Dewey’s Treehouse hosts this week’s Festival of Frugality with a clever “Be Prepared” theme. Thanks, Dewey, for including Funny’s encounter with the cost of eyeglasses.
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We Interrupt This Pap for…
…SOME SORT OF A MIRACLE!
Today (Friday, December 13…how apt!) has devolved into a day from Hell extraordinaire. I’ll refrain from describing the fiasco at Experian, the fiasco at the community college, and the fiasco with the car (which may mean having to buy a new car) and cut to the chase. To wit…
Pretty much in shock, after having untangled the mess at the college and rescued a lovely young student’s financial aid package (don’t even ASK!!!!!), I stopped by the Costco on the way home, there to purchase some dog meat and some dog veggies and a package of Campari tomatoes and…oh WTF, why not, a bottle of wine.
Friends have speculated that the size 10 jeans into which I have shrunk may yet be too large. And it has to be said that after while they seem to fit OK when they’re freshly washed, after one or two sittings-down they’re mighty loose.
So while cruising through the Mother Purveyor of All Impulse Buys, I picked up a pair of size 8 Gloria Vanderbilt Unquestionably-Your-Mother’s jeans.
Flew in the house and before even popping the cork on the cheap Pinot noir tried on the pants.
And holy mackerel. THEY FIT!
Not only do they fit, but they look pretty damn good.
Well. I don’t look like I looked when I was 22. Because I don’t have buns anymore. And neither will you, you crazy young pups, when and if you succeed to my state of agèd majesty. But I do look, incredibly and astonishingly, like a person who actually does fit in size 8 jeans.
Dayum.
Do you know how long it’s been since I could fit into a size 8 anything, to say nuttin’ of cheap pants made in Asia?
Thirty-six years!
Thirty-six years: THAT is how long since my body would fit gracefully into a size 8 of any shape or definition.
Who’d of thunk it?
Got Parents? Keep an Eye on Them!
It is freaking amazing how vulnerable we old folks get to scams and sales pitches as we descend the steps toward the grave. Lissen up, you young pups: if you have parents, it is sooo incumbent upon you to quietly keep an eye on whatever financial mischief they’re getting up to. If not to protect them (as most of them did for you when you were too dumb to know better), then to protect whatever assets you might inherit or to delay the day, as long as possible, that the old folks become dependent on you.
Here’s what brought on that outburst: Semi-Demi-Ex-Boyfriend called, all hepped up about having dropped something in excess of five grand on an improvement to his 35-year-old tract house in Sun City, a venue that most Boomers avoid like it was radioactive. While the house is ideal for a single person who doesn’t live there year-round, Zillow believes it to be worth $6500 less than he paid for it in 2004.
Here and there around Sun City, you’ll see old masonry houses that recently have been clad in stucco. Most of these get a layer of insulation under the new mud, which in theory should save on power bills.
Welp, one of SDXB’s neighbors decided to do this. Curious, SDXB stopped by to inquire, and that gave the contractor an opportunity to offer him a smokin’ deal if he would just sign on the dotted line before the guy moved his crew out of the area. So now he’s all excited because he expects this will increase the value of his hard tent (his term: a guy with terminal wanderlust, he wishes to spend his dotage in constant motion, using the place in Sun City as a place to camp out during the winter, when the weather’s livable). And it is true that the houses modernized with a layer of stucco do look a lot better than those with naked slumpblock walls.
So now he’s saying maybe he’ll sell the place, taking advantage of what he thinks will be spectacularly improved property value, and upgrade to a better place on the golf course.
Well. This sounds grand, until you think about it:
a) During the winter, it’s a rare day when you’ll turn on the heater. Today as we speak we’re in mid-November and it’s 73 degrees on my back porch. Last month my power bill was $66; this month it will be less. Ditto SDXB’s.
b) In addition to her house in Sun City, New Girlfriend owns a lovely home in Boulder, to which she repairs at the first sign of undue warmth. SDXB either goes up there with her or soon follows, every spring. She stays there until October. He spends most of the summer there, when he’s not hanging out with his relatives at the Hood River in Oregon or visiting boyhood friends in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Thus, when my power bills run upward of $200, he has exactly no power bills. None. Nil. Zero. Zip.
c) The two of them have developed a love of ocean cruises. They are merrily squandering their kids’ inheritance on wonderful cruises, and having the time of their lives! In summers past, they’ve been all over the Caribbean, to say nothing of the trip to Italy. And just now he’s got NG persuaded that nothing will do but what they must head for the South Pacific. Thus, between the summer home in the high country and the constant peripatetic mode, they’re hardly ever there!
d) SDXB has taken his neighbor’s word for it. He’s done nothing to check this contractor out or to get competing bids. This is SO out of character that it defies belief.
