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
May 9, 2019
I don’t follow basketball but I enjoyed this Muffet McGraw and Peter Sagal interview.
I relate so strongly to this letter about chronic mystery illness taking away one’s identity touchstone. I felt such loss when I had to accept that my illness had irrevocably, irretrievably, altered the course of my life. It still echoes sometimes when I remember everything that I hoped to do, or the things I would still love to do but cannot. I lost a huge measure of who I was – strong, unbreakable, defiant against any and all odds, brave and undaunted by challenges (at least on the outside!).
Blogging your way to a million – but not the way you think.
Lisa of The Traumatized Budget is a writer in her mid-50s facing down some pretty serious financial circumstances. I’m not convinced that formal financial literacy is the answer though. Anecdotally I’ve seen many friends grow up with frugal and financially capable parents and they just ignored every lesson in front of them. I’m not sure how one gets past that.
Whew, talk about “who lives, who dies, who tells your story?”: Behind the New, Gloriously Queer Emily Dickinson Movie
Wild Nights With Emily spends significant time with the person Smith now knows is responsible for mutilating Emily’s letters: Mabel Loomis Todd, a woman who was having an affair with Susan’s husband (and Emily’s brother), Austin. Despite never having met Emily face-to-face, Todd acquired the letters after Emily’s death via Austin and Emily’s sister, Lavinia, and set about removing Susan from them before publishing them. “When I showed this movie to the Emily Dickinson International Society last summer,” Olnek recalls, “the president of the board said, ‘What people need to understand is that when Emily Dickinson scholarship started, people didn’t know that Mabel was Austin’s mistress. They just thought she was the nice, young wife of a faculty member at Amherst College. They didn’t understand her stakes in spinning a certain kind of story about Emily.’
Muffet McGraw
May 6, 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 $184 in dividends this month. Our year to date net dividends are $1,113.44. I reinvest all our dividends.
Merch sales! Maggie was so kind as to give me some pointers on how to get started with Merch last year. She’s had serious success with it. I’m neither a fast learner or a great designer but I tried my hand at it and worked up several designs, and then waited. They sat there all year long with no movement so I’d forgotten about them in all the end of year work. It turns I had a couple of sales at the end of last year! The revenue showed up earlier but I wanted to wait until the 90 day return window closed before counting it. Exciting! No idea how to replicate that, and it was a drop in the bucket ($10), but it was neat.
(more…)
May 3, 2019
1. Friday: Our oven broke earlier this week and I was so busy I just shoveled the veggies onto a smaller tray and roasted them in the toaster oven instead. Thank goodness for that appliance! I finally took a minute to try preheating it again today to start diagnostics… And voila! Not broken!
(Later it turns out that PiC did the thing I asked him to try to fix it but didn’t tell me so it’s not actually magic but IT FELT LIKE MAGIC.)
2. Saturday: I forgot to record this before so I’ll do it now – I went two days without my laptop and while it was unnerving, I was ok! Woo!
3. Sunday: After catching JB’s cold, I see it’ll have to be the really little things this week. Like rotating my Tylenol and ibuprofen seems to keep the headache and sore throat to a minimum level of discomfort.
4. Monday: We are slowly making progress on a couple of home projects. Not much but we’re actually pricing out some materials and that’s a start!
5. Tuesday: I missed a couple doses of meds but the throat was surprisingly ok today.
6. Wednesday: Total bummer that both my cold and fibro flared up badly so I’m focusing on being grateful for the parts of my body that aren’t in pain.
7. Thursday: Steak and eggs for breakfast! FABULOUS.
:: Tell me some of your good things!
May 2, 2019
I haven’t ever written it out but I use these very steps for conflict resolution and customer service resolution!
Tanja’s childhood experience with MLMs. I had to sit with this one for a while.
Rich and Regular: Fathers on FI. I like what I see in the changing norms around fatherhood so far as the FI group is concerned, I hope that’s something that ripples out to non-FI and non-PF people.
Did you know that adoptees in the US aren’t legally entitled to their own birth certificates? One adoptee’s story.
We love pan roasted brussels sprouts already but I think we need to try this version of brussels sprouts with sausagebrussels sprouts with sausage.
Are recessions really necessary? (Nicole&Maggie, your thoughts?): “In November 1990, the Australian treasurer (and later prime minister) Paul Keating described a painful downturn then underway as “the recession we had to have.”
His point was that excesses in a lending and credit boom, combined with high inflation, meant that the Australian economy needed the wrenching experience of a downturn to rid itself of those excesses. It was also a horrible political gaffe, a comment that went over poorly in a country then burdened with an 11 percent unemployment rate.
But the question of whether he was right is profound — one that economists can still debate.”
