April 25, 2013
Do you remember the first six months of your best relationship?
Full of newness, and discovery, questions and sometimes “terrible” decisions.
We remember sitting on LA freeways for hours. Both ways. At completely, utterly unreasonable hours. Very scheduled phone calls post-9 pm to take advantage of those unlimited night minutes and lasted hours about nothing. Flowers every month, just because. Overly fancy restaurants (for us, at the time) the better to bat our eyes at each other. Cramming in one social obligation after another, stacked with work and school obligations, because sometimes, that’s the only way we could see each other without abandoning our friends or family. I’m sure there were more foolish decisions, and a lot less eye batting than I assume, but I can’t remember now.
A mutual friend laughed at our rueful reminiscing: the first six months don’t count! You do stupid things in your first six months together.
This is true, we did do stupid things to be together. We spent stupid money sometimes. Things that my normally pragmatic self would laugh at now, or even raise an eyebrow over wondering if this was setting ourselves up for a lifetime of impulse buys and trips. [I did (politely) ask PiC to stop bringing flowers every month around month 6 or so. I loved the thought but hated the idea he was spending so much.] And the first six months theory is a handy “it’s ok!” dismissal of it all. But you know what?
The first six months did count.
We spent time frivolously and had a great lot of fun. We enjoyed each other’s company without undue worry, which was a huge thing for me in my early 20s otherwise weighed down with worry and pain, and learned how to communicate. Even before we became a long distance relationship, we learned how to disagree and even fight efficiently and effectively, if you can believe it, and as much as talking about fighting wouldn’t seem like the most positive thing about an early relationship – it was how we learned to communicate better and waste little to no time on dramatic flounces.
We enjoyed each other as people, and made stupidly grand gestures to show it. We also chose to share the utterly mundane to share, like the Costco hot dog dinner. There was, as it turned out, plenty of time to be 90% sensible later. We are sensible now. But those short six months were full of laughter and learning how to care for and about each other. Rather priceless.
And the silliness of the first six months didn’t just end there. We still consciously make “stupid” decisions for each other, to make each other happy or laugh, despite being a boring old married couple. But it’s ok – we’re not wearing blinders when we do it. 😉 We have a budget.
What do you think of the six months theory? What were your first six months of a solid relationship like?
Did you travel unnaturally long distances to see each other? Spend hours on the phone? Sit in traffic forever just to see each other?
April 17, 2013
We’re a little more than three months into living on a combined budget. And even though this is the first time PiC’s lived on such a detailed budget, we still seem to be doing sort of ok.
I say “sort of” because:
+ we’re not fighting tooth and nail over living by a budget (yay!)
+ we’re not fighting over anything budget at all (yay!) (yes, I assume there’s going to be some amount of disagreement and conflict when you’re learning to live in new boundaries)
– we’re not exactly ON the budget in some places (boo!)
– we still need to discuss how to offset some of the early spending highs (boo!)
It’s a wash, as far as operations go.
As far as execution … we’re having a touch of trouble staying in our budgeted amount in certain categories and not yet doing a good job of pulling back in specific areas to make up for it. This goes against the grain. I’m a money hoarder and I would much rather spend on the low side of any budgeted amount throughout the year and have some left over. This is, of course, not PiC’s style. 🙂
Nearly four months into the year, I’d expect that our spending should be at about 33% of the budgeted amount across all categories. I’m seeing spending as low as 3 and 7% (less regular/essential categories) and as high as 47 and 53% (ahem someone’s allowance).
Overall, though, we only went over our monthly total once in the last three months and the monthly averages are very close to what we expect to be spending each month. That helps ease the sting of what feels like budgetary failure.
Management is….
a bit complicated right now: we primarily use my American Express, and his Southwest Visa when it’s a non-American Express establishment. Then we have the odd cash or check expenditures. It all gets tallied into a spreadsheet on a (we try) weekly basis.
We’ve also finally opened a joint checking account to pay the bills from so that’ll help smooth out the problem of taking it turnabout to pay bills. And, happy day! I may be able to start closing out some of my other banking accounts. I’ve got accounts across four banks right now.
Admittedly, I’ve been refusing to close my oldest checking account because it’s the one I opened when I first turned eighteen and was allowed to open my very open checking account. (PF sentimentality!) And I enjoy the freedom of having the choice of accessing ATMs for two B&M banks… but considering I have two branches of the other bank nearby and go to the ATM about 6 times a year, that’s not a good reason.
