September 8, 2014

On one of those days …

Most of my days are “those days”. Days where I’m happy if I’ve managed to work a full day and get things done, fed myself real food, taken care of the dogs, and possibly even created less mess than I cleaned up.

Most of them are “Igh, feels like crap” days.

But on occasion there are those stellar days when I didn’t just work, I didn’t just eat, I’ve also: cleared the monthly finances, done the housework, made an actual meal, and done some financial research. Even played with the dogs, not just skated by with a walk and some petting.

They’re rare and I love them all the more when they come around. Never mind that there’s a big ole letdown in the aftermath when I can’t do that much in one go again, the actual day is pretty fantastic.

Anyway, I haven’t decided yet which day this is, but PiC’s caved in our ongoing (wimpy) battle over whether to handwash or use the dishwasher because the time and energy we save not handwashing can really be better used on the 30,000 other things that need doing but for which we don’t yet have some sort of automated, robotic way to do them. So that’s kinda nice. It does mean that I more routinely horrify horrified the dog when the dishwasher runs (just Doggle, Seamus is utterly indifferent), but today’s run has had me hopeful he’s going to he would get over it as we‘re not stopped fighting over where he should go in case of Dishwasher Lives! Emergency.

This whole thing’s got me thinking about how else we can save more of our energy.

Also it’s got me thinking about how in the old country, as recently as during my childhood, food was always fresh and we weren’t connected or didn’t rely on electricity around the clock ..

BUT:
dishes and clothes were always washed by hand, using rainwater or water brought up from the river if it’d been a dry winter or especially hot summer;
meals were planned based on what was fresh at market and cooking them always included marketing once or twice a day;
electricity was only possible when you cranked the generator and sometimes not even then so bedtime was sundown;
forget actual running water for showers or toilets;
and good grief, the mosquitoes. I don’t care who you are or how tough you are, if you’re a blood bar for mosquitoes, you would hate them too.

I loved my time growing up in the rural farmstead but never will I ever romanticize that pioneering type life!

Right, so back to the point… !

I’m still mulling over whether it’s worth hiring help to lightly clean the house; we don’t typically care about super cleanliness unless people are coming over to stay.

Perhaps the solution to my inability to keep up with the shedding (by rugs and by dogs) is really just the robot vacuum? Or is cleaning that thing more trouble than it’s worth?

I’m actually back on the fence about the dishwasher – I need a better tutorial on how to load it or something.

We’ve experimented with ordering in a little bit more during the hectic times using coupons and deals. It’s absolutely a load off my brain and energy to not think about what to cook on delivery days but I’m not in love with the offerings all the time and without a deal it’s not quite cost effective enough to win me over. Still, we’re playing with the idea of scheduling delivery twice a month and economizing by buying and cooking more fresh produce regularly.

Is it weird that the only outsource candidates are cooking and cleaning? Everything else seems to require our input/judgement calls: looking for deals, managing the household finances (though I am now outsourcing our taxes because BRAIN), routine shopping and tidying, laundry, dog medical care. Of course I do enjoy doing laundry, and most of those other things, so probably that’s why it doesn’t make the list.

It’s not like we have vast sums of money to spend on this stuff, I’m just pondering aloud while I figure out how to maximize the money we do spend and the time we could use more wisely.

What would make your lives easier?

October 8, 2012

Links & Snippets

A belated CONGRATULATIONS to Lazy Man and Mrs. on their new baby arrival!

Last week’s Carnival of Personal Finance: the Fall Traditions Edition was hosted by Tie the Money Knot and this week’s Carnival: The Leaves are Changing Edition was hosted by Walking to Wealth’s Adam Hagerman.

It’s the beginning of October and Kay Bell’s got a list of things to do for the month. Happily, in the chaos of all of Doggle’s health issues, and with the filing deadline of October 15th approaching, of course it seemed October 1st was the right time to sit down and power through. It only took about … 7 hours?  Applicable excerpts for me:

Charitable donations other than cash: This year’s Goodwill donations included Mom’s entire wardrobe. I didn’t have it in me to go through that for anything to keep. Even now I can’t think about it. I know what was in there so I could list it for the donation, though, and it was substantial. But Dad wanted to donate everything but a small pile so I let him.
Medical costs
: Out of curiosity, I just wanted to know whether I could deduct medical costs. Started to seem worth asking this year, having spent a few thousand or so on them. We would have had to have costs over $11, 500. Ooof.  Ok, life doesn’t seem so bad now.

