Coffee heat rising

Dog lives to bark another day

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Amazingly, Anna H. Banana survived yesterday’s encounter with a vet who was searching for cancer. If she has cancer, it’s not easily detected. Nor does she have megaesophagus, the condition her previous vet speculated was the cause of the heavy breathing—her esophagus was clearly visible in the X-rays, and clearly quite normal.

What was detected, however, was extensive calcification in her spine. She has such severe arthritis that her spine is barely moveable. (Not news to any observer of her struggles to get down and back up.) The vet thinks the dog is in pain most of the time from that, which explains the pretty much constant huffing, puffing, and hyperventilating.

The plan is to treat her with Tramadol, a particularly effective painkiller that (according to the new vet) has virtually no side-effects in dogs. In humans, it has some wild ones: seizures, dizzy spells intense enough to cause falling, fainting, and uncontrollable shaking of an extremity. That’s why I don’t take it—my doctor prescribed it when I developed a life-threatening allergy to NSAIDs, but after getting a look at what it can do to you, I decided I’d have to be in outrageous pain to let that stuff pass my lips. The vet, though, insists that none of the above applies to canis lupus familiaris.

A hefty dose of this, I’m told, should cause her to snooze through the night. But I’m supposed to give her three hefty doses, one every eight hours. First dose came last night. It seems to have worked to keep her down all night…if not, I didn’t know about it, because at the same time I have her the dog pills, I dosed myself with two of Walgreen’s best knock-off Benadryloids, twice what I’d normally use as a sleeping pill. The burglars could have come in and set up a steel band, and not waked me up. One full night’s sleep—the first in about six weeks—-worked wonders on my own aches and pains: overnight the excruciating neck-ache and back-ache have almost disappeared.

Yesterday’s adventure set me back another $178, but at least we’re into another AMEX billing cycle. I had $50 left for the week, which ended yesterday. So I’m “only” $128 over budget at the end of this cycle’s first week.

Testing her for cancer and finding her (probably) free of it, however, allows us to test her for thyroid dysfunction (another hundred bucks), which I’m pretty sure she doesn’t have and probably has never had during the entire six years I’ve been dosing this animal with Soloxine and trotting her in twice a year for expensive bloodwork. There was no point in testing for a chronic, treatable illness if she had an untreatable disease that would carry her off.

If our theory is right—that the source of the dog’s pain is arthritis—and the Tramadol works on her, she should be in pretty darned good shape for an ancient dog. I hope so. With any luck at all, maybe Anna and The Beloved Ball will be around for a while longer.

Review: Blue Shoes and Happiness

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by Alexander McCall Smith
Random House, Anchor Books
Paperback, $12.95
A taste for literature and a turn for business, united in the same person, never fails to make a great man.

—John Adams to his son John Quincy Adams

Philadelphia, 1777

For quite a while, I’ve wanted to review books for Funny about Money. Thing is, I personally don’t much enjoy the how-to and self-help books other PF bloggers favor. Their authors rarely say anything new, what they do say is often shallow or downright wrong, and the books too often seem to exist primarily to promote the authors’ own wealth-building agenda.

One of Funny’s themes, however, is stress relief and control. No question about it: a good book makes a fine tool for relieving stress. And so that leads us out of the wilderness of self-improvement and into the sylvan glades of…yes! literature. That’s right: things that are actually fun to read.

Over the past few months and years, revisiting fiction has given me a great deal of pleasure and, exactly contrary to watching television, has deflected anxiety. What passes for entertainment on TV by and large is a murky flood of violence, lurid voyeurism, and angst. Even the news programs, infotainment that I refuse to honor with the name of news but instead call Play-Nooz (back-formation from Play-Doh), consist almost 100 percent of violence, voyeurism, and angst. So I’ve taken to leaving the television off in the evenings and reading a good book instead. Personal finance hook: no cable bill means big savings for your budget.

My own taste in fiction, and so the kind of thing that will appear in these reviews, runs to the intelligible. While I respect and honor ground-breaking creativity, some of the postmodernists are about as readable as a (mind-numbing!) self-help book. Now that I’m a certified escapee from graduate school, I no longer feel compelled to read things that leave my head spinning. Carlos Fuentes I enjoy; Salman Rushdie gives me vertigo. So, you’re not likely to hear about The Enchantress of Florence here, not anytime soon. Lately my taste has grown so debased I’ve developed a fondness for certain pulp novels: hence my delight at being paid (can you imagine?) to read page proofs for a publisher of mystery stories.

