Money Monday: July 30, 2012

Well, dang. Not doing so good keeping up these posts, am I? Honestly, I don’t know what is going on with me lately. Eh. That’s not entirely true. I know what, what I’m not sure of is why it seems to be hitting me so hard in the creativity. Writing, knitting, dyeing, anything that isn’t purely and only practical keeps sliding further and further down my priority list lately.

{purses lips thoughtfully} Huh…weird, ain’t it…?

ANYWAY. I did actually work on my List (from three weeks ago) (oy, I suck!), and I tell you what: I had a horrible time trying to do it.

Not because I couldn’t think of anything, but because pretty much the instant I started, I was trying to skip ahead, not only to here, but pretty much trying to do the and then we hit the >> button and everybody lived happily ever after, the end thing.

Which is so typical of me, really. “Hey, that looks cool!” {immediately and enthusiastically jumps for it} “Ow! Well, what idiot put a briar patch THERE of all places?!”

Sigh. Dear Me: The point of the exercise is not just to write down a bunch of random things and then rush out and start doing them. It is rather about creating a map with built-in compass, to help you actually decide where you’re going – instead of just ending up somewhere and, well, like it or not, it’s where you are now.

So, backing up a little bit and resisting the urge to start doing anything – what’s actually on the list? And what are those things collectively trying to say?

The next step in the exercise is to start organizing things – by overall ‘group’ (that is, “things to HAVE” versus “things to DO” versus “family things” or “career things” or “personal development”), by relative importance and effort/duration.

The relative importance is the tricky part; nothing is “unimportant,” but not everything can have the title of Most Important. It’s highly subjective, too, which is tricky because you can’t go to Wikipedia and get a definitive answer on which is more important, the chicken or the egg?

It’s up to you. ONLY you can answer that. (Yeah, it does kind of suck - sorry about that.)

I have to admit, my list is pretty easy that way. Fifteen years ago, this part was hard, hard, HARD…but now, well, you know…there’s really only two categories.

One is around here and now. We’ve had a rather spartan few years, really, while I was hyper-fixated on scrubbing away all the crap that had accumulated over the years before them. I have a few things that sum up to “giving the Denizens back a childhood.” More extracurricular things, more art and sports (yeah, um, they’re not actually all that thrilled about that one – but, tough beans, it’s good for you, dang it!) and music.

That is the easy one. After all, for me, mommy-hood is my number one thing – getting the kids from infancy to adulthood is kind of my master-work.

The other is around increasing our independence – which is a trickier proposition. Right now, we’re heavily dependent on paychecks, and retailers. (Unlike everybody else in America, right?) We trade our lives for paychecks, which we then trade for goods and services we don’t have the time or resources to make for ourselves.

If the recession highlighted any one thing for me, it is how precariously balanced that web really is; how many of us were in a world of hurt almost immediately after a job was lost, even if there was another job still in full swing in the household?

How many of us felt the rapidly rising prices on everything from cornflakes to gasoline as if they were sharpened icepicks driven into our guts?

Anyway, it really brought home to me how dependent we are on the massive, yet rather antiquated, commercial engine that is the American economy. We need it from both sides, too – first, we go to work for it, creating goods and services for others to spend their paychecks on. Then, we take our paychecks, flip them over, write “Pay to the order of MegaCorp” on the backs of them, and shove them right back under the door of our own office, so to speak – in exchange for the goods and services that make up our lifestyles.

It’s not that I want to build a compound and live entirely apart from the world (please. I love soft, clean sheets and Starbucks as much as the next minivan-driving suburbanite), but more that I don’t want all our eggs in the same basket. I don’t want us dependent on one or two regular cash-infusions from MegaCorp, followed by a need to turn right around and sign that check over to MegaCorp in exchange for t-shirts, electricity, groceries and everything else that make our lives what they are.

Seems like a great idea to me.

Now.

Um.

What does that really mean? What does “mission accomplished” actually look like, on something like that? What are the steps to get there?

This is where the dreaming begins to merge into the real world. Nothing is impossible, but not everything is easy; but neither is it automatically as hard as it might sound. Sometimes you look at something “big” and think it’s too big, or too far from where you are right now, and give up on it immediately.

But if instead you look at it not in terms of “the whole big thing” but rather as individual steps, one thing at a time, each individual step isn’t that big a deal. Each step is do-able.

And it is astonishing how often it goes faster than you thought, how one step leading to another and another “suddenly” becomes mission accomplished.

But it can’t happen if you don’t start taking the steps. And you can’t start taking the steps if you don’t know where you’re trying to go.

I think I’ve got a good rough idea – now, I’ve got to pencil out some ways and means and turn it into an actual map.

Hopefully with built-in compass.

And also a martini dispenser.

Because that would be COOL.

Dear Me: FOCUS, DAMMIT, FOCUS!!

I am becoming ever-so-slightly irked by my own lack of focus lately. Actually, it’s probably more accurate to say that I am irked by my inability to control where I am focusing lately. I’m hyper-fixated on problems at work, and having a lot of trouble focusing on anything OTHER than that.

Which led to a rather awkward problem this week.

My new job, see, is a bit different from most – instead of being a W2 employee of a contract agency, I reorganized our Enterprises from a general partnership to a limited liability corporation. That’s right. It is now Enterprises LLC, and you are talking to the chief executive member. {attempts to look dignified and business-y…fails…}

Anyway, I filed all the governmental paperwork way back in April. The LLC-1A to do the reclassification is done. The articles of organization properly written out. The business license is safely stored. Appropriate insurance policies purchased.

There was only one thing left to do, and that was to open a business banking account – because one can’t trot into their bank with a check made out to ‘My Corporation LLC’ and try to deposit it into Sarah Jane Smith’s account – even if My Corporation LLC is technically a ‘disregarded entity’ (meaning that Sarah Jane Smith is the sole ‘member’ and will be paying the corporations taxes via her own 1040 come April). Or even if the name of the company is “Sarah Jane Smith LLC.”

But then, well, I was waiting for all the paperwork I’d need to present to the bank in order to open the account to be finalized, and then…um…well, I got distracted. And while I have a list of excuses a mile and a half long, I still really shot myself in the foot there.