Athena just said good-bye to a lot of her mom’s stuff too. I’ve never been able to deal with actually being surrounded by too many things but it struck me how difficult it was to think about the idea of her things not being there anymore. Because it meant she wasn’t either. She used to rescue things that I planned to purge too, and I think it was to remind her of me. Now I have that double memory infused in that thing, as I let it go.

I grew up going to Chinatown in LA for cultural celebrations every year, shopping in the almost-musty shops several times a year, using the elderly and funeral services for my grandparents. I didn’t live in Chinatown but it was as much part of my extended neighborhood as any of the closely neighboring cities.  And the idea of seeing a Walmart in that place that’s both a cultural entity and also a home is disconcerting. I wonder if the residential support for a Walmart comes from just wanting any general store in the area?

This is a super old story and I don’t know how I ran across it, but it was disconcerting anyway. Minnesota’s Public Health program and Team D was apparently how we managed to track down foodborne illness outbreaks so well in the past. I am so glad we shut that down….?

/sarcasm.

Not totally sure that we really needed this pointed out but NYTimes covers the perils of goalsetting. As in, you shouldn’t be setting goals without regard for how you reach them, or to the exclusion of all other things. Well, duh. “Reach this goal no matter what” generally results in bad. I’m certainly OCD enough that even I’ve had to retrain my brain to let in the rest of the world after focusing on Goals 1 and 2 but absolutely nothing else ever. Of course I’m saying this from a point of view of a person whose only goal is to freakin’ survive right now. So… you know. *shrug* Perspective. I got some.

Found this new-to-me blog called Farm to Kitchen to Table that occasionally shares recipes/creations based on a CSA box. I still haven’t convinced myself to get one because they are actually rather pricey, but someday….

Looks like Fabulously Fru-Gal also buys and returns (shoes) online. I do this for anything that has free shipping because I hate going to B&M stores. Energy is too precious.

 

DOGGLE UPDATE:  Doggle’s recovering from his ordeal rather nicely so far, feeling full of himself and trying to go for broke on his limited walks. He’s doing much better than his mama, so I take that as a great sign!

MONEY UPDATE:  Taxes were submitted and if I did everything right, we should be getting a rather large refund altogether. I wasn’t ready to screw around with our deductions from last year without having done a tax year as married filing jointly yet. Now that I have a single year under my belt, and waiting to see the IRS process it without hassle and quietly (fingers crossed, salt tossed, whatever), I may make some adjustments to our money.

I’m increasing his retirement contributions, definitely, to make up for my lack of a fund right now. I’m pretty sure we’re over the eligibility for ROTHs now but I’m not 100% certain so when I have some energy, that’s another thing to check. We may be able to increase his contributions to just max him out. I take over a different payment for him to balance the take-home cash availability since we don’t have time to deal with changing banks for the moment. Fair enough for both of us right now.

More plotting later ….

September 17, 2012

Boundaries, respect, and righting some wrongs: A crappy conversation

There is definitely something to be said for setting boundaries.

I had plans, it seemed like so many plans for this weekend but they really boiled down to getting a huge list of work done because they really needed doing.

Instead, as I’ve heard it termed, I got VolunTold for a duty that I was very displeased to be set up with. I can’t decide if my favorite part was that I wasn’t even consulted or if it was that it triggered one of the worst episodes of physical pain I’ve felt in months.  After all, it was just assumed that since I was probably going to be around, I would deal with it.

Family was in town and instead of kenneling their semi-crazed, oversized, attention-starved pet that couldn’t stay with them in their arranged accommodation, they brought him to our place where, the last time he was left inside, despite being housebroken for his entire life, he peed a pee the size of the Great Salt Lake. But since everyone else had plans for the whole weekend “except for me” because I was “only” working from home, I was responsible for him.

Within minutes of arrival, he starting racking up a body count, human and canine, of targets he lunged at, trampled or nearly trampled in his manic bids for attention or half-mad disregard for current occupation of space and the numbers just kept ticking through the weekend. Any notion of leash manners was laughable, and after two walks, I thought my wrists and elbows might be permanently dislocated in trying to keep him under control. This was great for my health, needless to say, and I was on the heavy doses of narcotics before noon on Saturday. Those meds, I normally never touch. They’re for dire situations, used once or twice a year.

I can’t really wrap my head around the entire situation.

This dog clearly needs help – he’d nearly driven me insane by Sunday, and I knew it wasn’t really his fault. I was bedridden all day Sunday, thanks to his antics having undone all the good of the previous week’s destressing, good eating and exercise.

How is it not clear that this dog has issues?  

