About sixteen years ago, I met him for the first time. My trainwreck sibling brought home this adorable puppy he had no business adopting because he had not one thing in his life that wasn’t a mess. I was furious at my sibling – he didn’t even take care of himself, how could he drag
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July 29, 2019
This vacation was desperately needed but the timing was awful for me, for several reasons. I won’t get into all of them, just that the worst was that I was going through a terrible horrible no good very bad fibro flare up the entire time we were gone.
It sucked.
By the second day I decided to look at it this way: If I had to be in excruciating pain, at least it was in absolute luxury, where most of us had not much else to do but eat, drink, swim and be merry. I still had to work but it was minimal and that meant that I could take naps almost every day. That didn’t help my recovery, something was driving that flare up and I couldn’t put my finger on it, but it did mean that I was able to survive and actually enjoy parts of it with my family. If I’d been home, I would have had to work long days, cook meals (or we’d do take out), get JB to bed, all the usual parenting things we share, as normal. PiC did all the parenting on this trip so that I could rest and survive and he didn’t mind one iota.
This trip was for PiC – it was a reunion for his side. When I agreed to go, I accepted that due to the tastes of our travel companions, we’d be treating this as a once in a LONG time luxury vacation. I was pleasantly surprised to find that they were ok about keeping down a variety of costs while over indulging in others. It balanced well enough that we didn’t go over the $3000 mental (!!) marker I had in mind for how high this could go. I did my absolute best to bring the flight costs down and we economized as much as we could without forcing everyone else to be cheap. It was definitely still both expensive and the priciest trip I’ve been on in a very long time but he was really happy that we took it and we had some amazing views. It was almost surreal – they were so gorgeous.
It was the level of activity I would have wanted for a vacation even if I wasn’t in pain – lots of poolside hanging out and lots of food, a little adventuring to paddle around beaches and to see a really weird tree, great weather. It is possible that the heat and humidity made the pain worse but it felt great otherwise. (more…)
July 26, 2019
This is my weekly list of things that were good this week, even if they weren’t all unadulteratedly good things. Please do share your good things in the comments!
1. Friday: JB received a gift of a new Star Wars coloring book and it’s a beauty. This is going to be great to either keep zir busy or for our Sunday arts and craft time.
2. Saturday: I walked so much yesterday my feet were about to revolt but I made some good decisions about bedtime and medications (I assume) and was able to walk again today. Woo! This year has been all about people watching and collecting stickers, pictures, and temporary tattoos.
3. Sunday: We found a tick on Sera (gross!). The good news is I spotted it early, it hadn’t gotten any blood, we were able to get it off safely and JB got to squish zir first tick. Milestones!
4. Monday: We’ve had a lot of fun in the past week but I miss my bed and I miss my home so I will be glad to be done with this trip.
I’m also fully embracing my “f*ck it, I don’t care” mentality towards the people in my life I can’t ditch and bother me.
5. Tuesday: My head is fit to burst today, and half a dozen joints are swollen like marshmallows. I made a call to force them to do fine motor control chores and after three hours of misery, the swelling went down!
6. Wednesday: I felt categorically terrible (sleep deprivation) today but I powered through to: clear 150 emails, do two loads of laundry, take care of the dogs, challenge an incorrect bill, reschedule a vet appointment, pay a correct bill, make a new to do list, and eat lunch. Getting things done is the distraction I need from the feeling horrible bit of the day. Also I needed clean clothes and to pay the bills.
7. Thursday: It’s been a SLOG but I’m thrilled that I’ve gotten a ton of my backlog cleared away and I’m even getting back into the dinner making groove. Weeks like this, it’s hard not to daydream of a day when we can travel and not come back to work. I’ve also started tweeting my little bitty decluttering efforts to keep myself motivated and moving: #TinyDeclutter
:: How was your week? What were your good things?
July 25, 2019
“Ravioli” starfish
Coffee crisis
Oops. Little known tidbit: I did multi-lingual wedding invitations for our ‘do and misspelled a couple words.
Parenting strategy: I wonder if JB likes cars enough for this analogy to work or if we can come up with a similar one. I actually have been doing something a little different – when I discipline, I also ask JB what ze could have done differently and after months of that, when I least expected it, ze offered up the “what I should have done was…”
I love this moment that Moriah Joy has, realizing where they are now, and her mental shift. It took me six years into my money and blogging journey to come to that moment myself.
US birth rates are at lowest levels in 32 years. I had to look up why not exactly replacing a generation matters when we’re also concerned about too many people and not enough resources on a planet that’s been strained by human use. It’s a weird dichotomy. I have friends with 3-5 kids and also a lot of friends without any or who stopped at 1, across spectrum of regions, ages, and races. I assumed it would average out to an equal replacement rate.
Oh, of course “breakfast is the most important meal of the day” was a lobbyist thing.
