MP it might be God’s way of allowing you some Missy time.
I know shaw I would have liked to visit with her but I really didn’t need it, I thought it was nice they suggested her.
I have affair amount of phobia in regard to being assessed though
My friend is in ICU I am kind of numb.
I would not remarry. I am an introvert. I am too bonded to my H, and never was the kind of girl that needed a guy. But I agree it would be nice to have someone a few doors down. I could see myself getting too isolated if I didn’t get out.
Not sure if I would marry or not again. I have always had a boyfriend then a husband- well since I was in sixth grade. I probably could count on one hand the number of days since 6 grade that I was “single”. Just me. Not that I needed a guy. There just always seemed to be one there that I was interested in that was interested in me - which says something for a “fat” girl. 
Lately I seem to feel like I wouldn’t mind some time alone but I know that is just because lately my H has been a real slob and I’m very sick of picking up after him.
I find that as I get older there is less time to get everything done. I keep thinking that when I retire I will finally have some time. I would love to only be working like 32 or 24 hours a week instead of 45+. I had thought that once I got to this part in my life I would go down to part time. Sadly my work has eliminated that option lately.
Oh well – the weekend is almost here. Just need to get through today.
A friend of mine asked me the remarriage question a few years ago. I say most likely not but would be open to the possibility. I met H when I was 21 and married at 23 so have had no single time since college. Interestingly my friend who asked the question told me that none of the other women she asked said they were interested in a possible remarriage at this age.
My FIL died about 15 years ago. He told her he hoped she would find a new partner. I think she was probably late 60s, maybe 69. She wasn’t looking but a few year later found the nicest guy. I think they have now been together for 10 years or so. They just celebrated his 90th birthday. He’s still working as an emeritus professor of medicine, and he has set up an institute that is dedicated to eliminating a particular tropical disease that is a) preventable; and b) damages or kills kids. So, he does lots of traveling. He’s brought a lot of joy to her life and vice versa.
Well, just in case I might have been in doubt DH woke me snoring many times last night. Not typical but just reinforced one thing and that is that if I were to be another relationship in the future I will always have my own bedroom. And should we build again we will have a Victorian set up with separate sleeping rooms and a shared bath with two toilet chambers. 
I may be giving too much away about myself or my marriage but YES, Oregon, yes! Here I am with this stupid cold because I shared a bed with H when he was sick, when we have a 4 bedroom house with 3 of those bedrooms empty. Why do I deal with snoring just about every night when we have 3 empty bedrooms?
I usually sleep elsewhere when I’m sick. H’s snoring doesn’t bother me – I actually find it somewhat comforting. Weird. My snoring bothers him but mostly if he has gotten up or it is almost time for him to get up. He snores every night which is probably why it doesn’t bother me. I only snore when I’m sick or have a bloody nose which means it’s an oddity which is probably why it bothers him. Plus he says I’m not rhythmic about it.
mp^ and two other empty beds here.
Lol. I have been accused of lacking rhythm when snoring too. I can sleep through anything, so mch’s own symphony doesn’t faze me in the least
But I’m weird about daytime space, and I think, a bit territorial.
Before I remarried, I actually sailed the idea of a side-by-side duplex with mch. That didn’t end up being practical at that point in time, but when I did move in with him, I had my own room. I never actually slept in my own room, but all my clothes, makeup table, books, etc. and all my getting ready was in “my” room.
When we bought the foreclosure 5 yrs ago, the large master br was located at the far end of the house, away from the original wing, was right by the pool, and adjacent to my preferred bathroom, and had a 8 ft picture window looking out over the pool, terrace and forest. Because it had two separate closets, I thought what the heck why not so now we truly share a room, because no way was I gonna risk NOT having this room It was kind of funny at the time…and still is. Quite an eclectic blend of styles…pop culture and mid-century iconography meets contessa antique makeup table…it helps that its the size of two smaller rooms. The first thing we did was purchase new his n hers identical dressers in an effort to pull the look together, then installed shelves in a recessed wall. Its kind of a miracle that we managed to integrate our styles at all!
