Shiny Happy Pooper

In a book I'm reading right now there is a comment nearly suggesting how life without toilet paper would be a life of privation.
   I think not.
   Since I've gotten healthy, when I poop I more often than not don't need toilet paper. That's right: When I wipe it's already clean.

I enjoy toilet paper. But I could do without it. If I cloth diaper a baby I will stop using toilet paper.

"Put it in the ground where the flowers grow / Gold and silver shine"

the bad ol' days

My first and third years of college, I had housing arrangements that required that everyone in the house took turns cooking dinner.

   The first year, I cooked weekly for 6 young women. The third year, I cooked every other week for 6 women and 6 young men. Men eat more.

The third year involved a dinner allowance. I had to keep and submit a receipt. It was the same amount allowed the other 5 women and 6 men when they cooked. I remember it being $24; $2/person. We were not to go above budget.

   The most filling, cheapest meals I knew how to prepare involved pork, and pork is haram [1 man and 1 woman were Muslim]. 

   Every time it was my turn to cook, I struggled.

Q: Why didn't I just go to Grocery Outlet, buy a whole bunch of bulk food on sale, and cook rice-and-beans at every meal? 

   A1: I didn't know Grocery Outlet existed; even if I had, I didn't conceive of cheap food as something that is worthy. I identified as a person who didn't shop at trash groceries.

   A2: I didn't have a car, and there was no grocery store within walking distance. I had to beg a favor to get to anywhere I wanted to go beyond campus. 

   I hated (and still hate) feeling obligated to buy something at a store just because I visited. When someone on a college student's gas allowance has made a special trip to take you to that store, the pressure's on. And I hated, then as now, begging rides. Imagine, with those high emotional costs, how it would've felt to beg a ride to go to three different stores on three different days to find the best deals. 

   My idea of a nightmare.

   A3: Bulk food was not in my playbook at the time. Also: who has room to store bulk food in a college apartment?

   A4: Rice-and-beans was already overplayed. One of the 6 guys had cornered the rice-and-beany market. He claimed a Mexican mom. He made r&b each time and people did complain that he always made the same thing. Repeating meals wasn't so socially acceptable unless you ordered :PIZZA.

What on earth would I do if I had to feed myself and Bjorn on $2/meal? That's just $12/day! Now I know how to cook, and what foods to prioritize, but I wouldn't be able to do it and be healthy.

   I'm grateful I don't have to worry about that.

out loud to each other

Bjorn and I have finished The First National Bank of Dad.
   We are currently reading together Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and Parentology.

no zealot like a convert

I have refurbished a cast iron pan. I am enamored!

My mother-in-law gave it to me. It's a Griswold [brand] 8 [size], made probably in the 1930s or -40s.
   It looked terrible. Crusty, really rusty. I didn't know half of the markings on the bottom were there; they were crusted over.

I was whelmed with trepidity at the prospect of restoring it. Yet I wanted to cook my steaks — from my cow, you know? my lovely cow? — this way, in cast iron.
   And this pan was my chance.
   To get over the daunt, I tried to prepare myself to restore and maintain the pan. To that end I bought a piece of chain maille. (It's beautiful, I'm in love. I want to be draped in chain maille.)
   Using the Ringer, half a German Butterball, and some Himalayan salt, I worked the rust off.

I finished it Sunday. I used it for the first time yesterday — bacon. This morning I used it first for potato crisps in yesterday's bacon fat and then for steak.

T-bone for two!

I am really so proud of myself. I have set this pan to rights.
   I've sometimes see acquaintances' blog posts about their refinished dressers or tables. They're glowing with pride. I understand that now.
   Dull rust --> shiny black!

I'm satisfied and improved. I love to work to make it easier to do the other work I do to make the things I want. I swear it's easier to make great crisps in cast iron!

due, undue, undone

Matthew: You are going to be such a wonderful mother.

   Mary: How do you know?

Matthew: Because … because you’re such a wonderful woman.

   Mary:  I hope I’m allowed to be your Mary Crawley for all eternity, and not Edith’s version or anyone else’s for that matter.

Matthew: You’ll be my Mary, always, because mine is the true Mary. Do you ever wonder how happy you’ve made me?

screenless childcare | lucky me

If one of two parents works full time it seems to me that the other parent is more or less engaging in single parenting.

There are some things without which it would be much harder to take care of my niece and nephew. One thing is that their mother is pretty chill about how we do things. Even if I am not doing it the way she would, or though it may seem to her that I'm making a mistake, she doesn't fuss.
   That helps.

