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 16, 2013
Pacific Rim came out in theaters a while ago, and I have no idea how well it did but it was one of the few movies that appealed enough that I wanted to see it in theaters. When the DVD later went on sale for $8, I snapped that right up. Not because it was $8, I don’t try to own media unless I LOVE it and am willing to watch it 200 times so nothing’s just taking up space. But this movie got a wholehearted double victory fists YES. It’s a quick watch at 131 minutes, fast-paced and light fare, stuffed with plenty of good fun.
By grace of this stubborn cold or flu or whatever I have, I’ve only had the brainpower to sit around and stare so we’ve played the DVD 4 times in the last 2 days. PiC humors me so much.
I saw absolutely nothing in the promo trailers, for a wonder, except ROBOTS and MONSTERS (which is absolutely all it took for me to be in) and so had zero expectations except for fighting robots and monsters. Which I got in spades.
1. Idris Elba as the Marshal. He. Was. Awesome.
2. Idris Elba with the best shut downs ever. When Raleigh tried to walk away from the recruitment. When Mako tried to persuade him that it was her turn. When Raleigh laid hands on him (whoa).
3. The loving father-daughter relationship between the Marshal and Mako, caring moments entwined with their professional relationship without getting weird.
4. Mako’s willingness to confront Raleigh with what she perceives to be his weakness. Her confidence in the ring.
5. Raleigh’s balance as a character: he’s been deeply hurt, he’s been out on his own, but he doesn’t hold any dramatic bitterness when he decides to come back. He doesn’t lash out at the barbs that could have triggered a forced outburst: Newt’s groupiness, Chuck’s arrogance at the dinner table. He does protest things that are protest-worthy but he’s not melodramatic.
6. No schmucky love story! This was hands down my favorite part. A male-female set of leads that battle together, obviously care about each other’s well being, but don’t fall into a stupid love thing that wouldn’t be believable. Doesn’t stop Hollywood from shoehorning in gratuitous love stories in countless movies, but I have no love for them.
7. GIANT ROBOTS! Shades of Veritech, echoes of Transformers, ghosts of Voltron gone by, all the massive fabulous robots! Called Jaegers! Piloted by Rangers! Could you possibly appeal to my 80s loves any more?
8. Why yes, with GIANT MONSTERS! Hello, decades of Godzilla fandom come to life! In shark form, in dactyl form, in classic romping, stomping land form.
9. Chuck getting a well deserved stomping. Ranger or no, he was a jerk.
10. The Ops guy always in his bow tie. Because “bow ties are cool”. (All together now, who says that?)
11. Bulldog!
12. Bonus: Wonderful soundtrack.
And of course my money questions:
What havoc did the constant attacks wreak on the world economy? The Jaeger program required a lot of support but they were “only” dying 2 Rangers at a time. In the meantime, you have a huge defenseless population relying entirely on the mobile robots and a hell of a mess to pick up after each battle, regardless of who won.
Whose bright idea was the wall? Was it meant to be a jobs creator despite the sheer stupidity of the idea?
Politically, who were those politicians running things and making the predictably stupid decisions?
Where did all the materials to build the 250 foot Jaegers come from? Where did the money come from?
Does insurance even exist in the post-Kaiju world??
December 15, 2013
As we pass the 2nd anniversary of Mom’s passing, I’ve been sitting with a good friend who has recently lost her mother, discussing grief and the process of grieving.
In some ways, it’s not a simple thing, not an easy progression of steps, nor a checklist you can tick off one bit at a time and arrive at an end.
In other ways, it really is quite simple to understand the gauntlet once you’ve gone through it.
“I was fine at her memorial. I was smiling and talking to people. It didn’t look like her. It didn’t feel like she was gone.”
Yes. I remember that feeling of surreal unreality.
“I’ve cried every day since burying her. I still can’t go into the same stores that I used to shop.”
Me neither. I’d run, crying, out of a grocery store because the memories were just too much. It wasn’t even one that we visited together. It was the visceral memory of a childhood habit that gripped my heart and wouldn’t let go.
“I keep asking myself why I didn’t take her to X, why did I choose to do Y instead of Z? Why didn’t I ..”
I’ve second guessed every decision I made in the last twelve years. Constantly. I’m convinced that I was the worst daughter ever because the end, ultimate, result was that she died, never having recovered from her illness.
You could float on the sea of “if onlys” and “what ifs” that we create, in our grief, treading and retreading our memories.
Hindsight, as they say, is 20-20.
But is it really? Is it really so much clearer now that events have irrevocably transpired?
