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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August 25, 2017
Have I complained before about being terrible at side dishes and vegetable dishes? If I haven’t, here’s my declaration – I absolutely struggle to get a side dish on the table for every dinner for balanced meals. I hate cooking veggies. Too often, the effort required to make a GOOD side veg is more than I can manage, and the plain veggies are yukky. So I’m proud to share 4 quick and easy veggies that I’ve made the past few weeks!
All of them involve a dash of garlic salt and onion powder, and a saute pan, and pretty much the same cooking style.
Broccolini or fresh veggies
Ingredients
Half pound broccolini
Spices
Directions
This was my first time cooking broccolini so the timing is a little iffy, but here goes: Heat oil in a saute pan at medium heat. Toss the freshly washed broccolini in and cover with the lid for about a minute. Note: I deliberately toss the veggies in when they’re still wet, I like the nice blackened bits effect it has.
Flip the broccolini over, cover again and leave it to steam itself for another 2 minutes. If you like your veggies softer, leave them in longer. I like mine to have some crunch. Plate the broccolini and sprinkle with both the salt and powder.
I’ve done this with: snow peas, regular broccoli crowns, and Chinese broccoli with shredded bamboo shoots. ALL GOOD.
Frozen veggie medley
Ingredients
All frozen:
Green beans
Edamame
Corn
Bell peppers
Peas
Spices
Directions
When you have nothing fresh on hand, only frozen, this works pretty well! Heat oil in saute pan on medium heat, throw in all the veggies except peas and cover immediately. Give it about a minute and half, toss the veggies. When they look like they’re softening, toss again and add the peas for a minute.
Spice with a light hand, these veggies are lovely when they’re allowed to shine.
:: Does anyone do better than I do with vegetables? Please share!
August 23, 2017
My reply to Harmony’s question (What scares you the most about being a parent?) turned into a post. Of course it did! There’s so much about parenting, the inherent responsibilities, and to some degree helplessness, that I worry about.
As the good kid who took few risks, I worry about holding my JuggerBaby back by thought or attitude, but also I worry so much about zir safety in this world. It’s gotten meaner and colder in many ways since I was a kid, though I know for a fact that there are a lot of wonderful, amazing, supportive people out there too.
The best thing I feel like I can do in a situation where I have no control is to make sure ze knows that ze can talk to me about anything no matter what, and that there’s always another sensible adult who has tried silly, stupid, risky, or scary things and grown up to gain some wisdom from it to ask if ze doesn’t want to ask me.
I hope that ze will take acceptable risks and live the best of zir life, and have enough pain to build character but so much pain that it leaves indelible scars.
I hope that ze learns that there are people in the world who are terrible, awful, horrible humans and it’s ok to call evil by its name – like the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville. That there are people who will manipulate you six ways to Sunday for their own personal gain or amusement – like my sibling. That there are people so entirely selfish, and such utter blowhards, that the harm they do to you is just collateral damage in their eyes – like my mom’s siblings. But I hope there’s a way for zir to learn these things without having to be exposed to them daily like I was.
I’m scared that of all the things we try to teach JuggerBaby, the lessons won’t be heard and ze will turn out to be someone we don’t recognize or even like, like my sibling did.
I worry that I won’t be here for JuggerBaby the way ze needs, for all of zir life. I worry that if I do end up crippled in ten more years, ze won’t be able to see the example I’ve always tried to set for zir – work hard, work smart, advocate for yourself, advocate for those who can’t speak up for themselves without being harmed for doing so, leave the place at least a little better for your having been there. I believe in showing, not just telling, when it comes to real life values.
Financially, I don’t want zir to experience the same pains that I did but I have no interest in shielding zir from even most of life’s bumps – it would be far worse in my eyes to cushion zir every fall and end up with an adult who still needs zir mama to do all the accounting to make sure ze has money at the end of the month. Ze has got to make bad choices and mistakes early enough so that ze has time to learn from them and recover, my competence with money can’t be the reason ze doesn’t understand why ze should not carry a credit card balance in zir college years.
We can’t be the parents who sheltered JuggerBaby so much that ze has no idea how much grit ze has.
I have to take comfort in the fact that I got this far in life being me, which wasn’t always a good thing, and yet somehow nurtured enough loving friendships to feel supported and to know JuggerBaby is well loved even if most of my family is too toxic to allow in our lives. I’ve had to come a long way to be a good enough person that I’ve not been embarrassed to look in the mirror, and I know that JB has to take zir own journey to become a compassionate, caring, canny, strong and generous person. At least I hope that’s the goal.
