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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January 7, 2015
Reading Parenting with chronic pain on Slate was a huge wrenching reality check for me.
There’s nothing new in there. No surprises about how chronic pain plus the rigors of parenting go down. Nothing that I haven’t worried over and discussed to death with PiC. There were many many days where I just couldn’t see committing to parenthood because of it. But reading another chronic pain mother’s experience, after the child has arrived and is older, is a bit of a kick in the gut nonetheless.
Chronic pain has now dominated 2/3 of my life. There is no cure and very few effective ameliorating treatments for what I have other than trying not to “overdo it” (which is to say, do ANYthing that resembles having a real life) on bad days.
I have no reason to think that it’ll get any better. Parenting was always going to be a challenge but parenting with only 65% of normal function, at best, well, that’s going to be a hell of a thing.
I wonder if this is a huge mistake for LB’s sake. My parents, in some very real ways, shattered my late teens and most of my 20s with their financial and health instability and poor decisions. Am I setting LB up for an equally difficult path?
Obviously you could argue that no one knows what tomorrow brings and that terrible things could happen to any healthy parent as well but
A) most people don’t really actually get hit by a bus so that “anything could happen” argument holds very little water here practically speaking (and anything could STILL happen but magically getting better is not likely) and
B) I already have an existing chronic and limiting condition that has only gotten progressively worse over the years. This isn’t a game of What If, it’s a When and How Badly will this deteriorate?
We’ve committed.
We are committed. There’s no turning back and I don’t think we would choose to if we could turn back time. (I don’t know. I just don’t think we would. And maybe that’s just because I’m stupid. But it’s highly likely that LB will be an only child if we don’t adopt.)
But this just reminds me that I’m not paranoid, that the sort of lurking fear that I’ll be crippled “someday” is not being dramatic given the number of days I can only just exist.
This is why I’ve always insisted that our emergency savings are UNTOUCHABLE. And our savings rate must NEVER fall below 25%. When I get too sick or broken to work, I need to know we won’t be falling back on the charity of … who exactly? No one in my family is fit as support even were they inclined to provide it, the few who might be in a financial position to help are terrible people and I’d never ever ask them for help. His family’s got their hands full already.
Simply put, we must maintain solid financial health because my physical health is at best, average, on a good day.
January 5, 2015
I was reviewing the Investment House paperwork, vaguely remembering that I’ve got an old home warranty on the place and that it’d be good to make sure I renew that in time.
Good darn thing I did!
Old Warranty was expiring in a month’s time. Meanwhile, looking at a quote for the New Warranty company (the one my property manager works with and recommends as being reliable payers), I discovered that a new policy with them would only come into force 2 weeks after they received payment.
The timing on that would have been really annoying if something broke down that would have been covered and I’d missed that crucial detail.
Aside from that, though – there were things from the home inspection that were noted as being broken. Nothing was critical but the tenants were so balky about the inspection and walk-throughs that it completely slipped my mind that I’d wanted to fix those items.
I’m going to have some of the repairs arranged before the warranty is up. I’m sure it’s going to be a bit of an inconvenience to the tenants, but it makes more sense to me to have everything in good working order when it’ll still be covered for a base service fee. Otherwise, the new warranty won’t cover it and then the whole cost may be coming out of their security deposit because it was broken during their tenancy, they never reported or fixed it themselves, and tried to keep us from seeing it during the inspection.
Some of the items may have to anyway, but I don’t feel the need to wait and keep their whole deposit if I can deal with the problem now.
Would you find that unreasonable? As a previous tenant myself, I can certainly understand being annoyed by some scheduling inconveniences, but I’d prefer that over having to pay for the cost myself.
January 1, 2015
2014 highlights
SPENDING
The good: We can do a fair bit of luxury spending: travel, paying a little more for good quality things rather than settling for the cheapest (and lower quality), eating out more than usual to conserve energy.
We’ve considered a new (to us) car but we’re holding off for now. We’ll wait til the new fancy edition that PiC wants is at least a couple years old and available on the used market. That also means paying cash so I’d like to have that on hand.
The bad: I still feel we spend too much of our incomes (about 75% of it) but we live in both a relatively HCOLA and we pay at least $17,000 annually for my dad’s upkeep, more or less depending on shenanigans.
SAVING
The good: We maxed out PiC’s 401(k) contributions.
I made a last minute 2013 IRA contribution and did the same for 2014. (Last minute because I plain forgot.)
We continued to save 25% the whole year, and started a new savings account for LB.
Our side money venture went really well in Q4.
The bad: I don’t have a retirement plan through the new company so I intended to set up my own. Researched, yes. Decisioned, no. So that’s a fail.
