Year Five: Finances On The Flipside

Spending Review, Week Four

2012-01-27T16:07:00.000-08:00

Dom and I didn't eat out ONCE this week. I didn't buy any food or drinks at work or during break at class. We made big dinners (pizza, pot pies, quiche, casserole...) and packed leftovers for lunch. The only time we came close to what someone might consider a cheat was due to a miscommunication that resulted in my desperately needing a phone.

Unlike many Americans, I don't feel entitled to walk into a business, demand free samples, steal all the sugar packets, use the restroom, and complain about its cleanliness on my way out...at least, not until I've purchased something from said business. I purchased a $5.24 sandwich at Thundercloud before requesting the use of their phone. The funny thing is that I LOVE Thundercloud and fantasize about it pretty much constantly. But I had just made dinner. Darling packed the sandwich for lunch the next day.

This week Darling and I also spent...

...$10.81 on a good pair of work gloves
...$76.53 on gas
...$3 bus fare
...$20 carpool
...$116 on debt

...Total Spent: $231.58
Total Earned: $750.38

I'm pretty pleased by these numbers. There's a little bit of illusion at play here: our frugality is a matter of getting rent in the bank before it's due next month. I actually came very close to not paying any debt this month to that end, but...well, I'm obsessed.

EDIT:

On Saturday, Darling and I ran around to do truck-related things. We ended up paying $28.75 on renewing the inspection sticker, as well as $30.91 on personal groceries to celebrate not having to pay for an oil change which was apparently covered by the dealership. We also received another paycheck, bringing the total spent to $291.24 and the total earned to $1372.76. Hello, rent!

Story of a Hat

2012-01-24T05:04:00.000-08:00

In 2011 I made the amazingly clever decision to track and record every penny earned and spent.
One of my more surprising discoveries was how much Darling and I spent on gifts, because we suck so much at giving gifts. Most of the time it feels like we can't even afford a token. But it seems that when we can afford to get anything, we get something big.

This especially bothered me because I habitually neglect crafting and hobbies for frugality's sake. I sew scraps to make the occasional quilt square and accept friends' unwanted yarn for practicing knitting, but I don't typically invest any money in these pursuits. Nice yarn is expensive, and I'd hate to ruin any in the learning process...but considering what I was spending on gifts, I could afford to ruin a good deal of yarn in the pursuit of a few presents!

After purchasing a baby shower gift from an online registry last Tuesday, I decided to knit a present as well. This would give me a good feel for the hand-crafted gift business, a side-by-side comparison of sorts.

My original plan was to make it in three days, but I hadn't even touched knitting needles in at least a year. It took me about that long to re-learn the basics!

I started with cheap pink acrylic yarn a friend had given me, but it didn't feel nice. My double-pointed needles for socks were also too small. So I bought a silky bamboo yarn in a soft shade of lilac and a pair of bamboo knitting needles. This was significantly cheaper than the single store-bought gift, and the needles are a one-time purchase.

Since I've only ever knitted scarves and a single sock, I decided to teach myself hat making. Most of the week was spent casting on, working a few rows, making one more mistake than I could accept, and unwinding the whole thing. The starting yarn got frayed right alongside my nerves. I spent hours doing google searches, studying youtube videos, and found the pattern I wanted in a book at the second library I scoured.

Yesterday I woke up, gave Darling a ride to work, came home, and cast on for the hundredth time. I knit non-stop until I absolutely had to eat something, and paused very briefly. I was afraid to stop because the yarn was FINALLY forming a hat. I basically knit a newborn's hat in the space of five hours, after a week of starts and finishes and frustration. All I need to do is weave up the side, which I'm asking my sister-in-law for help with later today.

And it is SO sweet! Embarrassingly simple and tiny, but soft and delicate and pretty. I'm so proud!

I already have the pattern for Oblio's birthday present next month: a cute little cardigan. I can't wait to purchase new yarn and start again :)

Ali's Shower

2012-01-22T12:04:00.000-08:00

My stepsister, Ali, had the most lovely baby shower yesterday!

My stepmother went all out. She served tarts, cream pastries, and trays of home-made sandwiches on silver serving platters. There were half a dozen choices of loose leaf teas to be served with sugar cubes and cream. She HIRED A HARPIST, which officially made the baby shower more elaborate than my wedding. The tables were set with lace tablecloths, linen napkins, and fresh cut tulips.

I arrived early to arrange tarts and fold napkins. During the gift-giving, one of my fears was realized and someone else got Ali the same gift as me, but of course the gift receipt was included and I'm sure the refunded cash will be appreciated. I did not get the hat finished, of course, but I will before the baby is born.

I discovered that I knit like I cook. Recipes are fun and informative at first, especially when learning. But I've never, ever been able to crack open a cookbook, choose a recipe, and select ingredients accordingly. Instead I decide to bake, say, a casserole with sweet potatoes, broccoli, and coconut milk. Then I have to find a recipe that at least comes close to producing what I want with what I have...even if it turns out to be a recipe for spinach and broccoli quiche.

I've done the same thing in pursuit of the baby hat: I chose the yarn and cloth, then tried to find a corresponding pattern. And, of course, couldn't. It also doesn't help that I don't really know how to read patterns in the first place. But in the same way I know that blending sugar, butter, and chocolate in almost any quantity will result in delicious, I'm fairly certain that knitting and purling a beautiful yarn will result, somehow, in a lovely garment. It's just a matter of quantity and care. At least, that's what I'm telling myself. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Spending Review: Week Three

2012-01-20T21:04:00.000-08:00

So, this week. How do I even begin?

Usually I start with how much I spent, then admit how much less than that I earned. Well, this week was a surprise: Darling and I earned Zero Dollars!

It was dumb. We kept expecting his paycheck to come in - any day now - and he's not receiving anything until next week. But because we were in denial, we were very casual until yesterday afternoon.

We spent...
....$124.01 for Darling to work this week, including gas in the truck, snacks for his lunchbox, and the money he pitches in for the carpool.
...$205 on medical expenses, a trip to the doctor for Darling and a trip to the dentist for me
...$23 on Darling's haircut
...$3 cashing a check at the bank on Sunday to put gas in the truck when the banks were closed
...$2.15 making a copy of the truck key after I almost lost the original in a bizarre plumbing accident
...$10 on a library late fee (I know! I hate me too!)
...$68.28 on a baby shower gift
...$14.05 on knitting supplies so I never have to buy another baby shower gift.
...$4 on bus tickets
...$5.65 mailing a package
...$8.80 on a book of stamps
...$244 on debt

...$711.94 Total!!!

I feel like this week shows a more typical picture of my daily life than the past two spending reviews. There's a little more to me than commuting and paying dues...at least, there is when I'm unemployed :)

Darling and I never imagined he wouldn't get a check this week. I don't know why. Most construction jobs hold the first check. We just needed it so much I couldn't imagine not getting it. Finally yesterday we just had to accept that reality. I ended up only get part of the work done on my tooth, which is why the visit only cost me $120 instead of $603. I'll finish the procedure in early February.

Oh yes, I should also mention that my boss called and pushed back my return date. I've been given another week off.

We'll still be able to make rent, but that's pretty much it. I really don't see another debt payment happening this month, or again until mid-February. Instead I'll hang around the house, knitting and cooking, which should be a pleasant enough compromise.

Baby Shower Gift

2012-01-18T12:44:00.000-08:00

I've really enjoyed having some time off. My weekend was spent in the kitchen, making waffles and potato pancakes for breakfast, muffins and cookies for friends, and an awesome pumpkin and sweet potato ravioli with handmade pasta dough!

Yesterday I purchased a gift for my stepsister's baby shower. This is my third baby shower in three years, and I'm starting to get a little bored by the offerings of Babies R Us and Target. I have a rule about getting new parents something sensible from their registry. My actual rule (and you guys are gonna love this) is that I try and get a more expensive boring item from the registry, something they'll otherwise have to buy for themselves.

Nothing on the registry fit that bill exactly: the only really pragmatic item was way out of my price range. So I bought a (fairly pricey) toy I've seen numerous other babies love to death. Feeling a little dissatisfied, my thoughts wandered to knitting. By the end of the day I'd learned a new technique using my short, double-pointed sock kneedles and a ball of pink yarn which had been given to me.

I've decided to do a hat, my first hat, and I need it by Saturday afternoon. None of my three sets of needles is appropriate, so I'm running down to Hill Country Weavers after finishing this post to pick up a new pair and possibly some soft new yarn. Which isn't going to save me money this month, maybe, but maybe in February my beloved Godson will get something handmade, rather than store-bought, in the mail on his birthday.

Weekly Spending Review

2012-01-15T14:00:00.000-08:00

Darling spent last week in Temple, a 1 1/2 hour drive north of our home. After several months of planning, we chose to rent out a room in an extended stay hotel directly across the street of his work-site for the first few days.

This turned out to be an excellent idea. There was torrential rain that first day and many people didn't even show up, and the actual site is difficult to find at the best of times. Darling had almost no problem rolling out of bed, having coffee, and wandering to work.

The big downside is that the room was $249.72 for the week, we spent $108.91 to stock his little kitchen, and driving to and from Temple even twice not only ate up quite a bit of gas (we put $71.68 in the truck), but I ran out of gas on my way to pick him up, walked three hours along the highway, and spent $20 on the cab ride back to it.

Fortunately, next week Darling will have a carpool option from Round Rock. RR is still pretty far from our house, but only two exits further on I-35 than I take to get to the plant every morning. So that will add maybe an hour to my personal daily commute, and the driver is charging $20 a week for gas, but overall we will be saving quite a bit of time and money. Not only that, but the big boss agreed to pay Darling some per diem to offset some of the costs of this week.

I got laid off from my own job on Friday. Our crew wasn't supposed to come back until February 15th, but he asked four of us to come back January 23rd. Granted, I've been extremely unhappy with this job and was half-desperate to get into one of the drywall gigs closer to my house. But with Darling's carpool situation being what it is, it might be best for me to carry on up north for a while longer.

I fell into the habit of buying food at work, unfortunately, even on days that I brought my lunch. This was actually a peer pressure thing that I stepped away from before the end of the week, but it still hurt the wallet. I spent a total of $25.29 on sub-par tacos and bottles of juice. Walking along the highway for lack of $10 in gas was all the retribution I needed for this foolish spending, thank you.

$32.27 spent on dues brings the total amount of money we spent on work this week to a colossal $507.87. Scary, even knowing that some of that will be reimbursed and we'll get about $32 discounted from our rent for the days Darling wasn't here.

We also spent $35.60 on a dinner out, and I spent $1.09 on a bag of chips.

Only $250 went to debt, twice more than last week but only half of what I would have liked.

That brings our spending total to $794.56, which happens to be $14.09 more than I earned. Boo.

To have earned so much, and yet spent so much simply to work, is really frustrating. We could have spent a lot less on Darling's food for the week with a little planning. I could have (and will in the future) abstain from buying lunch at work. Otherwise, much of the spending was inevitable, and most of it - like the hotel - was a one-time thing.

My goals for this week are to spend significantly less on working, cover our medical expenses, update the registration sticker for the truck, and make a larger debt payment.

Debt Resolution

2012-01-12T20:47:00.000-08:00

Thanks for the encouragement on my last post, Capricia, Lizzie, and L. Marie.

I've been hoping to be debt free by my twenty-seventh birthday (just before year five of this blog) since 2007. I definitely can't deny dragging my feet at times, leaping ahead at others, and sometimes dropping the matter altogether. I can say that my husband and I have paid off a LOT of debt while taking college classes, undergoing the immigration process twice, constantly fine-tuning our career choices, and trying to live a life consistent with our principles. Theoretically, we could have knuckled down and paid off our debt ages ago. But we didn't. Finances don't happen in a vacuum. Money isn't simply numbers on paper, formulas to work out and forget. Not for me, at least.

I made a lot of good choices and a lot of bad choices, and here I am. Twenty-six, fighting for my right to do the heavy lifting, sharing a house with eight other adults, and married to a semi-nomadic solar installer. Darling and I are capable of earning more money than ever before. That is a fact about right now, not next week or next job. So whatever mistakes I made in the past, quitting this job or that, have brought about this not-so-exciting but unexpectedly lucrative situation. Earning more money has never really been my focus, but the checks clear anyway.

I currently owe $8,580.62 to my student loan company. I have about sixteen Fridays before May. If Darling and I both work full-time and receive a reasonable tax refund, and keep within a moderately limited budget, we could theoretically pay that debt. Keep in mind that I get laid off tomorrow, though I can reasonably expect to be back to work before long, and Darling should be employed steadily throughout that time. Also keep in mind that I am going to the dentist for very expensive care. But still, it's possible.

Starting tomorrow I'm going to do my best to pay $537 a week off my debt. Some weeks we might fall behind, hopefully other weeks will put us ahead. If all goes well, I will pay the mess off and never have to think about it again, except to brag :)

Waiting For Friday

2012-01-11T16:17:00.000-08:00

I'm getting laid off again Friday, which makes me inordinately happy.

I've been so bored. My boredom has been punctuated only by frustration and anxiety. Frustration that guys are extremely intimidated by how eagerly I will work given half a chance (they don't like to give me even half a chance when work is this boring). Anxiety that the friendships I am developing are getting too close too fast, and I don't really know how to navigate the gender/culture/language/age barriers without coming off as too friendly/young/white/racist/distant/feminist/unskilled/whatever.

So getting laid off Friday will be a really, really big relief.

Every day I wonder if I'm on the right track. Yet again I've found a decent enough job that is unexpectedly prone to drama. The challenges I face are not those I pursued, and the learning curve is razor sharp. I drive home thinking, "I should be on a bike. I should be outside. I should be providing meaningful service. I should not be bored sick. I should not spend eight hours a day handling uni-strut in a concrete tomb."

I find solace in paying off debt - another $250 sent yesterday. Darling is working hard and earning good money. My pay is decent enough to compensate for dry spells and unemployment payments fill in the gaps. So...I want to suck it up. At least for another few months, at least until I'm twenty-seven, at least until Darling finds out if he has a job after April.

I can't tell if January 2013 will be exactly the same or absolutely different. I honestly have no clue, and feel as though I have no say. I don't know if we will still be at the co-op, in the state, in construction. The only thing I really, really want is to be debt free. Nothing else seems to really matter.

Not until Friday, at least.

Pros and Cons

2012-01-10T14:43:00.000-08:00

Work has been boring. So boring I couldn't imagine it getting more boring. And then it did. Today's mantra was "do it for debt freedom, do it for debt freedom, suck it up for just a few more months for debt freedom..."

But now I'm off to a welding class, which is scary and exciting and involves fire and is basically free. So things could be worse.

Darling's First Day

2012-01-09T19:20:00.000-08:00

Yesterday Darling and I went up to Temple together and booked him a room at the hotel directly across the street from his job. We went out for dinner, spent a lot of money on his groceries, and tried in vain to hunt down the specific location he'd be working at.

It occurred to me rather late that it would make more sense to spend the night with him and drive an hour straight to work in the morning than to drive an hour and a half home, sleep for a few hours, and then drive the half hour back to work in the morning. Of course that meant sleeping in the clothes I'd spent the day in and showing up to work super gross and tired...but at least I got to be with my love :) We watched some bad television and drifted off fairly early.

Crazy loud thunderstorms woke us up at one a.m. and didn't let off until...well, they eased by the time I crawled out of bed at 4:45 a.m. I drove to work in the pouring rain, a little frustrated that Darling would have to spend the entire day at the hotel since no way would they have him working outside in such weather.

I was mostly wrong. A memo was sent out by Darling's company cancelling the day's work, but he and a few others didn't get the message and showed up anyway. There was work to do and he got to do it in torrential rain and, for a brief period, hail.

He found out that he'll qualify for a small per diam to offset some of our work expenses this week, which is awesome, and he was offered a carpool from Round Rock. Which is not a perfect solution, but doable so far as I can see.

Some of the spending of the past few days was fairly frivolous: My Mom came into town and I bought her pizza and rented a movie, Darling and I splurged yesterday, and this morning I purchased meals at work in something of a daze. Hopefully the next couple of days will be a little less hectic.

Accommodation Fail

2012-01-08T11:06:00.000-08:00

I had an epic airbnb.com fail! I don't know exactly what happened, but it seemed like the host confirmed our request and then denied it, giving me no explanation or returning communication. Which is fair enough. I mean, I did contact her really last minute. And I really can't blame any woman for not wanting to host a construction worker in her house for five days - even one described as a "vegetarian non-smoker who will quote Monty Python on demand." Actually, Darling thinks the Monty Python is what lost him the bid:(

So today we are going back up to Temple, most likely to book him a room at the Extended Stay hotel closest to the job-site and buy him some groceries. It sucks to send him off like this. I feel kind of sad and hypocritical, worse than when he went to work in East Texas. Fortunately he is working four ten-hour days a week, which means I will be picking him up Thursday after work. I am really, really, really hoping that tomorrow he will strike up a conversation with someone who will say, "oh, you work in Austin? Let me give you a ride," and that will be that.

If he doesn't find a carpool this first week, though, we're going to have to get him an apartment ASAP because the Extended Stay place is just too expensive. According to craigslist, we could rent him a room or efficiency for an average of $450 (22.50/workday) a month including utilities. The hotels are $700 ($35/workday) a month and smell bad. For the record, driving him to and from work in the truck would cost us $480 ($30/workday), assuming I drove him there in the morning and waited to drive him home, and did not take into account the wear on the car.

...This also does not take into the account that Darling will need personal groceries at accommodation he lives at, though it will save us $8/day off our co-op rent.

Blah. It's getting pretty hard to believe that there will be anything at all left over after the cost of the commute. The only bright side is that it will be work, legitimate, paying, good-on-the-resume work for the next six months while we look for something better. A step up, if you will.

Budgeting Backwards

2012-01-07T12:19:00.000-08:00

I now have a reasonable projection of what Darling and I can expect to earn and spend on an average week if this year is anything at all like last year. This isn't a tall order to fill: as long as Darling and I work every other month or so but earn decent construction pay - or even decent waitress or bartender tips, should it come down to that for any reason - we should meet these figures.

I also have an idea of what Darling and I will spend every week if our lifestyle does not change drastically. This assumes that we maintain basic (though admittedly slightly boutique) hygiene, continue living at the co-op (buying occasional personal groceries but not getting late fees), invest in our careers (which is about as expensive as community college tuition), maintain a second-hand wardrobe, keep Darling's home-made computer chugging along, devote a significant portion of our income to my dental health, upkeep a variety of licenses, travel, and indulge in casual entertainment and hobbies. I want to review my spending in these areas every week because many of them fall to the wayside for months, then Darling and I have to invest quite a bit of money catching up when we realize neither of us have had haircuts for a year and a half, we started a new job that requires $300 worth of tools, and Christmas is tomorrow.

Okay, so Darling and I now know we typically spend $331.38 a week on needs - which doesn't include late fines, eating out, ore even debt. We know that, on average, we earn $443.47. Sometimes more, sometimes less, but we can rest assured of the fact that most months we are capable of coming out ahead. But here and now our income still fluctuates, what do we do with that information, especially in the lean months?

In theory, we can save the surplus on good months to see us through the bad. We won't go to the dentist every month, but we can set aside $18 a week knowing that visit is inevitable. This will create a short-term savings fund to get us through these predictable "emergencies."

Of course, reality provides a challenging proving ground for such theories. This is what my earning and spending actually looks like for the first week of 2012:

Work: $93.32 on dues, gas, and food
Student Loans: $120
Meal out w/friends on New Years Day: $20
Total Spent: $233.32

Total Earned: $279.38

...So, I ultimately earned less than average as well as less than required to meet my projected needs and spent quite a bit on simply working. I also decided to eat out with friends and make a loan payment. While I technically didn't spend more than I earned, I also don't have much surplus for February rent or my dental appointment in two weeks. Though I am pretty happy with the spending in general, particularly the debt payment.

I'm also just realizing that the first week of the 2012 isn't even over! Yesterday was a no-spend day, though, and maybe I can extend that spirit through the rest of the weekend to keep these figures accurate.

Darling starts his job at Temple on Monday, so next week will look very different. More money spent on work, unfortunately, but more brought home and a better chance of covering a wider variety of expenses (like, say, rent).

New Career Path Involving Dinosaurs and Spaceships

2012-01-06T16:55:00.000-08:00

Had an easy half-day at work today, walked my paycheck to the bank, had a nap, and baked really yummy peanut butter cookies.

My partner is a millwright, so I finally got to ask about what the heck that is. Once upon a time, our local covered both carpenters and millwrights, but there was a split and the latter moved their books to Arlington. They also earn $2 more/hour and supposedly better benefits while working with a similar skill set.

He explained that millwrights work with big machinery, engines and turbines and the like, dealing with the mechanical side of things and more likely to weld than, say, hammer. The do the huge, well-paid turbine jobs I've heard so much about, including wind farms. I totally fell in love with the idea, mostly because I'm crazy and can't help but equate giant machines with dinosaurs (there is no logic to dinosaur love). As an apprentice I could theoretically move my own book and finish my training as a millwright while still working in this area - though I might have to take my classes there and might end up doing some pretty gnarly work with massive energy generators...which to my nerd mind might be like working on a spaceship...

I'd most prefer to do traditional carpentry - wood and hammers and outdoors and houses- and I'd especially like to do renewable building. But that's not an option within the union, which pays me fairly large piles of money for relatively steady work, offers me insurance, and provides me with very cheap training (did I mention I'm taking my first welding classes?!). If I want to do renewable building, it's got to be on my own time anyway. In the meantime, millwrights pay more money for less work and I could learn about engines, a subject matter that interests me so much that I seriously considered paying for auto-mechanic courses at ACC even though I don't especially like cars. I wouldn't have to leave the clean-room industry, but I'd have better opportunity to do so should I desire (which I do). Considering it's either clean-rooms or drywall for carpenters in Austin right now, it seems very sensible to position myself for the welding and energy jobs of the millwrights.

Pay Raise!

2012-01-05T16:42:00.000-08:00

I got a company raise today!

Apprentices at my local get a dollar pay increase every six months. I've been pretty excited about reaching the halfway point, so getting an early boost from my employer is a real treat!

Granted, most of the employees received the same raise as a reward for not complaining too bitterly about only working 3-4 days at a time for the past few weeks. Tomorrow will be the third Friday in a row that most of the crew isn't needed. But then I was one of the two people (not including the foreman, of course) asked to show up tomorrow! Which is pretty impressive, even if it is just because I draw the lowest pay :)

Unfortunately the raise couldn't really counteract the effect of only working three days last week. Today's was the smallest check I've seen since waiting tables. Last month such a figure would have aroused panic: how could I possibly afford my dental appointment, the truck's perpetual thirst, BabyO's birthday, dues, and February's rent?! Since reviewing last year's monthly tabulations, however, I'm okay with the ebb and flow of income and even looking forward to having a Friday off for myself.

Spending Reporrt: 2011

2012-01-04T16:56:00.000-08:00

Airbnb.com? Absolutely amazing! Thanks to Sam and Michele P for the recommendation. There is ONE house in Temple, and it looks perfect :) Definitely following up on that as soon as Darling gets the call that the project is going ahead.

I'm kind of exhausted and pretending to do the dishes just now, but I need to go ahead and posts the results of my 2012 tabulations before I forget. Fortunately, I wrote most of the following several days ago:

My first big surprise was our total income for 2011. Besides May, when Darling and I earned only $538.16, we brought home an average of $1,921.56/month. In October, when Darling and I both worked full time, we earned nearly twice that. That is significantly more than I would have guessed. It was also fairly steady, despite what felt like huge gaps in employment and a total career change.

That's the good news. The bad news is that we spent significantly more than I figured. Every month we swung from deficit to surplus and back again, but ultimately the deficit reigned. All told, we spent $1,179.71 more than we earned.

What did we spend $98 a month on that maybe wasn't totally necessary? Gods. Well, eating out. A lot. It didn't seem like a lot on a weekly basis. Meals with friends, dates with Darling...each hour at the table seeming as lovely and worthwhile as anything. Only now, totaling the yearly bill, do I blush with embarrassment...How much did we spend eating out? An average of $140 a month!