My thing is and always has been that I have to have some living space where there’s no TV. I wasn’t allowed to watch much TV as a kid, and also restricted my own kid from same to a degree, so its very environmentally distracting to me. How we solved this one at both the old house and this one, both which have large main floor family rooms, was that the “front rooms” get the TV and the “back rooms” (family rooms with slider doors to the yard and great views/light in both cases) get a retractable screen and projector…no casual watching but used for movies or at mutually agreed times. That way I can putter, read, listen to music, play music, visit with friends, etc. in “my” living space without a TV, and oftentimes ergo a man in the background Likewise, I generally stay out of the front room unless I’m deliberately watching something with mch, and otherwise leave him be unharried. (He might disagree with this assessment )
So its a bit like duplex living in some ways, as far as space divvying. People think its kind of funny, but we do work together all day, so I think having a bit of “space” to retreat to is in our case a healthy approach. Plus I love light and in those precious few hours he’s not working, mch loves it dark, so we kinda need to create separate “recharge areas” given how much we over- work.
We don’t have that kmc, but I have the same reaction to TVs and so I can’t even sit in a restaurant facing a TV. We have our own spaces at home – ShawWife with her studio, me with my office and my home office.
I have posted on Facebook a couple of pieces ShawWife just tossed off as a study after spending a few hours at Rodeo Beach. She’s not showing them – a bit too realistic – but I think most artists could work for a while life and not have the facility to do this. I think she is going to sell them while here just to finance her part of the trip. I think those of you in the FB group can see them. If not, let me know.
Well, H came home with a wicked cold yesterday, and I decamped to the guest room. I am really, really trying hard ont to catch it. He was pretty much the last man standing in his group, so I guess this one is pretty virulent.
I’ve started reading Wes Moss’ You Can Retire Sooner than You Think http://www.amazon.com/You-Retire-Sooner-Than-Think-ebook/dp/B00KNGPPLA/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1456601648&sr=1-1&keywords=you+can+retire+sooner+than+you+think – not particularly for the financial part, which is in pretty solid shape for us, but for the other parts of what makes a “good” retirement – the connections we have, how we invest our energies. Much food for thought.
We are the same way, arabrab. Financially we can retire in about 3 years (according to our advisor), but we want to see where our kids land before we decide where we will go. And while I have a number of interests (not TV!), H needs to find some hobbies to fill time. So at this point we will probably keep working another 5 or 6 years.
I asked mch the other day if he wouldn’t like to retire in 5-7 years and his response was “not really.” So I said “why” and his response was because he didn’t see the point when I’d still be working another decade (I am 10 yrs younger than mch.)
Part of the reason I asked was because we have a lot of catch up to do, having rebooted together late in life after at that time losing our net worth in a bad investment. But I’m also a believer that ultimately people can in fact enjoy a retirement without necessarily hitting benchmarks of the financial planning community, and that to some degree many people work too long out of fear of scarcity and a lack of a sense of adventure.
So now I have to weigh carefully decisions like 4,000 square feet of new metal roof and whether that money would be better invested
On one hand, if this is truly to be our “death house”, we have to permanently resolve our ice damning issues before we’re too old to rake the roof in a bad winter. Compared to long-term care facility rates, even a huge metal roof really is only 8-10 months of a stay so extending our ability to stay here looks like a good investment to me So I’d like to plan the investment and be sure we do it before we have to/or one of us is retired.
On the other hand, we changed our 401k to allow a higher rate of contribution and by my calculations, should be continuing to max those out at the higher rate.
In addition, the real estate market here has been very hot, and I’ve had no shortage of interest from our realtor friend about selling the other house. Likewise, while the predicted profit would accumulate nicely over the next ten years, my math shows it wouldn’t likely outperform the actual income stream it would present as a rental in retirement. So while I’d love to beef up the retirement fund through a sale, another part of me prefers to sit tight. I guess what I’m saying is I trust renters more than I trust Wall Street to keep me from eating cat food
KMC - we are fixing up our house now prior to retirement. H does much of the work himself although the new roof he will hire out. He did it last time but he feels that now he doesn’t want to take the risk of falling and really hurting himself. I get it.
He is surprised how much everything costs these days. At first he felt that we would just do this the first year or two of retirement but I pushed to start earlier. Now I think he is thankful that I felt that it needed to be done prior to retirement.