April 29, 2019
An acquaintance told me that she had a rule for her kids and their birthdays: up til age 3, they had a party. After that, the kids had the choice of a party or taking a trip together. The end result is they’ve been on a LOT of trips, and dodged the hosting a party bullet many times. I envy them a little, as my bones ache in the aftermath of this party.
We have celebrated with JB very quietly the past three years. We had a casual lunch with all our friends the first year, a home cooked dinner with family the second, and the third last was a park date with zir best friend followed up with a happy hour lunch. Each one was low key and most importantly, easy.
Since then, ze has been invited to over a dozen birthday parties which firmly planted the seed that zir birthday could mean, no, MUST mean, A PARTY. As a result, everything for the past 12 months has been about what ze wants for zir party. We don’t typically cater to our child’s whims but several stars aligned in zir favor: PiC wanted to do one, ze has been with these classmates for a really long time, and my favorite relative wanted to lend a hand. We decided it could be a one time thing and we worked on economizing! There was nothing saying we couldn’t do this on the cheap. Was there? (Foreshadowing voice: FOOLS.)
We did off the cuff research as we discussed whether or not this was really happening – at birthday parties for other kids, we evaluated the service, the cleanliness and fun level of each place, the prices. JB was evaluating too. Every party we left, ze piped up: I want to have my party here, please! Discernment, ze has none.
Venues range from $165-$600. ($600!?!?)
We prefer doing park birthdays which seem way more relaxed BUT they’re actually a ton of work. You have to bring everything: food, drinks, place settings, chafing dishes if you have warm food, coolers and ice if you need cold stuff, tableclothes, decorations. This time of the year, you run a real risk of getting rained out. One forward thinking set of parents brought tents and canopies for their kid’s party in case the rainstorm of the week stuck around for their day. Luckily the skies were clear for their event but helping them pack their two cars was a 5.5 person job. Also, why do people not listen when you say gifts are not necessary? They clearly stated “no gifts” and had to pack 20 gifts into their brimming over cars. We gave them the gift of no physical gift and helped them set up and clean up. (I vote that our gift was the most valuable!)
We wanted to have less work and less crap to haul so we picked the cheapest possible indoor venue. The cost should have been as low as we could get it except we expected 20% of the invitees to decline and only 8% did. Even the kid who never goes to any of the birthdays ever said yes. What the heck?? Um, “luckily” a few kids cancelled at the last minute so we had exactly our limit of attendees. Honestly if they hadn’t cancelled, I don’t think we would have had room for them. The party room was MUCH smaller than I expected.
The hour-long activity was really well organized. The two instructors kept things moving right along and the kids were all engaged and relaxed. PiC got to watch and photograph more of it than I did, I was somehow dubbed the “get people to sign their waivers” person so I had to watch the door for stragglers and get them set up.
Total: $235+ $40 tip
Food is typically pizza plus cake.
I was sick and tired of pizza at kid parties. I was going to be different – we were going to have good food! Then I saw how much it would cost to feed 21 kids and 25 adults. Quotes were coming in around $300. Holy crap, nope, immediate backpedaling!
Since I can’t cook in large enough quantities to feed that many people cheaply and well, we ended up with pizza and a platter of catered sandwiches after all. Oops.
We did make our own dessert using a delicious easy recipe. Totally unhealthy but delicious – tiny lemon cupcakes. They’re glazed and in tiny portions so two or three of our cupcakes is still less sugar than your standard store bought cupcake with four inches of frosting. (That’s disappointing to the frosting eaters among the children, namely, JB.) PiC insisted on having a small cake for zir candles and decorated it beautifully.
Naturally the kids all rejected the delectable dainties because it wasn’t the “real” cake. I overheard one parent valiantly trying to convince her kid that these “really are cakes, and they’re DELICIOUS.” We should have seen that coming!
We had sandwiches left over to feed all of us for 4 days, too so that was a nice bonus. They were really good.
Cupcakes for 42 people, plus cake: $24
Pizza: $30
Sandwiches for adults: $50
Juice boxes for the kids: $7
Water bottles, left over from friend’s party: free
Sodas for adults: $10
Dessert platters, which we’ll use again when we host dinners: $25
Cake server because we’re adults now: $4
Foil pans with lids just in case we needed them: $5 (returned these, we didn’t need them)
Paper plates, plastic forks, napkins, leftover from previous events: free
Total: $150
Decorations can ran the gamut, depending on how fancy you get.
