Bad News/Good News

Tuesday I went to my friends’ acreage right after work. Her dog went missing last Tuesday afternoon and on Friday they found his body in a trap about a mile from their property. Friday morning another one of their dogs came limping back to the house, lip completely mangled, blood all over her face, eyes blood shot. My friend took that dog to the vet right away and her husband went into the bush with his gun (thinking it was coyotes). After about 10 minutes walking thru he found the other dogs’ body in a noose like trap. They didn’t know anyone was trapping near-by. The Conservation Officers for the area are involved – as they know who’s traps they were and its not his first time doing it illegally/without care. Her other dog somehow survived the trap that caught her but she is still recovering – what a fighter. So after work on Tuesday I picked up a flower arrangement I ordered into town and went to spend the evening with her. We had dinner, talked about what happened: she’s more at peace now knowing where he is and what happened to him. They buried him near a lilac bush where he would always bed– a very fitting final resting place. I left there after a few hours of visiting, drove back to town and gave Mocha a big hug when I got home.

On Wednesday I got a Christmas card from my grandparents with a $160 cheque. I deposited right away, then G & I agreed to move it over to our vacation account to help fund our trip back home to Ontario next year. Instead of $160 I moved over $200 just to squeeze our budget a bit. The account is sitting at just a little over $800.

Today, the good mail continued but this time it was our Energy bill (surprise, surprise). We are on an equalized payment plan with both our Power and Energy bills. Our Energy bill for the last year was $160/month. But they reassessed for 2016 and our monthly bill is going down to $115/month AND we have enough credit that we won’t have to pay our bill again until April – score! Now, we are used to the $160 in our budget and I don’t intend to start spending it on crap, so what’s the plan? From January until April I’ll snowflake $200 into the moving account (rounding up to once again squeeze the budget and I like round numbers better). That’s $600 extra dollars added to the account in the next three months. Then following months until we move I have a snowflake of $50 to help fund our moving expenses.

- M

PS: Any pet owners reading; hug your animals tight & maybe an extra treat <3

Update: Raise, Transfer, Vacation & Surgery

Things have gotten a tiny bit busy around here (nervous laughter)… and I’m really surprised how well I’m handling everything. I’m not sure where I'm going with this post so I’m just going to start, sorry in advance if things get a bit jumpy.

We had an amazing time in Vegas, more so then I thought we would! We stayed at The Signature at the MGM and felt like royalty. I was so comfortable and there was a Jacuzzi tub – which was needed after walking up and down the Strip all day. The first day we got there we rented a car from the airport and drove to Red Rock Canyon where we hiked until evening. Other things we did: helicopter tour of the Grand Canyon & hike on Eagle Point. As someone who lives in very flat Saskatchewan seeing something like the Grand Canyon really takes my breath away. I’m surprised how well I did riding the helicopter but I think I was so distracted by the view to get nervous, lol. The tour we choose had us land at the bottom of the canyon for pictures and a quick picnic of snacks and champagne then flew to the top of the canyon for two hours of exploring. We could have gone on that glass walkway but we decided to spend the whole time up at Eagle Point and hike to the top – which I’m definitely glad we did. G also went on an air combat school flight, which was expensive but he really enjoyed it. I also shopped, a lot. I had been saving all my personal spending money, birthday money, etc for this trip and haven’t bought any clothes since back in the Spring. All the money I had saved up was converted to USD so it really forced me to make sure what I was buying was something I really loved and fit good. When I came home and started putting everything away in my closet I told myself it was going to be one-in-one-out, it actually ended up being more like one-in-two-out. The pile of donations keeps growing. Back to Vegas talk – we did gamble. We had a specific amount set aside that was our gamble money – and the rule was: once it was gone we don't gamble anymore. Turns out luck was on our side and with a nice 0, 00 split bet on Roulette we ended up leaving Vegas having doubled our money! Definitely glad we set limits though, we would watch some of the higher betting tables and I died a little inside… But what brought back to life by the food. More specifically the avocadoes, they were so fresh! By the time they make it to our grocery store up here (if they can even get them in) they really just cannot compare. We went to some fancier restaurants, some cheap ones, sometimes even cooking at the hotel (there was a kitchen in the hotel room), and we went to one buffet. The food and helicopter tour were definitely my favorites. We also did a couple of shows: one Cirque du Soleil, Penn and Teller (we got to meet them after the show too! So cool) and then had tickets to see the Red Bull Air Races (can you tell my husband likes planes? lol). Then the last day we rented a car again and drove out to the Houver Dam – what an amazing thing to see in real life. We had a really really fun time and we would definitely go again.

