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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September 19, 2018
Halfway to four
How did we survive 3 and a half years? Whew. What a journey this has been. I like JB a whole lot and there are a lot of days I don’t enjoy zir company so very much because it’s so frustrating just getting shoes on zir feet every morning why does this have to be an argument every single morning –
but I guess we’ll keep zir.
Hands on your belly!
Kitchen safety is harder to teach to an antsy 3 year old than I expected. I want JB to help and to encourage that zest for helping but also don’t want zir to catch on fire or slice off a finger, so instead of saying “Don’t touch X” which never ever ever EVER works, we do “hands on your belly!”
When we’re standing next to the stove together, giving zir wandering hands a docking station of BELLY! is the only thing that prevents zir from dipping hands into boiling water to fish out that one floating dumping, or stirring the pasta prematurely, or grabbing the pot handle and upending its contents all over both of us. (more…)
September 17, 2018
The anniversary of the Lehman Brother’s collapse is coming up. I keep hearing about the ten year recession cycle and that anniversary is symbolically looming large in my mind.
That was my first recession as an adult and I didn’t really know anything about recession cycles or how the market functions – nothing! All I knew was the financial world had come crashing down, my favorite bank (WAMU) had been eaten, the banks were dropping like flies, and that I didn’t know enough about stocks to make smart picks during the tumult. I did know enough to buy BRK-B at the first buying opportunity but I had so little money at that time I bought less than ten shares. Still I bought them and they’ve doubled in value so that was one good decision made in near total ignorance.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how to “recession proof” our lives and our portfolios. This time around, we’re incredibly lucky to have been able to build up a solid foundation already. I’ve still got a bit to learn but the basic outlines are relatively clear to me. We’re personally at least a decade or more away from FIRE even with a bull market so overall we need to stay aggressively invested to build up our wealth. We added some bond funds for stability recently but I’m still thinking about how much we need in bonds to endure a bear market in good health.
Several scenarios come to mind:
(A) a recession with an extended bear market but no job loss,
(B) a bear market + recession + 1 job loss,
and (C) a bear market + recession + both jobs lost.
In scenario A, in theory, I want to have cash on hand to buy more stocks / stock funds as their prices drop. This is assuming that we’re still making decent incomes and expenses stay the same – our savings would remain intact and we’d have cash flow to invest with.
In practice, I need to think about where my purchases should be made (individual stocks that bear dividends vs stock funds) ahead of time so when the prices are dropping during a stressful time, I won’t be irrational and go ostrich. With a buying plan, I’ll actually buy. Without one, I’d hunker down and miss out on good pricing.
Jonathan’s stress test, as a person looking to live off his portfolio for another 40 years, is also a useful thought process though he is far more heavily invested in bonds since he’s further along the process.
In scenario B, we would have to stop saving and investing to make up for the lost cash flow. Mind, we’d have lost half our income (at least) so we’d only be diverting savings from the remaining income. In any case, no cash flow would be available for buying but I could make an argument for diverting a bit of money to buy at low prices. Depending on which of us loses our job, we could also lose childcare which is linked to a job so that reduces one large expense in addition to creating a bit of logistical difficulty job hunting and minding JB at the same time. I’m not factoring in unemployment income specifically because I don’t know how much we could draw and how long it would last. It would simply be plugged in to cover non optional expenses if it does exist.
In scenario C, we start drawing down our savings to cover expenses and slash any optional expenses until we have a new job. We have 1 year in cash and CDs and 6 months in bond funds. Naturally, we would have to make cuts to variable / disposable income type expenses but we don’t have a ton of those. If we lost both our jobs, I would hope that 18 months would let us weather being between jobs but there’s part of me that still worries it’s not enough. I remember how long it took to get another job last time and it’s infinitely more stressful with two adults job hunting and swapping childcare. I’d still be able to do some mini gigs, probably, but that’s really minor income stacked against our expenses.
If we were in a different (better) place financially, I would take a job loss as an opportunity to take a real sabbatical but we’re not in that place yet. I keep looking at our circumstances to find ways we can do better and get to that place but we won’t be there in the next two years.
