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 14, 2010
It’s probably been twenty years since I last had a Christmas tree and just the prospect of getting one this year was delicious.
Negotiations were intense, and short-lived. Within ten minutes of wandering the tree lot, and squealing over the cuteness of the under three footers, my shopping ADD kicked in and PiC was asked to please make the final call because I was bored with fussing over which tree was perfect enough.
Imperfections are character and had I not mentioned the twenty year drought? Any tree is an improvement over the no-tree of yesteryear. Low expectations, indeed. Happily, we had ended up in the discount tree section by then, points to PiC for navigating so that I’m not both the penny-pinching miser and the impatient hausfrau.
Even with the discount, we (probably mistakenly) paid extra for a disposal bag, bowl and stand, checking out at $34.
With that extra expenditure over the $20 or $25 I imagined we’d spend, I’m perfectly happy to enjoy the tree in all its natural glory, and hang gifts from its branches if it can bear up. As a topper, Cthulhu shall preside.
It hardly seems to need anything else now, does it?
December 12, 2010
Frugal Scholar’s rather pragmatic look at Pet Costs triggered my usual, utterly emotional, I want a dog now! reaction.
I really miss my dog back home. I haven’t talked myself into bring her up north because there’s just no room for her to lounge. She is, after all, accustomed to a certain way of life. And let’s face it, momma’s girl or not, if momma isn’t home, what’s the point of making her live in a relatively cramped inside space?
She’s really not built for living indoors – she gets squirrelly and waits by the door to be let out with ever increasing impatience whenever she’s done visiting inside. Even though she was raised as an indoor dog, she up and decided quite early on that she was moving into the garage. Up here we’ve got zero yard, and very little outdoor space. It’s hard to imagine her being happy with us in the Bay Area.
In an entirely selfish and practical sense, if we weren’t just thinking about what might make her happy, it still seems like the most sensible thing to do is to bring her up here rather than adding to the family. And that would have the additional benefit of easing my little-spoken-of responsibility of finding my parents a new home as they couldn’t really have moved in to any sort of assisted care facility with a big dog (or two, since idiot sibling is still around with his dog).
That’s another thing for another day.
The thing is, after owning dogs for 17 years now and having worked with animals for a good part of my twenties, it’s a cold fact that they’re expensive when anything happens. And I never want to be in the position of asking myself: can I afford this medical procedure? Those decisions should be made based on whether it’s right for my pet, not whether it’ll put us in a poorhouse. So while it’s enough that I maintain a medical fund for her now, if I ever wanted to adopt another dog, I would seriously consider getting a second job in animal health care for the discount because it’s so freaking expensive.
That or I honestly need to be making quite a lot more money than I do now to afford another pet.
When did I turn into my parents? I’m almost positive they used this line of reasoning with me when I was seven and it all sounded like gibberish and insanity twenty years ago.
December 8, 2010
After all is said and done, we spent an insane amount of money preparing for this business trip. INSANE.
I will definitely use everything that was purchased for many years to come because they are all high-quality materials, and I most certainly used them every single day on this trip so far and wouldn’t have survived it without, but I still cannot believe the total cost at the end of the day.
My clothing cost at least $600. PiC won’t tell me how much my surprise warm fuzzy boots cost, but I know the coat was nearly $500. None of the coats I ordered from Lands’ End (I ordered four to try on as they don’t carry petites in store) fit well, nor were they as flexible. The one he ran out and bought can be unzipped to be just a down or just a raincoat as well as zipped together, and it’s got a lifetime guarantee. Add in new waterproof, lined gloves, a hat, and very thick woolly socks (on sale) to round out the total.
My tech cost another $700. The computer was nearly $400 and then I ended paying through the nose for a 3-pack of the Microsoft Suite which I intended to skip installing except our servers wouldn’t let me access my work email in any way shape or form via anything BUT the installed program. It’s never given me that much trouble before, and on the eve of travel, it kicked up such a fuss, I couldn’t risk it.
Web-only access continued to be a serious problem throughout the trip so it’s a good thing I did install the suite because I would not have been able to work and that’s a huuuuge no-no.
