be nice.

I didn’t buy him any gifts, since we’ll be spending the insurance money on the new deck, which incidentally my uncle said he’ll probably start next week. But the boyfriend did get him a canvas print of our old farm back by Liberty Reservoir (dad teared up). It looks really nice, I think he’s going to go show it off to his brothers and sisters this morning. Man I miss that place…

My uncle said the materials for our new deck will only cost about $1700, so I have a lot of breathing room I think to make sure he gets some money for this work. I figure they can probably get it done in a few days. I’ll take pictures as it’s in progress, as well as some before and after pictures.

My dad also mentioned what I wanted to do to the bedrooms upstairs, tearing out the ceiling and exposing the underside of the roof to the peeks to make it taller, and tearing off one side of the roof to expand the bedrooms out like the bathroom [Photo for Reference] (which incidentally will give me an additional 6 feet or so in each bedroom, that’s a -lot-). My uncle said that’d be easy, so I might start saving up for that