First Gen American, who came roaring back from a hiatus with an awesome post contemplating the true meaning of happiness, describes what it was like to grow up poor. Really poor. Shopping in thrift stores has become a modish trip among a certain set of financially jittery middle-class Americans; having to buy everything that way is quite a different thing from hunting the occasional Chico’s find at the “upscale thrift shop” whose proprietors screen everything and won’t accept anything that doesn’t have a designer label.
Mr. and Mrs. PoP also hold forth on the happiness issue, a post that elicits a long series of readers’ reports on the small things that bring joy to our lives.
Money Beagle has a great post on finding a roofing company, which goes into interesting detail on roofing materials and what one should be looking out for.
Uh oh. It’s 2:30 in the morning and I just remembered I haven’t read all those stoont papers that came in from the magazine-writing set. So…to work!
So here I am in the drink, in more ways than one. I’ve had two b&w’s with a lunch of chicken added to bok choy & garden red chard stir-fried together (the piece of grilled chicken cadged from a week’s supply of Cassie’s stash of cut-rate protein) (b&w: that would be “bourbon & water”). My back hurts. It makes the hips hurt. Though they don’t hurt like they did, they still hurt, and hurt is hurt. Oh, my god, but hurt is hurt.
I’ve learned that sneaking into the icy swimming pool water an inch at a time until the water reaches the sacroiliac helps a great deal to numb the old-bat pain. So….the day is warm, the sun is hot…oh, WTF, why not?
About at knee level, it strikes me that the water is not all that cold. About at hip level, it comes to me that at the age of 12 I would jump into water like this without a second thought.
At 68, I’m smarter than I was at 12.
However, let us suppose that one b&w erases approximately 30 years from the human. Two would erase 60 years. Uh huh. Two and a half would make you…what? Still in the womb? A twinkle in my father’s eye? Nay: a twinkle in my grandfather’s eye…
I declare myself 12 years old and take the plunge.
And you know what? That water is not, after all, cold enough to stop your heart. It feels INCREDIBLY WONDERFUL!
Oh. What a magnificent swim!
And so I am brought back to what I really am: an ecstatic, truth-to-tell pagan whose god is a woman that dwells somewhere Outback of the universe She created. The sky blue goes on and on and on forever and the radiant, no — the radioactive white glare of the star nearest us consumes the west, and yes, yes: people may be crazy, beer may be good, but only God is great.
Thank You, God, for all the life You created. Thank you, God, for all You created that is not life. Thank You for all the magnificence and all the baseness, all the splendor and all the obscenity, all the joy and all the misery, all the grace and all the cruelty, all the knowledge and all the awe, all the mystery of all creation, for all that we who are Your creatures can know or sense.
Happy Easter Egg! It’s been a busy week, and so I haven’t had time to post much. Holy week — the run-up to Easter in the Christian mode of thinking — has been filled with rehearsals and performances. And added to that, work has started to come in from various clients again.
The choir sang Paul Mealor’s Stabat Mater for its Easter concert, and it seemed to come off well. It’s an amazing experience to learn one of these awe-inspiring compositions, and even more amazing for a mostly volunteer choir to pull it off. The reason we do, of course, is that we have a number of professional singers, as well as a near-miraculous music director.
After a little rain a few weeks ago, we’re having a beautiful, warm spring. The desert, still parched by a decade-long drought, hasn’t sprung forth with the color that’s possible, but a few wildflowers are blossoming. We spotted these poppies in the valley between North Mountain and Shaw Butte.
{sigh} As usual, you have to click on the image to see it in focus and in detail. Annoying WordPress…
Despite some serious frost damage, the citrus has bloomed spectacularly in the past couple of weeks. The first to pop out was the Meyer lemon, and now the oranges and lime are covered with blossoms. Citrus is heavily scented, so at this time of year the air is perfumed with fragrance.
The Lady Banks rose I planted a couple of years ago to block the view of the pool equipment was unfazed by the frost, unlike the cape honeysuckle it replaces. The honeysuckle used to freeze back to the ground in a cold winter, but roses shrug it off. And this spring for the first time, Lady Banks is covered with tiny white blossoms.
The little garden I planted around the base of that rose somehow has managed to survive the seasons of neglect. I don’t remember what this flower is, but isn’t it pretty?
Here’s another mystery plant that grew in a different neglected bed…
I have no idea why these things survived the cold snap, but they did, and they’re gorgeous just now.
