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 19, 2018
Small win: I transferred cash being held for large expenses throughout the year, and my small pile of accumulated rental property profits, over to Ally’s online savings earning 1.75% APY. Those accounts need to stay cash and liquid since they’re all going to pay bills this year, but at least the money can earn its keep in the meantime.
Still making slow progress with the weeding – I’m making it a point to get out there at least a few times during the week, and we’ve cleared a small patch that’s safe for Sera to do her zoom-zooms.
What were your small wins this week?
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The isolation of special needs parents.
Positive masculinity! Men choosing to take their wives’ names.
I would love the limited edition Totoro watch.
I’d never heard of America’s most prolific female serial killer.
Side hustlin’ friends: Declare all your income.
The Original American Dogs Are Gone: The closest living relative of the precolonial canines isn’t even a dog. It’s a contagious cancer.
I really really enjoy this brooch warfare
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July 18, 2018
Not quite peer pressure
We don’t do a LOT of socializing and play dates, but we accept 2-3 birthday invitations a year from JB’s classmates. In some, the whole class is invited for a big bash at some place that caters to kids, which is probably at least a few hundred dollars, and for some, it’s just a family affair with a small group of classmates but still far fancier than any birthday party that we’ve had for ourselves in the past ten years.
That includes when we fed 18 people at a taco party for PiC!
Either way, they’ve got JB thinking about all the kids that ze wants to invite to zir party. Um … what party? We weren’t planning on doing any real parties for a while, our house still isn’t in any shape for that kind of entertaining. The indoors is simply too small to have more than 7 adults and 2 kids at one time, comfortably.
One day, the yard might be perhaps, but zir birthday is also not in September in those few weeks of the year that may be reliably counted on for warm weather and thus suitable for an outdoor / backyard fun thing. If it were, we’d reserve a BBQ at the local parks and let the kids run wild for not too much money there. But it’s not. I’m pondering what kind of compromise would make sense for a fun birthday that doesn’t cost $300 and a quarter of my brain. It’s not around the corner but if I don’t think now, nothing will happen by the time zir birthday arrives. I know me.
I’m always in favor of tacos again but then again, when am I not in favor of tacos?
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July 16, 2018
While talking to Penny about debt repayment resources, I kept thinking of other bloggers who are focused on debt repayment. Debt was my old life, we’re building resources now – but …. but, wait, we are in debt! Somehow in the last six months, I stopped thinking of myself as in debt. Except I regularly say that we don’t own this house, the bank does, so how did I forget that we owe a TON of money and therefore are in debt repayment hell?
$576,006.92
After a big down payment, and a few payments to principal, we still owe more than half a million dollars. HALF. A. MILLION.
How on earth did that morph into “just another bill”??
For reasons.
One, we’ve always had some kind of monthly payment for lodgings: rent or mortgage. It’s a normal part of our lives the way a car payment used to be. (Not anymore!)
Two, while we’re employed, we make enough to pay the regularly agreed amounts plus a little bit extra every month on time. That’s a whole other world from where I came from.
Because of numbers one and two, three, debt elimination hasn’t been my sole focus. I’ve also been working on investing wisely and building our careers.
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July 13, 2018
This was an unexpected hit for a recent BBQ meal so I thought it’d be good to share before we run out of BBQ season. No pictures, I’m afraid, I didn’t have time to snap any before half of it was devoured. In the spirit of true home-style hosting, we sent most of the remainder home with the guests who liked it best.
Ingredients
10 red potatoes, cut into bite-size pieces
olive oil, as needed
3 hard-cooked eggs, chopped into tiny bits
1/2 stalk celery, chopped into tiny bits
3 slices cooked bacon, chopped into tiny bits
1/4 cup mayonnaise
1/2 cup sour cream
salt and ground black pepper to taste
Directions
Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C).
- Spread potato pieces onto a baking sheet and drizzle with olive oil.
- Roast in the preheated oven until tender, about 45 minutes; remove from oven and let cool at least 15 minutes.
- In a large bowl, combine potatoes with hard-cooked eggs, celery, green onion, and bacon; stir in mayonnaise and season to taste with salt and black pepper.
- Cover and refrigerate for 1 hour to let flavors blend.
July 12, 2018
Small win: JB and I started venturing out to the garden-jungle this week to pull weeds. We hacked out a small but appreciable clearing free of weeds together and I yanked out an armload of weeds sprouting along the perimeter. Not so good for my hands (or back, hips, or knees) but I still feel mighty. I’m tempted to take photos every day as I do a small bit to create a little time lapse video.
