After a long hiatus

It's been a while since I was here.

See, uh, I have this problem. I guess you could call it my ADD--I have trouble keeping up with more than one stressful thing at a time. On a good day, I can do two or maybe three, but I start to break down after that. Too much to remember, too much to keep track of--I start ignoring, by necessity, the things I can't handle or which aren't essential. Like anything that doesn't involve my job, my husband, or the food and shelter we both rely on. I am not a good multi-tasker. I am good at hyper-focusing on what needs to be done right now, though. So I did.

I bought my house. The whole time, I meant to blog about it. It was, after all, a huge, huge move for me, both personally and financially. I am so grateful for the long, long time I invested in doing the right thing before this, even though it was hard to keep track of my bills and I nearly got derailed by my ex-fiance and our penchant for buying things together which he never intended to pay for. My good credit made the difference in getting the loan I did and buying that house. It paid off. What a relief, actually. For a long time I had wondered when being a good girl was going to get me somewhere.

It was expensive, don't get me wrong. I am now in the red on my balance sheet by more than 100 grand, and thinking about that hurts. I think often about how I need to invest in a retirement plan before it's too late. I think about Roth IRAs and treasury bonds. I admit I am kinda scared to do this. Scared of investing? Yeah. I mean, if my money is in my tiny low-yield savings account, at least I know where it is, right? At least I know where it will be when I wake up tomorrow. That's not an appropriate plan--I know that.

Tim finally got through his probation period on his job and even got a little raise. Having him in my life has made a huge difference. Not for the paycheck, of course, though that helps both of us. We have dramatically bettered our circumstances since we met, mostly by pooling our resources, working together, and being willing to trust each other. That's more work for me than it is for him. I'm not a truster by nature. Having someone who consistently loves me, even if he doesn't always like what I do--that's priceless. For me, knowing that I finally love someone who isn't just sucking that love up and spitting it on the ground is amazing. He's worth it, is what I'm saying. I finally love someone I don't have to hate myself for loving. Anyone who doesn't think this matters is pretty ignorant about the human psyche.

Anyhow, my latest endeavor is this--learn to listen.
It's very basic, I know. I am sure you've all got it mastered.

The gist is this--if I learn to listen to my body, I will feed it and exercise it when I should. I will medicate and baby it when I should. I will test it's limits when I should, and no more than I should so I can stay healthy. I will stop all these things when I should, when my body is done--eating, resting, exercising, being social, whatever. If I listen, that should be the key. (See here for the inspiration) Listening and paying attention are, of course, my weakest areas. Think about it--if you, all your life, listened and listened and tried so hard to pay attention to all the things you were supposed to, and STILL missed half of it, and forgot a good portion of the rest right after you heard it...wouldn't you get discouraged? Wouldn't you learn to cope with that by just not paying attention sometimes? I don't mean consciously, although I have deliberately tuned out before. I mean that the brain gets tired of constantly struggling with something that doesn't pay off. Maybe that doesn't come across the way I mean it. I don't meant that I choose not to pay attention and that's why I am like this. I mean that one came before the other. I mean it's so damn hard to catch what I need to when I need to, and takes so much effort, that I'd honestly rather not. Even if I hate myself later for it. How I cope with the outside world is that I force myself to stop and write things down. I force myself to put things in my calendar right away, even if it's awkward. Otherwise I would be without a job. With me and my body, it is a lot easier to fudge, but I really shouldn't allow that. I need to learn to listen to my body, and pay attention.

Learning to listen to people--of course that's worthwhile. Anyone can see that. I don't need to explain. Listening forces you to stop talking at and forcing yourself on the world and everyone in it. I am not some kind of guru because I understand this, though I can't tell you how many self-help workshops I've seen that try to teach this as if we don't know. Teach me how to make myself do it--now that would be a workshop I'd pay for.

I figured out one reason I love facebook. I love it because I can listen to people without struggling to talk. The statuses scroll down the screen and it is not such an effort to pay attention. Of course, it's a view through a cloudy glass; that's certainly a weakness. I know one thing--if I had to keep up with all the people I like in real life, I would definitely not be able to do it. Debate the pros and cons of that, but facebook lets me pay attention to people at my own pace, and that has helped me to be a better friend. In it's own way, facebook forces me to listen--to whatever it is you're posting. Most people view that as a negative--people can rant on FB without interruption, and sometimes interruption is healthy. I agree, but if you turn it around, it lets people with attention weakness, like me, stay all the way through the performance, so to speak. For better or for worse. It's ok; I'll take the bad with the good.

New Year, New House? Also--WHAT TO EAT, by Marion Nestle.

Well, well, well....things have been going on around here.

First, and I will write about this in more detail a little later: we are under contract for a house. We are first-time buyers, and haven't closed yet, so things are not set totally in stone, but all things being equal, we should be moving next month. This has been a very weird and amazing experience, and I can't quite write about it yet.