What else could I have curbed? I spent nearly $230 on late and overdraft fees this year. For $19 a month I could have purchased used books or DVDs instead of going to the library and video store (or, dare I say, get that subscription to Netflix I do not want).

I spent $107 on entertainment a month, mostly on gifts and my birthday party. I'll have to keep that in mind in the coming year...All other spending was fairly minimal: a total of $166.84 for office supplies, $308.22 for licenses (particularly Darling's pricey passport renewal), $103.92 on non-work clothing, and $300.48 for non-commute travel.

I spent an average of $351.64/month on debt, $42.39 of which went straight to interest. We spent $81.52/month on health-related expenses, and I spent $2,283.52 on work and work alone. Living at the co-op, where share the cost of the bulk of our groceries and utilities, costs us $11,620.94 (besides the late rent fees).

So, what do we do with all this information?

The really cool thing about last year was how, well, normal it was. Now, quitting multiple crappy jobs, experiencing months of unemployment and uncertainty, and undergoing a drastic career change isn't a daily occurrence in the Softly household, but overall our lifestyle, earning, and spending patters were steady. And that's really what counts. I knew how much we basically needed to pay rent, but not how much we tend to spend on top of that, especially in terms of holiday spending and the like.

With this information I can realistically plan for the future. I have a basic idea of how much Darling and I should bring home a month, despite our fluctuating schedules, and I can make educated choices about expenses. For example, I've always believed that knitting birthday gifts would be too pricey, as yarn is quite expensive. Now I know that if I spent $50 a month on crafts supplies, I'd probably come out ahead (Feel free to announce "I Told You So," in the comments).

There is a lot more I'd like to do with these numbers, including creating weekly goals to shoot for and regular updates - maybe on a Friday? I can come clean on the fifty-million times I've eaten out, you can chide me for being naughty, and I'll brag on sending that same amount (or more) to debt. Oh yeah, did I mention I'm going to use this all as incentive to pay down my debt super fast this year? I'd ask you to wish me luck, but you all have about a dozen times...so, I'll just say it again: Happy New Year and Clean Slate everybody!

Visit in Temple

2012-01-02T16:45:00.000-08:00

Today Darling and I bounced out of bed, had breakfast, and drove up to Temple. This is the location of the mister's upcoming gig, due to start "soon," which we are getting fairly anxious about. We figured driving up there and getting a feel for the place would give us some peace of mind.

The extended stay hotels are not a viable long-term option: they are expensive, unpleasant, and cost about $40/weekday. If Darling starts this week, we'll put him in the nicer (more expensive and convenient) location, but only for a few days. Surely he'll convince someone to accept his carpool request! He's already e-mailed his company and coworkers and posted a ride-share request on Craigslist, so now we don't have much to do but cross our fingers and wait.

January 2012 Net Worth

2012-01-01T11:14:00.000-08:00

I had a really lovely, quiet New Year's Eve Weekend. Friday I caught up with some chores and spent the evening playing board games and enjoying dinner and drinks with friends. Yesterday I made black-eyed peas, creamy potato leek soup, and cranberry muffins and Ambi and Mordi brought over some cider, white wine, and a pumpkin cheesecake. We played a few boardgames and watched the firecrackers set off by the convention center from my garden.

Darling and I chose not to spend for the past two days because I did my monthly tabulations a little early :) I was really amazed by what I found. Basically, we earned way more than I realized: an average of $1,921.56/month. And I have to admit that we spent, on average, $98/month than we earned. Which is a bummer, and I'll give a more full background of where our money went in another post (it's already written, just needs editing), but I want to get my net worth out of the way first.

My net worth is, by the way, a total and complete bummer. My assets total $824.91, and my debt is $10,036.78. That gives me a total net worth of -$9,211.87. I haven't such sorry numbers since 2010...but again, we'll talk about why and how in an upcoming post, as I had friends on their way for lunch.

Hope everyone has a lovely New Year!

Last Work Week of 2011

2011-12-29T18:18:00.000-08:00

Things have improved at work pretty substantially: I think the some of the boys were right ashamed with themselves and the project as a whole has moved on. So far we have had a four day week, a three day week, and can expect a four day week to start off 2012.

I'm enjoying the light load. Monday Darling and I had a great belated Christmas dinner with friends and it was a little bizarre having to pull ourselves away by nine that evening! Weeks ago, we were staying up with the same friends until three or four in the morning. Even though we were in bed by ten that night I was completely knackered at work on Tuesday. It didn't help that Raja and Xy were having a moving-truck-packing party that evening. After eight hours of lifting and moving heavy things I drove to their house and moved heavy things for another four hours. I had to leave before they were totally finished, exhausted and desperate for bed, and it wasn't a good way to say goodbye. They left town before I got out of work the next day.

Wednesday I came home from work and went straight to sleep, so today I felt great! We're kind of knocking out the work faster than they can print out the checks, so for two weeks now my crew worked half days and got paid in full. Which is nice besides the fact that we are working ourselves out of our jobs :) I came home and sort of stared at the stove for a few minutes - yesterday I had just enough energy to make a stir-fry veggie satay before crashing - but ended up crawling back into bed for another four-hour nap instead!

Now I have The Weekend, the last weekend of the year, a decent amount of money, friends to celebrate it with, and no concrete plans. The only flaw on the horizon (besides, perhaps, the sad imaginary specter of Raja and Xy's moving van trundling into the icy distance) is that we still don't know Darling's exact start-date for his next job. But we have four days to figure that out, and a weekend to spend together in the meantime. Who could ask for more?

Merry Christmas

2011-12-26T10:13:00.000-08:00

I've never been a big Christmas spender, primarily because Darling and I never seem to have "extra" around the holidays. This was especially true last year when the restaurant I worked out shut down for the last two weeks of the year, putting a choke-hold on our already tight budget. That was about the same time Darling left his job and had an $800 dental procedure...Some years, the holidays just sort of happen around us.

This year, though, something came over me. It started with the tree debate we have every year, and for the second time Darling and I went down to the lot and brought home a "real" tree. We decked it with the plentiful lights we happen to own from our last holiday splurge (2008?). What's a tree without presents? Out with Raja I saw the perfect gifts for Oblio and Baby-O, a sweet book for my niece in Ohio...and from there on out we spent at will. Eggnog, and a bottle of rum to go with it. A bottle of brandy to make amazingly delicious vegetarian mincemeat pies, a bottle of amaretto for a cheesecake recipe. Two tofurkeys, vegetarian marshmallows for hot chocolate, my beloved seasonal teas. Gifts for Mom, Dad, Stepmom, brothers and sisters, friends and housemates purchased at local shops and the Armadillo Bazaar...I stocked up on Darling's favorite English treats (Jaffa cakes, Ribena, and Hobnobs) and picked up my Mom's fresh Turkish Delight at the Phoenicia Deli.

Darling and I spent the weekend wrapping gifts, sipping Nog, watching our favorite winter films, visiting the massive "tree of lights" at Zilker park, baking and cooking. I cut out Texas-themed sugar cookies and topped them with home-made butter-cream frosting, baked chewy gingerbread men, stewed apples and dried fruit to make the individual mincemeat pies, chopped carrots and onions and potatoes to roast and brewed endless pots of tea. My Mom borrowed our kitchen to bake her sweet potato pudding and produce her "sugar plums:" balls of ground dried dates, apricots, cherries, and sultanas glittery with a dusting of sugar. Darling soaked tvp and mashed potatoes for his cottage pie.

It was all very lovely and also fairly pricey, not to mention very concentrated so far as the season goes: the bulk of the spending, baking, and general merriment occurred in the span of a few days. Obviously, there were better ways I could have gone about the business of celebration: I could have been making gifts all year, or at least buying presents for months instead of days. But I didn't, and I'm pretty happy with how everything turned out. Despite shopping two days before Christmas, there were no crowds or frantic masses in the little local shops. The folks at the craft fair were marking down their wares, and everything was very carefully chosen for each individual.

Despite our spending spree, we're all set for the New Year. January rent was paid weeks ago, so our next big expense should stem from figuring out Darling's commute situation. He should be starting a week from now, and no one is responding to his calls for a carpool. Our worse-case scenario plan is to set him up in a sort of extended stay hotel in the hopes that he'll have better luck talking to people about sharing rides face-to-face.

A Traditional Construction Workplace, and then also The Holidays

2011-12-24T10:24:00.000-08:00

On Monday I started back at the plant, and the atmosphere has been totally different.

My first day seems to have totally set the tone: the night before, I had nightmares about sleeping in, running out of gas, driving the truck into a river, or otherwise not getting to work on time. I woke up every hour, on the hour, lurched across the room, and cursed my alarm clock. It was a relief to finally get dressed at 4:30 in the morning.

The trip to work was perfectly smooth. I arrived early, as usual, but found a completely deserted employee area. Besides a bored security guard on the verge of a nap at the entry point, there was NO ONE. Before, there were dozens of workers of all trades sipping coffee and smoking cigarettes as they waited to start their shifts. It was very eerie waiting twenty minutes before any of my coworkers arrived.

Whereas before I was one of about twenty carpenters, nine of which were apprentices, and one of whom was another woman, this time I was one of nine carpenters, three of whom were apprentices, and the only woman. Filling in the gaps were non-union laborers whom I'd never known, and whom I later learned had been instructed by their ex-union boss to pretend not to speak English (no joke).

The project itself is smaller and more specific and, in some ways, more concentrated on the hard-labor front. I can handle the work fairly easy, so the problem is not that I am weak.. The problem is my strength apparently makes the other (male) workers look bad. By day two the non-union guys were blatantly blocking my way to lift not-so-heavy loads. Which made me angry at everyone. My regular coworkers, for whom I have quite a bit of affection, took the side of their gender rather than backing up their union SISTER. "It's not that you're a girl," one of them said to me, "it's that the guys look bad if you're doing their work." Um, hi, this is a union job, mofo. Why are you concerned about rat labor looking bad?!

For the record, I did stand up for myself, both to my fellow workers and the management, and intend to continue doing so. I'm neither bothered nor surprised by the sexism, per say, but the all-round betrayal by guys who, until now, have been so supportive of me. Also? I hate workplace politics and can't stand the fact that it's followed me into construction.

After work one day, though, my boss gave me a turkey, which was really sweet. He asked me if I needed him to carry it to my car, which was the WRONG thing to do at that point, but it was still very thoughtful. My step-mom was psyched to have the main entree at her Christmas dinner provided.

Fortunately, Thursday night I had class and my fellow apprentices let me vent a little. Four of us went out for a beer and it felt good, very secure and comfortable and easy.

In other news, Darling and I are really enjoying the season. We purchased and decorated a living tree and bought lots of presents for friends and family. We've gone through three quarts of eggnog and watched our favorite winter films: In Bruges and A Christmas Story. I'm going to make mince pies and sugar cookies today and hang out with family this evening and tomorrow. Hope you all are having a wonderful holiday season!

In 2011 I...

2011-12-24T10:01:00.000-08:00

* Tracked my income, spending, hours worked, and Real Hourly Wage every month

* Started the year working at a cafe (earning roughly $600 a month), a coffee shop ($600/month), and cleaning two houses ($270/month)

* Saw my Godson the very night he was born (waiting, somewhat awkwardly, with his family in the waiting room for hours)

* Rode my bike 15 miles to see him again the next day

* Came out of the blogger closet and axed my pseudonym "Tread"

* Discovered, and disputed, a number of black marks on my credit history resulting from my student loans being sold every couple of years (never got a satisfactory response about that)

* Made a go at getting a cell phone, again, and totally regretted it, again.

* Had my first and second fender bender, one of which was my fault

* Quit cleaning one of the houses

* Quit the coffee shop job

* Rode out of Austin on accident, Rode nearly 30 miles across two towns for my birthday, and in fact rode my bike every day for 100 days

* Learned a little about meditation

* Put up shelves in my room

* Baby-sat my Godson every week

* Replaced a part in our washing machine

* Oversaw the purchase of a refrigerator

* Was offered my dream job at a cooperative pub and brewery

* Was forced to spend hours commuting every week to reach my dream job

* Did the co-op shopping via taxi cab, and loved it

* Grew incredibly agitated with the oppression at my "dream" job: endless meetings, politics, dozens of folks in charge who had almost no food services experience...

* Quit that job before finding another

* Lost my sense of taste for a day

* Said goodbye to Darling as he spent six weeks out of town at his first professional solar installation job

* Applied to the carpenter's union on a whim

* Started writing my Dad's life story

* Scrubbed down my stepmother's house while she was out of town

* Was accepted into the union and started taking metal stud framing classes

* Borrowed Mom's truck to get to potential jobs

* Lost my cleaning job, and found myself totally and absolutely unemployed - aside from Darling's support

* Got my first construction job

* Received OSHA 10 certification

* Spent a few days at Occupy Austin

* Survived three lay-offs in one week

* Was laid-off for the first time ever and received unemployment benefits for four weeks

* Went back to work for the same company

* Darling successfully completed his second solar job and was offered his third

* Set up my first work- trade: mixing concrete in exchange for a compound miter saw

* Had an $80 extraction and $400 root canal

Health and Employment Update

2011-12-13T12:36:00.000-08:00

Health Update: Thanks for all the supportive comments and advice on my previous post. I also wrote a sort of ranty-crazy-woman e-mail to Aldra, which also helped a lot. I had another appointment with another practitioner today, for which I was super excited. When making the appointment, the administrator was telling me they would perform a number of tests, including the actual ultrasound needed to confirm the PCOS diagnosis. But at the actual appointment, the actual practitioner basically blew me off. Maybe it was a mistake that I noted on my paperwork that another doctor had diagnosed PCOS, and that I was looking for a second opinion, because this one straight up said, "you don't need a second opinion. PCOS is so vague a diagnosis that it basically encompasses anything that might be wrong with you." She stopped just short of telling me that any examination of me would be a waste of her time. She kept saying that there wasn't anything she could do for PCOS, and I kept saying that I wasn't asking her for a cure, just a diagnostic tactic besides looking at me - particularly since I lack the physical symptoms (abnormal hair growth and excess weight). I even pointed out that there was an ultrasound machine right bloody next to me, and that's all I wanted, some visual confirmation since I lack EVERY OTHER SYMPTOM of this disorder besides not ovulating. She refused, but gave me a list of gynecologists that might give a damn.

On the plus side, they didn't try to charge me for the visit. I also feel a million times better about the doctor I went to last week, who actually listened a number of options and tactics I could take in dealing with my problem. I finally filled the prescription she gave me and am pleased that she'll take the next steps with me in April (more on that in May, I guess).

In the meantime, this is my eighth day without coffee, as well as its companion white sugar. I did bake one batch of cookies and enjoyed a couple with friends on Saturday, and I take a little honey in my Early Grey. I don't think of it as dieting and don't feel all that restricted, probably because my house is full of so many whole foods that there's always plenty of good food for me to eat. I also sort of plan my next "treat:" tomorrow, I drive Darling to San Marcos for a work meeting at a nice little cafe, and my intention is to have a cup of coffee while waiting. Saturday will probably be my weekly baking day because my weekend is very social. I'm not saying goodby to the things I love forever and ever, I just need some time apart :)

Also, how cool is it that I am able to go to a doctor?! And my dental health is imminent. And we paid January rent today! We didn't simply put the money aside, but wrote the check and sent it to the bank. So, really, I have a whole lot to be grateful this holiday season.

Which brings me to the Employment Update: I'm going back to work next Monday! I was called back by the company I worked with in October/November, and this job should last until April. Which means Darling and I will both be earning a steady income in the first quarter of 2012, I will get the hours to qualify for my raise in March, and I will soon qualify for the union health insurance policy. See those ducks all lining up in a row? How pretty is that?

I also discussed with Darling our potential to throw a LOT of money at debt, and he is all for paying at least $1500 a month. This is not something we are taking casually - after all, putting a good deal of money in savings would also be nice, maybe taking a holiday, or something of the sort, but none of this would be as amazingly exhilarating as paying off our debt, and I think that is what will happen. My tentative goal is to be debt free by April, but that would actually cost us $1800 a month. But...if we managed to get our respective carpools set up...

If everything worked perfectly, April could be THE month for us: debt free, totally healthy, car-free, and in charge. Maybe I should find a Santa to sit on...

Hope everyone else is having a productive week-before-Christmas!

PCOS And My Fascist Regime

2011-12-09T10:48:00.000-08:00

Monday I went to a doctor to ask about a chronic issue I've had since "becoming a woman."

The tentative diagnosis was PCOS. It's tentative not only because without relatively expensive blood-work we can't be sure, but because I had some of that blood-work done earlier this year to no effect. Basically, if I have PCOS it's so mild and well-managed that I only have the one symptom of any worry to me. Not that I would love some excess body hair, but it's not the worse thing in the world.

Anyway, I'll be having comprehensive blood-work done in the next couple of weeks to be sure, but I'm already working on my eating habits. Since PCOS is ultimately a matter of insulin resistance, I decided to give up sugar (or the white death, as Darling has recently started calling it). For me, giving up sugar ultimately means giving up coffee. At least three cups of coffee a day, to be honest. So I've been sleepy and drinking endless mugs of hot tea.

Knowing basically nothing about the glycemic index, the first few days I made some educated guesses. No bread, white potatoes, white rice, sugar, honey, or baking. Not too big a deal. Tea with a slice of lemon instead of coffee with sugar in the morning, and experiments with grains and lentils instead of flours and yeast in the kitchen. I'm not going to be too hard on myself, but the desire to be able to have babies one day and not be medicated the rest of my life is very motivational.

Anyway, yesterday I finally googled "glycemic index chart" and was pretty horrified. First of all, many of the charts inevitably begin with a listing of "bad" foods: honey, Snickers bars, jelly beans...The first chart I saw portrayed pound cake at the top of the list, highlighted as a "low" among the baddies. Beetroot, on the other hand, is labeled "high," but there is no indication of what sort of beet and whether or not it is canned. While any of the information on these charts might be technically true, they are laid out in a deceptive fashion. One can not help but to make a mental note, "chips are only 54?," and compare that with the healthier foods, "that's a lower GI than brown rice!" A number of charts highlight empty calorie foods, presumably so people know to...what, ignore it? Avoid the highlighted foods topping the chart? Because that's human nature.

It upset me because this information is supposedly compiled to help diabetics. This is a life or death situation put in the context of a fad diet. So I'm left trying to figure out if my insulin can be controlled, if white rice and yams could be affecting my fertility, or if it's all a net to catch people bored by the Atkins diet.

If I ever happen to lead a fascist regime, one of my many proclamations (along with the ruling that all people must decorate their homes for the winter season, and that no more Christmas movies shall ever be made again ever, and in fact Hollywood as a whole shall be dismantled in its entirety, boxed up, and mailed to thousands of discreet and distant locations around the world to be buried) will be that no for-profit corporation, organization, or individual shall be allowed to ever promote anything as a weight-loss product again. Implying that any product, be it pill, exercise, lifestyle, beverage, or machine, could in any way positively affect one's weight at all will be punishable by...I don't know, you have to help old ladies put up their Christmas lights. Only medical doctors would be licensed to make any profit as a result of diagnosis regarding the correlation between health and weight, and then only on a patient-by-patient basis - no books. (Free speech is still sacred in my fascist regime, so anyone can say whatever they want, but not profit on fear and misinformation).

Why I'm Not Living Within My Means

2011-12-07T09:52:00.000-08:00

For what felt like a long, long time, Darling and I could claim to live within our means. Looking back on that golden era it seems like we did everything right: we did NOT eat out, we worked side jobs for food and debt servicing, we lived in the smallest space anyone would rent a couple, we borrowed cars to drive to the Mennonite bulk store, every single piece of furniture, and some of our food, was rescued from the garbage man...ah, to be young and wise again...Despite our pitiful income, we were able to pay off debt and save like maniacs!

Why were we doing so well with a fraction of our current income, when we can't we get it together here and now? What went wrong?

Nothing. Nothing at all.

I'm finally - FINALLY - coming to terms with the fact that although we did many things right, we were not living within our means.

Living within one's means is often defined as spending less than one earns. Without access to credit, Darling and I had not problem spending less than we earned. After paying rent and bills, there was too little to take to the store. Paying debt online was the least painful way managing the pitiful remnants of my paycheck. Over the course of a couple of years, that amount naturally increased, and we tucked it away out of habit. Which looks good on paper, but misses the finer points.

Those years of hardcore frugality Darling and I never addressed our dental or vision needs. Heck, we didn't even get haircuts for a couple of years! We were paying debt, sure, and even saving a good deal, but investing in personal care was put on a permanent back-burner.

After moving to Austin Darling and I started seeing an optometrist, which is fairly expensive. We also started playing the health insurance game. Someday I'll sit down to do the math for a precise figure, but we definitely spent several thousand dollars on health insurance that saved us, at most, a thousand bucks. But it was a necessary learning experience. In the meantime, actually getting the dental care we needed - with or without insurance - was an incredibly trying undertaking. It took four years to find someone I could trust and afford, and only in the past two years have I actually received any beneficial treatment!

The more we earn, the more capable we are to address such needs, and the more we spend on a monthly basis as we try and repair the damage of previous neglect.

The good news is that we're finally coping with these expenses with the help of neither the credit nor insurance industry. There IS a light at the end of the tunnel, and a realistic limit to our needs. Soon, very soon, Darling and I will be healthy, working, and debt free. Then we can honestly claim to live within our means.

2011 Resolutions

2011-12-06T10:58:00.000-08:00

The resolution I was most excited about this year was my decision not to get into a car. At all.

FAIL.

I drove more this year than ever before. And I hated almost every moment of it. And I had so many bad experiences behind the wheel: getting rear-ended downtown, driving into a manager at work, getting hopelessly lost driving a coworker home, being stuck in traffic for untold hours...All those benefits I thought there would be to having a truck handy? Okay, I was able to give BS rides to gigs, shop for groceries, drop donations off at St. Vincents, and get to and from family gatherings with relative ease. Was it worth it?

No. Not by a long shot.

What about getting to and from work?

Well...I don't know. I just don't know.

Speaking of things I don't know about: Veganism. My focus on this ebbed and flowed depending on what was going on in the rest of my life. I successfully snuck a vegan chocolate-peanut-butter pie to Thanksgiving dinner, found a scrambled tofu recipe I actually like, and went a few days without thinking about eggs or milk. But the mornings I woke up and headed to the plant, I honestly wanted nothing in the world besides a fried egg on buttered toast.

I DID succeed at tabulating my income and expenses every month as described in Your Money or Your Life. And I do intend to actually take the next step of this program in the next week or so. Maybe even today?

I rode my bike every day for 100 days in a row. I rode it to visit Raja and see Oblio on his first day of life, I rode in the rain and sleet, rode it all the way back to Austin from our campground north of Leander, rode home from closing the pub at night, rode to and from doctor appointments, rode along Texas highways and beautiful inner-city bike paths. It was one of the coolest things I did this year, and even if I felt 265 days short of my original goal, I still consider this a success.

So, two wins, two fails, and lots of lessons learned all around. Not bad, really. Anyone else make headway on this year's resolutions?

December Net Worth and Commute Discovery

2011-12-02T08:23:00.000-08:00

Last month I totally didn't report my net worth. It was calculated, accidentally deleted, and then apparently forgotten. Oops.

Rest assured that between the $1,000 loan from my mom, mounting interest on my student loans, and earning roughly $600 in October, November's net worth wasn't pretty. December would probably look good in comparison, though it's still not impressive.

I have $2,783.80 in assets and $10,077.11 in debt, giving me a total net worth of -$7,293.80.

Having earned so much money I've been resisting the urge to make grand proclamations regarding my net worth in the coming months. It seems that Darling and I will both be working and earning more than ever. Darling's new job is especially promising, with the single glaring flaw that it is a 60+ mile drive away.

Up until yesterday the most affordable and reasonable idea I could come up with was to rent Darling a studio apartment within a half-mile from his work-site. Which is still a possibility, but I found a completely phenomenal Plan B yesterday: The CapMetro Vanpoo l.

If 5-12 folks need to get to and from a location at least three days a week, Austin's public transportation office will provide a van for only $60/person a month. Not only does that $60 cover gas, maintenance, insurance, and so on, but the driver is excluded from that fee. Outside the metro area, a $.61/mile fee is applied.

