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
Read More
June 10, 2019
As much as losing our power irks me, I remind myself that test runs are a good thing. They help you expose the flaws in your otherwise theoretical emergency planning with minimal pain.
With storm season, the winds were glad to oblige us with a couple power outages to highlight our areas of weakness.
The first: a powerful storm blew out our power for almost 2 hours. Gas and water lines were fine but we had no heat because our furnace / thermostat runs on power and didn’t have a back-up battery. I did not know this before, good to know.
We had the basics: food, water, candles and tea lights, and a long-lasting Bic lighter. I make it a habit of using and recharging my power pack regularly so we had two full charges for our phones. JB had a tiny but incredibly bright little flashlight.
I had finished cooking dinner just a few minutes before the storm knocked us offline so we had a hot meal while we dried off after walking the dogs. Had that timing not been in our favor, I know we would have struggled along a bit to get ourselves in order on the food front. I still haven’t put together a safe non-flame heating option for our food but I’m strongly considering a set of flameless heaters. If I can find a really good set that’s not an arm and a leg, that is.
We still had gas so could have cooked in the dark if we had to, but not knowing how long power would be out made me hesitate to open the fridge any more than absolutely necessary. (more…)
June 6, 2019
The sole focus on just good things in this post isn’t working for me anymore. It was helpful in the first several posts to get myself oriented to seeing the good, but now just focusing entirely on that feels like forced cheerfulness and that doesn’t help. Pollyanna isn’t my normal mode of operation.
Having a bit of perspective here in seeing both good and bad is a better fit for my personality.
1. Friday: Trader Joe’s smoked salmon dip ($4) is a great way to get that bagel and lox taste without springing for the actual full spread of smoked salmon and capers. Since I shouldn’t be having bagels anyway, the dip on other vehicles like cucumbers is a nice way to go.
2. Saturday: I was up way too early for a Saturday but that’s good because it gave me time to prep the crockpot for dinner. We were serving pulled pork, coleslaw, and Hawaiian rolls. I think it should have cooked a little longer but overall the dinner was delicious. Sigh of relief. I’m still not great at hosting and now need to sit down and make a list of menus we should try, ahead of inviting people over.
3. Sunday: First swim lesson! I was a bundle of nerves because JB hasn’t been friends with the water lately, and though there were touch and go moments when zir reluctance looked like the lesson would be a bust, ultimately the lesson was good. Ze came out happy to have done and that’s all that matters here right now.
4. Monday: Woke up to disappointing news – a standing friend date was cancelled and that make me sadder than it should have. In my disappointment, partly because I’ve always been bad at making friends but partly because I’d looked forward to this event with those friends, I remarked to PiC: we need more friends! He later texted that he’d invited another set of parents to join us at the event instead. Proactive spouses FTW!
7. Monday: Not my finest moment but I stole a Twix from JB’s candy bucket. It was good. Terrible for me but my mood was worse and sometimes the cure has to be something that’s not good for you.
8. Tuesday: Complaining to my life Board of Directors almost always produces good results. In this case, clearly stating what has been bothering me for months lead to them making three comments that turned me right around. It’s not fixed but they helped me get my feet back on the right path and it made a world of difference. The long-simmering anger and resentment that I’ve been unable to pin down and pluck out was almost non-existent for a full 24 hours. I am hoping for long-term calm too.
9. Wednesday: I did ALL THE THINGS on this day. All of them. And I didn’t keel over. Calling that a win.
10. Thursday: JB received a lovely gift of books and ze is at least as excited as I am to read them. 😆
Lots of ups and downs this week – cross your fingers I can find the resources I need to make my life run a little more smoothly!
:: Tell me some of your good things!
‘The Sun Is Also A Star’ Author Nicola Yoon Wants To Normalize Relationships Like Her Own
This is, oddly enough, how I think about parenting: what time remains to me to spend with JB (or our dogs). I wonder if this is a side effect of losing so many loved ones in our teens and 20s.
Many Americans Will Need Long-Term Care. Most Won’t be Able to Afford It. We have LTC for PiC right now through his work but we don’t have anything for me yet. We should do something about that but I’m kind of exhausted by adding hefty bills to our expenses.
This roadrunner!!
A nice little piece on Randall Park and the origin of Always Be My Maybe, now out on Netflix. I’ve heard many happy reviews of it!
On the less happy but so important note: Ava DuVernay’s When They See Us is a powerful series, also out on Netflix. Bree Newsome’s thread on this.
I didn’t do it for the feature or recognition but I’m so so happy that our relatively small gift made such a big difference.
I find this sort of story on kinkeeping that ignores the parent to grandparent relationship to be rather exhausting: “Thus, you hear sorrowful tales like this one of a 72-year-old grandmother whose name I am not using to prevent further discord. She moved to Southern California last year to help her son and his wife with their new baby, her first grandchild. “I expected I’d be hands-on, babysitting in the evenings,” she told me.
It hasn’t worked out that way. Her daughter-in-law, whom she didn’t know well before her pregnancy, “did not want me to be close,” she said, and didn’t accept gifts and offers of help.”