Well. IMHO if you plan to spend the entire year in one of those hard tents and if you believe you’re going to live in it until you croak over, this stuccoing scheme may not be a bad idea. Although God only KNOWS how many years it will take to recover the cost if only utility bills are taken into consideration, SDXB’s slump-block home is fully painted. A new paint job, if it’s done with a decent grade of paint, will cost him two or three thousand bucks. Newer forms of stucco come dyed to the color you please and, in theory, never need to be painted. So assuming that’s true and assuming he lives, say, another 15 to 20 years, he could save as much in paint as he spends on mud. In that case, whatever savings he realizes on the air-conditioning (which could be non-negligible, should he ever break up with NG) would be gravy.
But as a practical matter, SDXB has no intention of EVER spending another summer here in the Valley of the We-D0-Mean Sun. So that leaves us with the question of
W
T
F
???
IMHO, this is a case where a competent family member — a son or a daughter, for example — needs to be on hand to keep an eye on big-ticket decisions for an aging parent.
Of course, none of us wants to give over our autonomy to the younger generation (or to anyone else, for that matter). And naturally, none of the young folk wants to have to take on the responsibility of riding herd on an increasing frail (and so increasingly annoying) parent. However…it must be recalled that, after all, those parents shouldered 18 years or so of responsibility for the pups. Or, less altruistically: our assets are their assets. Whatever we refrain from squandering will help to keep our kids in the middle class, to the extent that a middle class survives in this country.
So. Keep an eye on us old buzzards, you young thangs.
😉
.
HOOT! I can’t believe this…
Closing in on the fat-killing goal, which I expect to make by the end of this week — possibly even tomorrow — I decided to drag out the hated blood pressure monitor and see what progress has been made in that department, if any.
Defies belief!
120/68, pulse 78
Holy macquerelle! That is a drop of twenty-nine points in systolic pressure since May 22nd, and twenty points in diastolic. Without benefit of prescription drugs.
That’s right: I threw over the Irbesartan because I didn’t care for the side effects. This is purely the result of eating better, losing weight, and exercising mildly.
I have not beat myself up with running or gym-crawling. I have not starved myself. I have not interrupted my drinking habit. Indeed, as we scribble I’m dosing myself with a gin & tonic. Not once have I felt in any way deprived.
This amazing result has come about as a result of these strategies:
1. Cut sodium intake from incidental and unintended sources.
• Quit eating two to four pieces of bacon every damn day of my life.
• Refrain from scarfing down sausage, pastrami, salami, and other kinds of salt-laden processed meat.
• Read the labels on packaged and canned foods! Seek out similar foods with lower sodium content.
• Eat less cheese, which is high in sodium.
• Avoid restaurant food, which is astronomically high in sodium.
2. Prefer real food to food-like substances.
• Avoid all processed food!
• Instead, seek out the most delicious of all possible whole foods, including candy-sweet ripe fruit, crisp fresh veggies, and delicious fresh greens.
• Buy the best quality food available on the market.
• Have at least one excellent salad a day, always containing a wide variety of good things to eat. Use a real salad dressing (not commercial bottled stuff) of olive oil and lemon juice, lime juice, or vinegar.
• Make nutritious soups in quantities large enough to provide several meals. I happen to like cold soups such as xergis and gazpacho, which are extremely convenient to eat and (if you use low-fat yogurt in the xergis) low in calories.
• Evade eating in restaurants, most of which sell little or no real food.
3. Eat less meat but better meat. Much, much better meat…
• Cut meat-centered meals to two or three times a week.
• Seek out…
…wild-caught fish
…humanely farmed beef, lamb, and pork
…free-range chicken
…antibiotic-free meat
…hormone-free meat
…air-cooled meat
…meat whose packaging specifically says no extra liquid (i.e., brine or saline solution) has been added
4. Eat smaller portions.
• Serve food on smaller plates, so that it looks like you’re eating the same pile of food but in fact you’re consuming less.
• Eat slower and enjoy your food more.
5. Eliminate most starches.
• Refrain from eating potatoes, bread, and rice
• Include whole wheat in this ban
• Include brown rice, too
• And, alas, include the beloved PASTA! Oatmeal (the cookable kind) is OK, though…occasionally
6. Try to engineer about 40 minutes to an hour of moderate exercise a day.
• Walk one to three miles through the neighborhood
• Swim ad lib
• Indulge in yoga for relaxation and pain relief
• Bicycle when weather and traffic permit
None of these things (except possibly the business of staying out of restaurants) is difficult. None of them makes you feel especially deprived. Possibly the most difficult element is simply pulling them all together so you can engage them all at once.
The interesting thing about this is that once you do get all the strategies all engaged in a single project, falling off the wagon once in a while doesn’t seem to make much difference. Despite the shocking frolic at Tricks the other day, I still hit my goal of dropping to 132 pounds the following morning. And the weight did not go up a day or two later, in some sort of delayed revenge.
I think what works is to develop an effective plan, to engage it, and to turn it into a routine. The plan should not be so extreme that you can’t reasonably stick with it over the long term — and by that we mean “for the rest of your life.”
And speaking of the rest of your life, check out this interesting study, which suggests that pursuing whole foods and exercising moderately may actually reverse the ravages of aging. If you read what they report having tested, you find that the men in the study who achieved not only less aging but apparently reversed aging did exactly what I have described here. It’s pure serendipity…but it seems to work.
Cheers! 😉