So if only four of Darling's coworkers in Temple are commuting from Austin - which is very likely - the total price per person would be, at most, $390 a month. The driver would pay $360.

That's a hundred dollars less than what Darling and I would pay driving the truck. For someone driving, say, a relatively new Toyota Camry, however, that's about a hundred dollars more - assuming they can find gas at the fairly cheap price of $3.00 or less, which I can't, but the internet assures me is possible. However, if 8 people join the vanpool, it will cost the passengers only $266 each ($206 for the driver), which will be a savings for anyone getting less than 31 mpg. If the maximum 12 people join the carpool, which strikes me as a reasonable expectation, riders will pay a maximum of $197.50 a month!

Again, this is an estimation. I actually think the daily price will be slightly less, and on Monday I'll talk with the capmetro office to determine more precise figures. I also think it's reasonable to expect the price of gas to increase in the next six months, and also inevitable traffic is going to decrease everyone's mpg drastically. I also came to my total cost by counting the work days in January. Most months seem to have twenty-one work days, a couple have twenty-three, which will add a little variation to monthly cost, but not savings.

Other benefits include a free monthly bus pass for each rider, normally $20, and a certain number of emergency cab vouchers to prevent members from being stranded. The driver, as well as getting the $60 discount, can also get discounts on personal car insurance discounts and other perks, such as using the van to run errands during the day. Also, there are the untold benefits of simply not needing one's car every day: no missing work due to a failed transmission, flat tire, empty gas tank, or the other inevitable results of driving 18,000 miles in six months.

Frankly, I can't believe Darling's future co-workers wouldn't jump at this opportunity! If so, we'll save SO much money!

What's more is that my coworkers could do the same thing, and since we won't be leaving Austin it will only cost us $60/month total! If Darling is Vanpooling to Temple and I vanpool to the plant, our travel costs will be $450 for the entire month. That's quite a bit of money, but half of what it would cost for Darling to rent a small apartment and visit on weekends.

Of course, there are other options. Hopefully even if we can't find enough people to vanpool someone with a small car will offer Darling rides, and the same goes for me at the plant. That could be even cheaper, but without the safety nets offered by the metro. Also, I just love the idea of convincing twenty-two other drivers to leave their cars at home!

The Cost Of Work

2011-12-01T08:05:00.000-08:00

Tabulating my income, expenses, and Real Hourly Wage was more complicated in November than ever before. Even when I was balancing cleaning houses, waiting tables, and serving coffee, tracking hours and tips was a more manageable ordeal. Darling was a champ, of course, tracking his time on the job, getting to work, getting home, and money spent on bus tickets. Compiling all the information in a way that makes sense is the challenge. The more I categorize our spending, the more detailed it becomes. Early next year I might post our January 2011 tabulations next to our December tabulations so you can see what I mean. What originally took 68 lines on a spreadsheet now spans 163, to give you a clue of how much intricacy my personal "budget" has developed in only ten months.

We earned a lot of money in November. Easily twice as much as we've earned in previous "good months." That helped make up for the fact that, besides a massive loan from Mom, we made less than $600 in October. Swings and roundabouts, as my beloved says. That enabled us to pay October and November's rent, purchase three tofurkeys to share at the family dinner, devote $400 to my teeth, and mail off $260 for Darling's passport renewal. Any one of these expenses would have been a challenge to us in recent history. We also paid off two months of Darling's phone bill and two months of my union dues at once, simply because we felt like it. Also, we very nearly have the cash to pay rent in full. We should have it all, and probably will by the time a housemate gets to the bank next week, but it's still kind of a bummer to be a hundred bucks short.

In fact, let's talk about the bummer elements of last month's spending: only $300 to my student loan company, which is a lot, but not enough considering I haven't paid anything in months (fortunately I don't have to worry about late fees - I could probably miss a year's worth of payments before they start charging those). Also, I was planning on having $600 worth of work done on my teeth, not just $400. I shouldn't have had to choose between that and making rent considering Mom loaned me the tooth money last month.

So...where did we go wrong, financially speaking? Our food and eating out expenses were normal - despite the tofurkeys and buying my family dinner. Our entertainment budget included one item, a $21 gift I absolutely had to buy for my niece. We spent less on booze than last month, which wasn't difficult, but still...No, the culprit was not among the usual suspects. One category of spending towered above the rest, ominous and disturbing and infuriating all at once: Work Expenses.

Holy Home Depot, Batman. We spent a lot of money to work. Naturally I wanted to blame Darling, who spent three times as much on tools as I did. Plus, his cell phone is a work expense - we don't give the number to friends or family at all. But I spent a little more than he did to work. Gas for the truck cost us over $200, and my union dues take another bite out of the bank balance.

Despite all this, Darling and my combined Real Hourly Wage (Income - Work-Related Expenses / Hour Worked and Commute time) is still very reasonable. Not so much as when I was cleaning and waiting tables, which cost me almost nothing, but still reasonable considering how steady the hours are.

Have you ever tracked the time and money you've spent on work? Taking into account the coffee you need to get through the morning (especially if you stop at a shop, unable to take time to brew at home), the professional shoes, the second reliable vehicle so your significant can get to work, childcare, hours spent tweaking the resume, days spent in traffic, drinks with coworkers, time and money devoted to training...Have you ever really seriously thought about how much you pay to work? If not, try it for a few months, let me know what you find :)

Dental Update and Happy Story

2011-11-30T17:24:00.000-08:00

I just came back from the first part of my root canal! My face feels like it's on fire, but I'm so pleased to have taken yet another big step towards dental health :)

I'll be completing the procedure, cap and all, mid-January. Then I think there's just one more molar that needs expensive work: that which had a root canal last year but wasn't left with enough exposed crown to cap. They'll remove a bit of my gum line to finish the job, which should be an appropriately pleasant way to wrap up a series of pleasant procedures. Then it's just a matter of filling in a few cavities and I will be finished, possibly by my birthday. I couldn't ask for anything more precious.

Before my root canal I rode the bus downtown to make a couple of bank deposits. Waiting at the stop to get home, a handful of under-and-unemployed folks greeted a new comer, who proceeded to share an amazing story. He was at Occupy Austin playing his guitar when a woman approached him. She asked if he believed in Jesus, and he said yes. She asked him what it would take to get his life together, and he responded, "transportation and money."

"Get on Craigslist," she said, "and find transportation."

He found a vehicle priced at $6,000. She bought it for him, apparently on the spot. Then she asked how much money he thought he needed. He figured that to get an apartment, pay the first and last month deposit, buy some work clothes, and enough food to get through a few months, he would need $5,000.

She handed him a cashiers check.

Then she left. I don't know how she bought a car and registered it in his name, or how long it took this all to transpire, but she didn't even tell this guy her name. She just handed over $11,000 and walked away. She didn't know him from Adam, but pretty much completely changed his life. Not only with a financial favor, not only by providing him with the chance to shower and eat and show up to interviews looking respectable, but this guy was rocked to his core. Her kindness made him want to be kind, to be a better person because he couldn't stand the idea of wasting this wonderful stranger's small fortune.

Maybe someday soon I can find a way to be that kind to a stranger...

Saying Goodbye To Raja and Xy

2011-11-28T08:34:00.000-08:00

Raja told me yesterday that she, Xy, and baby Oblio are moving to Minnesota. In January. In fact, I think they plan to leave on or by the first.

I've been accused - by Raja herself, actually - of being hypocritical regarding my friends' choices to travel and relocate. During my late teens and early twenties, "home" was a very casual concept for me. I up and left apartments, cities, and communities with neither thought nor care. God forbid my friends even move across town, though, where I'll never see them again.

I think moving from Virginia to Texas was the rude awakening. I experienced acute and desperate homesickness that makes me hesitate to once more tear up my roots. I even suspect that yesterday's essay on cooperative living reflects my fear of inevitable departure more than anything else. So finding out that one of my best friends is up and leaving in four weeks just kind of makes me feel numb all over.

I can relate, of course, with the urge to pull up stakes and reinvent myself across the country. Darling and I talk about it a lot - not in an icy tundra, of course - but, y'know, somewhere. Heck, I can't even really deny the logic of simply joining Darling in Temple for 2012. Especially now the godbaby is out of the picture...

The Benefits of Cooperative Living

2011-11-27T10:42:00.000-08:00

Last night the house hosted a potluck and clothing swap. I got to stuff myself silly with pie and found two "new" shirts. My cousin-in-law K attended, which was very cool. She's going back to college and trying to move out of her family home and I had a very, very hard time not spewing cooperative propaganda. I kept catching myself, not meaning to preach but strangely overwhelmed by my own enthusiasm.

I didn't realize just how in love with this lifestyle I am before last night, when the benefits had to be described in hard numbers and casual ease. "The rents is so low," I said, "and we have procedures to handle any social issues that arise." It was like describing the benefits of marriage in terms of filing taxes and acquiring health insurance. The finances are the most shallow and celebrated nature of cooperative living. In the meantime, the friendships, support, and challenges are immeasurably more valuable and almost impossible to talk about. Especially the challenges, which have made me a better, stronger, and more loving person than I could have imagined. The challenges that have pushed Darling and me to experience our marriage as the intricate institution that it is, to tear it down and rebuild it as constantly as we ourselves are forced to evolve.

It never gets easier. Marriage, friendships, family...the same B.S. rears its ugly head time and time again, year after year, generation after generation. Many of our behaviors are learned, others seem hopelessly embedded in our DNA. I walk in the shadow of Bipolar Disorder and Alcoholism, the twin guardsmen of my family's genetic down-spiral. Do you know how that comes into play in terms of social cooperation?

The successful group environment demands the best of us, all the time, there's no room for the micro-biological in terms of running a household or business or family. Not to suggest we don't face those obstacles, quite the contrary. Our housemates get depressed, overwhelmed, heartbroken, and fall off their personal wagons every week. They lose jobs and family members and sometimes their dignity. But they are never left to languish, never allowed to backtrack too far. As a group, we focus on moving forward becoming better. The building blocks of health - a moderately clean home, wholesome groceries, heat and hot water - are consistently available. Someone is always available to listen, someone who knows and cares about you. Spend a week in bed, or partying too hard, or whatever. But next week? You have to get the groceries. You have to make the meetings. You have to be the shoulder to cry on, make the tea, hunt down a bottle of Asprin...Also? We have to paint the house, fix the fridge, haul out the trash, plant the garlic, hold a yard sale, stop by Habitat for Humanity, plan a fundraiser, and rework the budget.

Those learned habits and behaviors? We overcome them. Over time, we discover the difference between who we are and who we choose to be. We learn that doing the dishes, by hand, after every meal is so easy that dishwashers are a laughable invention, even for a household of nine. We learn that replacing the motor in a washing machine is easy even if we're not "handy." We learn that certain tones of voice aren't necessary to make our point, then we question what makes us angry and why. We learn that cooking isn't such a mystery after all, we learn how to ask for help, we learn how to listen.

We change for the better. So maybe the next bad week won't be quite as devastating as the last.

Not every housing co-op is for every person. There are many, many dysfunctional group living situations - Darling and I have both lived in several. Our own house has been through some very rough times and perhaps wasn't the most nourishing place to live at one time or another. But the reward of looking, working, and honestly trying to build a group home is indefinable. I wish I could give it to every young adult and every mature senior who feels alone and unappreciated, everyone who has something to learn and something to teach, every couple who lacks the family context necessary to thrive. Hopefully that's where our world is heading towards, a revival of large families and tight-knit communities, a replacement of the "independent" man with the empowered individual. Hopefully I get to be a part of that for the rest of my life.

Work Trade Learning Experience

2011-11-26T14:58:00.000-08:00

Last week I met someone who referred to himself as a carpenter. Despite being a union apprentice and slowly/surely developing my power-tool prowess, I can't quite bring myself to claim the title. To be quite honest, building clean rooms is so sterile and standardized that it doesn't quite feel like carpentry. The carpenters who live in my mind's eye are rough and wind-blown and almost as dirty as farmers.

Anyway, this carpenter whom I happened to meet over a game of Scrabble (because I live in an after-school program, apparently), mentioned that that he has a compound miter saw he's looking to sell. I can count the number of power tools I've used on one hand, but it just so happens that a compound miter saw is one of them. I ask him about his price, mentioning that I've been sniffing around that area of employment. Then I dropped the matter, as my rule regarding tools is that if I'm not using it for an immediate job or in class, I probably don't need one.

A while later he brought it up again and I suggested a work trade. It just so happened that he needed help with a project at his house - just down the road from mine - and would trade the saw for a few hours of my time.

Not knowing what to expect, I showed up at his house Wednesday at noon. I was totally amazed at what I found. His house, located on a typical spacious South Austin Lot, is a three-story straw-bale structure. I've never seen anything like it.

He and another worker were already constructing a massive rain barrel out of cement and wire mesh. He taught me to mix cement in correct proportions and consistency and later showed me how his rainwater system worked. It was all very educational and not very difficult at all, the sort of thing many people would pay to attend a workshop on.

I should be heading back to finish the job in a few weeks and bring home my saw, which isn't a fraction as valuable to me as the learning experience. This guy is doing pretty much exactly what I want to learn! I can't wait to find out what other projects he might let me in on :)

Thanksgiving Report, 2012

2011-11-25T11:25:00.000-08:00

Darling and I spent yet another Thanksgiving at my brother and sister-in-laws house. They are so sweet: they have four generations of her family, my Mom, Dad, Aunt, and Uncle, and two or three extra families over for dinner. There was so much food and booze and merriment. I'm more impressed every year :)

That said, Darling and I are definitely doing something different next Thanksgiving. I didn't even realize that this year was a carbon copy of 2010 until reviewing my Thanksgiving Blog posts. Darling and I even house-sat for my stepmother! And while I love my family, there are unfortunate patterns forming. I'm thinking that we'll either host a vegetarian Thanksgiving feast at the co-op or head to VA to spend the holiday with Darling's sister and brother-in-law.

Now, to start thinking about Christmas...

What I'm Thankful For:

2011-11-24T12:22:00.000-08:00

A chocolate-peanut butter pie, a vegan gravy, and three tofurkeys to take to the family dinner. All thrown together after helping Mom roll out her beloved sugarplums and before picking my Dad-plus-one from his place.

And five minutes left in between for some quiet coffee time.

Change, Multi-Fold

2011-11-22T08:38:00.000-08:00

Darling got hired for his next gig! And it's the Big One.

For all of two weeks it looked like solar install jobs were falling out of the sky. Then it looked like they were all no-gos, job interviews and the like being postponed for weeks for one reason or another. Because most gigs only last a couple of months, there's a sort of anxiety about planning ahead to avoid downtime. That all said, Mr. Softly has kept himself roof-side but was just about to grow anxious about "what's next?" I was even just about to wonder if we should consider a permanent relocation to a city more in need of installers than Austin, which probably churns out hundreds a year, when Darling announced his most recent and impressive employment to date.

I've mentioned the Temple job before. It's something of a breakthrough for Darling. It's a six-month position starting early January, which will take our minds off "what's next" for the time being and also look phenomenal on a resume. The pay is excellent. And, most important, the corporation operatives internationally, which means travel and possibly consistent work. In fact, they've already contacted him about possibly doing a brief (weekend) stint in Utah next month.

Naturally, I have a lot of basic concerns. Such as, How the heck are we going to handle Darling working an hour-and-a-half drive away for six months? I am obviously not happy about that. The commute is inconceivable: three hours on the road and gas will eat up the better part of his income, and leave me without the truck to get to any work I might be offered (and I should be back at the plant mid-December). I already mentioned our plan to rent him a studio apartment next to his work site, and have used google maps to locate one that looks perfect and fits the cheaper-than-gas budget, but it's still a bummer to be renting my husband an apartment so far away from me.

Part of me wants to find someone to sublet our room at the co-op, pack out belongings, and spend the bulk of 2012 in the little TX town together. The fact that Darling and I haven't even discussed that possibility says a LOT about how much we've changed in the past couple of years. Not only does leaving the house seem totally inconceivable - not while I'm on the board of directors - but so does abandoning my fledgling apprenticeship at the union, which is what moving so far away would amount to. Also, could I stand to be away from my friends and family for so long?

I'm not saying that option is totally out of the question, but in the not-very-distant past we would have jumped at the chance to totally re-work our entire lives, just for the experience. I certainly wouldn't have let a job get in my way, much less the suggestion of a job!

The Price of Catching Up

2011-11-21T09:34:00.000-08:00

Last week I worked a total of twenty-five hours, four of which were over-time and two of double-time, which gave us a nice little financial boost.Which I was really surprised to discover we needed...Darling and I have been working like crazy and earning good money, where the heck did it all go?!

Sure, I've purchased the occasional breakfast taco. But so far this month I've only put gas in the truck twice and haven't socially boozed since Halloween. Then again, we did spend a LOT of money on tools. I went back and forth like this until I found the culprit lurking, not in my daily expense records, but my checkbook. What set us so far behind?

Catching up.

On rent, that is. Darling and I haven't paid the house on time since April. It got so bad that we didn't pay October rent at all until November, at which point I wrote a check covering both months and setting us straight with the house (it's amazing what people will put up with when you provide a steady flow of baked goods). Now, for the first time in at least a year, we're looking to have next month's rent saved before, you know, next month. That means that from November 3rd to December 3rd we'll have paid rent three times! Which explains my struggle to also make a student loan payment, get my violin out of hoc, cover next week's root canal, and pay Mom back.

So...welcome to Scrubland, Ms. Softly, where paying rent on time is an actual milestone. Yet somehow not enough of one that it doesn't register on your financial "to-do" list and shows up, instead, as a mysterious cash shortage!

The good news is that I've been tracking my spending, and monitoring my bank account, avoiding more devastating mistakes. Some of the money we frittered away was making a double payment on Darling's cell phone as well as my union dues. And there's no doubt that I'll be in that dentist chair nine days from now.

Back on The Ball

2011-11-16T07:22:00.000-08:00

I got called back in to work for the rest of the week starting this afternoon!

It's almost a pain to be called back in for just three and a half days, especially considering how much I've been getting done around the house. Yesterday I washed and folded the laundry, planted leeks and beans in the (light) rain, filed for unemployment, made a student loan payment that knocked the total down to less than $9K, worked on a quilt, and made cream of tomato soup and fresh baked focaccia for dinner. I've been kicking my to-do list's butt, but I still have lots of co-op admin to finish up, some shopping to pick up, and credit union account to open.

At one point yesterday, BS walked into the kitchen to see me poring over two cookbooks at once, knees still dirty from the garden, and said, "you seem to like not working." True, in its way. Really, I like working quite a bit. It's a big relief to earn a little extra this month - the loan payment was made on a whim, and I still have that root canal on the thirtieth.

Of course come Sunday I'll be back to my own devices, which means I can lay claim to the best of both worlds: earning a living wage, overtime, and double-time some weeks, then back to the kitchen to bake casseroles and coddle a sourdough starter other weeks.

When It Rains, It Storms

2011-11-15T08:15:00.000-08:00

I was woken up by a massive thunderclap this morning, the first I've heard in at least six months! Good thing I got most of my running-around chores taken care of yesterday. I had to deposit some checks and buy a couple of money orders, take them to the post office and mail off Darling's passport renewal application, and get to the library to pay a fine from months ago and get a shiny new book :) My evening was spent making a veggie soup and baking a pumpkin pie to be obliterated by the house during our meeting...but that's not got much to do with the weather.

Yesterday, it might be noted, the beautiful weather affected me quite a bit more than in recent weeks because my transport was the city bus. And don't you know that I missed it like crazy?! I'm not even joking. It's so fantastic to sit down, open a book, chill for fifteen minutes, and hop off at the doorstop of my downtown location. The metro is by and far the most ingenious application of petroleum products, excepting perhaps those used in hospital settings to save especially sweet babies. I can't believe how many folks complain about the crazies on the bus, which do exist but have only ever made me fear for my safety once or twice in roughly five years of constant use. The crazies on the highway make me fear for my life once or twice every five minutes.

Today I have indoor chores to attack:

* Laundry
* File for unemployment
* Hunt down and organize paperwork necessary to file unemployment
* Confirm my out-of-work status with union
* Co-op Administrative Tasks; reporting on minutes of last board meetings and such
* Contact plumber re. leaky bathtub
* Make sure Darling has hot dinner waiting for him when he gets home from work.

*** And, if there is time, start that quilt with the fabric I've been collecting, re-start the sock I've been working on for years now, finish the scarf from two Christmases ago, mend Darling's quilt, work on Dad's project, or clean the closet.

Car-Free Commuting

2011-11-14T09:03:00.000-08:00

Mom decided not to come into town yesterday, so the car matter has been left to rest for another day. It's a complicated an emotional issue, so I need as much time to contemplate as possible. Tomorrow I'm heading to her house to help clean out behind her fireplace, take her trash to the dump, and so on, and that might give us both fresh perspective.

In the meantime, Darling is the conquering hero regarding car-free construction work. He has been taking to bus to his job on the UT campus. Students, of course, take this for granted. Ambi, who lives in Leander and takes the train to her job and graduate classes, couldn't believe Darling's coworkers face that parking fiasco every morning.

One of our big concerns has been a six-month job up in Temple Darling has been vying for. We had a difficult enough time getting him as far as Georgetown last week. The work pays well, 50% more than the West Texas gig, but no per diem and no arranged housing leaves us looking at a daily hour-and-a-half commute one-way.

After substantial debate we agreed that it might be worth our while to rent Darling a small apartment in the neighborhood, per diem or no, if we could find something affordable and within a mile of the downtown work-site. Rent, utilities, and groceries would have to be less expensive than the cost of putting gas in the truck to get there and back. Fortunately, our house gives us a discount on our own rent when we are out of town, so that adds another hundred bucks to the out-of-town budget.

We assumed that motels and extended-stay hotels would be the way to go, but $500-$700 monthly prices in seedy-looking buildings (thank you google maps!) put an end to that line of thought. Apartments weren't looking much more promising: most were across the highway, a feature I didn't want Darling coping with every morning by bike. Even a mile-and-a-half commute is too far, in my opinion, if a road looks too sketchy. One or two promising looking places were disqualified by angry sounding headers on websites warning of $30 non-refundable application fees and demanding proof of employment and income. Three or four places were disqualified by really negative reviews via yahoo and yelp - I've had enough horrible landlord experiences not to flirt with the devil this time around. No one who wanted to advertise prices online was renting for less than $450 a month.

I was just about to give up when I actually stumbled upon an apartment complex roughly half a mile from the job renting studio apartments for for $375 a month including utilities! We checked the place out on google maps and a few other sites and it seems to be in a clean, safe area featuring quiet roads and sidewalks. He could be at work in five minutes, stock the fridge and pantries with his beloved pasta, oatmeal, rice, and beans, and still bring home more money than he could earn in town with a more stable job than we could expect to find elsewhere.

I'm hugely relieved. Darling hasn't been offered the job yet, but at least I can stop obsessing about the ifs ands and buts until we find out. If we don't have access to the truck weeks from now I can get a zip car membership to drive him up there and visit every weekend. If I do have a truck, there's no doubt that I'll be working myself while he's out of town...though I should follow my husband's lead, man up, and figure out the car-free solution to my own commuting challenges.

Sorry I've been too lazy to really post relevant pictures this week - enjoy one of me and BabyO from early last year!

Car Oblivian

2011-11-12T06:19:00.000-08:00

Much of my lifestyle is the result of not owning a car. When Darling and I first moved back to Austin, we enlisted the help of an apartment hunter who urged us towards the affordable houses far north. Explaining our need to get downtown easily in order to work, she argued, "you don't even know where you'll be working yet!"

Maybe so, but we could guess that it wouldn't be in the suburban wasteland. Sure enough, we found a lovely urban apartment with countless employment opportunities within easy walking distance. What we lost to slightly higher rent we more than saved by avoiding the expensive nuisances of car-ownership. We saved even more money by moving into a community-minded apartment a year later, and did even better by moving into our co-op in 2009. For a few years every move and job change closed the the gap between where I lived and worked, up to the point that I could roll out of bed, brush my hair, and leisurely walk to my job down the street in about fifteen minutes.

Pair that with not needing to own a personal phone, a thrift store wardrobe, and sharing the cost of groceries with a house full of bean and rice enthusiasts, and I had this frugality thing down. All because Darling and I didn't want to own a car.