A truth I’ve had to learn is that the other choice always seems like it would have been better only because I already know the outcome of the choices I did make. I have no idea what would have happened had I gone somewhere else for undergrad, if I had pursued a Masters or Doctorate. Maybe I would have had to drop out and be even less prepared to do the basics of supporting the family.
There’s a song by Little Texas that gets me EVERY time I hear it.
That knowledge doesn’t stop me feeling bone-deep regret for not pursuing a white collar profession where I could have earned enough to buy her health insurance outright (even though that would have taken years), or for being angry with her, not just her disease, as she became more ill and less mentally competent. I couldn’t take the step back at the time, it was easier to be angry than to accept and understand that I was losing her.
What might have been
In the aftermath, even after nominally accepting that I, mostly, did the best I could, and failed, I wonder what could have been done differently. And I wonder how much of my choices, and non-choices, affected this family.
Before carrying me to term, Mom had a few miscarriages.
What would have happened if I hadn’t been the one to make it?
What if my brother had a brother like he wanted?
Or what if he had grown up as an only child, with all the attention he clearly needed, without a “weak” (but meaner than a pit of crocs) little sister to take care of and be bitten for his efforts?
What if he hadn’t had me to practice his machinations and manipulations on?
What if he didn’t have a “follower” sibling with my personality and strong inclinations to academic achievement to contend with and push against in his attempts to lead me? Would he have actually reached to do something with his abilities instead of playing the comparison game and not even trying?
It’s part of the family lore that after a few days (or weeks, I forget) of getting to know me, my sibling picked me up and suggested they return to the hospital to trade me in for a better model. Unfortunately for him, hospitals didn’t accept returns at the time or I’m sure he would have just taken me himself. Kids feel that sort of thing all the time, but I wonder whether they all really would have been better off without me?
Without an extra mouth to feed, a second child to clothe, educate and worry about, would my parents have been less stressed, and more able to save? Did their circumstances dictate the outcome, or would their actions have been much the same?
Would my sibling have been the productive citizen and son that my parents prayed for? Would he have learned to use his copious people skills and talents towards a job or career, would he have felt the unbearable weight of responsibility that I grew up with, or would that still have eluded him?
Was it my fault, my existing, that played a key role in his failure to thrive? Is his failure to find a niche where he would excel attributable to my combative and competitive nature?
These are intertwined but I can’t help but realize that, like the butterfly flapping its wings, my very existence changed things.
Was it for the better?
I can’t know. I do know that as the surviving fetus, as the kid who did come along second, eventually, whatever ill my coming boded, I always felt a pressing weight. I knew fairly early on about Mom’s miscarriages. I know about the bigger than usual gap in years between my sibling and myself. Where other kids were two years apart like clockwork, we were about 3 years apart and, oh, the strength of will it must have taken for her not to smother me mid-scream in the first nine months I spent crying my lungs out.
It always seemed like I lost the genetic lottery: as the scrawny, untalented (no eye for art, terrible ear for music, only Doggle matches my astounding level of clumsiness), not terribly smart, really a bit of drifter with no dreams, youngest child, I only knew that I had to compensate and overcompensate to justify having made it.
The ghosts of those other babies, the ones my parents never met, haunted me a little. What could they have done with the gift of life? Would they have had the talent? Would they have inherited Mom’s gift with numbers, Dad’s ability to dream for the future? Would he or she, or they, have been the charmers, able to mingle and make friends everywhere they went? I certainly didn’t get any of that, so was that lost with them, leaving me with only remnants of determination and a strange love of containers to work with?
Sometimes it feels like all I have are questions, a sense of those nearly siblings’ unfulfilled potential, the uncomfortable prickles of something like guilt.
Without dwelling on the macabre, there are some studies that suggest that the influence of a sibling, past a certain point in life, is a stronger force in the development of an individual than even that of a parent. Anecdotally, I could see this. I learned from my parents, authoritatively, but I viscerally reacted to my sibling. At a much deeper level, I absorbed what I know of human nature from my interactions with him, by growing up next to him, and observing his experiences. By following my big brother. And I can’t know how my existence, my following, and my watching affected him. A bit like Schrodinger’s Cat, I guess.
Having made it this far, it feels like it’s my job to make good, to redeem the family name. I can’t change the past, I can only work toward the future.
I try not to think about
What might have been
‘Cause that was then
And we have taken different roads
We can’t go back again
There’s no use giving in
And there’s no way to know
What might have been
December 11, 2013
PiC was relatively unimpressed when I announced that our Christmas presents this year were going to be Costco stock.
“… I like Costco….”