And in today’s world, I hope that the worry about nuclear war doesn’t come to pass, and that humanity will stop trying to completely destroy itself whether by allowing the rise of facism and Nazis in America, or because we’ve bombed ourselves out of existence. Our kid’s generation should be better than we were, not worse.
It might also be a good idea for me to stop watching cop shows. Law & Order alone has given me more nightmares than I care to think about.
:: What do you worry about for the next generation? What did your parents worry about for you?
August 21, 2017
Do we rent out or do we sell?
I was sorely tempted to keep this home as a rental property but ultimately decided against it for several reasons:
- Because of our refinance last year, our monthly costs are quite, relatively, low now. All told, our mortgage, HOA, insurance, and taxes run about $3350 per month. A home this size would probably be renting out for around $3500-3700 per month. That’s a cash flow of $179 to $379 per month. That’s not nearly enough to cover the maintenance and have a real profit margin. The two first years of cash flow would have to be banked against maintenance costs. That could work if I wasn’t so risk averse, we didn’t have any other drains on our income, and we had a comfortable savings cushion to cover our new home expenses. Which leads me to Reason number 2…
- We’re comfortable right now but not once you subtract the new mortgage and reno costs. We need the profit from the sale to recoup that spending. Short term thinking, admittedly, but I’m ok with that given Reasons 3 and 4.
- Both our CA properties are in the worst subduction zone possible. If and when the big one hits, both properties are highly likely to be completely destroyed. I’m not willing to bank my sense of stability on hoping there’s no major earthquake until we can easily afford the deductible on our earthquake insurance for two properties, and deal with the pain of rebuilding both. One will be painful enough.
- I don’t want to be a hands on real estate investor. I’ll do the accounting and management from afar but if we owned a property as nearby as this, I would feel compelled to do much of the property management myself. At this stage in life, that’s not something I’m prepared to do. The other option, hiring a property manager who would take 10% off the top, means the cash flow would be even less. In fact, that expense would drop our cash flow down to nearly nothing.
- After five years, we wouldn’t even qualify for the cap gains exclusion.
What’s the point, then?
I know that this is the right decision for us even if I am grumpy that the math doesn’t work.
Tax implications: Capital gains exclusion
I know, this may not be the first place your head goes to when we’re talking about getting ready to sell your home but this is a huge one in our state, given our market. Once I was sure that selling was the right way to go, I went straight to the IRS for the goods to make absolutely sure our sale qualified and that we were eligible for the exclusion.
How your sale qualifies. Your sale qualifies for exclusion of $250,000 gain ($500,000 if married filing jointly) if all of the following requirements are met.
- You owned the home and used it as your main home during at least 2 of the last 5 years before the date of sale.
- You didn’t acquire the home through a like-kind exchange (also known as a 1031 exchange), during the past 5 years.
- You didn’t claim any exclusion for the sale of a home that occurred during a 2-year period ending on the date of the sale of the home, the gain from which you now want to exclude.
All of these are true: PiC purchased this home long before we married, we’ve both lived here for much longer than the 2-year use requirement. We file jointly but I had to be sure that only one of us had to be an owner for the 2-year ownership requirement because we left the title in his name.
Marriage. Married individuals may exclude up to $500,000 of gain if they file a joint return and neither spouse excluded gain on the sale of another home within a previous 2-year period. If one spouse meets the ownership requirement, both are considered to have met the requirement.
I’m still working on whether or not we are exempt for CA state taxes but I’m reasonably certain that we should be.
Hiring an agent
I know most PF bloggers would say “go take a real estate course, and sell it yourself!” But I’m not (mostly) an idiot. That works for people who don’t have serious and severe limitations on their time and energy. I’m hiring someone to perform a service and to spare me the real pain of having to learn an entirely new skill in a compressed period of time.
I can take the real estate course when I’m not juggling fireballs and spinning ten plates in the air. Later.
We had a great agent referred to us by our friends who were really happy with her services, twice. After meeting with her and chatting by email, we determined that her rate and style were in line with our expectations.
Out of her fee, she would be paying for all marketing, the deep cleaning service, the photography. We’re paying her to advise us of regulations, the best way to market the sale, strategize pricing, do all the marketing legwork, and handling all our negotiations.
