<p>42" Flat Screen TV! </p>
<p>I’d need new furniture to go with it because 1. it wouldn’t fit in my TV cabinent, 2. I’m not willing to give up the storage & shelving in my cabinent 3. Mounting on wall seems unsafe as I’d always worry someone would bang into it.</p>
<p>After that – A Housecleaner!</p>
<p>The NOOK/KINDLE folks – Before buying, please remember the “color” Nook, while cool to me, uses different tech. than the black/white. The black/white is kinder on your eyes</p>
<p>
When mounted properly using lag screws to mount the bracket to the studs of the wall the mounting is very strong - way more than enough to hold a TV. They usually don’t stick out from the wall very much so unless it’s in an area where people frequently walk right along it, like a hallway, which would be an unlikely location to mount a TV, it’s usually not any problem. When I replaced my 32" tube TV with a 55" wall-mounted plasma, the flat screen was noticably less intrusive in the room than the old 32" tube TV since it’s so flush against the wall. </p>
<p>
I agree - the kindle uses ePaper (eInk) while the color nook uses regular LCD. The former basically looks like the paper of a book and works very well in brighly lit areas including direct sun but the latter is basically the same as a computer monitor screen. There’s a difference in the power used along with the subsequent battery life as well.</p>
<p>A house cleaner is less expensive than therapy.<br>
Have brought up the topic with DH many times and he considers getting a house cleaner a sign that I’m not competent to handle my life.
My therapist and I have good conversations. :)</p>
<p>^^^^I would love a cleaning lady, but cannot handle the stress/agitation of picking up my H’s clutter the night before the cleaning lady would arrive.</p>
<p>When we were both working, we had a cleaning person come in, but as I made the kids clean their rooms for the cleaner to come, I realised I had three kids who really needed to learn how to clean themselves. So, we taught them and assigned chores and it was a pain, but they now thank us for being good at cleaning and the house is now so much less messy without kids in it that is it no big deal to clean.</p>
<p>Though, I must say, in my house now we get the biggest fluffiest fattest dust I have ever seen in my life, the actual pieces on the glass table, floating through the sunlight are huge. No dust bunnies here, more like dust coyotes under & on everything. I don’t have any idea why it’s so big!</p>
<p>"^^^^I would love a cleaning lady, but cannot handle the stress/agitation of picking up my H’s clutter the night before the cleaning lady would arrive. "</p>
<p>If It didn’t have to do that (with MY clutter), I would certainly be buried alive!</p>
<p>(SIGH…I no longer have a housekeeper since we became a single income household.)
My former world traveler, but now housebound parents gave me a generous chunk of change at Christmas, with the stipulation that I must spend it on a trip. So it’s off to Istanbul and Paris in five weeks. I now have “product lust” for super light weight Rimowa Salsa luggage. But at $550 it is way out of my league! (but will keep my eye towards finding it on ebay)</p>
<p>A vacation home…either in Florida or a lake house nearby.
I’m hoping to win the HGTV Dream Home and solve all my problems! :D</p>
<p>BUT that’s TWO homes one would have to take care of!! A vacation home has never seemed enticing for that reason alone! I love my house and my neighborhood, but lately it seems like too much damn work. And living in California, I don’t even have to shovel snow!</p>
<p>I always wondered that about having a “weekend” home. Isn’t the extra maintenance and headache a pain? I cram everything into the week now. I have no idea how I could cram all the extra weekend stuff into Mon-Fri at the main house, so I could leave and go to the weekend house. Plus, it seems that most people who have these 2nd places live in a major metro area, so I would think there’d be horrendous traffic (2 hrs?) going each way on the weekends? I dunno–not appealing to me.</p>
<p>^We owned a lake house (very small, we called it ‘the shack’) about 45 minutes from our house. It * was* work to keep up with two places. We spent about 1/2 our time out there during the summer but in the winter we would drive out there about every 3 weeks or so just to check on things. It was close enough that hubby could commute to work from there during the summer. We ended up selling it after a few years for a variety of reasons. I wasn’t working at the time, so I enjoyed being out there and had the time to take care of things at both places but I can’t see doing that and working full-time. There’s just too many things to keep up with in your primary residence to be gone on the weekends all the time.</p>
