These attitudes about women and childbearing have got to go. Assigned childbearing shifts???
What would you spend on if you saved too much in your Dependent Daycare Account? I’m absolutely no help there, I’m just staring wide eyed at the idea of not spending a full $5000 in the DDA for a quarter of the cost of daycare. And frankly somewhat terrified at having to add “summer logistics” to my brainspace.
TSA, get it together. Now they’re thinking about telling us we can’t carry food on planes?? I’m not ok with this. We never travel without food lest one of the three of us become hangry.
We’ve talked failure resumes before, I haven’t done mine but look at Jim’s!
We want to make the most of our time together this year but still get things done around the house. There’s a ton of work still left to us, we only paid for work we absolutely needed completed before we moved in.
Despite (or because of) the massive derailment that was last year, we’re taking a more structured approach to planning our year. Admittedly, it’s a bit late in the day to be planning for the whole year, this is the kind of thing I would normally have done in October of last year. Holy dang it’s April already!
What we planned
Take one at-home home maintenance weekend per month.
Take Seamus to Fort Funston at least once a month so he can romp and meet other dogs. We’d love to do Point Isobel but crossing the bridge on the weekend is definitely a no go.
JB gets one or two playdates a month (includes birthday parties).
Host a dinner with friends once a month.
PiC and I loosely agreed to using the library’s Discover and Go venues at least 4 times this year. I was all kinds of enthused about this, applying for new library cards for both of us. Ours have been expired since JB’s arrival. Disappointingly, it turns out that almost all of the family friendly locations suck in some way: they require 1.5 hour drive one way, the discount is only for the child and parents have to pay for parking and $30 admission, or it’s in SF proper which means traffic, terrible and $$$ parking and walking miles just to get to the venue thereby burning up my valuable energy before we even make it in the door. This may have to be two weekend trips this year instead.
We recently took on a young lady rescue, to Seamus’s mild chagrin, and my heart’s delight. I’m pretty sure we needed a second dog but the first few months will be tough because no one gets Seamus AND an easy new dog in the same lifetime.
Even Seamus’s first months with us were hard. He was learning the ropes of our household and I was battling his allergies: hives, broken skin, rashes, bathing three times a week, steroids which means 6 walks a day, and one (terribly embarrassing for him) accident in the house because he couldn’t wake me for a walk in time. Those demanding weeks and all his maintenance since then has been totally worth because he’s a lovebug, has perfect manners, coparents JB, and protects zir from all comers. He was and still is a big help to me during my tough days, helping me get up and around during pregnancy and during flare ups, and supporting me through the days when people aren’t around. I don’t expect quite the same from her but it would be a good idea to train her like a helper dog as much as I’m able.
Suffice it to say, new pup has a tough act to follow. But we have lots of training planned, plus lots of patience and persistence. For my own sanity, I have told myself to give her two months to start showing real improvement and the ability to fit in. That’s about how long I can maintain all training all the time mode, and I need the reminder that a perfect dog isn’t achieved in 3 days.
An interview with a nanny for a psychic. This bit caught my attention: “I initially reached out to her because my (deceased) father’s spirit was following me around trying to get my attention. I asked him to stop but she told me that he was there trying to make it up to me for being a negligent father. He was trying to protect me now and wanted me to know that he’s there.”
Haunting runs in our family and is considered run of the mill. But if my dad tried to pull this, I’d be looking into banishment. We don’t typically go in for that in our family but no way no how no sir.
Nicole Cliffe on bigamous marriages in her family. We also have one of those stories. It’s weird.
Slate does a series based on the idea that “Every couple has one core fight that replays over and over again, in different disguises, over the course of their relationship.” Realistic or no? The very idea seems totally exhausting to me. We have had long standing differences of opinion, and backgrounds, but we acknowledge them, discuss why they’re important, and work out compromises based on knowing those things about ourselves. It’s a lot of work sometimes but it sure feels better than engaging in a lifelong tug of war like this couple. Also I think this is a remarkably immature read on risk-aversion, but is this actually common?: “I see risk-aversion as banality, boredom, giving into convention or family pressure or something like that. I hate this idea in our culture that you’re not an adult unless you feel frustrated and stifled and you hate your life. We equate maturity with the wrong things.”
