Personal blog of christian
writer & fallible mom
Katy McKenna Raymond
in Kansas City, Missouri
Katy is represented by
Rachelle Gardner at
WordServe Literary
Read more Katy at
LateBoomer.net
Recent Posts
- Some Things, You Know
- Ticking The Boxes
- Happy Ninth Blogiversary to ME!
- NaNoCryMo
- Predictability? Don’t Count On It
- It’s That Time Again!
- Losing It
- Acutely Not That Funny
- Coming To Terms With Writing Terms
- Another Great Conference!
- Catching Up Again, Or Still?
- Crazy!
- If Doug Had Seen This Movie Of Me As A Baby, He Might Not Have Ended Up With Chatty Katy
- I Can’t Believe We’re Finally Here
- Why I’m Always Glad To Have Written
Syndicate
E me at katy @ ngenius.com
Liposuction?
One great thing about really buckling down to drop some pounds: When I’m being diligent, I pop out of bed in the morning (with no alarm at 5 a.m.) because I can’t WAIT to weigh myself. I know, really sick. But you know what? It still beats sleeping in and gaining weight all to heck.
So I walked out of the bathroom before the crack of dawn, all smiles even though it was too dark for Doug to see me. “Lost another one-half,” I said. “So that makes eight pounds.”
He didn’t roll over or open his eyes. But somehow he always knows just what to say.
“That’s an Oreck XL.”
What a guy.
It’s All About The Mo
It there’s any force of nature that can work either strongly in your favor or horribly against it, it’s momentum.
I ought to know. Last August 6, the day my mother fell and permanently broke her humerus, the mo started moving against me. I knew that day that I was about to lose 6 or 8 months of my life, since she would likely spend that much time in hospitals and nursing homes over this injury.
Once the mo starts to go, what can you do? I’ll tell you what I did: I ran straight over to the Russell Stover’s Outlet Store and participated in their Biggest Blow-out Sale Ever! I got enough sugar-free chocolate to fill my freezer, all for about $20. Not that I needed to obsess about available freezer space, you understand.
Who needs long-term storage when you’ve got a rear end?
The bad, bad mo took me down, folks. Yesterday, I looked back over my (very sketchy) record of my weight ups-and-downs, and saw that I’ve gained SIXTEEN POUNDS since August. People, I’m only 5’2”. I can’t afford to gain sixteen pounds over the course of my entire adult life, much less in ten months. I virtually inhaled sugar-free chocolate for most of those months.
Actually, I gave it up for Lent and that broke its hold over my mind, but sadly, not over my butt. It’s not Lent’s fault, of course. Never confuse Lent with Dr. Atkins. Two entirely different deals.
Anyway, the hardest thing about momentum, since it moves so forcefully and steadily, is change. Momentum, I’ve found, makes change nigh unto impossible.
Nigh unto. But not completely and hopelessly impossible. No, indeed.
The mo began to reverse when a dear buddy of mine told me she and her fam would be in KC for a few days starting July 5, and could they stay with us? Of course! That’s what I said, but then I panicked. Our poor house had seen better days, and all of those days occurred before Mom’s accident. The place was a freakin’ disaster.
So Doug and I set to work. I bragged to my friend that the upstairs would be their bed-and-breakfast—two bedrooms and a full bath, with loft area for reading and coffee drinking. In reality, the upstairs was a burial ground for dead furniture and a gallery of atrocious art. It would take a miracle for my words to become truth, but we dug our heels in and started to make it happen.
When we’d finished one bedroom and the bath, to the point that I swear the rooms could be featured in a Pottery Barn catalog, my friend emailed. They can’t come! Doug and I laughed our heads off and took the first break from working on the house that we’d had in a month. Since then, we’ve painted his office and started on our bedroom, thinning out all the superfluous possessions that have tied us down.
The mo had changed directions, thanks to my bud. And when the mo changes, you can make that change apply to as many areas of your life as you wish. The next arena? The old caboose.
Seven pounds down now, in just under two weeks. I feel great! The nice thing about this change is the clear-headedness that goes with eliminating junk foods. And with clarity comes….you guessed it, more change.
The Starbucks thing? Gone. I’ve lost track of the days. Fifteen? Sixteen? It doesn’t matter. They’re not getting my money anymore, and they will no longer have the privilege of contributing to my other “bottom line,” either.
Piling up money for Kevin’s final year of college? Oh, yeah. It starts with foregoing the Fourbucks, but it doesn’t stop there. Suddenly, we see all the frivilous ways we’ve wasted money, and it’s amazing how much we’re enjoying cutting back. Now, if we do decide (after really thinking about it…) we want to spend $13 at the Twilight Hour to see Mission Impossible, it’s so much more fun. These days, thankfully, they don’t even look at you funny when you bring in your own drinks and snacks. Yes, people, we are that cheap.