Observations …
We eat a lot. Or rather, we spend a hell of a lot of money on not terribly fancy food. We don’t even buy beer (except once in several months), we only get basic (but good IMO) cheddar, we have a regular rotation of relatively “cheap” food & recipes around things like whole chickens but it’s more than offset by the handful of convenience foods that we buy for my fibro-body benefit.
Saving Money …
I’m over the moon about changing our cell phone plan with T-Mobile. SingleMa and I got into a conversation on Twitter about cell phone plans. Next day, we found the new contract-free plans and each saved a ton! She reduced her bill by $40/month, ours should be less by $50/month. Woot! That annual $600 will go a long way to making up for buying a new phone a bit earlier than I wanted to. I hated dealing with the nonsense of their customer service which has gotten pretty iffy these past couple of years. It used to be rock solid but not so much anymore. A shame. I also finally sent in Mom’s death certificate to cancel her phone line, something I’m trying to be totally pragmatic about but I have to admit gives me a bit of a pang.
And after a couple months of paying too much for internet ($43) when our last promotion lapsed, I surfed AT&T’s promotions for Internet without a Phone Line while signed into my account and lo! They still pulled up the cheap-cheap plans! I experimentally put it in my cart, put the live customer service chat on, and found that I could indeed switch to the $20/month plan without cancelling service. Check. That. Out. AT&T, making life easy for an existing customer. Unbelievable. And I love it.
Total to be saved this year (8 months of each line being cheaper): $400 + 160 = $560!
Tax Time …
We got bitten by AMT this year. Sonnuva … it wasn’t terrible, insofar as the money’s concerned. My headache was another thing entirely, trying to learn everything specifically relevant I could about AMT on the fly. There was definitely cursing associated with this year’s taxes.
I managed to get all the forms in for an April 14th filing but then found out afterward that one of the forms was an estimate and the “responsible” (@$$shole) accountant didn’t bother to say so until well after the fact. Again: cursing. Bitter? Yes. Now I have to file amendments for this year as soon as those new forms are in. Another hour and a half of my life re-committed to doing unnecessary taxes. Still, the bulk of it’s done and that’s something to be grateful for.
::How are you folks doing with your money these days?
April 12, 2013
Bacon pasta. Does it get better? (Not really, no.)
Back by special request this week for PiC’s carbing up pre-MAJOR NEW RACE, I get to make an enormous batch of this amazing new recipe. As race support staff, I (so modestly) rock.
One of my favorite things to do is experiment with new recipes if I 1) don’t screw it up and 2) have an appreciative audience. Number two is a given with PiC. Our diet tends to get staid and boring which, for such a health-oriented eater, is a surprising thing about him, but he does appreciate and enjoy anything I cook even when I think it didn’t turn out. So all that’s left to do is Not Screw It Up. No pressure.
After reading Eat and Run this week, I’m also inspired to experiment with the recipes shared in the book to see how that helps PiC’s running. And maybe it’ll have a positive effect on my health too. Guinea pig-dom!
Also happily, a now-local childhood friend is close enough to visit with us once in a while and we’ve found that we love cooking and eating together. We try to share new or new-to-each-other recipes each time.
This was the first time I’d ever cooked with crushed red pepper and boy howdy! Did I ever screw up. I normally always follow new recipes as exactly as possible (ahem, except every other recipe where I substitute one or three ingredients because our cupboard’s too lean. Including this one, as you’ll see.) and as it turns out, even our fire-mouth SE-Asia-travel hardened friend thought the first batch was eyewateringly spicy. Whoops.
We had this with an amazing kale salad and leftovers were just as incredible. The next time I made a batch, we two greedy-faces ate up the whole skillet in one meal. Good grief. Not totally recommended.
Bucatini All’amatriciana
serves 2 greedy-faces or 4 normal people.
Ingredients
1/2 pound thinly sliced pancetta, coarsely chopped*
1 red onion, thinly sliced
3 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
1 1/2 teaspoons crushed red pepper*
12 ounces prepared tomato sauce*
Kosher salt
1 pound bucatini*
1/2 cup flat-leaf parsley leaves*
Grated Pecorino Romano cheese, for serving
*I use regular bacon instead of pancetta since it’s faster and easier to find.
HALVE the red pepper for the love of your taste buds.
Just used jarred sauce to spare my hands.
Bucatini is remarkably hard to find! So I use linguine instead.