Your Professional Decline Is Coming (Much) Sooner Than You Think. I had no data on it but this is kind of line for what I was expecting for myself: “But the odds are he won’t be able to. The data are shockingly clear that for most people, in most fields, decline starts earlier than almost anyone thinks.
According to research by Dean Keith Simonton, a professor emeritus of psychology at UC Davis and one of the world’s leading experts on the trajectories of creative careers, success and productivity increase for the first 20 years after the inception of a career, on average. So if you start a career in earnest at 30, expect to do your best work around 50 and go into decline soon after that.”
July 22, 2019
Prognostications
There’s this thing my family does. When a new baby is just big enough to sit up and grab things, there’s an age ceremony where they’re all dressed up and given a tray of symbolic things to choose from: a comb, a mirror, a wrapped chunk of mung bean dessert, a pen, several other things. Whatever they grab and hold onto predicts their future interests and life path.
Obviously this is a bunch of hooey but it’s a fun little tradition. We didn’t do it for JB because at 3 months or whatever the appropriate time was, I was too exhausted to even think about it.
But the sociocultural obsession with your future life path is one that dogs our steps every step of the way. A kid with an interest in writing Must Be Destined to be a writer, if someone enjoys art they Must Be Destined to be an artist or no! An architect! And so on. There’s no ability to just enjoy the kid enjoying something for the sake of doing the thing. I remembered being exasperated by the constant predictions and the need for every spark of interest to become something productive. It bothered me endlessly and yet somehow I eventually became a person obsessed with efficiency and productivity. I don’t understand paying money to have fun, I think hobbies should be things that can be monetized (for myself).
As an intentional parent, I see that urge replicated in myself and I challenge myself to shut that voice up and just wait to see what kind of person JB can be, free of the endless predictions and expectations.
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July 19, 2019
This is my weekly list of things that were good this week, even if they weren’t all unadulteratedly good things. Please do share your good things in the comments!
1. Friday: I’m surveying my office. I’m making good progress! I can see the floor! I still need to get rid of, organize, or find homes for five large bins’ worth of stuff all while fending off the acquisition of any more stuff except for my coveted digital piano (someday). Can I do this?? Maybe! There’s also a ripple effect here – to achieve the elimination of those five boxes, I’ve got to organize more than just my office because some of this stuff should just be rehomed out of this particular area, not necessarily our lives. That will be good. It’s inspired me to cherry pick small areas to spot clean in anticipation of the big cleaning binges and it all helps set the groundwork for a really satisfying clear out.
2. Saturday: I’ve only been talking about wanting a robot vacuum for three or four years, so of course we finally just got around to talking about why I want it, why he doesn’t and where we stand on the matter as a family. After discussing my whys, PiC is on board! Now I just need my budget to get on board 😆 I’m going to be stalking the sales for a good pet-fur-geared robot vacuum. Let me know if you have one and love your model?
3. Sunday: JB had a rare cousins day, with PiC, and I got to work for as long as I could AND lay down for some rest. Everyone was happy except for that bit where everyone was still awake at 10 pm.
4. Monday: my early riser woke up at 6, gave me zir blanket to snuggle, then fell back asleep for another couple hours. Much needed rest for all. Why can’t ze do this on weekends??
5. Tuesday: Auntie broke out an age appropriate set of softball equipment and JB was FULLY into it. It was also lots of gentle fun for us adults though there was more running after the ball than I had planned for, except when I threw the ball overhand and my wrist abhorred that.
6. Wednesday: Homemade mango salsa (not by me) on my eggs this morning. YUM. I also got pointers on how to make my own. I will need to try it.
7. Thursday: What. A. DAY! We did “and beyond” walking (JB parlance meaning: way too much), saw many-many cool things and finished up with the most amazing zucchini lasagna I have ever eaten in my life. I had three helpings. There’d be regret but it was That Good.
:: How was your week?
July 18, 2019
Moriah Joy is leaving California.
What does your money want? I like to think mine likes to fly out into the world and grow.
What’s your love language? I don’t know what my other ones are but my top one is Acts of Service.
On that note, what’s your Enneagram type? I’m a 2 (healthy level), 3 (healthy level), and 6 (average level).
Are you too modest about your financial success? Are you comfortable sharing your financial accomplishments? Do you share offline, or online, or not at all? I almost never share anything offline.
If earning money (in doing the work itself or at all) wasn’t a factor, what would you be doing? Tanja talks separating work and money.
Orcs, Britons, and the Martial Race Myth, Part I: A Species Built for Racial Terror
Orcs, Britons, and the Martial Race Myth, Part II: They’re Not Human
Caroline of Brunswick: The Scandalous Story Of Britain’s First Tabloid Princess
This post makes my heart go UGHHHH. I am so not ok with people having keys to my house if they are prone to popping by without warning and don’t ask permission first.
