My dreams of a porch are coming through and I am SO nervous. I'm scared I'm being cheated, that I'm overpaying, that this guy is an amateur, that I'll hate it in the end... But he starts working on it Monday. Oh, and getting my money together is going to take a couple of days to get it out of investments and into my bank (that sounds like I'm a wheeler dealer which I most certainly am not).

The plan is that it will be about 10 x 20 and have a partition in the middle so that the smaller side on the west will be the true "catio" and the bigger side on the east will be my porch. There will be door between and I'm sure mostly the cats can share my porch with me. But I will have the ability to separate them when I need to. It will all be screened and have a metal roof and I can once again enjoy a fly-free patio year-round. I may move a Christmas tree out there next weekend!

My family is partly back from Belgium. My sister's flight was canceled so they went through great difficulties to get rescheduled and get home hours later than planned. It was really late so I didn't have to go get them, they used Uber. The younger nephew with the kids had the very same issue, but he really had difficulties and it forced them to spend a night in London. They are home. The other nephew and his wife are spending more vacation time in Germany going to the Christmas markets.

Work this week has been a morass. I am just not wanting to work at all. I hate that! I try to shake myself out of it and next thing I know I'm working a crossword or something, in a totally different world. Two weeks to go until Christmas, but I'm only taking one extra day of vacation so I'll still be working right after the holiday. I have a lot of vacation days after 14 years with the company, but I sure used it up this year and a lot more with bereavement and with the extra days my boss fudged and just let me have. All that vacation without really having a true vacation.

I re-hired a service I had in Austin that sends a handyman to your house to fix things at a better rate, but you also pay a monthly fee. It worked really well in Austin and I loved the guy that did things. They didn't have the service two years ago when I moved here, but now they do so I signed up. But I'm not happy with it and I think I will cancel in a couple of weeks. Scheduling an appointment is like trying to get a specialist doctor...the only available times are months out. I did complain on their scheduling form and immediately got a call and a better date, so a guy is coming MONDAY to put in new toilet seats and bidets for me. That's exciting. But you get an inspection and a lot of services every six months. They couldn't even get to my first one of those for 7 weeks after I signed up. Now I've gotten an email that their rates have all gone up considerable. Monthly is up a few dollars, but the hourly fee on the handyman has gone up to about what any handyman would cost. This would all be okay if I had lots of money and happily let the handyman come as often as I would like him to come. But I don't think there is any way I'm getting my money's worth anymore. And if my new porch builder works out, he will be my new handyman. He doesn't have a regular hourly rate so I don't know.

Now I need to get busy and clean my house. My old friend is coming by this afternoon and I want the house to look nice. I need to get to the store, too. I have put off shopping for days and days. I need to at least get a beverage and a snack for her visit even if I don't get all the groceries I need. I'm looking forward to her visit and to showing off my house, but I'm also having that aggravation with myself for having made a commitment!

The weather had been so perfect this week. I've been outside on the patio each day taking it in. Monday morning there were some crazy contrails in the sky. I took a lot of pictures since it seems I haven't seen any in a long time, but I write that off to not being OUT in the morning. I used to see them driving to work frequently. Oddly, though, later in the day my sister said someone had commented about the "chem trails" conspiracy and how bad they had been that morning. Weird that I heard about someone else noticing them. I don't believe in the conspiracy theories. They were just beautiful and interesting.