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We’re told that 81-year-old actor Gene Hackman got away with a few bruises after he was walloped by a pickup truck. What unbelievable luck! Especially considering he was riding without a helmet. And…who would think Gene Hackman could possibly be 81, anyway?

Bicycling is great exercise and fun. I love to ride around the neighborhood on the wonderful purple bike my friends gave me a year or so ago. And I must say, I’m not fond of wearing helmets either, and don’t. Even though I stay inside the neighborhood and avoid even the feeder streets, I’m still wary—it’s very dangerous.

One of the local peccadilloes that I can not figure out is the habit of getting on a bike and traveling on the main drags around here, effectively daring the nutcase drivers to run you down. People get into the traffic lanes where the speed limit is 40, meaning most people drive 45 to 50, and putz along at 20 or 25—not bad for a bicyclist, but exceptionally annoying if you’re running late and you get stuck behind one of them. Even though the law treats bicycles as vehicles and so bikers are expected to obey the traffic laws, too many ignore them, crossing against the red and weaving across main drags, apparently expecting drivers will just naturally stop for their wonderful selves.

It’s hard to tell which is more annoying, too: a biker who behaves like a jaywalking pedestrian or one who obeys the law and thereby clogs the traffic lanes. To go east or south out of my neighborhood, you have to get through one of two truly interminable signals. Because Arizona allows right turns on red, you can get around a several-minute wait by turning right at one of these signals, then going south to an east-bound main drag.

The other day, I was late as usual and headed for Scottsdale. As usual, the light turned red, and there was a bicyclist, bundled against the cold and helmeted up like a gladiator (which she needed to be, to live through her ride), parked in the right-turn lane. She blocked me from turning right as we sat there and sat there and sat there and sat there and SAT there waiting for the signal to change. Could she have lifted her bike onto the sidewalk? Of course, but that would violate the law, which says her bike is a vehicle. Could she have stood in the left-and-straight lane, where she would not be impeding southbound drivers’ progress? Of course, but that would make sense.

Yes, car and truck drivers do this all the time (more often, they take up their half out of the middle of the road, so no one can get around them on either side). But a car driver has a half-ton of metal and plastic between herself and her enraged fellow roadies.

Biking enthusiasts have persuaded the City Council to rip out a lane each way, northbound and southbound, of Central Avenue from Dunlap to Camelback. It’s imagined that hordes of commuters will jump on their bikes, ride across to Central on the canal banks, tool down to the train stop at Central and Camelback, and jump on the lightrail train from there.

Goofiest thing I’ve ever heard.

In the first place, because Seventh Street and Seventh Avenue, the flanking north-south main drags, are no-left-turn streets during the rush hours, the only way to go east or west out of the North Central district is to wend your way through neighborhoods to Central Avenue (I have to navigate three neighborhoods to do this), from which you can turn onto the east-west main drag of your choice.

Second, and far more important, is that cowboy drivers do not give one thin damn about bike lanes. You’re scarcely safer behind a white line on the asphalt than you are riding in the unmarked street. Sooner or later you are going to get hit if you ride on a main drag, and it doesn’t matter whether you’re in a bike lane or not.

And third, that stark fact is the reason virtually no one rides a bicycle to work around here. Well. That and the 118-degree heat. You would be crazy to do a thing like that.

Will Phoenicians start biking to work when gas reaches $5 a gallon? I kinda doubt it. What part of 118 degrees do our city parents not understand? When gas reaches $5 a gallon, Arizonans will drive to work in hybrid and electric plug-in cars. And they’ll resent having two lanes of a key artery torn out while they’re driving their high-mpg cars as much as they’re going to resent seeing that happen right now.

I’m glad Mr. Hackman came away almost unharmed. Wish every bicyclist who tangles with a vehicle could be that lucky!

So with SORT OF a break today (only one student paper that I missed on the server and only two or three that students are trying to faze past me late), I decided to knock off the community college servitude and spend a few hours focusing on exactly where The Copyeditor’s Desk, Inc., is gonna go in 2012. As part of our scheme to make a living off this thing, Tina and I need to get together and write a 2012 business plan.