One, I don’t know how it makes sense to uproot your life to be near a new grandchild if you haven’t developed any closeness with one of the new parents, and particularly the one you’re not related to. I don’t understand that presumption. I understand wanting to share this new stage of life, as a parent, but if I wasn’t close to the new grandparent, I think it would be equally presumptuous to assume they’d want to care for my new child. Two, birthing a child didn’t automatically make me want to be any closer to anyone who I hadn’t grown close to before the kid was born. I welcomed it when it happened organically, but basing it solely on the existence of the kid made as much sense to me as basing adult/mom friendships on the existence of kid friendships. It doesn’t work like that for me. I know it does for other people but why is there is automatic assumption that we’re to welcome everyone with open arms and zero discernment? Personally, in that DIL’s shoes, I’d have been quite wary of the new grandmother and her assumptions.
We all have bad days
June 3, 2019
On Money
Income
Our primary income comes from our full time jobs. We earn money on the side, including tiny cash flow we don’t touch from an investment property and investing in dividend stocks.
Our side income comes from Swagbucks, rare sales on Poshmark, cash back sites (Ebates, Mr.Rebates), and tracking physical activity through Achievement (my introduction to it). Some posts have affiliate links that pay a tiny commission to keep the blog running.
The long term goal is to replace our day job income in case my health prevents me from working.
***
Dividend income. We received $514.98 in dividends this month. Our year to date net dividends are $1,628.42. Our current monthly average dividend income is $325. I currently reinvest all our dividends into new stocks.
(more…)
May 31, 2019
1. Friday: On the cusp of a three day weekend and I’m not having a panic over how much work is still left to be done. It’s still a TON but I’m unnaturally calm about it. I do plan to work on the weekend but that’s not usually a calm plan.
2. Saturday: We cuddled a newborn and enjoyed a half deli lunch with friends.
3. Sunday: JB was pleasant 95% of the day. That is unprecedented! I like to think it’s because we did a good mix of play / chores / play / chores throughout the day so that ze also felt like ze was getting an adequate amount of free time. We did a combination of JB+Mom time (while Dad did his thing), family time, JB+Dad time (while I did my work) and then leftovers for dinner.
4. Monday: PiC proposed we take JB to one of those entertainment centers that have an enormous padded jungle gym / maze / tubes / everything you can imagine places. It’s the pricey one down the road where we couldn’t possibly afford a birthday party (starts at $600) but the open play is $12. Having just the one kid makes this seem reasonable, ze can play til ze drops. At least that was the hope. I worked while ze played, then took a break and played too. Ze even took an hour long nap after.
5. Tuesday: JB was allowed to pick all the free bagels from our Monopoly winnings and ze was Very Pleased.
It was such a busy week I had no time to finish this post! May next week be much better. (Last week’s non panic over work was misplaced. I’m drowning in work. ARGH.)
:: Tell me some of your good things!
May 30, 2019
Many ways to help protect reproductive rights.
Petite Aitza on anti-Blackness and Black privilege in Europe.
Kassandra took a huge risk with ditching her job and she doesn’t regret it one bit. I took a professional risk years ago and it’s been well worth it for us as well. What risks have you taken that paid off?
Protect your accounts.
I remember the pain in this scene so clearly: Uncle Phil from ‘The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air’ may be the best TV dad in history — this scene proves it
I adored APW long before I was thinking marriage and long after, so it piques my interest that Meg is going to do a vow renewal. That seems like it could be a lot of fun for the right people. Would that be a thing you’d enjoy doing? I wonder what interval of time would feel appropriate to do a renewal (for us, if we were ever into the idea).
Men are responsible for 100% of unwanted pregnancies.
I find it kind of annoying that JB used to eat eat zir veggies, and is now going through an “I don’t like it” phase. I should be glad that it took so long to kick in.
Gentle dog and calf
May 27, 2019
I told Done by Forty that I had nothing valuable to contribute to his bond swoop plan but as I was talking to Penny about her mortgage repayment, the two posts started pulling things together for me. Thanks for sharing, y’all!
I despise our mortgage. I hate that enormous looming debt that chips away at my brain every month because it’s twice the mortgage we had three years ago and I was so close to paying that one off. I hate the opportunity cost every month of the mortgage. This is nothing new.
And yes, we would have some kind of housing bill to live somewhere no matter what we had chosen and this was the most stable way to go in this area. Renting is too iffy with rent increases and comparable homes rent for the same as our mortgage + tax bill at this time. We are, of course, on the hook for maintenance in addition to that bill. We weren’t just being flippant when we bought, it was the right choice at the time.
Our priorities:
- Replace our current W-2 income with passive income through dividends. I once planned to build a real estate empire but I don’t enjoy our long distance rental ownership. Dealing with the property management and HOA is aggravating so I’m focusing future investments on index funds. That isn’t to imply I would enjoy hands on rental ownership more because I wouldn’t. I like being ethical and having a clean, safe place for people to live who then pay that mortgage but I don’t want to have to be hands on and fix things, or see people and talk to them, or screen tenants. I’m not a people person, they are exhausting.
- Retire in a reasonable time span (ideally in 7 years but I don’t have an FI date, our costs are too high at the moment).
- Have no mortgage in retirement – this is one of our biggest expenses at the moment along with childcare but I know it can easily be replaced with healthcare so I want to eliminate it.
(more…)