October 5, 2013
KHAAAANNNNNNNN!!!!
Yes, we just watched Star Trek Into Darkness.
How many ways can one procrastinate? Today alone I’ve: designed new address labels unnecessarily, read personal emails and wrote a few back, tried 2 new recipes (roasted beets and braised baby bok choy), activated a new credit card, organized and labeled files in my Administrative Stuff box, started planning Thanksgiving dinner (we’re hosting for the first time!). Then ate 2 ice cream cones and pondered what was for dinner.
Hence, the beets. They are surprisingly gorgeous when cut and peeled. I’ve only ever seen them a solid red, and this makes me wonder whether I did something wrong, bought the wrong kind, or how the beets I’ve eaten before were prepared. On the other hand, baby bok choy is a much-loved vegetable so that’s familiar at least, even if I failed to learn how to cook it well into adulthood. This recipe was a-ma-zing.
Also I did a lot of work, but I’m avoiding the Big Important Thing. Wait, there are 2 Big Important Things. It would be nice if I snapped out of this silly avoidance of things I don’t feel like working on. Still these moods are good reminders that I’m only human and can’t take on everything in the world. It’s a good thing I didn’t go back to school though, I can make myself be productive and check things off a list but studying would be a dismal failure.
To be perfectly honest, part of my restlessness has nothing to do with not wanting to work – I’m perfectly happy with my work and work situation. It’s just that, at the moment, my spirit wants to be doing something else. Creating. Making things that are pretty or useful or interesting … odd for me, really. I’m not a creative person. I’m not an artist and with my slightly shaky hands I’m not crafty. So there are really only a few ways I can channel this desire for creation: on the computer or in the kitchen.
I’ve had a long run of making address labels for the wedding invitations but I think we all know you can only have so many address labels before it’s ridiculous.
Recipes:
Roasted Beets
12 beets
3 tablespoons good olive oil
1 1/2 teaspoons fresh thyme leaves, minced*
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons raspberry vinegar*
Juice of 1 large orange*
*Skipped ingredients. They were still good.
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
Remove the tops and the roots of the beets and peel each one with a vegetable peeler. Cut the beets in 1 1/2-inch chunks. (Small beets can be halved, medium ones cut in quarters, and large beets cut in eighths.)
Place the cut beets on a baking sheet and toss with the olive oil, thyme leaves, salt, and pepper. Roast for 35 to 40 minutes, turning once or twice with a spatula, until the beets are tender. Remove from the oven and immediately toss with the vinegar and orange juice. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and serve warm.
Braised Baby Bok Choy
1 cup chicken broth
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
3/4 lb baby bok choy, trimmed
1/2 teaspoon Asian sesame oil
Bring broth and butter to a simmer in a deep large heavy skillet. Arrange bok choy evenly in skillet and simmer, covered, until tender, about 5 minutes. Transfer bok choy with tongs to a serving dish and keep warm, covered.
Boil broth mixture until reduced to about 1/4 cup, then stir in sesame oil and pepper to taste. Pour mixture over bok choy.
Beet Greens with BACON
1 pound beet greens
1 strip of thick cut bacon, chopped (or a tablespoon of bacon fat)
1/4 cup chopped onion
1 large garlic clove, minced
3/4 cup of water
1 Tbsp granulated sugar
1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1/6 cup of cider vinegar
As I cooked these, I wondered, am I going to hate this? I have no idea how much my beet greens weighed (maybe half a pound?) since I bought them atop the beets I really intended to cook but when in doubt, use bacon. I doubled the bacon and onions since I love them and just winged it. Wung it? I shouldn’t have worried. It was amazing!
1 Wash the greens in a sink filled with cold water. Drain greens and wash a second time. Drain greens and cut away any heavy stems. Cut leaves into bite-sized pieces. Set aside.
