Just wanted to give a welcome and a big congrats to Mommy Karen, Daddy Random and BIG SISTER MP from the Naked Ovary!
Welcome Chloe!
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Category Archives: Weblogs
Stuffing the mailbox
Today I’ve been working on setting up my gmail account. I am moving my email to gmail.
Why? well, for one, Jay keeps threatening to move us over to verizon. And I am getting tired of constantly changing my email addresses.
So I am going to work on this, cleaning up the email and moving over there…. Wish me luck….
Great news and tagged
First, Stop over at WhyMommy’s! She got clean margins on her breast cancer! But, (of course there is a but), they found cancer in the other breast as well. Keep her in your thoughts that they caught that nice and early so that she is now cancer free!
Second, I’ve been tagged by Penelope Anne of the Cafe at the End of the Universe!! Eek!
First, the rules, which are important, because they also tag — randomly — six more people to join in the fun:
1. Link to the person that tagged you
2. Post the rules on your blog
3. Share six non-important things/habits/quirks about yourself
4. Tag six random people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs
5. Let each random person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their website.
Hmmm
Random quirks about me:
- I dispise spiders. Hate hate hate them! Really!
- I like to eat Honey Comb cereal with kool-aid instead of milk (I know!)
- A dorito and peanut butter sandwich is supreme
- I love the feeling of snot freezing in my nose when it is really cold out
- I watch TV shows on ghosts and UFOs and then scare myself silly with shadows
- Sunday afternoons in the late winter are depressing because there are no good sports on.
I suck at tagging, so if you wish to do this meme, go ahead and leave me a comment so I can hunt you down! BRAHAHAHAHAHA
* BTW- I may be AWOL this week. We have a NSR to prepare for (NASA Senior Review) and we are all really busy
What is needed?
My Canadian buddy,, Midlife Traveler, is trying to save money. Her family wants to buy a house in a rural area and of course, houses mean mortgages, and mortgages mean you need money as a down payment.
Her blog often leaves me thinking, and now is no different. Please go over and read, but a quick summary is this: the original plan was to learn how to save money. This lead to her discovering the live simply theory. Now she is very excited about this concept and the practical implications.
She has asked a very important question "What is needed?"
I think that is a great question and I have been thinking about that the past few days
Things I think I could easily cut back on
- Starbucks. Yeah, I know. Sad, isn’t it? But I love my grande, 2 pump skim no whip mochas.
- lunches out
- My coffee shipment from Gevalia (yes I mail order coffee. get over it)
- my occasional Eddie Bauer flings
- discretionary spending- Jay and I each allow ourselves a certain amount of money each month for discretionary spending. If we have a tight month, then we stop this spending. So far, this system has worked well and we have managed to keep ourselves in check during tight months.
Things that are not so easy:
- Acupuncture. I have to say I love it, but it is expensive
- Health Club. I have signed a 2 year agreement. I need to do this another year, but to be honest, I could find a way to use the Harvard gyms or walking or weights at home. It is just that much more convenient to do the gym instead of finding a way to exercise.
- cable/hd/dvr- Eh, I know, these should be expendable. We love the HD. Just adore it. We love the ability to use the TV to just chill with our sports and the DVR is beyond wonderful for those mornings that the kids just want one show….
- Kid activities. We have 3 activities that we pay for right now, ice skating, swimming and gymnastics. These would be the last to be sacrificed.
To be honest, Jay and I do live pretty simply. We try to eat healthy at home and don’t buy a ton of junk at the store. Impulse buys are low and we rarely buy food that we don’t need. We don’t "shop" often. Soleil and I both have a touch of SID and we both flip after being at the mall for a while. We’ve switched our main lighting to CFLs, and have discovered that our electric bill dropped $40 a month (I kid you not). We’ve added a gas fireplace enclosure on each floor. We are burning less gas to keep the house as warm as before, plus we have sealed out the drafts from outside.
Every year we draft up a budget of what we want to do for the house, what expenses we expect to have that year from an annual grocery bill to travel costs (personal travel, not work travel), furniture purchases, electronic expenses and that oh so important savings. We actually put our savings into the budget and insist on a certain level of savings.
So I guess we have already simplified our lives. This holiday season was a perfect example. The girls got 1 present a day. Some presents were simple, a game that I purchased at a rummage sale. Or Leapster cartridges that I was able to pick up on a buy one get one free sale. The 8 gifts were not all from us. Parents and aunts/uncles were giving gifts too. That helped. In September/October, I had the girls do a toy purge with me. We discussed how we need to get rid of what we don’t use and that we should help those who could use it instead of throwing it out.
What do you find is needed in your life? What can you simplify?
