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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March 30, 2016
I’d been wondering something in my quiet moments. Why I haven’t started that business yet, or finished a creative project? Surely I’ve not gotten lazy and complacent?
It’s possible but it doesn’t seem likely.
Despite knowing that I’m awfully tired from constantly being on the go, oh and also you know, health, it’s hard to fight the sneaking suspicion that my lack of greater achievement’s down to a personal failing.
To get to the truth, I decided to Time Study myself. What do I do all day? Where can I make improvements?
Between two full jobs, a full toddler, Seamus, and the odd hobby or two, there is no such thing as a typical day.
Our days fit in three categories: both of us are home and I have work, I’m home with LB and have work, I have work and no LB.
So let’s dive right in!
A day where I work without the baby around
PiC gets to sleep in until 6:20 am, could lay abed even later if he wanted because LB doesn’t stir until 6:30 but he likes to get started ahead of hir.
It’s 7:47 before I hear it. The door creaks open and a cackle floats in. It’s time for my morning kiss and goodbye, it’s a Daddy and LB day, which also means it’s a Mom and Seamus day.
I sit up. “Can I have a kiss?” Obligingly LB leans in and suckerfishes to my cheek. Little lick, little nibble. Baby kiss!
“Can I have one more?”
Ze convulses in a silent laugh, then twists upside down and sideways out of PiC’s arms to dangle over me, expectant.
I catch hir blithely trusting form and ze grins. One last kiss for the family and they’re off. Seamus and I look at each other, and flop back in bed for another ten minutes of cozy peace.
Sooner than I’d like, I crawl out of bed. It’s time for Seamus’s morning routine.
Checking email on my phone for emergencies, I brush my teeth and get dressed. The favorite part of my telecommuting schedule is usually living in my pajamas but somehow getting dressed in the morning feels more efficient than waiting til we have to go outside later.
Within 15 minutes of waking, Seamus has his medication and we’re headed outside. This used to be a quick dash to take care of business while I distractedly checked email on my phone. Thanks to a reminder of OHIO, I’ve adopted a firm stance about time wasted on rereading emails, so this is now our time to contemplate and appreciate nature in companionable silence. We move slowly at first in the morning chill, watching the last bits of fog lace through the tree branches, letting our old joints warm up.
By the time we find our stride, it’s time to mosey on back. Our morning jaunts take 25 minutes, and then Seamus prances at the door, anticipating breakfast. I get him started, start a load of whites in the wash, get a glass of water, find my glasses, and settle in to work.
Thirty seven emails and 4 hours later, it’s time to hydrate and grab a mini chocolate bar from the fridge. As an afterthought, and a placatory gesture to the adult somewhere in me, I also take the yogurt cup with me. Funny how when you set the yogurt and candy on the desk together, I end up eating the yogurt first. Don’t get me wrong, the candy disappears an hour later, too.
Think about eating a real meal. Keep working.
Early afternoon brings a quick flurry of activity: put clothes in the dryer, wash the dishes, prep the veggies for tonight’s dinner, open, recycle, and shred mail. Put together the week’s to do packet for bills. Then, back at the computer for three more hours.
Seamus dines early these days, but he always starts the dinner dance 30 minutes before just in case I can be wheedled. Most of the afternoon is dog-naps, but his internal clock is something to behold as his perked ears bob up behind my computer screen five minutes before I intend to take a break. Dinner for him is the work of a few minutes, then I’m back into the computer glare for another hour.
By 5 pm, a break would be welcome, as would be dinner, so I head into the kitchen to throw something together. Starch, veggie, protein!
Put the pot pie in the oven and sit back down to quickly draft about two-thirds of a blog post from that scrap of an idea that bubbled up with the pot pie fixings. 30 minutes later, the oven is cozy just in time for LB and PiC to get home, exclaiming about the buttery pastry scents wafting out the door.
LB hands me the contents of the daycare bag, one by one, and I quickly wash up hir bottles and lunch boxes.
LB’s still unbelievably upbeat after a long day with hardly a nap, so ze cackles hir way through deconstructed pot pie, and then experiments with gravity. Hey look! The chicken will SPLAT just like the carrot did, and so does the green bean! That’s hilarious! *cackles*
We know it’s a necessary phase but child, stop that!