Except to say: it's crazy to be buying a home, which is such a grown-up thing to do, and something I thought I was too poor for. Sure, I am too poor to buy a large home, and I am too poor to buy a home in Southern California, where I grew up, and yes, I am too poor to buy a restored Victorian row house downtown. I am not too poor for a starter house in the suburbs, and, in fact, buying a home like this will save me money in rent AND gas for commuting. This experience has made me think hard about a lot of things. One very certain one is that unless things change a lot back home, I will probably never move back to the L.A. Basin. We COULD, one day, after racking up quite a bit of equity in this home and perhaps going through quite a few pay raises, consider moving to California, with all the expenses that entails. But this much is clear: my cost of living here enables me to have a much higher standard of living than I would in my beloved home state. My money means more, here. Plain and simple. Yes, it's humid in the summer. Yes, it rains a lot, and we do run the risk of hurricanes. Yes, we live in a flood plain (ahem--so do millions of people in the valleys surrounding the Santa Ana and LA Rivers). Yes, mosquitoes bite me frequently. No, there are no 24 hour Starbucks. Yes, the grocery stores sometimes close early. Yes, my immediate family lives on the other side of the country, and sometimes that hurts. The price of financial stability is not one that should be considered lightly, but I made an irrevocable choice 5 years ago to move, and all things considered, it is still the best, albeit most controversial, choice I've ever made.

Second, I am reading an incredibly engaging book called What To Eat, by Marion Nestle, an acclaimed nutritionist and food politics writer. In it, she describes and breaks down the complex choices food shoppers face when walking into a grocery store in America, and the powers of the food industry that create that complex shopping experience. She looks at product placement, pricing, organic certification, ingredients in foods, and seems to be doing what I enjoy most--not directing reader's choices but offering simple-to-understand information so that readers can be better equipped to make their own decisions about what to eat and how to spend their food money. The politics behind the business vying for your food spending are complex and make for compelling reading. I hope to offer some insights from this book and how I attempt to apply them to my life and my food budget on this blog as I read. We shall see. In the meantime, I recommend this book to anyone interested in taking control of his or her own food shopping and consumption. It can directly affect your health and your bank account.

Grown-Up Tips: Pot Lucks and Parties

If you get invited to a potluck or party:

Bring a dish to the potluck. Bring a host gift to a party. (Unless it is a party with gifts built in, then just be sure to bring an appropriate gift, and you're set.)

If you're used to going to a party with nothing, eating for free, drinking the booze in the fridge and leaving when the conversation starts to bore you, then you're not being a grown-up.

Don't say it costs too much. You can bring Chips and Salsa for less than $5.00.

Thank you. This has been a Grown-Up Tip, brought to you by a reluctant grown-up.

I Dare You Not To Tear Up: College Commencement Ceremonies

I went to my University commencement on saturday.

I volunteered. As a staff member, that means I wasn't working, and I wasn't getting paid.

I didn't know even half those kids (using that term loosely, since we have a lot of non-traditional students), but it didn't matter. I didn't know any of their families, and that didn't matter either. That room was so full of pride, relief, and hope, it just oozed all over me until I was as caught up in it as the graduates were. I did not expect to have an emotional response, but I did. I did not expect to be inspired, but I was.

College may not be for everyone. I concede that before you even say it. College degrees may not be as specifically valuable as you think they will be when you start college. They are generally valuable, however. Statistically, college graduates make more money and have lower unemployment than non-graduates--regardless of the type of degree obtained. College has been getting a lot of play in politics lately--people are disillusioned about the value and cost of getting a degree, and it's not so clear these days whether or not a college graduate is going to be able to just go out and get a job worthy of that education. In fact, pretty much everyone who graduates now expects to have trouble finding a job, and that pretty much sucks, since at LEAST half of all college graduates are coming out of their programs with student loan debt built into their monthly budgets.

I get all that, and I agree that the outlook is tough. I have to remember, though, the feeling in that arena on saturday. The people in those robes were not people who were jaded and angry, for the most part. They were proud. They were proud that they'd accomplished this monumental task and were about to be awarded a degree for their efforts--a paper that would forever say how hard they'd worked, and open the doors to ever higher kinds of recognition. These were not people who thought all that work was for naught. Their families sure didn't think so.

There is something intangible about successfully completing a college degree. Even if you only half listened to lectures and skimmed most of the chapters in almost every book, I guarantee you that you would not leave empty-handed from that experience. Even if your degree is in something esoteric or technical down to the tiniest minutiae, you will have gained more than just that special knowledge when all is said and done. What you get from college, if you participate at all, is CONTEXT.

context  (ˈkɒntɛkst)--n


1. the parts of a piece of writing, speech, etc, that precede and follow a word or passage and contribute to its full meaning: it is unfair to quote out of context


 2. the conditions and circumstances that are relevant to an event, fact, etc [C15: from Latin contextus a putting together, from contexere to interweave, from com- together + texere to weave, braid]

Notice the Latin origin--to put together or interweave. Context is essentially the circumstances around facts or events which contribute to the meaning or significance those facts or events have.

College, with all of it's reading, analysis, discussion and interpretation, is in the business of teaching people how to find meaning in and inject meaning into historical and current events, and then, of course, to make decisions or take action based on that meaning or context. College expands your horizons, teaches empathy and critical thinking, and tries to force you to see the world from outside your little box of personal experiences. Even math and science courses do this by insisting on the practical application of their theories and formulas on the natural world, and in society. Calculus may be nothing to you until you take Business Calculus and suddenly see how you can use it in your professional endeavors. In the right context, it is invaluable to you.

What I saw when I looked over the faces of those graduates was a crowd of people who all had been given the chance to learn about what all this means. A chance to learn, and a chance to become a part of the forward progression of society--a chance to make things better. I'm smart enough to know that a good number of those people probably won't do much that's special or extra meaningful to the world as a whole, but they could, if they wanted. They're better positioned to make an impact than they were before they went to college, and that's why we should keep going. Because learning about the world, the people in it, and how to find meaning in the spaces in between--that is never a step in the wrong direction.

Here's to college--and to maintaining access for all those who wish to add context to their lives.

Congratulations, graduates.