This morning I'm with Oblio, and for three glorious hours he has napped while I stared at the screen, written, deleted, written and deleted still more. I've juggled my emotions and rationalizations, rocking his portable seat all the while with my big toe to encourage his oblivion. This can't possibly last much longer. It seems we all have to wake up eventually. At least, that was meant to be the topic of this post.

I want to be a carpenter. I want to travel the United States and help others redefine home and community, sustainability and sufficiency. I want to arm myself with a hammer and wisdom, optimism and idealism. The first step was to go to the union, meet my new brothers (and many whom I can't help but think of as uncles), and master a trade in the most noble way possible. But the second step...the second step was to work out the transportation issue. I borrowed Mom's truck. I dinged Mom's truck. I filled Mom's truck with gas. And finally, Mom is saying that she wants her truck back, but more importantly, she wants to help me buy a car. Buy me a car. Whatever. So I can work, accomplish my goals. Maybe grow up. Wake up.

But I don't want to.

The only thing that hasn't been absolutely phenomenal about the past month was my dependence on the truck, the constant bondage, the weakening of spirit and flesh associated with the big toy-turned-tool. I sat down this morning with the intention of explaining myself, justify myself, but there's nothing to rationalize. I detest automobiles. I think the world would be better off without them and it's hard to envision my ongoing happiness tied to a death-trap on wheels.

...Which leaves me with choices to make, conversations to have, and maybe some disappointment. I don't know. Mom's coming to town on Sunday. Something will have to be decided.

Apprenticeship

2011-11-11T11:34:00.000-08:00

"It's fatal to forget the minority element - fatal to treat brawn as if there were no brains, and perhaps more fatal to treat brains as if there were no brawn."
- B.F. Skinner, Walden Two

"In 1965, there were a lot more jobs that involved real physical effort, whereas these days, a lot of people turning 65, the physical effort is getting out of their desk chair at 5 o'clock."
-Dr. Joe Antos, Interview with Morning Edition

A few years ago, my brother-in-law's young nephew saw road construction in progress. Fascinated by the heavy machinery, he announced his intention to "dig holes" when he grew up. His father, apparently unimpressed by youthful innocence, argued, "No, when you grow up you want to tell those men to dig holes."

When that little bit of family mythology transitioned from his family to mine, it took on a completely different meaning. For the Ho's, a collection of lawyers, doctors, and engineers, it illustrates their devotion to bigger and greater aspirations. For the Softly clan of dreamers and slackers, however, it represents an arrogance bordering on criminality. How dare anyone disdain the hard work that has built our country?

Here's the thing: we need roads. Both the Hos and the Softlys and everyone in between. Here in Texas we got some foreign folks to finance some toll roads, and that worked well enough, but sending them our money to let us drive 80 mph isn't a long-term solution to Austin's traffic problems. Even then, those roads were built in the United States by citizens. We also need buildings that aren't incredibly convenient to have built overseas for pennies on the dollar. And our mining? So much as we dig in Africa, it's not getting coal out of Appalachia. Whatever your feelings on immigration, unions, or the WTO, the fact remains that there is still back-breaking labor to be done in America if we still wish to maintain our way of life.

Someone has to do that work. And the majority of them are Americans. The majority of us understand that, in theory, but can't quite appreciate the matter for what it is. We both distrust and romanticize the workers: they are undereducated and poor, noble and likely felons, the foundation of our economy and probably illegal immigrants.

Deciding to be a carpenter drew a varied response from friends and family. I now understand that I might as well have announced myself a cobbler. We know that someone, somewhere makes shoes, but not in our neighborhood. White educated folks just don't do that sort of thing anymore. Better to be a writer, administrator, or counselor, to work with information rather than material. The reality of modern carpentry drew even more concern: clean rooms? Whatever happened, to, like, straw bale construction? Friends who would go mental without products produced by my plant seemed slightly appalled, "that's not good for the environment!" As though owning the product was the result of strange luck and happenstance, totally forgivable, but not building the space where the production (and resulting pollution) occurs. It's strangely similar to hearing carnivores explain why they eat meat (and so should I), although they have never participated in taking the life of an animal for food (as I have.)

Some of my supporters could care less about the big picture and social intricacies. They simply seem disappointed that I have not transitioned over-night to an independent contractor, pickup truck heavy with tools as I cross America constructing sustainable homes and repairing mid-century villas. Believe it or not, I'm right there with you. But there's more to apprenticeship than strapping on a tool-belt.

This is a four year program that the trade takes as seriously as college. Unlike most institutions of higher learning, however, this pragmatic bunch believes in making workers rather than paupers out of its students. We learn and earn. My classroom is at the union hall, where I am lectured and inspired by dozens of men on the mechanics of power tools and the ten-million proper ways of handling metal snips. My tuition, however, is committing myself to the employers who support the union. Not an unpaid internship, which is the best and most ridiculous experience most college students can hope for, but any living-wage full-time job the hall does its damnedest to wrangle us. Such as clean room construction.

The classrooms are small and students are limited by the number of jobs available. The staff is small and highly experienced. The material is based on skills we need for upcoming jobs. The community is ultimately devoted to the apprentices, to their next generation, and the environment is nurturing and no-nonsense. There are no rose-tinted safety glasses. It is the most sensible educational experience I have ever dreamed of.

Someday soon I will drive that dusty (bio-fuel) pickup down the road of tomorrow, retro-fitting America for it's sustainable future. In the meantime, I will always be a writer, always an organizer of thoughts and seeker of knowledge. Feel free to tell me one is more worthwhile than the other, but learning one is not to the detriment of the other.

L-A-I-D-O-F-T

2011-11-10T14:24:00.000-08:00

Project wrapped up early enough today for me to miss traffic altogether. Stopped by Walgreens to buy Darling a six pack of Snicker bars for his lunch and ended up snarfing a package of chocolate-covered cherries, bag of chips, and can of Arizona tea. So you can imagine how I feel now.

Took a long bath, poured myself a cup of coffee, and recorded my pay stubs (and junk food binge) in my planner. Wish I could just crash out, but class is tonight. Tomorrow I will apply for unemployment, do laundry, make Darling's breakfast and dinner, and pick up around the bedroom. Heck, I might even sleep in until five in the morning :)

Holistic Satisfaction

2011-11-09T16:40:00.000-08:00

Comments on my last post have inspired me to write about crafts, trades, unions, and careers. But I'm not gonna. At least, not today.

Why? Well, I didn't publish the post Monday because I visited my brother's house on my way home from work, where my baby niece called me "Aunt Maya" for the first time and caused me to almost be late for the house meeting at which we voted in our newest resident. I would have written the post yesterday after work, but Darling and I had a quiet evening together instead - no computers :) Today I obviously have some Internet time, but it is limited. Immediately after getting home from work today I tried out a recipe for almond soup, chatted with housemates over coffee, and spoke on the phone with my mom until Darling came home from his own busy day.

This isn't a "why I'm not posting" post, though. I tell you all this to make the point that very, very little of my self-worth, identity, or even energy is devoted to my current paid employment. My life is filled not only by 40+ hours of manual labor, traffic, and union meetings, but with board games and baking, babies and best friends. My life is richer than ever, regardless of my career. Which in itself makes my career even more satisfying!

Not to say that the post on trades, what's "cool" in American employment, blue collar vs. customer service, etc. isn't coming...Just not today <3

Satisfaction

2011-11-06T10:37:00.000-08:00

It doesn't seem that many of us take enough time to be satisfied.

We are constantly hurrying from one task, chore, or errand to the next. Another goal is constantly looming on the horizon, the rungs on the ladder of life seem never ending. The corporate world is especially guilty of this particular crime against humanity: promotions are endless, lay-offs are constant, all ceilings are glass, and even CEO's are rushed to "improve" year after year, corruption after corruption.

Planned obsolescence brings the rat race into our homes, tucked into our pockets. Cell phones, computers, entertainment centers and the like degrade faster than their immortal plastic casings ought to allow, pushing us to spend more and more on the gadgets we "need." Cars and trucks, diets, language, and career opportunities seem to evolve at an ever-accelerating pace, there is no such thing as keeping up.

Tabulating my earning, spending, and real hourly wage for October invoked an unexpected reaction.I flipped through my planner back to June, when I was working 35-40 hours a week and commuting another ten, spending at least $45 a month on transportation. Back then, I was miserable with that level of dedication to my job, to the stress of constant meetings and struggle and conflict and exhaustion. I was frustrated to watch my real hourly wage decrease along with my time and energy. Ultimately, I quit working cold turkey, too overwhelmed to even job hunt for weeks afterwards.

The last week of last month, however, I worked sixty hours. Add my commute, at least four hours at class a week, and a couple of hours wind-down time to cope with the physical exhaustion after work, and I spend between 70 and 80 hours a week on my new trade. Take into account putting gas in the truck, buying new tools, and shredding my second-hand jeans, and my real hourly wage doesn't look stellar. Technically, it looks like I still earn less per hour than when I was waiting tables.

Yet I feel absolutely great. Not because the principles or ethos of my job are buoying my flagging spirit, but because I actually come home from work feeling basically satisfied. I'm tired, often very tired, but not emotionally or intellectually. I can take a shower, grab a book, eat dinner, and fall asleep in the early evening feeling good about my day.

The money helps. Thanks to the union, my daily ninth hour of work is paid at time-and-a-half overtime rate. On Saturday - and I've only worked one out of three - I earned overtime all day. And that Sunday spent at work was double-time. My paycheck trumps any I've ever received, and I can expect a raise every six months until I earn 90% more in four year's time. Yet I honestly don't think that my happy mood is simply a payday high.

I'm satisfied. Satisfied building my knowledge base, adding a collection of certifications to my resume every month, making friends, working with my hands, observing a room that was nothing but exposed pipes and wires become something complete and perfect. I like listening to political radio in the morning, being hungry by lunchtime, and sleeping deeply at night. I'll admit that building clean rooms is not my ideal, and my social circle was much more supportive of my pouring drafts at a cooperatively-owned, socially-conscious company of hipsters. But there is something even more deeply satisfying about that, having stumbled into a culture and lifestyle as alien to me as that of another country.

A Day In The Life

2011-11-05T07:11:00.000-07:00

I wake up at 4:30 in the morning. Accomplishing this involves a series of mind games: I set the alarm for 4:30, but it's a good fifteen minutes fast. I hit snooze twice, but snooze on my alarm does not seem to be consistent. Every once in a while I hit snooze only once, other mornings a third time. By the time the clock says 4:45, however, I am dressing.

My personal dress-code at work is more complicated than that of the menfolk. The guys can role out of bed and pull on whatever rags they've been wearing for the past week, but I prepare myself for scrutiny.I pull on jeans, none of which fit anymore since I bought them all just after last Christmas and have since dropped two sizes. I tuck in a shirt, carefully seeking one that is not too revealing, featuring any words or images that might be misconstrued or need explaining, or have holes. Of course I wear steel-toed boots and proper PPE, and my hair requires extra attention to cope with the hard hat all day.

Downstairs I start coffee first, heating the cast iron skillet as it brews. When the skillet is hot and the butter begins to brown, I crack in an egg, rush to put on my toast, and let both cook as I add too much sugar and cream to my morning beverage. I eat standing up and preparing lunch. The first week I made sandwich wraps with whole wheat tortillas, grated beets, peeled carrots, spinach, and dressing. The second week I steamed veggies and brought a side of nuts and dried cranberries. About once a week I flake and take three dollars to purchase breakfast tacos on site, and as often I take leftovers from the night before. My favorite part of the morning is washing the dishes; the hot water seems to take the edge off the cold and stiff mornings.

I'm anxious about the truck every single morning. I come to terms with the difficulties it presents and might soon present every morning while it warms up. Someday the oil will need changing, soon it will need another $60 worth of gas, and sooner the tires need air. I turn on the heat and turn the radio to NPR as the engine warms, excited to hear the stories about the Wall Street Occupation.

I listen to the unemployment numbers and the political nonsense and try and relate that information to my own life. The news has grown strangely intimate in the past few weeks. Talk of taxes, gas prices, holiday sales and jobs packages are so much more significant than they have been before. This is as unsettling in the same way that driving the truck is.

The drive to work is easy enough most mornings, roughly a half hour in mild traffic. At work I pass through a metal detector and greet sleepy security guards, then sit with my coworkers until it is time to head into the plant.The first two hours of the day before break always seem more stressful, fast-paced, and prone to mistake. After the fifteen minute break, the three hour break before lunch sets the tone for the rest of the day. On the rare occasion I am already exhausted and impatient with the task at hand, and these days last for an eternity. Most workdays pass rapidly enough. By lunch time I just want to nap in the afternoon sun, but the final three hours of the day tend to be the most pleasant.

Yesterday and the day before were slight exceptions. As the project neared completion, the lay-offs began. After lunch on the first day the foreman started tapping people on the shoulder to tell them to pick up their checks, complete some lay-off paperwork, and go home. A few people said goodbye, most just picked up their tools and left. By yesterday, I was the only employee outside the "core" group who hadn't been sent home. Two others were there by mistake, having missed the day before for whatever reason, and we were all allowed to work until the afternoon.

Having worked fourteen days in a row, I'd been kind of looking forward to going home and to bed. But as my fellow apprentices and even some journeymen disappeared one by one, I felt increasingly exposed and vulnerable. The journeyman who had taken me under her wing was put on another task, and I busied myself with the task of appearing busy. Having already survived two stages of lay-offs, I'd been assured of my worth, but it was hard not to dread the inevitable rejection.

Finally, the foreman approached me, handed me a check, and started to walk away. "Hey," I called him back, craving the finality of at least a word of goodbye, "Does this mean you want me gone?"

He turned, looked at me like I was stupid, and said, "no, you're back Monday."

I was on cloud nine. I drove home, as I do most days, listening to punk rock. I take a back way that features about two dozen school zones but is still faster than the congested afternoon highway. Forty-five minutes later I am home. Often someone is working on dinner, or at least baking cookies, and usually coffee has been recently brewed. Until yesterday, Darling was always waiting for me. Either he would have just finished cooking my dinner, had been too busy on some task to eat all day and now desperately needs tacos from a nearby stand, or had a list of errands we must run.

Yesterday, however, he wasn't home because the job that was postponed for three weeks and then cancelled was suddenly resurrected. So Darling spent his day at his own job!

The evening was boring enough, especially as we were in bed by eight in the evening. We have yet to discuss our feelings about this new lifestyle in full. The fact that we're both working, full-time, feels perfectly absurd after so many years of part-time work. It's so great to have everything come together like this, so I guess right now we're just enjoying the day-to-day. Soon, we will look at frugality again, figure out the transportation issue, manage the tool situation, and pay off our debt in full. For now we're enjoying a weekend off.

Not Laid Off Yet

2011-11-01T18:17:00.000-07:00

I avoided the first round of lay-offs at work! Considering about a quarter of us were bid farewell today, this is fairly notable :) I'll probably only be able to cling on for an extra few days, as the project really is about finished, but every day of pay counts...especially this month.

Darling and I are going to catch up on rent completely as of Friday, which is good but a little bit of a downer. We've been behind for months, so it's a relief to get that monkey off our backs, but at the same time I haven't made a student loan payment in quite a while and I now owe Mom a big chunk of change. It's a little frustrating to have worked so hard and earned decent money only to have found myself back at square one.

Not knowing when to expect my next paycheck fuels my concern. There's actually a fairly good chance that I will be called for a new job right away - but I can't be certain.

After stringing him along for three weeks, Darling was finally told one of his projects is indefinitely postponed. After two distance interviews and a drug test, he has a face-to-face interview this Monday for a job that starts in a couple of weeks. So that's where he stands.

Oh yes, my net worth...which I calculated and then deleted. Hm. I will look back at that tomorrow, methinks, as I do my monthly tabulations. Suffice to say it was less than last month.

Hope everyone had a wonderful Halloween!

Second Week

2011-10-30T18:39:00.000-07:00

At some point on...I think it was the Friday before last...my laptop stopped working. Something about the fan, which I already "fixed" a few months ago.

Had I more than twenty minutes to myself since then, that might have been a problem. Instead my week has been absolutely mad:

Monday after work my house celebrated the success of the annual gathering by going to Egos after work. Darling and I only indulged in a couple of Lone Stars and games of pool, eager to be in bed by ten.

Tuesday I headed from work to my sister's house. I haven't seen Lenore since last Thanksgiving, just after the completion of her treatment regime, and she looks great. She showed me her beautiful garden, made me tea from home-grown peppermint, and served a dinner of baked veggies, kale salad, and white beans.

I can't remember Wednesday for the life of me. I'm fairly certain I went home and went to sleep.

By Thursday, work itself starting to get fairly interesting. My new favorite person, T, had gone from begrudgingly accepting me as her apprentice to singing my praises. Apparently she viewed me as "dainty" on my first day of work, despite being roughly six inches shorter than me and absurdly adorable. My enjoyment of working, and proficiency at lifting heavy things over and over again for hours, has won her appreciation and she wants everyone to know it. Which makes me feel very, very good.

After work on Friday Darling and I visited with Dad for a few hours. I've been dreading his response to my new career since walking out of that union hall in August. He's only just found out what I've been up to. And can you believe it's put him on cloud nine? He was introducing me to his neighbors as his daughter - the carpenter - as though he personally raised me in a little woodshed, constructing birdhouses and repairing tree houses. He hasn't been happier with me since he found out my husband was from Liverpool, "like the Beatles," as he reminds his friends. That made me feel even better.

What didn't make me feel great was the report that my crew would be needed over the weekend. Few of my coworkers were bothered by this because Saturday shifts pay time-and-a-half and Sunday is double-time. Add that to the fact that we already get five hours over-time every week due to our standard nine-hour day and the checks begin to look really good. But still, Halloween weekend?

Saturday was an easy enough shift but I made the mistake of fulfilling a promise to friends that we'd go out. A trip to Goodwill ($20 for a great long-sleeve shirt, comfortable leggings, and an unfortunate purchase of really awful gloves), and two trips for booze later (despite the fact that I had maybe two beers all night), five of us managed to have a fairly excellent evening.

I hated myself this morning, though. Late for work and feeling sore, I was infinitely grateful for what turned out to be an incredibly easy day.

I am feeling kind of like a deer-in-headlights on the financial front. The construction pay is very good, but we don't know how long it will last. Our project should wrap up in a couple of weeks and the lay-offs will likely begin in this week. I might be hired by the contractor performing the next operation phase, but I might not. And that contractor has a reputation for long days and working every weekend for months: a lot of apprentices quit last year rather than work Christmas day. Also, it's iffy whether or not that contractor will hire an apprentice that dented the superintendent's car. In other words: I may or may not be offered a job I may or may not want to accept.

Traffic Win

2011-10-24T16:59:00.000-07:00

The co-op's fall gathering went absolutely beautifully! It was a wonderful way to spend a precious day off, despite the mad rush of cooking beforehand and massive cleaning spree afterwards.

Was in bed before nine, up with my alarm, got to work early, and, on the way home, worked out the shortcut I kept losing myself with. As of today I can get home without I-35 and its snail-like traffic jams!!! Good day overall.

Darling has a work meeting tomorrow with an employer who was supposed to start a project two weeks ago. Actually, he has been dealing endlessly with two employers who are two weeks behind schedule. Bleh. At least the union came through and I'm working this month. We might actually catch up on rent before long :)

First Week

2011-10-22T13:11:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the long post, but I've had a heck of a week.

Sunday was my last day off. I spent much of the day at Occupy Austin, to which I donated a couple of pans of brownies. My housemates and myself have been going out there separately since it started, but this was the first time we actually went and hung out together.

After OA, I drove down to the location of my new job, hereon refereed to as The Plant, to confirm the location and entryway. Sans traffic, the trip is just over half an hour. From there we drove south to hang out with friends, buying a six pack of cider and some ice cream on the way. We played a few games of Bang, one game of Settlers of Catan, had salad and baked tofu for dinner, and totally forgot about the ice cream before leaving at the relatively early hour of eleven p.m.

I woke up at five on Monday and drove down to The Plant, where I was turned away from the gate for not being on "the list." In a panic, I drove to the nearest gas station, convinced them to let me use their phone, and called my union rep, who called my new boss, who said he was on his way to let me in. I rushed back to The Plant, was waved in, and felt very proud of having arrived so early that I still had plenty of time to relax in the truck before orientation.

Twenty minutes later I found myself less proud. Although we'd been told to show up by 6:30 a.m. ("but show up much earlier," the union instructors emphasized), the orientation didn't start until 8:30.

The Plan is absolutely massive, has been massive for over a decade, and is still growing. The Plant employs dozens of contracting companies, who employ hundreds of their own employees, possibly thousands over the course of the year, simply to build and maintain the buildings. This Plant is one of at least half a dozen in and around Austin which produces products in clean room conditions. The contractor I work with specializes in clean room interiors.

I say all that because it never even began to occur to me how many workers a single company can employ simply by existing. Thousands. It kind of blows my mind.

Anyway, after four hours of staring at power points were we went to work. The rough thing about clean rooms is that even in construction there can be no dirt or even loose particles. Which means no cardboard, or even wood, or Styrofoam, or packaging materials, or many tools. Everything is packed in plastic, mostly pre-shaped, and snapped or glued or bolted together with little to no mess. In other words, it's about as far from everything I expect from carpentry as possible.

Not that I didn't enjoy myself. I am consistently and pleasantly surprised by my coworkers. I like the work, which is repetitive but not always tedious, physically challenging at times, and sometimes takes place outside. I love how much I'm learning.

After that first day I came home and fell into a deep sleep, barely waking up in time to sit groggily through the house meeting. Tuesday I woke up and headed off to work at five thirty with my packed lunch. First I got stuck in traffic, then lost, then lost within The Plant. I showed up twenty minutes late and horribly ashamed of myself. After work I gave a coworker a ride home, which made me feel less guilty about driving the truck, then skipped the union meeting to go out to dinner with my Mom.

Wednesday I woke up at 4:30 in the morning to get to work on time, and packed myself a much larger lunch. I nearly left my safety goggles inside the building, but everything went much more smoothly until I gave the same coworker a ride home and got completely turned around trying to take a shortcut. I arrived at my first aid class nearly an hour late.

Thursday I barely managed to get to work, stopping to count out change for gas as the needle sat on empty. By now my coworker has grown to depend on me for the ride home, however, and put $25 in the tank on the way home to secure my loyalty. It's not something I'd ask him to do every week, but it sure was a relief. I got to class at the hall late again, though, and began to wonder if I'd ever be consistently on time again. That night my dreams took place in construction sites.

Then it was Friday. I awoke at 4:30 in the morning without a problem, pulled on my jeans and boots, packed my two-sandwich lunch, and headed out with nearly a half tank of gas. Life was good right up to the point that I turned down the road to the plant, right on red, and clunked right into a little black car speeding through a yellow light.

Got out, shook hands, pocketed my insurance card and license, and waited an hour for the cops to show. Having never had any event anything like this occur to me ever, I wasn't concerned about a ticket or, to be honest, anything else. Mostly I wanted "my side," of the story to be somehow vindicated, or at least recognized, by a cop, regardless of whether or not my choices were correct. On the surface of things, the other guy was the victim. He had the light - what was left of it, at least - and I did in fact hit him. On the other hand, I really wanted to know how fast he was going that I didn't see him as I started my turn, especially due to the curious nature of how our cars collided, and I'm also curious about the legality (and common sense) of turning into my lane if I did in fact, as he incorrectly insisted, "go through without even stopping." When I asked how fast he was going, he replied that he was "in a hurry to get to work." I'm not sure if the fact that he was speeding and making a wide turn would help my case at all, but it didn't make a difference because, after an hour, the cops never even arrived.

The best part? Before exchanging information and heading off to work learned that he was the head honcho of one of the biggest contractors at The Plant. Not my direct boss now, but pretty much one of the primary employers at the union. I ended up being ten minutes late and spent the rest of the day listening to journeymen tell me how I'd probably never work in The Plant again. After dropping off my carpool buddy, who agreed the dent in the truck is barely noticeable, I had to call my Mom, who made me feel much better about the situation.