For those of you not keeping track at home, I started this job in May. I just got my first check. That’s one of the downsides to working this way: I bill the client at the end of each month, and then they have thirty days [or so] to get around to paying me…I won’t get paid for work I did last week until mid-September [or so].

 So I got this check, which I’ve been anxiously awaiting because, well, let’s just say that the cash on hand situation around here has gotten somewhat hairy. I’ve had “working full time” expenses (most particularly, Vanessa the Great’s paycheck, which is a fairly major ‘cost of doing business’ for me), but no “income” since April.

 And then I looked at the check, which as totally expected, as is right and how it should be, was made out to Enterprises, LLC.  And I said, “Aw, @^*&@!” and slammed my forehead onto my desk a few dozen times because GAH!! I never got around to opening the blasted business checking account!!!!!

Opening a business checking account isn’t quite as fast as opening a regular personal checking account – there are a few more forms to fill out, and the bank also has to do a little more due diligence to ensure I’m not a terrorist, money-launderer, or drug runner. Fair enough.

 And no matter what kind of account you open, the first thirty days or so are always the most restrictive you’ll have; for the first thirty days, it is regular practice for longer holds to be placed on new deposits.

 Which sucks from where I sit right now, but can’t really argue with – I understand why they do that.

 Not to digress, but sometimes I hate my heavy background in banking…understanding why things are done a certain way makes it hard for me to maintain a sense of outrage when, darn it, they should just do it differently for me. Because they should! Because I am not a check-kiter OR a terrorist, and also I am NOT running drugs NOR am I laundering money!

I AM A SOUND FINANCIAL PARTNER, DAMN IT. PLUS ALSO, WELL, I AM ME. WHICH MEANS I AM SPECIAL AND SOME JUNK. NOW, BEND OVER BACKWARDS AND GIVE ME WHAT I WANT, EVEN IF YOU DON’T MAKE THE SAME OFFER TO EVERYBODY WHICH WILL TOTALLY GET YOU SUED FOR BAZILLIONS OF DOLLARS IF AND WHEN YOU’RE BUSTED DOING IT! (Um…yeah, uh, about that…well…I promise I won’t tell…?)

Anyway, I’m looking at between three and five business days to even get the account opened, followed by (probably) a ten business day hold being put on the funds. Whereas if I had gotten off my arse and gotten it done back in May, when I meant to, well. I’d be past the 30-day window, and could have deposited that check three days ago and had the money transferred to the household checking account to cover such trivial details as Vanessa the Great’s next paycheck and gas money.

 Crap-apples.

 …sigh…

 Oh well. Serves me right for letting myself be that way. Being tired or out of sorts, or too busy or too sick or whatever doesn’t mean you get a free pass to not do things you don’t feel like doing – if anything, it just means that it is more important than ever to keep the “first things first” mantra going.

 Which I totally know. But occasionally still decide to ignore, even though I also know it will lead to something like this – I’ve got the cash I need right in my hand, but I can’t actually use it for another couple weeks. Argh.

 Being a grown up sure can suck sometimes, can’t it?!

 …even if we can sneak downstairs right after we just told one of the kids “NO, you can’t have ice cream right now! AFTER dinner, AFTER dinner!” to dish ourselves up a bowl of rocky road, eating it in secret behind a locked bedroom door under the cover of “paying bills”…

 (Well, it sounded really good. Plus I always end up not getting any, because lately after I’ve eaten actual food my stomach likes to go on strike so when we’re dishing up dessert I’m usually going, “…eh, nah, I don’t think I can handle it…” so the entire box of ice cream is gone and I don’t get any.)

 (I’m sure I can come up with a few more rationalizations if you guys give me a minute. Probably could come up with dozens of them. I need the calories to maintain weight? Or how about, Because I need the calcium, to help with the charley horses? See? I excel at rationalizations! It is my calling, y’all…)

The Garden Report: July 23, 2012

I did a lot of yard work over the weekend. A lot of it. It had reached the point where it simply had to be done, no matter how much I didn’t feel like doing it. The last six weeks, I’ve been all, Eh, I don’t feel well enough…my back hurts too much…my ovary is throbbing…I feel nauseated…plus it’s too hot…and also did I mention the back pain?...AND, I’m tiiiiiiiired…(oddly, these sorts of things seem to get nothing but worse for me when I cater to them – go figure).

Meanwhile, although obviously there were Expectations to the contrary, the yard work steadfastly refused to simply do itself – instead, an ocean of weeds began to develop across the entire yard, the lawn grew and grew in length to the point where we were afraid neighborhood cats and dogs might be killed and eaten by tigers living in it, and a lot of the food growing in the back yard withered from a combination of drought and neglect.

I got up Saturday morning already doing the “Eeeeeeeeeh, I don’t feel…!” whine, only to glance out my back window at a weed-encrusted, largely-dead, so-called corn field and go, “…{long-suffering sigh}…c’mon, Toots, woman it up – we’re completely out of I Really Don’t Feel Like It passes on this deal…”

In related news, I really didn’t expect that I would feel any too good today because of it, and lo I was right. I feel like death warmed over today. I am regretting every weed I pulled, every cucumber I harvested, every square centimeter of lawn I mowed. I am so tired I could almost cry. Very Small Things™ are giving me a case of the weepies today. I am also having to tell myself, firmly, that one does not pick up the phone and scream, “I QUIT!!!!!!” into it just because one is having a touch of extra back pain and fatigue on a given day (or because folks are – all kidding and sarcasm aside, blithely and innocently dropping larger-than-they-realize bombs into your lap).

Sense of duty aside, I suspect several of my team members would literally have heart attacks and die if I were to simply walk out on them at this point. And only a couple of them would deserve it. So, you know, for the sake of the ten nine eight seven six five four three two one (eh, one and a half) decent men in Sodom…I shall spare the project.

I know. My magnanimity, it knows no bounds. (Magnanimity, mega-animosity…I never noticed before how close they are, spelling-wise.)

But at the same time, I’m glad I did it. Things really were getting bad out there; for example, check out this beauty.

That would be a cucumber. It is the size of an overgrown zucchini. And also, it is bright yellow. When it is supposed to look more like this:

Most of the yard looked kind of like this bed – which is more weeds than plants.