The best part of all about the flow of the mo is that I’m actually working on my novel. It’s essentially done, you know. Except for some not-too-major revisions, it’s ready to send out. But when the mo’s not working with you, you just can’t see how to make it happen.
All in all, the past six weeks or so have brought some much-needed change to our lives. Actually, it began when we went to the Old Country. That’s when I realized that my mother didn’t need me nearly as much as I’d imagined, evidenced by the fact that she got along so well without me. And a realization like that can really shake a girl to her core.
If your mo’s going to heck in a handbasket, don’t give up. It’s not the end of the world. In my case, Jesus was right there with me, patiently waiting until I was ready to embrace His gift of a change in direction.
I made up a motto once, one I’ve used off and on through my life. It first came out of my mouth when Doug would race down the road on auto-pilot, always late for wherever he was bound. Half the time, he’d turn to me and ask, “Where is it we’re going again?”
And I’d say, “You’ll never make up for with speed what you lack in direction.”
Pretty good motto, huh? Remember, you heard it here first.
If This Is My Manic Phase, So Be It
I wish I could tell you how much detoxing the old bod of all the junk you’ve been eating (low-carb meal replacement bars, sugar-free chocolate, sugar-free cookies, sugar-free cheesecake—do you see a theme emerging?) leads to all kinds of other good things.
Man, oh, man. My house is starting to look like a million bucks. I am whipping this puppy into shape right along with my sorry rear end. Does anyone else out there still “file”? You know, actually put hard copies of documents into folders and then into a file cabinet or milk crate? It had been 18 months since I’d filed, and this morning I finally caught up.
Interesting thing, that. Since my new way-of-life does not include keeping paper for which I will never have a use again in my natural life, almost ALL the 18-months’ accumulation got pitched in the bin.
I feel on top of the world at this very moment, clean and unencumbered by the physical exhaustion and mental confusion caused by too many useless possessions (junklets, I call them) and too much clutter.
I remember my grandmother, when she was just a few years older than I am now, saying, “Don’t ever again buy me something that has to be dusted.”
Amen, Grandma! Life’s too short. If I don’t love it or desperately need it, it’s outta here.
Extreme Butt Takeover
I can never do something “just a little bit.” Maybe you’ve noticed that about me.
So when I say I am going to get back into a serious weightloss groove, I really mean it. (Anybody got a peanut?)
I’ve dropped 4.5 pounds in 9 days, which for me is great. I’m motivated, organized, and self-sabotage has ceased to be a factor. And, just so you know, I don’t NEED no stinkin’ Starbucks! That’s right: Today is Day Nine Without.
I even have a few new words to live by. I’d give credit where it’s due if I knew where that is. If you happen to know, please comment here.
“The difference between need and want is remarkably similar to the difference between success and failure.”
I don’t need what I thought I needed, folks. And the things I truly want (things of lasting and especially eternal value) won’t be the ones that make a fat, cash-poor addict out of me.
So.
Whatever Works
I mentioned that Starbucks was going to have to go, didn’t I?
Today marks Day Seven Of Starbucks Withdrawal. (Mantra: God is in control, and this is good for me.)
The thing is, Doug and I have racked up quite a habit at our local establishment. It’s four years running now, and frankly, we could have financed a significant hunk of our baby’s college education on what we’ve imbibed.
And not only that: Every time I read about the investors who got into Starbucks on the “ground” level and made their fortunes, I see cappucino. Or mocha. Or maybe green tea. Take your pick.
I lamented about it to Mom this morning.
“You know what? If I’d invested a measly $10,000 in Starbucks in 1987, I’d be sittin’ on 5 mil right now.”
“It seems to me,” she said, “that you’ve invested quite a bit in that place.”
“Yeah, but Mom, I’ve peed it all away.”
What she said next made me realize how much I love the old girl.
“Well, Katy, you DO like to pee.”
Repentance
I’ve been following a completely sugar-free, reduced-carb diet for approximately 2372.5 days, give or take an hour or two.
Who’s counting, you ask? Normally, no one. Not even me, really. I stopped counting after the first 24 monthiversaries, that’s how NOT O/C I am. Doug, on the other hand, is suddenly aware of every hour that passes with me in a carb-controlled zone.
Why? Because, just for fun, he’s attempting it himself for a tiny 24 hours. Maybe 36, if his nerve holds.
My dear husband, you see, is addicted to bread. And toast. And bagels and croissants, both in their toasted and untoasted forms. Did I mention plain old toast? Just so you know, the man consumes upwards of eight slices of toast per day, not counting any of his other floury delights.
