A long overdue post

Hi.  It’s me, Lucy.  I can’t believe it has been over eight months since I last posted.  Worse yet, I’m not even sure how I let this happen.  Writer’s block, Covid, my dad passing, med changes for my RLS, increased hours with the kiddo, general life changes…honestly, I’m not even sure.  The thing is, I enjoyed writing and connecting with those of you who would stop by.  So why and how did I let this happen?  I am entirely answerless. 

For those of you who have followed my journey (are any of you even still out there?), my most sincere apologies for dropping out of sight.  Leaving my readers hanging was something I promised myself I would NEVER do.  In fact, I was so adamant about bloggers doing this I even wrote a blog post about it.  While I can’t change where I failed, I can offer you a “Whatever happened to A Dime at a Time” update.  There have been many changes, so hang in there as I try to remember it all ~ and in sequence!

Looking back at my last post, I was working on cleaning up our yard.  More of that still needs to be done (additional info coming), but thankfully, it is a fresh new year!  We were also trying to get a completed design for a major house renovation.  That never happened.  After receiving one excuse after another, we more or less fired the builder and his designer.  We saw far too many red flags when it came to working with this company.  It turned out to be a blessing in disguise.  Sorry, but more on that too!

Yes, when it comes to writing, I still drag things out.

In September, we took a short, two-night trip.  I don’t even remember what prompted us to do so.  We might have just needed time away to focus on ourselves.  It was nothing extravagant.  We concentrated on doing free stuff…well, that is until we bought a boat and a lift!  Trust me; it was not a spur-of-the-moment purchase.  Hubs has been looking at boats since 2015 when we moved to our lake house.  Looking at this boat was another one of those “Hey, I want to take a quick look at that boat” things.

The boat was being sold on consignment, and for its age, was meticulous.  We spent so much time looking at it that the owner happened to stop by.  Think small town.  Lol  It took me all of five seconds to realize he was a perfectionist.  He was the original owner and was only selling for health issues.  He bought a pontoon boat since they are easier to get in and out of.  Oddly, Hubs wanted to think about it for a night.  We had looked at enough junk in our price range that I knew this was too good of a buy to wait on.  It was also the end of the season (so we couldn’t even test it on the lake), making for an even better deal.  So, we put down a $100 deposit.  It was a good thing we did, as we later heard that an hour after we left, another interested party came back to buy it.

Getting the boat home was easy.  The boat lift was a challenge.  We ended up needing to rent a flatbed trailer for that.  Given the size, we also needed to take it apart as minimally as we could.  Funny story about that, though.  I guess the boat owner drove the owner of the boat shop a bit crazy.  He was always stopping by to check on the boat. If he knew someone had looked at the boat, he would come by to make sure things were folded just so, etc.  This boat was definitely his baby!  The day we came for the lift, I sent the (now former) owner of the boat a text to let him know we were in town.  When he and his wife showed up, the shop owner looked at me and said, “You just had to call him!” Yes, I did!  And it was actually a good thing I did. His engineering background came in handy in figuring out how to load and legally transport it home.  On a side note, after so much communication, we are now friends with this couple.

To answer a question that I’m sure many of you might be wondering…we do NOT have a boat payment. A lousy picture, but here is our (new to us) boat.  Since we didn’t have covered storage, we had the boat shop shrink wrap it before we brought it home.  Better for the boat, plus made Mr. Perfectionist happy.  Lol

So good to write again!  Much more to come…house plans, land, friends, money, jobs, family (not necessarily in that order!) …yes, a lot has happened since my last blog post.  It is really good to be back!