This brings me to my favorite author of mysteries, Alexander McCall Smith, who has produced three series of novels. What I most love about the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, among which Blue Shoes and Happiness numbers, is that almost nothing happens in these stories. No murders, no tortures, no kidnappings and cold-sweat searches for missing victims buried in living graves, no rapes, no mutilations. The few deaths that occur take place off-screen. Set in Botswana, the novels trace the lives and doings of Precious Ramotswe, proprietor of the highly unlikely but strangely believable Ladies’ No. 1 Detective Agency; Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, one of Africa’s finest mechanics and owner of the garage on whose premises the detective agency resides; Motholeli and Puso, the two orphans they adopt; Grace Makutsi, Mma Ramotswe’s doughty (not to say “dowdy”) assistant; and their various clients, friends, relatives, and hangers-on. The action unrolls like the plot of a genteel soap opera: slow, elegant, and endlessly entertaining.

The exotic locale allows Smith, who was born in Rhodesia, to tell us about rural lifeways in Africa and the issues currently facing emerging nations on that continent, at the same time addressing what it means to be human. Rra Matekoni (Mma evidently means something like “Ms.” and Rra, “Mr.”) suffers from clinical depression, Mma Ramotswe has survived an abusive marriage, the intelligent Mma Makutsi struggles with her own sweet nerdiness. As these people wend their way along the routes of their lives, we see all the facets of human nature-kindness and cruelty, evil and good, generosity and greed, energy and sloth, moral strength and dissoluteness-revealing themselves in the passing panorama.

The stately pace gives Smith opportunities to display his considerable writing style, especially when the action pauses while the characters take time to contemplate their lives and circumstances. These extraordinary passages will be lost, I expect, in the TV series, soon to spin off the books onto BBC in the United Kingdom and HBO in the United States. Consider, for example:

Mma Ramotswe and Mr J.L.B. Matekoni went home for lunch at Zebra Drive, something they enjoyed doing when work at the garage permitted. Mma Ramotswe liked to lie down for twenty minutes or so after the midday meal. On occasion she would drop off to sleep for a short while, but usually she just read the newspaper or a magazine. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni would not lie down, but liked to walk out in the garden under the shade netting, looking at his vegetables. Although he was a mechanic, like most people in Botswana he was, at heart, a farmer, and he took great pleasure in this small patch of vegetables he coaxed out of the dry soil. One day, when he retired, they would move out to a village, perhaps to Mochudi, and find land to plough and cattle to tend. Then at last there would be time to sit outside on the stoep with Mma Ramotswe and watch the life of the village unfold before them. That would be a good way of spending such days as remained to one; in peace, happy, among the people and cattle of home. It would be good to die among one’s cattle, he thought, with their sweet breath on one’s face and their dark, gentle eyes watching right up to the end of one’s journey, right up to the edge of the river.

We want stress relief? We want a true definition of wealth? Well, there they are.

This lovely, quiet imagery is directly followed by a scene full of tension as a new client appears at the Ladies’ No. 1 Detective Agency.

In Blue Shoes and Happiness, the people proceed through the small dramas of their lives, revealing their qualities of character along the way. Mma Makutsi finds a lover, though whether she will attain the happiness she has worked so hard to earn seems in question; Mma Ramotswe and Mr J.L.B. Matekoni rescue a foundering soul and end up with an assistant mechanic who wants to be an assistant detective; clients bring tales of rascalry to be cleared up. As in all the Ladies’ No. 1 Detective Agency stories, little happens and much happens.

It’s in fiction that reality and wisdom reside. We humans explore the truths of our lives in the stories we tell. I’ll take Alexander McCall Smith over Dave Ramsey, any day!

Are we movin’ on up? Or not?

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Can I Get Rich on a Salary has an interesting post on the question of whether American society offers real opportunity to provide each of us a believable chance at improving our financial situations. He discusses a lot of research and commentary that is pretty enlightening and reaches the conclusion that we do have a reasonable shot at moving up the ladder economically, but that it happens not by chance but through intelligent saving strategies. He asks readers if we think we’ve moved up, compared to our parents.

It’s something I’ve thought about occasionally: am I really better off economically than my parents were?

Typically, back in the Cretaceous, the only wage-earner in a family was the husband, and my parents were typical. My father went to sea. As a deck officer in the merchant marine racking up many an hour of overtime simply by being awake and on the bridge, he earned a pretty good living. My guess is he made around $10,000 a year at a time when $12,000 a year was the equivalent of today’s six-figure income.

He hated, loathed, and detested working. He set as a goal to retire at the earliest possible moment, and he decided that moment would arrive when he had $100,000 in savings.

He chose that figure because it was the amount his grandfather had left to his mother at the start of the 20th century. During the 1800s, his grandfather had a freighting business hauling buffalo hides out of Oklahoma into Texas. He made a ton of money. In those days, $100,000 was the equivalent of well over a million dollars today. Well over it, indeed. It would have been the equivalent of around a million dollars in the 1950s, when my father conceived his retirement plan.

