Progress, or the illusion thereof

I'm good at overthinking stuff and getting stuck in the details.
I find myself thinking about a half-dozen if-then steps out into the future which, while it can inform me of possible problems, can also paralyze the decision-making process.
Like, for instance: The previous owner of my 101-year-old house apparently didn't have much use for treated lumber. So when he had the upper balcony over the front porch done, his choice of materials assured that the part of the deck that's not under roof would get wet and rot. Which it did.
Our first clue, other than the mushrooms growing on the deck (really!), was when we saw water coming through the porch ceiling whenever it rained. Now, after a couple of seasons of procrastination on our part, the porch floor has started to warp and buckle and rot.
There are already plenty of demands on our time and resources, so we sort of went into denial about the whole thing, but when it rains incessantly like it has here for the past two springs, it became painfully obvsious that something has to be done to protect our investment.
Our first spring in the house, a contractor retained by the town council was rebuilding sidewalks in our neighborhood. Under state law, the homeowner is responsible for sidewalk maintenance, but the town got some grant money and was keen to see the decades-old root-buckled and cracked sidewalks replaced, so the town council offered to pay half of the sidewalk replacement bill for every participating homeowner. It sounded like a good idea to us, so we signed on.
In the course of the work, the contractor mentioned to my wife that he had done some work on our proch when the house was in the hands of the previous owner - I can only hope he wasn't the dope who set us up for our present problems. He said he had offered the previous owner a comprehensive porch repair plan, but the guy passed on the offer.
So about a month ago, I decided to see if I could track this guy down and ask if he could have a look at the porch - after all, he was familiar with it.
After several fruitless calls to the town hall to get the name and a phone number of the contractor, I had just about given up.
In the meantime, an old friend of my wife phoned yesterday to catch up on events - they hadn't spoken since before we were married - and mentioned that her husband was an engineer/contractor who was looking for business. Hmmmm.
So I called him today and he and his wife are coming over tomorrow evening to eyeball the porch project. Maybe he can also figure out why wind-driven horizontal rain has penetrated the west wall of our bedroom and caused water to leak through the ceiling, directly above my wife's $2,000 Bernina quilting sewing machine. (We acted in time to rescue the Bernina on both occasions, but it was a scary few minutes.)
Of course, today was the day the town clerk-treasurer finally returned my phone calls and gave me the name of the mystery contractor.
At the same time, the editor of a larger regional newspaper called today to follow up on a job interview he had invited my wife to a month ago. The coverage areas of his paper and hers overlap and, even though her paper has a smaller, less experienced staff, she's been beating his people to all of the big stories and generally embarrassing them. As is the style with papers in that chain (starts with a "G"), their solution to competition is to buy it rather than beat it. Her attitude, having worked for an even larger paper in that chain, is one of great reluctance to re-join the evil empire.
Mostly, she's curious to see how much money they're willing to spend to seduce her to the Dark Side. We shall see. As much as I hate to do business with them, more income would solve a whole bunch of problems.
She knows I'll support any decision she makes and she also knows that I'd rather see her having fun in the newspaper business for less money than be miserable for lots of money.
******
Later:
The editor at the regional paper offered my wife a cut in pay to step up to their operation. A cut in pay, for Christsake! She told them that was absurd and to forget it unless they could come up with more money. They're presumably now looking for more money, but she got what she wanted - an offer that makes it clear they value her.
On yet another front, we just got home from the town council meeting where we finally got the council to vote to top and, if necessary, remove the three huge maple trees that menace our house from the other side of the town-owned alley that doubles as a driveway for our house.
The dimmer members - well, all but one - finally grasped the idea that they can remove the trees now, or they can wait for them to fall on our house, then pay for the damage and then pay to remove the trees.
Besides the concern that a tree could smash my house, my other motive for wanting the trees gone was so I could have a clear shot at one of the DISH TV satellites. My goal was to dump my crappy overpriced cable TV service in favor of DISH TV so I could get TechTV. But I learned recently that TechTV got sold to some idiots who dismantled its brilliant stable of personalities and lineup of shows. So now it's pointless to switch.
Arrrrghhhh!