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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August 26, 2013
A friend’s spouse and I bonded over a plate of overcooked eggs.
“I was really looking forward to my runny egg!”
“I was too!”
“Let’s go get runny eggs.”
And like new playground besties, we ambled off to register our complaint with the server, leaving our spouses to look at us fondly and remark: It’s nice that they have someone to do that with. I would just gripe about it endlessly and do nothing about it.
We all laughed about how much Z and I are alike in refusing to take guff from anyone or be cheated of what we paid for, whereas friend Y and PiC are alike in preferring to let things go, even if they were unhappy.
Since we had, just the day before, gone back to a store for a $4 refund on a candy bar that should have been discounted, I think Y knew I was that type already but it was nice to discover my fellow introvert was also a fellow finance manager.
This led me to wonder, knowing that there are certainly extroverts among us, whether there’s any kind of predisposition for introverts or extroverts to enjoy managing their money more.
*Without assuming that introverts and extroverts are incapable of acting differently from the standard definition of their “type”.
**Borrowing from Wikipedia, working from these definitions and not the assumption that the extraverts are socially competent while the introverts are socially incompetent:
An extroverted person is likely to enjoy time spent with people and find less reward in time spent alone. They tend to be energized when around other people, and they are more prone to boredom when they are by themselves.
Introverts are easily overwhelmed by too much stimulation from social gatherings and engagement, introversion having even been defined by some in terms of a preference for a quiet, more minimally stimulating environment.
August 23, 2013
I have survived!
We have had weeks, literally consecutive weeks, of travel and visiting friends lined up for this summer and we’re finally home with no plans for a good while ahead of us. As an introvert, I’m not 100% sure that it didn’t break something in my brain. But we have returned, and I am alive. And not gibbering. This is good.
Rituals, settling in and shaking down
There have been dozens of trips where I’ve felt completely unready to take the final step out the door and lock it behind me. Either it was unfinished work holding me back mentally or the certainty that I’ve forgotten something. (It’s usually a hairbrush or pants. Or shirts. Sometimes I really shouldn’t leave the house.)
These last few trips have been harder because I’m working my way through juuuust keeping it together, there’s all kinds of family stuff I’m feeling like I’m being dipped upside down in, and we’ve been on the go constantly. The motivation to keep going, it was missing.
As it turns out, the best Getting Ready to Leave routine, aside from actually packing with a whole brain instead of half and getting a sensible majority of work wrapped up, is doing all the laundry and cleaning the house. Coming home to a clean and nearly fresh smelling house is balm for the soul, no matter why the travel and how it went. Even better when the trip was awful and I just want to disappear into Home for about a month.
This does mean that whenever I get home toting bags and bags and bags, I go into a flurry of unpacking, putting-away, and starting the laundry because I came home to a nice clean house, I can’t sully that!
Coming back this time was no different. I wanted to do ALL THE THINGS upon return. All in one night.
Open the mail, pay the bills, sort out a To-Do list for the weekend, finish all my work that I’d fallen behind on, write up some blog posts with recent thoughts, edit photos, finish designing simple wedding things, read one of the new books I bought from the Amazing Bookstore, watch all the Castle episodes that might be new (none, as it turns out).
Apparently I can’t do anything in moderation, not even recovery! I honestly don’t know how @mochimac and @eemusings hold up after months of travel. My travel meter seems to run out after about 2.5 weeks away from home.
August 17, 2013
Friend 1: “Why didn’t you ask for help?”
Friend 2: “PSH, Revanche? Ask for help?” *proceeds to laugh her head off*
– On me nearly unsuccessfully heaving a suitcase into the overhead, thinking I’d be damned if I didn’t get it in there myself.
There’s something almost therapeutic about old friends who know my foibles. I’m terrible at this.
It’s 2:30 in the morning. PiC and I have just set the date for our reception that’s oh, about 2 years overdue or something like that and now it’s time to actually plan this thing. I only get the occasional rage-attacks that tend to leak out when I think “wedding” and “Mom” and “family that was horrible” so this should absolutely go smoothly now.
For the three years since our engagement, the idea of asking people to be involved, to help or stand by me as I navigated the road of being engaged and getting married tasted sour. It was hard to fathom how it wouldn’t be an imposition, that family or friends who hadn’t volunteered might actually be willing to lend an ear, a hand or a brain.