It was about this time yesterday that he ate his last toast. You’d think someone died. When I ask him how he’s doing, he says, “Life is barely worth living.”
Tell me about it.
He’s repented for a number of sins over the past 24 hours. Fasting will do that to a man. Without comfort foods to satiate the beast within, the intentions and failures of the heart become plainer than the butter on your face.
“I’m sorry for the six and one-half years worth of pizzas I’ve eaten in front of you,” he says. “And especially for describing how great the crust was, how it melted in my mouth after I crunched into its parmesan-coated outsides.”
“I forgive you, honey,” I say, but who knows for sure whether a man in his condition is truly contrite or only using the occasion of his abstinence to dream aloud of his favorite foods?
“And I’m truly sorry for all the french bread, lasagne, manicotti, burritoes,the Pringles, Doritoes, the Hot Pockets, the mashed potatoes, and the Rice-A-Roni.”
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Does he have to write me a grocery list?
“Babe, really, it’s fine,” I say. “I know you didn’t mean it. You couldn’t possibly have known how hard it was for me to watch you eat all those foods when I couldn’t have—”
“When this experiment is over, I promise you, things will be different around here. I’ll be a changed man….”
“That’s so sweet, Doug—”
“Life is short, Katy. Forget toast. From now on, I’m eating dessert first.”
Have You Got A Deal For Me?
My husband and I, both rather ancient by many of your standards (he’s 53 and I’m 52) need just a tad of advice on how to lower our communications costs.
Now, lest you think I’m only angry or bored with my current services, and am just in the market to switch to something new—well, you might be onto something.
I already mentioned in this space my intention to ditch cable TV altogether, but guess what? Evidently, we’d rather switch than ditch, because we ended up moving from DirecTV to Dish Network. It’s ten bucks less per month to keep basically all the channels we currently have, plus we get that DVR thingie. Kind of like TiVo, if I understand it correctly.
Don’t let me fool you. When Doug tries to explain TiVo to me, I just lose it. How can you be recording something at the exact same time you’re playing it back? Or is that really what he said? I don’t know, people. And I’m not sure I want to know.
Our cell phone family plan is a huge issue right now, and it’s not just because the two grown kids who are members of the fam use most of the shared minutes. It’s also because Doug and I often fail to keep our cells near our bods. So if a member of our closeknit group tries to call us using (I think this is correct) free minutes, we don’t answer because, well…we’re too old to chase phones. We wait for them to call us on the regular old landline phone, which happens to be on the desk or bedside table right next to us, and they always do.
But I suppose that kind of defeats the purpose of those free minutes from fam member to fam member, huh?
Last month, the two kids used 850 of the 1000 shared minutes. Doug used a few over 100 (and he’s running a corporation) and my phone registered a measley 26. Honestly, someone must have taken a turn at my phone, because I haven’t spoken 26 minutes on it in the last year. I can’t hear on the darned thing, because of being deaf in one ear, so I don’t even try.
Then why did you get your own cell phone, silly? you might be asking. Because, of course, it only added $9.99 to our monthly bill. And don’t discount peer pressure.
On top of the 850 shared minutes the kids used, they also accumulated another 500+ minutes of the type that are nebulously described on my invoice as “other.”
Not on-peak or off-peak or on-plan or off-plan or roaming or in-area—just other.
Thanks for that, Verizon Wireless.
One of these grown children is going to be out of the country for ten months starting in late August. The other is also grown. My feeling is that since we are no longer of child bearing age, we should not have to invest in any further “family planning,” and that includes family plans of the cell phone variety.
What do you think?
If one adult child went on the “me and my friends” plan and the other went on the “buy a cheap phone in a foreign country and load it with prepaid minutes” plan, then we could dump my phone and Doug could have a cell phone for business, just like the old days. Hmmm….sounds like a plan.
I’m not sure what the very cheapest way will be for the adult child in the foreign county to call the U.S. on a semi-regular basis. Anyone have any ideas? Calling cards? Skype? What exactly IS Skype?
I did it one day with my friend Mary DeMuth, who lives in France, but I was younger then and I didn’t know what we were getting into. We had a Skype fling, I guess you’d say, but I swear I haven’t done it since. Now Doug is looking over my shoulder and says that I didn’t go too far with Mary—we only used Skype to instant-message an interview she did here at fallible. He says Skype is a also voice dealie—wow!
Then while I’m learning that little tidbit, I get an email from my friend Will Samson. In an earlier email, he said I should “chat him up” sometime if I needed more information for an article I’m proposing. I know that Will was raised by a Scottish parent, as was I, but my dad never said “chat me up.” I had a feeling Will meant something else entirely, something that might have been included in that suspicious-looking secret code of links underneath his signature line.
“What precisely is meant by chat up?” I asked in all my elderly innocence.