2 In a large skillet or 3-qt saucepan, cook bacon until lightly browned on medium heat (or heat 1 Tbsp of bacon fat). Add onions, cook over medium heat 5 to 7 minutes, stirring occassionally, until onions soften and start to brown. Stir in garlic. Add water to the hot pan, stirring to loosen any particles from bottom of pan. Stir in sugar and red pepper. Bring mixture to a boil.
3 Add the beet greens, gently toss in the onion mixture so the greens are well coated. Reduce heat to low, cover and simmer for 5-15 minutes until the greens are tender. Stir in vinegar. (For kale or collard greens continue cooking additional 20 to 25 minutes or until desired tenderness.)
*********
This is all well and good of course, but there comes a time you just have to get your lazy butt in gear. This comes after having spent a whole other day running errands with the burst of energy I got from sleeping a whole lot of hours and not rushing into work…..
Aiy, alright, to work!
September 30, 2013
Whether it’s an aging thing, or a post-surgical complication, Doggle is now on a chronic drug to keep him right and tight. At least he doesn’t need a chronic maintenance pain medication, that would make my heart hurt.
A 30-day supply from the vet costs 42.10, or $505.20/year. That’s a good chunk of his annual medical allowance! So off I went, online shopping as is my wont, and found that my original drug supplier (1800PetMeds) had it for a good $51.86 for a 2 month supply. A 20% savings with an 8% cashback from Fatwallet is good, but I got it in my head to try shopping around anyway. And lo, I found two competing suppliers offering the 2-month supply for $34.
DrsFosterSmith has been around for a while and I’ve never heard of the National Pet Pharmacy but I did my due diligence.
NPP just seemed a bit ridiculous in that I couldn’t get a straight answer from their FAQs how they work and their policies suggested that not only do you have to mail in a written script (slooowwww), they’d also need to get an additional approval from the vet. Delay+delay = annoyance. Even though their price was nearly a dollar less and they didn’t charge shipping (total savings of $7) than DFS, buying from a place that couldn’t get its policies written out clearly wasn’t appealing.
DFS offered free shipping for orders over $49. They charge the same per pill price between the 2 month supply and 3 month supple volume, but while it wasn’t cheaper per pill to buy a 3-month supply, the greater amount did get me within $1.50 of the free shipping limit. That means Doggle gets a new rawhide. If I’m going to pay extra, it’s going to be for a thing, not for shipping thank you very much.
In the end, we’re paying just $51 for a 3-month supply of medications plus a new rawhide, rather than $128 and a handful of free treats whenever we pick up another bottle of meds. 60% savings? Yes please.
While I spend a good amount of time working on maximizing my income within my energy limits, it still behooves me to do a little bit extra work to keep recurring costs down. A $300 annual savings for an extra 20 minutes of work is a fair enough ROI.
September 27, 2013
I’ve always used my own health insurance/other benefits through my own employer, but when PiC and I got married, it made more sense to go and add myself to his instead. His (health/dental/vision) insurance was more comprehensive and “premium” for either the same or less money.
We never went with the really premium PPOs, the HMO was good enough for the past few years, but we kept an eye on that as a cost we’d accept later on if we could find a really good chronic pain specialist elsewhere or if we started a family and they had better coverage or better healthcare providers.
We’ve both been using his employer’s health benefits this past year while I worked a new job at a smaller company without healthcare; I’d negotiated an increase in salary contingent on my continuing to use PiC’s benefits which would go away if I started using the company benefits (when we had them).
The company’s notified us that they’re now going to start charging for us dead-weight partners. We’ll be charged $600-900/year for my previous free ride and while their explanation sort of makes sense on the surface, that rankles a little bit when I look at my budget.
*grump*
It does make sense I suppose. I’ve worked for a few other employers who actually paid us back a nominal amount for using our spouse’s insurance, or for not using theirs, basically. I didn’t take advantage of PiC’s insurance until recently so I didn’t benefit from that until recently either.
The amount that I negotiated was multiple times more than the amount that we’ll be charged so it’s covered, in principle, but I’d been looking forward to saving more than just 25% of our salaries plus retirement next year. Between this, and the reduced FSA limits, health care just keeps getting more expensive.