:: What are your plans for weathering a recession?
September 13, 2018
The best hot dog story I’ve ever read.
Lovecraft was breathtakingly malevolently racist. I love that China Mieville and Nnedi Okafor respectively deal with being honored in their field with a horrific racist’s bust this way:
I put it out of sight, in my study, where only I can see it, and I have turned it to face the wall. So I am punishing the little fucker like the malevolent clown he was, I can look at it and remember the honour, and above all I am writing behind Lovecraft’s back.
Sniff. I knew Cait from her Blonde on a Budget days and I’ll miss her voice.
Lofty goals for California, hattip to Cloud for cluing me in: California approves goal for 100% renewable energy by 2045
Tough Love: When Bad Things Happen in the Wilderness
Cloud on Reclaiming Time. A friend with an older child talked about this playing into their decision not to have a second child or to add a dog to their family yet. She’s enjoying having her time back and I think it’s really smart of her to make a conscious decision to protect her time.
This is why intersectional feminism and eliminating toxic masculinity is for everyone – when men are assaulted, they are also dismissed, called liars, and disbelieved. Sexual assaulters can go on and hurt many more people before the first targets will be believed. This is atrocious. We need to do better for everyone: women, men, children.
Angela’s garden updates are awesome.
Twinsies
September 12, 2018
What I read
Our library is pretty great but also drives me bananas with their book-licensing habits. They hold licenses for random books in series (see Sue Grafton below) so that you never know which books you can read in what order.
I did some digging to find out that I can make a directed donation to the library so that they will buy the e-books that I very much want to be in their collection so I and anybody else can read them. YAY! I feel better about donating to have them own the books, for some reason. Probably because I’m still staring at 10 moving boxes blocking my entirely full bookshelves.
Also, they let me know that e-books can either be owned by the library entirely for unlimited check outs OR they might be limited by elapsed time or number of checkouts. This was news to me and it kind of stinks but someone pointed out that it makes sense because the library has to replace physically worn out hardcovers, they don’t have to do that for e-books so publishers have to make up their money somewhere else.
I couldn’t write reviews on every book but they were all, unless otherwise indicated, two thumbs up! (more…)
September 10, 2018
Sometimes insomnia pricks me badly and I’m not able to sleep even after reading two or three books. I used to be really good at sleep hygiene but the combination of being tired and too tired to sleep overrides the usual tactics.
So I lay awake browsing, trying to find that last bit of something to read that will let my brain relax and say ok, sleepiness! Come in!
All the time hoping and hoping that it won’t take three, four, or five hours. A preschooler, two jobs, and two dogs have no mercy for a mom who failed at sleeping again. Who fails at sleeping?? Who wakes up with new injuries from sleeping?? Not only me, I can tell you that much.
This night I took to writing. This post, and the beginnings of ideas for some freelance work. I shake out my brain for more freelance ideas. I check on sleeping JB and give zir a quick cuddle. Pet the dogs, scratch PiC’s back gently. Finally admit that the uncertainty at our jobs that’s been gnawing away at us is getting to me. I’m worrying about pennies again. I’m worrying about bringing in some extra dollars against the lean days, worrying about wanting to grow our family when we can scarcely afford all the priorities on our plates, worrying about if we could even choose to do that if we let ourselves want it. I’m repressing even the knowledge of what I really want, again, because of money, again, and that’s telling my body it’s the bad ole times, again.
My body responds, predictably. It tightens up. It doesn’t let me sleep. It says ok, stay awake, plan your way out of this mess! (more…)
September 6, 2018
Matt talks about globalization and the changes we’re facing with an increasingly automated world.
I just wrote about how to harness my unbudgeted spending and Penny has her own list of things to do instead of shopping.
Diets don’t work.
Sometimes you need to drop that thing you’re writing. Kind of like how sometimes it’s just not worth reading something you’re truly not enjoying even a little bit.
What I learned about weight loss from spending a day inside a metabolic chamber: One of science’s best tools for understanding obesity is debunking myths about metabolism…. The big theme in many of these studies: Our metabolism silently shifts under new conditions and environments in ways we’re not usually aware of.