This is what was left after all the weeds were out of there.

The other trouble spot is the roma tomatoes – they had rather ugly water issues, and thus we have blossom rot – in this really blurry picture (shot through my tears), you see how the bottom of the tomato looks kind of flat? Yeah. That’s the blossom rot. Sigh.

Some plants are wondering what all the drama is about – the Blue Nile potatoes are growing like gangbusters.

And the cucumbers appear to feel that the heat waves are no big deal.

The butternut squash is fairly happy.

And half of the peanut bed is like a green carpet of peanut plants.

The red potatoes aren’t complaining much either.

Don’t let the drooping fool you – the okra is doing just fine.

And yams are kind of slow to get started every time – the vines are perfectly healthy, so pretty soon they should start sending down those ‘extra’ roots and carpeting the whole box.

The watermelon patch is…a little scruffy.

And heat + peas = dead peas. (The corn-like stuff in the back there is broom corn – a.k.a., sorghum. Hopefully, there will be at least one (1) broom-worth of bristles on those stalks by the time they’re done.)

And my corn? Eh, not doing so good. The watering issue we’ve had have really stunted their growth rather terribly. Meh.

The rhubarb is pretty happy, though!

And the louffa are ready to start climbing!

The container tomatoes are doing pretty well – they’re a bit slow to set blossoms, but hopefully they’ll catch up soon.

And the container zucchini is proving to be great – it produces considerably less than the “regular” bushes, which is just fine by me. We got more than a little tired of zucchini by this time last year, thanks all the same.

The Stuben yellow-eye beans are doing really well – and dried beans remain one of the best things for a gardener with limited daily time to grow. As long as it isn’t raining, any dried out pods that stay on the vine an extra few days are no big deal – they don’t go bad or turn all stringy or any of the other things that other vegetables are prone to doing if you don’t get out there and pick in a timely fashion.

The bush beans are doing OK – I planted a bunch more in that center circle yesterday, to give us a second crop of fresh-eating green beans in a couple months.

The brussel sprouts are doing pretty well – the alien ships are beginning to cluster around the mother-ship stalks.

And Danger Mouse’s flower bed has morning glories peeking out of it.

It’s amazing to me how things are managing to survive out there in spite of me and my Issues lately; they could be doing better, I suppose, but all things considered we’ve got an awful lot going on out there. A lot more success than failure, overall.

But at the same time, frankly, weekends like this one are why I sometimes get this weird smirk on my face and avert my eyes when people start waxing poetic about how simply divine my weird lifestyle is, and how much they envy me (or those like me) and are themselves laying down Great and Mighty Plans in which they too will convert their whole entire living space over to the art, YES, ART, FOR LO, WHAT GREATER ART HATH MAN THAN THAT OF HIS OWN LIVING? of DIY lifestyle.

It puts me in an awkward place, really, because I know that for a lot of folks...this is so not an enjoyable lifestyle. It's demanding. It's unrelenting. It punishes laziness severely, while sometimes rewarding hard work with "meh" results for no apparent reason.

The work is often hard. It's sweaty. It's dirty. It's hours and hours of doing what you must instead of what sounds like fun right about then. And then you're sore, and tired, and also not ACTUALLY done.

There's always more that wants doing. Always.

And sometimes, sometimes...you find yourself thinking that on the whole, this whole thing kind of bites. And that giving it up is probably your best course of action.

But then, well...you just can't. And you're honestly not sure if it is the joy of doing, or just mule-headedness...but...either way...you know you're going to get out there again tomorrow. And the tomorrow after that. You know that you will be canning, and drying, and pickling all summer and fall, clear into the winter; that you will jokingly refer to your neatly labeled rows of Mason jars full of everything from baked beans to cucumber relish as 'Super-Advanced Laziness' because, see, it took a ton of time to grow and harvest and process and all? But look, ma, FAST FOOD!

And then I look at this person, at their soft hands and McPadded bodies, their perfectly clean jeans that have never knelt in a squip! of busted-sprinkler mud, the nails that haven't actually needed a nail brush since they were children...and I find myself smirking a little. Because I don't know what to say, really; I can't begin to guess how this person will react to the inevitable days when nothing is going right, and it's too hot, and there are far more interesting things going on but these things can't be left for even one more day...when backs ache and sweat is rolling down the inside of jeans, when something just hauled off and bit you from under that bush...gah, hope I'm not about to find out what a black widow bite really feels like today...because I don't have time for that, I've got this-n-this-n-this to get done today, or I'm going to lose this whole set...

Maybe they will hate it with a mad passion, and spit on the names of those who talked so enthusiastically about the "cunning" pea blossoms or the "sweet" little carrot fronds.

Maybe they will love it so much they hardly register the hard days.

I feel I should warn them. I feel I shouldn't. If they try it, if they build and tend it, will they look out their windows at their empires and realize they are its master and slave at the same time? And will that make them feel somehow whole inside? Or only trapped by the constant call of a duty no longer technically required of us?

Would they see something more than themselves in a shyly peeking morning glory, winking thanks for a new trellis to climb and a side-dressing of fertilizer?

Only one way for them to find out...so I remain silent and smile and tell them the truth: It's hard work, very hard sometimes, but it has many rewards that make it worth doing...to me, anyway.

And now, the ALIEN SNOT MONKEYS!!

(Fair Warning: This post is about stuff like endometrial polyps and alien snot monkeys. It is probably not appropriate for any audience. But I just can’t seem to stop myself. I appear to be dead-set on sharing this, even though it is a) gross and b) gross and also c ) gross. So if gross girl-stuff makes your toes curl up, this is probably a really good post to just skip.)

So I’ve been having all these Female Troubles lately. And they have been unpleasant and varying degrees of disgusting for, like, two months now. And then Tuesday – after a night of epic cramping that had me sketching out plans for a DIY hysterectomy (one bottle of Glenlivet and a kitchen knife oughta do ‘er…), well…

I’m pretty sure I gave birth to an alien snot monkey.

It was possibly the single most disgusting thing I have ever seen emerge from my body. It was fleshy and tissue-y and, well, it looked like something you’d pull out of a particularly ill-cleaned dead chicken. I mean, GROSS, people, GROSS.

