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
Recently, I pondered whether this blog serves a real purpose outside of being a personal money venue and a bit of therapy when my family is being my family. It definitely serves a personal need, but I also spend precious hours on blogging every week and I regularly assess if how I spend my time and money is appropriately aligned to my priorities.
A friend offhandedly joked that of all people, I should be best placed to analyze the cost-benefit of blogging in comparison to formal therapy. As it happens, as a good human who doesn’t want her boundless depths of rage with her estranged family to spill onto her beloved family, formal therapy seemed called for. I scheduled a few sessions with a therapist to help me work through the issues raised by the Dad issues.
Our first appointment was an intake session. This appointment was to go over the background of my issues, share what services she could provide, figure out what I was looking for (I don’t know … stop being so angry?), and assess whether I was in crisis.
Neither of us thought I was in crisis but there’s also a better than even chance I was doing therapy wrong because the therapist thinks I’m dealing really well with a “shitty situation” (her words) and that this much rage is normal. She pointed out that the definition of dealing well included: not self sabotaging, taking logical steps to protect myself and my family, facing the truth now that I’ve heard it and acting appropriately to enforce boundaries.
Please vote for my post (Father) on Rockstar Rumble, live today and tomorrow (Friday). The link still works, I don’t know why the blog likes to strike through links occasionally!
Kathleen’s moving to Arizona and says some quite true things about kids. We’ve gotten past some of those hurdles by having family visit and adjusting our expectations, and PiC works out of the home so we don’t feel trapped. But it’s true that without a supporting cast, it’s hard having kids.
I am always thinking about ways to teach JB good money habits and self control. We might give this one a try when ze is older.
Keep Thrifty’s Chris didn’t replace their pizza cutter. We work on not having specialized tools in the kitchen too but we recently added a food processor and it was sheer heaven when preparing a veggie heavy meatloaf and my Hainan chicken recipe. So much time and energy saved! Two thumbs up on that.
After I knew he had the signed title in hand, I emailed instructions on completing the process. I’d done everything needed short of signing his name, including filling out the statement of use, verifying that this was a family transfer and therefore should be free, but of course it still took him five days to bother to confirm receipt and, naturally, offer an excuse not to complete it.
The registration was due in a month, which is no impediment to transferring because you don’t have to pay til the due date, duh, he claimed he wouldn’t be allowed to re-title without paying the registration so I’d have to wait for him to scrape up that money.
I don’t usually love list posts but I love mail so the 21 things you can mail was a bit of fun.
Should I say yes more often as a parent? I dunno, I try for a reasonable balance. We allow small snacks before dinner though if you kept saying yes, JB would have two dinners and four desserts before the real dinner so the madness has to stop somewhere.
A transcript on how generosity in business pays off. It’s a good read but this made me laugh: “The more you can pour into making it a gift about them… Think about going to a wedding. You’d never engrave something with “Compliments of John Ruhlin” or “Compliments of Giftology.” It would be the cheesiest thing on the planet.” An incredibly tacky cousin stapled her business card to some cash for our wedding present. We’ve got some weird relatives.
This made me nod, this is exactly how we approach marriage and parenting which is why our partnership works. We don’t count how many times we’ve done something, we look at what our partner’s been carrying and try to alleviate their burden:
“So often in marriage we’re thinking about our own needs and what we want and what’s fair, and that’s natural. That’s really human, but good marriages come from two people thinking about how they can serve one another and really approaching marriage from a place of generosity. That gets really practical. It comes down to the division of household chores.
Instead of thinking primarily about equity and fairness, in a great marriage where both people are being generous you’re just looking for opportunities to help one another. It’s true of parenting too. Like, who’s going to put the kids to bed? Who’s going to get them ready for school or church? Who’s going to take them to practice? All those kinds of things. The endless driving. Hello. The endless driving. I’m so in that season right now.”
And then I REALLY liked this idea: “One of the things he said to me is the easiest, fastest way to get money to the people who need it the most… Don’t send it to Washington and let them skim off a big administrative charge. Instead, just give all of it to the people who need it the most.”
Shutterfly has this feature where they randomly email you “look what you were doing 3 or 5 or 12 years ago!” Sometimes they pick moments like JB’s birth, sometimes they pick a barely memorable random date from our first year together.
It makes me smile sometimes to see how much we’ve changed. You can’t see it in pictures alone (except for the hair – I used to have much better hair and my eyebrows were excellent) but I remember who we were back then.
Our Relationship
I’m so glad that PiC wasn’t as cool as I thought he was. (He laughed at the very thought.) We are both huge dorks, that what makes us fit. We’ve made lots of good memories, and had plenty of downs to go with the ups, but we also appreciate each other more deeply now.
Admittedly we have gone to having just about zero time for each other, solely each other, these days and that’s not good. But we don’t resent it, it’s a result of our choices and we’re still prioritizing each other in the daily choices we make. We’ll make some changes this year, like hiring a sitter on occasion, but I’m not going to worry about it. As long as we keep looking out for each other, we can’t go too far wrong.
Recently, I pondered whether this blog serves a real purpose outside of being a personal money venue and a bit of therapy when my family is being my family. It definitely serves a personal need, but I also spend precious hours on blogging every week and I regularly assess if how I spend my time and money is appropriately aligned to my priorities.
Shutterfly has this feature where they randomly email you “look what you were doing 3 or 5 or 12 years ago!” Sometimes they pick moments like JB’s birth, sometimes they pick a barely memorable random date from our first year together.