Is tail walking a dolphin’s dancing? Why would a wild dolphin carry on doing it after learning from a peer? (Learned from dolphins in captivity)
Learned helplessness
We’ve experienced this learned helplessness in our lives. After she’d gotten very sick with no good diagnosis or treatment, and their businesses had crashed, Dad was basically useless (not working, sunk in his own ego problems), she was trying really hard to work but her health was in the crapper, Mom reverted to a mentality I’d never seen before: blaming bad luck.
I don’t believe that we can think or willpower our way through everything and anything. You can’t wish away ill health (the cosmos knows I’ve tried!) or systemic ills, but I do believe that a helplessness mentality will undermine everything you do.
(There was a video here but I realized I didn’t have time to vet the sources so I’d rather remove it until I have a chance to do that.)
September 5, 2018
Month 4!
I didn’t get creative this month with food, travel logistics ate my brain, but my family did. For our trip to SDCC, my beloved Mama S made me so much good food, adapting my favorites to a GF version. She’s the best.
This was a very baking month. I turned out a few versions of rolled oat and peanut butter cookies. They’re still not quite right, they come out too flat and nearly crispy. I hate crispy cookies. Chewy is the goal! Next round, I’ll sub in powdered sugar for the granulated sugar and refrigerate the dough before baking to see if that helps.
Do you suppose reducing sugar in a cookie recipe without any substitutions would be dreadful? If the recipe also has peanut butter and chocolate chips, it feels like a 25% reduction in sugar should be safe.
It was also Muffin Month. I bake like I work, I do what I feel like when I feel like it. And July felt like a muffin month so I baked as much as I could and froze the rest against a month when more cooking than baking was happening. It’s my version of making hay while the sun shines – when there’s energy and willingness to bake, roll with it.
Month 5!
Meatloaf! This was my first meatloaf since going GF and I substituted ground up rolled oats for the breadcrumbs. It was a little softer than usual, probably because I used a giant zucchini instead of a small one like usual, so I’ll double the breadcrumbs and reduce the zucchini next time.
Coconut curry (from a packet). We picked up a GF curry packet at Sprouts and combined that with my sauteed chicken thighs, cubed potatoes, and sliced carrots. We usually don’t like cooked carrots much but JB especially requested them.
Roasted pork log. I don’t remember which part of the pork this was but I slow roasted it at only 275 degrees with garlic, sadly we were out of pesto or it would have been covered in that, and we ate it for daaaaays with rice and veggies on the side. Later, the second and third pork roasts I made were slow roasted with pesto, for 3-4 hours, and it was perfection. I’m not making it any other way again!
Pork turned into enchiladas. PiC was perfectly happy eating the pork as is but I decided not to push my luck and transformed the leftovers. He was skeptical the first time I pondered this aloud but as is almost usual when it comes to experimenting in the kitchen, my idea panned out. I made red and green sauce enchiladas in the same pan because each packet only makes 4-5 enchiladas but our casserole dish holds at least 10-12. Leftovers!
Shrimp and cheesy grits. I finally perfected the water to grits ratio (3 cups water to 1.25 cups of grits) when I’m also adding lots of mozzarella cheese, and cooked it all on low. We get our large shrimp frozen on sale from Sprouts for $7/lb every so often and I grill those babies right before serving dinner. This was a hit – so much so that JB ate all the shrimp that we adults didn’t eat, and nearly all the grits as well.
Speaking of perfecting ratios and recipes, I’m not there yet with zucchini but they’re back on our dinner table and not just hidden in pasta sauces, muffins, and cake. It turns out, when done well, we all like it. The problem is the darn things go from not cooked to over-roasted in some mysterious and mystical way that has no relation to temperature, cook time, or cut size. It’s driving me up the wall but also got my attention in a way that no vegetable has since we discovered brussels sprouts and bacon are a winning combination. For the moment. Update: 7 minutes at 400 degrees seems to be doing the trick as long as the quartered slices were big enough. My store bought zucchini has also been going into several rounds of a modified lower sugar version of Erin’s chocolate cake.