Occasionally I have a day of extreme fatigue. On these days I am a drugged slug. It's not at all like the fatigue I had when my CFIDS was at its worst. It's acute. I cannot function or do anything; I just become unconscious. The sleep isn't even restful.
   Yesterday was one of those days.
   My mother-in-law made dinner and brought it over. We let the kids have some screen time (the first screen time they have had — apart from videochatting).

Fabulous mother-in-law. That helps. Screen time ... well, it's a resort, one that is so tempting I see how a single parent would daily succumb.

But absolutely, positively the thing that makes it best is Bjorn. Every day he does something to help me. Today he did the dishes (my job) twice, read to me while I did the dishes once, played games with the kids, helped them learn to maximize their utility functions (a continuing effort), took them downtown to eat dinner.
   That's a sampling that doesn't even represent several categories of his help. I've got it good.

I'm totally going to have all of his babies.

x$ / yr ?

I recently came across a Financial Independence blog introducing its extreme 21 day financial makeover. It features good advice — and a goal I shan't match.
   [Quote] "The goal here is to cut your expense level to <$10,000/year/adult. I live on $6000/year/adult. It can be done."

This is a pretty common ceiling (floor?) in the frugal community. The personal-finance blogger I regularly follow has claimed that a family of 4, in the US, can live well on $24k/yr (IF that family is living mortgage-free). His family of 3 lives large on ~$25k/yr.

Okay. I live on <$20,000/yr. I wondered, what's keeping me from $6,000/yr? I looked through my finances and made a comparison to MMM's 2013 spending.
   After my medical costs and my food costs (which I consider a medical cost*) I spend $300/month. That $300 breaks down into fixed/steady costs like this:

public utilities
- $50/mo water and waste
- $65/mo gas and electric (in the cold half of the year I pay ~$100/mo, in the warm half I pay ~$35/mo)

stuff wif plugs
- $50/mo 'Net + phone 

warm fuzzies
- $30/mo dog! 
- $35/mo gifts

homesteadying
- $50/mo into a medium-term savings envelope (with an eye toward house maintenance and repair)

...

leaving $20/mo to be split to cover clothes, lightbulbs, other household supplies, garden supplies, bus fare, library fines (I'm a fine kind of patron), play tickets.

In sum, all my non-medical, non-food expenses are $3,600/yr. (These numbers are from my finance spreadsheet, where I track every cent in and every cent out.)
   I could save money by not having a dog and not giving away $35/mo. But those things contribute massively to my happiness and my feeling of wealth. Even if I gave them up I couldn't get to $6,000/year, because I have major health costs.

* To round, my grocery+medicine bill is $1,250/mo. In 2014 60% of that is food, 40% is drugs, druglords, and then the little anodynes. In 2011 it was a similar total, but I was sick all the time and it was more like 30% went toward food and 70% went toward drug(lord)s. My total co$ts are the same; my health is better.

In another year I'll have more solid numbers, because I will have been living this way for longer so I'll have longer-term averages.
   Maybe in another year I'll be healthier, too.

thank you Earth

I have harvested my garlic. When the bottommost pair of leaves gets dry and yellow, it's time.
   On Monday morning I sat outside with the eastern sun toasting my back. I was wearing R's old "Dr Teeth and the Electric Mayhem" t-shirt. I peeled the dirty, spotty top layers off of the garlic. I set each shucked, bulbous pearl down on the deck. It was so beautiful: the tall withered stalks, pale gold; the shiny bottoms.

I haven't been this deeply proud over any other garden harvest. I'm highly happy with the whole process. It was "in-system", start to finish. Propagation? Check. No buying starts or seed. Watering? Check: It took no city water!
   I put it in the ground at the right time, got out of its way, minded the soil, and nature did the rest.

(Oh, I also cut the scapes. That puts more energy into the bulbs. And it doubles the yield. :)

i need to Help! somebody

Not just anybody.

One of the nice things that I don't think I would have had the energy to take on if I was working teaching is taking care of my niece and nephew for a week or more, as we will do starting next week.
   My sister Mona is moving here (to our very hood proper!) and has suffered from logistical impediments. Bjorn and I want very much for this move to happen and this arrangement was proffered and accepted.

See: This is so cool! I get to help my family (and realize a painfully dear dream of mine: more proximal relations) instead of managing a schedule!

I feel like I've leveled up!