He just now responded that it can mean using any of the instant messaging thingamabobs, as well as Skype (there’s that word again!) and Gizmo. Gizmo! Are any others of you out there using Gizmo? We need a free or very extremely cheap way to communicate long distance.
Our other communication prob is our regular phone line. It’s all AT&T now, I guess. It was SBC, but you know how these things go. We used to have cable Internet, but now I think we have DSL through AT&T. Not cheap enough, IMO. We also have two phone lines. Doug uses the home phone quite a bit for business, but so much that we need another line? Why? We’ve got caller ID on both lines, and CallNotes, as well. Something tells me this is significant overkill.
We do need a phone line for Internet and fax, but hey—here’s something else I don’t get: How come people who have no phones in their homes except cells have Internet access? With both wi and fi? Please explain that to me, because something’s gotta give over here.
Okay, look. I happen to know you savvy techie types are holding your communication expenses down to a low roar and what I need to know now is HOW? You’re young, you’re hip, you’re smart, you’re attractive. Please help us out here!
All we really want is to be more like you. As long as you don’t advise text messaging.
Good Grief
Since we got home from the Old Country, I’ve been going through the six stages of grief. You may have heard of them?
Denial, Anger, Depression, Bargaining, and Acceptance. Oh, wait….that’s only five. Something’s always disturbed me about that list, and I finally realized what the problem is. Whoever came up with it left out The Biggie that should be squeezed in right before Acceptance: Rebellion.
There is nothing like some great time away to give an old chick much needed perspective on her life: what’s working, what’s not, why, and what to do about it. We’d barely gotten on the plane and over the water before I turned to Doug and said, “If anything happens to Mom, I won’t be able to be reached until we land in Ireland. There’s nothing I can do for her now…”
This was one of a thousand revelations granted me on this journey, all small and obvious in and of themselves, but all huge in their implications should I choose to apply their truths upon returning stateside.
And choose, I have.
Do you know that TV ad for Luzianne iced tea? Where the old coot is sitting on his front porch, saying how he and his woman have lived in that same house for fifty years, and how they’ve been in the other-brand-of-iced-tea rut that whole time? Then his neighbor gives him a glass of crystal-clear Luzianne, and his eyes are opened to what he’s been missing.
“Kind of makes you rethink your whole life.”
That’s how I feel. I’ve rethought my whole life, and man, I’ll tell you what. I’ve not only been getting tossed to and fro by the six stages of grief (you don’t go through them in chronological order one time only, you know. Like a team of careless surgeons, they toss your miserable self around on the operating table of your soul), but I’ve been dealing with a number of losses at one time.
None of them are huge. No one close to me has died, at least not in the past two years.
But sometimes, in this life, there are other kinds of losses that we need to define as such. In my case, I needed to realize that in many ways, I’ve lost several years being over-vigilent on my mother’s behalf. I’ve hovered, protected, and instantly responded as if she wasn’t a person capable of many of her own decisions—be they good or bad.
That’s the thing: I really, really hate it when people make life-altering bad decisions. I really, really hate watching people live with the consequences (so easy to foresee!) of those bad decisions so much, sometimes, that I don’t want to allow them the freedom to screw up their own futures.
So I screw up mine instead. I lose days, weeks, months, years—time that can’t be recaptured, ever. I try to “do” someone else’s life—to protect them from themselves, of course. Or wait? Could it be something else? Could my real motivation be something I’m even less proud of?
Ummm….yeah. When I do someone else’s life, it’s to avoid my own.
Now, to most of you sane folks out there, this is not exactly a heavy revvie. But to me? A veritable epiphany.
It’s not just about Mom. I’ve had to weigh myself. Yes, on the bathroom scales. Yesterday. I’ve avoided the scales (can we say “Denial”?) for many months, which is never a good thing for me. In fact, it can only mean one thing: I’m out of control.
Six and a half years ago, I started low-carbing. It took me two full years to lose 68 pounds. Now it’s taken me four and a half years to gain back thirty. I’m just a little angry about all this, since I’ve never tasted sugar in all this time, and don’t intend to. Shouldn’t that be sacrifice enough? I don’t personally know a single diabetic who doesn’t eat sugar, much less a member of the healthy population. For all these years, I’ve been living the sugar-free lifestyle alone. It ain’t easy, which is why I’m mad.
I’m not in denial any more. I’ve looked in the rear-view mirror, and the truth ain’t pretty. And I’m only angry part of the time. The rest of the time, I’m depressed, bargaining with God, or just plain rebelling. However, acceptance is starting to seem like a real possibility now, and with it comes forward motion.
You know how St. Paul wrote in one of his epistles, “I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now”? I’m going to let you off easy today. A bit about changing how I relate to my mother, and one about changing directions weight-wise.