And for the past four months, talking about setting a date and finding a venue, the thought of even asking them to make time to attend felt like a definite imposition. As much as I don’t care about what people think in the abstract, that non-caring only works when I’m doing my own thing and working on my own life. Not when I have to *shudder* share part of my life. Setting a date was something of a random process, filtered and narrowed down as I frantically tried to ensure that the really important people wouldn’t be put out too much.
Not all of this is the rambling of a paranoid, oversensitive loon. More than some of my oldest friends have moved thousands of miles away and it’s no small thing to travel cross country for a wedding.
I mean, weddings. High probability of mediocre food, questionable music, and dozens if not hundreds of strangers surrounding you while you don’t spend quality time with the person you came to celebrate. (yes, i a wildly sentimental.) That hasn’t been the case for most weddings I’ve attended since becoming an adult but only because I started self-selecting out of the ones where I don’t love the person enough to put up with nearly anything for them years ago. As a kid, I was the unwilling baggage at dozens of family weddings, and believe me, when you’re related by way of dad’s mom’s sister’s brother in law’s nephew’s elephant’s trainer, “family” didn’t make them any more special. (Kidding about the elephant trainer because honestly, I would have been 100% all over the elephant trainer thing.)
But it’s time. It’s time to commit to a thing that’s supposed to be special, supposed to be for us to enjoy with our family and friends, and supposed to be memorable in good ways and not the kind that leave me up at night pondering the meaning of life. And for that, it might also be time to learn how to ask for help in a way that lets our loved ones know we want them to be part of it.
We didn’t get here all unwilling after all. We really did want to share some part of this with good friends and family.
~
And speaking of loved ones, maybe I’ll learn how to talk to Dad again. Those conversations have not been going well these past months and I feel like the World’s Worst Daughter for it.
In trying to talk about wedding receptioning, he and I have butted heads far more severely than I ever imagined possible, leading to my insisting that he’s obligated to support me and my decisions rather than insisting that we must invite “all or none” of our relatives. The grief hasn’t been doing either of us any good, and in this situation, being the only child he’s likely to parent at a wedding, I understand that he’s suddenly got a vested interest in “Doing It Right” culturally but … guys. “All” is approximately 500+ people. I would lose my mind. I’m going to do that anyway, what’s the thing after that?
Ach.
In any case, we have a date and a possible venue and we’re going to spend twice as much as my stingy soul’d prefer but whatever. Full service. Small wins, right?
August 8, 2013
These days, especially since the summer started, I’ve been feeling like the days just blend one right into the other.
Not for any bad reason particularly. Or any bad reason generally. I work a lot. PiC’s working a lot. We don’t “get home” from work until around 8 most nights now and we’d normally be eating a lot later than that, and eating out most nights, if I weren’t taking out time in my workday to prep dinners.
My work flexibility has been a serious lifesaver in this regard.
Also on our plates: working the mortgage refi (slammed into a brick wall there); coordinating and scheduling summer travel plans; bills; taking care of Doggle’s various needs; again, keeping ourselves fed with actual groceries. No wonder all I talk about is food and … food, these days!
Our continuing experiment in shared finances is, well, continuing. Halfway through the year, I see that we have spent nearly half the annual budget in some categories and in others, we are way over already.
Household: We both bought new phones this year, a first in a few respects for me. I’ve never paid more than $40 on a phone and I’ve certainly never bought one outright until my contract expired. This time, however, my contract was expired and everyone else on the family plan still had ten months to go. The way my phone wasn’t working, waiting wasn’t an option. Same for PiC, a couple months later.
My verdict after several months of use: I generally like the phone even if it’s too big for my hands but it, like most of my new phones, seems possessed. It’ll randomly turn off without a peep, and other times the screen is slower than molasses. The battery life used to be great but unless I am considered a power user, I think it drains batteries far too quickly. Combined with the fact that sometimes it hates every charging cable but its own so I have to carry my own charging cable everywhere.
Gifts: With two more planned gifts, and not even accounting for yet another wedding we’ve been invited to, we’re already tapped out here. We budgeted $800 which seemed like plenty for giving away of things for a year. I’ve suggested that we skip Christmas gifts for the whole family entirely – you may now call me the Grinch.
Travel: This budget was set pretty high for the year and even though we actually skipped two of the originally planned trips it looks like we’ll use a good percentage of this budget, if not all. And it was a very generous budget, IMO. We’ve spent more time on the road than ever, with more miles to go, enough so that I’m sort of looking forward to end of the year and clearing the slate. And staying home for months on end.
