1-800-GOT-JUNK

I have been slowly cleaning out my basement to allow my brother to move in with us. There was a lot of stuff down there that we never use. Most of it I tossed into the trash cans that the county collects twice a week. There were some large items I hauled out to the curb. I called the bulky trash pickup for them.

Then there was the exercise equipment in the basement. Momoko wanted the stationary bike. It will be moved into our library. However the Christmas tree is in the way for now. So I hauled the bike out to the shed. Little Kat wants to keep his weights. I got rid of the weight bench he does not use. But I had to haul his weights out to the shed for storage too.

That left the treadmill and elliptical machine. Both were big and very heavy. I thought I might be able to move them with a couple guys. However why bother? I researched some junk haulers in the area. Called a local guy that came highly recommended. But he did not pick up his phone. Thus I decided to go with the big company. They just use local franchises. Still I heard about 1-800-GOT-JUNK.

I scheduled 1-800-GOT-JUNK online. They arrived a few hours later. They estimated it would cost $300 to remove the exercise equipment. And for another $250, they would take all this other trash. The two guys who came struggled getting the treadmill out of the basement. They called the home company for more help to get out the elliptical. They ended up disassembling the thing and carrying it out piecemeal.

Now my handymen need to finish adding a bathtub in the basement. They are also erecting a well to give my brother a large room that is private. Today I am going with my brother to the carpet store to re-carpet the whole basement.

Probate Court

I decided it was time to take action to probate my parents' wills. My dad had delayed in getting my mom's will processed. Now we had more work. No need to delay because we were already running into complications with the auto insurance on my dad's vehicles.

I printed out all the forms from the court web site. Spent the day filling them out. Needed info from my brother. We planned to go visit the court the first thing Monday morning. I got to my brother's house and made sure we had everything from the list of items to bring.

One item was mom and dad's will. The originals were in my brother's house. My mom's will was missing. The thing had been in my dad's lock safe for 25 years. Now it turns up missing? We ransacked the house and finally found the will. Then I decided we should take my mom's Chevy Monte Carlo to court. The thing needs to be driven occasionally.

Finding the court was no problem. My GPS got us there to the front steps. Parking was another story. There were some metered spaces on the street. They were all occupied. I tried to follow the signs to parking. All the lots required permits. Eventually I thought we were headed towards satellite parking. Instead I found none, and a copy tailed me as I slowly drove along.

Finally I drove down the street and parked in the CVS parking lot. Broke out the phone and started to Google where to park. The 4G LTE access in the parking lot was terrible. Took a long time to find the name and address of the satellite parking. I punched the address into my GPS, and we got going.

Unfortunately the GPS took us right by the parking lot, but put us on the highway. We drove around in a huge circle until we were able to get back to the parking. Initially I decided we would walk to the court house. But it was taking long so we hopped on the bus. The bus did not stop at the courthouse. It came really close though.

I found out we need to obtain nominal bonds for both my parents' estates. That would have to wait for another day. We spent so much time searching for mom's will and looking for parking that I was late for work. To be continued.

Curse of Beowulf

Last week, Momoko and I discovered that Little Kat was not checking his English web site. That's where all the homework is posted. Of course Little Kat is clueless about assignments that are due. He was not even looking at the place where the assignments are doled out.

We found out that Little Kat was behind in reading The Wife of Bath's Tale. This was written by Chaucer, and is one of his Canterbury Tales. We spent the majority of last weekend making sure Little Kat read and understood this story. This was not without great pain as Momoko and I had to pick up the slack around the house that normally would have been done by Little Kat.

I figured after this debacle, we might start getting English under control. Silly me. Little Kat had a substitute teacher this week in English. Instead of reading the next assignment of Beowulf, he read comics online in class. He also did a bit of sleeping in class. Now we were behind schedule again this weekend.

Little Kat ended up having to find a copy of Beowulf, read it, and understand it. This required more work on Momoko and my part, as Little Kat could not attend to his regular household duties. It was even more difficult because Little Kat had trouble finding a copy of Beowulf that he could understand. He even struggled with the copy he ended up using.

The level of fail in here is getting way too high. Getting tired of all this worked created because Little Kat is slacking off. I am proposing some punishments that get Little Kat's attention. Momoko is advising some other courses of action. But I believe she will come around as she is starting to put in more and more effort to make up for Little Kat's shortcomings.

Getting Paid

Little Kat has been working his job for work study. Been a month or two. He is getting regular paychecks now. I figured it was time for him to start contributing to our household bills. Determined  a reasonable percentage of his pay to fork over.

As always, I wrote up a small agreement between Little Kat and I. He would pay me at the end of each month. He could give me cash or a check. It started at the end of November.

This will help a small amount. Little Kat requires a car, auto insurance, gas money, etc. His contribution won't even cover the cost of gas he uses up each month. However every bit counts.

Little Kat already has a rate above minimum wage. Let's hope he also gets a pay raise if he sticks with his company.