Not only was my week very demanding on the union and employment side, but the house is gearing up for its big yearly meeting, where we invite anyone whose ever lived here for lunch and a planning meeting. We've been working on a very elaborate menu, painted the living room, and worked like crazy nailing out budgetary and legal matters. I've been on the menu side of things.

Earlier in the week I'd managed to bake a pumpkin, so last night I made a cheesecake with it. It was nearly eleven at night when I realized that the God baby would be with us in the morning. I took a bath and crashed into bed hard.

Woke up today at six a.m. to meet the baby. Thankfully, he agreed to a two hour nap before demanding breakfast and games. It was nice to actually wake up clearheaded for once, so I happily complied with peek-a-boo and noisy-time-in-the-kitchen while intermittently trying to help prepare for tomorrow's meeting. Now he's napping again, giving me desperately-missed time on the computer :)

Things I learned this week:

* Residential carpentry is a very small niche, at least so far as the union goes. Sooner or later, I might have to choose between clean room construction or unemployment.

* Although I don't exactly mind clean room construction, it's not what I'm looking for in a career. My current position is temporary, and there's a good chance that I'll be turning down similar jobs in the future. So, the aforementioned choice will probably be made sooner rather than later.

* I really enjoy physical work. It's been so nice to be actually hungry come lunch time.

* Blue collar workers deserve much more credit than I've previously given them.

* Unions and cooperatives both demand a lot of time an attention. So do family and friends. So does cooking, crafting, gardening, spiritual development, writing, community involvement, and frugality. Apparently, anything worth doing well must be done constantly.

* I really, really, really detest driving. I may or may not choose to go car free after this job, which might also mean going job-free.

* It sucks having employers hold that first paycheck.

Workin' Gal

2011-10-15T13:22:00.000-07:00

Last Monday I was offered a carpentry job at a nearby technology facility, which spurred a massively busy train-up-the-apprentices week at the union. Naturally this would correspond with the very painful week following my molar extraction, as well as Darling needing to be everywhere at once to wrap things up with his last job, interview for his next job, renew his passport, and replace his lost drivers license. So, things were hectic.

Tuesday Darling was interviewed and hired for an upcoming installation gig starting "soon." Wednesday I had the first half of an OSHA 10 course. Thursday I had the second half of the class, ran to the store to buy some tools for work, and then had another four hours of class. Friday I woke up before six in the morning to care for baby Oblio, which involved baking pumpkin and cream cheese muffins and later taking a three hour nap together. Despite the nap, I was absolutely exhausted for the rest of the day and passed about before ten in the evening.

This morning I took a fall safety and protection class and that's pretty much that: any more training is just going to have to be on the job. Which I still can't quite believe I have.

Not only will I be earning decent (albeit apprentice) wages, but my health insurance will kick in after a few weeks. The job should last until December, and I'll qualify for unemployment benefits when it's finished. The money Darling earns installing solar panels will be icing on the cake!

I'm trying not to let my hopes get too high, but it's really, really exciting to imagine earning more than enough money to pay rent, fix my teeth, and knock out my student debt once and for all. Of course, I also need to arrange a trip to the optometrist, have seventy million cavities filled, buy some hardy work clothes, purchase more tools, look into buying a the most efficient vehicle available if we're going to keep depending on an automobile to get to and from jobs, buy Christmas presents or the supplies to make some, travel across the U.S. to see some family we dearly miss, shower nieces and nephews with gifts, buy all manner of safety gear for the bike, fund a savings account, purchase a digital camera...and figure out how, if ever, one can ever trully catch up financially.

Last Day Off

2011-10-11T19:46:00.000-07:00

Darling and I were so busy today! We went down south to investigate a job lead - for which he has an interview in the morning - and then fill out some paperwork at the electrician's union. We were home less than an hour when I got a call telling me to get to north Austin ASAP for a mandatory drug test for the job I'm definitely starting on Monday. Dom and I dropped what we were doing (he was in the attic dealing with a wiring issue, I was chopping a pie pumpkin in half) and jumped in the truck. We barely arrived at the facility in time.

Since we were up north we took the opportunity to meet with Darling's previous employer to pick up a paycheck and talk about potential work in the next few weeks. Then we swung by a friends house to finish some passport related materials on the way home.

It was a heck of a way to spend my last "free day." Technically, I won't be officially employed until Monday morning, but I will be training five hours tomorrow, nine hours on Thursday, and nine more hours on Saturday. I'm so excited to be on the job again!

Horizon Brightening

2011-10-10T14:06:00.000-07:00

The extraction was easy peasy. For whatever reason my gums never get totally numb - I discovered this when having all four wisdom teeth removed at once - but the pain was very minimal. For a charity dentist, he was incredibly gentle.

The receptionist swiped my card and the $80 payment went through. Which means the rent check will clear tomorrow, hopefully with just the one overdraft fee. I scheduled the root canal for November 30th to give me plenty of time to save up the cash.

I came home swollen and jumpy, wanting to run any number of errands before the numbness wore off or the pain killer kicked in. Three hours later and neither has occurred, so far as I can tell, but Darling put me in bed and insisted I stay here.

That was actually a better idea than either of us imagined, because I was home when the union called. A contractor needs apprentices for an upcoming job which requires OSHA 10 and Fall Safety. In response, the union scheduled certification courses for Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday of this week and wanted me to sign up. So by this time next week I will have received over $150 in complimentary training and will most likely be employed!

Impending Overdraft

2011-10-10T08:55:00.000-07:00

So, things are pretty much coming down to the wire.

I called my Mom about borrowing the thousand dollars for my teeth. This is obviously something I didn't take lightly for a number of reasons, especially since I'm already borrowing her massive truck. However, she has the money, and the dentist put in no uncertain terms the time frame I'm looking at for saving any of my molars.

When I told her how much I needed for an extraction, root canal, and cap, there was a catch in her breath but she sounded positive. She said yes and I was incredibly relieved. Then I called her back two days later and she was definitely not okay. I can't be totally sure if my asking her for so much money put her over the edge, or what, but it obviously didn't help. Kicking myself, I excused her from the favor and insisted I could handle my teeth just fine on my own.

In actuality, I won't need $1000 all at once. There will need to be at least a couple of days between the root canal and capping, and those are the two $400+ procedures. The first visit could really cost more than $500. My plan is actually to go in and ask for just the $80 extraction and schedule the next appointment in November.

What's worse is that I'm knowingly going to overdraw my account, because I don't even have $80. I will, but not for two or three days. Knowing that put me in such an weird emotional place that I sort of gave up. There was no possible way everything would come together, so I stopped thinking. Which wouldn't have mattered if it hadn't been Raja's birthday on Saturday.

To celebrate, about twenty of us went bowling and barhopping. Altogether Darling and I ended up buying snacks, two pitchers of beer (to share), and a six pack (which we ended up sharing at the game night on Sunday). Yesterday we figured we might as well go ahead and fill the truck with gas.

So today all I can hope is that my extraction is paid for before the rent check - which was deposited this morning - clears. If not, I have an emergency borrowed hundred dollars to pay for the procedure. No matter what, though, there's going to be an overdraft.

Unemployment, Month 3: Dental Progress

2011-10-06T07:16:00.000-07:00

I have been unemployed for a little over two months.

So far, so good. Darling stepped in and, in just over two weeks, earned enough money to see us through two months. Now we just have to figure out if he can expect work in the near future.

I did especially well the first month tackling a dream project: recording my Dad's life story. Sadly, that fell off last month for one reason or another. I need to catch up and start interviewing him regularly again.

I did well the second month pursuing one career choice that I've always been interested in. Now I have to cope with the fact that, as a union member, I'm still unemployed, but learning skills, but limited in earning opportunities...I actually e-mailed my manager at the cafe to see about waitressing on the weekends and was horrified to learn that they went out of business. This was by far my favorite job ever, and my favorite restaurant in Austin, so I am very sad not have gotten to say goodbye. Also...that's pretty much it for my casual, flexible, no-hassle ways of earning money.

It feels like I'm winning at being unemployed, though, and to keep up with my streak I decided to make another stab at working out my dental woes. Remember when I had MAP, Austin's low-income medical insurance? Loved it, but after waiting six months for an appointment I was told they couldn't do route canals and was referred to a charity clinic. Less than a month later I got the pub job, waited a couple of months for my insurance with them to kick in, quit my job, and haven't moved forward at all with that whole emergency oral surgery situation.

Anyway, earlier this week I called the charity clinic for details. Manos de Cristo accepts walk-in appointments 7-noon in the morning. Having had a number of exhausting - and ultimately disappointing - experiences regarding charity clinics and dental care in general - I was dreading the early morning wait, rush, hubbub, and inevitable denial of care.

I woke up at five this morning and had a smoothie, coffee, and bowl of cereal for breakfast. I eyed the clock carefully, checked my e-mail, dressed, and left early enough that I arrived at the clinic at six in the morning. To my surprise, there was no line. There was, in fact, no one around. I settled in the doorway and read my book until a sweet woman let me in at 6:30 a.m.

Having filled out eighty-million forms in the past two years explaining my random work history, my husband's meager earnings, my small investment account, and the difficulty of defining individual expenses in a cooperative living situation, I was not expecting the single form with the single question: monthly income. That was it. No proof required, no explanation requested. And again: there was no line.

I filled out the form and read for a bit. I was called in less than fifteen minutes later. The deal is this: $45 for an initial inspection of one tooth. No cleanings or general visit, just x-ray and diagnosis. In my case, however, the tooth that needed a route canal is no longer salvageable, and they couldn't help but notice that the next molar will need immediate treatment or suffer the same fate. So I guess my initial visit was something of a two-for-one deal.

They scheduled me for an extraction on Monday morning. MONDAY. I have been trying to save these teeth since 2007. I've seen at least half a dozen dentists, and not one of them has offered me treatment within seven days of diagnosis.

Over the course of two or three visits, they want to yank the one tooth ($80), give me a route canal ($405), re-build and pin the remaining tooth ($120), and crown it ($483). That's just over $1000 for $2300 worth of care. Afterwards I'll have the molar on the other side scaled and capped, which will be another diagnosis and surgery, but then I will finally be finished with ugly, devastatingly expensive experience (give or take a half dozen cavities).

The only problem, naturally, is that I don't have $1,000 sitting around, or even hovering about on the horizon. Darling is expecting some calls, but in a matter of days we'll be in panic mode regarding rent...And even if he does get a job starting Monday, he's won't be bringing home a paycheck early that morning. I'm going to ask my Mom for a loan. It sucks to do so, I've been leaning on her pretty hard lately, but it's the only plan I have.

October 2011 Net Worth

2011-10-02T18:20:00.000-07:00

My net worth is currently -$7,245.94, a decrease of $425 from last month. Which is hardly cause for celebration in and of itself, but frankly I'm really pleased that the situation isn't worse.

All things considered, we lucked out. Not only did I spend the entire month totally unemployed, but Darling and I spent a lot of money on work-related expenses. We invested quite a bit in tools for Darling to take to his work site and a couple of tools for my classes. I also paid three months dues along with basic union entry fees (totaling just under $60). We spent well over a hundred dollars updating Darling's wardrobe, including $80 on boots, a pair of brand new jeans (a rarity for us), several thrift store shirts, and new socks and underwear.

These were all worthwhile purchases, even if Darling and I ended up going back to washing dishes and waiting tables in two months time. We'd still need underwear, right? Also, his first job technically covered the costs of these investments while still catching us up on rent. I say technically because rationalizing "investments" always depends on vaguely fuzzy math, and also because we're still waiting on the final paycheck with which we will pay October's rent (due tomorrow). I'm confident we'll get the check, but the time has come to start worrying about the paycheck after that.

This is going to sound bad coming from someone who writes primarily about money, but the most exciting thing about this month is that - albeit technically - we know how we'll pay this month's rent. For the past year, that has not been a given for us, so it feels like we're ahead even though our net worth took a hit.

Now the question is where November's rent will come from...

Flu, 2011 Edition

2011-09-28T19:37:00.000-07:00

A week after getting his flu shot, baby Oblio's family has been passing mild forms of the virus back and forth. Yesterday I witnessed the baby erupt like a stewed prune volcano. Picking him up and rushing him, still spewing, to the bathroom sink, I am only agonizingly grateful that he wasn't alone napping in his room during the incident.

Hours later Darling lay in bed radiating a dry heat. After a restless night and a day in bed he is still warm. Feeling weak myself, sweating heavily, and taking a number of breaks, I made a blueberry-banana-spinach smoothie, oatmeal with raisins and cinnamon sweetened with honey, and, later in the day, egg drop soup. Never one to turn down the vitamin K, my husband downed the smoothie, but only managed a bit or two of oatmeal and a negligible portion of soup. Watching me amble about the kitchen with growing apprehension, my housemates force grapefruit seed extract and zinc tablets on me by the handfuls.

This evening's first aid class was cancelled, which spared me from having to make a very ironic choice. Now the only question is whether or not my zinc-and-grapefruit-infused self is going to feel up to metal framing class tomorrow. I also need to make a trip to the bank and decide whether or not I'll be able to do the house shopping this week before we run out of coffee and things get ugly.

I don't mind getting sick every now and again, whereas many of the people around me seem to experience illness as a sort of personal and cultural failing. I find it interesting how sickly Oblio grew immediately after having the flu shot, but I don't take it as unshakable evidence of the evils of immunization. Babies get sick, no matter how hard we try and protect them. As much as I hate to watch my Godson suffer, a big part of me is unspeakably thankful that we live in a day and age in which the average baby survives. I'm not saying that our future generations won't suffer the undue burden of pollution, reduced environmental diversity, climate change, or even super-flues resulting from immunizations...but Oblio isn't likely to get dragged off by dingos or die of an infected paper cut, either.

Then again, I'm feeling unusually stoic about this bout of flu. Perhaps it's the security of practically living in a hippie pharmacy, of knowing the ins-and-outs of not having health insurance in this particular city. Maybe it's even the fact that Darling and I don't actually have anything better to do than sip soup and get better, being unemployed and all.

NIght Owl Finances

2011-09-25T17:09:00.000-07:00

The coffee fudge was a total fail. I whipped up a batch of oatmeal chocolate chip cookies at the last minute, packed them into a paper bag, and arrived at game night quite late. Fortunately my friends are as much night owls as I have become, and we all had no problem hanging out until four in the morning. We ate home-made enchiladas and played the Game of Thrones board game, which was good fun and quite complicated.

Darling and I spent most of today catching up on our sleep. I served blueberry and chocolate chip pancakes, eggs, toast, fruit, and iced early grey tea for breakfast, and now Darling is facilitating the last board meeting over which he will preside as president.

I took the time to look over our financial situation, which isn't bad considering we both spent most of August totally unemployed and only one of us worked for a total of two and a half weeks in September. Darling received two paychecks and has a third on the way. He spent some of his first check on living expenses and supplies, and I immediately put half a tank of gas in the truck when he got back...

...Oh, by the way, I'm borrowing my Mom's truck as of a few weeks ago. Before anyone gets huffy about it, I've driven the truck about three times in three weeks. A potential carpentry job came up in Killeen and while it would suck to have to drive that far, it will suck a whole lot more to never be a carpenter because I can't get to work-sites. My goal is to get steady work nearby that within carpool or even bike range, but until that happens I have to be available for anything...

Anyway, the money we have on hand is just short of what we need to pay what we owe for this month's rent. I'm going to transfer $40 from the small savings account I really hate to touch and deposit that check on Wednesday. We should receive the rest of Darling's pay by next Friday which, along with a little more money out of our savings account, should cover October rent. I hate to drain our tiny savings just when it was becoming useful, but that's being unemployed and having a big ol' bill hanging over us. It will be a big relief to be totally caught up :)

Welcome Home, Darling!

2011-09-24T14:49:00.001-07:00

Yesterday Darling came home from his gig in West Texas. I haven't slept well without him at all, and Thursday night was no exception. I barely napped for a couple of hours before Xy dropped off Oblio for sitting.

The baby was super happy to be awake in these pre-dawn hours, so I went ahead and prepped the crust for Darling's welcome home dinner. I use the basic bread recipe from The Enchanted Broccoli Forest, with the addition of oregano and basil. This gives me 4-5 crusts, which is usually just enough to feed most of my house-mates :)

I baked the crusts and set them aside, then made a marinara using canned tomatoes, onions, garlic, thyme, and sage. During this time the six-month-old was very happy with a wooden spoon and mixing bowl of his own. At one point Bo came in and said, "I could see you as a Mom...actually, it's hard not to think of you as a Mom!"

Just before noon I had prepped the pizzas as much as I could and the baby decided to take a glorious three-hour nap. I flipped through The Joy of Cooking in the hopes of finding something exciting and sweet with which to surprise my love, and stumbled upon the candy and confectioners section for the first time. Fudge.

A few hours and a resignation of defeat later, there was actual chocolate fudge in my kitchen.

Xy picked up Oblio at three and I headed upstairs to scrub. Last week I took two days to put up shelving, de-clutter, and re-arrange the furniture. Yesterday I scrubbed and polished the long-neglected sink, bathtub, toilet, mirror and bathroom floor. Then I went to my room and carted out the last of the donations, emptied the trash, dragged the laundry to the machines in the pantry, made the bed, cleared the surfaces and gave the new shelving a final glance.

I was about to shower and get the pizzas in the oven so they'd be fresh and hot just in time for Darling's arrival when he showed up an hour early! Granted I'm not going to complain. It's so great to have him back :)

We got his stuff upstairs where he properly complicated the new room set-up, then we baked the pizzas. Most of my house-mates had been sniffing about the kitchen since noon, so we had quite a crowd in the kitchen for the event. It was actually the first time in weeks all nine of us have been home at once, which added depth to the celebration. Also, did I mention there was fudge?

Today has, in some ways, been a repeat of yesterday. I was up before the sun to greet a very awake Oblio. I prepped for lunch, started Darling's laundry, and cleaned our kitchen shelves until he conked out at nine a.m, then we took a fabulous three hour nap - best.Godson.Ever. After we woke up Darling watched him while I slipped down to finish lunch: nori rolls with rice, beet, apple, and cucumber, and a dessert roll with cream cheese, apple, and raisins. After lunch I folded laundry and helped Darling unpack his bags until Raja came for the baby. Since then I have worked on coffee fudge to take to a game night with friends down south.

Darling, a friend, and about a tenth of their total work.

Unification

2011-09-22T00:11:00.000-07:00

Although I've been curious about carpentry for a long time, I wandered into the union last month with the intention of teasing my own curiosity and accepting inevitable disappointment. I would make one last stab at the construction industry and finally put the dream of being a skilled builder aside once and for all.

I kept my hopes low even after being welcomed into the brotherhood. But after Tuesday's union meeting, I can't keep that up. Between the political validation, social interaction, and straight up free training in valuable skills, it's a dream come true. It's absolutely unbelievable how I feel in that building, among my new peers and mentors. After the meeting I had a beer with some of the guys and talked for a couple of hours. And it feels so right.

My family doesn't really know what to make of it. This might be my own fault: sometimes I keep things close to my chest rather than risk their disapproval. At the same time, only my Mom has shown the slightest shade of enthusiasm for my choice. Today my brother actually hinted his suspicion of "corruption from within."

Um, okay. First of all: non- union construction is about as corrupt as it possibly could be. The average construction worker is very lucky to get paid at minimum wage, much less a living wage, and health benefits and pension are unheard of. The same workers are employed in very hazardous conditions and denied their entitlement to workers comp.

Union activity is 100% financially dependent on dues and a percentage of member pay. A member is free to leave the union at any time. So, while "corruption" is always possible, the moment a union stops acting on behalf of its members, and the day that non-union employment is more desirable, there's not going to be a union any longer.

I will admit to seeking the cloud to match my silver lining. I've yet to actually work a job, but things are supposed to pick up in October. I'm making connections now, and once a foreman sees me in action my reputation is going to soar. In the meantime, there are plenty of free classes to keep me busy.

Outing Fail

2011-09-20T15:04:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I puttered around the house for a good deal of the day, then facilitated the weekly co-op meeting. Faced with another long, lonely night staring at the computer, I decided to go watch my housemate's band play in East Austin.

I've been so bored sick lately that I decided to make a night of it. I put on make-up, put up my hair, and wore a skirt, tights, and heels. Amazingly, it's not difficult at all to ride a bike in such a getup...even when said bike is borrowed and apparently without functioning brakes...

The ride was very pleasant, but I felt super-awkward at my destination. I was expecting a casual bar atmosphere. I'd only brought three dollar coins with the intention of buying a Lone Star and tipping a buck. The venue was actually a high-end novelty sort of cafe, and so packed that I couldn't get a seat at the bar. The hostess sat me at a tiny seat right next to the band, which I didn't mind. But then the server ignored me. After a couple of songs I went to the bar and tried to catch someone's attention, but gave up pretty quickly and left feeling pretty down.

I went home and baked chocolate cranberry cookies and watched Lonesome Dove until late into the night.

I'm glad I at least tried to go out, and it's about time that I start riding again. Part of me is even glad I didn't waste $3 on a crappy beer. But most of me is just missing Darling...

My Frog Friend Likes The Privacy Of His Own Home, Too

My 26th Birthday Ride

2011-09-19T16:10:00.000-07:00

Guess what I found? A post written in late April detailing my super-awesome birthday camp trip/bicycle ride! I can't believe I forgot to publish it...I think my original plan was to publish it in two or three parts due to its insane length. But, you know what? I like reading long posts. They are much better than un-puplished posts, at least. And I'm certainly not editing this beautiful memory five months after the fact. Take a nap midway, if you'd like :)

A $40 bike and a borrowed bike.

I had the best birthday ever.

I spent a lot of money.

Thursday evening I went on a shopping trip with Darling and the money I'd earned that morning cleaning a house and the tips from my mid-shift at the coffee shop. Our plan was lightweight, high protein snacks for the bike ride. Somewhere between the bus stop and picking up a small basket I transformed into a ten-year-old girl packing for a fantasy picnic: our basket was heavy with bars of chocolate, a big bottle of juice, strawberries, energy bars, and packages of cookies.

Why did I think we would need chocolate syrup???

I didn't know I could spend so much on so little!

Friday we woke up early and had a big breakfast before packing our bags and catching a ride downtown to pick up the commuter bus to Leander. The commuter buses, by the way, are AWESOME. Big and comfy, free wi-fi, and plenty of space to stow bags, including those big undercarriage luggage compartments that Greyhound buses have, where we put our bikes. Not bad for less than three dollars each. Darling and I read and chatted until we got to Leander, at which point we actually got on the bikes and started cycling down 183.

This is a much sharper incline than it looks.

We must have ridden for about an hour and a half, mostly downhill with the wind at our backs. It was a pleasantly cool and sunny ride. We stopped two or three times for breaks, at which point enjoying our strawberries and juice in the shade.

I'll be honest: Darling and I are not dedicated road cyclists. In the city we will take to the sidewalk in the blink of an eye. I promise we'll get better, but I don't even like being on the highway in a car. It's so vulnerable and scary watching a sixteen wheeler share a lane with your husband...and at one point, two cars passed Darling at once on a two lane road, the three of them sharing such a limited space at once, the cars still racing along at 60+miles an hour. We'd checked on Google Maps to ensure that there would be a shoulder for the majority of the route, but road work blocked our way and actually squeezed us tighter to our petroleum-powered friends, forcing a two-lane road plus shoulder/bike lane into a single lane flanked by loud and dusty machinery.

Going downhill as we did, pumping away at top speed, it was easier to pretend that we blended right in with the huge trucks, careless SUVs, and weekend warriors on motorcycles. When I suddenly realized we had reached the bottom of the great hill, however, and saw the next stretching ahead of us like a great mountainous Tower of Babel to Heaven, I almost burst into tears.

Miraculously, that's when we turned off the highway onto the sweetest country road you ever saw. We coasted along scenic pastures, fields of longhorns and barbed-wire fences. Less than two hours after we embarked from our train station, having ridden from the northern tip of Leander to Liberty Hill, we arrived at the cabin.

Baby Cow!!!

"Where's your car?" a flabbergasted property manager demanded as I photographed a baby cow on the neighboring pasture.