He: can’t sit still for up to two seconds to have a leash put on, trembles so viciously that he nearly collapses in his anxiety to run when told to wait for that leash to be put on, yowls like he’s being beaten when he’s got to wait for a door to open, is willing to trample anyone and anything in sight to get out and about, barks like he’s being chased like demons if he’s been held back for a few moments from racing down a hallway.  If you even look like touching a leash, he goes off like a pinball shot out of a chute. Any movement or sound triggers a panicked scramble to his feet and a racing to your side as if he’d been stabbed in the side. If I stood up, he was in front of me, blocking any step I made, he didn’t follow me so much as paced me backwards, not allowing me even an inch of personal space to even go to the bathroom. The anxiety comes off of him in palpable waves.

In any case, this basket case was beyond my physical capabilities to care for over the weekend, much less to Dog Whisper which isn’t in my job description even were I asked to deal with that. And since I wasn’t even granted the courtesy of being asked if I was happy to dogsit in the first place, the glamorous crippling opportunity that ruined my chances of accomplishing anything between the walking, the stalking, and the constant cleaning of fur and spillage, there wasn’t a bowl of food or water he wouldn’t run through or kick over. I thought Doggle and I were the certified klutzes!

I have no idea how much it would cost to get this guy some therapy or re-training but he seriously needs some help. And no, before you ask, he’s not perturbed because he was a rescue – he was purebred and obtained from a breeder, raised from puppyhood. He also wasn’t always like this.

The point is, the responsibilities of a pet owner are myriad and owners should be prepared  for all necessary costs including health care, training, hygiene, and placement if you travel. One couldn’t possibly imagine that pets are welcome everywhere much less showing up virtually unannounced.

The cost of kenneling him should not be worth too much but I’m actually sitting here pondering the likelihood this conversation will go well and hoping the family see reason because either way, this can’t happen again. My health is not a lower priority than the dog’s putative happiness or the supposed value of keeping the “whole family” together. Of course, this isn’t my side of the family so they very well may think otherwise. Meanwhile, this is our home and while I don’t like to make difficulties there has to be at least some basic respect.

More than ever, I’m ever so grateful for Doggle, and he’s worth every penny we’ve paid,  every minute we’ve spent playing and training, and a bargain in every sense of the word.  He’s finally being more of that therapy dog I wanted, entertaining but mellow. He had his first SQUIRREL! moment this weekend and tried to chase it up a tree, actually trying to run up the tree trunk after it.  He seemed surprised when he didn’t make it.

February 6, 2012

Fighting the good fight and when bowing out is winning

I’ve been watching Jenny, The Bloggess, take the world by Symbolic Red Dress storm, and it’s been pretty amazing. The traveling red dress really did start as a red dress, and it really did travel and then it became a magical thing wherein people took the idea and began donating red dresses and all manner of “red dresses” of all shapes, sizes and colors, and offering their services as photographers and generally empowering one another to become stronger people in one way or another.

It’s a pretty cool story.

And most recently, in all of the furor, Jenny was offered a finalist’s slot for a Health Activist Award.  She said: No.

As someone who feels like there are always about twenty different battles to fight or causes to support or banners to uphold, where it’s hard to make the choice that’s true to yourself and your strength, I felt there was something incredibly smart and good about that “No”.  It wasn’t meant to be, it was just honest. And these days, there are so few people who are willing to do something that could be uncomfortable but honest that I’m impressed by it.

She was willing to forgo an honor and the spotlight because she didn’t feel able to do the things required in order to get the goods. She didn’t pitch a fit, she didn’t use her platform to foment, in fact, she used it to explain why she was begging off, rather apologetically.

“I’m not sure if i was chosen because of my rheumatoid arthritis or my mental illness issues but the latter sort of keeps me from doing web chats or phone calls or any of that. My anxiety is just too strong right now for me to take on anything else. But I’m so honored. If you’d rather give it to someone less crazy than me though I totally understand. I just have to take care of myself a bit more and that means saying no when I want to say yes. I hope you understand.”

Really, how can you not smile at that?

In the end, she won the award anyway so begging off made no difference to the result but she did preserve her strength and her sanity which were really truly necessary and what was to be, was.

It’s a really nice reminder to me that we all have limited time, space and energy. We all, especially us spoonies, have to be aware of it and be smarter about how we choose to spend any of those things. The external stuff matters but how much we let it affect our choices is really up to us and we should remember that the outside world goes on as it will as we continue our personal journeys.

In the wider world, the need to earn a living to live the life we imagine requires that we make choices to grow and build but sometimes, we have to say no to create space for our lives. There’s such beauty in learning the wisdom of saying “thank you, but no” and learning when it’s right to say it.

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