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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December 17, 2018
Reading fairy tales and life lessons
I want JB to think about what we read, so as much as I can, when we’re reading stories that don’t necessarily have the kind of message I want zir to take away, we ask a lot of questions.
For example, a Disney book from Grandma had a story about Snow White and Prince Charming. Prince Charming wants to give Snow the perfect gift to show his love. I ask: Do we need to buy people fancy or expensive things to show them that we love them? (No.) Do hugs and kisses and telling you “I love you” work to show that we love you very much? (Yes.)
Honestly I’m not sure how much critical thinking is happening here but we are doing our best to nudge it into blooming.
Screen time
We still limit screen time to the weekends only and in fact, just after dinner on the weekend when I’m not so exhausted all day that I have to lean on the tv for a break. Now that ze can entertain zirself in hours of play, we can limit the viewing to just a few hours a weekend total spread out across a few days, if that much. We do strictly limit it to shows that JB can handle. Ze is not allowed to watch Coco anymore despite how much we all love the music and beautiful art because ze mimics Miguel’s rebellion and talking back and we can’t have that 8 year old back talk at age 3. We love Hilda on Netflix right now, it feels very Swedish though it isn’t, and zir Uncle recently said that he and Auntie were enjoying My Little Pony lately so we gave that a try. (more…)
December 13, 2018
How $12,500 turned into $1.5 Million (of erased debt). I would to do this for one of my next organized charity activities.
I like GYM’s part time plan.
When your number isn’t just YOUR number.
Seven years ago, Hiro was wheeled into the OR to have her brain operated on.
A simple one minute test for stroke.
RB40 asked: “Do you feel guilty for not giving your family the best when you can?”
(He’s talking about material things.) Nope, because I do give them the best I can. It’s just that to me, the best doesn’t mean the most expensive or what other people think is the best. The best is the thing that serves the purpose well without generating unnecessary waste. What do you think?
Related to that, Matt talks about how to be happy and you might notice that buying it isn’t a good long term plan for that sort of thing. There is a threshold where money makes a real difference, but after all our needs and most of our reasonable wants are covered, I want myself and my family to embrace gratitude and contentment, and not have to keep chasing the next high.
Why do you tell your story? Good question! It used to be because I didn’t have enough people to discuss money with but that’s less true these days.
What a litter!
December 10, 2018
As the holidays and focus on gift giving ramps up (we have some obligatory gift exchanges), I like to review my purchases from the past year (and sometimes from the past few years if they were that good) to see if they held up to the expectations.
- Last year: This was a rare impulse buy but I adore my Owl Silicone Coin Purse and so do the dogs. It’s one of the few things I’ve bought solely because it was too cute to pass up, not because it was a gift or because I had a purpose in mind. Three months after buying it, inspiration struck and it became my dog treat pouch – something I’ve needed for years! With silicone, there’s no worry the treats will stain and it’s airtight enough that the tiny treats don’t dry out overnight.
- Last year: I have the sold out dachshund puppy pouch but I adore the Catseye London zip pouches. They’re so thick and sturdy, mine survived a ten month loan to JB.
- Last year: I still adore my only full price clothing purchase: Barefoot Dreams Circle Cardigan. I’ve worn it multiple times every week since buying it last year and it holds up. Of course it gets furry because I keep forgetting and hugging the dogs but it machine washes just fine.
- This year: Hands down, the furnace. Being warm again is such a novelty.
- This year: $7 of fabric purchased on Thanksgiving weekend at 70% off. I’ve started hand sewing again this year and I’m really enjoying the act of creating something useful though my skills are quite limited to just an almost straight seam and a backstitch.
PiC
- This year: An expensive piece of sporting equipment that I’d managed to forget about because 2018 has felt like a DECADE.
- This year: But also the furnace.
JB
A few things stayed on rotation all year long from past birthdays and Christmases:
- Magnetiles and Magformers for building strange architecture and “stables” for zir little animals
- All manner of small animals and figures
- Books books books. We have been slowly building zir library and ze loves rotating through the lot of them, even the baby books.
- A very basic Lego train set. Even simpler than this one but ze loves it.
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December 6, 2018
How an irked Northern California postal patron helped crack a global plant smuggling scheme
Veronika on survivorship bias
I knew the CRISPR baby gene editing was bad, I didn’t realize quite how bad it was. But of course if you’re going to be unethical, why would you bother to be meticulous about the quality of your work?
On Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere
Oh great, another data breach. This time with my favorite hotel chain: Starwood.
As much as I’m an introvert and don’t want to talk to anyone, I also do want a little bit of a fabulous neighborhood.
Whew. A standard marriage according to the research sounds absolutely terrible: “Experts used to tell straight couples they should get hitched and stay that way, no matter what. But one researcher told a different story: marriage was not only harder for women—it could actually ruin their lives.” Also I’m not so sure what the big deal is about your friends choosing to have polyamorous relationships. In what way does that affect you?
This FlyerTalker’s question about what salary you make and how often you fly business class was interesting in how people pushed back. Some interesting anecdotal information there. Personally we make more than the OP, together, but I don’t think we’ve ever flown business class. There was that time Dad went and bought us Premium Economy for an overseas flight when we could ill afford it but that was foolishness in the extreme, they were paying for that for ages. One set of friends got hooked on business class recently because of an unexpected upgrade and blanched at the real business prices ($5000 for a single overseas flight). I don’t think I know anyone else who travels business class regularly (outside of Kathy) but I’d like to, once or twice. It’s not really a thing you do with kids, though. Still other well-off friends choose to travel economy, despite traveling in style during their working years, to preserve their retirement income for all the other fine things in life they enjoy.
December 3, 2018
On Money
Income
Our normal income comes from our full time day 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, occasional sales on Poshmark, cash back sites like Ebates, Mr.Rebates, and tracking physical activity through Achievement (my introduction to it). Some posts have affiliate links that pay a (very) small commission to keep the blog lights on.
The long term goal is to replace our day job income before my health declines enough to prevent me from working.
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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.
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November 29, 2018
Massive climate change report: probably no surprise at all that this was released a month early, on Black Friday, when it would garner the least attention
As a parent who manages kid-free unattached staff and covers for them days nights, weekends and holidays as they need to care for their family or personal needs, as a person with chronic pain who never calls out unless it’s dire crippling pain and even then I don’t want to ask them to cover, I find these parent-coworkers enraging. What terrible selfish people!
Nnedi wanted to give Fwadausi Bello of this terrible story an alternative ending of triumph.
Thank goodness for this federal judge: A federal judge on Tuesday blocked a Mississippi state law that sought to forbid most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, writing a sharply worded opinion with implications for states weighing similar measures.
Furthermore, he called the Legislature’s professed interest in women’s health “pure gaslighting,” pointing to evidence of the state’s high infant and maternal mortality rates.
“Its leaders are proud to challenge Roe but choose not to lift a finger to address the tragedies lurking on the other side of the delivery room, such as high infant and maternal mortality rates,” he wrote in a footnote.
I didn’t know any of this about Billie Holiday’s life and death.
busy vs. activated: a major lesson for productivity
Childhood poverty in Los Angeles.
It’s Still Radical For a Woman to Be Alone
Penny’s all over my money map this week with Giving is a Muscle and Why Money is Always More than a Math Problem
Luxe’s Black Friday spending. I like seeing what Luxe gets, it scratches a weird itch in my brain to see pretty things. I spent nearly $500 of our combined money this weekend on our Lakota families and it was incredibly satisfying, I daresay more satisfying than buying for myself because there was no regret involved.
November 28, 2018
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…)