After settling in, Darling and I agreed that the ride had barely been anything at all and decided to ride deeper into Liberty Hill to purchase tea bags and maybe have dinner. By this time it was roughly 4 p.m., and this leg of the trip was infinitely less pleasant. The heat of the day was well and truly upon us, we were harassed by trucks that seemed intent on forcing us off the road, and the entire idea behind the weekend seemed idiotic and childish. Yet again, as our trip teetered on the brink of unpleasantness, we found ourselves in the lot of a little local restaurant.

Dahlias had outdoor seating, a massive beer and wine selection, and a large selection of fresh and delicious vegetarian sides. Darling and I gulped down glass after glass of iced tea, forgot to order appetizers, and shared green beans, asparagus, cinnamon apples, mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, and the best chocolate chess pie I've ever had. Then we realized that, besides that carton of strawberries at noon, we hadn't eaten since nine in the morning. Needless to say, our ride back to the cabin was much more pleasant.

Taking a break on a country road

Until this point, I'd always taken the lead. Darling is much stronger and faster than me and has preferred to let me set the pace so as not get worn out and fall behind. Unfortunately I hate not being able to watch him. I feel he falls to far behind, making it more difficult for cars to pass us both safely. Already conservative with my energy, I go slower than necessary to close the imaginary gap.

Letting Darling take the lead, however, changed the dynamic entirely. Not only did I go much faster than ever before, quite comfortably, probably doubling our speed, but I felt much more confident demanding space on the road. Instead of teetering dangerously on very edge of the highway, I took as much of the lane as felt comfortable - enough so that cars would be able to see that there were two cyclists and forcing them to change lanes if they wanted to pass. If they wanted to share a lane with Darling, they'd literally do so over my dead body.

Strangely, cars seemed to react much better to this. Perhaps it was seeing a woman taking such a risk, rather than my long-haired husband. At one point on the ride back I noticed that we hadn't been passed in quite a while. I looked over my shoulder to see a woman in an SUV very patiently coasting behind us, making it all but impossible for anyone to get passed her or us. By the time we turned off that particular road, a good fifteen minutes later, she was leading a procession of five very annoyed drivers.

We arrived home in time to take a dip in the river before evening fell. It was then that it occurred to us that our time could have been managed more sensibly: we ought to have taken refuge in the water during that blazing afternoon, and hit the road during the cooler evening hours. Live and learn. We spent the rest of the evening enjoying a bottle of wine and television.

The river got deep a little further down

Saturday, my actual birthday, we spent the early morning reading, chatting, and relaxing. My friends drove in from Austin, including baby Oblio, and soon after my family arrived. There was a chocolate cake, a chocolate cake with strawberry cream, and one of those cheesecake samplers. We went to the store twice for provisions, buying lots of beer (for me and friends) and meat (for family). I got to hang out with Baby-O, whom I haven't seen in ages, and she did incredibly adorable toddler stuff like eat the pickles right out of my veggie burger and cover my clothes in mustard fingerprints.

We had a full kitchen, A/C, and cable television :)

Sunday we checked out of the cabin and hit the road for serious. Despite the thunderstorm warnings that kept me up all night envisioning us cycling home in a torrential downpour, it was another beautiful spring day. We agreed to ride towards home until we couldn't pedal any longer (having loaded friends' cars with the majority of our luggage), and headed south towards Austin.

We purchased a map of the area from a gas station, which showed neither our starting nor ending point. After a lunch at Subway at the northernmost point of Leander (bad, bad idea...two blocks later we saw a beautiful local diner and cried out in regret), we rode down 183. Construction was even worse going south, but the machinery was abandoned. It didn't take us long to claim the closed road as our own, and we traveled through most of Leander on brand new roads and freshly built bridges.

This was OUR road.

It was thrilling to exit Leander a handful of hours later, to have traveled through an entire city! Resting at the start of Cedar park, which I'd mistakenly always imagined to be a "neighborhood" of Austin, we were hit up by Jehovah's Witnesses while resting in a field. Weird. Forced reluctantly back onto the highway, we took a leap of faith and made a detour towards a Lakeline Blvd in the hopes that it would have less road work and more sidewalks. We were rewarded mightily for our efforts and enjoyed the majority of cedar park on that winding, beautiful road.

I wasn't expecting the outskirts of Austin to become suddenly rural, however, and getting from Cedar Park to northern Austin was surprisingly difficult. By five o'clock we were totally beat and Darling's bike - which needed a tune-up when we left, was making an absurd clunking noise and lost it's chain more than once. Slightly delirious and so distracted by hunger that I forgot the snack bars in my bag, we were overjoyed to find a bus stop. Ironically, it took us another three hours and an uphill ride to get from north Austin to our home in South Austin. But we were agonizingly sweaty, smudged with dirt and oil, slightly sunburned (Darling missed a spot on his arm), and sore as all get out, and therefore felt perfectly happy to sit for a while.

At home we took showers and faced with the choice of cooking, passing out and waking up in the morning sick with hunger and dehydration, or going out to eat, I decided to end our awesome weekend with my favorite sandwich from Magnolia cafe. We decided to walk. I don't even remember the walk home afterward, just waking up this morning feeling like I was made out of solid rock. A few hours later, however, I got out of bed feeling pretty great. Even my knee, which was bothering me the day before the big trip, feels perfectly fine now!

Queen of the Road!

We probably traveled 25-30 miles yesterday, my longest trip by far. Now I'm convinced that, with the right supplies, we could make a longer weekend trip...Though we might wait for it to cool down a little.

Tabs!

2011-09-17T13:13:00.000-07:00

I finally, finally figured out how to put tabs on my blog! I've been super-jealous of all the other blogs with their fancy multiple pages and driving myself mad trying to get some of my own.

Now, naturally, I have no idea what tabs to create. I've been in love with the look, not the function.

After five years of free-form composition and close to a thousand posts, this blog is getting a little unwieldy. I recently went through the very time-consuming process of editing my 27 labels...and I'm still not incredibly happy with them. It seems reasonable to have five pages folks can access to get the meat of my story, philosophy, and processes.

...Come to think about it, those might be my first three pages right there.

A Clean Break

2011-09-16T17:28:00.000-07:00

This year I made an extra hundred bucks every month by cleaning a house every couple of weeks. Truth be told, this is not a job I especially enjoyed. In fact, at first I was making over $300 a month cleaning two houses, but had to quit the better paying job to maintain my sanity.

The cleaning job I kept is straight-forward and fairly easy, even meditative. I toyed with the idea of quitting when I was juggling two low-paying jobs, and again when I had the good hourly-pay at the pub, but couldn't really justify stemming this steady trickle of cash.

Yesterday the cleaning job was canceled, and today it was canceled indefinitely. Part of me is kind of dissapointed. The other part is a little relieved. Cleaning the homes of other people is kind of a bummer because it isn't difficult. The entire time I have a hard time not thinking about how much better off the owner would be scrubbing her own sinks clean, committing her own two hours of time to making her life run more smoothly. And on the flip-side: my bathroom is getting scary gross without Darling here to clean it for me. I really should be spending two hours every other week getting my own business in order...and yet I don't.

Anyway, I should totally be focusing on getting construction jobs so I won't feel foolish introducing myself as an apprentice carpenter. It would also be good to earn money, earn raises, and activate my health insurance. Turns out I actually missed out on two jobs last week. I'm not sure if they forgot to put me on the unemployed list or if I'm just missing calls. Either way, I should have nipped that in the bud by now.

Broke (ish)

2011-09-15T23:14:00.000-07:00

I am broke.

The house I was supposed to clean this morning canceled last night. I spent the last of my cash on supplies for shop class (which went really well, particularly as I was the only apprentice who decided to bring said supplies).

In a way, I am only theoretically broke. Darling has a paycheck, but no way to deposit it into our bank account. We agreed a while ago that he would hold onto it until returning to town...a little over a week from now.

Our first Christmas together, broke and madly in love

Also, I have a secret savings account. Actually, it is my normal savings account, but except for the occasional deposit, I have been totally ignoring it for months. My until-now-unspoken goal has been to save up enough money to pay rent in a pinch. But right now it's too little to do much good to anyone, especially if I drain it. In other words, there is money available, but I can't bring myself to touch it.

Darling and I have actually spent a lot this month, particularly in the pursuit and preparation for work. So maybe it would be a good thing to simply not have a choice in the matter of spending or not.

No More T.V.

2011-09-14T13:24:00.000-07:00

I spent all day yesterday cleaning, re-arranging, and organizing my room in honor of my awesome new shelving - there may even be some before and after shots someday. Hurray for productivity!

Unfortunately, the rest of the day was a practice in being totally unproductive. I watched everything Hulu had to offer of The Simpsons, American Dad, Family Guy, and Community. Then I finally decided to break down and check out Serenity, which I have refused to watch until yesterday for relatively petty reasons. It's good, but mostly made me wish I was watching Buffy The Vampire Slayer or Cowboy Bebop instead.

In other words, I totally fried my brain with entertainment media yesterday. I was up until four in the morning for the second night in a row, and at one point I even went out and bought and ate a pint of ice cream. Naturally, I slept way too late today and will have to do the house shopping tomorrow between cleaning a house and going to my framing class. Bleh.

But still, my room? Looking great. After weeks of prioritizing anything and everything above my home base, I'm finally able to go in there and feel comfortable. I feel like that was the first step of getting the rest of my life running smoothly.

The next step is getting a daily schedule sorted, even if it's nothing more than eating three times a day and getting to sleep at a reasonable hour. With Darling out of town and no job to arrange my time around, the hours just sort of flow together. Starting today I'll take a break from on-line television and start thinking about how I'd rather spend my slow days.

Out With The Old, In With The Built

2011-09-13T00:34:00.000-07:00

Before Darling headed west I got his permission to de-clutter. After years of focusing on frugal accumulation of furniture, and then downsizing substantially to squeeze into the co-op, we still have a hard time with organization. I think it's primarily a matter of utility. We really don't own that much stuff, our space just isn't equipped to handle it. I mean, have you ever had a kitchen without a utensil drawer, knife block, or spice rack? I have. If there isn't a place for everything, ain't nothing gonna be in place. That's what's happening in our room right now.

The first thing I sent away was a beloved coffee table that was gathering dust in the corner. We have a table surplus in the room, including the one Darling made last year and a telephone table serving as a bed stand. I really loved this one, but honestly couldn't tell you how I would use it except as a junk repository. I gave it to a group of people running a new permaculture community in East Austin who will definitely appreciate it.

Today my goal was to give away the book case. Tall and wide, it would be a total prize if not for its depth of about five inches. To make matter worse, an uneven bottom pitches it precariously forward. It can't be trusted with much more than DVDs and paperbacks.

This afternoon I finally got the chance to sort through the house's selection of odds and ends to come up with a replacement. After a goodly long while I came up with six two-foot lengths of 2x8 and twelve wall brackets. Besides the length, they were basically ideal. I primed and painted them a creamy-tan color and spent forever hunting for the perfect sized screws.

My first plan was to mount the pieces side-by-side to produce three four-foot shelves, but could foresee the inevitable sloppy appearance. I then thought to mount the shelves in a corner at right angles, which might lend a sense of design and intention to the stubby shelves, but there would be quite a bit of lost space where they came together.

I figured a similar effect could be gained by placing one shelf on one wall at the corner, and the next shelf on the adjoining wall about sixteen inches higher. Unfortunately, that placed the highest shelf out of my reach and the lowest shelf at knee-level.

I finally mounted one shelf against the corner, and two more on either side, one sixteen inches higher, the other sixteen inches lower, at varying distances from the corner. On the adjoining wall I placed the other three shelves in a similar design at equal heights. The result is neatly asymmetrical and creates intermittent focal points perfect for framed art. I was able to move all the books off the case and give it to a roommate (who had been warned of its defects, of course). Now I just have to determine whether my rocking chair or remaining table belongs in that corner or against either wall.

Tooling Around

2011-09-11T22:29:00.000-07:00

Darling got his first paycheck on Friday! He's officially a professional solar installer :)

My carpentry class on Thursday went really well. I met my fellow female apprentice and she is really nice - as are my other peers. The guys are sweet, really, and don't make me feel at all unwelcome. It's just a relief not having the absolute least muscle mass in the classroom...

We're learning about metal framing, which will be followed by drywall installation. I'm going to need a few tools for the next class: hardhat, tape measure, and maybe a belt. I'll be trolling about on Craigslist seeking full tool sets for sale, but quality is coming before frugality in this instance.

Firsts

2011-09-08T14:04:00.000-07:00

My elder brother came to visit from Ohio on Monday. Going out to dinner with family was a nice way to spend Darling's last day in town. Tuesday morning I drove him to his new employer's house, from which they car-pooled to Big Springs. Afterward I ran some errands, drove my Mom home, and spent the night at her house.

The next day I drove Mom's truck back to Austin and had just enough time to chat briefly with Darling via Facebook. It sounds like he really lucked out with his roommate, worked his butt off, and is enjoying having a pool at the hotel to fall into after long days in the sun.

Yesterday was my first class at the union. I don't have a problem admitting to finally experiencing some doubt about the situation. Doubt is perfectly acceptable in my world. Especially since it feels like Darling and I are finally making progress towards where we want to be and what we want to be doing. I have another class tonight that should focus more on the physical work of carpentry, though, and that will give me a much better idea of what to expect in the coming months.

September 2011 Net Worth

2011-09-02T09:26:00.000-07:00

The past couple of weeks have been rough. Incredibly rough. It's really opened my eyes to how busy I habitually keep myself regardless of employment. Between dog-sitting across town, baby-sitting a second day a week, and preparing Darling for his job in West Texas, I haven't had time to prepare for my own apprenticeship, keep up with house chores, answer e-mail or phone calls, or maintain any sort of routine at all.

I totally surrendered to eating out and buying beverages to enjoy with friends. Not every day or every get-together, but often enough to make me feel pretty guilty.

That's why I was not looking forward to tallying my net worth. Imagine my surprise upon discovering that it's actually increased by $318.01! Not only that, but, at -$6,820.42, this is the highest it's ever been!

Reactions

2011-08-30T08:59:00.000-07:00

The heats seems to have sent my thoughts into a wild flurry, buzzing madly in my eyes like so many swarms of gnats. This month was so wild and intense and so, so hot. How is one meant to focus in times like these?

The primary response we seem to be getting from my friends and family regarding Darling's upcoming job is, "Really? That's weird." Seriously. I have had more than one person describe this development in Darling's life as "weird," and nearly everyone is surprised that he is actually going to do this for pay. Which leads me to wonder what everyone has been thinking since Darling's first solar installation course in 2007. Darling has been obsessed with solar energy for four years, has participated in dozens of installs, and is finally doing so for pay...how is that unexpected?

And now the carpentry thing. It's as though I've finally exhausted my friends' capacity for humoring me. But...really...becoming a carpenter is what does it? Really?! My friends have smiled and nodded at my most wild musings. But I mention working on construction sites and eyebrows raise. "I know you're no shrinking violet," SK ventures, "but there's a lot of cussing on work-sites."

Mordi is harsher, "it doesn't matter who you're working for, or where," he lectures me on the dangers of construction, implying but not outright telling me that I simply don't have what it takes.

After years of sniffing around the periphery of the construction industry, last Summer I just about killed myself trying to build a house without the necessary knowledge or skills. This year I take steps to actually develop those abilities and somehow that's unrealistic. Right.

Approaching Change

2011-08-28T16:56:00.000-07:00

It's Sunday? How is it Sunday already?

I am definitely taking it easy today. Between Friday and Saturday I joined a union, spent fifteen hours babysitting, about twelve hours commuting to and from north Austin, six hours scrubbing my stepmom's house, and got about six hours of sleep.

I crashed last night feeling as though a week had gone by in two days. Slept in this morning and came straight home from my stepmom's thinking only of coffee. Back at the house I made scrambled eggs, spinach, and toast for breakfast, and am now sitting directly in front of the A/C. I was thinking of baking, but it is 111 F. in Austin and I can't quite muster the enthusiasm to turn on the oven. I even missed my appointment with Dad.

I haven't had time to mull the carpenter thing over yet. I start class the same day Darling starts his new job 350 miles away. By the time he comes back in November I should be working full-time on construction sites and he'll either have a job in the solar field or an electrician apprenticeship. I'm excited, really, but sort of dumbfounded at the same time.

Re-Union and Scrubfest

2011-08-27T04:50:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I headed down from my stepmom's house to relieve Darling of babysitting duty at the co-op. Even though I was awake at seven and heading for the bus within the hour, I didn't get home until nine-thirty. Not enjoying that commute.

Since Darling had been up since six a.m. I sent him to take a nap and proceeded the cuddle my Godson to death. A friend dropped in during her lunch hour and we chatted. Normally I ignore the phone if it rings while I have company (most of my friends accuse me of ignoring it altogether), but my guest happened to notice and read aloud the caller I.D. "Austin's Carpenter...?"

The union! I quickly answered the phone. Remember a couple of weeks ago when I thought they blew me off? Not so much. They warned that there still isn't much work to be had in town, but wanted to sign me up for classes in September!

I went to the hall as soon as the baby was picked up, filled out a million sheets of paper, and was handed several constitutions, tool lists, class descriptions, and a pamphlet regarding my future pension fund. Within the space of a couple of hours I shifted careers and became a member of an organization that calls itself a brotherhood.

I caught the bus back to my stepmom's in something of a daze, but was focused by the time I got to her house. I mentioned yesterday that the filth factor there is getting out of hand. The poor woman has two dogs, a crazy work schedule, and is losing her vision, so I guess things got a little out of her control. I dug out a sponge, filled a pan with hot water, vinegar, and dish soap, and hunted down the vacuum cleaner. Four hours later I had dusted and displaced a million knick-knacks and scrubbed the shelving and other flat surfaces, vacuumed the furniture, lampshades, rugs, and floors in the living room and guest room, and lit a couple of candles. I'm hoping that by the time she gets home I'll have reached the polished furniture and scrubbed porcelain stage, but right now I'm happy just to be able to breathe at night.

Cake And Cleaning

2011-08-26T09:12:00.000-07:00

Wednesday was Darling's birthday. I woke up early to make him a ridiculously awesome birthday breakfast of two giant pancakes that barely fit on his plate, set the dough to rise for his pizza dinner, and blended the dry ingredients for his cake.

Upon discovering that I needed to take the bus up north to pick up my Mom, a three hour endeavor at best, I stuck the dough in the refrigerator to slow the process. Sure enough, after travelling up there by bus, driving back in traffic, and stopping at the store for extra ingredients, we didn't get back until 5:30 in the afternoon. And dinner was at 7:00.

With Mom's help chopping vegetables, I was able to knock out 5 delicious pizzas and a double layer chocolate cake topped with a thin layer of cherry jam and fresh whipped cream. I also served store-bought potato salad, chips, and a giant green salad.

It was definitely (and unfortunately) one of those parties that kept me on my feet in the kitchen the entire time. Even less fortunately, after bidding farewell to our guests and cleaning up, Darling and I had to get to my step-mom's house house to care for her dogs. I agreed to do this while she cares for my step-sister and newborn step-niece with the assumption that I'd take a week off from the co-op and many of my responsibilities and spend the week cuddling puppy dogs and watching cable television.

Not only have I failed to shake many of my weekly obligations (yesterday I had to shop for the house, today and tomorrow Darling and I babysit), but I quickly realized that my step-mom's house desperately needs a very deep clean. I will not be able to sleep soundly - or walk barefoot - in that place without the help of some hardcore scrubbing action.

Heh. Last weekend I worried that boredom might rear its ugly head. This week finds me as busy as ever, juggling family and friends and the co-op like so many flaming chainsaws. And still people ask when I'll be working again. Who on Earth has time to work? I don't need work, I need a freaking vacation.

Fair Trade

2011-08-24T08:57:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I was skimming Craigslist - out of boredom more than anything else - and came upon a job post seeking childcare and light cleaning a few hours a week. The pay was too mediocre to be interesting, but I was intrigued by a proposed barter of personal trainer services.

There are only about a million trainers in this city, so I was skeptical that a fair trade could be made. Still, it couldn't hurt to get more information...

A couple of hours later I received a response and a link to her website. And I totally fell in love, in a mostly non-creepy way. If I had ever fantasized about having a personal trainer, she is the one I would have gone with. But at her $60/hour rate? Not in a million years.

Now I have to ask myself how stupid it is to barter my time for personal trainer services when I don't even have a real job. Is getting built really that high on my priority list? Then again, the point of quitting my job was to explore what makes me happy outside the confines of capitalism. This shouldn't take up much of my time, and it would be kind of nice to have some routine injected into my lifestyle. I imagined that unemployment would give me more time to stretch, attend yoga classes, swim, meditate, and cook. I have maybe done each of those things once in the past three weeks. Having someone hold me accountable, at least in one area of my life, could be very beneficial.

It's really strange that while I'd really, really like to take this opportunity, a big part of me is resisting because this won't do anything for me career-wise. I keep thinking, "no, I can't commit that much time to something that won't earn a paycheck." As though the only worthwhile choices are those that make money!

Summer Days

2011-08-23T10:26:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was the first in over two weeks of unemployment that I almost actually felt bored. Catching myself in the nick of time, I ordered Darling to break out the sunscreen and we walked down to Barton Springs Pool.

We used to visit the free and unregulated "doggie section" immediately downstream of the paid entrance, but one day my Mom came to visit so we forked over the $3/person fee. The difference was so great that we've used the official entrance ever since, usually during the off season or 9 p.m. free swim. Paying $6 to swim in the middle of the day, sunbathe for a bit, and then swim again was so amazingly luxurious and worthwhile!

When we came home Darling made a cheesy chickpea and pasta dish and I chopped up a couple of side salads and made strawberry lemonade. After eating we went upstairs and passed out for a couple of hours before the house meeting. Later Raja called wanting to hang out. I accepted the invitation and was at Trudy's before I realized what she meant. I already felt guilty for spending $6 swimming, now I was sitting at a pricey restaurant!

What made things even worse was the realization that my friends planned on camping. They just wanted a couple of appetizers and maybe some drinks, and to hang out chatting for hours. In a packed section.

For those of you who don't wait tables, let me lay this out for you: waitresses make money by moving tables. The more you eat the better, true, so she will certainly encourage enjoying drinks, appetizers, entrees, coffee and dessert. She wants you to have a good time and to spend money. But mostly the latter. And then she needs you to leave. Because if you sit at her table having a good time for three hours on a busy night, you have lost her multiple other money-making opportunities. Don't forget, she is most likely earning less than $3 an hour, and she will likely be tipping bus boys and dishwashers out of her earnings. She can not afford to spend three hours trying to woo a minimum wage income out of you.

This is why I'm not a fan of frugality at restaurants and only go out if I intend to make it worth my while. It's a matter of decency, not pride. Anyone out there thinking, "Well, if the waitress is that busy she must be making plenty of money anyway," do me a favor and slap yourself. Whatever you do for a living, you'd probably be pissed if someone said, "you're so busy it won't hurt if I rip you off a little." You can't afford to go out to eat if you can't afford to tip well. And if you want to spend two hours chatting with coworkers, chill at the freaking bar or go to a coffee shop!

Anyway, that's how I ended up spending $13 to cover a drink, my share of an appetizer, and tip (and, for the record, I know my friends tip very well, and my fears were unjustified). We actually had a really good time.

So...this is me two and a half weeks into unemployment. Margaritas, sunbathing, and naps.

Four Days of Spending

2011-08-18T14:12:00.000-07:00

This has not been the most successful No-Spend Month. Since Monday I have made the following purchases:

A Go Local Card
Taco and a soda
Two bottles of water
Monthly bus pass
Dinner Out
Two Movie Rentals (and a $9 fine I didn't know about)
Two 6-Packs of cider
Two pints of ice cream
Gallon of ice cream
Half a bottle of whiskey
Watermelon
Various cleaning supplies
Two bars of soap
Shampoo

No, I did not actually purchase half a bottle of whiskey. A friend and I split the cost of a full bottle for Ambi's birthday. Because I am such a good friend that I've forgotten her birthday eleven years in a row and panicked, which also accounts for the gallon of ice cream, half a dozen ciders, and the watermelon. The rest of the cider and ice cream, as well as the dinner out and movie rentals, was an early celebration of Darling's birthday.