Now, with all the mayhem that has been going on with me, you’d think I’d be relieved that something tangible had finally shown itself. Not looking at it and going, oh, GREAT, what’s THIS?

But I was. And also, I had no idea what it might be. I’d never seen anything like this. So I scooped the thing into a take-n-toss container, called the poor, unsuspecting OB/GYN who so unwisely didn’t tell me he already had too many patients and to go away when I called back in May, and very calmly told him that I had just given birth to a 6x2x2 centimeter Alien Snot Monkey, and asked if that sort of thing was, you know, expected given Everything Else that was going on…or if I should drop everything and rush in for an immediate hysterectomy (hope springeth eternal and all) (if you are sensing that I am ever so slightly sick and tired of my uterus right about now – yes, yes I am).

“Huh. Sounds like an endometrial polyp,” he said (Dunno what that is, I thought to myself, but it sure sounds booooooring!). “Do you still have it? We should definitely send it to pathology.” (Ooooooookay! And now, it sounds vaguely sinister!)

And thus it was that one lidded Gladware container was delivered to his office, to be forwarded on to Pathology.

Now, it turns out that these polyp-thingees are almost always benign and not all that sinister really. So we can drop that and move on to more important things, like discussing the relative merits of the terms ‘endometrial polyp’ and ‘alien snot monkey.’

It is this writer’s humble opinion that the term ‘endometrial polyp’ is boring-yet-ominous sounding, and should be replaced with the far more interesting moniker of ‘alien snot monkey.’

Not only is it more visually appealing (oh hush, it is too!), but it sounds far more exotic and exciting. Plus it would make an excellent name for a band – a far better band-name than endometrial polyps.

Imagine if you will that you are in a large stadium waiting for a concert to begin. Which of these sounds like a better show to you:

“Ladies and gentlemen, the Endometrial Polyps!”

“Ladies and gentlemen, the Alien Snot Monkeys!”

SEE? Alien Snot Monkey  is a totally better term, and I vote that in future whenever some crazy freaked out woman calls up her gynecologist clutching a take-n-toss container full of something that looks like it was picked up off the slaughterhouse floor, s/he should immediately tell her that it sounds like an Alien Snot Monkey  and that pathology would love to take a look at it.

Because also, telling somebody that they should send their endometrial polyp to pathology sounds far more serious than it actually is…whereas I very much doubt anybody could manage to work up an ounce of concern over sending an Alien Snot Monkey to pathology.

Disagree with me. I dare you.

The Artiste is IN

Captain Adventure and I are bach-in it this weekend. That’s right. It’s just me-n-mah-boy, for three whole days. His father and sisters piled into Homer the Odyssey yesterday and headed off for the uncharted wilderness of the Los Angeles area for the family 4^th of July party.

I couldn’t go this time – between Female Troubles (yeah, still…I think I may be approaching the point where I start proposing we just yank the whole blasted works out of there and be done with it), work-related deadlines and an epic amount of laundry (don’t laugh – one of the girls had scabies, and I’m so freaked out by Such Things that I won’t be able to sleep at night until I have washed ALL the things), I just wasn’t able to take five whole days away from Everything.

Which The Captain feels is possibly the second or third most awesome thing that has ever happened to him in his entire almost-eight-years of life.

I was a little worried last night, as he was revisiting the question of where exactly daddy and the sisters were right now. Would they be home later? Would they be home in the morning? Where did they go, again? And then, just as I was starting to think, Aw, crap, he thinks he’s been ditched!, he grabbed hold of my neck and yelled, “Good! Cause then it just you and me, just dat!”

Sometimes, I think The Captain wishes he was the only child of a single parent. Just a hunch.

Also, I had to keep sending him back to his own bed, because he was totally trying to take over daddy’s spot while he was away. Possession is 9/10^th of the law, dude…you left it unattended, I moved into it, ANY QUESTIONS?!

So this morning, he had a list of things he felt would be a good use of our time. Important things. Like marshmallows, cereal, and bendy wax sticks. Oh. And some of the fusible bead trays, so he could build cool things for me to obediently iron upon demand.

The young artiste, he has NEEDS, y’all.

So after some breakfast cocoa and a morning chat about video games, we went off to WalMart together. He chattered all the way there…and then promptly went into shut-down as we were walking up to the store.

…so…much…stuff…!!!

He maintained a death-grip on my hand the entire time. The most I could get from him was a whispered “yes” or “no” when I would show him various products – or a wordless pointing as I started to toss the coveted and seldom-purchased marshmallows into the cart. How about the pastel ones, because the only thing better than marshmallows-at-all would be PASTEL marshmallows, which is, like, ULTRA awesome and stuff…

But WalMart…they had neither the fusible-bead things, nor the bendy wax sticks. Sadness. And. Woe.

So we went next door to Michaels. Where I found the fusible bead things on sale no less in about three seconds. But the bendy wax sticks…couldn’t find them.

We searched high and low, and with increasing desperation. When an autistic kid has decided that this and ONLY this will do? Not being able to find whatever-it-is becomes a big deal. I had to transfer his hand to my belt, because he was griping way too hard as aisle after aisle did not have them, and his anxiety began to mount.

Finally, tucked away in the Crayola aisle, waaaaaaay up at the top in unfamiliar packaging…bendy sticks.

Whew. Disaster averted. Captain Adventure was so happy, he started flapping his hands and skipping to the register, and even forgot that he was freaked out and overwhelmed and started chattering again. I’m going to make a GUY with really long LEGS and hey! How come they have YELLOW [inevitably pronounced LEL-LO, which I find so cute it half KILLS me to correct him] on the picture on the box, but there’s no LEL-LO stah-WINGS in the box? Huh? How come? Huh? HOW COME?!

And then we came home and he made a guy with really long legs and said I had to take a picture quick because his legs were going to fall off because they were toooooooooo LONG!

So I did.

(Note the very serious expression. He is an artiste, people. And arte, it is serious!)

And, they did. Pretty much immediately. So he made smaller people with normal legs out of the fallen-off legs and said it was a family of wax-string people.

And then he decided it was time for fusible beads. I foresee a LOT of ironing in my immediate future…

We don’t get a whole lot of one-on-one time with any of the Denizens, really; normally, my home office is like the customer service desk at Target, a constant string of people asking for things, returning things, registering complaints and suggestions, coming and going day and night.