We bundle The Messy One off to hit the showers once the play time turns to boredom and most of the food now gets rubbed in hir hair. A bottle of milk warms during shower time, and the non-bathing parent clears up the dinner mess.
By 8:20, ze’s creaking and chirping from bed, falling asleep, and I get a shower! I wryly think back to the early days of newborn life when a shower was a complete luxury and give myself a full 10 minutes before it’s back to work while PiC does post-dinner washing up.
My concentration starts to waver around 10:30 and I realize that the last ten minutes were lost to mindless oblivion. It’s time to call it, so I check everything one last time to make sure I hit my deadlines and head to the kitchen.
Usually packing LB’s lunch is still amusing: ze eats everything so I just compose a sort of balanced collection of snacks in bite sizes and that’s set. (Yes, I’m easily amused.) I’m the most underachieving bento box packing mom ever and I’m only that because it totally entertains me. If I could justify it, ze would be carrying hir own R2-D2 to daycare. Heck, if I had to pack a lunch that sucker would be MINE. PiC is in charge of the bottles and labeling everything according to daycare procedure.
Oh and Seamus needs his meds so I check on the supply and make a mental note. Second half of the month is always time to figure out if we need more medications or pill pockets, or basically anything on Amazon’s Subscribe & Save. I’m aiming for that 15% off, if we get a delivery.
The kitchen’s cleared up, lunch is packed, and we’ve made it through another day. I deserve bed and a book. If only sleep came to adults as easily as it does to the dog whose been snoring for the past 2 hours! These hours of the night are the most wasteful part of my 24 hours: I have to read to relax enough to sleep. There are days, though, sleep eludes me til past 2 am.
Yesterday, I worked til 2 am so at least trying to sleep is an improvement for this hour of the night.
What did I learn?
As much as I love seeeing LB’s face all day, when it comes to working, daycare is a blessing. I get so much done when it’s just me. I have so energy left at the end of the day to snuggle hir and do bedtime routines. If only daycare wasn’t a petri dish but that immune system needs to be built sometime and early is better than later.
Daycare has made a huge difference in our ability to get things done and not be exhausted every second of every day. It’s been absolutely critical in letting us both have our alone time professionally, and therefore have the energy to give each other personal time.
I’m not a morning person but sometimes my pain drives an extra early morning whether I intended to or not. This means that it’s not always a good idea to insist on getting everything done the night before. For the first time, I’m becoming relaxed about doing as much as I can, when I can, and trusting that the rest will get done in its own time.
:: What morning routines work best for you? Are you decidedly at your best at any particular time of day or day of week?
March 28, 2016
I wrote a response to Nicole and Maggie’s question: How do you balance the importance of your salary with the importance of your partner’s?
But the site wouldn’t accept my comment either because WP.com is weird or I went way off track and it’s judging me. Whatever the case may be…
I’ve been single longer than married and that heavily influences my answer, as much as peering into some key past experiences.
My salary, Version 1.0
Just after high school, I started a minimum wage job full time. My parents were skeptical, college was due to start in a few months, but trusted my judgment juggling work and school.
Sidebar: Lucky for them, and lucky for me, that I took that job. It kept us afloat for the next four years.
A friend of a coworker was in her mid-40s when she joined our staff. It was an entry-level, no experience required, training on the job situation. She had no work experience. In her late teens or early 20s, she married a man who made the money and wanted a good looker on his arm to bear him children. Her job was to make him look good by looking good, raise the kids, and have an acceptable hobby or two to keep herself entertained. Her job benefits were a roof over her head and food on the table (that she cooked, of course).
At some point, and before he replaced her with a younger model, she realized she wanted to actually live a life while she had any hope of one. Giving it all up, she went to work for the first time and sank like a stone. I was in charge of training her and it took months for her to learn all the things people have to learn about the workplace, many years later than they do. Eventually even she, who was hardest on herself, was proud of how good she’d gotten.
That lesson was burned into my soul.
My salary, Version 2.0
In truth, I don’t think it’s just one single decision, it just looks like it. Over those 20+ years, she would have make that decision more than once not to work. But the sum total is that she trusted him to take care of her, and didn’t consider the bargain a poor one, until it was quite late.
