May 21, 2008
The insurance policy has been rewritten, and the remainder of the last policy’s premium has been refunded to my credit card already. Whoop! It’s offset the entire balance on that card, with just under $300 left over as a credit on the card. This billing period ends on the 27th, and I don’t have any other bills (expected ones, anyway) to put on it, so I should be able to recoup about $200 or more to put towards my gas/groceries credit card. Squee!
April 16, 2008
I’ve been spending a lot of time with coupled people lately: newlyweds, married-for-three-years, expecting, family planning, long-term relationships, the works. It’s a little intimidating, truth be told, because it constantly reminds me of where I am in my life and relationship, or where I’m not. Or maybe “intimidating” is not the word I’m looking for, perhaps what I mean is “unsettling.”
In any case, that leads to my pondering how other people juggle their personal needs versus couple needs. Considering how difficult it is to carve out time for friends when busy with work and home priorities, I often wonder if their together time is also adversely affected. Does the romance get prioritized above all, or does it get pushed below the surface because it’s been subsumed into a category of personal life that has to wait?
This resonates even more strongly when BoyDucky and I try to schedule time to see each other. Figuring out when we’ve time to see each other, much less romantic getaways, is no joke when every weekend is struck off the calendar because of a litany of other obligations. There’s also definitely a need for us to balance the costs of an LDR and seeing each other by keeping dates during our visits low-key. Communication, in the meantime, via calls, emails or I love you letters keeps the wheels turning.
At the other end of the spectrum, my friend lives with his girlfriend, and I keep hearing that she constantly feels as if he doesn’t spend enough time with her. They live together! He doesn’t go out without her, ever, and she drives him to and from the train station. I can’t fathom a couple being more together. It may be that her expectations are simply misunderstood, or just too high, but regardless of rightness or wrongness, they’ve got to balance each other’s needs just as much as anyone else in a relationship.
It’s a bit of food for thought. How does one get from *here* in a relationship to that point where you’re ready to be committed, to live with another person, for the rest of your life and make it work? The path’s different for everyone, so I’m sure there’s no one answer, but it’d be great if there were a few more signs along the way about whether to turn off, or go straight for another ten miles!
March 25, 2008
Driving to the bank and to the mall after work yesterday, I actually listened to the commercials on the radio instead of tuning them out as usual. This might have been because the Hyundai commercial unexpectedly had a cameo by Larry Winget, and inadvertently, highlighted my ambivalence about the state of our economy.
The commercial went something like this:
Narrator kid: I could save all sorts of money buying a Hyundai! I could use that money and buy a trampoline! Or a [something else ridiculous that I’ve forgotten].
Larry Winget: That’d be stupid. You should use that money to pay down your debt, or save.
Narrator kid: Aw. That’s true, but it’s not nearly as fun as my ideas.
Voiceover: Voices in your head might sound something like Larry Winget, author of You’re Broke Because You Want To Be, and with the special Hyundai sales event, you can actually have a choice of what to do with the money you’ve saved!
That commercial was quickly followed up by an ad for cheaptickets.com: another spend to save shill. Of course all radio commercials are selling something, but it was ironic that they are also reflective of our nationwide dichotomous dialogue about the economy and how to cure what ails us:
Spend! We’re facing a recession, so we need to spend our way out of it
But Save! The cost of living has skyrocketed, and don’t have money for luxuries. People’ll really get in trouble if they lose their jobs!
But, spend! So we’ll give them a fat check, and they should spend it so people can keep their jobs, and the economy can grow again!
But no, save! Because we have a negative savings rate, and that’s very bad!
Ugh, no wonder our economic policy seems to be all over the map. Giving out money, spending $42 million to tell us all about it, watching the subprime market go nuts and then bailing them out, dropping the interest rates which feels like punishment for us savers. I know that I’ve got a fairly tenuous grasp of economics in general, and I’m reacting emotionally, but seriously, it seems like there is an awful lot of flailing about in trying to fix what’s broken, and I have to wonder how much of that is an inability to identify the problems, and a moderate, reasonable course of action.
January 31, 2008
My grandma passed away yesterday. I may or may not be rushing back to Vietnam for the funeral, if we can make it.
Hence, the lack of post.
January 24, 2008
I was idly sitting at my laptop, pecking away at some keys and rifling through some clutter on my desk when I happened across an envelope wedged between my tape dispenser and Lone Wolf comic book. It was an envelope from work, so I thought that maybe I’d forgotten to send out a rebate for Walgreens or something, and I’d just stuck it in a used envelope.
*peek* Oooooh!
I was supposed to lend MaDucky $300 two weeks ago, but didn’t remember to go to the bank to get it. Actually, I just didn’t deposit $120 worth of cash and planned to withdraw the remaining $180. I forgot to do that and just paid the bill electronically for her. And then forgot all about the original $120 in cash! Man! I must be losing my mind. But that’s awesome! Another $120 towards those bills.
*yay*
January 21, 2008
and I shouldn’t whine about it being unfair. I promise I’m trying to keep a positive outlook despite all the turmoil of late.
I’m just worried.
I worry about letting my brother come home to live. I can’t trust him to clean up after himself and not run up all the bills. I can’t trust him to treat my parents right. I can’t trust him to behave in the house. I can’t trust him. Period.
I worry about not letting him come home. He says he has nowhere else to go.
I worry about my mom. She’s so confused half the time, and we never know which half it’s going to be. She can’t eat well, sleep well, and insists on trying to work. I can’t “ground” her, she’s my mom! BTW, E.C., getting her not to drive has really been a combination of a guilt trip (I worry so much about your driving, we can’t afford to lose you, we can’t afford for you to have an accident serious or not, etc.) and making sure that everyone around her knows that she’s not allowed to drive so we have to plan ahead to make sure that everyone’s got rides
December 21, 2007
The recurring theme of MY turn to be “roasted” at the Christmas lunch was: work ethic. How hard I work. How MUCH I work. How WELL I work. How much I should be remembering to have ME time amidst all that work, because if I dropped dead tomorrow, the office would just have to replace me and move.
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