Sometimes, I can’t remember which kid was just in here bellyaching about what thing, and then I’ll be yelling at the wrong kid to quite harping on that! and whaddya mean, mommy, I only brought it up this one time!

…oh…that wasn’t you five minutes ago…well, anyway, QUIT HARPING ON IT, I KNOW YOU WANT GRANOLA BARS!

It’s always neat to get some of this kind of time, with only one voice to listen to, only one other set of needs to cater to, only one other person to focus on for a while.

…except…well, it is kind of quiet around here today…little bit creepy, almost…I think I’ll go see what the hamsters are up to, see if they want to start running around in their little balls on the tile floor, that might liven things up a bit around here…

Money Monday: July 2, 2012

Among the many things I keep thinking I should totally be better about are these sorts of posts – one of the many ways in which finances can be like dieting is that having something that keeps you motivated (and also honest) can really help you stay the course when you’re trying to accomplish something.

Which is actually a large part of my problem: I have a lot of vague ideas, a fistful of could and a pocketful of should and a side helping of would, but I don’t have a particularly clear-eyed vision around what exactly I want to do, or how precisely I think I should chart the course to get it.

This lack of vision tends to make it hard to actually get anywhere. Kind of like driving a car with the sunshield still up, you know? Where we goin? Dunno, but I think we’re getting there fast!

We’re actually at an excellent place in life to be having the sorts of conversations we need to have, too. Not only because we’re sort of between Grand And Sprawling plans at present (which is rather a problem that needs to be addressed), but because we are – whether we care to admit it or not – standing in the doorway to Middle Age.

(There. I said it. We are middle. frickin'. aged.)

(Well. Chronologically, anyway. Mentally…well, let’s put it this way: Fart. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! SHE SAID FART!!! HAHAHAHAHAHA! See? Maximum mental age: Fourteen, MAYBE.)

The way I tend to operate now is on an autopilot that was first set in place fifteen years ago – when we were newly-minted young adults learning just how hard this whole “being a grownup” gig actually was. We had six-figure dreams but only four-figure experience. We had lots of hope and energy, but not a lot of power in our jumps. We had tons of opinions, but not a whole lot of wisdom. And of course, we were desperately squeezing nickels hoping to transform them into dimes through sheer force of will.

But that isn’t where we are now. Now we are in our prime earning years. We are sailing into what we will undoubtedly look back upon as our best-ever earning years, the years when we were making the most money we ever made.

I could be wrong, but I suspect if I don’t get off my arse pretty quickly here and apply my experience in Such Matters to the question of how we want to leverage these literally golden years, I will be rather pissy with my younger self when we are sitting around in our Golden Years wondering why we even call them that, seeing as how it probably should be called the Once Upon A Time We Used To Have Some Gold, ‘N Now It’s Almost All Gone Years. (<= I very much doubt I will become less wordy in my old age. Just a hunch.)

The place I like to start for Such Things isn’t directly with dollars and cents and how many of them go to what categories – rather, I like to start by daydreaming a lot. This is actually a really fun exercise, because at this point in the game you don’t have to be realistic.

You don’t have to be sensible.

You don’t have to be all accountant-ish.

In Point Of Fact, the best way to approach this little task is playfully. Take yourself back to your childhood and play Let’s Pretend with yourself. Let’s pretend that we have all the time, money and talent in the whole wide world at our disposal…nothing is impossible, nothing is too big or too small, nothing requires too much pre-work that we haven’t even started yet, we can have, do or be anything we want…

Well. What do we want?

Grab a notebook and a pen, and start writing! It doesn’t matter whether the thing is an object, a destination or an accomplishment. It doesn’t matter whether it is “silly” or “serious.” They don’t have to be all the same category, or level of difficulty – you can have “swim the English channel” next to “grow at least one edible radish.”

It doesn’t matter whether anybody else approves. It doesn’t even matter whether you approve – yet.

The point here isn’t to carve into stone all the things you will absolutely, without fail strive to and possibly beyond your utmost to have, do and be…it’s simply to give yourself permission to dream, to imagine what such a reality would look like for yourself.

Sure, ultimately we’ll go over this list and prioritize things and look at what steps are between here and there and all that boring sensible stuff.

But for right now…don’t worry about it. Just rough out what “reality” would be, if you got to decide on it.

It’s so easy to get so caught up in what is that we forget that we aren’t necessarily defined by it. Reality seems so…well, real. Finite. Defining. Immovable, and irresistible.

Living as we do within the boundaries of What Is, we can start to believe that we, too, are part of it. That we too are what we are, nothing more, nothing less, unchanging and unchangeable.

It isn’t really so. To our species has been given a terrible and profound gift – we do not have to be defined by the world we are born into, or have fallen into, or even have worked long and hard to arrive in, only to find that, eh, now that I’m here? It ain’t quite what I expected, ya know…?

We have this gift of imagining. Of dreaming. And daring to mold ourselves, so that we fit the reality to which we would like to become accustomed.

Whether the journey is across the street or across the world, though, we can’t get started until we have some idea which way we want to go…so!

Start scribbling, and don’t overthink things at this point. Let those hopes and dreams of yours talk without being interrupted with words like “but” or “if only” or “can’t” for a bit. Build some castles in the air.

Next week, we can start looking into how we can get some foundations under them.

Noble Achievements

Today was Cooking Day – a rather overdue excursion into What should I cook up before it goes bad?

And so it was that two dozen sandwich-shaped burger patties, two loaves of bread, about twenty lunch-sized servings of lamb and lentil soup, two dozen bagels, sixteen BBQ ham turnovers, four dozen each of four different cookies, a coconut meringue pie, a 13x9 pan of coconut bars, six dozen pancakes and four dozen waffles were born, ready to join the other turnovers, muffins, and ‘why did you make those square, aren’t they usually round?’ objects in the freezer. (Well, because. Sandwich bread, I almost always have…hamburger or hotdog buns, not so much.)

I sit here now with my feet and back complaining, fighting an impressive case of The Yawns and trying to remember that hey, all things considered, I did pretty good today.