Kids were not an option back then but for sure I didn’t want to be a stay at home me. My temperament was not suited for childcare. Mom was more than ready for grandkids but my mind, body, and soul needed to hustle and earn. Besides, I had more than enough to take care of: Mom and her illness, Dad and his badly hidden depression, Trainwreck Sibling and his multitudinous mistakes in life.
By the time PiC came into the picture, I’d been on the grind for what felt like a lifetime. 80 hour work weeks, school, family, my plate was full, stacked atop another full plate, and precariously wedged between a thumb and a finger while the other hand walked the dogs. Fresh at a new job and out of school, “only” working full time now, my earning power was laughable. Rather than wanting to lean on him, my pride was pricked. Until I could match, and overmatch, his salary, I didn’t consider us on equal ground.
We had widely disparate backgrounds and it mattered.
I hated that I was the poor girl from the poor family that had never had money while he came from a real upper middle class family that was quite comfortable and had never gone without a meal. Months before we met, I was still living off my puny earned wages, eating one meal a day, and our economic class differences burned.
It didn’t matter to him, it never mattered to him, but it did to me.
He didn’t know it for years because it also felt like a shameful weakness. So I buried it, and I earned. And I earned. I negotiated and earned some more. There were many other good reasons to do that, and they were much more important, but looking through the view of the relationship glass? I needed to make my way in the world, I needed to blaze my way, to prove my worth to myself before I would allow anyone, any man, or any man’s parent, question my worth, ever again.
I’d dated boys whose rich and racist parents weren’t shy about telling me that I was less-than-worthy, “because the Chinese are far better than the [insert any other Asian race here]”, and damned if I was going to let that shake me again.
I’d had a crawful of being demeaned and it taught me a simple lesson: if they didn’t respect you when you had no money, that’s not respect now that you do have money. (But go get the money anyway.)
My salary, Version 3.0
I went after the money for a lot of reasons. Survival. Self respect. Confidence. Achievement. Pure buying power. Investing power. Security. Most of those reasons still apply now. It’s less fraught, though.
At this stage of our money journey, PiC’s and my salaries are both respectably high and nearly on par. Together, we can afford our lives here, we can save, and take care of family. On one salary, we would survive but things would be much less pleasant. One salary would have to outpace the other by at least 50% before we’d even consider relying solely on one salary. I’m not sure what we’d decide at that point.
Philosophically, I still value earning power as an expression of my worth more than not. It gives me a competitive edge in the workplace but, mostly, it should be left there. PiC values it as an expression of money in the bank and the ability to buy foods and things. That’s better than the other way around, I expect.
How about you? Do you associate your worth with your earning power? Would you feel comfortable relying on a partner if you had that option?
*Part of Financially Savvy Saturdays on brokeGIRLrich, Disease Called Debt and Thrifty Meets Spendy
March 25, 2016
If there’s something I need more of in this life, it’s quite likely more patience.
I’ve no shortage of things to be patient about but surprise surprise, I really suck at it.
The need to resolve things itches
The mortgage refinance is creeping along at a snail’s pace. Two and a half weeks ago, they said it’d be approved two weeks ago. Yet, still no idea if they’ll approve it yet. Cross your fingers, please?
We need to schedule a signing of our estate plan with the lawyer, just as soon as I quit being a disgusting, racking-cough, sneezy sniffly snotty mess.
Oh right, this cold brought by an emissary from the lower depths of Hades? Still here.
Even better, it turns out that flu-like fever and chills can also be a fibro symptom which is just awesome. I discovered this over a 24-hour period of misery. My only solace is that I didn’t manage to pick up the flu in addition to this cough thing.
Car #2 remains a figment of our fevered imaginations so we’re still a one-car family, and Seamus doesn’t fit in that car so I can get him to the vet for his overdue nail trimming. I did try it myself and got as far as three nails before I quicked him. Sorry, pup.
My phone is still creaking along, but it’s just getting worse, and really needs to be replaced. This has got to happen before it totally craps out in the worst possible situation.
Keeping my chin up (or at least above water)
Before I get too sunk in the melancholy of what’s NOT going right, I will keep in mind that:
We’re still all alive and kicking. In this, the most disease ridden season ever, that’s no mean feat.
Even if I’m scraping the dregs of my energy barrel, I’m still getting my work done and still managing to do a little writing here.