From Ahead To Behind: Story Of A Windfall

2011-08-16T15:12:00.000-07:00

Despite my best intentions, the first thing to get knocked off my financial priority list upon turning in my two-week notice was my student loan payments. I'm so far ahead on these payments that I haven't received a bill in over a year, and I'll be very surprised if I ever get another bill again (they'd much prefer I stop paying and start racking up that interest).

Of course it's never been my plan to lay off the student loan payments at all. Quite the contrary: I desperately want to be done with the matter by April 2012. Unfortunately Darling and I got hit with a really big bill last May that took grudging precedence over student loans for the past couple of months.

Yesterday I picked up my last full paycheck from the pub and was pleasantly surprised to find it $200 more than the one before. I had two trains of thought on this matter. The first was that I could write a check to the house for October's rent ASAP. In many ways, that would have been the right thing to do. The house is my largest expense and most vital obligation. Sure, I'd only have $12 left to my name afterward, but it might be worth the weight off my shoulders.

That train of thought derailed the moment I came home from the bank and checked my student loan account. Since my last payment of $100 in June I've accrued $98 in interest! It was just too much - without thinking I applied the full $200 "windfall" to my debt.

Once I gave into that single reasonable expense, they started multiplying like gremlins. Tired of counting nickels for daily bus passes, I shelled out $30 for another monthly. Then I remembered how desperately my cleaning supplies need to be restocked, which will cost me another $15-20. And oh, the tools Darling needs for work. And, come to think of it, how the heck are we nearly out of soap again? Didn't we just buy soap?!

Blah. In the space of a few hours I went from thinking we were financially set for another month to being as far behind as ever. But perception is everything, innit?

Unionployment

2011-08-11T14:53:00.000-07:00

I have a pretty lengthy to-do list to accomplish while being unemployed. Not only do I want to spend some time writing - which meant spending last weekend with my Dad - but I wanted to explore some other "if only" careers in the meantime.

If only I were ___________, I could be a carpenter. Fill in the blank however you like, but where I grew up intelligent white girls were not expected to excel in shop class. Building for a living strikes me as very satisfying, but I'm not up to cold-calling construction sites. So I hit up the Carpentry Union on Monday in search of direction.

I was directed immediately to Raul with the promise that he would explain the apprenticeship program. Raul gave me a single, searching glance and then avoided my gaze for the rest of our "meeting," which took place in two parts.

Part One was a maths test, "very simple," he told me, "because carpenters have to be good at math." I bit my tongue and opened the test. Roughly 50 questions which breached the gap between math and common sense. What is 1/3 of 4/8's? What is 12 ft. 6 inches minus 6 ft. 9 inches? Because I am careful with exams, it took me an embarrassingly long time to complete. Raul definitely checked on me at least once. Finally, I brought it to the desk.

Part Two involved the "interview," which was Raul asking me questions and clicking responses on his computer. Did I have a criminal history of any sort? Do I have my own tools? Really?

Before I knew it, I'd undergone the application process of a program I know next to nothing about. Raul informed me that apprentices were ranked based on their test scores and interviews and the highest ranked were hired as needed. He added that, as a woman, I'd get special treatment (not his words), but there aren't many jobs to be had so I shouldn't expect anything in the next several months.

I was then shooed away having no idea what any of that meant. Not that it wasn't an educational experience. I learned that, mathematically speaking, baking a loaf of banana bread and erecting a house are equally difficult. I also learned that having boobs will get me special treatment even from people who don't want to see them.

I'll call that fact-finding mission a success, with the added bizarre bonus of possibly becoming a carpenter at some point next year.

Sunemployment

2011-08-09T10:01:00.000-07:00

Darling was offered a job yesterday.

He's had several interviews in the past several weeks that revolved around a similar theme. Solar companies want journeymen electricians or NABCEP-certified workers with on-the-job experience. It's the old Catch-22: can't get the job without experience, can't get the experience without the job. What makes things more difficult in Austin is the sheer number of solar students. most commercial installs are done at reduced rates for instructional purposes, so people are basically paying to do what Darling wants to do for a living.

Darling finally snagged a crew position out of town. Unfortunately, it's a six hour drive west of town. Since most of the crew is from Austin, they'll be traveling for two weeks at a time, working fourteen days in a row with extended weekdays in between. The job should take 6-8 weeks to complete.

We're both really happy that he got the job. I mean, being able to pay rent is a good thing. He should be back just in time to start his paid apprenticeship. And this will open a number of doors he's been banging on for months. My own unemployment is suddenly much less scary. But...six weeks? I can't imagine going most of a month without my husband.

Fixin' It Tips

2011-08-07T10:51:00.000-07:00

Not much was repaired in the house I grew up in: once something broke, it stayed that way. The doorknob between my room and my brother's, for instance, came apart once and was never replaced. To this day my mom opens that door with a pair of pliers.

As a result, I've always been enamored with mechanically-minded people. I basically swooned upon discovering Darling had basic DIY skills. On the flip side, I was bitterly resentful when my beloved couldn't fix something, regardless of the necessary skill. It took an absurdly long time for this feminist to pick up a wrench herself.

It was moving into a co-op that did it. After years of expecting landlords to deal with broken appliances, and moving when they didn't, I finally developed a sense of stewardship over the stuff my family depends on. The appliances and fixtures in our home aren't simply junk we temporarily pay to use. Our house and property is a gift passed down for over thirty years from fellow communitarians and an inheritance we will eventually leave behind. More important, when something breaks, we pay to replace it, and we see that reflected in our rent.

For whatever reason, that bothers some of us more than others. Few of us will hesitate at all before calling an outside repairman for any reason, which I like to avoid if possible. It was easy enough, I found, to replace loose screws or even entire faucets. But there is a small contingent within the house that is eager to replace anything, anything at all, at the drop of a hat.

Within a cooperative, she who acts first usually wins any debate. So when the washing machine broke, and people talked about buying a replacement, I was the one who did the very dirty job of purchasing and installing a new motor instead. For roughly $80 and a few hours of research and labor, I post-phoned an $800 purchase. That was about the point I discovered that fixing stuff isn't something some folks are born knowing how to do. As with baking and knitting, gardening and customer service, repair requires both skills and tools that must be acquired over time.

This is some of what I've learned about DIY so far:

Borrow tools. Whatever it is you need, your neighbor has one rusting in his or her garage. Your neighborhood already hosts 200 precision screwdrivers, it does not need you to buy another from China.
Google it. Whatever is broken, someone else has had that same problem and posted advice on how to fix it.
Take it apart. You can't really diagnose a problem until you know how a system comes together. Children do this habitually for a good reason.
Put it back together, even if you haven't identified the problem or solution. It's amazing how often this fixes simple issues. I've even repaired my laptop this way (something was jamming the fan, I think).
Talk to hardware store employees. Shop local, or go to Lowes. Either way, these folks tend to have really good advice to impart. I've often had employees recommend different companies for special assistance and prices.

By accepting the responsibility of performing basic appliance and hardware repair in your home, you can save a good deal of money and recognize when it really is in your best interest to replace a piece of equipment. Plus, people will treat you like a superhero if they find out you can bake and re-grout a bathroom.

The Taste Of Unemployment

2011-08-06T13:14:00.000-07:00

Thursday night was my last shift on the job. I spent the entire evening suffering severe pangs of regret, very much wanting to take back the resignation, take back the last two weeks, the past three months...start over, somehow, and find some way to make things play out differently.

Instead I clocked out, drank a half-pint, and hurried to catch the next bus home.

I barely had the energy to brush my teeth after work, and might not have if not for the pain in my back molar. Worried about infection, I thoughtlessly gargled some prescription anti-bacterial mouthwash I'd been given by a dentist last year. It stung worse than I remembered, and late into the night.

Only four hours later I was awakened by a knock at our bedroom door. Xy had brought Oblio for sitting, and I'd slept through my alarm! I rolled out of bed, threw on some clothing, and started my first day as an unemployed American.

It's amazing how long it took me to notice something was off. First the cottage cheese seemed wrong. Not sour or old or bad, but different, like a vital ingredient was missing. My coffee was absurdly weak as well. I had lots of fruit, which was delicious, and Darling made me yummy eggs and unusually dry toast. After Raja picked up Oblio, we set to work on a lasagna to take to a friend's house. Well, Darling made lasagna, and I worked on a batch of Sorry-We-Made-The-Kitchen-Smell-Delicious-And-Didn't-Leave-Any-Food Brownies for the house.

As the lasagna baked, I began to realize what was missing. See, I never set alarms while cooking. I depend totally on my sense of smell, which reliably informs me of what's going on in the oven at all times. Until yesterday. If it weren't for the waves of heat, I wouldn't have been sure the oven was even on. Confused, but still not quite getting it, I sampled the brownie batter.

Texture. Slightly grainy, clumpy, slime of egg and oil. And nothing else. No sugary sweet or bitter chocolate, no hint of vanilla or buttery goodness. My heart stopped. I went to the sugar bowl, pinched out some grains, and put them on my tongue. Nothing. I opened the tub of honey and did the same, and the sticky slime in my mouth could have been anything. I could not taste sweet.

Suddenly my morning coffee made sense. I went to the pot of cold dregs on the counter, and sniffed. Nothing. I brought a spoon to my lips and drank what could have been water. I turned to the back of cocoa powder on the counter, dug in the spoon, and scooped the it into my mouth. Darling, whom I'd called down as a witness, did the same and gagged. I could not taste bitter.

Further experimentation proved that I still experienced salty and sour. But that was it.

A quick study of the mouthwash revealed not only this potential adverse side-effect, with no reference to potential permanence, and that this was the mouthwash Darling had been prescribed post-surgery. Terrified of the prospects of living life with neither sweet nor bitter, I was ready for the ER. Darling convinced me to give it 24 hours to wear off, so we went out as planned instead.

Sure enough, my senses did return. This morning I awoke to the precious aroma of coffee.

Obviously I've learned my lesson regarding prescription-strength medicine. And I'm trying to appreciate any other lessons revealed by my harrowing experience. After all, in giving up my job I redeemed the bulk of my life, both bitter and sweet. My first day was busy from start to finish, but today I woke up feeling vaguely hollow, the Now-Whats are buzzing about and threatening to swarm. Like yesterday, I need to remember that the sweet is still there, the bitterness close, whether or not I personally perceive them. And given a little time and faith, the numbness will wear away, and life will be rich again.

July (Not)Spending

2011-08-04T13:12:00.000-07:00

The No-Spend Month is an interesting animal. For roughly two weeks it was all I could think about. I kept a list of things I wanted to buy, which I'd share in full if it contained anything besides beer and fried food. I flipped through my day planner on my commute to and from work, guessing and double-guessing how many days Darling and I could go without carrying cash. Every social interaction posed a moral dilemma: Darling and I are social spenders, which correlates into being social drinkers and eaters as well. It was actually very strange to me that we could arrive at a friend's house without alcoholic beverages, that the evening could go on.

After the first two weeks? I kind of quit thinking about it. Quitting my job became a much bigger issue, and spending (or not) a more sensitive matter. Heck, in some ways all of my goals seem to have gone out the window except not spending. I didn't give up on the challenge, obviously, it just slipped from the forefront of my mind.

This is what I ended up buying during the first month of not spending:

Taxi for house shopping, $23
Rent Late Fee, $10
Darling's haircut, $25
Stocking up on various toiletries, including toothbrushes, floss, shaving soap, shaving brush, razors, and sunscreen, $47.57
Bus tickets to work, $36
Food At Work, $15.50
Beverage purchased while dropping off a resume, $3.00
Bus Tickets (excluding commute), $20
Allergy Medicine, $3.25
Darling's Birthday Present, $88.48

When calculating my net worth on the first of August, I was disappointed by what looked like a lot of surplus spending. But, excluding rent ($950) and debt servicing ($686), I've only parted with $271.80.

Not only that, but most of that spending can be easily avoided in August. Quitting my job, for instance, will save me a good amount of commuting money and remove the temptation to eat over-priced fried stuff on the clock. Borrowing a car to do the house shopping will reduce my transportation costs again. Darling's birthday won't be around for another eleven months or so, at nor will he need another haircut for a while yet. We should also be good on toiletries for a little while, though I'm surprised by how much we spend in this area. Overall, I wouldn't be surprised if we reduce our spending by over half this month.

August 2011 Net Worth

2011-08-03T13:39:00.000-07:00

Thanks to having a few hefty paychecks in a row, I knocked over a thousand dollars off debt and brought my net worth up to a rockin' -$7,138.43.

Tomorrow is my last day of work, and I'm insanely excited. And perhaps generally a bit insane. There is so much to do my mind is reeling.

There is the bedroom, which could very well do with some re-arranging and de-cluttering. There are crafts to begin, complete, or finally announce dead and forgotten. There are instruments to practice, corners to dust, so on and so forth.

So without, so within. My diet, sleep pattern, and meditations desperately need attention. I lost fifteen pounds since April, a change I'd be overjoyed by if it could be attributed by some sort of healthy choice. In reality, the weight loss is as much a symptom of stress as the consistent "fluttering" in my ear and terrible insomnia. I look forward to regaining my balance in the coming weeks.

My family needs me, as always, but for the first time I don't resent the sentiment. I've watched my Dad die for most of my life now. I'm ready to forgive and be forgiven. And, in true prodigal form, I'm ready to request my inheritance. My Dad is brimming with stories and histories that, so far as this writer is concerned, are rightfully mine to salvage. And now I finally have the time.

In the meantime, there are nieces and nephews to rile, tired brothers and sisters to relieve. Ob is building a deck, my stepmother needs a dog-sitter, a friend is putting in her first garden...

I should be thinking about a job hunt, scanning Craigslist, freaking out as I near the moment that next month's rent becomes a serious issue. But the only thing that worries me at all is the awful idea of negotiating hours with a new employer, trading my life away shift by shift.

Week One of Two

2011-07-30T11:10:00.000-07:00

I've had an excellent and busy week since my last post. Sunday was spent playing board games and enjoying a delicious enchilada casserole with friends. Monday I sat baby Oblio, cooked a large family stir-fry, attended a house meeting, and went to the Barton Springs evening free swim. Tuesday my mom came into town, which meant shuttling up to north Austin to spend time with her and my brother and niece before work. Wednesday a friend and I took both of our visiting mothers to lunch (actually, the mothers insisted on treating). Then Thursday was a real hit: I woke up early for my house cleaning gig, Xy and Raja popped in to visit for a few hours, and I helped a friend bake vegan chocolate chip cookies for his family reunion before heading to my night shift.

After all that I only had a few hours to sleep before babysitting Oblio. By the time Raja picked him up in the early afternoon I pretty much just crawled into bed to watch Away We Go, drink tea, finish a book, and cuddle Darling for the rest of the day.

Several people have recommended deciding what I want to do before diving back into the job market. To be honest, if every week of my life proceeded like this past week, excluding the exhausting evening shifts at work, I'd be pretty darn happy. Spending time with my family and friends, hosting guests, baking for loved ones, sharing meals and conversation and games with friends? Rocking babies to sleep, riling toddler nieces into frenzied excitement, doing small repairs on my creaky shared house...Life is good.

Turning in my two-week notice seems to have invited the good back into my life, the qualities that have all but been left for dead since starting this job. After months of wrestling with my consciousness and suppressing my intuition, justifying poor choices and waiting for things to improve, it's amazing to experience happiness again, even as I continue to struggle with frustrating evening shifts and resulting sleep deprivation.

Thursday, my last day, can't come quickly enough.

So...What Next?

2011-07-22T11:05:00.000-07:00

Fantasizing about quitting a job is very different than facing the cold reality of impending unemployment. It's been a while since I've left a job without an escape route to another paycheck.

This time around, my inherent and general enthusiasm for work is severely lacking. I would much rather sulk off to lick my wounds than put on a happy face and fill out applications. Darling and company think I should take a week off and think about what I want to do with myself. Right now I only know what I don't want. I don't want to work forty hours a week, commute, work with anyone under the age of 25, serve frat boys or entitlement whores, sell liquor or crappy food, earn less than $15 an hour, juggle two part-time jobs, listen to awful music, worry that my employer is on the verge of bankruptcy, or wonder if I'll make rent.

I'm not totally unambitious. I do have an idea or two in the back of my mind. I'm just very hesitant to pursue something new, to tackle a new type of dream while I'm still reeling from the backlash from catching the last.

Giving Notice

2011-07-20T14:01:00.000-07:00

I'm quitting my job.

My dream job turned into a nightmare. Employment that should have been about empowerment and communication actually centered around power struggles and politics. I was expecting self-development and personal growth, but I the only thing I developed was a mild stress disorder and the only growth occurred in my capacity to withstand and accept B.S.

I spent months waiting for change, trying to set a good example, desperately warding off disillusionment. The result was that I came off as Mom-ish at best, cloying at worse, and totally ignored either way.

I made the decision to quit Thursday and was alarmed by the intense feeling of relief which followed. After all, I'd just written a post glorifying my position. I decided to give myself the weekend to think it over.

Friday, after a long night of drinks with my favorite coworkers, I felt a touch of the camaraderie I've grown so desperately to crave and changed my mind. Saturday I hung out with a group of communist friends late into the night, caught a glimpse of the other side, and determined again to quit. Sunday I worked a very peaceful shift and got out several hours early, and decided that I could hold on a few weeks more, at least...Monday, my supposed day off, I spent three hours traveling to and from an hour-long meeting that made a mockery of all things related to meetings, cooperation, business decorum, and basic democratic principles. I went home and announced publicly for the first time my decision to quit, and for the first time in nearly a week was able to get a full night's sleep (I'd been operating on 2-4 hours hours at a time).

Yesterday was the first day I didn't change my mind, and in fact realized that I can't even stand to wait until finding another job before giving notice.

So I'll be turning in my notice tonight, and my last available day will be August 3rd. That means I'll receive my last full check on the 15th of August. That will be enough to pay September's rent. It's as nice a cushion as I've ever had leaving a job, giving me all of August to find a new job and all of September to earn the next month's rent. I might even be able to sneak a week off somewhere in there, if I tried.

Day Fifteen

2011-07-15T16:44:00.000-07:00

Today is the fifteenth day of not spending.

So far Darling and I have purchased toothpaste, razors, a bar of shaving soap, several bus tickets, including the $20 five-day pass and the $30 30-day pass, and a taxi for the purpose of grocery shopping. We also paid some rent and debt.

What we have not purchased is more impressive. This includes alcohol despite hosting a fourth of July party and watching True Blood twice, which usually involves bringing a six pack of cider to share with friends. That's an estimated savings of at least $30 right there. I have also totally refrained from eating out for any reason, including food at work. Resisting the temptation to buy fried food for a shift meal has been my biggest temptation by far. But it's saved at the very least another $10, not to mention 50,000,000 calories.

The longest we've actually gone without exchanging money for goods and services is three days, mostly due to the bus pass situation (now solved).

Tonight I'm going to play games with friends, another ritual associated with a trip to the liquor store. Instead I baked a massive loaf of Challah bread to take.

Working For More

2011-07-13T12:38:00.000-07:00

For the record, I really, really like my job.

I like my team mates, who are all roughly my age and with whom I relate quite well. I like my other coworkers, so many of whom are the dreamers and anarchists I've desperately needed in my life lately. I like the founders of the company who, totally unmotivated by profit, are driven by an idealistic pragmatism I've never seen before. I like the customers and the nature of our relationship. I like the pay, which is far more than the $17K Darling and I earned last year.

The most stressful aspect of my job is that which I value most: not having a boss. It's much more difficult than, say, not having a landlord. As with cooperative living, collective working requires strong and trusting relationships built on superior communication. Which does not, believe it or not, happen over night. But it's an amazing thing to see develop, and I'm incredibly grateful to be a part of that.

Lizzie aptly compared my mission statement to the American Dream. That's no accident. A major goal of this blog is to prove that The Dream is achievable by the average American. If Darling and I could buy land, build a house, and raise children on our modest incomes, so could anyone else.

What I'm finding is that while the standard Dream is achievable sans credit, it's increasingly difficult to accomplish within the bounds of a standard life. This is in part due to the fact that, despite international economic woes, most people are increasingly dependent on expensive luxury-turned-tools. Cell phones are a particularly good example of this. Five years ago I never saw cell phone numbers as a required field on job applications, nor did I expect to see most pay phones in the city gutted and dismantled by the dozens, literally over night. An act of simple frugality has, due to the shifts in culture, become a fairly radical lifestyle choice.

Some shifts are more personal than cultural. Simple and frugal choices lead down unexpected paths, and the further I travel the more difficult is to engage in standard practices. In our pursuit of cheaper rent, Darling and I started living cooperatively. Now we've grown accustomed to benefits beyond affordable monthly payments. Sharing groceries is one thing, sharing meals is something else entirely. Despite the compromises and sacrifices made in such an arrangement, the thought of living "alone" makes me very sad. Upon visiting home-owning couples these days I can't help but experience a sort of pity. So much space, so much stuff, so much dust. I wasn't born thinking like this, it is the result of years of experience and reflection that are irreversible.

I can see the same thing happening to me at work, with time. In a year or so I won't know how to have a boss or withdraw from decision-making processes. I won't know how to measure my worth to a company in terms of pay any more than I could handle sharing a wall with neighbors I didn't know intimately in an apartment complex. I will learn to love my coworkers, which at this moment is a very scary prospect, and it will be hard to imagine developing such ties with another group at another company.

The course of my life will be fundamentally different as a result of this job. I've undergone too much transformation in the past five years to ignore the implications of what I'm learning right now. I find it be very amazing and very, very stressful. And I don't know ANYONE who has been through this sort of lifestyle change or worked for this type of company with whom I can really share these thoughts. Imagine going to college freshman year, but somehow having come from a community that has never even heard of college before. It's hard, scary, heartbreaking, and more wonderful than you can describe...and no one has a freaking clue what you are talking about. That is what stresses me out the most.

The pay, the mighty dollar, was a big part of why I accepted this job. Being able to achieve some long-held financial goals is going to be amazing. That is easy enough to communicate, and perhaps the most appropriate topic for this blog. But everything else? It's going to take a while before I really know how to put it into words.

Working Full Time - Today

2011-07-11T14:53:00.000-07:00

My last post received some excellent comments, stocked with the usual great advice and encouragement. Sarah D. took a break from lurking and made the following observation about a topic I've been wrestling with for several weeks.

What does bother me at the moment is I'm really not feeling the joy with your new job. It seems to be mucho frustration, mucho extra travelling and a serious drain on your finite resources (ie time). Am I mssing something? It seems that you've become everything you've fought against over the past few years, albeit working for a touchy feely co-op, and mainly for the sake of the mighty dollar. Personally I'm all for job security, but you seem to be struggling. Are things improving?

As with so very many of my responses, there's a short answer and a long answer. The short answer is yes, I've been struggling, and yes, things are improving.

The long answer:

The most Darling and I have ever earned in a single year was less than $28,000. Last year we barely earned $17,000. In the meantime I've paid two sets of immigration fees, traveled to Europe twice, supported my Dad and little sister for a few months, spent a few thousand dollars on college classes, moved into one of the priciest neighborhoods in an already expensive city, paid cash for two oral surgeries sans insurance, and spent an entire Summer acting a fool.

While I've lived a life rich in love and experience, I am not entirely satisfied with my progress. In my early twenties it was all good and fine to work four days a week, exceed my minimum monthly minimum debt payments, and feel clever making a trip to and from England with less than $3,000. But next year I'm 27, and treading financial water isn't quite good enough anymore. So even before I was offered a full-time job, I was searching for something that would enable me to break free of my debt (and solve my dental woes) once and for all. Then I was offered my current job.

The mighty dollar is not something I want to pursue my entire life. I don't think there is a job on this planet that I could dedicate 40 hours a week to and still be content. I'm too spoiled, too petulant, and too sleepy by nature. That's why accepting this job, and working forty hours a week right now, is the right choice.

To my mind, debt is the only thing that keeps me traditionally employed in the first place. This is a radical statement, and we can deal with its implications in time, but for now let's deal with the fact that I have to pay over $10,000 before my life is totally my own. At my current rate, I'll be doing this for the next 5-10 years. That is not acceptable to me. By pairing a full-time salary with a hardcore spending fast, I might achieve debt freedom and perfect dental health by next year. It's not going to be easy. I might be a little grumpy for the next twelve months.