She’s the antidote for needing to sell while suffering from a fair amount of information overload, and serious decision fatigue. She’s been incredibly responsive and flexible, going to great lengths to minimize the disruption to our lives, which was highly appreciated considering how much we’re keeping moving at the same time between this sale and our renovations.
She’s even been helping with the seemingly endless packing and transporting furniture to get this place show ready. But that leads into a whole other story, for a whole other day.
:: Have you ever done a FSBO or been tempted to? Or did you go the agent route when it’s time to buy or sell? How was that experience?
August 16, 2017
Books, books, everywhere
We read three books to JuggerBaby before bed every night. On the rare occasions PiC isn’t there for bedtime, that can go up to seven as compensation for loss of daddy, but that’s only happened a few times in zir short life.
We once agreed that after being long distance for nearly a decade, we were ready to settle down and stay that way, in near proximity to our family for a long time.
We repeat lots of books; I’ve read that repetition is good for young children because it helps reinforce language. I can certainly see it developing as ze memorizes the stories and bursts out with truncated rushed narration every few pages.
It makes me wonder what my parents did at this age. Supposedly I already knew how to read so maybe they let me read to myself? We didn’t own many books, though, just the encyclopedia and a dictionary. I remember reading newsprint and smudging everything, though.
Sweet sleeper
For a whole week this month, I was instructed to stay in zir room with zir, after bedtime: Mama sleep dere peez. I’d just lay down and pretend to go to sleep for five or ten minutes, sometimes fifteen, and after several “Mama, what doin?” queries, ze would pass out. On Night 8, PiC passed out during reading and bedtime, so he groggily offered to stay for a while in my stead. Nothing doing, though. Night 8, ze kicked us both out: Mama, Dada, sleep own bed. Good night!
PiC: Can Dada stay?
JuggerBaby: No, Dada sleep own bed, good night!
Well then!
I don’t know why it continually surprises me that JuggerBaby’s sleep habits change so frequently. I’ve never been a good sleeper. Since early childhood, I’ve been prone to nightmares, restless sleep, and insomnia even before the pain became a problem. Was it just wishful thinking to hope that ze would inherit PiC’s amazing powers of falling asleep anywhere, anytime? Probably.
Manners
I love that daycare teaches the kids new concepts, but I don’t love that they don’t come with manners. This month we’ve been working very hard on the concept of manners.
Instead of “I don’t WANT it!!!”, we prefer “No thank you.”
Instead of “I WANT THAT”, we prefer “May I have….”
It took weeks but ze finally started voluntarily asking for things politely:
“May I see?”
“May I hold it?”
“May I have more stickers, please?”
“May I have mama’s purse?”
“May I sleep in big bed, please?”
Bathtime playtime
The bath is incidental, from JuggerBaby’s point of view. Ze just expects to splash in zir tub of water while a bath happens to zir. I used to vaguely plan to get zir some bath toys but ze has been perfectly content with a handful of blocks, a boat, and a few empty shampoo bottles. It used to be about building and stacking, now clearly the imagination has set in as ze “cooks pasta” by using small containers to fill larger ones and we pretend to eat “pizza and pasta and butter and avocado!” (Ew)
What’s even more interesting is that ze clearly understands the concept of “pretend” now. The “pasta” and other food groups are water but ze understands that this is pretend only, so we don’t really drink the water. “Oh, no drink?” “No, just pretend.” “Oh ok.”
I know for a fact that I didn’t grasp that “pretend” wasn’t real until well after 7 or 8. My jerk sibling took full advantage of this, of course. It’s one of the reasons I felt stupid for so long – he was a master at manipulating me from very early on and it took too many years to catch on.
I’m hoping we’re giving JuggerBaby the tools to spot these things without falling for an abuser’s tricks first. I often wonder if our coddling means ze won’t believe us that terrible people exist, when I’m closely related to some of them, because I won’t let them near zir.
Precious #parenting moments
- JB + tape measure: it taller and taller and taller!
Me: Be careful, that can cut you.
JB: and taller and ‘igher and taller ow
- JB: MY CHIN OWIE!
Me: what happened?
JB: I pinch it.
Me: so don’t do that.
JB: Oh.
- Things I’ve washed out of JB’s hair: yogurt, rice, red wax, guacamole, orange pulp, cheese, sand, fur, corn kernels, scrambled eggs…
- Me: JB, you have two minutes before we turn off the tv.