Red, red wine…
Yesterday was a crazy day. After spending the morning with the girls, running to the gym and then following up with an afternoon with friends, I hopped a nice flight to the state of Texas. There’s an astronomical meeting here and I decided to luxuriate in a bed by myself.
Since I was in Texas, I let Johnny know I was coming. Today we met up at my hotel, went for a tour of the area and then checked out the renovations at his house. I got to meet the dogs (I love them!) and the wifey (who is much nicer than Johnny paints her. She is so sweet.) and the Girl and the Boy. The Girl warmed right up to me. I love playing with kids, something I never thought I would like when I was younger!
We got most of the afternoon to sit back and chat. That was really nice. You can learn a great deal about someone via email, but it is much nicer to sit back and talk in person.
Johnny took some, um, photos. Including the One with the Pimp hat…Oh yeah.. the p1mp hat…(sorry, I tried to find the blog entry about that, but I couldn’t find it… sigh…) You’ll just have to wait until he posts them!
Right now I am contemplating sleep after 3 glasses of wonderful red wine!
Thanks Johnny!
Ediited to add: I found the P1MP POST!
Happy New Year
Trackback Hell
UGH! I am getting so frustrated! I am getting bots that come through my blog and put up trackbacks on old posts. These are for P*rN or for drug or damn Viagr@ UGH! I had 22 trackbacks today!
It is hard for me to go back and remove all of the trackbacks from my old posts….sigh….
Anyone else have trouble with this? Suggestions?
A quick post before the day hits.
Yes, I was hoping to get a quick post in before the day really hit me hard. But, oy! Start with the bus being EARLY and you get the picture of today. I make the girls leave the house at 8:25 (so we really leave around 8:28). We need to walk about 1/6 mile to the bus stop. It’s not far, but it is around the corner. We got to the bus stop at 8:33 and BOOM at 8:35 the bus was there. The boy at the corner house almost missed it. His mom ran him across the street and got him on the bus. Whew!
We had two meltdowns in the car; one because Soleil got the pretty pony tail holder and one because we’re three and who needs a reason to meltdown when you’re three? G-d, I hate three. There are so many great parts of this age, just to be blown out of the water by Toddler Insanity. Really, I think it’s been declared by the APA that children who are three are affected by Toddler Insanity. If I were Dave Barry, I would say that Toddler Insanity is a great name for a band.
Finally, we made it to daycare, when another meltdown occurred because Daddy was going to make it to the door first.(Note to self. Find copy of Alfie Kohn’s No Contest. Use this as a bedtime story.)
I’ve been avoiding the "post once a day in November" stuff because, well, I post every work day and occasionally on weekends. It is fun reading everyone else’s blogs, but really, I can’t keep up. I have a life somewhere in here.
But yesterday, one of my favorite bloggers*** who shall remain nameless, titled a post "Arbeit macht frei".
I couldn’t remember the translation, but the title was enough to unnerve me. In truth, the blogger was not trying to offend. She was upset over a topic. She later changed the title to the English and later changed it again.
It is amazing how little words can hurt. To me, this phrase brings hurt to my children. They don’t even know it. This weekend, our town is holding a memorial for Kristallnacht. Please take a moment to read that link. I’ll wait.
You back? Good. Think about this. I think about our temple. The beauty of the sanctuary. The handcarved ark that holds three Torot (Torah scrolls). I am not terribly religious, but I shudder at these thoughts… Imagine, people bursting in and destroying this all. Imagine being forced to a camp or beating to death just for being Jewish. My children would be accepted as Jews by the haters and probably not as Jews by the faithful (blood line goes through the mother). Could something like this happen today?
You think it can’t. You know it can’t, right? I mean it’s not like the United States would ever round up people based on their religion and torture them and force them to live in a camp? We’re tolerant now. Right? We respect all religions (unless you are atheist. Then you are scum of the earth(that’s SARCASM– I support atheists 100%))
Imagine this, one small title on a blog post. Having nothing to do with religion at all, brought on these strong feelings… Words hurt. Use them carefully.
***If you know this blogger, understand that I am NOT upset at her in any way. She is a wonderful person. I am not mad at her. She changed the title when people questioned her on it. And NO, I will not respond to questions of who it was. She does not deserve any bad press. This is a post about how words brought on such strong feelings….
Stop making me think!
Side note of the day: Soleil has Dacryocystitis. Tear duct infections. Lovely. She already had a minor procedure for this, but now we might need surgery. With lasers. Nance is not a happy camper. Not at all.
Sometimes, you run across bloggers that make you think, and hard. Lately, Jody over at Raising WEG has been doing this. There are 2 recent issues she brought up. I want to discuss hiring help for the house today. I have a house cleaner. I started this when I was on bed rest with Soleil. I suddenly was confined to the couch. I was not a happy camper. I hired a local company.