When the old man died, this fund of cash went to his daughter, my father’s mother. My father was a change-of-life baby who came along 20 years after his youngest brother. When my father was born, his father abandoned the wife and new baby and disappeared. As the two older brothers went on about the business of making their livings and raising their own families, their mother slid into the influence of various con artists: spiritualists, a church (yes, a mainstream church) that persuaded her to donate large amounts, and a building contractor who took her money by talking her in to making repeated additions to her home. She sold two business properties and a second home. My father was ten years old when the grown brothers discovered she was flat broke and her primary home was being forfeited to the State of Texas for tax delinquency. She lost her entire estate to predators of the sanctimonious, the otherworldly, and the commercial varieties.

So my father determined to earn back that whole amount-$100,000-and when he did, he would quit working.

Through hard work, relentless frugality (some would say “miserliness”), and constant saving and investment, he attained that goal in 1962. By then he had $130,000, enough (he figured) for him and my mother to buy a house, retire modestly, and send me to college. At the age of 53, he quit his job and moved himself and my mother to Sun City, stashing me at the University of Arizona.

They lived comfortably enough in a manner that suited their tastes. The house was no larger than the apartments they’d lived in, but it was a house, not an apartment. For the first time in her life, my mother had a dishwasher. The development was quiet and safe, the cost of living extremely low, and in those days there was plenty of hunting and fishing within driving distance. What more could a man ask for?

Well, a crystal ball, maybe.

He didn’t anticipate the inflation of the 1970s, and as a result the hundred grand did not suffice. He had to go back to work until his health failed.

I now have almost $600,000 in savings, which I think is about equivalent to my father’s $100,000 around 1965. After having seen his experience, my guess is that in real buying power my economic status is not a lot different from his. I live a little better—have a bigger house with a pool, and I live in town, not in a retirement community out in the sticks. But I’m still working. I support that “better” lifestyle with a salary.

Certainly, if I moved to Sun City, which no longer stands in the middle of onion and cotton fields but is now surrounded by a sea of houses, I could collect a little cash on the trade from my house to the cheaper housing out there. I would save hugely on the cost of living, since auto and home insurance are half of what they are in town, property tax is a third of what I’m paying, and utilities on a smaller house are much cheaper. (The green stuff on the ground in the photo is gravel. That notwithstanding, ’tis a far, far better house than you can buy in town for $250,000.)

The fly in that ointment: I don’t want to live in a ghetto for the elderly embedded in a zillion square miles of ‘burbs!

But for me to feel the amount I’ve saved has more capacity to support me for the rest of my life than did the amount my father saved for his retirement, I would have to live exactly the way my parents lived. In other words: no, I haven’t moved up, really.

Cheap Eats: Dine in, not out! Shoulda had shrimp

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M’hijito came by the other day to eyeball the house I was thinking about buying. Feeling flush over the $150 his current attempt to kick the nicotine addiction is saving him this month, he invited me out to dinner.

I’d just bought a mess of gorgeous shrimp at Costco and offered to cook that. He said no, he’d rather go out to eat.

O.K. So we went to a neighborhood restaurant, where the menu was loaded with yup-sounding items ranging in price from $10 for appetizers to $20 and up. He said the food was all right but not as great as the menu sounded. We each ordered a beer; he asked for the seared tuna and I got a pork quesadilla.

For fourteen bucks, the pork quesadilla consisted of a wheat tortilla (about 2 cents worth), a small handful of pulled pork (available in bulk at Costco, probably around 50 cents or a dollar’s worth), some melted cheddar cheese (maybe 5 cents worth?), and a sprinkling of barbecue sauce (negligible). Unless it’s annealed onto spareribs, I’m not fond of barbecue sauce (which wasn’t mentioned on the menu), so I found this creation unappetizing. Beer was good, though.

M’hijito said the tuna was less than top quality (I tasted it: indeed, it was a bit strong) and not seared but scorched.

Neither of us came anywhere close to eating everything on our plates. He took the leftover quesadilla to eat at home, but since he left for New York City at 5:30 the next morning, the stuff presumably will go to waste. The tab, plus tip: $60!

For a fifth of that (or less), the two of us could have had the following:

Shoulda Had Shrimp

  • 4 to 6 large shrimp per diner
  • one juicy lime
  • 1 or 2 fresh tomatoes, depending on number of servings
  • spaghetti (enough to serve all diners)
  • dried herbes de provence or fines herbes, if you have it; or a little dried basil or marjoram
  • fresh basil, if you have it
  • fresh parsley, if you have it.
  • 1 or 2 cloves garlic (to taste, and depending on number of servings)
  • olive oil
  • salt and pepper
  • shredded Parmesan or Asiago cheese

Peel the shrimp and, if necessary, devein them. Lay them in a single layer on a plate or in a shallow bowl. Squeeze the lime over them, being sure each shrimp gets lime juice all over it. Allow to stand for 20 minutes or more. If you leave them to marinate longer than a half-hour, put them in the refrigerator.

