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 15, 2015
Three months after LB was born, life was less than ideal. I was restless, impatient, and struggling to find my place again. And any clothes that would fit.
Then: The closet’s my usual target for a shakedown when I’m feeling antsy but it makes no sense to weed out clothes until my weight settles. The possible casualties of a post pregnancy body:
Two “new” bras that are two Christmases old. Suckers aren’t cheap! hadn’t They didn’t get into rotation before falling pregnant (as the English so elegantly put it) so I don’t get back to normal, I’m out $130 for new bras.
$100 for the tailoring of my wedding dress that has pockets and fit Old Me like a glove.
On the other hand, at least two pairs of shorts would fit me if I stay this size.
Now: I’m still shedding pounds, months later, so the closet is only undergoing organizational changes. No layoffs yet, but a few rehires.
Then: Just one among many things that are uncertain at the moment.
Now: Still true. Less a feeling of frustration and more a feeling of anticipation, though. A touch of the resting winter, preparatory to a new year?
Then: Our taxes can’t be filed by April 15. I hate having to file an extension.
Now: Still hate this but it may not be the case in Tax Year 2016!
Then: I’ll have to return to work sooner than I like and I don’t know how well that’ll work with LB’s lack of schedule.
Now: Not having answers wasn’t a disaster. Surprise!
Then: If I want to branch off into my own projects sooner rather than later, this requires a commitment to the one most likely to produce some kind of income. Don’t know what that is, yet.
Now: I still want to but until I can make a few hours to test the right thing, I’m working on the writing project.
Then: Seamus is rotund and I’m not sure if it’s diet or exercise related. It’ll take some time to sort him out.
Now: He had put on ten pounds of sympathy weight. We cut back on his food and increased his outings, and he’s back to his svelte self. Incidentally, that meant I was getting more exercise more regularly but I didn’t lose much more weight til the Great Flu of the summer and fall. Nothing like disease to manage your weight. /sarcasm
Then: LB is changing every single day. That’s a good thing but at the same time, whatever worked yesterday doesn’t work today and definitely won’t work tomorrow. Keep hopping!
Now: Yep, ze just keeps changing but the behaviors and habits are starting to become a little less wildly different day to day. Ze has now slept the whole night through to a reasonable hour in the morning TWICE in hir life!
Then: We can’t make any major money changes right now. Well, can’t and don’t need to. But I’m kinda bored with status quo – I want to be making decisions and making it happen! (probably a sign that getting back to work is a good thing.)
Now: No longer true! We kept on saving all year, I’ve made investments, we’ve traveled and correspondingly spent what we experts in personal finance might call “a crapload” of money doing so.
December 14, 2015
As we bleed money this year-end, I want to put up Christmas lights. To remind myself not all is lost? Irrational? Maybe. It’s not like we’re going broke. It’s just a remarkably expensive close to an otherwise pretty good year. And it was a good year. (I jumped the gun on the yearly recap but being grateful for what you have and accomplished isn’t the worst perspective to wear before writing a wish list.)
Except for this disgusting viral thing that was so bad it knocked us all down for more than a week, badly enough we would have headed to the ER for the fevers if we couldn’t get them down. Losing that week was bad enough but the lingering aftereffects just rub salt in the wounds. Oh, right, salt and wounds, the bleeding money thing. This is what our Fall has looked like.
Annual expenses
Car registrations: $450
Life insurance: $900
Property taxes: At least $5000
Christmas presents: $260
Museum memberships: $350
My IRA contributions: $5500
*Increase in childcare expenses: $1500 (per month for now. Expect this to go up. Of course.)
One-time expenses
Estate planning, retainer: $4000
Miscalculated tax, $700
Stock purchase for Christmas, $10,500
Mortgage prepayment, $XX,000 (not prepared to put that in print yet!)
All this wouldn’t seem that bad, even, if it hadn’t been preceded by a few months of higher expenses (hello, Summer).
Still, it has sucked up every penny of our cash reserves, our incoming paychecks for a few more weeks at least, and even touched our savings. That was the last straw.
Looking at the due dates for the stuff I can’t change, you’d think I would have been smarter than to take on the voluntary stuff (life insurance, memberships, the lawyer) at the end of the year but noooo. Of course not.
Is it just me or does the end of the year bring you the gift of annual expenses?
December 9, 2015
At some point, we’ll likely take LB back to Asia to meet relatives. That sounds all yay family and fancy-like but every single time I say it, and I test it on myself every so often for desensitization purposes, alarm bells of Preparation, Will Robinson, Preparation! go off in my head.
