Sunday Weigh-In April 28, 2019

[Barb135]

Good morning...As usual, as I'm writing this, it's not daylight yet, but the weather report says it's supposed to be a beautiful day today... well, that's if you like hot.  We're back in the upper 80's again and it looks like it will probably stay this way now for the summer - except for those rare occasions when we get rain showers that push it back to the 70's or the days that it jumps into the 90's, which will be coming soon.  I feel badly for those getting late snow/ice storms this weekend.  I hope everything is okay.

This past week has been pretty busy for me.  I mentioned last week that my neighbor and I had lengthened our walks in preparation for the March of Dimes March for Babies walk that we planned to do this weekend.  We decided that we'd take a ride to the actual trail on which the March is held and walk it ahead of time to make sure we knew what we were getting into (or rather what *I* was getting into, since my neighbor walks more than I do, generally).  We did that on Thursday and discovered that it's a beautiful trail; the walk is a 5K walk and I did it with no trouble at all, which was awesome because it showed that I'm in better shape than I thought I was.  Yay for me.  

Anyway, when we got there I'd taken my driver's license out of my wallet and put it in my pocket just in case I might need it for some reason.  I thought no more of it - I bet you can see where this is going...  :-)

We got to the site on Saturday early enough to get a decent parking spot, get registered, make sure to scope out the restrooms, etc.  Again, I thought I should have my driver's license with me "just in case" but when I went to get it from my wallet, I realized it wasn't there.  OMG...that put me into a tailspin!!  I searched all through my purse, we searched my van and no driver's license.  I called home to ask my husband to check the washer and dryer to see if I washed it when I washed the pants I'd worn that day - nope, not there.  He checked a few pairs of pants in my closet to see if it had actually stayed in the pocket through the laundering process, but no luck there either.  I'm stuck searching my brain, trying to retrace my steps on Thursday to figure out where I might have lost it; I was reasonably sure I'd had it when we got back in the van to come home.

When I got home, I searched everywhere I could think of that I'd been that day and had no luck. I went online to find out what I'd need to replace my license.  I found that I could do it online if I knew the exact number that was on it, but I couldn't find anything with it on... I finally came to the conclusion that I'd have to dig out my birth certificate, marriage license, SS card, car title, voter registration and/or other identifying items and go to DMV on Monday and go through the laborious process (again) of proving who I am in order to get my license replaced.  

Once I'd come to that conclusion, I decided to go to the mailbox and check the day's mail, which I don't normally do in the evening as our mail comes late and I typically, pick it up when my neighbor and I walk next morning. We have a long driveway and it was a nice evening, so I decided to just ride the golf cart down.  As I was riding to the mailbox, I was actually praying that I'd be able to find my driver's license before Monday.  I pulled the mail out of the box and going through it, there was an envelope with strange hand-writing and my name on it.  I'm wondering what that is, so I feel of the envelope; it feels like a credit card.  I opened the envelope and there was my driver's license with a note saying the person had found it on the trail we'd walked on Thursday.  I couldn't believe my eyes.  I'm so grateful to this person who found my license and returned it.

Anyway, that was my week!!  Weight-wise, I'm up by a pound as of this morning, but I'm pretty sure that will be different by this afternoon... We went to a birthday party yesterday afternoon and there were too many desserts.  I did eat a couple small pieces of cake and it's showing this morning.  It's also interesting to note that my weight has been higher when I first get up than it is later in the day.  Perhaps, I'll start using my Saturday evening weight instead of my Sunday morning weight for my weigh-in weight. :-)

Anyway, that's my story for this week.  I'm off for my morning walk, much more relaxed now that I don't have to worry about a trip to DMV in the morning.  How's your week been - I hope not as stressful as mine; that cortisol isn't healthy.  :-)

~~Wishing everyone a wonderful, successful week~~

[AnnieBrooke]

Oh, I was definitely working harder than my realtor. The days when the realtor finds some choices for you and drives you around to look at them are long gone. Most of their usefulness is in the process of writing an offer, then scheduling inspections and helping you stay on track with the banker, the title company, etc. (Even for showings of houses that were empty and had lockboxes, my realtor always sent his underling agent, he didn't come himself.) For all that my agent did, I should have paid a smaller fee than his agency is going to get. When it comes to selling our house, though, I am quite tempted to find a realtor that will take a reduced fee. I'm not going to be dragging them out Saturdays and evenings to get me into houses via their lockbox for a showing, or anything like that. They say they deserve the fee because they put a lot of money into advertising, but I'm unconvinced.