March 23, 2016
For months after LB’s arrival, the sum total of my aerobic exercise was taking Seamus for daily walks with LB strapped into the stroller or the carrier.
I didn’t have the energy for more than that and, particularly when breastfeeding, there was no motivation for yet another thing in the list of things to do.
PiC and I have access to at least one basic gym as part of non-optional fees we pay, but taking a solo trip to the gym when you have two critters at home begging for your time and attention? They’re really good at the oogly eyes, thing. Well, Seamus is. There was that once I strapped LB to my chest for a jaunt on the treadmill. It was fun in that rickety roller coaster kind of way. Turns out wearing a 20 lb weight with grabby hands leads to unexpected (totally predictable) events like the Grand Yoinking of the emergency STOP pin, or *beep beep beep* Run faster!, or the equally stumble-inducing *beep beep beep* Slow it waaaay down!
But taking a ramble outdoors, that’s easy, right? It’s free, and more importantly, free of major dangerous opportunities for the kid to kill you. Bonus: the dog can come along.
That’s the ticket! Buuuut as a sleep-deprived and chronically fatigued mom, what really happens is we mosey outside and down the road, then shuffle our shanks back into the warm once Seamus has stretched his legs and done his business. Rather than trotting a brisk mile or two, a lot of the time we (ahem, I) ended up making a beeline to the nearest appropriate spot and then turning back like Eeyore. Seamus didn’t complain but he didn’t need to. My guilt prodded me sharply – you know he’d love to do more! and of course, anything for my dog, so in the later months of last year, I made it a point to stop working before I hit the mental wall and take him for longer and better walks. It’s gone well enough that I’ve made it a part of my personal goals this year to carry on and do a bit more training.
That was well and good but both PiC and I were still feeling the flobs.
Once LB was holding hir head up easily, we created the Little Workout Routine. Give it a try with yours, so long as you’re careful and don’t hold me responsible for hurting yourself! Need a baby? Borrow a baby! (I have one right here. Seriously, borrow hir. Please.)
Disclaimer: Know yourself, know your baby. My child thinks all of these are hilarious but yours may not. If your child does think it’s hilarious, be forewarned, you might pull something because the laughing is contagious. My child is also more wriggly than a kitten, so if that’s your baby, this could result in injury. Be careful!
ARMS!
Little-lifts: Brace our feet about two feet apart, lift LB under the armpits and reach for the ceiling. Bonus points if you can do this smoothly and toss hir up in the air without straining something. Repeat until your arms like cooked spaghetti noodles and the baby can’t catch hir breath from giggling.
ARMS + CORE!
Little-bell: Pick LB up under the armpits and holding hir straight out in front of you, do a deep knee lunge forward. Keep hir steady, even if ze is giggling and kicking hir legs, with a tight core. For the ambitious, add in a baby-curl: smoothly lower the baby toward the ground as if ze was a hand weight, curl hir back up again. Repeat until the dog looks at you disapprovingly for “dropping” his human sibling. (This will take longer and longer until he no longer cares so probably stop after a few sets.)
LEGS + CORE!
Little-legs: when ze is big enough to hold on (kinda), sit down on a chair or stool where your knees are bent at a 90 degree angle but your feet remain flat on the ground. Put the baby on your lower legs, probably hold onto their arms just in case if their grip is as bad as LB’s, then lift your legs up, straightening them out. This is a massive upper leg and core workout. I go to jelly in about ten lifts.
LEGS + ARMS + CORE!
Little-lunges: Pick LB up under the armpits and holding hir straight out in front of you, do a deep knee lunge forward. Keep hir steady, even if ze is giggling and kicking hir legs, with a tight core. For the more ambitious, add in a turn and baby-dip: turn your torso to the right or left, still maintaining the lunge position with the baby still extended, dip the baby down to about waist level and then bring hir up again smoothly. Repeat on alternating sides, until you’ve gone across the room or collapse. Tuck baby close to your baby as you collapse into a ball, protecting the hapless but usually cackling infant.
Enjoy? Those of you with older ones, is the toddler and child exercise routine half as fun or do we go back to doing normal adulty exercise?
March 21, 2016
“Business as usual”, since LB was born and we got new tenants into the property, has been quiet. Once a month the rent comes in. Once a quarter, I send the tenants the sewer bill and the property manager, let’s call them “Lou”, collects that.