JB: NO!
Me: *mother’s glare of THAT WAS RUDE*
JB: ONE MINUTE!
Me: …. Ok.
:: Did you ever struggle with sleep? Did you prefer to sleep alone or share your room with live or stuffed companions? Is there a good effective way to teach kids about people and their machinations without hurting them?
August 14, 2017
Our savings have been decimated by this year’s spending. The new place and the work required is classified as No Joke and that spending is projected for months. Labor and materials will eat all our cash and liquid funds (CDs). We’re selling some stocks because we’ve got some options expiring in six months. Now if I’d picked up the gift of foresight at the shop like I meant to, I would have exercised those options last summer and avoided the short term capital gains tax. But I didn’t, so I’m leaving aside 40% of the stock sale for taxes.
I haven’t felt this poor in a decade. Nor have I been this stressed about the state of the world, our country’s moral deficiency, or the future in … ever.
Why, you might ask, am I not crying in the designated corner for such heartbreak? Or perhaps gibbering?
Because I have a strategy! Because even though there’s not much I can about about the fact that enough people in this country are racist, sexist, and hateful enough to have elected an evil, morally bankrupt, utterly self serving, cancerous tangerine to office, I *have* been this poor before, seriously poor, and without any of the resources I’ve got at my disposal now. So the money problem I can do something about even while I worry quietly that our economy is due for a bit of a crash soon.
We have two good incomes. Back then, I had one small one and the energy of youth to press my career forward.
This is just a small challenge. A temporary setback.
However. The last thing I want to do is find ourselves in a position where we’ve spent down every last dollar and then surprise! Flat tires! Six in a row. That was 2007. There was much gnashing of teeth and many tears of frustration.
I’ve put up a sign: No surprises are welcome here. My long experience with money, and not having it, is that Murphy usually kicks the sign over, pees on it, and moves in.
Hence, my backup plan: even while we’re cracking open one CD after another, I’m “secretly” hoarding every penny and dollar I can get outside of our usual income. Reimbursements, bonuses, rewards are all fair game.
Every month we get $208 from our daycare reimbursements. Yoink.
Those Chase bonuses? Yoink.
My Swagbucks PayPal redemptions? Yoink.
MyPoints money? Yoink.
Reimbursements of any kind? Yoink.
Any and all little bits of income are getting stashed. It’s hiding in a separate account, complete with alias and trench coat disguise.
We both know it’s there. It’s small but growing, like a tiny revolution against the possibility of more debt as a side effect of swallowing the massive mortgage. If, by some great good fortune, we don’t have to use that to make ends meet, that’s money we can contribute to good causes in hopes that we will have a country worth living and retiring in.
That keeps me sane at night.
:: Do you squirrel away pockets of money or canned goods? How much extra cash helps you sleep at night? Are you supporting any good causes these days?
August 9, 2017
Our travel cost breakdown
Food and lodgings, $125*
Gas, $143
Parking, trolley: $20
Car rental, $317
Books, $100
Badges, $240**
Total: $1,022
* We lodged with friends this year, and they never let us pay for that, so we paid for take out one night.
** This was for two days and two adults. SDCC has a great child badge policy – children are free up to age 11.
This year, the weather was so much better than last year when it was well over a hundred degrees Fahrenheit!
The lottery systems this year
Badges: success for us by the skin of our teeth. A good friend wasn’t able to get enough days to make it worth coming out so this was only sort of a win.
Hotels: not necessary this year.
Parking passes: one of the 7 of us got into the lottery! (It was me.) I bought passes for all four days but on consideration, passed that along to my friend because we decided to try the trolley this year. And also because he missed the lottery. Now that JuggerBaby is mobile, it was a really big place we could save, assuming we survived the experience. Every parent of a toddler knows that they go boneless, right? This kid has been practicing that since infancy. It’s awful.
Anyway, the passes were $191.80, versus the $20 we paid for two adults, so it’s a big price tag. That convenience can’t be overstated some days, if you’ve been trudging along for 8 hours logging mile after mile on the exhibit floor! But we were already paying for a rental car to reduce wear and tear on our two cars that are incidentally due for service, so we survived without it this year.
On making it happen.
I found myself dreading the week, rather than anticipating it. This is the second year I’ve felt this way, this time it had everything to do with all the work we had to complete before and after, with the reno. Too much stress!