[AnnieBrooke]

(The reason agents don't do the searching any more is that due to sites like Zillow, the buyer usually is more up on what is available than the agent. I found every house we looked at.)

[Barb135]

It would seem you hardly need a realtor; can't you write the offer yourself?  And you're organized enough to stay on track with the bank and title company, etc.  You might have a bit of trouble finding someone to do the inspection but then it doesn't sound like the realtor was getting the very best person to do that anyway.  

I guess I'm thinking you should be paying a smaller fee or had a realtor that took more interest in selling to you.

Because there are sites like Zillow, the realtor should be working harder to stay on top of what's available so the buyer doesn't have to find their home; that's what the realtor is for.   My next door neighbor has her place up for sale and the realtor did such a crumby job, that when the contract ran out, my neighbor decided to try selling the place herself.  She's not nearly as on top of things as you are; we'll see how it goes...

[AnnieBrooke]

I don't mind using a realtor when I am a buyer, not because the realtor searches out houses for me in the multiple listings any more (those were the days) but because the stuff you have to do once you make your choice is important to get right, yet at the same time super bureaucratic and boring. And, the buyer's agent's fee is paid by the seller. (Yes, the seller has computed fees for agents into the price he or she asks for the house, but I have decided on a figure I'm willing to pay and that is the max  amount I pay whether the seller pays my real-estate agent a fee out of it or not.)

It is quite a pile of paper when one is buying a house, and my agent's company has a whole process that they bird-dog until all the steps are complete. Title company documents and bank documents alone were many, many pages. And there is the hassle of researching the HOA agreements to see if there is some big assessment coming up that the seller is trying to get out of, and ordering tests and inspections and the appraisal, and being there to let the inspectors in on a certain day and time, and remembering the timing to buy homeowners' insurance and get it activated, and who knows what else is going to hit us. It's great to get news that some hoop has been handled, like, the banker and the agent sent each other important documents, and I didn't have to know a dang thing about it. (For example, the real-estate agent sent the banker a copy of our offer and earnest-money agreement. I didn't want to have to bother with this, and wouldn't have thought of it without a lot of effort anyway.) I find the value is there, if only for getting me out of the middle of bureaucracy that I would not do as well as the people who are used to doing it every day. That's as a buyer.

The agent for the guy who is selling the house to us is hardly involved, now. All she is doing is telling the seller when we are going to need access to the house. If I were a seller, I might look twice at the possibility of negotiating my agent's fee down a percent, to reflect how easy it is nowadays to advertise a house compared to the way it used to be. (For this, agents have the Zillows of the world to thank.) And if I were to find my own buyer (say my aunt wants to buy my house) I would never use a seller's agent. I would go to a real-estate lawyer with my aunt and we would draw up the papers and do it that way. Even if my aunt had an agent who expected fees, I would only pay her agent's usual percent, but would have saved the percent that would have gone to my agent. Sellers' agents are for the brochure at the front end, the open houses, the advice (is your house really worth that much? I don't think so) and the help during the negotiation of the price. After that, not too useful unless the inspections turn up something that requires re-negotiation.

I'll let you know how we do it when we sell our little house. Our agent has a lot of splashy but classy advertising methods, which might be worth it if we were in a total rush to sell quickly. Not sure if that is worth 3% of the sales price.

[AnnieBrooke]

I think the reason we regularly copy our wallet contents is that the contents change. Sometimes I take out cards so the wallet isn't so fat and sometimes I carry other things. Xeroxing the contents is meant to save me having to call everyone in my file drawer to cancel their card if I lose my wallet, since I might not have even had the card in the wallet.