With my chronic stuff, with Mom’s health history and horrible experiences with healthcare as an uninsured cash-only patient, I’ve always pushed myself to work a full time job with solid employers in order to stay covered by an employer plan. Despite the increases that I resent, I’m grateful that we’re still in a position to have relatively affordable health care, all things considered.
Does anyone else expect a hike in costs and know what they are?
September 24, 2013
Tomorrow is our inaugural session of the alcohol and finance meeting wherein PiC and I sit down once a week with a glass of wine or beer to discuss the state of our union as regards money, financial accounts, and things to do going forward.
He likes wine (alcohol) and I love money (a lot) so it made sense to combine the two to dull blunt rein in my overwhelming enthusiasm while making it less onerous for him.
You wouldn’t think that we’d need to schedule time to manage our finances after this many years together (nearly a decade of togetherness, a couple years of being married) but we do. Or we need something like it that works well for us.
We managed a marathon session creating our 2013 budget last Super Bowl Sunday, and without drawing blood on either side!, but I’d much rather get our affairs in healthy working order without falling back on such a dramatically exhausting effort.
This is an experiment to see if we can meet on a good middle ground from which we best manage our money without driving us both crazy. It’s my passion, not his, and while we generally share common goals, our ideas of how and when to reach them diverge sharply.
Even as we plan our “wedding”/reception, I’m reminded that marriage is not an opportunity to change the other person. We influence each other, we rub off on each other, but equally, we bounce off each other. It might be for better or for worse, but how it feels is a whole other ballgame.
A saner person might question whether starting this weekly meeting while we are planning a major event and running like hamsters with work. To that I say, what better time to start a good habit? If we work at this in bite-sized chunks, it’ll be more likely to take root.
And this is the point of all of that. There’s little to no point spending time and money on the wedding day if we’re not spending time and energy nurturing important aspects of the marriage itself.
I don’t know how this will go but I’m hoping for the best and looking forward to making inroads into clearing up our money landscape. It’s been one of the things in marriage that makes me feel complicated: finding a balance between respecting each other’s autonomy while charting a roadmap that works for our family. As I said on Twitter chatting w/@nofearingthemon and @singlema, it’s very much like a waltz. We take steps forward, backward, forward, backward, all the while learning to listen and communicate to the other. Toes have been stepped on in the making of this marriage.
Tomorrow’s agenda
An Overview: identify and log all our existing financial accounts (banking, investing, credit cards, shared/individual).
Log the accounts, amounts, and beneficiaries.
Next week’s agenda
We’ll decide from the overview sheet which accounts still need beneficiaries, need changing, closing or combining.
Our finances may be combined but we don’t intend to shut down all our individual accounts.
I’ll be recording our progress, of course.
September 20, 2013
I’m maintaining a fourteen-tab spreadsheet since I’ve taken over the bulk of the planning; this way, I can keep good records of everything I’ve worked on and easily refer PiC to whatever tab to either make a decision or record his part of the work. It’s unfathomable that this level of spreadsheeting doesn’t solve all problems, I think it should, but it’s a start.
It’s a huge weight off my mind that the invitations have mostly gone out since we skipped any Save the Dates. That wasn’t without its fights of course. Dad insisted that since we agreed to invite some family, after several hours of tense and cranky discussion, the invitations had to be bilingual. So I had to start all over again, redesigning the whole thing AND figuring out how to write bilingually. Awesome. Sank another ten hours into that project but they’re done and while they’re not amazing, I’m proud of them. I’m not looking forward to hearing what he has to say about them, though, which is why I still haven’t sent him his batch to send out for the family. Strategy: Avoidance. Not my usual style but 5% avoidance + 95% directness is about good enough.
I’ve had offers of help from a small group of people and in a complete about-face, I’m accepting them. I’m sure it’ll make a big difference as we get closer. It’s not meant to be a huge stressy bonanza but it is stressful making all the arrangements and trying to make sure that it’s set up in a way that our guests will enjoy and have fun with. If nothing else: so much work.