Yup. So do most people I know. Fun fact: Costco apparently ed to keep offering mainland prices when they opened up their Hawaii stores. This was from a Hawaii-based friend. We’ve shopped there and while I won’t say all the prices are still on par with mainland prices, they’re pretty close. For a place that easily charges 3-5x more for basics than the mainland, that’s not bad.
I’ve been on the hunt for an addition to my tiny portfolio, so I started thinking over the businesses that I’ve tracked over the years, as well as the businesses we frequent. If we’re consistently willing to spend money at a business that has a strong foundation and cash flow, it makes sense to consider them as a stock holding after some research.
I’m looking for stocks with dividends this round and Costco (COST) fits that bill. Their fundamentals looked tolerably good, though the ratios are on the lower side compared to some other stocks that are flying high. I will admit that my working knowledge of the market is pretty rusty after spending enough years sitting on stocks and not doing a lot of research. It makes Evan’s Investment Club an attractive idea; you’d think this was like riding a bike but apparently I was never that good at riding bikes/stock picking!
I decided the number of stocks I wanted (based on how much cash I had on hand, honestly), the price I’d be willing to pay and set a GTC (good til canceled) stop order at that price.
My portfolio is currently at TradeKing (referral link gets you and me $50) which has been great for my style: simple, low-cost at $4.95 per trade, easy to navigate and good information resources. I buy and hold, reinvest dividends, and balance growth and income stocks.
::Update: I’m now the proud owner of COST. PiC remains slightly indifferent. 🙂
December 9, 2013
Our favorite guesting ritual is cooking a meal for our hosts.
There’s always a bit of shuffling figuring out what to make and cooking in an unfamiliar kitchen but cooking a nice meal for hardworking (often parent) friends and cleaning up for them’s a nice way to give them a bit of a break and thank them at the same time.
For our new parent friends especially, going out is not so much the fun and easy time that it used to be. Depending on the age of the kids, and the parenting style, they’re generally on the hook for crying, projectile food, running, screaming… all ingredients for a good time, right? It’s just easier to eat at home and weird as it is, PiC and I always enjoy a good ramble through the grocery stores wherever we travel.
Grocery shopping in Hawaii was one hell of an eye-opener.
The ingredients for a basic taco night for four adults and 1 child, which probably would have cost about $30 even here in the Bay Area, was a shocking $60. Granted, I wasn’t buying on sale cycles like normal, and didn’t have any coupons either but still, I’m certain we could manage turkey tacos for less than that on the mainland.
That included: 2 lbs of ground turkey, taco seasoning, hard taco shells, tortillas, onions, 5 avocados for guacamole, 2 limes, 1 bag of chips, a few tomatos, and shredded cheese.
I walked the rest of the produce section and aisles to get a feel for the rest of the store and it was equally scary.
Milk is consistently expensive, running between $9-10 per gallon; kale cost 3x more than I would normally pay (between $1-2 per bundle on the mainland; $5 on the island); bananas that are usually between 29-79 cents per pound were $2.49/lb. Apples were nearly $4/lb; and cereal ran $7-9/box.
We often joke that we can’t afford to feed another mouth around here, PiC snacks enough for three and meals that would serve 4-6 don’t last past the first sitdown, so paradisiacal as Hawaii is, we couldn’t even afford to feed ourselves there!
We’re so spoiled by how reasonable food prices are, even in the Bay Area, and especially in Southern California.
December 4, 2013
The question is pretty simple, really: should I get (do I really need) a wedding band?
PiC is in favor.
I am opposed.
My argument:
1. I already have a perfectly lovely engagement ring that he spent a fair amount of money on a few years ago. It does the job just fine and we’ve got to get about ten years of continuous wear out of it before I stop trying to calculate the amortized cost.
2. It does double duty: gem facing up = engagement! gem facing my palm = wedding! I just turn the ring around when I want to see just a band and I’m all set.
3. I don’t even get to wear this ring (or anything) all the time because I have Sausage Fingers Days where I risk the ring cutting off all circulation to my phalanges. What’s the point in getting a second ring that I can’t wear much either?
4. If I were to buy a band, there’s this sense that it has to match this ring. And it’d be nice to like that. That costs … more than I want to spend. A case of champagne taste for a (non craft) beer budget.
PiC’s argument:
Because I said so.
Obviously, I’m just trawling the Internet for support of my cheapy ways but seeing as how Twitter folk have turned on me and supported PiC more than once, it’s not a sure bet. Come on guys, say I’m right!
November 25, 2013
I hope everyone had a happy and fulfilling Thanksgiving Day, full of family, friends, or whomever you chose to celebrate with.