Unfortunately, did I mention this? Things don’t always go smoothly in money matters and this is no exception.
The current tenants pay on time and don’t have a lot of needs. They’ve requested a few minor repairs and those issues have been addressed pretty quickly. But they have a problem with complying with a relatively minor HOA policy about clearing their curb on a weekly basis as required. It’s not that they object to complying, they simply didn’t comply on time for several weeks in a row.
They’re good tenants so far as I can tell, so I hated dinging them for something like that but the HOA is a huge stickler and sent a violation notice every time it happened. After three violations, the HOA proceeded to start fining for the violations, even though the tenants had been informed and were doing their best. The fines were $100 per occurrence!
It’s more than a little alarming to get a bill for $100 per week, with a grand total of $600, when the fines start. It’s a lot alarming that the latest bill is up to $1500. Lou assures me that they’re working on it which means that they’re confirming the lack of violations each week for the HOA and after several weeks of “clean” behavior, the fines will be removed.
That’s little consolation while I see the fines skyrocket. This is the part I hate about going through third parties. As much as I like that having Lou lets me stay hands off, the part of me that manages money and the household particulars chafes at not being hands on so I can fight the charges if shenanigans occur. The bills are in my name!
So that sucks. But the whole point of the manager is to deal with stuff like this.
Basic appliance repairs eat into a slim profit margin
I have a home warranty which covers the repair and replacement of appliances. We’ve called them out to take care of three plumbing problems and 2 appliance replacements. Their timely responses keep the tenant happy and a good tenant is worth keeping happy IMO. Though, what the hell is going on with the plumbing??
The $75 per call out fee is steep in contrast but DIY isn’t an option for this property. I was only breaking even in the first seven months on routine costs (mortgage, property tax, and insurance). We had to get new tenants and raise the rent to bring in enough to have a little extra left over to cover the irregular expenses.
We’d need to raise the rent another $100 to have anything like “profit”. Unlike the “pay yourself first” mantra in regular employment, the leftover money each month after subtracting regular expenses goes into savings. It’s the buffer against the inevitable repairs and maintenance, not money I take out of the business. This is conservative but other than my initial down payment stake, the goal is for the unit to break even overall first. Only after costs are covered, thus preventing any need to dip into personal funds, do I consider that leftover cash mine. The long term goal is for this property to generate some rental income and appreciate in value over time.
*Part of Financially Savvy Saturdays on brokeGIRLrich, Disease Called Debt and From Cost to Coast*
March 16, 2016
The Gymnast
LB confidently climbs onto and off of furniture now, safely, and faceplanting only rarely. Except that one time onto concrete. Oops. That was sad. Ze pivots on hir face a lot. All in service of a greater cause: climbing onto furniture and making a grab for the remotes, the books, and the tissue box. Oh lordy the tissue box is the BEST. 5 seconds of silence means ze made it and is pulling fistfuls of tissues out, shaking them on the floor, taking an experimental bite out of one or the other handful. If you time it right, ze will turn and stick hir be-tissued tongue out for you to scrape out the latest indiscretion.
We <3 books
We’re constantly reading to LB, several books a day, and ze normally “listens” while cruising for the latest bruising. These days, the listening is active and participatory. Ze wants to help turn pages, really looks at the pictures, sometimes touching them, sometimes just urging us to turn pages faster. A lot of the time ze will shut the book on my hands just to be able to open it up again. Ow.
Lapbaby, lapbaby, where are you?
Today, ze picked hir plushie, pivoted, and plopped hirself into my lap! This is a new thing. Since the day ze discovered self-locomotion, we haven’t been able to get the kid to sit still. We suspect this is a by-product of fighting for attention at daycare.
They’re decently staffed, but the kids there compete for attention as kids do. When a kid crawls toward an adult, it’s a cue for the rest of them to converge on that adult. PiC said it looked like being pursued by a tiny mob of tiny zombies.
Big Brother
Ze still isn’t cuddly with us but is trying to form an alliance of affection with Seamus. When he sniffs hir face, ze leans in with an open mouth to lay a kiss on his nose. He never lets hir land the kiss, deftly dodging like a submarine dodging a calf and thus thwarted, ze will crawl to his back and lay hir face on it instead.