I think we each need to articulate some specific goals, both in terms of what we think this business can do for our careers and our personal lives and of how much we need to earn. She’s apparently knocked out with the Bug today and incommunicada. But here are my goals:

2012:

• Cut back teaching load to 2 & 2
• Gross $26,250 to $36,870 from blogging and editorial work combined

Not unreasonable, eh? Well, we’ll see.

2013

• Quit teaching altogether
• Earn enough from blogging and editorial work to meet all my living expenses after covering business expenses.

 We need to calculate how much we need, combined, to draw out of this business. In Tina’s silence, I did use today’s relative peace to figure out how much I think I need. It’s a range, actually: from the bare minimum I need to cover my present expenses to what I really would like to have to make my life ever so slightly less miserable. In the latter category, I want (but probably don’t need) a regular pool service (once-a-week maintenance), a handyman on call to for honey-do’s, and Gerardo to show up two to four times a month instead of just once a month.

Those services, which almost seem within reason, boost my annual living expenses by about $10,600 a year.

gaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!

Don’t believe me? Here are the actual living, breathing figures:

Jeez. Fifty or sixty grand to live here in the Funny Farm without sinking into the Slough of Despond. Amazing.

“Business expenses” don’t actually run $400 a month right now, though they may once we start joining up the various chambers and networking groups we should belong to. In fact, the S-corp needs a new iMac or MiniMac+large screen right now (±$2000), and I think it’s reasonable to expect that various hardware and software updates will represent a regularly recurring expense.

I can’t even express (without risking a breakdown!) the amount of time I spent just today on repair and yard tasks around this place. I need someone who knows what he’s doing to come here and do this shitwork!!!!!!!!!!!!! And that’s th’truth!

Okay, I need a husband. But I’m not gonna get one of those in the near (or distant) future, so I’m going to have to hire the rough equivalent in the form of Gerardo the Lawn Dude Extraordinaire and Jack the WonderHandyman.

Moving on.

So, how exactly do we think Little Me is going to earn these spectacular figures? Right now FaM earns around $1,800 a year on Adsense (though the cavalry recently galloped over the ridge, so there’s hope).

Eighteen-hundred dollars being negligible, we move further on. Teaching nets about $12,725 a year and Social Security returns $12,252, for a munificent more or less reliable (if irregular) income of $24,978 a year.

God help us.

This means that the S-corporation is going to have to earn some serious dollars in 2012 if Yours Truly is not to sink beneath the waves.

Let’s try to keep calm here.

I hate teaching, and I especially hate teaching freshman comp. Therefore in my Ideal Universe I would teach nothing at all.

Here is what the S-corporation (i.e., Funny about Money + The Copyeditor’s Desk) would have to earn if I declined to teach any community college courses:

[emits maniacal laughter]

You understand, $35,875 is more than I earned when I started teaching full-time at The Great Desert University, and $46,496 is one helluvalot more than I was earning at the time I escaped teaching into a quasi-administrative position.

Oh well. This is 20whateveritis. Moving on.

Now, if I were to teach two sections a semester, the net proceeds would ALMOST cover my share of the upside-down mortgage on the Downtown House, which inflates as each year passes. So, what happens if I do that?

Left is HAVE to earn; right is WANT to earn.

Okay, 2 & 2 isn’t intolerable, especially if the online course makes every semester, which so far it has done. It would mean I’d have to drag out to campus to meet only one class, and if I begged appealingly enough, His Chairmanship might grant me a once- or twice-a-week section.

What we’re seeing in the bottom line here is the amount I would need for the S-corp (FaM + The Copyeditor’s Desk) to earn over 12 months. Really, $27,000 to $37,000 is not far out of line, as we’ll see in a few minutes.

The maximum number of courses I’m allowed to teach is (theoretically) three a semester. And, one might add, that’s more than quite enough. How much would the S-corp have to make if I were teaching a miserable 3 & 3?

Okay, so, not counting the amount that Tina needs to earn to keep food on the table for her and the Kidlet and to keep the Kidlet covered by healthcare insurance (Tina has given up on trying to cover herself), just for me alone The Copyeditor’s Desk will have to earn between $21,432 and $32,052, assuming I grind my way through three sections a semester.

Gasp!

Things are desperate, but not as desperate as they seem.

