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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February 29, 2012
Nicole and Maggie (I’m on a Grumpy Rumblings kick this week, as you’ll see): request in this post:
Please do not try to work full-time and also go to school full-time. That’s why we have low-interest loans for education. Don’t take out more than the average salary for someone in your major from your school, but don’t kill yourself either. School isn’t just a degree– the reason it gets you a job is because of the skills you learn, and a lot of these skills are fuzzy… they’re training your ways of thinking. How to think like a [insert your major here]. If you’re just repeating things you’ve memorized back, or cranking numbers through an algorithm like a computer could, then you’re not really much more useful to an employer than a high school graduate would have been.
If you do work full-time and go to school full-time, don’t blame us for trying to make you get a solid education even though you don’t have time for it. Choices = consequences. As your professors, we realize that you have other things in your life besides our courses. But if you don’t place a high priority on our courses, your grades will suffer, and if they don’t, you have to wonder about the worth of the degree you’re getting. More importantly, you won’t be learning anything. Save yourself the time and money and don’t go to school full-time now if it’s not going to be a priority.
And… regardless of the schooling choices you make, it is never too late to learn and grow and change.
Do you think people should be encouraged to work full time while going to school full time? What would your advice be?
The comments thread was so big I didn’t even want to dive in so I thought I’d muse over here instead.
Now, I’m that kid that went to school full time and worked 40-80 hour weeks. More or less, I didn’t plan to pay for college because I thought I’d get more scholarships than I did, and I thought I would have my parents’ support, not that I’d be supporting them.
While I graduated with an ok GPA that I wouldn’t state publicly because I’m not proud of it, it’s not bad. It’s just not as good as I think it should or could have been (summa cum laude, say). I know I skated through at least one class on decent testing skills and probably the professor’s empathy (B). Also, I took some classes that were just for learning because I wanted to, not because they were required and not because I knew anything at all about them. And those Russian Lit classes were way above my brain-grade so making Bs in those classes was kind of a miracle.
Yet, I always got my homework done, always. I took care of my ailing mother, I worked my tuckus off and I graduated within four years. It required a bit of summer school, very little social life, and very little sleep, but I did manage it. And I have a thriving career now, thanks to the start that degree gave me.
Meanwhile, here are Nicole and Maggie citing studies that working less than 10 hours per week is beneficial and while working more than 20 hours per week is detrimental.
And I’m wondering – what would I do if I had kids?
Deep down, you know I’m totally going to judge my kids if they don’t at least try to work through college, whether it be a few hours during the week or just full time summers, right? There’s absolutely a bit of me that says you have to want it and you have to earn it, and yo’ momma wasn’t the smartest cookie in the jar and she did it, so can you. And I recognize that’d be poor parenting and the voice of inexperience being 18+ years away from having to even think about the question. But still.
What is really a good answer here?
Obviously, I haven’t a clue because I haven’t met my prospective kids yet, so I don’t know what might be best for them in their specific circumstances. But I am quite certain that their future does involve having a vested financial interest in their success and progress through college.
:: What would you do? What did you do?
:: Bonus question: did being either an on-campus or commuter student affect your experience?
February 26, 2012
It’s been a heck of a week. Not terrible but tiring. I finally caught up with my dad and found out that there have been multiple deaths in the family. It’s maybe a good thing that I didn’t know about them in time to attend the services as I would have felt obligated to attend. Instead, I’ve been focusing getting things done at home and exercising myself and Doggle.
Kind of overdid it though, between being emotionally overwrought thinking about Mom and seeking catharsis through cleaning. My hands and arms don’t appreciate the outlets that my brain seeks, which is really frustrating as physical activity is so good for the brain.
Posts for Perusal
Little Miss Moneybags and Peanut got their Life Insurance in order. PiC and I organized our life insurance along similar lines, though we will likely be having more conversations to get aligned as things change. At the time we sorted our insurance, he was well able to take care of any financial needs without my income. Without me, he would likely still work in this town and stay in this home. He would need some assistance for sorting things and Doggle, so I still carry insurance through work but both he and my dad would be beneficiaries of my life insurance because I don’t want him to be financially responsible for Dad’s healthcare and continuing care. (I still have to set up a trust for that.) If he’s gone, I couldn’t carry the costs for myself, this home and my Dad however long I had to support him, so I would need a fair amount of extra income from his insurance.