I don’t really want to settle for some things in the house. If this is our house til we can’t take care of it or us any longer than I want it to be what I want. There are things that we can’t do – or don’t really want to put the funds in to do that I would like.
I would love a mud room but our layout just doesn’t really foster that unless I gave up space from another room and I don’t want a smaller dining room. I would love a 2nd floor laundry - ours is in the basement. Again although I might be able to figure out where to put it H just isn’t into moving walls and bringing it upstairs. Again I understand but I think that in the long run that would be helpful.
Currently we are doing our kids old rooms and making them guest rooms. S’s is almost done. Need some furniture but other than that it’s complete. Got rid of the rug and H put down a hardwood floor which I love. D’s will be similar - hardwood floor and just a clean up/new paint. We are also replacing the doors with nice 6 panel doors - just nicer than the flat doors that we had.
Current plan is the hallway upstairs will also be hardwood with the stairs as well. We will put a runner on the stairs for the dog mostly plus H really likes that look - less rugs though to try to keep clean! When you have dogs that is painful!
I am now trying to convince him that once that is done it is time to redo our room as well. Not quite there yet.
Then the downstairs!
Kitchen will be the biggest - new cabinets, counters and appliances. Dining room and living room is really just a paint job. Hardwood has been in those rooms for years - maybe we should refinish them but we will see. Family room will be paint, new carpet and badly needed new furniture. Hoping to have all this done in the next 3 years. With H doing most of the work though we will see.
Our apartment has wood parquet floors. We have lots of throw rugs, but not enough for our old, arthritic dog. He can’t get traction on the wood floors and I’ve woken up a few times to find him stuck in the middle of the floor. Reminds me of the old commercial “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.”
Working from home this week, then I leave Saturday for Kuwait.
Like RM we are also fixing things up around the house before retirement or a sale. We need to replace roof, soffit/ fascia, furnace and windows. I want to add hardwood floors on the entire first floor. We are currently painting the entire interior. D1’s fiance just replaced the kitchen faucet and a bedroom ceiling fan for us this weekend. We have a large home and we can’t decide whether to stay here or move to a new home. The market is a bit stagnant here so we would hopefully break even on the sale of the house but know there would be no profit. We could stay here but there would be lots of maintenance. Such a hard decision! D2 and her H are very handy and love to remodel but they are so busy with their own house that I hate to ask for any help from them. Some of you have seen the links I posted on FB about their remodeling skills.Wish I had their energy and abilities!
Heading out to caucus this evening. Hoping there is a record breaking turnout!
Our house is about 2900 sq. ft. It’s really 4 bedrooms although I suppose my sewing room which is off the dressing room could be a nursery. We turned one of the bedrooms into a TV room. It’s the smallest of them all and H did a built in for the TV, books, storage. Turned out nice and being it’s small it’s really a nice place to sit and watch TV out of the main areas of the house. I would like a bigger house with a big porch but that isn’t going to happen!
We will purchase a mattress soon. We have S’s bed frame for when they first got married. H will build night stands, small dresser and a bed frame for the room and then basically the same for D’s old room. Right now he is building 4 night stands but those are for the kids. I’m last in line.
Our house itself was purchased with age-in-place in mind already, as it is a one floor layout and the house proper is about 2000 SF on one floor. But the roofline also covers a heated double garage and then another 1300 SF addition that we currently use as a studio. So our roof-to-house ratio is quite ridiculous. And then there’s to pool house too.
I am coming to the conclusion that we really, really need to get at least a powder room on the main level of our four-level split. Neither of our dads can do stairs very well these days. I had minor knee surgery seven weeks ago and it hit home. It would be an expensive project, though – no space in the existing footprint (it’s the LR, DR, kitchen, and main/carport entrances, about 600 sq ft. Also need to get the master bath repaired/updated, replace the 50 yo windows, etc. DH doesn’t plan to retire, but doesn’t see the need for maintenance, either. I see benign neglect becoming an issue for us just as it has for our parents, as much as DH and I have railed about it.
Caucus is packed! No parking left in parking lot or on side streets for several blocks. Looks like a good turnout in my area.