And of course, the tote bag didn’t show up until I was long gone had to be replaced by another one, so I had to hie me to REI for something waterproof and over the shoulder/cross body in the absence of anything lightweight and professional looking. Found it for $80. *sigh*
Honest to goodness, I really should have considered all these costs when scheduling the work trip, not just when it would be slightly less inconvenient to be away from the office. What a huge pain to have spent well over a thousand dollars and wasted all that time shopping and fretting. It was an unusual week and the snow made for an unusual trip and it was an awful lot of fun. But that’s an offsetting benefit you can’t really expense against the costs.
I’ve just been minding the cost of meals out down to recoup some of the per diem money even if it is just a drop in the bucket. Every little bit counts!
December 6, 2010
*** Whoops! Meant to post this before I left! ***
Half of our Christmas shopping is done, and now that I’m business trip-bound for two weeks, the other half must rest on PiC’s shoulders lest we shop on the week before Christmas. I’m awfully proud of the bit that I accomplished, though!
Some time ago, I’d discovered the lovely Lesley of GeekSoap fame, and I was bound and determined to share the wonder of Geeksoap with my friends for Christmas.
Turns out, most of the soaps I ordered are now wrapped for PiC’s friends because somehow, he’s infinitely less geeky than me and still gathered more geeky friends around him. Our dynamic continues to baffle me.
At a nearly standard soap size, these lovelies don’t merit a whole box. I have small boxes, they’re not nearly that small. For the folks who only get one bar (one lucky fella’s getting four), I decided to repurpose odd-sized wrapping paper to craft my own gift bags instead of running out to buy them at $2 a piece or a pack.
Armed with a Swiss Army and glue stick, it was all pretty much executed by eye and estimation. There was at least one major gaffe where I forgot to account for the fold at the bottom part of the “bag” so I had to glue two squares together because I’d gone and carefully cut out perfectly estimated squares that would perfectly surround the soap. Those bags didn’t have enough paper to fold over like above, so I popped a couple holes in using a star shaped hole punch leftover from crafting days and tied it shut with a ribbon.
The post-it will be replaced by a sticker, surely, unless it’s going to one of my friends in which case it’s an inside joke to just address gifts via post-its.
December 5, 2010
A quick photo montage …..
My first few days were spent in the country getting snowed on, so of course we had to walk the wide open fields with the dogs who romped in the snow. (This was only the first day.)
My first ride in a London cab was great. The cabbie zipped around all the local spots he could without veering off the path to our destination, showing us the park, stopping for me to snap a shot of Big Ben, and the church where Prince William and Kate will be married.
Did you know ….
that “giant prawns” are really just small-medium shrimp?
that black pudding is made with blood, fat and other filler?
that Marmite tastes like super concentrated soy sauce?
that tipping really IS only for good service around here?
that all plugs have an on/off switch?
that the exchange rate is positively abysmal and that converting GBP to dollars on every transaction causes heartburn?
that the temperatures dropped to 8 degrees below freezing Celsius and I survived? (ta-daaa!)
That’s thanks to PiC kitting me out – I’ve been double layering bottoms and quadruple layering tops before I put on the big coat, scarf, boots, hat and gloves everyday to stay warm. Mostly warm.
Second week shouldn’t be quite so cold, and the airports shouldn’t be frozen in either, I don’t think! I’ve been working like a fiend, 12-14 hour days and totally crashed this weekend so I missed a nice lunch in London. 🙁 But I needed the sleep and the quiet time, so I’m not going to beat myself up for it. I had a nice loooong walkabout town Saturday and ran out for some takeaway dinner tonight so I’m getting acclimated to city life again after being cozy in the country life for a week. Gads the country life was lovely. Everyone was incredibly friendly and so funny.
Bed early tonight, methinks….
November 27, 2010
In another twist of the unusual, I spent a few hours cruising through the Black Friday crowds on a few missions with D yesterday. I typically don’t Black Friday but as he’s guesting with us, I would have gone with him even if I didn’t have to buy anything and that would have been a lot less stressful. Instead, I was spending an obscene amount of money on a highly consumeristic day and not even getting any bargains out of it.
