: Suddenly Single

When do you need to buy more?

Hello everyone:

When Do You Need to Buy More?

When the bottle of ketchup or the container of strawberries gets low, you probably know it. Would you rather run completely out of something, need it desperately, and then have to make an emergency run to the store to buy it? Nope, I didn’t think so.

When you see that the bottle that you have is less than half full, start looking for specials for that product. If something is on sale, don’t buy ten bottles if you live alone, but do stock up.

[Note: Things rot and products have expiration dates. Be sure to check the dates on the side of the container. If you think you won’t use it up by then, only buy one, not fifteen. Even if it is a really good deal, if you aren’t going to use it before it expires, then it really is not wise to buy too many of whatever it is.]

What is your favorite story of when you bought too many and the expiration date arrived too soon?

Best,

Dr. Sheri

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Garage door dilemmas

Hello everyone:

Garage doors are an awesome thing, especially if you have an electric garage door opener. Pulling them up and down under your own power can be a wet activity if it is raining and a snowy activity if it is snowing, so it’s just plain nice to have an electric one do the job for you.

If you lose the power to your house, you will find it difficult to get your car out of the garage, so you will have to pull the emergency cord that hangs down from the opener in order to release the lock it has on the door. If you pull this rope, it will disengage from the opener. This will allow you to manually open the door and get your car out. Once you are outside, pull the garage door down by hand and turn the handle so that the door locks.

Your garage door opener will not work when you come back home after the power is on. You will have to go into the house, come through the garage, get on a ladder, and reattach the opener.  Release the door lock on the door so that your garage door opener can function properly.

[Note: If you do not do this correctly, you could really mess up the garage door, which would collapse under the strain of being opened when it is locked. You do not want that to happen, so make sure that everything is hooked back up correctly and that the door is unlocked.]

If you have done it right, you will then be able to push the garage door opener button and pull your car back inside. If you have not done it properly, you will destroy your garage door.

Best,

Dr. Sheri

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Duct Tape is Delightful

Hello everyone:

Vesta Stoudt from Johnson & Johnson invented duct tape; she deserves our life-long praise. This marvelous tool can be used to secure screens on windows (perhaps not the best of uses but it kept bugs out of my condo when I was a single gal with no clue how to tighten the screw things that held my screens in place).

It is used to stick things together and it works very well. It is available in a variety of colors in your local craft and hobby store; however, I have found that it will not hold a heavy air vent air re-director in place over time. [While visiting my condo in Florida, I was freezing because the air conditioning was blowing right on my desk. I bought an air vent re-director thingy and tried to attach it to the vent. My purchase had magnets on it, but the vent was made of plastic, so they wouldn’t stick to one another. I bought some of my beloved duct tape (in white, so it would match the vent) and used some of the tape to attach the vent cover to the vent. It did not last long; I should have used screws.]

Duct tape can also be used to keep water from your shower from getting into that circular thingy that seems to serve no purpose in your shower. You know the thingy- it is under the faucet, taking up space for no apparent reason. You have to keep the thing clean and shiny or you look like a slob- you know what I am talking about, right? Well, if you have a water leakage problem, I have seen duct tape used to block water from getting underneath it and spoiling the ceiling in the room underneath your bathroom. This should not be a long-term fix, but it can help out in the short term.

What creative uses do you have for duct tape?

Best,

Dr. Sheri

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Trashy Thoughts

Hello everyone:

Do you know what day the trash is collected in your area? How about knowing when the recycle folks show up? What time do you need to have the trashcans out at the curb? Where should you place them? How much time do you have to bring them back to the house? (This could be an issue with your homeowners’ association.) Are there any special restrictions on what you can place at the curb?

If you haven’t been paying attention to these details, talk to your neighbors or observe what they are doing. Your local county is also a good source of information on trash. Visit their website or give them a call to find out what is or is not acceptable.

Garbage cans can be extremely heavy when they are full, so either do not fill them completely, use more than one garbage can so that the weight is more evenly distributed, or get a dolly to roll the can to the curb.

I do not recommend putting the garbage can in the back of your car; even if you could lift it (this sounds like a hernia operation waiting to happen); if the trash spills out you could end up with a very smelly trunk.