I always feel like I should have been able to do better. I can find a dozen places where I should have started something else, should have done that first, then this…should have been working on that the day before, instead of this other thing.

It’s very annoying of me.

But at least it isn’t a particularly nasty Interior Critic. Mine is more like a cheerleader, expecting that with a little motivation, greater goals can be achieved. Yay! Go team!

A lot of folks aren’t so lucky. Their Interior Critics are downright vicious, skulking around in the shadowy corners of their minds muttering about ‘uselessness’ and ‘hopeless’ and ‘you stink.’

Mine just has…slightly inflated beliefs around exactly how much can or cannot be done by us within a given period of time. And a tendency to move the bar when I’m not looking, such that if I were to achieve next weekend what she thought I should have been able to do today, well, there will be just one or two more things she feels could have gotten done, if…

Well, I’m sure it’s true. And I’m also sure that I could get just one or two more things done this weekend, before I dive back into another working week full of deadlines and changing requirements, and trying to get things done at work in an environment where everything is broken and nobody can fix it (mostly because of an understandable terror around touching.ANYTHING!...when your whole system is prone to barfing up a hairball and dying for no apparent reason right in the middle of month-close, welllllll, I can totally understand why nobody wants anybody to tinker with things) (even though we could so TOTALLY fix it…all it would take is a little [more] time, a little [more] money, a dollop of trust and maybe a pinch of pixie dust and with a hearty hi-ho-Silver-and-away we could make all those nested transactions stop locking each other [and themselves here and there, for bonus Hilarity Points] into oblivion, can I get an amen?!, BUT…I digress).

I’m sure I could get just a few more things done tonight. Before it’s too late and today becomes yesterday and the deeds are set in the stone of what is past.

But something else I should really get done today? More sleeping. Which tends to be mutually exclusive with getting other things done. Although I suspect I’ve tried. Few other things can fully explain the oddities around the things I find around here the way “I must have been sleep-walking when I did that” can.

TO WHICH END…I am going to bed, so that I can accomplish more sleeping.

WOOOOOO! WAY TO OVERACHIEVE, ME! (<= desperate times call for desperate measures…let us make of sleeping a Noble Cause, and strive for ever more nobility…)

Proof that I am not the ONLY crazy person around here

A couple weeks ago, the husband went to the store to buy copier ink and index cards. And that’s how all of this came into my life.

You may be wondering what the heck all that even is. “Tama!” you may be asking. “Did you guys dismantle the Golden Gate Bridge and bring it home or something?!”

No. No we did not.

What the husband stumbled across while he was getting index cards and copier ink was a warehouse liquidation sale. Those big orange doohickeys are dismantled warehouse shelving – the kind you can store refrigerators and transmissions and other really heavy things on.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, First of all, I think I need more coffee or something because I seriously can’t keep up with this. And secondly, what the ever-lastin’ Jelly Belly do you think you’re going to DO with refrigerator-storage-enabling SHELVING?!

Well. The husband – all by himself, this was not, REPEAT, NOT!, my idea! – has decided that he is building a 16’ x 12’ greenhouse for me. He spent quite a few hours fiddling around with dimensions and other engineer-y stuff in this AutoCAD-ish program he has, figuring out how he’d run water to it, and how to handle humidity / light / blah blah blah, and what gauge beams he wants for the roof, and what grade plastic he needs for the jacket…and sorry, ladies, but this particular geek is SO taken.

Actual sexiness may be higher than it appears in this picture

I’m excited by the possibilities something like this would open up...and a little scared of them, too. Kind of along the lines of, “Be careful what you wish for, you might just get it,” I suppose.

I’ve frequently wished I could do more “bulk” planting – instead of smaller 10x10 or 10x12 boxes of just this one thing, I’d love to do half the yard in corn, the other half in tomatoes. Plant nothing but peas in early February! An entire yard of green beans in May! Stuff the freezer with bags, pack the pantry with Mason jars! Ring the whole thing with a thousand onion sets!

Buuuuuuuut, of course, this isn’t just some ‘back to the land’ thing. It’s also about minimizing our basic financial needs – the less we “have” to spend on this-n-that-n-the-other, the more we have available for other things.

So when I’m looking at a situation where I could either break the area up into several smaller boxes, grow lots of different things in “just a few meals worth” quantity and save $200-300 at the supermarket, or dedicate the whole entire area to growing enough wheat to replace one, MAYBE two at the outside of those $12 sacks of flour at Costco…welllllll, there’s what might be called an economic inequality between those two choices.

And I end up with tiny patches of spinach, pak choi, three kinds of lettuce, and one lonely little eggplant…

BUT…if I’m moving those into a greenhouse and taking them vertically up ten feet worth of shelves, thus freeing up a good 75% of the growing area currently taken up by Such Things…wellllll, now, I have options that might make sense.

I love the idea of it. And I know I’ll enjoy the part where I’m putting my hands on things and actually doing the individual tasks. Taken one at a time, I enjoy weeding, hoeing, planting, harvesting, and preserving.

Where it starts to get to me a bit is when I step back and look at the whole thing. THAT’S when I start to get a case of nerves, and wonder if I’m woman enough for All That.

Suppose I’ll have to see when we get there. It’ll be a while before the husband can get this thing going, so I have at least the rest of this season and possibly the entire fall and winter too before I’ll have to actually worry about it.

Which leaves me free to ponder more important questions, such as, What on earth do you DO with a busted up babysitter swing that should probably go to the dump except that it’s too CUTE – even busted up like that – to just throw away?

Four words: Butternut Squash Jungle Gym!

Can I please have a do-over?

Dudes. Today was one of those days where I started looking for the hidden cameras. There just HAD to be one.

I woke up for no reason on my own, looked at the clock, and went, “Ack! 5:45, what the heck?!” Then I kicked the husband and hissed, “DID. YOU. TURN. OFF. MY. ALARM. LAST. NIGHT?!?!” at him.

“Murfle mutter whaza larm? Sor-rah, zzzzzz…” he replied. So I kicked him again, got up, and squinted more closely at the alarm – because it wasn’t light enough outside for 5:45 to be an accurate measure of time, so, something was wrong.

My alarm was off. But it was not 5:45 a.m.

