I knew Ashley Ford’s name first on Twitter as @ismashfizzle because she does good work for the world there but here’s another facet to love: her interview with Michelle Yeoh.
“America First” – not my America. This piece was hugely resonant for me as a child of immigrants, knowing how much the generation of parent-immigrants gave up in order to give us a better life. I still feel that sense of gratitude even if my own remaining parent has turned out to be a terrible person. It’s weird but I do.
Golden Globes
I don’t watch awards shows but I will watch Sandra Oh in pretty much anything. And Samberg is hilarious. This monologue made me laugh out loud. And they cut to her mom.
I’ve almost closed out the 2018 budget but there’s one last check to be cashed from December 1st (when is it ok to tell someone to take their damn money already??)
I was fortunate enough to have a choice between maxing out our IRAs this year right away or investing more in our brokerage so I did the former to get it out of our hair.
I’ve calculated our expected cash flow for the first three months of 2019 and scheduled automatic savings to reflect that.
I’ve calculated our expected large expenses for the year and scheduled automatic savings to cover them over the course of the year.
What’s left?
Mostly the everyday things.
Working my job every day with attendant frustrations so I can keep earning that paycheck that feeds our savings and investing.
Feeding my family – meal planning, grocery shopping, thinking about diet stuff.
Walking the dogs – training Sera, making sure Seamus has every possible health need covered.
Making sure to the best of our abilities that JB grows up to be a good and decent human. We also need to get zir into some sports and activities to be a bit more well-rounded and make a few more friends.
Reading all the good books I can reach (more more more!)
We’ve got one big trip for later this year to be planned out. After that? Probably staying close to home for a while. Now that Seamus is showing his age (his hearing is suspect, his eyesight seems to be less sharp, he’s definitely much crankier) we’re going to curtail international travel so we can spend this time with him.
These are good things. I’m enjoying them. I’d like to enjoy more of them. I’d like to be out in the garden ripping out the rest of those weeds now that the rains have softened the previously rock hard ground.
I should be pretty content.
Instead, the past few weeks, I’ve been obsessively sitting here staring at our accounts, glaring at them to sprout 100x their income as if Power Stare is a method of investment growth (it’s not). I’ve been cranky and impatient. (more…)
Mini-windfall, Tweetchat: The random number generator loved me and gave me a win for the many tweetchats I’ve participated in this year, a big Amazon gift card! Woo! This will be really helpful to defray normal household costs – I’ve got a huge list of things we’ve been holding off on buying until we have the money for it and we’ll get a few of them. I’ve also allocated a small part of it to buy one random person in need of help a small gift from their wishlist because I believe in passing on the luck / love.
Dividend income. This was a huge month for dividends: $504.44 which is our highest month of the year. It’s just the way the quarterly dividends shake out. Most months are typically around $200 but they’ve grown little by little each month. Our year to date net dividends are now $2,855.80. We don’t spend our dividends, these go right back to work for us purchasing more shares of something.
PiC and I grew up eating tv dinners, fast food from McDonald’s and the like, and all kinds of other junk food. I still have a nostalgic yearning for those Jeno’s frozen pizzas, we used to buy a huge stack of them at a time for $1 each. Or the cheap Chinese takeout from the place across the street from high school, we’d swing by there on the way home and for $5 fill up our tanks to the brim with the veggie medley, orange chicken and chow mein. (I miss chow mein.)
It was cheap easy sustenance, if not quite nutritious. We both had parents who worked away from the home and while my mom cooked hot dinners for us every night (in addition to working 15 hour days, thanks for the help Dad) we were mostly on our own during the day once we could be trusted to be home alone.
I learned to cook basics very early – rice in the rice cooker by 4 or 5, boil water for hot tea and ramen, scrambled eggs or eggs over easy on the stovetop by 6 or 7. The frozen food life started in our preteens and my addiction to boxed cake mix started right around then as well. As a teenager, my Saturday (late) morning breakfast treat to myself was a fry-up: french toast, scrambled eggs, whatever else that could be fried. The idea NOW makes my stomach turn a little bit because I remember how much grease was in there!
PiC started on a healthy food kick in his mid 20s, and my acquiesance to the whole thing started in my late 20s, so now we’re largely a healthy foods family. That’s not to say that our diet is totally boring, it’s not! At least it’s not because of choosing to be healthier. For that, I just find ways to reduce saturated fats and increase vitamins, minerals, and other good things for a balanced diet. It IS boring in that I rotate the same 20-30 recipes depending on what I can think of and what’s in season. (more…)
Last summer, I talked about how we made it work around here and I think it’s worth revisiting a year, and a lot more stressors, later.
We’ve been settled into the new home for a year now – thank everything for being done with the massive renovations. We’ve been ignoring all the other projects around the house that need doing for a while just to recoup our savings and sanity.
We still manage with just the two of us: working, parenting, maintaining a semblance of a personal life. I continue to blog, albeit a bit less with my job problems, and added a monthly massage to help alleviate my pain. He has picked up a hobby again and we try to ensure he gets out at least once a weekend for exercise, during which time JB and I spend quality time together. Mostly we spend that time cleaning and puttering around the house but once in a while we can have a friend visit. We are adding some visits of our own to PiC’s friends we don’t see nearly often enough.
Last year, we added one chauffeur day to my schedule but PiC needed some more him-time so I now have two designated drop off days.