Make every effort to get rid of your trash on a weekly basis. The longer it hangs around, the more likely you will attract bugs, rodents, or other small animals. Trash does not get better with time. It also does not go away on its own. (Think Alice’s Restaurant by Arlo Guthrie, here!)

You can also purchase garbage cans that have wheels. They come in very handy if you need to pull your garbage can to the curb for pickup. You may wish to put your house number on the side of the can so that you can identify it from those of your neighbors; a magic marker usually works well on providing the cans with permanent identification. Again, be sure to follow the homeowners’ association rules for when you’re your garbage can be placed at the curb and the deadline by which it must be removed.

What tips do you have for garbage removal? I would love to hear from you!

Best,

Dr. Sheri

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Moving out and moving on

Hello everyone:

An acquaintance of mine was divorced when her hubby decided to marry his long-time girlfriend. She sold their marital house and planned on moving; she had spent a few years trying to maintain their former dream home on her own.

She had two children to support, the house was very expensive to keep, and her ex had petitioned the court to reduce her alimony and child support because he and his girlfriend had one child and another on the way.  By that time, my acquaintance had begun dating a fellow from a nearby state; they saw each other every three weeks…for the weekend, if you get my drift.

When it came time for her to move into a smaller home, her boyfriend told her he would call her “after you get settled.” Translation: “You’re moving, I only want you for the sex you provide, and I’m not helping you move.”

Where could she go from there? She couldn’t afford a mover, so she and her other single gal friends did it themselves. My hubby and I lent a hand with the heavier items, out of pity for her difficult situation. She had ordered a new bed, but for some reason, had it delivered to her old house. She couldn’t lift it and now she had to move it. My hubby and some of the other men in the neighborhood helped her move it, but what if they hadn’t been around? Lesson here: get your new bed delivered to your new home, not the old one.

When we all arrived at her new home, we discovered that her upstairs bathroom toilet was leaking and had flooded the floor and the ceiling of her dining room. It was not a pleasant start to her new life.

What moving tales of woe can you share?

Best,

Dr. Sheri

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Having your own bank account

Hello everyone:

For my divorced readers, it is my earnest hope that your spouse did not control the finances of your family exclusively. You should have had your own savings and checking accounts so that you had some control over your own expenses.

Not having access to your own money is a recipe for disaster, if you have become suddenly single. When a very close friend of mine became unexpectedly unmarried, her estranged spouse allegedly cleaned out three bank accounts that they had jointly, leaving her with a grand total of $6 for the next two weeks before pay day.

By removing a check from the middle of the checkbook, she did not notice that one was missing when she picked up the checkbook to pay bills. She received a call from a friend at her bank the next afternoon; the banker told her that her estranged husband entered the bank, asked how much he had to leave in the accounts so that his withdrawing money would not trigger a special statement ($2 in each account), and took out the rest of the money.

Fortunately, she had thought ahead and had opened a personal checking account and deposited her paycheck for that week in the account, so things were not as disastrous as they could have been. She still had to cover the checks she had written before becoming aware of the situation and she thereby avoided bank charges that would have otherwise been incurred. I hope that you were not in this same situation; I hope that you had your own money, no matter how little the amount.

Best,

Dr. Sheri

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Garage doors should not be opened when locked or they break

Hello everyone:

Garage doors are an awesome thing, especially if you have an electric garage door opener. Pulling them up and down under your own power can be a wet activity if it is raining and a snowy activity if it is snowing, so it’s just plain nice to have an electric one do the job for you.

If you lose the power to your house, you will find it difficult to get your car out of the garage, so you will have to pull the emergency cord that hangs down from the opener in order to release the lock it has on the door. If you pull this rope, it will disengage from the opener. This will allow you to manually open the door and get your car out. Once you are outside, pull the garage door down by hand and turn the handle so that the door locks.

Your garage door opener will not work when you come back home after the power is on. You will have to go into the house, come through the garage, get on a ladder, and reattach the opener.  Release the door lock on the door so that your garage door opener can function properly.

[Note: If you do not do this correctly, you could really mess up the garage door, which would collapse under the strain of being opened when it is locked. You do not want that to happen, so make sure that everything is hooked back up correctly and that the door is unlocked.]

If you have done it right, you will then be able to push the garage door opener button and pull your car back inside. If you have not done it properly, you will destroy your garage door.