I pretty much never have parsley.
Directions
1. (I trim at least half the fat off the bacon first.) Then, in a large, deep skillet, cook the pancetta over moderate heat, until lightly browned. Cook about 6 minutes.
2. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the pancetta to a plate.
3. Pour off all but 2 tablespoons of the fat in the skillet.
4. Add the onion, garlic and crushed red pepper and cook over moderately high heat, stirring occasionally, until the onion is lightly browned. Takes about 6 minutes.
5. Return the pancetta to the skillet. Add the tomato sauce, season with salt and simmer until very thick. Cook about 10 minutes.
6. Meanwhile, in a pot of salted boiling water, cook the pasta until al dente. Drain the pasta, reserving 1/2 cup of the cooking water.
7. Add the pasta to the sauce along with the parsley and the reserved cooking water and stir over moderately high heat until the pasta is evenly coated, 2 minutes.
8. Serve the pasta in bowls. Parmesan if desired.
:: Have you ever seen bucatini in a store?
:: If you’re a runner, how do you like to dietarily prepare for races?
:: Or are you more like me and just like to make yummy food?
April 10, 2013
A marriage is always made up of two people who are prepared to swear that only the other one snores.
–The Fifth Elephant, Terry Pratchett
I’m absolutely prepared to swear that I’m not the one who snores. [Admission: I used to sleepwalk, sleeptalk and sleep fought back against nightmarish intruders that have turned out to be … PiC. Oops. In my defense … well ok, he didn’t even notice so do I need a defense?]
PiC and I have put a lot of money into a fantastic new mattress, bigger and better than ever!, and really need to replace our pillows. But every so often PiC wonders if we should have gone our separate ways for sleeping since his snoring keeps me up or wakes me so many times in the night.
Katie recently asked this same question about Separate Bedrooms.
The thing is, except for those nights when a literal earthquake couldn’t wake me for the exhaustion, my body’s become attuned to having him around and startles awake if he’s not there. This probably stems from those many nights when he’d have one or another thing to do before bed and would end up falling asleep where he sat. Around 2 or 4 am, something would trigger in my brain and I’d get up to fetch him. Can’t win for losing!
It’s like Mind-Reading (but worse)
While cooking the other day, I heard the scrape-scrape-scrape of the dog food container we’d just gotten to prevent any bug infestations. Not a problem now and not a problem ever, we hope.
Unhappily, the touted stackable container that should hold greater than 40 lbs appears to have all it can do to hold about 25. Other than that, though, we quite like the container. Until I heard PiC’s cursing: “why can’t I close t— oh. Never mind ….. ”
“Because you were turning it the wrong way?”
“YES. How did you know?”
simultaneously: You/I just did that!
*burst out laughing*
Learning to make the best of things
Talking to my dad about trying to start to plan a wedding reception has uncovered a whole pot of simmering tensions. He’s holding firm on some pretty unreasonable expectations, in my opinion, and basing it on fairly illogical logic. *sigh* It’s hard to say how we’re going to navigate to the other side on this but I’m having a hard time wrapping my brain around how, frankly, selfish he’s being about this.
I’ve willingly sacrificed pretty much everything I wanted in the past ten years for them. And now when it comes to the wedding, instead of working together to figure out how to compromise, he wants his way or no way at all for the sake of his reputation. Those are my choices. I can have all the family he “has” to invite, or none of them. Which is no choice at all in my book. And utterly ridiculous when he keeps insisting that we have to have 300-400 family members minimum, before we even look at non-family we would choose to have there for either side.
By virtue of distance alone, we won’t be able to return the invitation to a great many people he feels he “owes” an invitation to (by the backwards logic of “they expect to return his wedding gift to them or their children”), a great number of our family are overseas… and a great number are in SoCal too. Based on the criteria “because I have to save face”, there are still a hell of a lot of people who can’t be invited. So why is it we can’t just invite the family that I actually know, keep in touch with or care about, and include a reasonable number of his-choice invites? That’s still a large number by itself.
This has me quite annoyed on principle. Quite frankly, his priorities shouldn’t only be his standing in the community or how he looks. This isn’t entirely, 100%, about him. He’s not paying for one cent of this and saying “don’t worry about it, I’ll handle all the details” doesn’t make it better. You can’t just push me out of a core part of our wedding and expect that I’ll be ok with that. I’m all about including his input, but I am NOT about rolling over and giving him everything he wants.