I ended up with two different women every time. They were white, American workers. I paid the company. I talked to some of the women and I found from their conversations that things were tough for them. Living paycheck to paycheck and trying to get enough for rent and their kids. I couldn’t decide if it was good, or bad to have hired this company. After Soleil was born, I was not comfortable with this company. Lots of reasons, but we fired them.
When we moved to our current house, I hired a friend. She was great. She had started her own business and she did a great job. Unfortunately, she had to quit to work in an office to make more money. We always paid her in cash. I spoke to friends and found another woman. She was from Brazil. She was wonderful, but she had her daughter do our house and slowly that relationship fell apart. We found another woman (again Brazilian) and we worked with her for a while, but then the first Brazilian woman asked if she could work with us again.
After much talking, we decided to hire her. Let’s call her J for fun! J left Brazil with her husband and two children. She joined family here in the States. She went through an abusive marriage, divorced her husband and raised the kids. She started cleaning houses for other people and then started her own business. As far as I know, she is a legal immigrant. I know she hires family. I do not know if she hires legally or not.
Jody brought up the issue of using immigrants for cleaning. Are we exploiting immigrants by hiring them "under the table?" This is a very good question. I think about J. Now J is a bit of an anomaly. She LIKES cleaning. She loves it! She has told me "this is hard work, but I love to see and smell clean houses". I don’t get it! I like clean houses too, but I hate the work!
Jody wrote
Cleaning my house should not be an underground activity conducted by
people living on the margins of our economy. My aunt for many years
hired a local woman to clean her house, a farmer’s wife who reported
all her income and furnished documents to her employers every year at
tax time. I’d be more than happy to do that. Not one of the people I know locally with house cleaners has such an arrangement.
And she is correct, I have never asked J if she does income tax or how she works the Medicaid, etc. I DO know that J is documented. She goes back to Brazil once a year and this means she has the paperwork to travel. But she does drive a early model vehicle. She has a great relationship with a friend of mine and she once asked for an advance of payment because her cash flow was tight. She has called us about switching days and times so she can see a doctor (which I completely said yes). We have slipped her an extra $20 when the house is extra dirty. But we have never asked her "How do you pay your family?"
I don’t think, at this point, I would change my hiring of J. We definitely give her extra money at holiday time (and BEFORE Christmas, so she has the cash to buy what she needs, not after) and we tell her often how much we appreciate her. But do we contribute to her being pushed to the edge of the middle-lower class in the Boston Metro area? The rents here are outrageous. Really. She loves it here (there is a large Brazilian population in Boston). But can she afford it here? Her rates are not dirt cheap. She is not much cheaper than a company who can come out with different people each time and with insurance to make sure our home is safe… These are the same companies that offer ads with "Our women speak English!", the ads that make me just a little sick to read….
I don’t know, but dang it Jody, you are making me think!
Rolling Meme of Doom
Johnny asked if I could do this while we wait for Mrs. Figby to catch up!
Gargantuan Rolling Meme of Doom
1) Read the meme that was dumped assigned to you. Answer the questions.
2) Add TWO new questions to the list. Answer those questions.
3) Forward Dump this onto the next blogger victim (and list their name and link to their blog).
4) This series will conclude when we get 50 questions – so yes, it’s 25 bloggers in the chain.
5) Please make sure that the next victim in the “link” doesn’t have a password protected blog.
[Optional 6] Update the links so people can follow along (this is similar to the method I used in the Why China series).
[Optional 7] When you see an update, down the chain, update your own page with the new questions and answers.
[Optional 8] Copy these micromanaging instructions into the top of your meme post.
1. What secret/surprising/personal goal (that is realistically achievable within the next 15 years) would you like to fulfill?
I would love to learn how to really hike. I don’t mean just a stroll in the woods, but how to hand rock scrambles, which terrify me, and how to carry gear and get water, etc. I want to be able to take a day or 2 day hike without being terrified.
2. Can you list an event in which you made a last minute decision or guess that significantly changed the path of your life?
I was planning to work on an undergraduate research project with a grad student. However, over the winter break, I discovered I would be a Resident Assistant. I decided to skip the research project. When the time came to tell the grad student that I wasn’t going to do it, I suddenly changed my mind. The grad student was Jay….
3. What is one unrealistic goal (but your total secret
dream) that you would love to come true, but are pretty sure it won’t
ever happen?
Writing a book and/or opening a bakery.
4. Who has had the most influence on your life and what did they teach you?
Honestly, I have to say Jay. He came from a completely different upbringing and it opened a whole new way of looking at the world. We do disagree on some basics, but I find that I now view some basic human interactions differently than I did when I was child/teen.