What tales of woe can you share about your garage door?

Best,

Dr. Sheri

Read more

When do you buy more?

Hello everyone:

How do you know When Do You Need to Buy More?

When the bottle of ketchup or the container of strawberries gets low, you probably know it. Would you rather run completely out of something, need it desperately, and then have to make an emergency run to the store to buy it?

Nope, I didn’t think so. When you see that the bottle that you have is less than half full, start looking for specials for that product. If something is on sale, don’t buy ten bottles if you live alone, but do stock up.

[Note: Things rot and products have expiration dates. Be sure to check the dates on the side of the container. If you think you won’t use it up by then, only buy one, not fifteen. Even if it is a really good deal, if you aren’t going to use it before it expires, then it really is not wise to buy too many of whatever it is.]

One exception to the above rule deals with paper towels. You can never, in my opinion, have enough of them….well, actually, you could have too many, if you can’t move in your kitchen because of the pile of unused rolls. Don’t ask……okay, I will confess. When I was a single mom, I used to buy paper towels every time I went to the store because I was always using them to wipe up spills. Apparently, my son and I weren’t as messy as I expected because, when I went to move, I found that paper towels and bottles of ketchup dominated the space in my boxes. These days, I buy them about once a month. That works much better and  doesn’t take up as much space.

Best,

Dr. Sheri

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Having a marketable skill

Hello everyone:

Women should  keep in mind the need to have a marketable skill, even if their plan is to get married and live happily ever after with their husband supporting them.

My sister-in-law had a ministry to recent widows and she tells the story of many older women who, after they get over the shock of losing their husband, suddenly realize that he had little or no life insurance and that they do not have any income.

One of the women she ministered to was so unfamiliar with the ways of the business world that she started to work for someone, only to learn later that the person was paying her poverty-level wages. She was unable to maintain even a small house on her income and had to turn to her church for help.

She is in better financial shape these days, yet she has no money for anything except the bare necessities of life. If she had not been involved with a widows’ group, who knows where she would be today, since no one would have been aware of her extreme situation.

Have you known a widow or divorcee in a situation similar to the one I have just told you about? It would be great if you could share it with us (no names, please).

Best,

Dr. Sheri

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Controlling Rodents

Hello everyone:

 

You know those weird sounds that you have been hearing, the ones that sound like scratching? Do you sometimes find strange brown turds on your countertops?  Have you ever found Christmas ornament boxes full of destroyed, formerly stringed ornaments? Have you ever reached into a cardboard box that you had in the shed and saw something move out of the corner of your eye? My dear, you have mice (or, at the very least, mouse).

Keep in mind that these critters are very fertile and letting one live with you can lead to your having a whole colony of mice. You need to get rid of them ASAP. There are various ways of doing this; we have effectively used baited traps in our garage and basement. The upside is that the traps can be baited with peanut butter; the bad news is that you have to get rid of the mouse after you catch it and it may still be alive, just stuck.

When a mouse threatened the sanity of my time working in our garage a few years back, we put out a snare, only to find that the mouse survived the entrapment. When the little critter showed up for the peanut butter feast, my hubby was out of town, so I managed to get the mouse and trap into the middle of the garage, covered it with a layer of cardboard (to protect my tires), and drove back and forth over the covered mouse until there were no more signs of life underneath. I then swept the entire contraption outside and moved the car back into the now-mouse-free space. The deceased rodent thoughtfully remained under the cardboard until my husband returned home, though it might have looked a bit odd to the neighbors.

A good friend of mine has a cat that periodically demonstrates its love by depositing half-dead mice at her feet. After she got somewhat used to this method of devotion, she said that her favorite means of removal was to pick the rodent up with a large pair of kitchen tongs and place the unfortunate animal in the toilet, for rapid flushing. She must have a really high-quality toilet, since there is no problem with the toilet accepting the mouse for disposal.

If you have a toilet that might not take such deposits, you might be better off using the tongs to toss the creature outside in order to rid your home of it. However, if the animal does not die, you could have a problem with a mad, injured mouse returning to torment your life via the courtesy of your cat, since the mouse would be considerably easier to catch in its current condition.

Do you have a rodent-catching scheme that works for you? Please do share it with us!

Best,

Dr. Sheri

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