I have had various run-ins with vermin over the years. I stayed with my sister in roach-infested apartment for a while. Years later, I had a mouse visit me in a studio apartment that I lived in. (I shrieked and jumped on a chair, just like in the cartoons. Did cartoons influence me? Or do cartoons mimic life?) Mr H works in a downtown area, has had to deal with vermin as part of his job, and as a result I have learned quite a bit about various kinds of vermin. Previously it's been roaches and rats, primarily. Now Mr H is dealing with bedbugs.

Yes, bedbugs.

Mr H has had to learn about them, and as a result I have learned quite a bit about them over the dinner table in the last few months. You can google them; it might gross you out though. Did you know that cochroaches are one of their natural predators? (This led to a rather amusing discussion about using cochroaches on leashes to take care of bedbug problems.) Mr H has requested that any used clothing items I bring home go into the dryer on high for about 20 minutes to kill any possible bedbug eggs. I'm happy to do this. Now that I know way more than I want to about this topic - I sure don't want to take chances with them getting in my house!

Mr H picked up change the other day. He was cleaning up an area for work. He picked up 115 pennies, 3 dimes and 1 nickel. Wow! I was impressed.

I'm putting my mileage for March on a page. With only 5 days in to the month - it looks like if I get in the car I drive at least 20 miles.

The other day I went for a walk after church while Daisy was at Sunday school. As I approached the tattoo parlor what did I spot but two pennies on the ground. Do people lose their change when they go in to get tattoos? I'm sure the college student walking by the other way thought I was nuts but I picked them up and put them in my pocket.

March 1 mileage: 0. We didn't leave the house.

He did it.

The other night Mr H approached me with his old paycheck stub and his new paycheck stub and asked me if I wanted to talk about what to do with his salary increase now or on Monday (the first). Not being one to want to let grass grow under my feet with this one, I said "Now".

Mr H asked me how much I wanted to put towards a new-to-us car. I said that it depended on where else we wanted to put the increase. If we had five items to put it to I would suggest a different amount than if we had 3 items to put it to. After discussion it became clear that we had two items to put it to - retirement savings and new-to-us car. I suggested a dollar figure, he agreed and that was that. 31% of the increase will go towards the car, the rest will go towards retirement.

Mr H will deposit these funds into a somewhat unused savings account and keep a ledger of how much is going to each item. He volunteered to do that. Eventually I'm anticipating that the retirement funds will be automatically invested somewhere. We discussed IRAs. I suggested that we open one in Mr H's name. I do have an IRA - the funds in it came from my old employer. Mr H has no retirement savings anywhere.

I'm still kind of in shock. It looks like Mr H is engaging more, involving himself more in our mutual life. Are things really changing? We've been married quite a while, and his involvement has been extremely limited for most of that time. I'm open, but naturally pretty skeptical. When I first started trying to bring up my car and its lifespan, at least seven years ago, Mr H said that when my car died we'd just buy a new car and take out a loan to pay for it. At the time I said, Mr H - if we can't afford to put money into savings for a new car, how would we afford a car payment? He had no answer. He's come a LONG way since then. . . most of the distance traversed in the last three to six months I think.