We haven’t even flown domestically with hir yet, I’m not at all prepared to wrassle a child this active and interested in everything on a flight for double digit hours.
It finally sank in why my friend said Travel as much as you can in the first year. It’s all much harder after that. Oh. Some of them, when they can move, they MOVE. This one does. Holy mopeds, this one does.
Logistics
Passports: US passports for any minor child under 16 costs $105 and is good for five years. I don’t know in what world a child looks even remotely similar five years on but I’m not volunteering to pay that price more frequently.
Among other things, they require both parents to apply in person (or one parent goes, the other parent sends a signed, notarized form), proof of US citizenship, and evidence of the parental relationship.
Flights: Ze is a lap child until the age of two but since the last time I received sage travel advice, ze has become even squirmier. Even if we manage to squeeze in a flight before hir second birthday, I think our sanity demands a separate seat. This means an extra cost whether we manage to swing award flights or pay out of pocket.
Packing: Holy CATS I’m not looking forward to this. Bright side? Ze isn’t going through 11-20 diapers a day anymore. Less bright side: hir diapers are huge now, in comparison, and we still have to carry a supply of them. Also the stroller since it would be lovely not to be incapacitated by hefting this most-healthy, not-yet-walking, heavy child for miles. And of course, there’s the car seat thing. Traveling with a kid still in a car seat is most definitely anti-minimalist but I will do my best. It feels like Stroller City around here so I’m totally against buying an umbrella stroller to add to the mix, but I’m open to any other suggestions to keep the mess down.
Health check up: Ze was an absolute trooper for hir flu shot, after being given something to bite down on like any good ole Wild West character, but the battery of injections needed to go to Asia makes me cringe. Still, better a jab than a multi-week illness. *For the record, I got all the jabs and still got sick when we traveled to Asia as a youngun. If I wasn’t so sick, I would have been extremely bitter.
On the plus side
I suspect this will make for a good story, no matter how well or badly it goes. So as long as we survive, I’ll be excited.
There’s really no economic payoff on this choice, but I don’t think we expected there to be one. (Though, can you blame me for checking?) Oh but naturally it’s going to set off all my travel planning / deal hunting neurons and I’ll be obsessed with that for a good long while. You always need a good obsession to chew on.
Meeting family should be good. Right?
December 2, 2015
Change from Jan 2015: 18.7% increase
0.23% decrease from last month
ON MONEY
I use Swagbucks. Here’s a handy tutorial if you’d like to join and earn.
Spending
***
The huge cash withdrawals are still happening: half of our property tax bill was due, the other half will be due early next year, our mortgage prepayment actually went through (though we had a specific amount we took directly out of savings so that wasn’t a scramble).
The large withdrawals for my retirement savings will drop to a lower monthly amount starting in January thereby improving our cash flow by a couple hundred dollars. That’ll be good. I hate feeling like we have zero cash flow cushion.
*** (more…)
December 1, 2015
Friend: What do you want for Christmas, Revanche?
Revanche: THE WORLD.
Not Friend: What do you want for Christmas, Revanche?
Revanche: None of your business, go away.
Blog readers: What do you want for Christmas, Revanche?
Well, funny you should ask! Here, have a seat next to me and I’ll tell you. (No, I know you didn’t ask but I’m going to pretend you did. A polite fiction never hurt anyone, right?)
Real answer #1: Be simple. Be kind. Be considerate.
“Fresh towels!” I hear echo from the bathroom. Laundry is my thing but it’s awfully nice to be appreciated, isn’t it? Centering our lives around appreciating the simple things, contrary to what our very consumeristic acquaintances say, brings them into sharper focus and stops our tendency to inflate our lifestyles. The less complex our lives, the more energy we can give to the things that really matter.
“Clean your plate, there are starving children in [insert location here]” is a common joke. But it’s true! And a lack of appreciation for our own abundance, the insistence on more more more, makes it awfully easy to forget that we can do good in the world.
My resolution: I already give half my annual personal spending allowance to charitable causes. From now on, I’m going to look for ways to expand that, even if I don’t have my huge charitable foundation & empire yet.
Real Answer #2: Of course I still love things
Like books. Boy do I love books. But I don’t have a lot of room so I’m reconsidering my approach of always getting a physical book first and maybe splurging on an ebook later.Another argument for e-books? I only have to protect my device from the drooling crawling creeper that is my child. We have daily races to the bookshelf as ze scampers on all fours, cackling wildly at the prospect that this time ze might get a grubby finger on my books. I shudder for the day ze wins that race. For both of us.