Giant drop right below my feet

My very unfortunate sunburn...  

We were happy to get home to our dog though. The day after we got back from our vacation, I went straight back to work and G took Mocha to the vet for her surgery. Everything went extremely well, even while healing she’s had no complications. The first few nights were hard for me. I would get upset and question if we did the right thing or not but as the days went on and she was taken off her pain medication she become more and more like herself. She even went into her toy bin the other day and got a few toys out for us to play with her, she hadn’t done that in such a long time! The vet called about two weeks afterwards and said that the lab results came back on her eyes and one eye lens had completely burst, which would have been extremely painful and that the other eye the retina was becoming detached and they same thing would have happened eventually. That news made me feel a lot better about the surgery. Around Hallowe’en I called her my Franken-puppy. <3

Recovery <3

Now for the big news! Last week G got his transfer notice, we had a hunch it was coming but I didn’t expect it this soon or for things to happen so fast! I’m really glad I’ve spent the summer declutter and organizing. I think it’s definitely going to make this progress go a lot smoother. Today we signed up with the relocation company so I’ve spent a good portion of the day reading their different help guides. We will have an actual meeting with our representative soon, I told G it was really important to me that I be there, so we will have to work it around my work schedule and his. We are really pleased with the town we got transferred too, although I’ll miss this one. I’m going to write a more detailed post once we get more information – as we literarily just found out that it got finalized. I’m excited and nervous all at the same time! This will be our first transfer and I’ve heard some horror stories from some of the other force spouses. I’m just going to try to keep a level head and make sure I understand everything related to this entire process. I’m going to be the annoying girl asking a million questions, lol. I’m sure our rep is going to love me :P

Gabe got his yearly salary raise, even though he is way over that amount as it stands right now with all the overtime he works. Nice though because at the new posting there may not be as much overtime. Oh! And we finally got his LaRonge expenses paid out today. $1300ish deposited into our account. Yay! Only took since July…

Okay, expect more random posts in the future. My mind is going a mile a minute with everything going on.

- M

PS: We are still going to be in Saskatchewan - so I won't have to change my blog name, haha

A Raise, Overtime and a Healthy Pet!

This has been an excellent week for us.

Tuesday, I left for the city with a co-worker for a work training session. It was a two-day course in Regina; meals, hotel, etc were completely paid for so a night in the city cost me absolutely nothing. It was an extremely helpful course and I came back with a ton of knowledge that will help me. Not only with my current job but this course is something I can add to my resume as all Credit Unions have this same training. I was able to meet up with a friend of mine who goes to University there, so we had a nice catch up over dinner.

Also on Tuesday G left for Saskatoon to bring Mocha in for a check up. We also wanted to get her eyes looked at again as one was become inflamed and the pupil was changing colour. I’ll explain more about this later.

Wednesday I had course all day and G was supposed to have the day off but got called into work – this triggered double time automatically. 13.5hours later he was done his shift. He could have been done a lot sooner but they asked him to do a prisoner transport and at double time he said hell yes. He made a few cents under $1000 in a single day. Talk about a hustler!

Wednesday was also his pay day at there was a good chunk of overtime payout. Payroll has recently switched systems so the payouts have been coming a little bit quicker. With that said the total owed in overtime is a little over $4800. It would be extremely nice to see that before our Vegas trip but I’m not getting my hopes up, lol.

I did a bit of calculating to see where we are at for taxes and even if G was just paid his regular salary for the remainder of the year, without any payouts, he will be hitting over 100k. Last year he was just a few thousand off so it’s definitely cool to see a number like that this year. Online calculators are giving him a refund at the end of the year thanks to my RRSP, the Saskatchewan Retention program and all the tax that gets taking off during big payouts.