The 2012 goal (for me alone, pending word from The Kid) is to drop back to teaching 2&2 and to earn gross $28,247 to $38,867 from The Copyeditor’s Desk, Inc.

Adsense is paying about $1800 a year (on average, $150 a month…and oh, yes, dear Google, what you are paying is not enough for me to give a fig if you take offense at my revealing these numbers). IMHO, the total amount CED is earning must be replaced with an amount that will add up to the totals needed to support me, my dog, and my home.

Let us assume Google does not notice I have blurted out the amount its exploitive service actually earns for a PR 4 site, and that this amount continues to flow in. Here’s what this would look like if I taught nothing, if I taught two sections a semester, and if I taught three sections a semester, with the number of $60 hours I would have to work to make ends meet in each scenario:

Hmmm. Really? REALLY????

What kind of workloads would be involved in cranking enough to live on, in these different scenarios—not teaching at all, teaching just two sections a semester, and laboring under three grossly underpaid sections a semester?

Hoooowww many hours would I actually have to WORK under which conditions?

This is where things get interesting….

When you teach three sections a semester, even though the community college district pretends you’re not working half-time and therefore are ineligible for any benefits, you’re actually putting in about 60% of a 40-hour week: right around 24 hours a week. Two-and-two amounts to about 50% FTE, or 20 hours a week.

Let’s recall, too, that some days ago we posited that for each billable hour of our $60 time, we must put in an equivalent hour on marketing.

With those factoids in mind, here’s what we come up with in contemplating what we really would like to have by way of living a moderately comfortable life here at the Funny Farm and what we absolutely positively have to get in order to survive (want to earn and have to earn):

This is kinda interesting: the fewer hours I teach, the more I earn.

Well. Of course. If you’re earning three times as much per hour, you should in theory have to work a third as many hours to make the same amount of money.

Teaching three sections a semester and earning the bare minimum needed to support myself and keep me in my home, I would be working 61 hours a week. As a practical matter, that is about what I’m working right now, and earning nowhere near enough to make ends meet.

But if I were to shuck off all the teaching and substitute those hours with decently paying work, I would earn enough to live reasonably well. The fly in that ointment, of course, is that I have no idea whether I can get enough editorial work to take up the slack.

Still…eleven to fifteen hours a week doesn’t seem far out of reason. Especially if I’m spending an equivalent number of hours in marketing.

So. It’s entirely possible that the only way I’ll ever get the workload down to a manageable 45 or so hours a week will be to quit teaching and generate a reasonable number of $60 hours in editorial work.

What if I quit writing Funny about Money, which in a light week takes up about 7 hours of my time and in a more realistic week consumes about 21 hours?

Well, $1800 a year divided by my $60 an hour earning potential = the equivalent of 30 hours of editorial time spent on blogging. Divide that by 50 weeks (I figure I deserve 2 weeks of vacation time in a year) and you find that I could earn the same amount by adding .6 hours a week to the editorial work. Let’s round that up to one whole hour. Then what would the workload look like?

Which is to say that if I were to quit teaching and quit blogging, I could make ends meet by working less than half the number of hours I put in as we speak.

Isn’t that interesting?

Well, I like to blog. But I will allow that it takes up an awful lot of time.

It has to be added, though, that recently Adsense has not been the sole source of this site’s revenues. In September ad income generated enough to cover that insane mortgage payment, and this month it came very close. Plus I have two e-books in the wings, and I’m told one can earn a little from those, given some decent marketing.

So, I’m thinking FaM needs to remain part of the 2012 business plan. I’m going to give it until the end of next summer (when I don’t expect to be teaching and so will have more time to devote to marketing and Copyeditor’s Desk work). If I can get at least two e-books on the market, and if sales of ad space and appropriate, relatively inoffensive paid links come through, the site may earn enough to justify the time it takes. If not, by the end of August I’ll have to decide whether to continue the folly or not.

Meanwhile, the goal is to drop the teaching load to 2&2 in 2012 and to nothing in 2013. The strategies are to emphasize sales of ad space and inconspicuous paid links on the website, to publish at least two and preferably three e-books by August 2012, and to market the editorial business vigorously to other business through a networking campaign, ads in local law and medical journals, and some strategically placed ads.