As much as I know my own mind and just want this to be a simple and fun thing, there are aspects of cultural tradition that I want to include and there are others that my dad wants us to include and navigating that negotiation gives me heartburn. It seems obvious to other people that if I’m paying, I decide, but I defy any and all of y’all to be the first one to break with more than 100 years of tradition and not have to take anything your family wants into account.
In my family, you do exactly what everyone else has done, period. The only differences are trivial, like how much make up you cake on .. wait, no, that’s not true… oh yes, the quality of your restaurant’s food when you do a Chinese banquet. Because you always do it banquet style. And have basically the same menus. I remember knowing precisely what foods I would eat and in what order every time we went to a wedding when I was a kid, only one or two dishes of 8 ever varied.
So this is culture shock for both of us: the idea of compromising at all is utterly foreign to my family, while having to accommodate more than just a few parts that I care about means a 3 hour conversation for each thing and that irritates me to no end. We’re all trying but in the meantime we’re getting on each other’s nerves.
I do want to include aspects of my culture that are important but I wish my dad could be more supportive and willing to accept that this isn’t, in fact, about him. After 14 years, it can’t possibly still be a secret that I’ve been carrying the family by myself, I deserve to be treated as the adult I am, and not a showpiece.
This of course reminds me of the chauvinist language we use. Brides “take” (accept) husbands; parents “marry off” their daughters and “marry in” daughters in law; husbands actually “take” (for themselves) wives. It denies the daughter and the wife agency and is hugely annoying when that’s the crux of the arguments: no one will think you’re making a choice for your life, your parents are giving you away, so you have to do it my way because it’s about me.
Sigh. No, not exactly, but ….
Anyhow, one hilarious side effect of getting things done and sent, though: the responses and reactions. All the early responses have been texted RSVPs and one friend completely jumped feet first into the registry.
She called saying she’d found a better deal for a full set of things rather than the separate pieces that we registered for and could we please confirm that they were the same? If so, couldn’t she get the set instead?
My answer: well, yes they’re the same so that’d be fine but no, you can’t actually get them because you have already been too generous.
Her answer: LET ME DO WHAT I WANT. LET ME HAVE MY WAY.
I had to laugh at her; it was absurd that she was fake-tantruming to get her way on buying us gifts but I had to cave. Plus Twitter friends told me to hush and let her buy whatever she wants. I did, under protest, but she sounded so happy by the end of it I couldn’t feel guilty for accepting the additional gifts.
September 12, 2013
Taking a deep breath here: I’m actually making progress with the wedding planning!
This is NOT a thing I expected to be excited about, but since we committed verbally to a date, the weight of planning has felt like an opppressive weight around my neck, haranguing me to get things done. So, to work I go!
The problem with the oft-proffered PF blogger advice on cutting costs for weddings “do it in the backyard!”? We need to HAVE a yard!
So we don’t have one and while I think my aunt is funny-haha for suggesting it, I’m not trying to buy a house in SoCal so that we have a shiny new place in which to be wed. Ahem, “wed”. Knowing that while we wanted something as casual as that, we would have to pay for an actual place, we made some high-level decisions early on in this round of wedding planning.
In the spirit of priorities and keeping a reasonable budget: No save the dates, no favors, no fancy decor, no fancy invitations that’ll just get tossed out, no DJ, no big ceremony requiring an officiant, no 16 hour stress-filled day. Yes to good food, drinks, fun stuff, DIY invitations, dogs, and relaxing.
Only one of them was reversed, through very little fault of our own: it turns out that our final pick venues require the use of a professional DJ which I think sucks. I don’t want some stranger directing the activities, nor do I want “wedding activities” where I have to be the center of attention any more than absolutely necessary. But that’s my inherent distrust of strangers speaking.
We’ve been reassured that the DJ will do as we direct and I’m going to play whack a mole if he doesn’t.