Speaking of income. Everyone at work had a mid(ish)-year review on Thursday and mine went extremely well. My manager said she is really glad she hired me and I’m really showing everyone that I was the best person for this job. She sees a lot of leadership quality in me, even a lot of my other coworkers (some of which have been there for 20+ years) have said to her that I’ve been teaching them new and better ways of doing things and they always feel like they can approach me if they have questions. After about 20 mins of her talking and my head about as big as the room she said that I deserved a raise. Ummmmmmmm what! This is actually embarrassing but I started to tear up. I have never just randomly gotten a raise, only at year-end reviews has that happened for me. She kept repeating that I deserve this raise and I kept thanking her over and over again. LOL She was laughing and said she’s never had anyone so grateful for a raise before. My salary is now at $37,000/yr (rounded up just a few hundred but not including any bonuses). Woohoo!

Thursday we had more really good news. All the test results came back from Mocha’s appointment in the city. She is 100% cancer free!!! Everything, except her eyes, is healthy. The eyes have completely detached retinas so there is no hope of regaining sight ever again. They suggested the best thing for her is to completely remove her eyes. I know for some this sounds a bit extreme and why I would consider this good news, you may not understand. Mocha has been completely blind since the spring, but has never let that stop her. She’s never been depressed, acted any differently and still gets into the garbage no matter where we hide it (that’s how we really knew she was going to be okay, lol). Even though she couldn’t see thru them, her eyes were still causing a lot of health issues. We were giving her drops 5 times a day trying to keep the swelling down and discomfort at bay and the vets were getting nervous about future problems they may cause. This is the best option for her to continue living a healthy life. Seriously, this dog makes me more and more proud every single day.

Okay, that was the end of our epic week. I’m enjoying this string of goodluck now because I know something is bound to happen that I won’t like so much :P

- M

Using the Emergency Fund

Rereading my last post, I can't help but to laugh: I totally jinxed myself... We had to use our emergency fund, there was no way around it.

Lets catch you up to speed here. G took Mocha for her appointment last week and the results where good and bad. Good: no masses besides the one on her leg. Bad: cancer cells were found in her liver and spleen. They had her in for surgery the next day. She has been recovering well from her surgery even though they had a remove a large amount of skin from her leg. But the fact they were able to do the surgery at all is good news as they told us they may have to remove her entire leg: which is where, given her other conditions, G and I were going to draw the line (that was a really really tough conversation for the both of us to have). We are expecting to know what stage cancer she has sometime this week, to which they will recommend the next steps for her recovery.

We spent a little under $3000 on our dog this month, I had budgeted $500. Yes, this is an extremely bitter pill to swallow but it could have been worse. First thing 'extra' to get cut from the budget was our LOC payment, we moved over the minimum amount due so that was out of the way until next month - it is sitting at $9500 at the moment. Next thing we needed to get taken care of was about $1000 worth of expenses from G's trip up to La Ronge. He was in charge of paying for his hotel, which we were not expecting until he got there. Yes this will be 100% reimbursed but it was still not budgeted for and was sitting on a credit card. We paid this off, being able to cash flow this expense from our account (which was our plan since learning about this curve ball). Last but not least was the vet bills. This is were money was starting to wear real thin in our account and I knew no matter how I looked at it or calculated there was no getting around taking from our emergency fund. So we moved over $2000 from our $5000 EF. That on top of the $500 I already had budgeted and cash flowing the few hundred we had left, we were able to pay off the vet bills in full. Our chequeing account is sitting just a little below $700, so we still have a little bit of a buffer as the month is not over yet.

I will say during this really difficult time, I am so glad we didn't have to worry about money or the cost of getting her healthy. We just sort of rolled with the punches and stayed strong. It wasn't until we had Mocha in the backseat of our car and were on our way home after the surgery that I started bawling. All the emotions I was able to keep in check over the last few days came flooding in all at once. But once I let out all that emotion I could finally listen to G saying how good Mocha is recovering and financial, we got this. The emergency fund served its purpose, and we will begin to rebuild it once again so when the next round of punches comes our way, while its kicking our ass emotional, it won't be hurting us financially.

Mocha and her cone of shame :P 

- M