Babysitting: We tend to avoid babysitting because at $25/hour, it REALLY has to be worth it but we’ve been terrible about hiring the sitter for anything. Maybe we should have tried for our anniversary? It’s felt desperately needed and yet we don’t really have any space for it to happen. (more…)
I am hardly any hand at sewing but I am living Kristine’s needlecraft posts because they’re so accessible and get that part of my brain that WANTS to create ticking over with ideas. This week is darning! I used to attempt darning socks purely based on my mental theory of what should be done and the results were pretty hideous but I’m willing to try again now that I have a good guide.
One climate scientist’s commitment to not flying. We are working on our carbon footprint and fly a lot less now than we did years before which is a step in the right direction but I don’t think that we’ll be able to completely give it up for a while yet between my health limitations and being hundreds of miles away from loved ones. I think as we grow our financial independence and have the options to take more time to travel, we can reduce our flying even more. At present I think we’re flying once or twice a year.
Mining crytocurrencies is absolutely devastating for our environment: During the past two years, researchers estimate cryptocurrencies generated between 3 million and 15 million tons of carbon emissions.
It was perhaps the one thing Mom never understood about me and even somewhat feared in me. She once asked me not to get “too involved”. There’s no doubt it’s led me to make foolish choices, and was the driving force behind my first not wholly honest transaction when I dipped into the coin dish without asking permission or forgiveness to fish out quarters to buy a book from a classmate in first grade. I would have gotten away with it entirely too if it hadn’t been for a teacher telling my parents at parent teacher conference time. I loved books more than food or sleep and honesty, drilled in me deeply, was only forgotten once in my sheer madness for books. Mom never understood it and she probably wouldn’t understand why I foster this love in her grandchild. PiC doesn’t have the book hunger either but he willingly goes along with feeding the flame, reading JB’s current favorites night after night after unforgiving night.
I know JB isn’t here to be our second act and I’m not trying to imprint a clone of either of us but of all things ze could have from me, let it be my love of reading and love of money management. One will feed zir mind and comfort zir soul, the other will help keep those together with a nourished body.
It will of course then likely be the source of many sleepless nights as ze will likely choose to read until four in the morning given the chance but that’s a risk I’m willing to take. Even with the memory of the sheet scorched 28 years ago when I unwisely draped it over a naked bulb to hide the light from my parents. I’m the reason we shouldn’t have nice things.
I taught JB how to wash zir own hair months ago, but then the skill just sort of laid there, unused. I wondered about it but kept my mouth shut and carried on washing zir hair as usual. There was the usual amount of manipulation in that “as usual”. Grouchy JB would gripe and moan about not being ready to have zir hair washed the second I started washing it. On good days, I would just agree and say, ok then if you’re not ready, rinse the soap out! I wonder when ze is going to realize that by the time ze rinses out the shampoo and realizes I’ve put in the conditioner, we’re already 3/4 of the way there and I’ve tricked zir. On bad days, we’d fuss at each other and my cleverness would be out the window. But the hair would still be washed, by me.
Out of the blue, ze started taking down the bottle of shampoo intending to wash zir own hair. I just made some suggestions on how a smol person might more easily pour shampoo from a large 30 ounce bottle into one’s hand and stood back. Ze took the initiative to lather up. It wasn’t thorough at all but I didn’t criticize, preferring to let zir make it a habit more than caring about it being done well.
Ze was being out and out rude the other day as we prepared for bed, then threw zir toothbrush at me. Ze didn’t have the gall to throw it so that it connected – I think we’ve established that that triggers the nuclear option. But it was definitely at me. And we do not throw things as an act of anger in this household. You’re allowed to beat up a pillow – you’re allowed to punch and kick a pillow if it’s time to Hulk out. But throwing things is not allowed.
I looked zir right in the eye, looked at the toothbrush (which was at the end of the 6 month span anyway), and tossed it with toothpaste smear and all right in the trash. Zir bestie has gotten that before. But we’ve only had to threaten it before.
Now, I don’t believe in bluffing so I choose my threats carefully. I have to follow through on them, every single time, if JB doesn’t get zir act together. But there was a moment of petty satisfaction when ze realized that if the rules are clear already, as in I’ve already said that you forfeit your belongings when you throw them, ze doesn’t merit a warning when ze is pushing the boundaries. It’s just going to happen.
There were so many tears. But then ze straightened up and stopped being QUITE so defiant. For about ten minutes.
Make better choices!
Speaking of discipline, I’ve been working really hard on keeping my cool when JB is openly antagonistic, defiant, and sulky. REALLY hard. So instead of raising my voice, I lower it. I breathe deeply to oxygenate my brain (and incidentally as a big red flag for zir that ze has left DefCon 5 and the numbers are now ticking downward).
We almost always give zir a chance to correct the behavior unless ze has slapped, kicked, bitten, pinched, hit, or otherwise physically harmed someone. The chance is generally: Should you be [doing the bad thing] or should you make a better choice?
If ze hasn’t gone to another world in zir head, rage world, then ze will stop to think and choose “make a better choice”.
So petty. SO SO PETTY.
JB: I don’t LIKE your turtles.
Me: Ok.
JB: I DON’T like your TURTLES.
Me: I didn’t ask you to like them.
JB: I don’t like my UNDERWEAR
Me: Ok.
JB: I DON’T LIKE MY UNDERWEAR.
Me: Ok. Maybe you can like them tomorrow.
JB: NO I’m not going to like them EVERY DAY.
Me: Ok, wear diapers then.
JB: I WANT DIAPERS.
JB: Can I have a yogurt?
Me: Yes, but only after I take a bite.
JB: Why?
Me: Tax.
JB: WAT.
I’m having a bit of a patience problem.
On Money