So, things are getting done!
Venue, check.
Our first “final” choice that we actually visited and liked turned out to be at least $7k more than we wanted, before we hired a photographer and DJ. They didn’t tell us that an actual DJ was required until we were at the commitment stage … at which point I started backing away slowly and researching alternates. Hidden fees/poor communication? Not a vendor I want to give my money too. Good thing I did – both our brains did micro explosions when we saw the ridiculous total. Nope. Nope, that’s not happening.
I had to have logged more than 30 hours researching and comparing possible venues and their associated costs and discussing them with PiC.
Guest List, check.
(Sort of.) We came up with our own lists, divided into categories: his friends, her friends, his family, her family, mutual people.
Then I had to consult with my dad about the family guest list because I’m terrible with names and I don’t keep in touch with the elders and cousins that I grew up with and there are COMPLICATIONS shall we say.
Several hours of arguments and post-call fuming eventually culminated in his caving and agreeing to invite SOME family. *eyeroll* For the record: if you concede that we can’t possibly invite 400 people on just our side of the family, I think you have to concede that some smaller headcount of that 400 is a more reasonable way to approach the problem, not: don’t invite any of them.
Invitations, che….
PiC and I bought cardstock and envelopes on clearance, thinking we were so clever to save money that way, and it turns out that was the opposite of clever. I couldn’t print them using our home printer so now I have to go to Staples or Kinko’s, neither of whom are able to print on cardstock that’s not at least 8.5 by 11. What.
I’ve designed the invitations about 20 times. And for something that I feel like shouldn’t take more than an hour because it’s not a high priority: so many hours have been spent on this!! It’s because I’m using free photo editing software (picmonkey) which, I’m sure, is REALLY not meant for this, but it’s what I know and I just wanted to get it DONE. And now it basically is, I just have to commit to printing them.
Centerpieces, halfway there
I found really affordable vases ($1/each) that were moderately sized and will decide later whether to fill them with: candy, flowers, potted plants. Whatever works when we’re closer to the time. (Clearance Halloween candy, anyone? Is that wrong?)
Still to do
Top up the wedding site with information.
Actually print the invitations, labels, mail them.
Clothes for PiC and my dad.
Hire a photographer.
Finalize the food selections.
Make a bow tie for Doggle.
Make some arrangements for my head (hair, face).
Crafting day to create some quick and easy decor for the place.
Buy the contents for the centerpieces.
It’s very possible that I’m forgetting something but I’m operating on the assumption that if it hasn’t occurred to me now, it wasn’t that important. Let’s hope I’m right.
September 4, 2013
Well well, look at it being September already!
SingleMa had a great topic and discussion thread so I’m borrowing it for both my answers and to ask you what you thought:
1. What’s the most money you’ve ever loaned someone?
B. Did you get it back?
C. How did it turn out?
2. What’s the most money you’ve ever borrowed from someone?
B. Did you pay it back?
C. How did it turn out?
3. Based on the above experiences, what is your current philosophy on personal loans (giving or receiving)?
My Answers
1. [Stupid Alert] As an indirect loan, I’ve purchased a new vehicle for my family and my sibling was supposed to pay me back in the monthly payments. That turned out terribly and cost about $20,000. He probably managed to pay back as much as $7000? I had the paperwork for a long time but decided to get rid of it after it had long been clear I wasn’t going to get another penny out of him.
2. About $50, at most, when I didn’t have cash on hand and paid it back within days. With a couple friends, we’ll foot the bill for each other for one thing or another knowing they’ll either pay you back or get the bill for us the next time. This mostly applies to meals, though occasionally, to things like ordering from a store together to save on shipping.
3. Mostly based on getting burned time and again by my family and their bad (though mostly well intentioned) decisions, I won’t lend to anyone ever again. I’ve been asked to, and demurred, and asked to consider financial commitments that hadn’t previously been part of my plans but so far I’ve steered clear.
An additional question: Do you think your philosophy is subject to change? What would that depend on?