You know… If all that’s required to make a living on this is 12 to 15 hours of marketing a week and 12 to 15 hours of copyediting, Tina and I working together should be able to make this business fly.

In theory.

🙂 Having received the marching instructions a week early, I jumped the gun on the Festival of Frugality’s visit here. It’s October 11.

That shouldn’t stop you from sending your best frugal post to be published in NerdWallet’s version, Tuesday the 4th. Meanwhile, write like crazy so you’ll have something cool to send in for the October 11th edition, which will appear at Funny about Money.

LOL! The Dog Chariot came out unscathed this morning from a Close Encounter of the Airhead Kind.

I’m sitting in line at a red light, heading east toward the 7:00 a.m. meeting of the Scottsdale Business Association, when I’m rudely awakened from the morning’s daydream by a whack and a billiard-ball zing forward followed by a slam on the back of the head.

Rear-ended in the middle lane.

So, deeply depressed, both drivers crawl out of the traffic and park on a residential side-street. We clamber out of our cars to inspect the damage our insurance companies will soon be frowning upon.

Mercifully, neither car was damaged. The Dog Chariot had not so much as a scratch on its much-weathered, once black now gun-metal gray bumper. The Perp’s car had a tiny scrape that clearly would polish off.

I should have had my wits about me. Darn it…I never think of the good stuff until it’s too late.

What should come trepidatiously out of the other car but a very pretty, very sharply dressed young woman, a creature in her early 20s or maybe even very late teens. She is dressed to the nines: her makeup is impeccable, her hair glows under the gilded ministrations of its owner and its owner’s stylist, her clothes are adorable. She is, in short, a very lovely young woman with manners to match.

A perfect mother of my grandchildren.

Here’s what I mean about having my wits about me: I should’ve said, “O.K., I’m not calling my insurance company, but only if you’ll go out to dinner with the cutest young man in the world.” And then fixed them up.

Heh heh heh heh heh!

Well, it was lucky, very lucky. She must have been playing with her phone as she was slowing to a stop. Neither car’s airbags deployed and we were both OK. Given the way people drive around this place (a moron passed me on the right this morning; two others shot by me at 65 mph in a 45 mph zone where I was driving 55; and another wove back and forth, speeding to 50 and then dropping to around 35 as he yakked on the phone), a fender-bender in which no fenders get bent is a variety of miracle.

One of my SBA friends remarked that I should’ve nabbed the kid’s insurance information anyway, because even though I felt fine after the bump, ooooohhhhhhh god! Whiplash pain could appear as much as two days later!

Naturally, that made my neck hurt, my head ache, and my back start to clench up. The fact that my neck already hurt and I woke up with a headache did little to persuade me of anything other than that these were the early symptoms of terminal, nonreimbursable WHIPLASH!

Eeek.

M’hijito, who works as an automobile insurance adjustor, says many people stumble out of their cars after minor incidents like this grasping their necks and claiming unbearable anguish. It is, he says, impossible to prove they’re not hurt, since muscle injury doesn’t show up on X-rays, and so they stand to collect stupid amounts of money for “pain and suffering” from the Perp’s insurance company. Alas, I’m not that good in the acting department. Nor do I think fast enough to be convincing.

After a glass of my favorite analgesic (Sangiovese), all signs of crippling injury seem to have disappeared, though. So I guess I’m not kilt.

And I feel very fortunate, as I do every time I arrive safely at a destination around this place, to have ventured out and returned unscathed.

As for you? Would you have made a claim against the child’s insurance company, for as little or as much as you could get?

😉

One long round of extreme work! Give me a four-day weekend (mine is four days because I don’t have to go back to campus till Wednesday, thank God) and that’s what you’ll get.

Is this only Sunday?

Saturday morning I decided to return the rockers I’d purchased at Pier One. The stationary outdoor fake-wicker chairs, billed (somewhat clumsily) as “nesting” chairs, worked just fine. But the rockers…not so much. After endless unwrapping of cardboard and twine and plastic, one is left with the chair, its naked feet, and two loose metal rocker pieces.

The lucky purchaser is supposed to slide the holes in the rockers over the chair’s feet and then (what could be easier?) insert screws to hold them in place.

What could be easier, indeed?