Eemusings on the Cost of Convenience: I’m pretty sure that I’m close to the same as eemusings. I hate spending money on convenience items like snacks when they’re not part of the grocery shop. But I will buy things as part of the shopping trip like chips, nuts, frozen foods for reheating on those nights when we don’t want or don’t have time to cook a full meal.
A Recipe
I have SingleMa‘s Pinterest obsession to thank for this one. She pinned this Crispy Honey Lemon Chicken recipe several weeks ago and the name (of course) stuck in my mind. I rather obsessively went back to hunt for it when trying to decide what to make for dinner and made it with some alterations to the recipe to suit my lazier cooking style and general preference for baked over fried (faster clean-up).
Original:
Crispy Honey Lemon Chicken
serves 4-6
Ingredients:
4 boneless skinless chicken breasts, cut into pieces
1/4 cup olive oil + 3 tablespoons
3 tablespoons honey + more for dripping/drizzling
the juice of 2 large lemons
1 tablespoon fresh lemon zest + 2 teaspoons
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1 cup all-purpose (or whole wheat) flour
2 tablespoons cornstarch
Directions:
In a bowl, combine 1/4 cup olive oil, 3 tablespoons honey, lemon juice, 1 tablespoon lemon zest, and a 1/4 teaspoon each of salt and pepper. Whisk ingredients together, then add chicken pieces to a ziplock bag and pour marinade over top. Let sit for 30 minutes – 2 hours.
When ready to make, add flour, cornstarch, 1 teaspoon lemon zest and the remaining salt and pepper to a large bowl. Mix well. Heat a large skillet on medium-high heat, and once it is very hot, add 1 tablespoons of olive oil. Coat chicken pieces in the flour mixture, then add to the skillet and cook until each side is golden brown, about 3-4 minutes per side. Remove and set chicken on a paper-towel covered plate. Cook remaining batches, adding more/less oil if needed. I used 3 tablespoons, but depending on how coated your chicken pieces are you may need a bit more.
Serve with rice and a few tablespoons of honey mixed with lemon zest for dipping.
Modified
Crispy Honey Lemon Chicken
serves 2 greedy-faces
Ingredients:
4-8 chicken drumsticks and/or thighs, bone-in
1/4 cup olive oil + 3 tablespoons
3 tablespoons honey + more for dripping/drizzling
the juice of 2 large lemons
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1 cup all-purpose flour
Directions:
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Cover a roasting pan with foil.
In a bowl, combine 1/4 cup olive oil, 3 tablespoons honey, lemon juice, and a 1/4 teaspoon each of salt and pepper. Whisk ingredients together, then add chicken pieces to a ziplock bag and pour marinade over top. Let sit for 30 minutes – 2 hours. (Or overnight.)
When ready to make, add flour and the remaining salt and pepper to a large bowl. Mix well. Coat chicken pieces in the flour mixture, then place pieces side by side in the roasting pan.
Bake for 20 minutes, turn, bake for another 10-15 minutes until done.
Serve with rice and roasted vegetables.
February 23, 2012
A jaunt
Driving through Los Gatos, the hilly, ridgey, close roads and tall trees parts of town, bursting with real fall colors last November, PiC and our friends and I got to admiring homes and the lands they sat on. Estates, practically, the big houses set back into the cliffs, with horse property, a barn and proper lands set round it.
Nothing at all like what we’d acclimated to near the city with our city streets and dirty little suburbs. No clean suburbs for us, you have to make a lot more before you can afford those. We roved by loads of homes, peering through the trees and vines. Good job it was broad daylight or we’d have looked awfully suspicious.
And then we drove past the castle. An honest to goodness castle thing, twenty rooms it must have had, another structure on the side of the property, a well-into-the-double-digit-millions price tag.
It tumbled me back, way back, to those wonder years, when the future was jostling full of sheer and opaque possibilities, unfettered by realism, untempered by failures.
I could remember when a $200,000 house might well have been a $3M house for all that I had any money and that meant I could dream of anything at all.
Anything at all ….