<p>We have a lot of friends who buy lake houses and then end up selling them after a bit, mainly because they don’t get used enough to justify the expense.</p>
<p>Though, now is the time to buy one, there are so many on the market around here, they are going at rock-bottom prices.</p>
<p>Weekend home: YES it is too much work to maintain two homes. We have been doing it for the past four years this spring, and it is coming to an end as we are moving to the vacation house. I have not liked the two house thing too much at all. Two houses to clean, buy food and supplies for, and two gardens to maintain! My H insists on every weekend there and it seems all I do is work rather than enjoy it. I also get to haul in all the food and then haul it back. My advice is save the money and take some nice vacations with room service!</p>
<p>I want a cleaning lady. I need to be home the first time she comes, and that hasn’t happened in a month since we’ve began talking. I’ve had meetings or work last few Saturdays.</p>
<p>My Kindle is waiting to be activated.</p>
<p>Oh dear–if I gave up CC I could do that!</p>
<p>atommom - House in the tropics we’re building (Hubby wants it), I want an apartment in the city!</p>
<p>my2sunz, getting off the dime and purchasing that VitaMix was the best kitchen splurge I ever made. We are regularly drinking yogurt/berry/vit. C packet smoothies here nowadays.</p>
<p>tired already, tell mom that if you hire help. you’ll help the economy. My dear grandma cleaned during the depression. It was often the only work the family had, and if I ever do hire help I’ll justify it that way.</p>
<p>I’m not itching for much. We just had a new furnace/AC put in, and I look forward to sitting out on the deck w/far less AC noise.</p>
<p>I have nothing I am really itching to buy. I used to have a long list whenever my birthday came about, but now I don’t really have must haves.</p>
<p>I crave for less hassle and less excitement. If it’s possible to buy - I would like to be able to buy sometime/place where no one would need to reach me, and where BB wouldn’t work.</p>
<p>I only have one left at home…a teenage girl. We can go up all summer and “plant it” at the lake, and with no one in the “home” house…how much can there be to do? We can afford to have a neighbor kid cut the lawn and water the plants at home. Only about 45 min. away by uncrowded Interstate. Husband can do a little at home, and I will take care of stuff at the lake.</p>
<p>At a Florida home, we would have a maintenance company to do all that…and maybe rent it out when we’re not there. </p>
<p>Love being “away” with my family…it would be worth it to us.</p>
<p>bookiemom–I envy you! We are, in my estimation, fortunate to be doing the two house thing, and given our druthers, we’d move to the second one in a second. The first one is falling apart, has astronomical property taxes because of the part of the state it’s in (but not the cache that should go with that; it’s worth next to nothing.) The second one, which we go to almost every weekend, feeds my soul. It’s still half empty, everything works and is clean, and my H does almost all the upkeep. It’s near the ocean and the bay and a really neat town.</p>
<p>However (and it’s a big one) I feel like no. 1 house (which we have to keep because it’s where our jobs are) is falling apart around us. Never time to clean and do maintenance there, because we’re never there on the weekend. I would love to sell it and live full time at “retirement” house, but we can’t afford to retire.</p>
<p>So that’s my real wish–quit work, sell no. 1, live at no. 2 full time. Definitely a pipe dream!</p>
<p>(but in the scheme of reality for most people, hardly something I should be complaining about).</p>
<p>^^^what Garland said. We have new #2 house that we love. Spend many hours on the road back and forth between houses. Have a huge itch to update the worn out parts of house #1 and sell it so we could move to house #2 fulltime. We’re waiting for S2 to graduate from college and get settled. Can’t afford to quit the jobs just yet.</p>
<p>My wish is for MANY things for my falling down old house:
New perimeter fence, maybe the wrought iron looking stuff.
Wider driveway to accomodate two cars side by side…that WHITE stuff, you know?
New master bedroom: falling down ceiling, bad old carpet replaced.
Hardwood in downstairs living area.
New or newish Honda CRV</p>
<p>LOVE my Kindle. Very easy on the eyes, even in bright sunlight. Which is where I need to be soon to save my sanity. Oh, and the old house is falling down due to lack of funds and lack of interest…can’t wait to go spend the summer at our town pool, swim, chat with my pool buds and read my Kindle.</p>