The I don’t know yet: We expanded our portfolio into real estate this year.
Since it took me all of Q1 to properly collect our net worth data, I don’t feel like I can really extol our progress accurately on that front. (more…)
December 29, 2014
Do you cook with your partner?
I read “How Cooking With My Boyfriend Showed Me Our Relationship Was Toxic” and in between shaking my head over the clearly slothful boyfriend who expected to be served and catered to, I realized, oh wait, PiC and I can’t cook together anymore.
You know I adore him, obviously, and this doesn’t affect our actual relationship, but we cannot be co-chefs.
He can be my sous chef, he’s all over the grocery shopping as necessary and the dishwashing as well, but otherwise, he gets the boot when I’m cooking. And likewise if he’s cooking, I just set out the ingredients for him, get out of the kitchen and do the clearing up after.
We just don’t work well together! He’s a backseat chef, questioning whether I should be doing or not doing something a certain way, which drives me nuts. I tell to “just shush and dice the onions. I don’t care what they look like as long as it’s cut up!” which drives him nuts.
See, for all that I’m a Type A in other things, the kitchen is where I get to be haphazard, laissez-faire and not really follow directions fully. Just like he defies the GPS’s recommendations, I routinely take only what I want from recipes and with a little guidance from Twitter, barrel along my happy way. That also means I don’t want to answer many questions that aren’t important to the taste. (To be fair, sometimes how a veggie is sliced actually does make a difference but never does the size of the minced garlic matter.)
He, on the other hand, and he needs structure and specifications, dammit! If he could get measurement requests down to the millimeter, he’d be in sous chef heaven.
Basically it came down to this: unlike other things about the house, neither of us could fundamentally compromise on our styles. So, out ye get, non-primary chef.
My firm rule about separation in the kitchen was an ongoing joke, mostly him ribbing me over my refusal to deal with his running commentary, until one day ….
We were having brunch with a dear friend who is, in many ways, just like him. So, as he tried to slice the bread, she was hanging over his shoulder scolding him for how much it was getting squished. As he started to fry up, she was at his elbow, surveying, heck, I don’t know, his spatula technique? She actually rattled him enough that he spilled some egg! He’s had his occasional kitchen snafus but never when there are witnesses. That’s also my area.
True to form, I sat in the other room working, chuckling over the hollering (mostly hers) and the fuming (mostly him).
Honestly, I thought the best part was that she didn’t know how irritating she was being. I was very wrong. The best part was actually later in the day when he turned to me and said: oh my God!
Didn’t even need context, I knew immediately what he meant. I started to laugh, and said, “Yeah. But it’s about time you got a dose of your own medicine.”
The look on his face was priceless. “NO WAY. That’s what it’s like?!?”
“YEEEEEP. This is why you stay out of my kitchen.”
“Oh. My God.”
“Yeah. Seriously. Stay out of my kitchen.”
Love, y’all. It’s also about boundaries.
December 26, 2014
FYI: Not all of these LB-related posts will be in real time.
Every day in the first trimester felt like a week, not least because I couldn’t eat… we also couldn’t say anything to anyone about why I was even sicker than usual or what was going on because it still wasn’t “safe” yet. It was only made a bit easier when socializing because I’d stopped drinking a couple years ago, so it wasn’t the immediately obvious red flag.
But we survived the first trimester, huzzah!
On the first day of the 13th week, it was as if the heavens opened up and bestowed upon me the ability to eat without nausea. I can’t emphasize how much I ate for the sheer joy of being able to eat.
Now, each day just whizzes by remarkable only in whether or not we have an appointment this or next week.
Going into the 20th week, our apprehension came back. We have questionable genetics in some respects and are braced to find out that we’re going to be dealing with a repeat of history when Little Bean is here and becoming a person, but there were dozens of serious medical problems that could be detected at that so-important ultrasound. I won’t list them here but the suffice to say, the tech wanted to know if I was *sure* I wanted to hear what they were looking for.
I’m tracking specific things like the baby’s probable size and shape and development much less these months. (Almost not at all.) It seems this isn’t normal, everyone seems to feel I desperately need this or the other app to track Little Bean’s progress. But once we established that all the parts were there, my attention has really been on more practical matters: eating and drinking the right amounts, getting exercise, dealing with all the details that we’ll wish we’d taken care of before the baby arrives. I’m not uninterested by the changes, it’s just that there’s only so much grey matter to go around. All the changes are actually happening Right Here; so my attention is on doing everything I can to influence the outcome.