I dreamt of buying not one, but two houses. One for me, one for my parents. Right on the main boulevard of the town, whatever town I lived in, so I could use the walking trail I imagined would be there with my half a dozen well trained dogs. Or ride my horse, the one that stabled in my back barn. I’d definitely have the best library with a sliding ladder ever.
My parents would be neighbors, of course, they’d never wanted to be far from me. Well, Mom didn’t. If I had married and had children, she wanted to be Right There. They had to be downwind of the barn though, I didn’t want to hear any complaints about my critters. 🙂
I’d have two degrees, graduate and professional, and would be working and saving half that income; I’d be volunteering in my spare time, and setting up a charitable foundation, eventually.
Clearly, an unimaginative kid. A secure home base (note I bought two homes outright, I wasn’t dreaming of any mortgages), to take care of my family, to continue the volunteering I was already doing and be surrounded by pets and books. Basically I wanted to be a kid in adult form. Or something like that.
Twenty years later
I never dreamt I’d have spent this much time dinking around on the Internet when formulating Ye Grand Planne. Or any of the other things I ended up doing instead. But when I look at houses now, it’s a little less aspirationally now that I can attach a price tag of salary and hours to each thing. (Mortgages, interest rates, take home pay, egads!)
I still want the 6 dogs, but will settle for three. I shouldn’t get a horse. But the library is absolutely still on the list. Sometimes, things make me happy.
One house. My dad wouldn’t want to own or live in a whole house alone even if I could afford it.
As for the degrees … As much as it feels like being a failure not to have three degrees in total, I’m not yet willing to pay for another degree that won’t pay for itself several times over or that isn’t paid for by an employer at this point in my career. Things may change but the career trajectory is doing well enough to focus on making substantial strides there rather than taking time off to go to school.
Add:
More travel to see interesting things, eat delicious things, talk to interesting people.
More quality time with the people I don’t see enough.
That charitable foundation, yes. And I still want to be a billionaire to make that work. Don’t care if it’s not strictly necessary. Want.
And the things I can’t have: perfect health. My family intact. So instead, peace. Better health. Happiness. Contentment. And yes, ambition.
:: Do you remember your old dreams? Do you know what happened to them? Have you replaced them with new ones or are you still making them come true?
February 19, 2012
Oddly, being in new surroundings, a side effect of the promotion, has actually seen me behaving in a healthier fashion. The promotion itself was meant to promote better health, as I said before, but I truly didn’t have any expectations for it to be this soon or this naturally. I thought expected the stresses of the new role would be obvious more quickly than the benefits and definitely expected to have to be very conscious in my healthy choices.
New things
Diet
I eat now. I never used to eat during my work day. I’m actually eating at a reasonable hour of the day. Snacking a couple times rather than regular meals but that was something my doctor and I discussed as a healthy alternative.
Exercise
Being less sedentary: It’s more than just for meetings, though just barely. The goal is to get away for at least 15 minutes per work day for a walk of some kind.
Logging miles: Though the days can be longer because there’s just that much more work to be done during this period of transition, I’m taking advantage of that and squeezing in nearly a mile walk up to a few times a week.
These are small things, and we’ll see how long it comes without much effort because it’s really early but it’s significant. Already I’ve gone five full days without a stress or fatigue headache despite my still carrying serious responsibility and throughout major, unexpected, chaos. That’s unusual. And reading this post about my friend and professional inspiration, Single Ma’s, Health Breakthrough this week had me absolutely choked up in my happiness for her. I actually teared up at work. That never happens.
See, pain and I have been close companions for nearly 20 years now, and I’d (sort of) become resigned to living with it for the rest of my life. From that vantage point and as a friend, I hated every minute of Single Ma’s struggle with her injury that derailed her journey to physical fitness. The setbacks and the time it was taking to get answers were familiar as well, and depressing as anything. I hated that a friend was living the same kind of hells I had. Hearing that she had a breakthrough was all kinds of happy.
It gives me hope that my dear friend Ruth who is also experiencing some pain issues will find answers that lead to a pain-free life as well.
And there was a minute where I started to wonder if maybe there’s a chance I can improve too, even a little.
