Small win: I’ve converted my Alaska card into a different BofA travel card without an annual fee for the moment to buy some thinking time on what we want to do next on our card churning.
What were your small wins this week?
Femme Frugality in Osaka. I’m dreaming of taking a really cool trip to Japan one of these days.
I’m very curious what made this particular individual’s Fiverr gigs take off to this extent because I’m guessing this is not the typical experience of other writers who take $5 per gig.
If you need a laugh, I always do, Sam Sykes trolling Myke Cole pretty much always makes me laugh. He’s dedicated to the cause. I can’t tell if he’s ever passed on an opportunity to troll Myke on Twitter and possibly also in person. From my observations, so far, no.
Do you do five year plans? I haven’t done one in a while, I’m in a season of rest for a little bit.
A friend found this site that solicits bids for services for you, no charge to the consumer and no commitment required. She crosschecked this with Yelp reviews and it seems pretty solid, at least on the East Coast.
OMG PUPPY
This is Nala. She discovered a new passion today. 13/10 would catch her at the bottom (IG: nala_thegoldie) pic.twitter.com/Yprl8EYexg
Small win: I made an amazing cottage pie with sour cream mashed potatoes for dinner. JB loved it and declared: mama, I am going to eat ALL MY FOOD!
Also, though I hate phone calls with a passion, I returned some calls about the LTC policy application that we’re considering. I’m really not ready to go through the fine print and make a decision so I scheduled the exam for late July to buy some time.
What were your small wins this week?
***
Ruth and I lost our mothers too young, she younger than I, and it’s left scars. I still remember the exact moment I got back to my desk at work and getting her message that her mom had passed; I remember it as clearly as when I got the call that Mom died suddenly. She’s written something you should read.
Small win: I found a new next size up bathing suit for JB for next to nothing!
What were your small wins this week?
***
If the separation of parents and children also breaks your heart, and you can donate to one of these causes linked in his tweet to help the kids, show Dr. Linus your receipt – he’ll match up to $10k, however long it takes. UPDATE June 21 10:53 am PST, he’s down to the last $150. Good job, y’all!
At least one very popular PF blogger is an asshat who think that it’s ok that migrant children are being separated from their families because they still have food and shelter because it’s far more concerning that children in Syria are living in dire circumstances. A) Read up on the lifelong consequences of familial separations, well known since after Operation Pied Piper in WWII. B) Both things are terrible and we should donate to help both horrible situations. C) Our government is materially contributing to the crappy situation in Syria just like it’s materially contributing to the separation and internment of babies and children. This all needs to stop. D) I don’t know about that blogger but I do have the capacity to care about more than one group of people and they don’t even have to look like or be like me to deserve it.
This is one of my nightmares: losing one of us when our child is young. We do have our life insurance and our wills, our trust, and I’m still working on pulling all the pertinent information into one handy Life and Death folder.
Small win: We had an extra long stretch on the social calendar in addition to my tripled workload. It was touch and go whether I’d make it through without blowing my top. I made it!! What were your wins this week?
I’m thrilled for Stacking Pennies, one of my original early days money blogging friends. She is expecting!
The Fuck-over-ability Index: As a manager, I definitely don’t pry into my people’s lives or encourage them to overcommit financially so we can overwork them. That’s messed up. I expect them to do a great job because that’s the job while I do my best to compensate them fairly and treat them well. And regardless, I expect that attrition will happen because that’s how it works.
The quiz was reasonably accurate for us though. I scored a 22: You can push back on your boss if they’re being totally unreasonable without fear of immediately going into financial ruin if you lose your job.
Waffles on Wednesday talks privilege. I like it when people are willing to speak on this, and when we practice gratitude for our many advantages and blessings.
A trustworthy immigration lawyer I know vouches for this group of lawyers fundraising to litigate against Jeff Sessions. If you can support them, that would be a tangible way to fight the ongoing horribleness with immigration in the US.
Sandy dug into the fine print of the Tulsa Real Estate Fund and points out some very valid concerns. It would be awesome for this fund to succeed, but as a mentor and I lamented, not on the backs of our own people (respectively). We see investing schemes and money advice that are about exploiting the community rather than building it up and it’s highly concerning because there are a lot of people trying to make their financial situations a little better, and a lot of people out there to take advantage of the shared connections, to take advantage of them. I truly hope they make some minor changes to ensure that doesn’t play out here.
Anthony Bourdain’s passing saddened me, he was such a creative thinker and I admired his risk taking and unique perspectives. One of the reasons I liked Anthony Bourdain (as much as you can like someone you’ve never met) is because I admired his ability to deal with his own pain and anger without projecting it on others, and instead trying to portray the humanity of cultures that were not his own without trying to look superior or like he’s the first to discover them. There was no appropriation or disrespect, it was entirely the opposite, and that was refreshing.
Scalzi on coolness vs not coolness. This is exactly how I’ve been thinking of the cool / not cool designations in our friend groups! But it does leave me I’m confused where I go because I’m definitely not cool (people don’t expend energy coming to me, by and large), am very ok with that not-coolness, but also don’t put energy out to draw people in, either.
Not due to racism, obviously, but JB doesn’t have much of a relationship with my Dad right now. It wasn’t due to lack of effort on our part at first but I’ve stopped trying. Ze doesn’t seem to notice that my parent isn’t in zir life. Ze has noticed that ze hasn’t met my mom and knows that she’s dead but perhaps due to age, or because I’ve supplied multiple surrogates. I am maintaining a policy of not lying but am working on giving zir more neutral and graspable answers suitable for a 3 year old.
Do you have any pre-marriage and/or pre-kids regrets? Things you wished you’d done? I kind of wish we had traveled a little more, mostly because I now appreciate how many times simpler it was back then.
Over at MarketPlace, Tanja breaks down “How to save twice your salary (or more) by age 35“. She started with a zero net worth at age 28 so she knows some things. As always, I never think “everyone can do it because I could” but rather “there’s always something we can learn, it might help”.
Roxane’s piece is painful to read. The things she has had to go through because our society is so incredibly judgemental.
Ah ha! Neuroplasticity and Novelty Effect! The reasons I keep researching tropical vacation deals, or seeking the next freelance gig, even while I’m stretched out on the sofa comfortably going about my routine and know that I can’t commit to anything like a new volunteer gig or workout routine: “….when you make time for new skills that are personally interesting to you, the benefits of success are heightened. Your body will actually release more dopamine when you achieve goals that your mind has deemed more interesting and fulfilling to your core interests and values.
….The novelty effect is a particularly strange psychological phenomenon that shines a light on just how finicky the human brain can be when it comes to feeling renewed and ready to go back to work. Research has uncovered that your performance at a task will initially improve when a new technology or process is introduced. That’s right—you can instantly get better at something old simply because your brain will be interested in the new process on the block.”