It was probably the first really decent Thanksgiving we’ve had in a while. It’s been over six years and the specter of loss still hovers over the holidays. Both of us have lost parents and other family in the month of November over the years; it’s been hard to shake off the sense of doom associated with the winter months and the holidays.
PiC got a great workout in, in the morning, while I slept late and then we spent the day cooking all kinds of goodies: a really big turkey, a new stuffing recipe, mashed potatoes and gravy, and a new brussels sprouts dish. We shared our Thanksgiving dinner with an entirely new group of family and their friends.
I even managed to resist working all day. I confess to reading several work emails, but I did absolutely nothing with them. #WordsofAWorkaholic
And now that our bellies are full, I have turkey headed for a soup bowl and turkey bound for the freezer, Thanksgiving Day has been enjoyed and shelved.
We can officially look forward to Christmas carols and all things wintery!
The Christmas Carols and commercialism that starts as early as September gets on my nerves, but I will admit to thinking ahead to Christmas even earlier than that if we’re talking about gifts or scheduling holiday plans.
Normally, there’s nothing I enjoy more than snagging great deals throughout the year and wrapping gifts starting in early December but we’ve been a little busy this year with travel and planning wedding things and so on.
Originally, I thought that we’ll get everything done two weeks ahead of the reception but neither vendors nor PiC cooperated with my timeline. So, instead, I’m still working on keeping a level head and stripping out anything that we don’t have time for or don’t have the energy to spend on as time ticks by. I impose the Rule Of Sanity!!
And in keeping with that:
1. Christmas gifts this year are going to be photographic mementos. Originally that sounded like it’d just be easier than trying to go shopping on a straining budget. It’ll be cheaper and perhaps more meaningful but it’s going to take time to dig through for the right photos.
2. Money Matters: I’ll note that I refuse to dip into real savings for the reception, I’m determined to cash flow this. And of course it’ll probably sound like I’m cheating a little, because in order to pay for this out of normal cash flow, which hasn’t been adjusted to accommodate this line item, I am dipping into another “savings”.
In the last few years, I’ve instinctively hoarded any bits and pieces of money that was budgeted for spending in the Expenses savings account. That money was earmarked for spending and instead of being my usual miserly self, I didn’t pop it into the emergency savings account from whence it can never emerge unless one of us loses our jobs, or something catastrophic happens. This gave us a several thousand dollar headstart. And even though all our budgeted categories for 2013 are averaging something like a 90% spent rate, I’ve throttled spending as much as possible where it doesn’t matter as much. Or creatively financed by ….
- Using Swagbucks to eke out $5 Amazon gift cards. (If anyone wants to sign up, I’d be very happy to send you a referral invitation!)
- My three step checklist before buying online: Always check Ebates (referral link) or Fatwallet for cashback; Always check Retailmenot (or just google) for coupon codes; Always double check credit cards to decide which one gives the highest payout for specific kinds of spending. I am a determined bargain hunter, but as eemusings just so wisely pointed out, there’s a tradeoff between time and money. I want to make the most of both so there has to be a balance, and an end in sight when searching.
- SingleMa also shared a great price tracker, in advance of Black Friday, that was really useful for Amazon shopping and comparison shopping.
- When I knew we needed to spend at certain stores, I bought gift cards from Cardpool and ABC GiftCards. Best bargain? 27% off Michael’s gift cards, combined with 50% off coupons at the store. That really stretched our dollars.
3. Moderation: I’ve treated myself to a few things (again, gift cards). New undergarments, a Pacific Rim DVD, a new mouse since my working mouse is driving me crazy. Life isn’t always about taking care of everyone else.
I hope everyone has happy and sane plans for the month of December! Do share.
1. PiC and I had a mini rant about Walmart the other day, on the heels of the blowup about their Ohio store’s doing a food drive for their own employees, when we saw a Walmart commercial advertising their “opportunities”. The spokespeople for Walmart would have you believe that the fact that the company culture supports “associates” and takes care of them during the holidays doesn’t highlight the fact that a company could actually “take care of” their employees by paying them living wages and that’s where their responsibilities lay.
2. For a good part of my childhood, my parents were small business owners who took very little salary for themselves, but paid their employees both as decent salaries as they could afford and Christmas bonuses. Admittedly this wasn’t the best financial decision they could have made for our family in the short term, but if health problems hadn’t prevented them from continuing to run the business, we would have slowly built up enough savings to make it worth it in the long run. In the meantime, we knew our employees were able to feed their families and keep a roof over their heads. And as crap as it made my 20s, and as much as I would have made some minor changes to how things were run if I had a more active hand in business decisions (yeah because I was all of 9 years old. totally plausible), I’m comfortable with knowing our employees didn’t have to struggle just to feed and clothe their families, they just had to do a good job while they were with us.