Well, the problem is, the chair’s feet don’t align with the holes in the rockers. The only way you can get them in is to bend the chair’s metal frame and force the ends of the legs into the holes.

This is a feat best suited to a youngish man at the prime of his strength.

An elderly woman is not up to it. I explained this when I left Pier One, as their saleslady was merrily telling me it would be no problem while their male manager sulked behind the counter, trying not to be noticed.

More annoying, after I got the first chair unwrapped and realized there was no way on God’s green earth I was going to get the rockers onto it, I noticed that the fake wicker was unraveling.

Experimentally, I unwrapped the feet only of the other cardboard- and plastic-swathed chair and found that noooo, none of the supplied rockers would fit on those, either.

So, back they went.

Wrestled the two rockers back into the car. Shlepped them back to Pier One. Retrieved $225, charged back to American Express. Despite annoyance, was pleased about this. I had other things to spend $225 on.

From there it was on to a Costco run, a Home Depot run, a Safeway run, and back to the house mid-afternoon. Driving around this city through the unholy heat is in-fucking-sane. Drivers here go mad when temps exceed 100 degrees.

Northbound from a very long on-ramp I hit the I-17 at speed—just over 65 mph. As I entered the freeway I could see a guy in my rear-view mirror, moving with the traffic a good long way behind me. He saw me trying to merge into the right lane, so he floored it and came roaring up behind me, trying to cut me off.

He, alas, was driving a Corolla. My aged Sienna has had most of its heavy seats removed but still retains its vast, superbly maintained six-banger. I breathed on the gas pedal and the thing shot forward like a Mercedes-Benz. Or, to speak in today’s terms, like a Titan rocket.

phphphbphbphhhhttttt!

Heat drives white folks crazy.

The old Cost Plus rockers are tired, but not beyond resuscitation. So I spent most of the afternoon scraping off peeling paint and sanding.

Had to drag them indoors for this activity, because at 108°-plus, it’s way too hot and way too humid outdoors to be scraping and sanding wood.

Despite several layers of paint, they’re sunburned and rain-soaked to the point where most of the paint just chipped right off.

This is either the third or fourth time I’ve painted the damn things. It’s a bitch of a job. It was a bitch of a job eight years or so ago, when I first did it. And each year of advancing age seems to make it more of a bitch of a job. That, truth to tell, is why I wanted to buy new weatherproof fake wicker chairs!!!!! I just didn’t want to do it again.

By sundown on Saturday the things were scraped and filled and sanded and dusted as best as one can dust old wicker chairs. In the relative cool of the evening before sundown. I applied one layer of paint to the underside and backs of the chairs. This took the better part of an overheated hour.

It also consumed both of the two cans of white paint I’d bought at the Depot. Luckily, though, two ancient cans of white spray paint in the garage were still functional, despite residing there for three or four 110-degree summers.

By the time I finished, it was after dark. I had inhaled enough aerosolized paint to vomit it up for a good hour afterward. That was grand fun.

Sunday morning the runners were dry enough that I could flip the chairs upright and repeat that drill by light of dawn.

Getting the picture about why I really, really did not want to do this again? About maybe why that $225 for those two discounted chairs—a mere $500 for six, all told—felt like one helluva bargain?

Oh well.

They look pretty good  now. By mid-afternoon, when the skies were starting to clabber up again, they were dry enough for me to pick them up and carry them back to the covered patio, where with any luck if it rains tonight they’ll be at least moderately protected.

The effect is somewhat…rustic. They’re weathered, pleasantly weathered. I do like these chairs and wish they weren’t wearing out with age. This latest slathering with spray paint, I expect, will tide them over for another year. I can’t imagine they’ll last much longer than one or two more years. By then, though, maybe I can afford to buy a couple of fake-wicker chairs from some outfit that puts them together, rather than expecting elderly women to construct them.

After my arms quit hurting and my right hand quit shaking, I decided I’d better try to replant the schefflera I’d bought a week ago into a pot that it could live in. Quite a nice plant, this thing from Costco. Figured it could take the place of the dying thing that’s on its last legs in the family room.

So I dragged a heavy pot M’hijito had given me around to the side yard and primed it with some of the potting soil I bought during yesterday’s HD run.

Tried to shake the schefflera out of its plastic pot.