Gosh darn it, I sure do like my geeky gear. Cheeky grammar / literature wear? YES please. Library socks? Yes and yes. You say The Count of Monte Cristo, I see Doctor Who’s The Silence. And what child doesn’t need a cute evolution shirt? Or their very own Hungry Caterpillar?
But instead of succumbing to my baser desires to buy, I went through my closet and reorganized it all. To my shame, I realize that when you put together my casual gear and my professional wear (that gets not so much wear these days), that closet is jampacked full, thus grossly violating my policy that half of my closet space should just be space. Ooops. No gear for me, then.
I will, however, observe our new Christmas tradition: buying dividend stocks and building our portfolio!
Real Answer #3: Be a better me
I like myself quite well, most days. Professionally, I set high standards and I’ve learned to be forgiving as well. Personally, I make solid efforts to be a good spouse/partner, parent, dog-parent, and friend. I still have room to grow. Preferably existentially and less out so I can fit into more than one pair of pants. *lookin’ at you, belly*
Time and time again, I have to body check myself out of my comfort zone. If I leave room for thinking, there’s room for doubt. But I like it here, it’s cozy! It’s got books, and internet, and and and ….! that unworthy part of me whines. And it’s limiting.
Some limits are real, though even I forget they are, sometimes.
Some limits are temporary and are as much about respecting the now as being a growing period.
Others don’t have to be at all. If I can get over my aversion to guacamole (side benefit: not being escorted to the CA/NV border because my existence offends nature), I can do other strange and horrific things in the name of self improvement.
This year, I started small. I did some interviews. One is still to be shared, and by actual voice, I mean my voice that I hear in my head. The other, in actual audio, was this podcast with Jessica. I started #1GoodMoneyThing which was featured on Rockstar Finance. I kept our Tiny Human alive.
What will next year bring?
Travel: our first vacation with a squirmy wormy baby, my first FinCon (sans squirmy wormy, unless I am persuaded otherwise), seeing friends up and down the West Coast.
More important work: I’ve been struggling with feeling static, with being only moderately productive. With more childcare comes more hours freed back up to do meaningful and/or professional work.
The writing project is coming back to the front burner and so is the quest to find or create my next step. It’s weird that I know what I’m good at when I’m being good at it but struggle to quantify it for discussions like if I’m awesome at X, then I should hang my shingle out as Y.
Want to help me fill in the blanks?
What are you looking forward to this holiday and next year?
November 23, 2015
Spoiler alert: If you watch Grey’s Anatomy and haven’t watched recent seasons, and care about spoilers, don’t watch this clip. I don’t think the post is specifically spoilery but I’d need an outside opinion on that.
Onward!
I am HUGELY conflicted about this scene. Mind, I don’t watch Grey’s anymore, I used to have it on occasionally for background and it’s too much life drama for me to really get into. Plus I mainly enjoyed it because of Chandra Wilson and Sandra Oh. Not the sex in the workplace, part, that weirds me out in a lot of ways, but their hard-driving, take no shit from anyone, I will prevail come hell or high water approach to work? Those were good.
And they weren’t caricatures, they were complex human women and I liked that.
On the one hand, I’m all about Bailey’s professional standards:
YES, you can only mentor someone for so long.
YES, a person must stand on hir own feet to know that ze can.
YES, you can be taught and taught and taught, but only YOU can actually put those lessons to use.
YES, you have to learn to work within the system in order to succeed in it and change it.
YES, part of the system dictates that Miranda has a fiduciary responsibility not to just give money away if it’s not asked for.
On the other hand, I’m not about that system AT ALL:
The system as it stands, where every individual must negotiate and with the internalized bias against women for negotiating, SUCKS.
I say this as someone who has negotiated in every single job she’s taken. I’ve fought for every raise and promotion to be at least close to commensurate to the value I brought. I make a decent salary. But the system SUCKS. The system is riddled with bias and is innately structured to benefit men, who are expected to negotiate, and discriminates against women who are penalized for negotiating.
Hell, according to the first study below, women are already penalized simply for being women at the point of application.
Ilana Yurkiewicz’s post Study shows gender bias in science is real. Here’s why it matters: scientists presented with application materials from a student applying for a lab manager position and who intended to go on to graduate school. Half the scientists were given the application with a male name attached, and half were given the exact same application with a female name attached. Results found that the “female” applicants were rated significantly lower than the “males” in competence, hireability, and whether the scientist would be willing to mentor the student.