I did weigh myself this morning, now that we are back from the farm. Even though I forgot to do it until after I had a cup of tea, a cup of coffee, three dolmathes and a croissant, I'm down from last week, about .8 of a pound if I allow 16 ounces for the food. Guess I could get scientific and figure out how much each item of food weighed by filling the same coffee cup with water (it was a Starbucks venti) and weighing it, and the tea mug the same, and guessing at the weight of the food, but it's close enough. We'll see how it goes this next week.

Had a near-argument with my real-estate agent, since I kept telling him we want a mold test on the prospective house and he kept ignoring the request. I finally said the magic words, which were "We'll pay for it even if it is a separate test," and he got it. I think he was so busy trying to tell me that a general inspection does not test for mold that he wasn't listening to me make that point, which I did make originally. The house we propose to buy was built by DR Horton, which has a reputation for not flashing windows properly and not putting a vapor barrier behind the siding. (Or, at least, if you look up consumer complaints, the DR Horton list is very long. That might just be a self-selected sample, like we see on this site -- people who don't have a problem don't write in. But it made me want a mold test even so.) I think we are probably back on track, but am still annoyed that the agent and his assistant agent didn't seem to listen; I'm spending big on the house and it doesn't seem too inquisitive to wonder if it is going to cost future major money to remediate problems we could have caught at the outset.

[Barb135]

I don't often change the items in my wallet, unless the credit card company sends new cards or I get new insurance cards or something like that so I don't have to copy everything very often.   I do have insurance cards, etc copied since paperwork received from them doesn't have the full number on it.

I don't think it would do much good to start weighing identical food/drink after you've eaten because as soon as you eat it, digestion begins and that process changes everything anyway.  You've probably hit it close enough with 0.8 lbs... I don't think we have to get "too" precise.   :-)

I mentioned that I'd probably be down later in the day yesterday since I, typically, am... I was right.  About an hour after I'd posted this thread, I was down to the same weight as I was last week.  This morning, I was down a whole pound from yesterday.  I expect to be down even further tomorrow because today I had to make a 3-hr drive to attend a court hearing with my daughter in regards to her divorce proceedings and because I left at 6:00 this morning, I didn't eat before I hit the road nor did I bother to stop on the way home.  I've just eaten a piece of leftover chicken and am working on a piece of watermelon.  That's not much for a day's food, but it's been pretty stressful and I'm full...

I definitely agree with you about the mold testing.  Because mold can cause major health issues, if there's any reason to believe there could be mold in the house you're thinking of buying, I'd certainly want to have that checked out, as well, especially, if the builder has a history of not using vapor barrier, etc.  Is this house only listed by one realtor?  Some houses are listed by multiple realtors (multiple listing service)... if it is listed by more than one realtor, perhaps it might be to your benefit to find another who might work better in your behalf or do you have to stay with this one since you've made an offer?  Just wondering if there are better options for you; it seems like you're working harder than the realtor.

[AnnieBrooke]

That was terribly kind of the person who found it. I hope you wrote him or her a nice note!

OK, now, given that you are the kind of person who takes her driver's license out of her wallet by itself "just in case", here is your instruction. Take it over to your printer right now, and copy both sides, and put the copy in your files. My husband being a loser of wallets, we both regularly lay out every card that's in our wallets on our printer screen and copy them, both sides, so we will know what credit-card companies to call to cancel the cards if we lose the wallet. I've had to phone credit-card companies on my husband's behalf once (though he found the wallet before we had to go through the hassle of replacing his driver's license) and it was very handy to have the copy in my hand -- they even have 800 numbers printed on the credit cards. Don't know if would have "if this card is lost" numbers on them, since obviously when you would be calling them you usually don't have the card! but I do remember being pleased that at least a contact number was right there on the copy in my hand. Made things easy!

We're at the farm this weekend, enjoying incredibly gorgeous classic spring weather. I will have to do my weigh-in tomorrow. (Somehow it hasn't dawned on me yet to get another digital scale and take it to the farm, all I've done is give up on its old, cracked dusty scale there. Maybe I like the farm being a vacation.) I think I'm either level or down. Not wildly, but some.