I’m embracing change, folks. I’m not too old, even though I’d like to tell myself I am. (Excuses Backwards R Us.) I’ve teased before that Starbucks loves me and has a wonderful plan for my life, but at best, their plan is a poor substitute for the Real Deal.
I’m getting back to the Plan.
Worth
I’ve already admitted that Doug and I are not paragons of financial virtue. What? You thought I was kidding?
Compared to the millions of other families out there who are obviously “doing it right,” (if you believe the profiles in Money Magazine in which they are described as opening 529 college savings plans for their children who are still in utero), we are losers.
Here’s the deal: We’ve pretty much bankrolled college educations for our kids one year at a time. It hasn’t always been pretty, and we still don’t have a working knowledge of that whole compound interest thing we keep hearing so much about, but hey. It’s worked for us.
Our youngest child, Kevin, is enrolled in a not-very-cheap school for this fall. He’s finished his first two years of college at the community college here locally, which is—thank You, Lord—very extremely cheap.
Kev is our last child to put through college. We committed to paying for four years for each kid, and so far it’s worked out, even though we qualify for NO financial aid whatsoever. (The high cost of making a good income, and no, I’m not complaining….)
Anyway, this last phase of funding a child’s college education will not be without its unique challenges. In fact, we are going to bite the luxury bullet and cut out some things we really don’t need, in order to finish what we’ve started.
Kev will be leaving the area and won’t need a car at the school he’ll be attending, so first of all we’ll sell his car and put the cash toward his tuition. Then we’ll cancel his car insurance for the duration of his academic career, saving us $125 per month.
Health insurance coverage is included in the tuition, so we’ll cancel our private policy on him, as well. Again, big bucks per month, because (phooey!) we’re self-employed. I’ll also probably raise our deductible on our home owner’s insurance (thus lowering the monthly premiums), because we would hesitate to make a claim on it even if we had one. Ditto the car insurance.
Cable TV? Do we really need it? It’s a flippin’ $50 per month, and you know what? We can totally live without it. I’m cancelling it tomorrow.
We even had season tickets (a table for four) to the local dinner theater, which represents our social life, since we view it as a set-in-concrete way to make sure we are socializing with our treasured friends. Cost for the year? Over $600.
I don’t need a cell phone AT ALL, and it’s time to cut our daughter loose from the Family Plan, on which we’ve continued to pay her portion even though she is grown and gone. Savings? I don’t know—$100 per month?
In addition, we’re selling Doug’s Uillean (Irish) bagpipes for (hopefully) $2500, since the darned things have a 20-year learning curve and he didn’t get them until he was 50. Just so you know: Uillean bagpipes might be the most difficult instrument to learn in the entire world. But if you give it the old college try (Ha!) and realize it’s not going to happen, why hang onto to the things?
Today, we hauled a load of books to Half Price Books and got $45 in return. But we neglected to make it home with the Rubbermaid container we transported them in, so I’ve got to make a second trip. Hey, the container cost me $6.99! This afternoon, we gathered another assortment of VHS and DVD movies, and even more books, so I hope to score another $50 or so when I head back tomorrow.
There are other, smaller steps we’ll need to take, too. Fewer meals out, fewer trips for coffee, consolidating errands to save on gasoline—it all adds up.
When you have a goal that’s really important—such as seeing your baby’s education through to completion—it’s amazing how financial priorities can make themselves crystal clear. It’s amazing how you can do pretty much whatever you determine in your heart to do.
Kevin, I hope you know how happy we are to throw ourselves and our resources into getting you through school. The bottom-line truth is this: You mean more than the whole wide world to us.
Funny Emails
I love the emails I get in response to blog entries. Sometimes, they are from people who would like to leave a comment on fallible, but who are embarassed to reveal that much about themselves on the Internet.
I got a great one in response to the entry about zit-picking. Looking back a whole week, I can’t believe I had the chutzpah to make such a gross confession in this space, but heh—confession is good for the soul. Or the face. Whatever.
Anyway, this lady and I have formed our own little support group now. We are encouraging each other to fight the good fight, keep our fingers off our faces, and persevere to the end. I tell you what, when next you see the two of us together, you will think to your collective selves: “Wow! Such amazingly clear complexions! How do they do it?”
That’s the power of email.
Then this morning, I got a message from a girl I’ve only known for a year or so, who lives just twenty minutes down the road. She’d read my last post and felt like she’d learned something about me she’d never known before.
“Looks to me like you were raised by one of those wealthy Kansas City families down on the Plaza! Do tell more!”
Honestly, I had to go back and read my post to understand how she could EVER get that false impression! Yep, there it was in all its fallible glory—references to my girls’ school and the boy’s school and prep schools and high-powered careers.
