way back when .... in the time machine.. and i was a newbie .... when i had thoughts like this.. i would take a moment to wonder if i was trying to kill my plant with 'too much love'.. rather than letting nature take its course ... if the answer seemed to be yes .. as gal suggests.. then let nature take care of it ... with recent transplants.. in z5 .... just insure they are moist deep within the root zone.. but insure they drain.. before the soil freezes .... mulch properly ... and see what ma nature throws at us this year ... [with cool days and cold nights ... usually no additional water is needed.. but do check at depth] ken

I met with the coordinator today and had a tour of the facility. It's lovely. It's warm and cozy and has a real home-like feel about it. There are approximately 40 residents, and I met quite a few of them. One of the ladies asked the coordinator, "Where'd you find this pretty girl?" and that was so cute, as it's been ages since anyone's called me pretty or a girl! ;-) From the minute I walked in the door, folks were friendly. As I sat in the lobby and waited for the coordinator to meet me, a couple of ladies (residents) were sitting out there and they immediately started chatting with me. Just so very friendly, and obviously eager for someone NEW to talk to. There are numerous activities throughout each day, and I may be able to pop in some evenings but mostly my involvement will be on the weekends. Playing games with the residents, reading stories to them, or just taking them out into the beautiful garden courtyard on nice days so that they can get some fresh air. And talking. I'm sure there will be PLENTY of talking. The facility has a photo wall where they post pictures of residents fulfilling their "bucket list." Several of the ladies had always wanted to go to the theater, so there are photos of them dressed up at a production. One gentleman wanted to go fishing, and there's a photo of him kissing the fish he'd caught. One sweet little lady wanted to ride a motorcycle, but was too scared to get on the back of one, so they found one with a sidecar and she rode in that. As you can imagine, her photo was just beyond precious. This is a Level B facility, which was explained to me to be a facility in which the residents require SOME assistance but are generally mobile and able to feed themselves. One of the women who lives there has a little dog, and two of the men have cats. One is actually a kitten, and the receptionist told me how lonely he had been until he got this little cat, which now sleeps on his shoulders. I'm so looking forward to going back and getting involved. I felt I did pretty well today in stepping outside my own comfort zone and engaging with the residents, trying not to be self-conscious or shy. I'm pretty sure I even detected a streak of mischief in some of the women. This may be interesting! Certainly it will be a blessing to me, to be able to share some time with my new neighbors across the street.

Your costs are almost opposite here. With some differences. Independent living which depends on if you have a down payment or on a month to month with no down payment can range from $800, no meals, to $2,500, with two meals. No one seems to have three meals. Assisted living base cost is about $5,000 plus attendant care which can run from $800 up to about $4,000. Once a person needs the $4,000 range many Assisted living places will no longer care for them. Nursing homes seem to use the Medicare/Medicaid unwritten guidelines, means I have not found it in writing, of mid $5,000. Niece wanted us to move to Minneapolis and the range for assisted living there was between $8,000 to $11,000. If like my husband you need two attendants to care for family member or they are over 250 pounds you must use a nursing home as assisted living places will not accept. I was initially looking at assisted living places for him. He has some form of dementia then developed a UTI. Unexplained consequence he could not stand or walk for months afterward. Should have no connection but it happened. Since he was 318 at that time the hospital doctors would only release him to a nursing home. He is down to 246 in the nine months he has been there. After that explanation his nursing home costs $5,548.61 a month with extra charge for medicine. This is in the mid range of nursing home costs in this area. A suggestion for anyone looking for a nursing home is to look at ones that accept Medicaid patients. They are inspected at least once a year and are generally better at record keeping and seemed cleaner when I was looking. We are lucky??? that we will not have to worry about Medicaid for at least ten years or so.

We had a whole house fire about 6 years ago and had to redo everything down to the studs. We were like you in that our kitchen wasn't brand new, but too new for us to have considered redoing without the fire. Doing an unexpected reno is super stressful (as you know), but one tradesperson told us, you have the chance to redo things to be exactly what you want, make sure you do. We tried to take that advice. I was pretty happy with my kitchen, but now I adore it. We ended up finding a designer who specialized in space planning and she gave us several options and was also happy to consider the ideas I got from the friends here. She was the one that came in and did the precise measurements to see what would actually fit and what wouldn't. I was going to suggest finding someone other than your contractor to do the design, but it sounds like he is part of a bigger operation and there is someone who will do good drawings/measurements for you? Our designer was very experienced and one thing she was able to do for us was predict our family's future needs. Our daughter's were 11 and 15 at the time and I was thinking of what our needs were before the fire, she nudged us to see that soon they would both have near adult needs and then be gone. She helped us design for that and, so far, we can see that she was bang on. Good luck making your decision. It sounds like either scenario you are considering could work, but I would wait for good plans/drawings before letting them go ahead and do anything.