I’ve lived my whole adult life focusing on what would be best for my parents, isn’t it time he stepped up and cooperated?
/rant.
So I asked a pretty-exasperated PiC what he’d like. Guest list and other BS aside, what would he actually LIKE?
An Enchantment Under the Sea, a la Back to the Future theme, says he.
[headsplosion] Seriously??
Yes. {starts singing the song}
[hilarity ensues]
We can’t have a DeLorean because if no flux capacitor, then no DeLorean. Authenticity dammit!
Costumes? Sure. But for other people.
Wonder if we can get the local high school gym?
{text old high school friend who still FBs with high school administrators}
We’ll see!
How about Enchantment Under the Sea in the gym, and luau outside?
ROAST PIG. YES.
This could be expensive.
Or … not? Hm. Yes. It could be. If we’re going to do it, I’d like it to be cool, not slapdash. Also, I stipulate that I must have Wolverine something. If we’re going geek, I want something of mine represented.
Deal.
Being married and getting married. Two strange states of being when cast simultaneously.
April 9, 2013
[Warning: possibly a little spoilery]
Sometimes I do it to tweak PiC, or at least he thinks so, but this time I picked up the book he chose because I’ve already finished all my library books and his looked moderately interesting.
I’m not a runner and certainly don’t ever see myself marathoning but I love a well told story, particularly one of achievement, so even though I had never heard of Jurek, the book flap sounded promising enough. I’m so glad that I did.
It gave me insight into a person who knows how to endure because he learned long ago that sometimes, that’s just what you do. This resonated. It gave me insight into a journey of growth and coping, of discovery and delight in pushing yourself. This resonated. It gave me insight into the life of a runner, then an ultra runner, and how they endure through their races. This… suggested ways I could support PiC in his bid to be an ultra runner.
Written with Steve Friedman, in Eat and Run, Scott tells the story of his life as an elite athlete and as a vegan starting from long before either of those things were relevant in his daily lexicon or the running world. He was a meat and potatoes Midwestern kid managing a difficult home life who found the world of running almost unintentionally, derisively dismissed as “the flatlander” on his entrance into his first major 100-miler, and slowly transformed himself, step by step, into the elite athlete he is today.
Honestly, I say again, I’m not a runner, never was more than a sprinter in my best days, but reading this about made me rise up and go out for a long run.
Never self-effacing, Jurek also doesn’t sound like someone wrapped up in himself. He doesn’t sound like anything but a remarkably human guy who’s managed to figure things out one step at a time, painfully sometimes, and with all the steps forward and back that comes in a normal life. It’s not all about the wins, though there were those, it’s about the experience of the runs, what he learned from it, who he was at the time of the race.
That might be what struck me the most: he was incredibly focused on the running in his life, perhaps sometimes to the detriment of his personal life, occasionally giving rise to self-doubt over whether he’d made the right choices years down the road.
He doesn’t succumb to the doubt but he acknowledges it, he acknowledges that he wasn’t necessarily 100% sure of the choices he made in his life and he acknowledges the possible mistakes. I really identified with that as I’ve wondered many times in the past year how my actions failed my mother and whether she would have been better had I this or that.
Then there was a period of time he lived in debt to run those races and of course, as I’m highly allergic to debt in my post-debt life, that made me cringe a little. Still, I understood. Given the results, I mean. I would have loved to hear more about how this part of his life came together. Because I’m nosy …
The recipes he discovered, developed or loves are seeded throughout the book, linking into his forays into healthy eating and ultimately veganism, and his narration includes notes of what worked best for him during races. Once, the idea of dispensing with the medication entirely would have sounded like a pipe dream to me, living in chronic pain, but the timing is good. I’ve given up my medications this year as a regular routine and instead only take them when I can’t endure any longer. Incorporating more healing foods into our diet sounds appealing and he shows how easy and delicious it can be.
There’s precious little ego in this book, so long as you don’t think that telling your own story is ego (I don’t), just a hell of a capacity for endurance.
He sees himself as an Everyman, and sees in everyone the potential to achieve just about anything. Whether anyone can run an ultra (looking in the mirror skeptically), his modest and welcome all-comers approach makes me want to get to know him a bit more.
April 8, 2013
On a very quick visit to the Midwest…
A) I nearly shivered myself to pieces in the approximately 30 degree weather. Brrr. Brrr…. BRRRR….