Independence and (un)coordination
We haven’t lost an eye to fork stabbing yet but it’s not for lack of flailing. Ze’s use of spoons and forks involves much banging on the tray, excited waving in the air, and holding both ends of the utensil while biting down on the middle. Most attempts result in half the food on the ground and half down hir front. Never mind, ze will carefully place bits of food on the utensil and try to steer it into hir mouth, oftentimes flipping the fully loaded spoon face down and getting absolutely nothing to each. That’s alright, ze carries on with determination.
The clean-up crew knows to (literally) shake hir down for food scraps after a meal.
Our Baby Pestilence, ye bringer of disease
We had some of our worst sick days yet. So many middle of the night wake ups and so many pitiful little sobs. We tended to hir and cuddled hir as best we could, sleep-fuddled and clumsy, but most of the Motrin ended up inside hir, at least. (Thanks, daycare.)
Pirate-raccoon-kitten
Most small things are unsafe around hir. Everything goes into the mouth: hair clips, binder clips, small toys. Hair ties on my wrist are pulled right off, gets clamped between hir teeth as ze pounces for a water source like a pirate of old, cultass clenched in mouth, there to … wash the object?
Yep.
Have shiny object? It will be stolen and washed for you. Possibly returned, but only after a thorough wash.
Some of our favorite things
Bright & Early Board Books: These are great. LB loves to read AND chew on them, win win.
It’s not getting a ton of use specifically as a walker, but both LB and Seamus rock out to this learning walker.
We have some great hand me down alphabet toys that LB likes to chew while we decide what “B” stands for. This combines two of LB’s favorite things: magnets and letters!
March 14, 2016
Do you have a number?
The number that means you’re safe? You can relax, you can enjoy life and kick up your heels a bit? Maybe buy the good cheese, or wine, or really splash out and get both?
This is an emotion question, not a logic one. What number would you need to hit to feel like life is alright?
In 2008, my number wasn’t about net worth; I wasn’t that advanced in my Personal Finance Nin-jit-su. It was salary. It was “do you know how much I could save if I made a $100,000 salary?”
8 years later I still can’t answer that question so now I’ve got two more years to figure it out because arbitrary and deadlines are what I’m all about.
But what’s that number?
Would I feel safe if I had $1M in the bank?
No, that wouldn’t buy a house with four walls and a roof here.
Would I feel safe if we had $2M in the bank?
See above.
Would I feel safe if we had $3M in assets and carried a spare $100 bill in all our wallets?
That’s just asking to be mugged.
Would I feel safe if we had $5M in assets?
If we had $5M, say $1.2 of that was spent on a house, bought outright. We’d need to need 0.8M for renovations since of course nothing for that much is going to be updated and we’ll find something that needs fixing. Tuck away another $1M for maintenance and taxes for at least the next decade.
No, better make it $10M. I think – I’m only speculating here, that I’d feel comfortable to relax, without having changed our basic lifestyle, other than quitting my job and managing money full time, buying a house (and don’t look! I’m just gonna slide this under the wire, adding two more dogs to the pack), if we had at least $10M in assets.
Back up – what was that?
Quitting my job is a change in lifestyle? Not exactly. It’s just redirecting my energy and time to focus on the thing I’m pretty good at. And it’s realistic. I do alright for now, with PiC’s love and support, but nothing is forever.
Specifically, my health could nosedive and force me out of the rat race at any point. The horror show that is trying to get approved for disability can’t possibly get easier as we age, that’s simply not what governments do. It took Mom six years to be approved. She would have been dead on the street in the time it took the state of California to help out with a few hundred a month, long after she’d lost much cognitive function, and the ability to feel reasonably human, if I hadn’t already been working my butt off to keep the lights on, gas in the car, and food on the table.
You’d better believe I took a dang hint from that. I’ve been planning for and saving against forced retirement, reasons of cripplement, since 21. Shoot, I’ve been planning in case of my early demise since I was 22 because when you find yourself in college supporting dependents that you didn’t birth, not even once, life gets serious in a hurry.
$10M is my Happy Place. (I think.)
What’s your Happy Place number? Also, Happy Pi Day!
*Part of Financially Savvy Saturdays on brokeGIRLrich, Disease Called Debt and DIY Jahn*