Honestly, I’m kind of running a mental marathon here and I’m not sure when I got so busy but for the first time in my life, I’ve found myself thinking: So much work! But, I like my job and I’m happy.
Hand to JossWhedon, I’m happy with my job right now and that’s one hell of a thing.
Traveling on the hottest weekend EVER. Awesome.
If you can’t tell, the dashboard is showing an outside temp of 110 degrees Fahreinheit. /frazzled.
Doggle was traveling with ice packs on his bed to make sure he stayed cool, even with the air conditioning blasting. Thank heavens the used car we bought really was in excellent condition.
I looked up and it’s already August. How are you guys doing out there?
To answer my own question with a few links:
Can I ever complain about heat to Funny About Money in Arizona? Nooo….
I’m semi-stalking The Asian Pear for Hawaii updates.
Donna’s scold about checking your email for giveaway wins made me smile. If I won more often, that’d be the sole reason I checked email sometimes, these days it’s mostly Twitter doing email’s job trying to tell me all kinds of things. But really, it was the employment of the neighbor children that made me smile. I loved working as a kid, whether it was babysitting or doing my parents’ finances, or whatever and getting paid for it was really some major icing on the cake. Now I love getting paid 😉
My friends in (or done with) academia may enjoy Rebecca Schuman’s thoughts on leaving it and the real definition of sour grapes. It’s a good read.
July 28, 2013
I think we all know I’m crap at anniversaries, right? Well, I’m pretty sure this was my tenth anniversary of attending Comic-Con. Or 11th. Whichever it was, it was AWESOME.
Welcome to San Diego, Comic-Con Style
We had to make a lot of compromises throughout the Con due to schedule conflicts and I was at least a bit amazed: they were none of them disappointing. I rarely experience that “Fear of Missing Out” except at SDCC when I hate giving up even a minute of hard-earned fun. Other than having to reconcile myself to not getting Preview Night, which wasn’t really a choice, we had barrels of fun. But that’s ok, we spent Wednesday with family friends and then goofing off at the close of the Petco Park exhibits.
Thursday was full of floor time to make up for missing out on the usual Wednesday Night scouting run. I bought seven TPBs, two to give away, commissioned a tiny pet portrait from the talented Katie Cook (@katiecandraw, now of My Little Pony fame), and got to chat with both her and another talented creator, David Peterson (of the gloriously cute MouseGuard). The creator and artists of Elephantmen were again, super funny and super nice. I wished Pia Guerra were there hanging out with them when I stopped by. I missed her if she did.
I blew through one-third of my $300 allowance in a day. !!
Scratching every possible itch I had:
Top left: A DUCK TALES GOLD VAULT TO DIVE INTO.
Top right: Game of Thrones trolley station stops.
Bottom left and right: Dog-Friendly on the floor and across the street. ConDogs were dressed up as Princess Service Dog, Scout Service Dog, BatDog, DogRobin, and casual we’re here to play Dogs.
Top left: Blood Drive at the Omni Hotel
Top right: Molly Lewis, singing about her offer to bear Stephen Fry’s baby
Bottom left: Marian Call, pre-Browncoat song
Bottom right: All the ladies together!
I’ve never been one to go to concerts but lately, indie artists who are both a delight in person and amazing on stage have been creeping their way into my schedule.
My attempt to give blood post-weight gain was denied, but we basked in the musics of Marian Call, The DoubleClicks, and Molly Lewis at a coffeeshop later and that salved my wounded pride of being rejected. I was so excited! And then so dejected. The guy who gave me my consolation t-shirt saw my face said, “Oh nooooo….” Oh well.
The Money Recap
… and “never again”…
After totaling the cash and credit card spending, it looks like I’ve only spent $220 of my $300 personal allowance.
Our hotel rate was bumped up a bit because it was evidently booked wrong, but since we usually share rooms, it keeps our accommodations cost to a reasonable rate. This time, the room-sharing was a bit of a disaster and has gotten one person bumped off my list of “I’d be fine never seeing you again” forever.
By common consent, shared rooms get divvied up into personal zones. You don’t put your stuff on another person’s bed if you’re not either married or related to them, you share the common desk areas and split the use of nightstands down the middle: you get the one you’re closest to and you don’t spill over into someone else’s. And you always respect the sleep! You don’t make noise when anyone is still sleeping, clattering and clanging, slamming doors and such. It doesn’t matter if they’re the last one to wake! (This hasn’t always been me, either.) And snoring? You warn your roommates if you snore. These are all courtesies observed without discussion by all roommates we’ve had, male or female and we’ve generally had decent rooming experiences.