Despite the floral show, the yard’s really a mess: dead bougainvillea and plumbago sticks need to be cut back; weeds are growing amok; a third of the lime tree’s canopy is dead; the yellow oleander in front has turned into a dried arrangement; and leaves and twigs and debris have settled in a carpet over the xeric mulch. Gerardo has his work cut out for him…I suppose I’ll have to give him a bonus for the extra work he’ll have to do this month.
And soon it will be summer. The pool’s already almost warm enough for a brisk swim. We’ve had an unusually warm spring, and that often presages a scorching summer. It’s hard to understand how anything lives in this place.
One of these days, presumably, nothing will. But I’ll be gone by then. 😉
Well…we could say it re-happens. Got a tax refund of $2300, mostly because the college withholds taxes even though I don’t earn enough to pay them.
In an anchorite’s world, that’s a very nice chunk of money. It means I’ll have to draw down nothing from retirement savings to cover Q2 living expenses, and much less than planned for Q3. All the while, m’dears, not teaching freshman comp.
mwa ha ha!
It also plumped the Survival Savings fund, the “pool” that’s fed quarterly from Fidelity, from The Copyeditor’s Desk, and from teaching the online magazine writing course, and from which I draw a monthly allowance to meet expenses. It’s right back up to where it was on January 1. Before the first-quarter disbursal, that fund had about $12,600.
I couldn’t freaking believe it.
So. Barring any new windfalls, Survival Savings will end the year with a balance of about six grand, significantly better than planned.
Since I probably can dispense with the Q3 drawdown from the S-corporation of $360 (we transferred most of the planned 2013 distributions in the form of loan repayments and dividends), in 2013 earned income should come to a grand total of $4800, for the two online courses.
Meanwhile, revenues are flowing in to the S-corp at an acceptable rate. I’m not working very hard — believe I’ve developed an allergy to work — but I don’t have to work very hard to earn enough to adequately supplement Social Security, a 4 percent drawdown from savings, and the most minimal teaching schedule possible.
If you’ve never heard the astonishing classical violin virtuosa Midori, take the first opportunity you find to go to one of her concerts.
The Phoenix Chamber Music Society brought her here last week. This, hot on the heels of Chanticleer, one of the most gorgeous a capella groups ever, the first fully sold-out concert the society had enjoyed in a while. Midori’s concert was also sold out, and for good reason.
My companion in spending-on-concerts crime, being a tax accountant, was reduced to having to work that night (or at least to subside into comatose stupor for a few hours). So she offered up her ticket, and I invited a friend from choir. She decided to fix us a lovely dinner of chicken and dumplings beforehand (!! haven’t had that since my mother made it) at her great old North Central home, and then it was off to the shindig.
Midori. My god. It was the single most astonishing performance I’ve ever heard, and I’ve been in concert halls around the globe. She played, solo, for a good two hours, an all Bach program. Many of the pieces were extremely challenging. By the end of the evening she seemed no less vigorous, no less inspired than she was when she started. Her playing: spectacular. The music: awe-inspiring.
Okay, let’s try one more time to launch the proposed exciting roundup.
First: Once again Funny made it into the Carnival of Personal Finance. At Money, Life and More, Lance kindly included the rumination comparing our parents’ income and expenses with those of us moderns.
At NZ Muse, eemusings posts a very interesting article about the arranged marriage one of her best friends is about to enter. Some of the comments are also extremely interesting.
Free Money Finance offers a nicely nuanced piece about the many decisions awaiting young people an their parents when it comes to choosing a college.
At My Personal Finance Journey, Jacob discusses pros and cons of the several tax-advantaged investment instrumentsother than the IRA, the 401(k), and the 403(b). None of them are exactly what you’d call aggressive, but they certainly are worth knowing about in the context of your overall investment plan.
Revanche donated her long locks, which she recently had cut short. Now she’s contemplating how to make other biological kinds of donations.
Holy mackerel! At Afford Anything, Paula is having a frenzy of great posts! Cruise over there and take a look, starting with today’s post on the question of paying off the mortgage.
Over at Antinecktie, Jesse has found a program that helps you learn another language, and along the way he translates the maker’s business model, in spades.
Five-Cent Nickel has the obligatory springtime post on how to save money on your taxes…which reminds me, I’ve got to get off my duff and go stand in line at the post office to ship off this year’s check to the state. One thing I could do without is having to pay $5 to mail returns return-receipt-requested!