Most people have themed balloons, banners, and goodie bags. I used to think that was extravagant. Then we went to a party that was so over the top, we cringed all the way home over the waste. There was SO MUCH paper and plastic, and extravangantly expensive fondant cake that didn’t even taste good, that was thrown away. They had themed everything: goodie cups filled with toys, snack boxes to take home, stickers, custom made frosted cookies scattered all over the tables for the grabbing, and a costume for the birthday kid just for the party. Enough latex balloons for everyone but everyone scattered to the winds with their armloads of swag, leaving only the birthday family to take them home. So much was just left behind, and trashed, it made my heart hurt. Of course the kids were over the moon about it at the time, but they also promptly forgot about it.
We ran in the other direction. We planned to have, at most, a small bundle of balloons, a gold banner that we can use for many birthdays to come, and the venue’s standard tablecloths. We pulled out a set of disposable tablecloths we thriftily saved from PiC’s birthday a few years back just in case. (Disposable, hah!) We couldn’t get the balloons and didn’t need the banner since the venue had one left up already, so that was $21 saved. No one noticed our lack of decorations – the food and drinks and the birthday kid were all they needed.
Total: $0
Goodie bags, oh boy
I was thinking we’d do a stack of books but one of JB’s aunties wanted to contribute this to the party. I THOUGHT she was going to be restrained but… no. I think the kids loved it, it wasn’t a bunch of cheap plastic to throw out, but it was a lot more than we would have done on our own! JB wanted to hand them out personally, ze was so happy to have that thing to do.
Cost to us: $0.
Final out of pocket total: $425.
We’ve very clearly told JB that we’re not doing this again and of course it bounces off like ze is Teflon. Every other week, ze is doing research for zir next birthday and writing up new guest lists! Kids.
:: What is your favorite birthday tradition, for kids or adults?
April 26, 2019
1. Friday: Complaining does help. I was telling Tenacious Feminist of my tired-woes, and one of them was a Target order I couldn’t quite complete. The order was started to restock our sunblock but one of her suggestions got me out of my chair to check another item and it turns out we still have 2 sunblock tubes, I just missed it on my last check! $33 order bumped to “save for later” for the next time there’s a sunblock sale and we need things.
2. Friday: PiC found a $50 piece of equipment he thought had been lost. YAY for not having to spend money on the same thing twice!
3. Friday: Also I figured out how to fix my sunglasses that JB royally messed up. That’s a relief. I started this day in a very deep funk and all the little things are adding up to help bring me out of it.
4. Saturday: I still hurt all the time, and I’m fatigued like you wouldn’t believe, which can trigger pain (or the pain can trigger fatigue for a fun turnaround), but my dietary changes have wrought changes I would never have believed could happen ten years ago. I can hold a pen to write today. I can hold a dog’s leash in my hands without them swelling up into oven mitts today. I never thought I’d get this much function back, ever. I know it can go away but getting this much back even for a short time is just about unbelievable.
5. Saturday: We had to drive a long way to see family for Easter and we both made it out of the house on time (gasp!), we also made such good time we were able to lollygag and hang out for a while before meeting up. Such a novel unstressed mortification free (I hate running late) experience.
6. Monday: Everyone was dragging because of our very-busy weekend but we made it out the door to our respective destinations and managed to get some things done.
7. Tuesday: It was a glorious 77 degrees almost all day. I was in heaven.
9. Wednesday: I lost this post and was very sad, and then 801red (my tech support) found it and I was very grateful. He’s the best. Highly recommend.
Tragic Sandwich: I worked on homework with Baguette last night, and she is starting to understand parts of speech and how they go together to make sentences!
10. Thursday: I’m unlikely to spend the money on it but I’ve gone so many days, multiple days, with not swollen fingers that for the first time in 10+ years, I thought it might be nice to get a wee little wedding band for myself. Just something light and small off Etsy or the like. I didn’t get one when we got married to save money, sure, but mostly because it felt pointless to buy anything I couldn’t wear more than a day at a time because my fingers were constantly swelling up and deflating at random times.
:: Tell me some of your good things!
April 25, 2019
Oh, nostalgia! I loved Babysitter’s Club!
Penny’s got enough cash to cover her mortgage. That’s faaaabulous.
What do you want to make your legacy?
If You Ever Hurt My Daughter, I Swear to God I’ll Let Her Navigate Her Own Emotional Growth
19 bedrooms and 25 bathrooms. More kitchens than days of the week. Sold for just 2.9 million!
What if we lived among giant animals?
I wonder what prompted these changes to New Zealand’s visa and tourism policies.
An interview with Kassandra Dassant, talking finances after 40: Building her Business and Finding Her Purpose. This is a timely read / series for me as I examine how I want to end my 30s and how I want to enter into my 40s.
As much as I would like to share JB in all zir glory here sometimes, I won’t. Ze deserves better than to discover in five or ten years that all zir life has been made public without zir knowledge or consent. If I had discovered that as a preteen or a teen, I would have thrown up.
I really expected the mountain lion to smack the human for messing with it