Wakeup calls

A crop-dusting plane passed over our house repeatedly yesterday.

Thank goodness the Culligan man is coming today to fix our water softener; as soon as I got the call yesterday I started loading up the dishwasher so it would be ready.  No more hard-water coffee for me, either.


Now that I'm starting to watch where our money goes, I've made a big discovery:  Most of our main bills... cell phone, house phone bundled with Internet and Dish, electricity, the propane level-pay, car insurance, gasoline credit card... fall in the first ten days of the month.  Not usually a problem unless it's that every-third-month when we make our quarterly house payment.  Like this month.
And it wouldn't really have been a problem this month except that I am putting money into envelopes that would normally be available to pay bills.  I could have skipped the envelopes and started up again later, but I didn't.  I'm anxious to get this thing to the point where it works; and work it will, once we're a month ahead.  So I used money I have tucked away here and there in savings accounts and proceeded.
Here's the thing:  Because Cliff makes good money and we don't have a lot of bills, I've been living it up through the rest of the month when all those pesky bills have been paid.  Need a birdhouse or a new printer?  Need to take a little vacation?  How about a new laptop?  Do it the last half of the month, we're good.
Then comes the crunch again as a new month rolls around.
This works fine at present; it won't float, once Cliff retires.
Can you believe I'm sixty-six years old and just figuring all this out?
On the plus side, we learned a long time ago about credit card debt, so that lesson is behind me.  

Did you know cows play hide-and-seek?