No luck. Trudged into the garage; retrieved the big plant nippers. Cut open all four sides of the square plastic pot the plant came in.

Went to lift the big plant out of the pot. And….

SPLAT!

It fell apart!

Yes. It fell apart into half-a-dozen small plants, each with a root ball about the size of a 99-cent potted plant’s.

So. Instead of paying $12.99 for one large schefflera, I’d paid $12.99 for x + (.99 ·5 y) + ~$8. ARGHHHH!

Jumped in the pool to wash the sweat off. Blow-dried the chlorinated hair. Painted the face. Threw on a moderately presentable dress and some makeup. Piled the plant debris into a box and tossed it in the back of the van. Set out again into the vicious traffic.

Got the $12.99 back from Costco. Didn’t have the nerve to ask them to pay for the large bag of potting soil I’d bought at HD, intending to transplant their fraudulent house foliage.

From Costco, intended to head east on Missouri toward Scottsdale, skirting my son’s neighborhood.

At 15th and Missouri a godawful wreck had had shut down the intersection. Fifteenth was closed northbound; Missouri in both directions. One of the crushed automobiles was an aged, once-silver Honda.

It looked exactly like my son’s car. Trying to convince myself that ten thousand cars a day drive through that intersection, I cut through the neighborhood to get around the accident scene. Headed east on Missouri from Seventh Avenue. Made a U-turn. Drove back to M’hijito’s house.

No answer at the doorbell, no puppy yapping. Stood in the heat silently rehearsing what I would say to the cop at the intersection…was one of the victims a 30ish man? did he have a white puppy with him? where are you taking him? can I take the pup, if it’s still alive?

Finally after what seemed forever a voice from the back of the house hollered “coming!”

Holy God.

Back on the road, eastering, eastering through the madding traffic. Arrived at Scottsdale Fashion Square, the erstwhile home of the upscale.

It’s getting a bit worn with age. Marble steps are cracking. Brass treads, where broken, have been replaced with black tape. No joke.

It’s still populated by upscale stores. The crowds, however, consisted of hoi polloi like me in search of smokin’ deals. What a zoo!

At J. Jill’s, I picked up a coveted little dress at a 20% discount. At Macy’s, I got an allegedly $80 pair of sleek sterling silver earrings for $29. Could’ve gotten them for another 20% off if I’d been willing to use my Macy’s card…no chance of that, though, after the last fiasco, despite their manager’s fine recovery. Dropped by the Coach store and confirmed that a hobo bag I covet costs $298; add 10% tax to that and you’re looking at a $330 price tag. For a purse. And that’s cheap. The really cool bag they had was $425. Before taxes.

Well, it’s clear I don’t get out enough. So long has it been since I visited those rarified climes that I had no idea Pottery Barn had closed its outlet there and been replaced by three new boutiques. Some stores have moved. Others, little remembered and less regretted, have been replaced by new palaces of mercantilism.

I must have walked through thirty acres of merchandise. And the weird thing was…almost none of it appealed to me. In all that huge expanse of expensive products, I couldn’t find anything more than a mid-priced dress and a pair of plainspun earrings that wanted me to buy them.

No wonder the economy is going down the tubes. Americans are learning to do without and prefer it.

Oh well.

Homeward bound. Stopped by a Safeway to grab a bottle of wine, having decided that now is not really the time to ride the wagon again.

Fed the dog. Fixed a piece of steak, a slab of Costco scalloped potatoes, a fine green salad. Wine.

Noticed the dog’s eyes are running. She has an eye infection, lhudly sing goddamn. Sunday night before Labor Day: soonest I can possibly get her to the vet is Tuesday. Soaked paper towels in ice water and applied cold compresses to her eyes. Seemed to relieve her a little. Now we’re having a frenzy of ball chasing.

I have not graded student papers.

I have not cleaned the house.

I have not repaired the kitchen cabinets where Charley scratched them up (again).

I have not dug the new pup-resistant fencing into the ground around the poolside garden.

I have not washed the car.

I have not cleaned the garage.

I have not loved my fellow drivers as myself.

Heaven help us.

Image of God at work: Michelangelo. Believed to be in the public domain.

 

 

 

 

Holy gawd. There are no words. You’ll have to read it yourself.