* No really it's Thursday in da hood. Yes, it's da hood- do I sound racist, I've been drinking?
Well it's now Saturday and I haven't been drinking. Nastia just left for work and before she did she told me she might spend the next few days sleeping over at her friend CJ's house. I asked why. she said it was more convenient. I then asked her how sleeping twenty minutes away from work is better then sleeping ten minutes away from work. Her reply, it's more fun. How can you argue with that. She's twenty-one, going to be twenty-two in three months. The only thing I could say was....nothing. What could I say? Yes, she does live under Teri and my roof and our house, our rules, but do I want to make maybe the best age to be full of me saying, no you can't do that. It sounds harmless, if she is going to do what she says she is going to do. I mean, she didn't sleep at CJ's when she ended up at the motel in Stony Point last week. And yes that did turn out to be harmless. And if she is going to spend the night with some guy, whether I say no or not it will still happen one way or another. I remember being that age and how we were. She know how to be safe and that's all I can do.
COVID has now been going on at least for six months. After a very rough start New York and the tri-state area seem to be doing OK. Sometimes you hear about some idiots having a party of a couple hundred and the police coming to break it up and test for COVID. People are getting tired and they have always been stupid, so what do you expect. Nastia in addition to her sleeping over her friend CJ's house said we might not see much of her the next few days (see reason above). She also might be invited to a BBQ. She is not sure if it is for just family or friends can be invited. Life during COVID.
Elena, works and doesn't date Matt. That hasn't changed. Well it has changed a little. He is back in school and he has two jobs I think. Elena is a little concerned he is stretching himself a little thin.
Elena works most days from noon to eight. She is a manager's assistant for a specific manager. It turns out that this manager was filling in for another manager. The former manager is coming back and Elena likes being an assistant and doesn't want to go back to what she was doing. She is also talking about school but doesn't want to do it remotely. (See Nastia's experience, FYI- it wasn't good) Elena needs a structured environment with rules and someone to call her on her bad attendance without being bossy. I know that is the exact opposite of what college is. Maybe working almost full time at ShopRite and her realizing that she doesn't want to spend the rest of her life there will give her the inner fortitude to do well, when she does go back. Or maybe she has just grown up over the last year and she will just tough it out. Only time will tell.
Teri still hates her job. Her staff is not very dedicated and management above her except for one person is not doing anything to help make the job bearable. I guess we should just be thankful that we both have had jobs through the COVID-19 pandemic. Unemployment went from about 3% to over 30%. It has dropped to just under 10% now. All of this without the help of the orange raccoon. Soon I hope I can go back to hating Cuomo, but in a pinch he came through and saved New York.
The House is not completely finished. We started with a budget of $30,000.00. We thought we could go up to $37,000.00. We finished up somewhere around $35,000.00. A copy of the final bill will be dropped off on Monday or Tuesday. I called Gary's gutter service to check out our gutters because one of them over flows over the kitchen window and the roofing guys kind of were rough on the gutter guards when the roof came off. I thought we had a lifetime guarantee on the guards, but where that paperwork is I don't know.
Karl gave me the a number for a guy who I was told was reasonable and a bit of an artist. I had him come by and he did a through job of looking over the porch. The porch is nor huge, maybe ten by ten and there is a little bump in to make it smaller. He looked under the porch at the support columns and I wanted everything from the support columns up gone except the porch columns. He disagreed and said the support columns under the porch were no good and I couldn't just repoint them ( put cement back in the joints between the bricks) He texted me a price a day later of $6,000.00, about double of the top end I expected. Then the other day Teri says the taxes for Nyack have come in (don't ask why we're paying) which I remember as about $6,000.00,maybe more. So no porch complete tear down (wasn't going to spend $6,000.00 on it anyway) Gary's $475.00 for a complete cleaning of the gutters will also wait, but just until later in the month, but no later then October. I will strip and paint the part of the porch we will be keeping and maybe rebuild the decking if I feel I can get away with it. We'll see.
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