PiC had tried to purchase a netbook for me as a birthday gift a while back but I balked because I wanted something so lightweight that the price points were far too high. Rejecting the reality that I’d need a netbook for travel and especially for business travel when he’d not be around to help with my bags, I insisted that I could wait. After hauling my beloved mainstay Vaio to and from work for one day, getting left by five buses in the dark, cold and wet, and nearly having to walk 2.5 miles lugging the 7 pounds of computer in addition to the usual work stuff, though, I realized: I’m not that tough.
Pretend as I might that I can soldier on through anything, I had a highly unusual meltdown that night and boy oh boy, that was a wake up call. Meeting challenges is fine, but why on earth create more for yourself?
Unfortunately, I woke up very late in the game which left me scrambling. With a lot of browsing and some help from online friends (thanks @brokeinthecity!!) and having spent a mint on the computer itself, I still needed software.
I’m looking at the poor and poorer choices of buying Microsoft Office for Home and Business for at least $200, or going without on a business trip and hoping that I can get by using the free trial (opening it 25 times total in two weeks) will do.
I ended up forking over $250 for a family pack of 3 Home and Business key cards because that was the only package available at Costco – I was expecting to pay $170 for a single use license.
Today’s D-Day: do I open it up and install, hoping PiC can Craigslist the other two license keys? Or do I leave it pristine and hope I can get through the trip without actually needing it?
And do I spend time today searching for a lightweight waterproof tote because the one I ordered two weeks ago never showed up? Because I would really love to stop shopping, but letting my new computer possibly get drenched in the sudden downpours I’ve been warned about is beyond stupid.
November 25, 2010
Having seen PiC off to the airport, my hometown friend D and I are spending a quiet Thanksgiving weekend together in the Bay Area without our families because making our ways back to Southern California just wasn’t in the cards for either of us. His reasons are his own and not mine to share, but mine are, of course, not precisely a secret.
Since moving away, I’ve been a mess of conflict struggling to remain a dutiful daughter from hundreds of miles away; fighting to establish my place in a new job, and adjusting to a new home and shifting relationship dynamics.
For the first time in four years, PiC and I are in the same city all the time. We pick up the phone and schedule a shared commute, shared dinner plans, shared grocery shopping and budget. In most ways, it’s nearly been seamless. In others, we’ve picked up our bones of contention and sparred a few rounds. At the end of the day, it’s all worked out and I’m more grateful than ever that this was the end to my almost year-long stint of unemployment. It was horribly nerve-wracking at the time, and could have been the biggest mistake ever, but so far, it’s been a huge support.
Conversely, however, for the first time in my life, I don’t live steeped entirely and totally in the family stress. And so in a strange turn of dis-inoculation, perhaps call it weakening by means of detoxification, my spirit quails at the thought of venturing back into the fray, each and every time. Every visit has been emotionally fraught, always including fights with the sibling when we run into each other, the heartwrenching sag in my mom’s cheeks, left behind from her stroke-like episodes in 2008 and other small signs of disrepair in my former home and crumbling family foundations.
After several rounds of trying to walk it off, and playing the stiff upper lip game, it was time to admit defeat. I simply couldn’t face it again this weekend, not this holiday weekend when the expectations of family are at a near all-time high. I just didn’t have the strength to pull a shroud around my soul again, and I don’t have the ability to pretend that that is business as usual. Until I have taken steps to get my parents out of their living situation and dealt with my feelings of guilt for “abandoning” them, I need to keep my physical distance for a while longer.
While I wasn’t totally happy with the decision, I haven’t had any nightmares since deciding to stay in town for the weekend. And with a friend to keep me company, I’ll actually cook dinner to eat while reading comics all day. It’s probably the best decision for me right now, and it’s about time I learned how to make those kinds of decisions in addition to taking care of everything and everyone else.
Happy Thanksgiving to all my American readers and a wonderful weekend to everyone else! I hope you’re enjoying peace, quiet, and comfort and remember all the blessings we have in our lives. I hope you’re able to do that every day, regardless of the season.
Thanks to all you faithful friends and readers for being there in the virtual world and in some cases, in real life as well. I’m grateful for everyone’s support, online and off, you’ve made the journey this far so much more positive and even enjoyable than it was when I was just a young pup struggling to make ends meet with my minimum wage job and a checkbook.
<3