So I’m firmly on the side of “everyone has to learn to stand on their own two feet”, but I’m also intensely uncomfortable with the assumption that women have an equal chance at the same money that men do, “just negotiate!”
It is NOT that simple.
Obviously, from the lower salaries that women were offered to begin with, they’d have to negotiate for a much larger amount just to catch up to what the men would ultimately receive.
And I’m tempted to say that Ellen Pao’s move to cut out negotiating entirely would be a good answer except that I don’t really trust companies to make a good, fair offer at the outset.
Getting back to that scene, my conflict stems from knowing that you have to challenged to get stronger. Sometimes being challenged results in your failure to rise, your failure to see it through, or your failure to even recognize there’s an opportunity to win in the challenge. Simultaneously, I rage at the fact that there are times it simply doesn’t matter how much you rise, or struggle, or fight, you lose because you fought, you lose because you fought as a women, you lose because it’s not “appropriate” to push back as a woman.
I don’t know what the answer is but I know this: there is a startling amount of bias in the current system and it sucks. And it sucks to see someone being admirable in her growth from a mentorship position to an authority position and realize that the line she’s holding for a damn good reason was drawn, and is redrawn every day, by people who never intended to level the playing field.
My feelings are complex on this.
More on this, if you really need the additional data
From the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Who Goes to the Bargaining Table? The Influence of Gender and Framing on the Initiation of Negotiation
From Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Not competent enough to know the difference? Gender stereotypes about women’s ease of being misled predict negotiator deception: “negotiators deceived women more so than men, thus leading women into more deals under false pretenses than men.”
Harvard Business School on How Benevolent Sexism Undermines Women and Justifies Backlash: “Benevolent sexists, more often than not, are also hostile sexists”
November 17, 2015
A decade ago, dementia stole my mother’s body, and gave it to a stranger. We buried her years later, but on this anniversary of Mom’s passing, the loss feels as fresh as though it happened yesterday.
I think about her, and miss her, every single day. Every time I sneeze, I hear her sneezing. Every day I look at my child, who is hir own person, I see the striking resemblance to hir forebears. Any day that I speak with relatives who remember her, that she loved dearly and would support and defend no matter what it cost her, I’m reminded that she loved me at least that much and more, even when I was a brat. Even when I was a petulant jerk and didn’t deserve it. Every time I learn something new with my Wee Warrior, I realize that she went through this with me or my sibling and understand a little better her hopes and fears and dreams as a parent.
I owe her for giving me life and, more, I owe her for fighting to teach us wisdom long before we needed or even understood it.
My soul may always bear the weight of her death, much as it bears the weight of my sibling’s life, but I am going to make an honest effort to honor her memory with gratitude each year, until I can remember her with joy, as Shelley does her mother.
She was my first and best teacher
I learned that being comfortable in your own skin is much more important than what others see. Make up was fine but she discouraged me from using it as a mask I’d eventually come see more as my face than myself, unadorned. But combing your hair once a day would (probably) be better than not. Were she alive today we’d probably still disagree on that last point.
I learned to protect myself, and my loved ones, fiercely, unapologetically, unremittingly.
I learned that my face was a mirror of my feelings. I could get it under control and make it my shield or refuse to and accept that that readability allowed others to make it a weapon. It was my choice.
I learned that people have to earn my trust and not all are worthy.
I learned that patience is, especially for our family, hard won, but a battle worth fighting within.
I learned that I’d rather fight til the death than be beholden to people who were not worthy of being in my life.
I learned that family is important but not all of them are worth sacrificing myself for. We disagreed on this in practice, she always sacrificed for her own family even when they repeatedly demonstrated they were awful. I would have done, and have, the same for her and Dad. I’d never do it for people as terrible as her siblings.
I learned that bringing your work home may be OK but not if it means making your spouse feel like their boss came home with them. And even if you are the boss at work, you’d better not play out that power differential at home lest you damage your partnership.
I learned that I’d far rather be alone my entire life than to settle for a mediocre partner in marriage. She wanted me to want a husband and a wedding but never asked me to pick someone to suit her.
I learned that we all have to get older, if we’re lucky, but we don’t have to stop having fun. Mom was the ultimate straight-faced sneak-prankster. When LB gets that mischievous glint in hir eye, I flash back to all the times we fought back giggles during the most solemn of events because of something Mom did or was about to do.
Do you have any fond memories of loved ones to share? Please do.