So far this weekend has been interesting.  Hubby did all the housework while I went to work on Saturday.  Well, let me correct that – he did all the housework except the bathrooms.  I am still grateful.  I worked longer than I wanted to and I ran back down the road to the Chinese place for orange chicken for dinner.  Hubby has changed over the years on this point.  When he was working, he would never consider that it might be a burden for me to cook a full meal after putting in my own hours on the job.  Housework was also not his thing – he preferred to work or fish.

Then came his first retirement.  For the first month, he tried to bring some order to his newly found freedom, but he also noticed that I literally never stopped.  Everything from the yard, to the housework, to the cooking, to the food buying, to the errand running – it was all my job, too.  Things slowly started to change.  He realized that my begging to eat out a couple of times a week was more of a cry of desperation.  My need for someone to help take the load of living in a house with 4 cats and grandkids was again – desperate.  He’s never been one for outside help.  I am still in favor of that.  But things are better.   I still spend a part of every weekend cleaning house and cooking, but it’s better.  My goal?  If I’m putting in 10-12 hour days 6 days a week – someone else does the heavy lifting at home.

He’s now on second retirement and I dream of mine.  But I’ve got a few hundred $K invested in a business and I need to get the investment back before I can pass the torch.  What’s happened this year is that we’ve all gotten totally overwhelmed by the workload and thus have stopped taking on customers.  Of course, we’re going to regret that now as the cash flow slows.  Meh.

More about work later.  So yesterday, being Labor Day weekend and owning a 14 year old mattress, we adventured out to “Sleepy’s” to test mattresses.  3 hours later we’re the proud owners of an adjustable TemperPedic which is going to set us back about $8K.  Yep.  You read that right.  Now, the Kingsdown that  we bought in 2000 cost about $1700 – which I also thought was absurd at the time.  I have no idea if this is going to work or not, but there is a 30 day return policy and trust me, for $8k if I can’t sleep, it’s going back.

I guess in the long run we’re prepped to spend a ton of money this year.  So far we have a new roof $21K, need new gutters $3.5 K, need a new kitchen (might come in at $25K), and we need to redo at least the master bath ($10K).  I am pressing hard for these renovations since we’ve lived a ridiculously frugal existence for the past 20 years while caring for son, son’s baby and his mother, hubby’s mother, hubby’s father, and started this business right at the time I have been ready to retire.  We’re recently inherited a substantial amount of money and I’ll be damned if I plane to die with even a few million dollars sitting in a bank.  This is a hard sell to husband who is Scots-Irish and even to me.  I’m not used to spending a bunch of cash.  But the reality is that what I want to buy is practical – a good kitchen, a safe bath, a roof that won’t leak until after we’re gone, gutters to keep hubby off ladders and digging pine needles out of same.  The bed, however, was a bit of a stretch.  It better be good.

Plan for the day?  Piddle around the house.  Head to Dillards (Clinique plus bonus) and Macy’s (Estee Lauder plus bonus).  Not sure what else. My fitbit seems to be having an issue with getting charged – readjusting that in hopes that I haven’t killed it.