Occasionally I’m a touch overwhelmed by the need to be done with everything. Occasionally I’m a touch overwhelmed by the fact that I can’t quite bend over to tie my shoes or pick things up and don’t recognize myself in the mirror because WHOA. NELLY.
But it’s also pretty funny, as is the new feeling of a vaulting, spinning, gymnastic Little Bean spiralling from one side of my belly to the other. Enjoy that freedom while it lasts, kiddo, you’re going to run out of room soon.
We’ve got our last bit of travel in under the wire and I have no intentions of stirring more than a few miles from our home base until we actually do something about the new human in the house. Minimal though we may be, Little Bean is likely going to need more than one fun geeky onesie and one nerdtastic toy. I like to pretend that with the right few tools, we will maintain a certain level of order in our lives despite all the changes to come. (Cue hysterical laughter)
December 24, 2014
Merry Christmas Eve!
This might have been more appropriate for a Thanksgiving post, but a little reflection before Christmas isn’t a bad thing.
It hasn’t been an easy year.
Hell, this decade. We’ve had grief piled upon grief, year after year. Stress and stressors are constant, if not consistent, and things aren’t perfect by any stretch.
I still want my body back. It probably won’t ever happen but reality doesn’t stop the yearning.
My 20s, starting in my teens really, were RIDICULOUS. Seemingly only memorable for the slow dissolution of our family, while I forced my career to grow like a hothouse bloom in a desperate bid to save them, all at the expense of my health and wellbeing. There are whole chunks of years I hardly remember because all I did was work + school + work.
There was a move, there was a marriage (and a wedding), and parent loss. Travel, abroad and domestic. Two huge job changes.
Bringing home our “first born”, Doggle. Celebrating our first year with him. Having Thanksgiving with him.
Bringing home Seamus.
Then losing Doggle.
The impending Little Bean.
The family relationships continuing to be crap – it’s not as bad as it’s been but only because it’s been pretty DAMN bad before.
Figuring out how to manage money with a co-pilot. Figuring out how to blog about combined/family money.
Life revolved around money (mostly not having it). Not having it was the fire under my butt to do better. Having it was a watershed moment, and purchased a sense of stability, and security that I haven’t felt since I was too young to worry about the family. (I was around 8, coming home from the library with a stack of books as tall as I, and playing with our first dog, that I last remember not worrying about anything, much less making ends meet.)
For all those years in between, “happiness” didn’t occur to me. Who worries about that when you’re not sure how you’re going to get from one broke month to the next? Or if you’re properly braced for the next emergency?
This year, it’s sunk that we are happy. Part of that’s being low maintenance. Give me a donut and I’m happy for the day. Give PiC an hour to himself, and he’s happy for the day. Clearly, our bar is set pretty low and that’s how we want it.
But more importantly, for the first time, despite all the uncertainty surrounding pregnancy, childbirth, adding a human to the family, not knowing what the heck I’m doing next, despite all the stuff that would normally set me on the starting blocks, ready to bolt somewhere – anywhere – I think I’m also feeling contentment.
Happiness is that thing that’s thrown around all the time. It’s the thing to be pursued. It brings the highs to offset the lows. We’re even Constitutionally Entitled to pursuing it. But happiness feels to me to be an extrinsic thing, so easily influenced by the external things like jobs, weather, family, friends. And once you get it, you almost have to start over and find it again.
Meanwhile, the mellower version, contentment, doesn’t get the good PR that happiness does and it should!
Whether you celebrate Christmas secularly or religiously, or not at all, I wish you all joy, contentment and warm fuzzies
December 23, 2014
As a kid, unprincessy things were my forte. I slew invading insects and marauding spiders, climbed walls, played in the dirt and the trees and insisted on pants with pockets, darn tootin. If I was wearing frills or pink, or Lord help us all, BOTH, you’d know from the look on my face that I was only tolerating it because I was told to.
So M.R. Nelson’s latest, Petunia, The Girl Who Was NOT a Princess, put a smile on my face before I even got into the story. It sent me back to a time and a place when things were so much simpler and gender issues were dismissed with a scowl and a determination to do whatever I wanted even if Dad said that “it’s not suitable for girls”. No one else had the nerve to say that.
But I digress.
Fully expecting to find the kind of story I could relate to (though I suppose I’m long past those days of defiance) and I wasn’t disappointed. This is a story of a kid who unabashedly enjoys playing her way, whether or not she’s quite in line with her compatriots.
It’s a cute romp that touches on being your own person, which is wonderful, and also gently suggests that keeping an open mind can be a great thing.
I’m reviewing this just in time for a last minute Christmas book gift, if you’re needing something light and fun – it’s an e-book available at Amazon!