Since when is adult life equated with feeling frustrated? For me, it’s meant freedom and stability and more freedom even with all the responsibilities I choose to take on.
This is for all of us. Our local preschool wait list is 3-4 years long so we’re not specifically choosing this over the muuuuuch cheaper preschool, but I view it as a luxury to pick this particular option instead of a home care option. Home care options are significantly cheaper but since we don’t know anyone who can refer us to a good one, we just don’t have the peace of mind that ze will be treated well and that any violations or mistreatment of children will be immediately reported by the other people who work at the facility. Our facility isn’t perfect, but they DO self-report any time there are infractions where other people might dismiss them as “not that bad”.
JB LOVES the teachers at this daycare and all the resources they have: books, toys, iPads, desktops where ze can pretend to be me. They are located close to PiC’s work which makes dropoff much easier, we love that their schedule mirrors PiC’s work schedule so neither of us has to take precious days off to cover childcare on holidays.
Empty spaces
We have 2 cabinets in our kitchen that are almost completely empty. I have no plans or desire to add to it any time soon. It’s my favorite non-thing about the kitchen! The emptiness is a promise to myself that if we want to grow or change or add, we can without feeling claustrophobic and that we are committing to not expanding to fill every empty space just because it exists. We’re respecting the space.
My ideal closet is a half empty room, housing exactly what I need, a couple of extra lovely soft cuddly things for cold days and nights, and a wide open space. For possibilities!
Four legged friends
Seamus is a delight and a comfort. He keeps my blood pressure down, generates fabulous sleeping dog scent while he cuddles nearby, and intervenes when JB is driving us all loonytunes.
He brings pure joy when he’s sleep-roaching, when he’s converting a friend who is afraid of dogs into a doglover, when he’s sunbathing and grins with tongue lolling and stretched gaping joyful jaws. He requires a lot of hands on care and he’s worth every minute and every penny.
Travel
As a confirmed hermit, and would be shut-in, who hates to be away from her home and dogs, you would think that travel would be my last priority for spending. In some ways, it is – I hate paying full freight on flights, rental cars, lodgings. But it’s important so I travel hack to make it affordable. We live far away from friends and family so, as a purely practical matter, it’s the only way we’re going to spend time with a lot of them as they have families themselves and it’s no longer just a matter of driving across town and dropping in for dinner.
“Be fearless in the pursuit of what sets your soul on fire.” – Jennifer Lee
The non practical side of it is simply this: discovery. It’s so easy to lose sight of the world out there. It’s really easy to let our own narrow range of lived experiences come to encompass all experiences, to overwrite the wealth of the world’s beauty and inspiration because it’s easier and, for me, less painful to stay home. It’s easy for friends and family to forget that I live with pain as a companion every minute, it’s most definitely easier for me to avoid those exertions that bring on even worse pain. Hiking, exploring new countries, walking to new food experiences, riding horses through Scotland? That sounds fantastic, except that after the first flushes of excitement, I come home to my body. Where I live, the view never changes. It would truly be much easier to avoid travel. That ease makes it much more imperative that we don’t fall into that trap. Even if it costs money, takes a lot of time and precious brainpower, it’s a luxury that we can afford and should afford for ourselves.
In my family, travel hasn’t ever been a thing you did for fun. You traveled when you were leaving everything you knew, for good. Emigration, not tourism. Now that we can, we should.
Laurie described great reasons for international tourism more eloquently than I can manage right now, but Done by Forty reminded me of another one: our children are going to be raised by very different parents than we were. Our parents were immigrants who came here with nothing but the clothes on their backs. By contrast, we are basically wealthy people. Not just compared to our parents, compared to much of the world. As such, it’s even more important that our children be exposed to more cultures and languages and society with different values so they understand that there is so much more to the world than just what they know here.
NOTE I didn’t realize many people thought that cutting off Dad meant we’d be rolling in cash. How I wish that were so. We had to cut him off because our expenses skyrocketed (tripled) when we moved last year!
That, in the process, he was revealed to be a terrible person was just the awful icing on a crappy cake.
Tax refund! Our refund is going straight to savings, as it always does, though I did have to temporarily borrow some to cover bills I paid for April early.
We want to make the most of our time together this year but still get things done around the house. There’s a ton of work still left to us, we only paid for work we absolutely needed completed before we moved in.
We appreciate 
On Money