We put an offer in on a house, and are now at the stage where you inspect, and walk or stay in. Our realtor hired the Disinterested Puny Inspections Company, who charges not very much and looks at very little, and writes on their form that if they make a mistake and miss something, all they will do is give you your tiny fee back. Why doesn't the realtor get that we want the Big Mean Inspections Company where you pay a lotta money and find every dang thing that is wrong with the house? I don't think the realtor cares if we have future problems or not, he just wants his fee when the sale goes through. I wrote him this morning and said I thought the scope of the proposed inspection was inadequate and asked if he couldn't hire someone better. Ball is in his court, since he wants to list the house we are going to sell. (I think it's probably not going to be him in the end, he is just not working very hard on our behalf.)

Weather like this makes me think of getting a Golden Retriever puppy. We have had four Goldens over the years, and moved to a Chihuahua/Pomeranian mix when the last of the Goldens died and our son was little, because he didn't like the way the big dogs were eye to eye with him and would lick the snot off his nose. But now my son is almost as tall as me, and the Pom-Chi is not that exciting, and we miss our big Golden girls a lot. The new house has a durable, mature back yard (the little house where we have been living in the school years since 2012 has a tiny mudpit back yard), so it might be do-able to get a big dog again. I think I should be more realistic about our ages and the length of life a Golden has -- our kiddo will be going away to college in 5 years and we'll be getting elderly, eh eh eh. But on a morning like this, anything is possible. :)

Have a great week!

[Barb135]

Oh - the person who sent my DL back, did put their return address on the envelope, so I went straight to Walmart yesterday and got a nice thank you card and a gift card; it's lying here on the table all ready to go back in the mail.  I thought the least I could do is reward them for taking the time to return my license instead of chucking it into the trash or using it for nefarious purposes and it would have cost me $$ to replace it anyway, not to mention the hassle of dragging out the documentation necessary to prove my identity, going to DMV, waiting in line, blah, blah, blah... Now that I think about it, the gift card may not be large enough.  lol

And yes, I did put my license on the printer and make a copy of it though I only copied the front side that has the number, etc, not both sides; perhaps I should go ahead and copy the other side, as well.  And now that you mention it, it's probably worth the time/effort to copy all the cards in my wallet, even though I can go online or in my file and get the numbers off the statements.  I do carry the numbers for credit reporting agencies in my wallet, though I'm told that calling the credit card companies is sufficient to begin with.  

I also offered to make a copy of my husband's DL, but he declined, so if he loses his, he's out of luck unless he wrote it down without telling me.  Of course, replacing his is simply a matter of providing his SS card and birth certificate and a couple of items to prove residency... I just don't know if he knows where his SS card is anymore!!  I should look into that.

I'm glad to hear that you've found a house that all of you like and you've actually put an offer on it.  I agree with you about the inspection.  One really does want to find every little defect prior to moving in.  It sounds like the realtor is working harder for the seller, which in his mind may mean he'd work harder for you when you're the seller, although, from my perspective, it doesn't work that way.  If he doesn't work hard for you now, you have no reason to think he will hard for you later.  At any rate, I hope this house pans out for you.  With school almost out for the summer, you'd have the entire summer to get things packed up and make the move if the closing comes soon enough.  Sounds like the perfect scenario...

As for puppies, I guess, that's a personal choice.  It's understandable that your son would have been intimidated by larger dogs when he was very little.  It's true that Golden's have a long life-span, but then you and husband aren't "that" old... If you got a puppy now, by the time you hit your elder years the dog would be losing steam as well and wouldn't require as much energy (maybe...lol), but then dogs tend to keep us younger and more active since they need exercise.  There used to be a sign between my house and work put up by the local animal shelter that said: "If your dog is overweight, you don't get enough exercise." A golden might be a nice dog to grow old with.  Anyway, you're right - a nice sunny day after a long winter brings out the yearnings and anything is possible.  :-)