Sheesh. My family lived fifteen minutes south of the Plaza. Believe me, fifteen minutes can make a world of difference! My parents didn’t have two nickels to buy a bottle of Coke the whole time I was growing up. I got a scholarship to that school, for one-quarter of the price of tuition. I started there in 1968, when the cost for an entire year was $400. (I’m guessing it’s something like $7000 per year now.)
My mother has told me often that my $100 per year scholarship made the difference in whether or not they could send me there. And that for them, coming up with the other $300 was no simple matter. Whenever I hear the phrase “Sacrifices were made,” I think of my parents. They put five of us through Catholic schools—K-12—on a bank teller’s salary.
So. If you’re ever walking around on the Plaza (make sure you pronounce it “plaaah-za”) and you see two clear-faced middle-aged chicks, at least one of whom dresses like she didn’t grow up in that neighborhood, well. Stop and say Hi! Chances are it’ll be me and the other half of my support group.
Everything I Know About Money. Were You Afraid To Ask?
I could definitely write a boatlload of books with those titles that start with “Don’t Know Much About…” You fill in the blank.
In high school, I competed in speech tournaments nearly every weekend. I loved debate. We had the same topic for an entire year, something like “Resolved That The United States Should Not Be Unilaterally Involved In Vietnam” or “Resolved That Abortion Rights Should Continue To Be Determined By The Individual States.” You get the idea.
Debate topics reflected the times we lived in, but my personal opinions didn’t matter one whit. All that counted was my ability to debate both sides of any issue (with a poker face) and prevail against worth opponents. I got pretty good at this. My all-girls’ school (St. Teresa’s Academy in Kansas City, MO) often came up against the neighboring all-boys’ school (Rockhurst High School). Those boys were being prepped for not only the most exclusive universities, but also for high-powered professional careers. They could talk circles around us.
But I’ve got the pics to prove that my debate partner, Beth Bowen, and I beat their socks off at least once. Nearly seven years ago, I contracted Dr. Brad Thedinger to remove my brain tumor. When I recalled that he’d been one of those infamous Rockhurst debate boys, I felt enormously relieved that the fellows usually whupped us good.
You don’t want the loser of a crummy debate tournie doing your head. After all, sometimes it IS brain surgery.
My favorite category in the speech tournies wasn’t debate, though. It wasn’t extemporaneous (in which each contestant is given a random topic and 20 or so minutes to prepare a five minute speech, with access to research materials), either. No, for me it was impromptu all the way.
For an impromptu speech, the entrant drew a topic out of a hat. Believe me, these were the most obscure subjects a 16-year-old could possibly imagine, maybe something like “Discuss the effect that the Japanese government’s investment in Icelandic treasury bills will have on the stability of the Swiss franc.”
I’d pull that sucker out, read it once, head to the front of the room, and bull my way, unflinching, through a three-minute speech. Whoever can persevere to the end without twitching, sweating, obsessive blinking, or weeping—wins.
Which brings me around to today’s topic: Tell Us Everything You Know About Money.
I’ll admit, sometimes this topic reduces even me to knee-knocking, and I am trained in this sort of thing. But now that the topic’s been pulled, there’s no turning back.
The first thing to avoid in personal finances is having a plan. Or a budget. Or even a plan to develop a budget. These types of artificial constraints only breed resentment, stinginess, and boredom. Why should you impose so many financial rules upon yourself that you can’t spend at Starbucks all the money you should be saving for retirement, if you so desire?
Trust me, when you retire, you are going to be surrounded by oldsters who for decades have had the codes for their drinks of choice embedded into their wrists so that—Alzheimer’s notwithstanding—their ever-more-juvenile-looking baristas can scan their orders. You’ll have all that money, with Starbucks still on your mind after years of sacrificial deferred gratification, but you’ll have NO CLUE about how on earth to choose a beverage. Is that what you want?
The second thing is to spend more than you make—way more. If you spend just a little bit more each month, what do you have to show for it? Nothing, plus you look to all the world like just another Average Joe. Really, how much imagination or even forethought does it take to only go a little past the point of no return? But if you go all the way, and spend as much more than you earn as humanly possible, you’ll have a LOT to show for it. And, I’m sorry, a lot is always better than a little.
The third thing is to permanently lose the checkbook. You know the old joke, “How can I be overdrawn? I still have checks left!”? I don’t get that joke, because I don’t get checkbooks.
Of all the ways to torture yourself, “finding that last penny” so you can balance your checkbook every month has got to be the worst. If you spend an hour looking for the penny, and your time is worth, let’s say, $25 per hour….um, you do the math.
Now, taking a peak into your account online every couple of days, that’s a good thing. Don’t worry: No matter what, the bank WILL let you know when you run out of dough. Why should you spend your high-dollar-value time sorting it out?