Shared rooms can be a somewhat tight fit and we go out of our way to be more polite: asking if people are night or morning shower-ers and what schedules look like so we don’t cause a bathroom traffic jam, checking to make sure that no one wants the bathroom or shared surfaces when you’re about to monopolize it, etc.
This time? Oh man. We checked into the room after dropping off our stuff, claiming one bed and the area around the bed, furthest in the room to give our next roomies a clear path to the bed by the bathroom and door. We came back later that night to find that Roomie 1 had strewn stuff all over his bed, gone to the far side of our bed and claimed the whole desk with his electronics and food and beer and trash was on our nightstand, the floor, and the desk. He’d basically pooped on every surface. He didn’t shut down the computer until nearly 1 am, took a phone call in the room at 445 am and conducted a full freakin’ conversation, then let his phone alarms go off multiple times until 6am. Then at 630, he decided work at the desk next to our bed instead of taking the laptop back to his bed, so as to put space between us and his clicks, clacks and beeps. Then he acted put out when I lost my temper and asked him to leave the room as he’d keep me up for the past two hours already and I was sick with exhaustion.
That was Day 1. If you wonder if I had strangled him by Day 3, that’d be a valid question. He was passive-aggressive when he wasn’t being downright rude, talking through me to PiC. What a jerk. Once we get his repayment for the room, I wash my hands of him. You can be certain that I set a deadline for that payment.
The rest of the Con was fantastic and worth every penny. But I will likely never allow someone to room with us again without a full background check. I’d simply say no roomies ever again but it’s such a good way to save money and hang out with good friend-roomies that I don’t hate it.
July 4, 2013
It feels like keeping atop, or even just immersed in, the news of late has been one hell of a roller coaster. Maybe it’s age that compels me to think: didn’t things used to be simpler?
They were, years ago. But it seems like all that ended after 2000… dirty and useless politics and pandering, social pressures moving away from what I think are sensible, a roller coaster economy. (I’m sure it was just more obvious, not that things were really better before 2000.)
In a fit of sanity, some 8 years ago, I told a frazzled friend: it’s no use waiting for things to become clearer. As we get older, life’s just going to be more complicated and shades of grey.
In a lot of ways, that’s held true, though I’ve made it a point to cut out complications where and when I can because I value my limited ability to function. 😉
So while not ignoring the bad, the scary, and the really hard things to swallow, I’d like to focus on some good and beauty in the world on this Fourth of July.
My friend, Christopher Daley, is fundraising for his charity run for the Boston Children’s Hospital. He’s 1/3 of the way there as of today!
A Vietnam vet, James Hensinger, took some really amazing long exposure photos 40 years ago and has finally shared them with the world.
This man spent 2 years creating this absolutely incredible video of the San Francisco Fog. I’ve had the pleasure of watching this fog roil and bubble, flow and rush over the mountains, through the city and into our lives for years. This is a most spectacular way of seeing it all over the Bay Area.
July 1, 2013
PiC and I have a new tradition of sorts, a weekly dinner with one singlet friend, and a every couple of months dinner with another singlet* friend. Both are friends from years back, Ye Olden Youth Dayes. I don’t know if it’s weird that we never tried to seek out couple friends specifically now that we’re married but it’s just never been a priority. A friend’s a friend, whether single or doubled up. And I like that, paired or not, our friends feel comfortable with us, paired or not.
*Singlet denoting the fact that they may not actually be single, but they hang out with us sans partner for these regular shindigs.
We’ve gone out to explore weird little joints, relaxed with easy take out, and experimented with new recipes. The responsibility or privilege of deciding what to do next has been alternated like a hot potato, back and forth, but I always feel like since we’re feeding three in total, two of whom are a couple, isn’t it more fair if we paid 2 times out of 3 outings?
Sounds logical to me, but the singlets we dine with usually gives me an odd look when I venture forth with this theory. Granted, we rarely have terribly expensive meals, ranging from $5-20 per person depending on whether we’ve cooked, did take out or dined out, but it does still feel a bit unfair from my perspective.
:: Am I being overly aware or would you feel the same way? What if you were the single one? What if you were part of the couple?