It was also a bit weird because many of our friends couldn’t come this year, so it was an awfully quiet year but I’m so glad we went. That’s the most relaxed and at home I’ve felt all year, eating with and catching up with Mama S.
On food.
We thought we’d try our hand at cooking with Mama S this year, but it wasn’t a good time for it. We feasted, still: my annual pancit and lumpia, the original baked pasta and garlic bread.
We packed our PB&Js for lunch this year, avoiding the fancy deli meat and veggie sandwiches we used to be weighted down by, and snacks, as always, to avoid the atrocious and overpriced convention center food. I always think it might be better this year, but it never is.
On having fun.
This was a funny old year. Half of our now-usual crew were in attendance, and we picked up a handful of first timer friends to escort around the exhibit hall. We have a Marco! Polo! system by text – we clump together when we find a good booth, we expand and filter out to explore, then text our location to re-cluster the group. There isn’t planning or rhyme or reason, it just works organically.
This year’s exhibit hall was chock full of cute things and fantastic displays. I was hard pressed not to go on a buying spree – only the knowledge that I didn’t want to pack another 60 pounds of detritus saved me.
There was an astonishing Tamatoa cosplayer, a life size Lockjaw promoting the Inhumans show, fabulous (as always) new Lego creations.
We discovered awesome artists, we visited awesome favorites, we laughed til we cried at JuggerBaby.
Empowered by the fantastic superhero costume my unspeakably awesome friends had commissioned, ze spent the whole first day “flying” in spurts through the crowded exhibit hall. No sooner did one of us catch up to the slippery scamp, ze would throw zir “wings” out and race off again shouting “uncle, look at meeeeeeeee!”
Uncle was charmed, of course, and threw over all his plans to run along behind my stampeding bull toddler all day.
I tell zir often that ze’s lucky to be cute but cute won’t last forever.
The second day, ze kept chanting “where is Spider-Man?” No one knows where that came from – we haven’t introduced Spidey to zir lexicon yet! All day, where is Spider-Man?
Uncle spotted a particularly good one and shouted back to me, whereupon I turned and pointed to our right, look, JuggerBaby! Spider-Man is right there!
Spidey heard us and went into a web slinging crouch for zir. As Spideys do.
JuggerBaby, face frozen in a rictus of horror, scaled my leg trying jump right back into the womb. “NO NO NO!”
Poor confused Spidey. He crouched further down to make himself shorter, inoffensive, non-threatening. He did a stupid little jig to look like a clown. Finally he cowered, hiding his head a little, apologetically, because JuggerBaby was having NONE OF IT.
Sputtering, I tried to reassure zir that it was ok and Spider-Man wasn’t going to hurt zir but my sincerity may have been muffled by the choked back laughter.
For the next twenty minutes, ze declared vehemently: I don’t want Spider-Man.
Never meet your heroes, y’all.
On family time.
This is the only place I feel at home away from home. At peace. I forget sometimes that this is the home away from home to retreat to, then I arrive in July and find myself breathing serenely again.
Mama S is the mother of my heart. She’s the best. Period.
This isn’t to malign my irreplaceable mother who physically raised me, just filling my heart with people who are still here so it’s not so lonely. It’s a strange feeling to grow up with tons of family and then be separated from all of them whether by distance or by feud. I’m related to terrible people so I have chosen to distance myself from them and fill that space with good people.
That means being welcomed with open arms, seeing your pictures mingling with the family pictures, sitting around comfortably chatting about old times or random events that have meaning. That means knowing Grandma’s got your back when the toddler is trying to pull a fast one.
Books books and more books!
Highly recommended books are great.
For the adults:
For the whole family:
- Skottie Young and Eric Shanower’s Oz Omnibus Hardcover
- Shannon Hale’s Princess Academy is highly recommended, I might pick that up even though JuggerBaby’s not ready for it yet. For investigative purposes, you know.
For the kids:
Little Golden Books does Star Wars books! And DC books! I did not know this. JuggerBaby loves:
:: What would you have your eye on if you made this pilgrimage?
August 7, 2017
On Money
Income
Our normal income comes from two full time day jobs.
We experiment with earning money on the side, including minimal cash flow that we don’t touch from an investment property and investing in dividend stocks.
Some side income comes from Swagbucks, selling clothes on Poshmark which is hit or miss, and tracking activity through Achievement (my introduction to it).
The long term goal is to replace our day job income before my health declines enough to prevent me from working.
*** (more…)