The last thing I know about money is this: Eat out every meal. I know, I know. You’ve probably heard that if you only eat out on that very special occasion, you’ll enjoy it more, plus you’ll save TONS of money by preparing the bulk of your meals at home.
Baloney! I’ve never met a meal out that I didn’t FAR prefer to anything I’ve ever fixed at home and besides, eating out can be significantly cheaper in the long run. I can guarantee you that the “you must manage expenses!” crowd isn’t factoring in that when you cook at home, you risk causing traumatic wear and tear on your stove, oven, BBQ grill, refrigerator, freezer, disposal and diswasher, thus causing the value of your home—your biggest investment—to plummet.
And not only that: What if you were to start a grease fire frying up those sopapillas that you should have purchased in the comfort of your local Chipotles? That $3000 wallpaper job that you only thought you couldn’t afford will look pretty shabby after you unleash the extinguisher on it.
And what if in the process of cleaning the kitchen sink after prepping enough vegetables that people will think someone died and left YOU in charge of the Salad Bar, you scratch the sink’s surface so badly that you need to replace it to the tune of eleventy gazillion bucks?
How far ahead do you think you’ll be then, hmmm?
So there you have it—my three-minute off-the-cuff presentation, during which I’ve told you Everything I Know About Money.
Yes, it’s true. Everything I know about money I learned doing impromptu.
Picky, Picky, Picky
Have you ever heard of Self-Injurious Skin Picking Disorder? Yeah. Me, neither.
The tendency to pick must be hereditary. My mother and grandmother were both zit pickers, and so am I. I just didn’t know the disorder had a name.
Now I know. Lucky me.
I went to the doctor, sure I had skin cancer or something worse, whatever that might be. After all, it’s been 18 months, and I just can’t get my face to clear up. Just so you know, this is the only part of me that still looks sixteen.
“You need to stop touching your face,” Dr. Craemer said.
“Oh, I’ve stopped picking it,” I assured him. “Five whole days ago. But I do find my hand running across the surface of my face all the time, just to see how it’s doing since I stopped picking it…”
He looked down at my chart, clearly avoiding eye-to-zit contact. “Katy, I think you might be a little bit…” The good doctor hesitated then, but as usual, I didn’t.
“What? OC?”
He nodded. “I could send you for a few appointments to learn some behavior modification techniques—”
“No, please! I’m fine. Besides, I’m too old to modify anything, honestly. And compared to Doug, I’m not OC at all. Can’t I just try this on my own?”
“Sure, you can. You know, OC can work in your favor on occasion.”
“You mean, if I can somehow become obsessive/compulsive about not picking my face?”
“You got it.”
I’ll just go on record here as saying that I have a brand new, positive OC behavior. How’s that for progress?
Extreme Home Takeover
I never thought this would happen to me, but it has.
You’ve all met folks who turned their kids’ rooms into veritable shrines after the little darlings left home, right? My mom was like that. When the first three of us flew the coop, it was good riddance, baby. But when Bridget and John left? Shrine City.
My kids still talk about the feeling they got from going into Bridget’s shrine—the good vibes. There were her ‘80s jigsaw puzzles, stuck on backboards with puzzle glue, hanging on her bedroom walls. Her prom dresses and dance costumes filled the closet, and I’m pretty sure the dresser drawers contained teenager-frozen-in-time secrets that fascinated my young children.
Doug’s mother, until 2004, lived in the same house he moved out of in 1971. His bedroom remained a shrine, too, in the sense that the wall decorations—all Jesus freak campy stuff that might sell for a gazillion bucks on eBay, or then again, maybe not—was never altered.
“If you feel far from God, guess who moved?”
Well, Doug might have moved, but his stuff didn’t. And not only that: His mama turned his room into a Where Broken Furniture And Pieces From Things We Can’t Identify Go To Die Room. In addition, the woman became incapable of tossing even an old Price Chopper ad, but filled grocery sacks with junk mail, opening his door just far enough to toss a fresh bag upon the pile.
Doug’s room became a shrine with plenty of flameable material, in case anyone got in the mood to offer a random sacrifice in there.
Is it laziness that keeps parents of adult children from lowering the boom on shrines? Or is it that they’ve got other stuff on their minds, and don’t have the time to devote to reclaiming their own space which they purchased at interest rates possibly as high as (in the late ‘70s) 15%?
Or is it that dreaded Something Else?
Until now, I’ve maintained (Ha!) that it’s probably laziness more than anything else. But you know what? That was before Carrie and I started going through her room and all its artifacts some ten days ago. She admitted then that until she went to Jamaica to work in the orphanage for five weeks, she probably would not have been able to deal with all her childhood stuff. She wanted the shrine, and I can understand why.