It was 1:19 a.m. And the alarm clock was sitting with the husband’s setting displayed. So I pushed all the buttons until they were doing the right thing again, got back into bed, gave him one last kick out of pure spite (nobody hates a sleeper like an insomniac, let-me-tell-you) (and no, I didn’t really kick him repeatedly…but I THOUGHT about doing it!), and tried to go back to sleep.

And failed.

And then had to give myself a serious pep-talk to get my carcass out of bed when the alarm finally ticked around to the buzzing-spot.

There was vigorous and whining opposition to the idea. I don’t WAAAAAANA…I’m tiiiiiired…and also my STOMACH hurts, plus my HEAD hurts, and also I think I’ve got CRAAAAAAMPS again…

But when I told myself that after all, it wasn’t like rabid alligators had chewed my feet off in the night, which pretty much meant I could, in fact, still walk…well. I couldn’t really argue with me, there. The lack of rabid alligators in one’s life makes such things as being tired and/or crampy and/or headachy seem somewhat less important.

You know, comparatively-speaking.

BUT STILL. I mean, see, thing is, I already wasn’t exactly sleeping soundly before the initial wake-for-no-reason-other-than-serendipity thing at 1:19. And then I was irritatingly aware that I didn’t get back to sleep afterward, but was just kind of dozing or dayNOT-dreaming until the alarm went off.

So I’m not just tired. I’m like, stupid tired.

But undaunted by such things, I talk myself into getting on the road.

I get to BART. Park. Walk up to the station. And there’s an agent who has flung herself in front of the turnstiles, bellowing “THERE IS NO SERVICE TO SAN FRANCISCO RIGHT NOW! YOU CANNOT GET THERE FROM HERE! WE ARE ADVISING YOU TO SEEK ALTERNATIVE MEANS OF TRANSPORTATION, BY WHICH WE MEAN YOU SHOULD DRIVE YOURSELF THERE!”

I cannot begin to describe the chaos of this scene. Here we all are, allegedly adults, most of us with our car keys jingling away in our pockets, still warm from the ignition switch. And we’re staring at her blankly like we’ve never even heard of these horseless carriages. Heads cocked to one side like the RCA Victor dog. None of us can comprehend what the noises she is making mean. Our lives are being thrown into utter disarray by this. We cannot process what is going on, here.

“Arrrrrrugh? Wha? Wha she say? Me no understand, why she say ‘drive’ word? Drive San Fran? Can DO this? Streets make with go-there for drive-drive, San Fran? Whaaaaaaaa she say?”

I came within a hair of actually asking the poor woman, AND I QUOTE, “But, where am I supposed to park if I’m driving to Montgomery Street station?”

{face-palm}

I literally caught it by the barest edges of my teeth before it just fired on off into the air, exposing the degree of my bumble-brain-ed-ness to the whole world.

I’m so glad I did, though. The poor woman had enough to contend with this morning, having to say the same thing over and over and over again to people who wanted to fight with her about it – like she was going to say, “Just kidding! There actually wasn’t a three-alarm blaze that licked over our rails, possibly rendering them completely unsafe! What the heck! All aboard, folks, let’s charge the transbay tunnel and see what happens! WOOT WOOT!!”

Or possibly, “Wow, that is such a compelling argument there! I’ll call Operations immediately and let them know that you, Mr. Joe Guy Who Thinks This is Bull-Spit And Who Pays Taxes And Who Really Just Needs To Get To F@^&@ing Work, says it’s totally OK for us to just go ahead and use the f@^&@ing track. I’m sure they’ll restart service immediately when they hear this brilliant reasoning!”

So I got back into the car and drove home.

And then I had a meeting during which the thing I was most focused on was my headache. And how much effort it took not to take out my bad mood on this poor project manager, who was just trying to get something that more or less resembled an actual plan together.

I suspect howling, “How the @*^&@ should I know how long Task #76 is going to take in hours?! I just @^*&@ing got here, I haven’t even seen how long a NORMAL load takes!!” at him would have been slightly less than helpful.

Or professional.

Then I worked for a while.

Until the tired jumped out from under the desk and bit me on the arse; I became aware that I wasn’t really working, I was just sort of poking around at the same itty-bitty detail like maybe this time it would return a different result.

So I closed the laptop and just walked away from it for a while. I went and got my nails repaired, and pretty much fell asleep at the salon.

Then I fumbled my way into Starbucks and asked for a mocha frap with extra coffee. EXTRA coffee. By which I meant an extra hit from the caffeine-pipe.

I did not say eight coffee.

Guess which one THEY heard?!

They put EIGHT hits of coffee-stuff in that frap. And even though I heard them talking about it, even though the guy who actually made the drink even commented, with that disbelieving laugh people use at Such Times, that “that was kind of a lot,” what they were actually saying with that ‘eight coffee’ thing didn’t register with me.

Until the taste of this thing hit my tongue. Wowzah. The instant the flavor hit, my eyeballs shot open and I was almost like a new woman. But with a preexisting headache.

In related news, I think if I were to have my blood pressure and pulse taken right about then? They’d have been all like, Damn, girl! What have YOU been up to?!

And then I came home and went back to work. Sort of. Except that mostly, I was dreaming up interesting reports that could theoretically be designed out of the new data warehouse…most of them falling into the category of “interesting but ultimately worthless information.” Which is not what we’re going to be after.

So I gave up.

And would rather like a do-over for today.

Or failing that, at least an early bedtime tonight.

Preferably with no rabid alligators, toe-nibblers or otherwise.

If I were to be completely honest…

…I’m kind of…um…well, not exactly avoiding y’all, but…it’s more like…welllllllll…

OK. Fine. I did something so astonishingly stupid weekend before last that I have no idea how to even begin describing it. Then hard on the heels of that, right when I was feeling almost human enough to talk to other humans again, well, I got to the end of the first cycle and all hell broke loose.

I swear, my life lately has been a kind of gore-fest. And while it is kind of funny, it’s also kind of not.

It’s kind of gross.

And I don’t want to deal with any of it, or talk about it, really…but since it has been Center Stage for the last two weeks, it’s also kind of like the only thing I have to talk about right now.

I know. My dilemmas, they are epic.

So, what did I do a couple weekends ago?