5. You are on a deserted island. You are stranded with
someone from any point in time for 2 months (they are coming to rescue
you but are busy right now). Other then family/friends/naval engineers,
who is it?
I would want Albert Einstein. He had an incredible philosophy of life. I would love to just talk with him and not about physics.
6.Name and describe 3 things on your mind lately. Is there any particular reason why you’re thinking about a particular thing?
- My work. I am working on a complex code right now. The people I work with think I am a gifted programmer. I am terrified that it is going to fail in the basic job it has to do because I don’t completely understand the math.
- The party. Jay’s parents have their 50th anniversary on December 1st. We’re holding a rather large party in Cleveland for it.
- My parents. Mom just got news that she has a genetic clotting factor so she has to take heparin shots whenever she travels. We were hoping they would visit us late December, but I don’t think it is going to work out.
7. If you could go back to one moment in time and change it, what would the moment be and what would you change it from and to?
If it was something out of my control? It would be the day Corey died. I would somehow prevented that first truck in the convoy from going over the train tracks. If the first truck hadn’t gone, then Corey’s wouldn’t have gone, and he wouldn’t have died.
In my control? I guess it would be a date with an ex-boyfriend. I couldn’t explain something well enough and it led to our breakup. I wish I could have explained it better at the time.
8. What is your biggest pet peeve and is there anything that you can do or not do to stop other people from doing it?
Not listening. Too many people yell at each other and don’t listen to the other point of view.
9. Who has been the most influential teacher in your life
and why did he or she have such an impact on you? Have you sent them a
note?
Doc. He was my math teacher and he ran the musicals/plays at school. I talked to him every time I saw him. He was a person who really challenged students. He knew who could do things and how to challenge them. And he taught me that "arc" in trig just means "AngleWhoose" as in "arc cosine" means "AngleWhoose cosine is". He died 2 years ago.
10. What three things do you regret not learning to do?
- Continuing learning French in College
- Swimming well (I can swim, not well)
- Taking more art classes
11. What is your biggest fear?
The house burning down. Every time we go away, I have a mental image of the house burning down. I know it goes back to me being a kid and having a sleepover where the house caught on fire, but it’s still a bit extreme.
12. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
Having more willpower.
13. What is the answer to life, the universe, everything?
42.
14. If you knew, beforehand, that the wait for your child
from China would take this long and drastic a time frame, would you
still go through with it or would you choose another country
N/A
15. What is one food that most people like that you do not like at all?
Mushrooms. I used to call them "slime critters from outer space". My argument was that when you eat them, they embed themselves in your brain so us non eaters would be the ones to save y’all when the mother ship calls.
16. Name one place in the world you would love to spend at
least one month visiting? Is there anywhere on earth that is so
repulsive to you that there is no amount of money that could convince
you to visit it?
Hawai’i
No. I really thought hard, but I think I could even visit Iran/Iraq and the hot beds of the world right now.
17. What book have you just finished reading and why did you pick it up? Would you recommend it to others?
I just finished "The Bourne Ultimatum". I picked it up because my flight to Cleveland was delayed in August. And I love the Bourne series. Yes, I would recommend it to others.
18. Share a relatively quick and easy recipe for Fall. One pot/dish recipes given extra credit.
The Crockpot cow
- Stew beef or pot roast.
- 1 onion, diced
- 2 cloves of garlic, diced
- 1 can of low sodium cream of mushroom soup (shut up! I know my answer above)
- 1cup of old sour red wine
- 1 package of onion soup mix
Saute onion and garlic in olive oil until clear,
toss can of soup & soup mix in crock pot. Mix it up. Add wine,and onion/garlic mix. stir.
Add meat and cover meat with the mixture. Cover for 6-8 hours on low. Serve with egg noodles and veggie of choice.
19. Would you rather be financially well off, but unhappy or a happy person who is always in need of money?
I would rather be mentally healthy and deal with the money issues. I find that our society is big on how much stuff people have, but I find a good time is better than a new ipod. OF course, too little money can affect one’s happiness, but I think I would rather have the financial troubles.
20. What is the most comforting sound in the world to you and why?
I love the sound of the ocean. It has to be waves. Ocean waves, not those wimpy lake waves. The ocean always leaves me longing for something. I don’t know why, but if my soul is sad, the ocean makes all of the difference in the world.
The next victim is still Mrs. Figby . So she moved across the country, has school issues with her middle child and is buying a house, Plah-lease. As if the rest of us don’t have drama! (Just kidding Mrs. F! I know you are busy). Please go over and
harass her until she posts the next installment.