July 15, 2019
Walking the dogs, I see a lot of open garage doors. Sometimes, there’s a whole living room set up in there. People hang out enjoying the breeze (or the fog). The rest of time, the garages are storage units. Once in a long while, I spot a car parked, and it might be covered with stuff too, but mostly they’re packed to the gills with boxes and piles and more piles.
It’s positively nerve-wracking to see people threading their way through the 6 inch path left between stacks piled right up to the ceiling. It looks like the whole thing is going to come tumbling down and crush them. It very nearly did, last week. The stacks of stuff atop the boat that clearly hasn’t been out on the water for quite some time because it couldn’t possibly be extracted from the garage were teetering precariously as the lady reached for something just beyond her fingertips. I didn’t want to be a creepy stranger though, since we don’t know each other, so I walked on, holding my breath for her.
It made me reflect.
That’s so much time and money sitting there. Time digging through your piles. Money re-buying things you can’t find and probably already have. Energy and psychic energy. I feel like that stuff preys on your mind. It does on mine, at least. Every time I look at something not being used, the money we paid flashes before my eyes: $100 for that bike we don’t use, $200 for that camera lens, $300 for my bike I’ve never ridden. It’s not a huge list but each thing and the associated opportunity cost makes me batty. One Frugal Girl did this to herself on purpose to train herself out of buying things, it really works!
And yet, we all have a tendency to hoard here. I’m as guilty as anyone else, with my obsession with reusing containers (and really nice note cards and really nice pens and a really good zipper pouch). Some of it stems from not having stuff when I was younger, I keep wanting to fill all the needs. Luckily, I also don’t want to feel crushed under the weight of my belongings, wasting time and money on storing things that just sit there moldering away. I want to feel free and enjoy our space. Emphasis on having space. So I embrace that feeling as much as I can.
Generally, we hold the clutter to a static volume so it’s not growing by much but that’s not good enough. Seeing what can happen if we don’t keep working at this decluttering, relentlessly, is a heck of a kick in the pants to get back on it.
I’ve been staring down (errrrr…. ignoring) my own piles in the garage and the office because a) I keep running out of time and energy and b) it’s really hard to get rid of things with a preschooler running around trying to reclaim everything. I need to tackle at least a box a week if I want to get on top of this but I’ve got to squeeze it into daycare hours.
Stress cleaning works well for me and I put it to good use last week: framed photos that I’m not ready to put up were all piled into one place, two boxes were emptied, piles of magazines were recycled, and a handful of books were set aside for donation. There are seven more boxes in the office and seven more boxes in the garage but two boxes and random floor clutter eliminated is progress!
We’re not trying to be totally minimalist. I remember someone tweeting that their house could burn down and they wouldn’t replace most of what they owned. That’s not us or how we think of comfort. We’re striving for a happy medium of having most of the things we need plus a few things we want.
Speaking of wants, S’s career break post brought up my list of wants. I don’t think it’s a secret that despite all the work I do to reduce clutter, I still crave things like a magpie. Not a thieving one. But definitely an avaricious one. It’s nice to get it out of my system because most of these wants boil down to money and having a nearly endless supply of it, set against my desire not to be found buried under my things like the worst episode of hoarders.
- This adorable Captain Marvel tutu dress. I barely ever wear dresses and I have never in my life owned a tutu but here I am, wanting one because this is so awesome. (This only comes in kid’s sizes)
- Refills for my Uni-Ball Signo 207 Retractable Gel Pen, 0.38mm Ultra-Micro Point. They don’t seem to sell refills anywhere. I hate the waste of just tossing pens when they run out of ink.
- A new ultralight laptop.
- A new backpack.
- Two beautiful brightly colored tablecloths for both the regular and expanded-with-a-leaf sizes.
- A water pitcher for serving guests so I don’t have to walk back and forth to the kitchen filling two glasses at a time over and over. I will have already put miles in cooking and serving before we sit down.
- A better organizational set of baskets for my office. I bought several baskets on sale from Michael’s dirt cheap two Christmases ago but they’re not quite enough for my needs once I gave some to JB and the dogs for their toys.
- A digital piano (which isn’t allowed until I have cleared my entire office of all unnecessary things. So maybe never.)
- All of the books: Seanan McGuire’s, Sabaa Tahir’s, Daniel Jose Older’s, Terry Pratchett’s, Cassandra Khaw’s, N.K. Jemisin’s, Nnedi Okarafor’s, Zen Cho’s. All of them. A glorious library full of books that won’t hurt my hands, a hammock, and a fabulous cushy chair in which to read.
- A group vacation with my closest friends where I’m actually on vacation.
- A three week vacation in Japan with people we enjoy and that are good with JB.
I’m working on channeling my wanting for things into only very useful things we’ll use for many years but it needs some work.
:: Are you comfortable with how much you own?