Thirty years and counting

Yesterday, my life partner and I celebrated 30 years of wedded...mostly bliss...some rough spots, but mostly good days, weeks, months and years. So, today, to honor those thirty years, we went out and spent about $100 per year. We are doing our part to keep the American economy recovering by purchasing durable goods. We bought 2 refrigerators, a washer/dryer set and a sectional for the living room. The refrigerators replace two that are vintage 1980's. The washer/dryer replaces the pair we purchased when we moved into this house 10 years ago, and the sectional replaces the sofa/loveseat we bought from a discount furniture place in 1996. As you can see, we believe in squeezing every last minute of life out of our purchases. We still have the sunroom addition in the line queue, and after that we need to reconfigure the sleeping arrangements in this house. (That means we get a king and our queen goes to the guestroom. My kids and their husbands/significant others will appreciate that.)

All of the above is our anniversary present to each other. We are going to have to decorate and furnish the new 4-season sunroom when that gets added (which I hope will actually begin in the next week or so) And then we have our one-room-per-year renovation which we have been trying to adhere to over the past couple of years. If we are able to do that, I am pushing to do the living room this fall. New wall treatment (paper or paint...decisions, decisions, decisions) and a new carpet on the floor. The goal for 2010 will be to do the dining room--same work plus lighting (chandelier and wall sconces). My goal is to have the entire house redone (with an added basement entertainment center) by the time we seriously think about selling it (call it 8 to 10 years). Actually, our son will get first dibs and, depending upon how things work, that could happen sooner rather than later. I'd give my daughters a shot at the homestead, but neither of them would be caught dead living in Joisey.

And with this spurt of spending, there are only two things that I really need now: I need a stereo which can run speakers in either/and the basement workshop or out on the new sunroom, and I need a new desktop computer. The primary Dell machine is now 5 years old, and the backup Quantex is like 12 years old. It makes grinding noises when it is running. The hard drive is about to die...Oh, and I need a new wireless router...one that provides a little more coverage than the Netgear 805.11g model I have now...If I can add those three things to my immediate spending priority list, I'll be good for the next couple of months. (OK, sooner or later we need to replace our cell phones, and new MP3 players are always in my "gotta have" list.)

PS.

Oops, I forgot one more thing that needs to be done this summer. The new sunroom is going where our current patio is. When they come in to put the sunroom up, the first thing they are going to do is move all my lovely flagstones from the patio to over by the pool machinery. So, when that happens, I need to have somebody come in and remove 8-10 inches of dirt and replace that with 6-8 inches of gravel and sand. Then, upon that base using my existing flagstone, build a new patio next to the pool. I figure that is going to cost me about $1500 for labor plus the cost of gravel and sand. *sigh* It is not easy supporting the economy all by myself...