I was awfully tempted to make my own flame weeder in the form of a tiny Bic lighter but I’m pretty sure that setting your yard on fire isn’t either frugal or ecologically sound.
What were your small wins this week?
Damon Young’s “I have post brokeness stress disorder.” I can relate to a portion of this. Particularly the sound of that damn tow truck. In hindsight, this is why Dad took such care to lie to me so convincingly for the decade after.
Pregnancy discrimination rampant in the American workplace. From personal experience, duh.
When are we going to take stalking seriously?
Half year update from Kay Lynn. I love when bloggers from yesteryear still update us on their lives. I remember Kay from way back when.
Let’s have chocolate cake.
Do you dress your age? I never did in my younger years and now I’m not sure where I land. It’s only rarely occurred to me to buy the whole outfit and honestly, I think it makes more sense to than not.
I feel a similar sense of impending doom as Cloud.
And that feeling of impending doom (not just in politics but on a personal level for friends in very tough personal and professional situations) is why I love Penny’s new series of Money Wins. Featuring yours truly in the first post, and Aitza in the second post.
I wasn’t familiar with Mitch Landrieu (former mayor of New Orleans) but some of the thoughts shared in this article were interesting. It feels a lot like no one’s thinking about the deep fissures cracking across our society right now and seeing those fissures addressed by someone who could pursue office again may or may not be a hopeful thing.
Thank you to the folks who are going out to protest. Miser Mom on what to bring.
I had lots of male friends growing up but I’m grateful that I was not called on to fix them. Perhaps because I wasn’t the most well behaved kid in addition to being somewhat antagonistic. I do reach out to some of them from time to time sharing articles I think they need to know about though, and I know it’s not always gratefully received but such is the privilege of being my friend.
July 11, 2018
Photo by jousi osorio on Unsplash
We are living in particularly stressful times. 2018 is even worse than 2017. GRAND.
I knew things wouldn’t be easy as we got older but as I told a friend, I never fathomed that we could be spending our middle years (ish) fighting the rise of fascism in America.
And even if we weren’t, living as a responsible adult and parent means that stress is a natural part of our lives. We have to have healthy coping mechanisms, and we have to be able to reset to neutral or happy, or we’ll never make it.
Here are a few things I do.
All things in moderation. I have a sweet tooth but the myriad of carbohydrates that would normally take care of it are now out of bounds. Now I rely on a package of Immaculate brand gluten free cookies, bought on sale. I used to think of this as cheating but that was unenlightened me. A lot of the time, I only want a couple of cookies. Mixing up a full batch is just too much trouble, but pulling out two cookies? Perfect. Which leads me to….
3 cookies. 2 for now and 1 for later. I’ve developed a little ritual of baking 3 cookies from my break apart cookies pack once a week when things are particularly tough. Two get eaten with lunch on that day, and the other one is for the next day.
#SweetTooth
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July 9, 2018
FIREcracker says don’t give your kids money and let them fail if you want them to succeed.
That’s similar to my core parenting tenets.
I will save JB’s life when ze is choking or about to pelt over the edge of a cliff.
I don’t spare zir the bumps, bruises, scrapes and scratches that happen when you run pell mell through life without your feet under you. Ze takes after me so won’t ever be graceful but eventually ze will learn to stop falling so much. BY FALLING SO MUCH.
I just stopped being the biggest klutz in town at age 35 so I could send zir to gymnastics lessons for fun and an attempt to learn some physical balance, but my guess? Ze will just be pretty good at the sport and STILL go through life collecting bruises like Mario Coins. Fine. Bruises won’t kill you.
Back to the point – there’s more nuance to this whole parenting thing. We are saving a bundle for zir college education even while I’m hesitant to commit to paying for all of it because I think ze needs skin in the game. At the same time, I know what life was like when I had to work all through college – I barely remember anything I learned.
The reality is, if we’re doing our jobs right, ze will very likely have some resources inherited from us or from one of many grandparents. We must teach zir to fend for zirself, making a living wage, saving, investing, and making good decisions. In short, have the skills to survive without money coming from anyone else. But I also want zir to have the skills and discipline when resources are plentiful and not live in short-termism.
Some people are naturally frugal, some people learn it. If JB is the latter, the lessons should come from us – we have the knowledge. It would be a massive failure on our part not to try to pass along the lessons and philosophies that create the life that ze lives now.
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