Money, Money

I feel like I've got a hole in my change purse at the moment. I told you about the plumber having to come twice recently and the bills adding up to almost $500. Now they need to come again because I finally called the gas company about the gas I was smelling outside. They said there was a leak on the meter--on our side, of course. They're coming Monday.

While my brother Kevin was here, he cleaned out part of the gutter that was clogged and said that part of the wood had rotted and needed to be replaced. He looked at the roof, too, and said the roofer could fix the gutter problem. He also said there was some thing I need to jiggle around about four times a year so the gutter wouldn't get clogged up. Yeah, right! I have no idea what he's talking about and don't have a ladder to do it. Argh! So I finally called a roofer. He sounded like he thought I should call the insurance company and see if they'd pay for the roof. The insurance guy was a lot of help. He took pictures with a digital camera and explained what was going on to me and how it could be fixed. He wrote out a check for about $1200 and gave me a few names of contractors to call. I decided I didn't want to go with the original roofer because he'd told me the whole roof needed to be replaced as well as the electric vent, which he said needed to be cleaned every year or it could catch fire. The insurance guy said the whole roof didn't need to be replaced but only patched and that he had the same vent system on his house and had never heard of them needing to be cleaned or catching fire. Hmph! The roofer called back today and tried his best to make me feel bad for not getting him to do the job. Almost worked! Also, the insurance guy said that the hail season wasn't over so it wasn't a good idea to get a new roof right now. He promised that if we ever did really get bad hail damage that he'd pay for a whole new roof. I felt like I could trust him. Now I just need to call one of those contractors and get the job done.

Yesterday the cat threw up twice and was hissing at me and meowing around. She'd been draggin her butt around the carpet and leaving marks for a few days, so I called the vet and they got us in. When the vet stuck a thermometer up the cat's butt, she bit me--yikes! He said she had infected anal glands and gave her two shots after expressing the glands. $70--yikes again. And then I forget how much for half a year of heart worm pills for Rudi. Oiveh!

I'm going to Lexington tomorrow for my annual ovarian cancer test. Bonnie is on vacation, so she's able to stay with Mary all day, only coming once this week. I'm going to meet some friends and my niece, too, so that ought to be nice. I hope we have something to talk about! I've always taken Mary with me, so it ought to be much easier without her. Still, it seems kind of lonely to go alone.