Well, maybe I should say that "I'm back" since I haven't been doing much besides lurking and a little blogging for a while now. Lots of stuff going on. Not great stuff - in fact, pretty unpleasant stuff when you come right down to it, but too much stuff for me to digest, let alone talk about.
Okay, there's good news
and bad news
. Good news is I lost three pounds.
Bad news is that I've mostly lost it due to stress.
DH was fired from his job last Tuesday. No warning whatsoever - in fact, his last review was glowing, and he got a substantial payraise. For those of you who don't know (because there are a lot of new
Golden Girls and I'm an old one), DH is a software engineer who worked for a major hospital in Manchester, NH. He's also 61 years old - will be 62 next August, which is when he could have taken "early retirement" but in fact wasn't planning on doing that. We live in Worcester, MA and I work in Boston. Between the two of us we make (oops - were making) a good income that allowed us to pay rather large mortgage payments on a house - the value of which was tremendously inflated - as well as travel, buy pretty much whatever we wanted, and live - while not luxuriously, certainly comfortably enough. But it looks like the wheel spun and landed on our number - and here we are with just my income, which is $25,000 less than his (was). He'll get a check for his "earned time" - something in the vicinity of four weeks pay, and he'll be able to roll his retirement fund over into an IRA - or collect the balance in one check, half of which will go for taxes and penalties for early withdrawal, which obviously makes no sense since he could access it
without any penalties in eight months from now.
So, yeah. I've lost three pounds, but only because I've simply been too stressed out to eat. Simple stress - like a hangnail or something
- tends to
increase my appetite. It takes some very serious stress for me to LOSE my appetite, but lose it, I have.
Oh, we will most definitely be pursuing an age-discrimination complaint, but that's likely to take forever, and our dilemma is what to do right now. It looks like our best bet is to get rid of this house - my daughter owns a duplex which is empty on one side (she hasn't rented it our for over a year because she hasn't been happy with the potential tenants) and it's a very nice house - very nice apartment - and we could easily move in there and pay her a nominal rent payment until all of this is resolved. We've actually talked to a couple in their mid-thirties - friends of one of my DD's - who would love to take on this house and can most likely get a mortgage without any problem. We won't
make any money, but we could walk away not owing any. So we may be moving very soon - like by the first of the year.
I was shocked at first - I think both of us were in some kind of stress-induced state of disbelief - but this isn't something you can sit on for too long adjusting to. It becomes a question of throwing good money after bad, so to speak. We don't want to keep paying $2000+ a month on a house that we'll ultimately sell to break even.
In the meantime, DH is certainly looking at other job possibilities, but let's face it - he doesn't have a lot of employable years ahead of him. And, he's not going to get paid at the rate he was making (another probable reason for his being let go was that they could get two+ younger workers for what they were paying him).
But, of course we're far from alone in this dilemma, after all. We'll manage. Everybody has to figure out some way to manage, after all. Life goes on.
So, I'm three pounds lighter - not going to change my ticker until it stays off for a week or so: who knows? I might overdose on hot fudge sundaes this afternoon and gain it all back.
I do need to check in here more often - I see that our
Marylynn is running marathons now, and everybody's getting ready for the holidays.
My son will be flying in on the 20th, and I sure am looking forward to having him home for a little bit.
LindaD, it's good seeing you back, too! Sorry you're not feeling so well.
You too,
Meowee-Linda. Hope you're both better soon, and I hope yours doesn't turn into anything nasty,
Karen.
It was bitterly cold here yesterday,
Lynn. If it was anything comparable where you are, kudos for doing the thirty minutes walking! I wouldn't have wanted to be out there for much more time than it took me to get my groceries loaded into the trunk of my car. The wind was SO strong that I could barely keep hold of the grocery cart getting from the store to my car. And frigid. Ugh. I hate the thoughts of another winter.
Hi
Freda! I'm glad you're still with us! As for the hair business, I've always frosted mine pretty heavily, and now I'm getting enough whitish-gray (I don't know exactly what color they are, but they're light) hairs in the new growth so that it's blending pretty well with the frost, which has grown out maybe three inches. If it keeps up, I maybe won't have to put another frost on - just let it keep growing out streaked the way it seems to be doing. I don't think I'll ever go all silver, although I'd love it, but my mother stayed "streaked" until she died in her eighties.
Well, that's about it for now. Take care,
Golden Girlies, wherever you are, and see you later!
E!
Congratulations!! 
Here is a 
right back at you! I too used to color my hair but I got tired of it about 4 years ago and just stopped. And Like you I hope to have a nice platinum silver color one of these days but for now it is that old "dirty dishwater brown with gray streaks" Still trying to hold out a little longer before I "help" it along to the platinum silver!! 
