It’s been a while. Life at The Young Human Factory has flooded over into el ocio (edit: leisure. My brain is not wanting to English today.) I enjoyed a lovely luncheon on Cinco de Mayo in honor of my aunt’s birthday.
However, when I take a weekend off, I must pay with another. This weekend is devoted to lawncare and catching up at work.
But all is not bleak. Below are highlights from the previous month. Continue reading
Have you ever had one of those days weeks when your brain simply refused to stay on task? Me, too!
The bullet journal is good, but needs tweaking.
I like putting a one-line description that covers the key task of the day. Project management is a breeze.
However, I still have a hanging calendar AND a work calendar. There seems to be so much I need to remind myself, and it doesn’t fit in bullets.
“The four-month “future” section isn’t. It’s NOW. I’m loathe to create a new section every month, so maybe every other month?
The Cycle Is Vicious
I get ready to work, work, bring things home, work on them after dinner, hear the alarm telling me to go to bed, go to bed, wake to the light, get ready for work…
I don’t even have time to procrastinate! Continue reading
Sorry about that. Also, Happy Easter and Felices Pascuas!**
Last week my favorite puertorriqueño gave me a couple of suggestions, including that I jump on the “Year of No Spending” bandwagon and give details.
“It is going to be very funny if you do,” he wrote.
After considerable thought, I decline. First, I have a tendency to focus on a task to the exclusion of everything else, including sleep and common sense. Second, I foresee having to spend a bundle on certain home replacements in the future.
Case in point: I awoke one night thinking cats were fighting outside my window. No, it was the fan of my furnace screeching. It has subsided, but it’s only a matter of time…
However, I am intrigued by the idea of tracking my expenses. I did that 2013 in order to create a better budget on a “frozen” salary.
I have done a month of low-spending.
And a few years ago I followed a Canadian blogger who challenged herself to live as cheaply as possible. Each month she posted the results as a spreadsheet as well as a tally by category. As I recall, she ended one year with less than CA$5,000 in expenses. I admired her experiment and wished she’d left her blog up for future reference. She had some oddball tricks that couldn’t be done by just anyone, such as moving across Ontario one summer to an off-season dorm room and being paid in food to babysit a young relative. But she also had great tips on simple one-bowl meals and entertainment.
So maybe I could track my spending and add it to my monthly updates. (And yes, I know the March update is due. But it’s a holiday!)
** Note to anyone thinking of telling me that “Easter” is derived from a pagan goddess called Esther (the nemesis of a god named Fred Sanford):
Everyone knows the English liked to apply their old words to new things; e.g. the North American orange-breasted robin is a delightfully musical thrush named after a shrill, squeaky flycatcher native to Europe and Africa. (The photo above is of a North American robin’s nest and its distinctive blue eggs. It’s a free-use WordPress photo because the nearest nest appears to be in the upper reaches of my maple.)
Outside the Anglocentric view, the words for today’s holiday are variations on “Passover”, such as Pascua in Spanish. Even in English, the Resurrection of Christ is called “The Paschal Mystery.”
If you feel the need to argue, let us focus on food names. We can ramble at length about squashes known as either courgette, zucchini, calabacita, OR zapallito. But do NOT get me started on turnips, Swedes, and rutabagas!
I spent quite some time over the last 39 days digging through bookshelves, boxes, and cupboards. I kept coming across old diaries, snippets of writing, and the like. Some things are timeless and I immediately thought “This would make a good blog post!”
And then I came across some unfinished cartoons that I meant to use on my first blog. Yes, I used to draw cartoons. In fact, I won an award in high school for the best editorial cartoon (I can’t recall what category).
And yes, I had a blog before this. In fact, this is my third.
Two blogs ago, I was “famous” enough to have real-life repercussions from a former student’s mother. It wasn’t as if I wrote about her child or even about work. It was merely that every small town has a contingent of gossips and a photo of me enjoying wine with friends was “proof” that I’m a drunken lesbian.
“My client pleads guilty to the lesser charge of fun at parties, Your Honor.”
” I see no evidence of that. Case dismissed.”
A blog ago, I paid for a nom de plume and no ads. I ended up with more spammers than readers. I deleted that blog and signed up for a free account. Now, since everyone and their grandfather has a blog (not to mention vlog), mine is nicely obscure.
Posting on a blog is a bit like writing in a diary, except that a diary entry is usually uncensored and doesn’t attempt to polish up the boring or ugly bits.
On the other hand, diaries would be better if they had categories and tags like a blog post. I can’t tell you how disconcerting it was to read an epiphany I had in 2008 – which I promptly forgot – had again in subsequent years!
That epiphany? Well, over the years I reworded it, but it goes like this:
The worst pains in my life are self-inflicted.
And that, Dear Diary and Reader, is the unvarnished truth.
Money was running through my fingers like water this week, what with the chariot due for an oil change, toiletries running out, and shoelaces needing a replacement. I found myself grabbing gas money out of the “Stash o’ Cash”.
Some readers may know it by another name: the emergency fund. I learned to squirrel away bills and coins for those situations that require cash on hand. (I admit it began with a gas-and-pizza fund at college.) It’s a kind of running joke among old friends that some of us follow the “squirrel model” too closely and forget where they put it. (Or add to it without using it, like my grandfather who stashed thousands of dollars in a safe over the course of years!) Continue reading
There are thirteen days left in Lent (not including today) and I have eighteen bags to go. A certain someone who will be known as Kiko thinks I won’t make it.
Yes. I. Will.
The hardest bags (actually boxes) are filled and gone: books and art supplies. I thought long and hard about how much reading and painting I do versus how much I dream of doing.
I was reminded of a personal organizer who worked in the Detroit Metro area. She said – and I paraphrase based on memory – that people were haunted by reminders of their old hobbies and felt relieved when they gave those tools and supplies away. I mostly feel sad that those activities have fallen by the wayside on this crazy road of life.