But once Darling and I can honestly say that what we have is totally our own? Capable of living very well while working very little? I can't even begin to imagine what we will do with that power. I'm hoping to have come into my own at my current workplace, which I really do adore. If not, I'll be more free than ever to pursue employment that does make me happy...if I choose to work much at all. But that's a challenge for later.

Lessons From Fasts Past

2011-07-07T12:23:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I used the seven day bus and train pass to get to and from work. I'm still frustrated to have spent so much money on something that won't get used for full effect, but at least I'm not steadily bleeding money on bus fare in the meantime.

For someone who "isn't spending," I've been especially obsessed with money. I remember this from Spend Nothing Months past. Coping with compulsive temptation requires cultivating a certain type of self-awareness. It gets slow at work, and I'm watching people eat fries. And even though I'm not hungry and have a packed lunch, even though I don't actually like fries that much, suddenly there seems to be a very compelling argument for just going ahead and buying myself a plate of fries to get through the next half hour of my shift before the dinner rush hits. And even though the answer is "no," my brain wants to chew on the idea, the pros and cons, the potential cravings, the justifications, the socio-economic relations between myself and the bloody stupid fries. If I was spending, I'd just think that it was time for dinner, buy a plate, eat it, feel guilty and greasy for the rest of the night, and wonder what the heck I was thinking spending $40 on food at work over the course of the month when it came time for monthly tabulations.

It's a silly example, but true. Every time I set limitations for myself like this, I can't help but pity the credit addict all the more. I have such a difficult time resisting things I can't afford while limited by the amount of cash in my pocket. How do people cope with $1,000+ lines of credit? I read critiques of spending fasts written by folks who have deluded themselves into thinking that money is about numbers, wants and needs, credit ratings and net worth. Until you truly, voluntarily choose not to spend more than absolutely necessary for a certain period of time, you can't really understand how much spending occurs out of boredom, stress, and habit.

Based on previous experience, I expect the anxiety associated with not spending to go away after about a week. But then, I've only ever "not spent" for a month at a time. What will happen after ten months of financial abstinence?

Spending on Buses, Not Booze

2011-07-06T13:51:00.000-07:00

So, about not spending...

...It's been fairly easy so far. Since my last update Darling and I spent $186 on debt and $2 on bus tickets.

On Monday the house had a party and I had a really, really hard time not pitching in for beverages. It kind of makes me feel like a huge jerk, actually, not to purchase a six-pack to share. Not that there wasn't plenty of beverage to go around. Come to think of it, I had a similar compulsion while hanging out with friends on Sunday. I wouldn't have expected that to be my strongest temptation so far, but there you go.

I spent some time trying to fix my bike today and succeeded in little more than threading a nut and becoming very, very frustrated with the entire situation. I miss riding like crazy. Due to the 4th of July my trip with Em to YBP has been postponed yet again, but maybe on Monday everything will get sorted out.

2011 Resolution Update

2011-07-05T12:03:00.000-07:00

So, I made some New Years Resolutions last January.

And I was fairly good at keeping them for a long while. Then...well, I obviously stopped mentioning them. It was Beanie's recent post on our car-free challenge that reminded me to fess up.

So, car free? Not so much. I posted early on about my first several snags. Getting across town to babysit Baby O on MLK day was my first ride of the year, I think. Remember that day I shared a glue trap with a rat and then discovered the trains weren't running? Crap way to start the year. February I borrowed a car from Bo to do the house shopping, got trapped in South By Southwest downtown traffic, and got rear-ended. Not long after I shared a ride to the liquor store with her and then a bottle of whiskey. By my Mom's visit in March I no longer had the energy to resist her request to drive her around the city, though I was still shaken from the last time I got behind the wheel. By April I took for granted that I'd end up in a car to buy emergency provisions (meat) for my family to eat at my birthday barbecue. And by May I pretty much let the matter drop.

What have I learned? Darling and I choose to live car free, and I really think that if we moved to a new town (or back to Virginia), we'd have no problem going a year without metal coffins. However, we live in my hometown,where not only do we know a dozen people who want to see us regularly, but they all live at least an hour's ride away from us. By not owning a car (among other "alternative" lifestyle choices) we're able to live in an absurdly expensive area of an already pricey city. My friends, in turn, have chosen to live in the suburbs. Eventually we will all have to make difficult choices about where we choose to live and whom we get to hang out with as a result of those choices, but we might as well enjoy our mobility while gas is affordable (if gas wasn't affordable, people wouldn't drive SUVs).

As for riding the bike every single day, I crapped out on my 26th birthday, which also happens to be the hundredth day of the year. So I rode my bike for ninety-nine days in a row, a little further every week than the week before. To be fair, that first day I missed was also the weekend of my longest ride, well over thirty miles. I only realized that I went a full twenty-four hours without riding in reflection.

I kept riding daily for a few weeks longer, then I got sick. After pedaling an evening or two in a sickly haze, I gave it up for about a week. Then one day I went to grab Mimi's bike and it was not available. That was the same week I was offered a new job eight miles away. You guys should be able to recall easily enough what's been up since then.

Is this a fail? Maybe. I personally don't think so. I got enough riding in to feel like a true cyclist. I made trips to doctor offices and to campsites several towns away. I rode on dirt roads and highways. I rode to see my Godbaby in the hospital twice in the first two days of his life. And I built a foundation for future cycling. I knew before signing on the dotted line that riding eight miles home from work would be a breeze, even when most of my friends and family could only relate to the route as a hour-and-a-half-stuck-in-traffic trip. I learned some basic bike repair and am coming to terms with the fact that, to be the person I want to be, I have to embrace my mechanical side. I regret not riding every single day, but slowing down to master some mad hex key skills is obviously a necessary step in my personal evolution.

I totally forgot about the veganism thing, to be honest. Between the cycling and the commute and adjusting to a new job, not eating dairy fell pretty low on my priorities. Being away from my kitchen 10-12 hours a day five days a week is an incredible challenge. Finding any type of food that is nutritional, easy to transport, will be delicious after a long hot bus ride, does not make me look like a complete nerd at work, and can be thrown together in six minutes has been fairly stressful. Though, come to think of it, most of my successful lunch boxes have actually been vegan. So maybe I've been more successful than I give myself credit for. I'll start paying attention again.

I'm still tracking my money and creating my monthly tabulations, but still haven't moved onto the next step of the Your Money Or Your Life plan. I have to create and mount a sort of chart to gauge my success over the next five years or so. I've never been good at visual aids and the very sight of poster board brings to mind haunting memories of science fairs past. However, I'm pretty sure the next step of the plan is basically: Be Frugal. So, if I can get past this little fear-of-wall-charts thing, the next step will be crazy simple and jibe nicely with my 10 Month Spending Fast.

July Tabulations

2011-07-03T08:36:00.000-07:00

My real hourly wage for June was $8.45. I'm expecting slightly larger paychecks in July, and riding the bike should cut my commute by several hours a week, so hopefully that will improve.

I spent about 114 hours on rent, 23 on debt, and 14 on "extra" food and drink out with friends and on the go. I kind of can't believe that, broke as we seemed to be last month, we spent so much on beer and snacks. It adds up so quickly! And while I do love eating out, experiencing new restaurants, and not having to wash dishes, a lot of last month's eating out was really dissapointing. Darling and I spent $33 on a date to a favorite restaurant we neglected for a year, and the food was terrible. That was the biggest chunk of change, and the biggest letdown, but ultimately I'm looking foward to denying that vice for ten months.

Lizzie wondered if I ought to list all my expenditures on my blog for thirty days, which seems fair enough, since I'm claiming a spending fast. On the first of July Darling went to the bank and metro station to buy me a $30 thirty-day bus pass. Confused, he came home with a $20 seven-day bus and train pass. Frustrating as that is, thank God he didn't waste $80 on the 30-day bus and train pass. I'm wondering if this is a sign that I should start really relying on my bike to get to and from work. Tallying my hours worked for my monthly tabulations shows that the week I commuted by train and pedal-power, I saved roughly 5 hours of time.

That same day I did the house shopping, spending $2 on a bus and $21 on a cab in the proccess. Thankfully we have a new housemate who owns a car, so there will be less pressure on me to take up that chore.

We also paid $600 of our rent. Which means on day one we spent a total of $643. Not what I would call a massive success for day one, but whatever. Yesterday I spent no money.

July 2011 Net Worth

2011-07-02T11:41:00.000-07:00

My total assets amount to $2,165.42.

We spent this month trying to catch up. I got a sort of mini-paycheck on the first that barely put a dent in our situation, and then a full check on the fifteenth to pay the rest of June's rent with. My most recent check covered most of July's rent, but it won't be until my next check that I'll be able to say we're totally out of the hole. That knocks our current debt up to $10,527.04 .

Our net worth is now -$8,361.62. That's the lowest it's been since January, and $2,000 more than our record low! On the bright side, my upcoming paycheck is going almost totally to debt, so that should help get us back on track. That and the long-term spending fast we officially started yesterday.

Uncooperative Ranting

2011-06-29T14:24:00.000-07:00

"We're you really angry at the meeting yesterday, or just a little?"

Crap. I don't easily lose my temper. I'm normally the most patient and level-headed person at any given workplace. When someone does push my buttons, however, my pale complexion erupts in red blotches. That's why I got up at the last meeting and walked across the room to pour and drink a glass of water, hoping no one was paying attention. Apparently Kel was.

It's nice to know that at least someone cares. And that someone had the delicacy to wait for a quiet moment the next day to asses the situation. I shrugged, admitted that I hadn't gotten enough sleep the night before, and the topic dropped.

Less than an hour later I was coping with one co-worker throwing a hissy fit and another insisting on "clearing the air," which was successfully stoking the flames of what should have been solved with a five-minute cool-down period. I got home much later that night than necessary.

Battles of will and ego don't confine themselves to my workplace. At a house meeting Rin wants to know why we don't do more together as a group. Shouldn't we be more cohesive? Why don't we have weekly dinners like other houses? I point out the obvious answers to her question and come off looking like an uncooperative jerk.* Perhaps my frustration is intensified by the fact that I'd begged out of a family dinner so as to attend this meeting.

In other words, I'm experiencing unusually high levels of agitation right now. It might be the effect of my oppressive work schedule. It might be the stress of being absolutely, totally broke for weeks on end. It might be the mounting trepidation of my upcoming long-term challenge. I can't tell if everyone around me is unusually petty and obtuse, or if I'm unusually impatient, or both.

Yuck. Hopefully this mood passes soon.

* We're nine people with nine very different schedules, including a coffee shop employee, corporate drone, student, and bartender. Everyone has a really, really hard time even making the one meeting a week...To try and create another mandatory gathering would put added pressure on those who would attend while alienating those who will inevitably miss out. Not that we don't eat or socialize: many of us take particular effort in preparing meals for each other, playing board games in the evening, going swimming, and so on.

Meetings+Sleep Deprivation=Suck

2011-06-28T12:52:00.000-07:00

Sunday my Mom came into town. My day was spent traveling to my brother's house ten thousand miles and one bus transfer away from my home to hang out with them for all of six minutes before needing to go to work. Faced with the task of getting home from that evening when the night buses weren't running with neither bike nor cab fare, I was very relieved when my sister-in-law offered the use of her town bike.

I then missed the bus and had to ride to work, showing up sweaty, flustered, and late. It was worth it having the bike to ride home, but the weight of the cruiser added at least twenty minutes to that night's trip.

Four hours after getting home from work I had to wake up and go straight back for a meeting. I cycled fifteen minutes to the train station and slept in the comfortable seat. I was very, very grumpy during the two-hour meeting, at one point so frustrated that I nearly walked out for very immature reasons.

Afterward I returned Sister-in-laws's bike and my day improved. Baby O played with me for quite a while before Mom took me out for lunch and vegan ice cream. Then I headed back to my house for another meeting, which was comparably pleasant, and after that hung out with Ambi to watch the rest of Game of Thrones.

This morning I chose to sleep in rather than try and fix my bike. It was a worthwhile sacrifice. I'll be able to get home by bus for the rest of the week, at least. And only four days until payday!

Bike Break Down

2011-06-26T12:37:00.000-07:00

Bleh.

Thursday I hung out with Xy and Raja during the day and they gave me a ride to work, which meant a trip home by bus. Friday, of course, was spent with the baby and that evening I took a walk to Barton Springs to partake in the evening free swim.

Yesterday it was back to the commute, wrestling the bike onto a bus and paying my scrounged dollar for a one-way ride. I had an easy enough shift, but wasn't especially looking forward to the evening ride home. Not only was I battling a mild caffeine withdrawal headache (I'm finding that I can have my morning coffee or a chance at being hydrated during the day...it's a tough call), but it dawned on me that Saturday evening traffic would be very different from Wednesday night.

At midnight on a weekday the straight-through-the-middle-of-town involves the least amount of work: I point my bike south, listen for the approach of an occasional car, and coast downhill most of the way. At nine-thirty last night, however, traffic was still heavy. I checked on-line and found a route home along quiet roads with bike paths, which unfortunately cut across the very-hilly college campus. That's what I get for whining about a lackluster work-out.

The first five or so miles were absolutely awesome, re-affirming that biking home is the best commute ever. Then I began to feel a wobble in my left pedal. At first ever-so-slight, it could have been my imagination. Or has that always been there? By the time I crossed campus and hit the drag, the wobble was accompanied by a threatening squeak. Assuming I'd left a screw loose when replacing the pedals, I pulled over and tightened them with a hex key. Nothing I'd tampered with in the past, or anything I could discern by streetlight, was loose besides the entire crank (I just had to do a quick search to determine what the arm-type thing the pedal actually screws into is called).

Even though I couldn't tell what was wrong, each push forward was soon accompanied by a steady, grinding whine. Fairly certain my bike was on the verge of losing her guts and with no money for bus fare, I had to walk her the rest of the way home.

Don't know when I'll get a chance to fix the problem, but at least this doesn't suck as much as having a "new" used car break down halfway home.

My first Commute By Bike

2011-06-23T08:27:00.000-07:00

My new bike is a vintage trek racing bike, at least as old as myself and in much better shape. She looks a lot like this.

I'm totally unused to the posture and style of riding such a bike, but after months of riding a super-heavy cruiser, the speed and responsiveness is a revelation. Not dissimilar to driving a small sports car after a Summer behind the wheel of a Toyota Tundra.

Tuesday I rode her to the train station to work, but a rainstorm forced me to accept a ride home from a coworker. So it wasn't until last night that I got to try out my eight mile ride home for the first time.

We had a late rush at work and I ended up staying on an extra hour helping to catch up. Feeling rough and worn out, I wasn't looking forward to pedaling home. Having missed the last day bus, however, I had another hour to wait for the first night owl! So I hopped on the saddle and, before I knew it, was very nearly home and had not come close to breaking a sweat. The streets were mostly clear and, although I was anxious about drunk drivers as I coasted down the drag and through downtown, I didn't have a single issue.

The ride was so easy, in fact, that I couldn't help but be a little disappointed. This was supposed to be my daily workout! Climbing the last massive hill home, however, got me huffing and puffing. So there may be some aerobic merit to the ride after all.

The entire trip took me about 45 minutes. Not only is that half as long as the bus takes, but it's only about ten minutes longer than the trip by car in daytime traffic (not rush hour). I arrived home feeling refreshed, took a quick shower, drank some herbal tea, and passed out feeling great.

Catching Up and Making Plans

2011-06-21T13:40:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I finally fixed my adopted bike. It really only needed a couple of adjustments: a lowered seat and new pedals. I gave it a good test ride to and from the library and, besides having no idea how the gear system works, I feel comfortable enough to ride it home tonight.

In order to assuage my friends' concerns about my riding eight miles from work, I walked home one evening last week to get the best possible feel of the route. It took me a little more than three hours, mostly because I got turned around at one point and added at least half an hour to my trip. Although it's not a walk I'd like to take again, it was not, as many of my coworkers insisted, "impossible." And if I can enjoy a trip on foot, taking it on a bike will be a breeze and a half.

Last night I baked chocolate oatmeal cookies and Darling and I had a very good talk about money, employment, capitalism, spending, and so on. At first he was a little alarmed at the thought of embarking on an extended consumer strike. During his break from ACC, he enrolled in a state-funded training program for NABCEP practitioners hosted by the local electricians union. We've long considered shifting his renewable energy studies into a career in electrical work, but he was hesitant to commit to a five year apprenticeship program. Hanging out at the union and getting to know instructors, contractors, and novices has finally compelled him to apply for a spot in the full program. Nothing is guaranteed, but upon acceptance he would qualify for wages and benefits that would totally change our financial reality. We'd finally be able to afford darn near anything we want! And, as a vegetarian living in a cooperative who rides his bike to and from the offices in the heat of the Texas Summer, Darling really, really did not want to hurt his small chance of fitting in with the hyper-traditional masculine crowd he'd be working with. So...not spending money? Pretty much the opposite of what my husband was looking forward to in the next ten months.

After explaining my theory and what I hope to accomplish, however, Darling got the point. The goal would not be to sacrifice needs or forgo wants, but cultivate a system of satisfying both needs and wants outside the capitalist system. I know that might sound ridiculous/impossible, and I'll go deeper into the details over time, but it is a worthwhile experiment. After lengthy debate, we agreed that it needs to be long term, but with scheduled periods for review. Due to the nature of the project we won't arrange for a gearing up period, as we had with early no-spend months. We'll start July 1st for ease of scheduling, even though we won't have any money for one last meal at a restaurant or trip to Goodwill. He is still going to get his $30+ worth of computer supplies he's been requesting for his birthday, but otherwise we don't expect to make many exceptions. Our first review period will be three months from the start, October, so we can make needed adjustments to our philosophy before the holidays.

I intend to spend the next nine days practicing and developing an awareness of what makes me want to spend, and how such desires can be met without buying.

A Challenging Challenge

2011-06-20T12:20:00.000-07:00

A funny thing happened on my way to...uh, the blog.

Yesterday I wrote a post entitled "I May Not Be A Dreamer" to explain that while, technically, I could embark on a really interesting challenge, I wasn't gonna. My very good excuse is that all my time, energy, and excess cash should go towards my dental health. The latter point remains. I will be going to a dentist and having my teeth fixed in the next six months, come Hell or high water. That said, writing my "non-dreamer" post evoked a strange internal response.

My thoughts drifted into strange and unusual places. What would it actually be like to go ten months without spending money? What if my intention wasn't to develop my frugality, but to step away from the capitalist process altogether? This blog has always been about abstaining from credit, which I imagined depended on proper money management. But, in looking at my progress so far, it is life management that has done me the most good. Living somewhere I don't need a car, sharing my daily expenses with eight other people, buying second hand, borrowing, and sharing have not only reaped substantial savings, but yielded deep bonds and an unexpectedly rewarding lifestyle. Why wouldn't I take this a step further?

What would it mean to cross the line between frugality and freeganism? Not straight up dumpster diving, per se, but a voluntary restriction from general spending? What if when someone asked me to go to lunch, I responded, of my own free will, "No thanks, I don't spend money," the way, as a vegetarian invited to a barbecue, I respond, "No thanks, I don't eat meat."

How would that change my life, myself, and the people around me? How would it influence my marriage and my family relations? Without money as a bridge, could I reach my Mom and Dad? Without the excuse of poverty, could I handle the guilt of holiday gluttony, or lack thereof? Where would I find a place in this city, where one is defined by her favorite bar and trailer taco, if I did not indulge so? How would I prove my worth as a person without expensive gifts and casual, pricey generosity? How would I ease my occasional frustrations without a trip to the corner store for ice cream and soda?

Would I burn out and morph suddenly into a shopaholic? Or would I find myself more easily satisfied, more creative, more loving and grateful? Would I find an interesting class of non-shoppers to befriend, scattered throughout my current life, eager to offer tips and share experiences? Would I run into jerks who feel inexplicably threatened by my lifestyle choices, like the coworker yesterday who announced his intention to "convert" me from my vegetarian ways?

Perhaps most importantly, from a social experimentalist perspective, do I even have the right to let such an opportunity slip away? After all, I'm young, childless, and living and working at cooperatives. My husband is totally behind any and every idiotic scheme I'm capable of coming up with. I have a proven capacity to record my endeavors for posterity, whether or not they're worth reading. I would not be embarking on said experiment out of necessity, and could "back out" whenever I wanted.

If we decided to go through with the experiment, I believe these would be the ground rules:

- We would start on July 1st and end on April 1st.

- The goal would not be to save, invest, or service debt, but to abstain from spending money, to potentially cauterize the wound of capitalism at its source. Therefore the success of this project lies not in how much we have in the bank come next April, but how deeply we can enjoy life regardless of our account balances.

- Because rent at our house covers food and other daily necessities, we will obviously continue to pay for that. Our second priority will be health and absolutely nothing will come between me and getting the dental care I need.

- We will also continue to purchase whatever is absolutely necessary to maintain hygiene, employment, transportation, and other needs as they arise.

- We will continue to manage money responsibly by saving 10% of our income and heavily servicing debt. Both saving and debt servicing will come after paying dental expenses.

- If and when we do spend, we will attempt to do so as responsibly as possible. We will first seek out a cooperative business, if one is not available we will purchase from a non-profit, and failing that we will purchase from a local business.

I have eleven days to consider this and talk it over with Darling. We'd definitely have some kinks to work out, but to be honest, I'm really not seeing why wouldn't go for it.

I May Not Be A Dreamer...

2011-06-19T13:42:00.000-07:00

One of the things weighing very heavily on my mind lately is how much I should focus on debt servicing.

We started this year off with a bang by allotting $650/month - basically most of my tax refund - to debt servicing. Then I hit that employment snag and and haven't made a significant payment in a couple of months. Nor will I until August.

In order to reach my goal of being debt free within the first five years of this blog, Darling and I need to pay about $1,000/month to this goal. I'll go ahead and say right now that such a thing is narrowly, barely possible. Assuming Darling and I only spent money on transportation (bus passes and bike maintenance), and basic hygiene (including shampoo, but not hair cuts), and did spend any money on any holidays at all (including birthdays, weddings, and our 7th wedding anniversary), we might be able to meet this goal.

I love a good challenge, and ten consecutive "spend nothing" months would probably be good for Darling and me. We could nip ~~our~~ my convenience snacking in the bud. Instead of fantasizing about buying a not-quite-new bike I'd be forced to repair my broken bikes like a true hardcore cyclist. We could even technically forgo riding the bus altogether come September when it might be cool enough for me to ride both ways to work. Heck, maybe I could even cut down on shampoo and conditioner by switching back to baking soda and vinegar. Much as I would hate to continue missing capoeira and yoga classes, I'd certainly maintain my fitness levels cycling 8-16 miles six days a week.The possibilities are enough to make a frugal girl giddy!

However, how much we could reduce spending is only half the story. In about a month I will have insurance. The day after getting my card I intend to find a dentist and have a lot of work done. We're talking two root canals, three caps, and many, many fillings. As my company employs fewer than 20 people, I'm thinking ours is not the best HMO in the entire world. In other words, even if Darling and I are able to cut our "regular" expenses down to the bone, we can expect a massive surge in borderline-emergency medical expenses. I'm expecting to spend roughly $2500 in this area alone. And lets not forget another $300 in optometrist expenses in the next eleven months.

Obviously our best course of action is to reduce our spending as much as possible while pursuing both dental health and debt freedom. But the moment a dream becomes the impossible dream, commitment is less exciting. Sure, Darling and I could scrimp and save for ten months. We could even make it feel fun. But scrimp and save for eleven, twelve, thirteen, or a year and a half? Not so exciting a concept. Especially considering that we would be putting off other sound financial choices, such as building an emergency savings fund.

I haven't given up the dream yet, these are just my concerns. The radical in me wants to jump in and make the commitment, come hell or high water. Hopeless as it seems, Darling could land an excellent job he's been circling like a hawk, a tax refund or bonus from work could give us a massive boost - or at least cover the medical expenses, or I could find a way to make an extra $50 a week (another $2600 over the course of a year to cover medical expenses). We really won't know unless we try.

I'll definitely seek Darling's input before making any promises. But how absolutely awesome would it be to spend ten months kicking butt and, come my 27th birthday, find ourselves not only debt free but having effectively doubled our monthly spending money?