B) Thankfully PiC really loves me and on a morning jaunt, scouted a Top Shop for me. Seriously, the guy remembered the one store where I like to get my leggings. My one pair of leggings I’ve ever bought. Thank goodness for the ridiculously good Patagonia jacket he found for me a couple years ago.
C) The Water Tower had a fun art exhibit and I had to document a few things for @CthulhuChick. Cthulhu-rabbit! Octo-heart?
D) What trip isn’t all about the food for me? Thanks to @aledonne for the recommendation, we stopped into Giordano’s for a few different pizzas. They were pretty good. Of course, I had to stop into Downtown Dogs for a Chicago dog appetizer ….
E) We also tried macaroni and cheese pizza, grilled chicken pesto pizza, and a fish fry. So. Good. (I want to eat mac and cheese pizza forever.)
F) My second old-fashioned with a cinnamon stick. You wouldn’t expect that a single detail like that would make a huge difference but it absolutely made the drink.
Except for the cold, I loved the city, the feel of fun and culture, and most definitely the food. We’ve been there on another quick trip in the past and were focused on Millenium Park and saw the famous Bean, etc., and I’ve worked in the city (again, briefly) and saw the Field Museum during a closed exhibit.
It feels like getting little very spaced-out nibbles of a vast and wonderful area.
Have you been to the Midwest? (I know some of you are FROM there!)
Next time, what would you recommend?
April 1, 2013
March was WAY better than February. Hoo-rah!
I’m not back in the gym yet, but have extended Doggle walks on every nice day so that we both get our Vitamin D and stretch our legs a little more.
One night, I had this nightmare that PiC signed me up for a marathon, because he decided to run even more than that, and for some reason an ex-classmate I really didn’t/don’t like was going to run with me so of course I couldn’t admit that I couldn’t do it. Yeah, toughing out a marathon when you can’t run a full mile yet – that’s an awesome idea.
It’s probably an indication of how much desperately I want to be my “normal” self. The one who could run a mile without being utterly wiped out, or work out for a few hours and actually enjoy the process. Of course, that’s getting ahead of myself in a big way. It’s as frustrating to be this thoroughly out of shape as it was to be in debt; it feels like someone’s chained my wrist to my opposite ankle. Awkward AND limiting!
It would be amazing to have a workout buddy who can hang with me in the little leagues and work our way up together. Exercise is much more fun as a cooperative endeavor.
All true and so relevant. I’ve never talked about it but I really hate doors, and heavy doors that remind me that I’m weaker than I used to be, or just plain make me look weak. This is why I “shoulder” or “hip” doors instead of pushing them when I can. There’s an amazing number of things that are much more difficult to manage b/c of pain: pocket doors, can openers, pots before food’s in, pots after food’s in, fancy cookware, lifting wet laundry in and out of washer and dryer. Round door handles suck, scissors suck, skinny pens suck. Yoga mega sucks because it’s so appealing, and not possible to do without hands/arms. Life is a strange thing viewed through the lens of what you can do or handle with only a very light touch.
It’s easier to dismiss said things I can’t do anymore or do well as jerks. All jerks. And then move right along.
Food
Using different grains and making more from-scratch recipes has been on my mind a lot lately; it seems like it’d be easier to eat more healthy foods this way. I finally had the energy (and the ridiculous need to procrastinate) to experiment with a couple recipes: Pasta and Barley Soup and Bucatini All’amatriciana.
The Pasta and Barley Soup was incredibly easy:
1 cup of ditalina pasta
3 liters of vegetable broth
1 diced onion
lots of diced garlic
1 diced potato
1/2 c diced celery*
2 diced carrots*
3/4 c barley
salt and pepper to taste
olive oil for drizzling**
Parmigiana Reggiano**
Parsley**
* I only used 1 diced carrot and substituted in one extra potato for the other carrot and for the celery I didn’t have on hand. So, extra carbalicious!
** For topping the soup and serving.
1. Saute onions and garlic.
2. Add broth and barley to simmer for 30 minutes.
3. Add the vegetables and pasta to cook for 6-8 minutes. Original recipe called for 6 minutes but I had to go to 8 minutes to fully cook through. Add salt and pepper to season.
Serve!
I played with the ingredients a bit, cutting back on some ingredients (broth, pasta) to make a smaller batch. It was perfect for the first seating but needed extra broth for the next day reheating.
Your turn: what did you do in March to be a little healthier and happier?