Well. I knifed myself in the thigh.

Literally.

With a knife.

{face-palm}

SO, I was making a sort of watering system for some of the container garden plants. I wanted to end up with something that would seep not pour, and do it in a fairly wide patch. The tool that got me this result from the thick plastic I was using for the project was an 8” kitchen knife. So I’m standing there cheerfully whacking away at the plastic with this thing…and then one of the girls erupted around the corner into the kitchen. RUNNING. In the kitchen. In spite of many lectures about running + kitchen = DON’T.

I took my eyeballs off what I was doing (but did not stop my hand and arm from moving, this is an important point!), opened my mouth to yell at her about running in the kitchen, and…thwhack.

You know that split second between doing something, and the pain hitting you? Yeah. Like something out of a movie, that split second sort of stretched out. The husband was nattering on about something not five feet from me. The kids were bouncing all over the place. And there I stood, frozen in time, ever-so-slowly coming to grips with the information being fed to me through my assorted sensory input channels. Did I just do what I think I did? Are you sure it isn’t just hung up on your jeans or something? Oh. Blood. Bleeding. Oh! Yikes! Fair bit of bleeding there, really soaking that denim pretty good and, oh hey. Pain. Pain! Yeah, there it is, pain part coming through now…yeah. Um. I’m going to have to say that, given the evidence here…yes. Yes I DID just slam that @^*@ing knife straight on into my thigh there…

Now, some people are yellers. The husband, in fact, is one of those types. He will bellow like a bee-stung calf over a stubbed toe. He has sent me into heart-pounding panic because of his shouts of horrible, life-altering pain over something like…a splinter. A finger pinched in a cupboard door. And so forth.

Some people are weepers. “Ohmygah ohmygah ohmygah! Sob! Sob! Sob!”

Some people are cussers. “Oh fer @^*@&'s sake! ^*@&! @^*&@(^*&@! Argh, ^&*@^&@!!!!!”

And then there are people like me, people I herewith dub The Hiders.

Here is the sum total of my outward expression of pain and disbelief at the time of injury: “…ooof…”

And then, well, I calmly and without making the slightest hint of fuss, poinked the knife out of my thigh and – with remarkable speed for somebody with a hole in their leg – made for the upstairs (!!!!) bathroom so that I could assess the damage without any meddling busybodies undo emotion entering into Things.

I’m afraid I’m not kidding. Every time I do this, afterward I say, “OK, that is so stupid, and I am never going to do that again!” – and then, the next time something like this happens, where am I? Hiding somewhere, while I frantically get myself cleaned up and self-assessed as to Need To See A Doctor Quickly lest somebody else try to get a vote before I have made up my mind on the subject.

I’ve done this since I was a child. When I was somewhere around four years old, I fell on the sliding glass door runners at my grandmother’s house, and slashed my knees open. She suddenly realized I wasn’t making a horrific racket anymore and went looking for me…eventually, she found me hiding in her water heater closet with a bunch of Kleenex, trying to clean up my knees without getting caught.

I have no idea why I did it then, and I really don’t have a good reason now either. Maybe I’m more of a ‘lurking on the sidelines making smart-assed remarks out of the corner of my mouth’ sort of clown, not the ‘lookit me! I’m juggling eggs and your best crystal wine glasses with wine in them in the middle of your white carpet! WHOOPEE!” type. I despise being fussed over, and I don’t want to be “helped” when I don’t feel well.

I stop just short of resenting the people who bring me food and fluff my pillows. I’m that patient in the hospital who is always deciding they’re going to just get up and go to the bathroom their damned self, without waiting for the nurse to respond to the call button. Or even using the call button.

So what if I have a 7” hole in my abdomen and am missing a bunch of organs now?! Pfffffft!!! I can get out of this bed by myself, and I will get out of this bed by myself! I’ve been using the bathroom without help since I was two-frickin-years-old, and I will be damned if I need help now…

…and then I will follow this up by returning to bed, turning a sickly gray color, covered in sweat, but nevertheless gritting my teeth and refusing to admit that it was a really, really bad idea, and that maybe, just maybe, a little hit of morphine might be a good idea right about now…I’M FINE, DAMMIT, I’M JUST A LITTLE TIRED, YEAH, THAT’S WHAT IT IS, A LITTLE TIRED, I DON’T NEED YOUR DARN DRUGS, IT’S JUST A LITTLE PINCH!!!!!

(I know. I’m going to make such an awesome old woman someday. Get in line, Young People Of The World, being my in-home caregiver is going to be the most popular job in the world someday!)

After a near fight with the husband over it (on a related note, he really needs to learn to knock before he unlocks doors and barges into rooms while somebody inside is yelling, “DON’T COME IN HERE, I MEAN IT! I’M FINE!!”), we ended up sidetracked into a bizarre “who has had more holes in their flesh, with and without stitches” contest. (Need you even ask? I so win that one.)

Starting to argue was stupid and the “oh yeah? Well, this one time I fell off a skateboard and slid about four feet on my knees…!” thing was even dumber, but! It served a very important purpose, which was that by the time I had trumped his last major-enough-to-actually-remember injury…the bleeding had stopped and it was obvious that I was, in fact, right.
Sucker did not require a trip to the ER for stitches. It may have been a bit on the marginal side, but a little over a week later I’ve got a thin little almost-nothing of a future scar forming and as long as I don’t get too enthusiastic about things like stairs it hardly even hurts anymore.

Just enough to keep me humble, really.

Eh, well. There are certain perils involved in Being Me, and I guess this is one of them: I’m going to do things that don’t exactly end well for me, and then I’m going to more or less shrug them off, fretting a little bit that maybe I shouldn’t, but, well, at the same time, in all likelihood it’s going to end up a no big deal sort of thing…and a few sidetracks into what exactly causes tetanus, and horrifying myself with research around things like detecting wound infections and how the wounds from my alien abduction turned gangrenous.

(Stupid aliens. You’d think they would have figured out Neosporin by now, what with all that Advanced Technology and some junk.)

(It really is fine. Well on its way to becoming an awesome story to traumatize the girls in front of their boyfriends. Ya, just don’t expect her to be safe in the kitchen, not with MY genes…seriously, this one time…?!)