Sounds good if she has a job.
Poor Bob. I know what it's like to have to be VERY austere. There was some constant, non stop rants about money and house repairs here at our place in the past. In regards to house repairs, I finally bought the woman a hammer and a set of screwdriver's, a staple gun, some nails and screws and said, "Here, fix these little things for yourself and PLEASE wait until the time and the money is in place for the big stuff." Gawd! It was all I could do to keep the wolf away from the door and keep my head above water given the horrendous dynamics of having to come out of the Fam, resolve working for the mammon of unrighteousness, buy and fix a beater of a house, feed 6 kids - some of them entering their teens (and you know what that kind of acting out can be like), and somehow try to cope, myself, with the NIGHTMARE of troubled emotions she, herself, was experiencing in her recoveries. (I say "recoveries" because there were pre-cog, cog and post-cog recoveries to go through) and then be ranted at on top of it? I don't think so! It finally came down to this: "Make your own peace. Find your own happiness. Find your God and forgive Him. And if you want personal spending money and a little runabout car, get a job."
Thankfully, she did those things. Now, given our circumstances and our extreme winters, house repairs wait until snowfall. By that time, after a summer of making hay while the sun shines, the money and the time IS in place, we've had a few good mental health summer fishing trips together, some fine wine and dining dates, and we're ready to slow things down and get into fixing up the house. We should be finished this year.
She's gone and beautifully landscaped our (I mean HER -- hee hee) front yard and now has pools and walking paths, fences, rocks and trellises etc., in mind for next year. She's purposely blocked off any obvious entrance for me to get in with any equipment. Her precicely ordered little yard is something that she can control, which I know is important to her right now. I grew up with all kinds of priveledges and freedoms to be, just be. She had that stolen from her and is just getting it now. I just had a huge pond dug in MY back yard (40' x 80'). I'll sow it to natural pond weeds and it'll be my 'pool of reflection'. The surrounding mud hill and levy will be sown to tall grass prairie - a mix of no maintennance wild grasses and flowers that the buffalo, in the millions, used to thrive on around here. When she got home and saw what I had done, she got all excited, and if I'm not mistaken, the way things are going, my backyard is suddenly becoming OUR backyard. Go figure!
Did you get a few tomatoes this year?