Sure, she’s been living away from home for seven years, but it took a complete change of perspective—seeing things through the eyes of children who don’t have many attachments to physical objects—for her to be ready to lose some of her baggage.
I’ve got to admit, she and I did some ooohing and aaahing over pictures and letters and awards and stuffed animals. We boxed up her china dolls, in case she has a little girl someday who might love them. We kept all the stuff of importance, and pitched the rest. There was a whole lot of pitching going on.
Since then, Doug and I have kicked in big-time. Carrie had a penchant for attaching posters to her closet walls with Scotch tape. Dang, that stuff works great! Much better, in fact, than whoever hung the dry wall. Our beautiful daughter also used sticky-tacky-gooey stuff to adhere Anne Gedde pics mounted on foam core around the top of her walls, like a border. It was darling at the time, but not quite as darling on this end.
Remember this, All You Who Refuse To Build Shrines: Sticky-tacky-gooey stuff, after it is scraped off, must be covered with Kilz or it WILL show through the new paint, no matter how many coats you use. I’m just sayin’.
And I might as well tell you this: I’ve bawled up there in that Temporary Shrine, paintbrush in hand, meticulously covering the material evidence of a little girl having ever spread her creative wings under our roof.
It’s the little things that got me, the things I didn’t expect. Like the one strand of stencilling Carrie attempted behind her closet door without our permission, a long gangly vine of tendrilled ivy, so gloppy and smeared that she must have despaired when she saw it, and then gave up the effort.
If she’d given up on other efforts, if she hadn’t gone on to grow into the amazing young woman God made her to be, I might have rushed out of the room, paintbrush in hand, and left the vine to wither for another day. But she’s a woman now, and so we, too, must continue to grow.
Her room was a shrine for a little while, for a few reasons, I’m sure. She wasn’t ready—until now—for us to perform an Extreme Home Takeover. And while I don’t think of Doug and me as lazy, and I’m not sure we have so much on our minds that we can’t keep up around here, there really is Something Else that must be faced.
Ah, Something Else.
Now I’m heading into Kev’s old room. Wish me well.
Emptiness
You know it’s bad when you catch yourself squinting through the narrow slot on the opaque lid of your latte, hoping against hope to spot even three more drops, elusive dregs that stubbornly refused to cross your lips when last you tipped the drained cup into your craven mouth.
We live in desperate times.
Progression Or Regression?
You may have noticed, if you’ve read the past few posts, a trend either developing or unraveling—depending on your vantage point, I guess. Even I’m not sure which one it is, or—for that matter—which one it needs to be.
The deal is, by the time Doug and I had spent a couple weeks in the Old Country, I’d become convinced that I’d been going about my life all wrong. That I’d been concentrating too much on my mom’s needs, over and above what was beneficial for her well-being. I decided to make some changes when I got back home, and I’ve managed to do just that.
I’m spending less time with Mom, and while I’m still aware of her complaints, difficulties, and deficits, I am not behaving as if I am God’s Gift To Moms. I am allowing her the opportunity to make more decisions on her own behalf, even if she chooses unwisely.
For example, I could have hustled over there to examine her injuries when she fell out of bed the other day. (Her phone on her end table has stopped working and she decided to “make a run for it” to the living room phone, which she knows better than to attempt….) The only thing she mentioned at first was that her finger might be broken, but now she says she’s black and blue over much of the old bod.
There was a time I might have chastised her for her indiscretions before spending a day with her in the ER over such a fall. I’d have her examined from head to toe against her will, just because I could. Now, I figure the nurses at the Funny Farm (Mom’s words, not mine) will call me if they need me.
Sounds insensitive and cruel? Maybe. But, hey, Mom bruises easily and I’ve just spent more than fifteen years overreacting to a pesky adrenaline buzz. I’m just sayin’.
So I’ve backed off a bit. Then I announce to the Internet, God, and everybody that my new conviction will give me the time I need to really get down to some potentially publishable writing. Sounds logical, right? For you, it probably would be. But for me—the one with the serious avoidance issues—it’s not that simple.
No, I have to immediately fill the Mama slot with another all-consuming project. Like weeding out the whole house—again. Huh?
The truth is: I don’t have any horrible disasters going on in my life right now (in the lives of my extended family members, though?—whoa, baby!), at least not ones that I’m willing to buy into emotionally. And that leaves me with a big hole in my life. Not a bigger one than I should have had available to me all along, you understand, if I’d only had the strength to resist getting over-involved—but a big hole, nonetheless.
Why don’t I just forget the cluttered house and write a book, you ask? Um…fear of rejection, maybe? I don’t know.
All I know is this: If you’re thinking of taking a nice long trip, watch out!