Posts for Perusal
Nicole and Maggie asked: How do you pay for presents? This is a new thing for us to work out this year. For those of you who are partnered, do you set a price limit on how much you can spend on gifts for each other? Or is there an understanding?
Stacking Pennies started a weekly Monday list to set up her week back in January. It’s a great idea – you may not have control over how the week develops but at least giving it the best opening that you possibly can keeps you from being flustered out of the gate. I try to do this with cooking and laundry over the weekends, if nothing else.
A Recipe
A delicious, easy, recipe we’ve been enjoying thanks to our one sane neighbor who shares food and recipes generously. Plus: it only costs pennies since almost all the ingredients are in our cupboards. This is one offset to going out to eat with the same neighbor nicely. **We do have more than one sane neighbor, it’s just that this is the only one we trade foodstuffs with.
Lentil Soup
I’ve made this soup twice now, modifying it the first time with cubed potatoes and keeping to the original the second time. It was pretty fantastic the first go-round, just as good the second.
Ingredients:
1 tablespoon canola oil
1 tablespoon margarine
1 large clove of garlic, chopped
1 teaspoon cumin powder or seed
1/2 teaspoon curry powder
1/4 teaspoon cayenne powder (I never cook w/cayenne so I’ve substituted paprika)
1 teaspoon turmeric powder
1/2 teaspoon coriander
6 cups water
1 cube vegetarian boullion (I prefer more fresh ingredients so have just used veggie or chicken broth instead of the water plus boullion)
1 diced onion
1 pound lentils.
Directions:
Saute the onion and garlic in the oil and margarine in a large pot until tender.
Add the spices and saute for 1 minute.
Add water, vegetarian bouillon, and lentils.
Cook until lentils are tender, about 1 hour*.
*I used pink lentils, it only takes approximately 20 minutes to become tender.
Do you have any quick and easy recipes to share? Please do!
February 16, 2012
I didn’t ever finish up my recap of our Thailand trip (reasons: due to life) but I wanted to take a minute to revisit some of that trip.
While we truly enjoyed the company of our friends, the beauty of the country and the environment and the breather from stress, we also took away some serious food for thought.
I felt a strange homesickness even though that wasn’t actually my homeland. The landscape engendered in me this striking familiarity: green-blue waters, shallowly built boats propelled by pungent gas motors, overcrowded harbor and ports overshadowed by buildings elbowing other and balconies leaning into each other, families pulling in and out of the beaches of a morning and an evening with the day’s catch.
While the day-long snorkeling journey we took around the islands in the boats was visually stunning for my friends it was just emotionally stunning for me – I felt as though I was reliving my parents’ escape from their war-torn home and every face I looked at hepost his huge potentiality of Story behind it. It was a strange duality. Over thirty years ago, this trip was risking death and now? It was just a pleasure seeking cruise. It was incredibly hard to reconcile.
On Ko Phi Phi especially, one of the overwhelming feelings that PiC and I shared with each other was something that this post by Jennifer Derrick in Money Lessons Learned from Traveling Well covers in a few different ways: we were uncomfortable with our (comparative/relative) wealth.
Wealth, particularly Americans traveling with wealth, marks you out as different and as a target. Not a target for thieves or robbers which is just a traveler’s usual caution, only that, traveling Americans with money seemingly tend not to know how to behave with that money, more often than not and it was nowhere more viscerally obvious than on this, the most tourist of places. While we were traveling on a very strict budget, we were strikingly aware that every single person on that island was dependent on tourist spending for income and for some reason, that make us terribly uncomfortable in a strange way.
I had never felt like this before, not quite laid bare like this before, having always traveled internationally either on business or to see family and PiC had only ever experienced a shadow of this once before in Mexico when his family had an incident.
Jennifer notes that “People will try to take advantage of you” in bargaining and “When you have money, the gap between rich and poor seems (or should seem) much bigger all of a sudden. You realize that you have so much more than many other people.”
Both true, but that doesn’t get at the soul of the feeling that there’s something deeper, that it feels like there is something brittle in the choice to be where there’s nothing left but a tourist trade to sustain a region.