3. Abby’s ruminations on J.Money and his thoughts on Tom Corley and Linda Tirado’s Why Poor People’s Bad Decisions Make Perfect Sense remind me that people who have always had enough to eat, money for a rainy day, and a support network find it much harder to understand the decisions that poor people make, that seem to obviously be bad choices, but in reality, many of them aren’t really choices at all. I’ve been there, and remember the things that burned in my gut much like shame when I had to make those “stupid decisions” because I didn’t have the cash to make the smart one.
Note: I never smoked, drank or did drugs to get by but damn if I didn’t understand the desire, at times. I never gave up because I had my parents to support, while I wouldn’t call it hope, I never acknowledged that not fighting was an option. Still, when I was affected by THEIR bad decisions, that really sucked too.
A. You don’t have float money. You have exactly “enough” to get by from day to day which means if there’s a sale at the grocery store on pasta, you don’t have the extra $5-10 to buy enough to last you until the next sale cycle. So you buy off sale cycle, you only buy enough for today and tomorrow or even just right now. You resort to super cheap, filling, but super unhealthy fast foods, compromising your health. I used to buy a 99 cent corndog for lunch/dinner on days that I didn’t have food to bring from home and I had to run from school to work. It was the cheapest thing I could get, and I guarantee that was not a healthy choice. But I loved corndogs and it was a dollar for a few minutes of “happy” and food on any given 14-hour day. Or you can’t fill your car up with enough gas to last the week, you can put in $5 for now, and milk that until you hit E and then have to pay whatever price-gauge is at the next station. Also you buy cheap stuff because you can’t afford the higher quality stuff. So it breaks or falls apart, and you have to buy it again. And again. And again.
B. You don’t have time. You can work enough to pay the bills but then you don’t have time (or money) to go to school so you can stop working a dead end job without any hope of advancement or decent working conditions. Or you can work less, and struggle to pay all the bills in any given month. So you pay what you can, week to week, day to day. Bills slip, and it only takes one late fee to really screw up what you thought you were going to be able to clear that month.
C. *Observed: You don’t have hope. So you make stupid decisions like buying crap you don’t need, because your luck is crap anyway. After all, you scrimped, saved, and did without and where’s that gotten you? Nowhere. So you also think that luck has more to do with your life and what happens than what you do (I saw this develop in more than one family member, my incredibly strong, adaptive, and hardworking mom included.)
Confession: I had hope for several years, then I gave that up and just relied on gritting it out.
D. You live in the short term. Today’s work, tomorrow’s bills: rent, utilities, food, gas. Saving for a rainy day doesn’t exist when every day seems like one, saving for retirement sure doesn’t exist. You have to be willing AND physically able to find ways to squeeze every last penny out of every last opportunity: overtime, credit card rewards (without ever paying interest or late fees), loyalty programs. This takes time, which you don’t have, and attention which you don’t have.
That’s definitely only scratching the surface.
I made it out of there by working my ass off, taking every scrap of overtime available ever, and by good luck and good fortune. I was fortunate enough to be employed by the people I worked for: whether they were good people or not was irrelevant, the fact that I was able to make it work so that I could claw my way out of debt and to build up savings was a blessing.
I was fortunate enough to gain the respect of good people who would vouch for me when I needed it.
I was fortunate enough to become friends with people who had retired from super high income, high powered careers who were willing to advise me and help me make the hard professional decisions as a neophyte to the business world. My parents were decidedly blue collar, working class folks who didn’t know enough about today’s world to help. They could only listen and try to help guide.
I was fortunate enough to have just enough brainpower to plan a career path, at least somewhat vaguely, and not just focus on the immediate horizon.
I was fortunate enough to have discovered Fatwallet’s Grocery and Finance Forums in the early years. They taught me to save every scrap, every penny, that I possibly could, while trying to generate a little extra creative income AND to think about the future.
I was fortunate enough to always have been able to pay the internet bill: the source of my inspiration, ideas, and money blogs that taught me things that FW hadn’t. For all the crap that the internet represents, it was an amazing resource.
While we all have culpability in the choices we make, it’s far too simplistic for people to say: being poor is your choice.
And this is why SingleMa’s post on giving always resonates with me. People may not have given me money, my path may not have been smooth, but at every step of the way, while I struggled and fought for what I needed, I was given a helping hand by people who had zero obligation to do so, whether they knew they were helping me or not.