Dice the tomatoes and sprinkle a little salt and pepper over them; mix in any dried herbs you decide to use. If you have basil, chop it up. Chop a little parsley. Peel and mince the garlic.

Bring a kettleful of water to a boil. Cook the spaghetti al dente.

While the spaghetti is boiling, skim the bottom of a frying pan with olive oil; heat over a medium-high flame. When the oil is hot, add the shrimp. Toss around until they turn bright pink; do not overcook. Add the garlic while you’re stirring the shrimp. When the shrimp appear to be almost cooked, pour any lime juice left in the marinating dish into the pan, and then add the tomatoes. Stir quickly. Add the basil (if you’re using it) and parsley at the last minute.

Apportion the cooked spaghetti among the diners’ plates and top with the shrimp mixture. Garnish with cheese, as desired.

You could serve the shrimp with rice instead of spaghetti. Or hold the starch and simply stir-fry or grill a combination of your favorite veggies (maybe some sliced zucchini, a few pieces of onion, and some sliced bell pepper?) to go with.

Real Estate: Is now the time to buy?

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Yesterday I came very, very close to making an offer on a house in the tonier part of our neighborhood. The seller, an aged widow who has moved out of state, is offering a vintage 1957 three-bedroom ranch house in an area of $600,000 houses for just$400,000. My agent friend discovered from the seller’s agent that she would entertain not only a low-ball offer but also a contingency offer!

So, we concocted a scheme whereby I would offer $350,000 for that house and then try to get enough from my house that I would walk with $325,000, leaving me with a very small mortgage and enough room to borrow an extra $30,000 for fix-up.

For a brief, shimmering moment, it almost looked doable. Then sanity crept in: “Hey,” said I, “maybe we should run the comps in that subdivision before we present this offer to the guy.”

Oh. Yeah! Maybe so.

In recent memory only three comparable nearby houses have sold. One, a similar model but smack on Seventh Avenue, a hectic main drag, was purchased for $600,000 but just sold, in a short sale, for (hang on to your hats, dear readers) $261,000. Another went on the market FOUR HUNDRED DAYS AGO at $600,000. The seller lowered the price steadily in small increments, but only very recently did the house go under contract-after the price dropped to $450,000. No idea what the contract price actually is, since it has yet to be published.

Under those circumstances, $400,000-or even $350,000 or some compromise between those two prices-doesn’t seem like such a bargain for a fixer-upper, nice neighborhood or not. Add to that the fact that the most basic fix-up would run around $30,000 but still would fall far short of the $60,000 to $100,000 the house needs to bring it up to par with its neighbors.

Meanwhile, here in the low-rent district price drops have been nothing like that. Au contraire.

La Viajera, who bought my last house from me and then defaulted, actually ended up with the bank accepting a short sale of $261,000. She bought the house from me, four years ago, for $211,000, then refinanced to take money out of it as the make-believe value ballooned. That is a growth in value—as in “a house is worth what someone will pay for it”—of more than 5.5% a year. During a period when real estate values across the nation are dropping!

The average actual sale price in my tract is $271,000. My house is slightly above average in quality, with a pool, a new roof, four new skylights, lush xeriscapic landscaping, a watering system, an extra-large lot, new double-paned windows, a deck and a covered patio, renovated kitchen and bathrooms, new flooring throughout, and a custom paint job. The most realistic estimated sale price is about $300,000. I paid $235,000 for it: that’s an increase of a little under 6.5% a year.

It appears to be a matter of location, location, location. Some parts of the city have been very hard-hit by the real estate recession, particularly the brand-new instant “communities” recently tossed up on the far outlying fringes. Closer-in areas are also suffering: at our city councilman’s regular breakfast meeting with constituents today, we learned that 800 houses have been abandoned in our (overall pretty downscale) district alone. But in this immediate neighborhood, to my knowledge we’ve had two actual evictions and repossessions (one of which is presently undergoing a major renovation) and three short sales. That’s a lot for a small area, but it’s far from every second or third house, and in this immediate development, the losers apparently haven’t much affected property values.

Think of that. It pays to be in a centrally located lower-middle-class neighborhood.

DIY Back Massage

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People who live alone have no one to give them a massage when the old back goes out. Argh! What to do?

Well, you could do contortions trying to reach your own back, or you could pony up $50 or $80 for a massage therapist to try to knead out the kinks.

Or you could try this:

Take a tennis ball or a hard rubber ball about the same size. Back up against the wall with the ball placed between your back and the wall, as close to the sore muscle as you can get it. Lean on the ball and move around so as to roll the roll up, down, back, and forth across the affected area.

Gives you a great massage, and after you’re feeling better, you can use the ball to play with the dog.