We didn’t feel that same sensation in Phuket or in Chiang Mai – and perhaps it had worn off because we were in the city or were more tired or perhaps because there was more depth to those areas. It was a lovely trip and we met some absolutely lovely people, especially our hoteliers in Chiang Mai who were really more like an aunt and uncle who let us stay over in delightful bungalows with their menagerie of animals and other guests and served homecooked meals.
Since that trip, I haven’t had much time to think over those feelings but we did agree that it was disconcerting. We really aren’t looking for decadence and luxury when we travel, and even less so when we’re in regions that have such widespread poverty but for the tourist trade, and a striking disparity between classes and wealth. Neither of us are comfortable trying to play upper echelon traveler, we’re much happier blending in with the everyday crowd. It’s the experience of learning a new culture, language, history, and people that we look for in a trip, all of which can be accomplished on a low-key budget.
Related Links:
Embarking on a journey: Choose your own adventure
Discovery: Rediscovering romance in Thailand
Travel: Thailand, Leg the First
Travel: Thailand, Leg the Second
February 9, 2012
A) One friend is having a baby.
B) One friend is getting married.
C) This blogger got a promotion.
(So I get to rewrite the budget for 2012 again! This is a good thing, yes.)
It’s a pretty big step up.
This comes with a new title, a higher level of seniority, more responsibility and visibility, a lot more travel. A couple other things I’m not as in love with but I know I can do. Spiffy. It does come with more money as well, which was pretty important considering that I came in on a lowball offer originally. I’ve been working intensely to bring myself back to parity and this negotiation was no different.
We’re also really looking forward to the changes that will let me make to take care of my health. It doesn’t just come with more, more, more, it was built to promote some balance as well. I was also saying no to some things: for my health and for a stronger structure, the position is arranged sensibly to reduce specific burdens that I’ve already mastered and shift it elsewhere.
It’s been a very tough road, not just for me but also for PiC who has had to live with me running on all pistons 100% of the time, and being totally career focused despite my health issues, and then paying the price with my health and I’m really grateful for this outcome.
And on the whole, it’s also pretty neat – I’ve sweated and slaved over the building of this little empire and I’ll be able to continue to run it for a while yet.
February 6, 2012
I’ve been watching Jenny, The Bloggess, take the world by Symbolic Red Dress storm, and it’s been pretty amazing. The traveling red dress really did start as a red dress, and it really did travel and then it became a magical thing wherein people took the idea and began donating red dresses and all manner of “red dresses” of all shapes, sizes and colors, and offering their services as photographers and generally empowering one another to become stronger people in one way or another.
It’s a pretty cool story.
And most recently, in all of the furor, Jenny was offered a finalist’s slot for a Health Activist Award. She said: No.
As someone who feels like there are always about twenty different battles to fight or causes to support or banners to uphold, where it’s hard to make the choice that’s true to yourself and your strength, I felt there was something incredibly smart and good about that “No”. It wasn’t meant to be, it was just honest. And these days, there are so few people who are willing to do something that could be uncomfortable but honest that I’m impressed by it.
She was willing to forgo an honor and the spotlight because she didn’t feel able to do the things required in order to get the goods. She didn’t pitch a fit, she didn’t use her platform to foment, in fact, she used it to explain why she was begging off, rather apologetically.
“I’m not sure if i was chosen because of my rheumatoid arthritis or my mental illness issues but the latter sort of keeps me from doing web chats or phone calls or any of that. My anxiety is just too strong right now for me to take on anything else. But I’m so honored. If you’d rather give it to someone less crazy than me though I totally understand. I just have to take care of myself a bit more and that means saying no when I want to say yes. I hope you understand.”
Really, how can you not smile at that?
In the end, she won the award anyway so begging off made no difference to the result but she did preserve her strength and her sanity which were really truly necessary and what was to be, was.
It’s a really nice reminder to me that we all have limited time, space and energy. We all, especially us spoonies, have to be aware of it and be smarter about how we choose to spend any of those things. The external stuff matters but how much we let it affect our choices is really up to us and we should remember that the outside world goes on as it will as we continue our personal journeys.
In the wider world, the need to earn a living to live the life we imagine requires that we make choices to grow and build but sometimes, we have to say no to create space for our lives. There’s such beauty in learning the wisdom of saying “thank you, but no” and learning when it’s right to say it.