The other week Bjorn and I were talking about our standard of living, and how it's sky high, in its austere way.
   Having the Macbeth family (sis&co) live nearby is, I identified, the only thing I could think of (besides quitting teaching, which I had not yet quite done) to boost my standard of living to the next tier.

no ado about much

Actually there is a big to-do brewing.
   In February Bjorn asked me to read this book. I read it, OFCOURSE. I love having books recommended 'specially to me!

It changed my life. My life changes a lot. Here's a book for that.
   I don't think that someone else reading the same book would have the same life change. This book introduced me to a new concept, which I followed, researched, and further followed and researched for 100 more hours —

my research took the time of a part-time job, some weeks.

I'm planning on turning our yard into an Edible Forest Garden. I am not sure why I haven't blogged about it a lot. I do feel like I've talked to some people a lot about it and they still exhibit cluelessness about what it is. That kind of takes the hot air out of my sails.
   What's with the deaf ears?
   Maybe my message is wrapped in an impenetrable tortilla of zealotry. Perhaps my elevator pitch is snore boring. Maybe these concepts are so counter-cultural that people can't grok it. Perchance people lack only visual aids.

I am very interested in talking about it — I'm more interested in doing it.

keeping the stars apart

Most people upon hearing I no longer teach ask me some variation on "so what are you going to do with your extra time?" Do. It's always do.
   All people that ask me anything ask me that: "What will you do now?" Dodo.
   No one yet has asked me "so how are you going to feel with the extra time?", "how will you live now?", or "what will you be?"

Pretend, for a moment, that I do all the things I used to do, but I feel different while I do them.
   (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud / and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;

one man's gewgaw is another man's gewgaw

I've managed one garage sale before. I was — 13, 14?; I was not in public school. I did it for a Personal Progress merit (it's a thing for Mormon girls 12-18); the proceeds went to the Ward Mission Fund. The proceeds totalled between $50 and $60.
   I don't remember how long it took me to prepare. I know I went through a whole bunch o' junk and put it on display in the garage.
   Note: I didn't actually think that any of it was junk. I had tchotchkes disease.

Here are the bits I remember.

• I made my own flier for it.

• It took place in the garage.

• I sold a teddy bear (in a beautiful-red tutu) that I apparently didn't really want to sell: afterwards I lamented her sale.

• I wanted a lot of money for a ring display case and no one wanted to pay that for it. Its exterior was chipped, not just a bit. Its interior pillow was dingy.
   I was sure it was precious.
   I'd bought it at a neighbor's garage sale a few years before. It was the first and one of the only things I've ever acquired via yard sale.

• I sold a Nintendo game for $5; when an interested kid saw it and he asked how much it was and I said something like a dollar. His derisive whoop must have embarrassed his mother because she said "it must be worth more than that" and insisted he give me $5 for it.

~

Tomorrow I'm going to have my second garage sale ever.
   This one I won't have to make fliers for: the street we live on has a well-known annual sale. Supposedly someone puts it in the paper — the newspaper. (I don't think I'd ever have one if I had to do my own marketing.)

I've tried to price things so that they'll sell. I don't frequent yard sales, so I have little market exposure to help me set prices. I've probably set some things too high (again), and perhaps a few things too low. (It would be convenient if there were no such thing as "priced too low to sell"; the psychology of pricing isn't so easy.)
   I don't have a goal, but I suspect I'll be disappointed if I make less than $100. I plan to put the proceeds toward the purchase of a food processor.

Melee

The day Roscivs got diagnosed with cancer I asked him who should I tell or not tell? (Note: I had already told my sister Rita, in shock and need.)
   He didn't have any wishlist of persons to tell. I could tell anyone I wanted, he said, as long as it was clear they were not to contact him — ask him how he is, solicit information — call him for details — insist on "processing" it with him — &c.

I wanted very much to talk about it for a little while.

I chose to tell his mother. She was not the second person to know, or the fifth, but she was one of the soonest. I later wished sometimes that I had not told her for as long as that was feasible.
   I don't know how long that could have been.
   It was perhaps more his father that was the problem even up front (certainly later). It's hard to tell. They are, after all, a unit. His father began pestering Roscivs to "call your mother", telling him "she needs to hear from you" and "she's worried" and other such things.

I was — absolutely — clear that it was R's request that he not be contacted. That he be contacted and pressured to contact someone else seemed ... foul.

His dad didn't respond to the initial boundary.
   When I reminded him, he kept at it.
   When he kept at it, I sent him a diamond-clear restatement: this is Roscivs' wish. I expect you to respect it. He basically said I don't care what he wants. This is what I want. (To be fair, and to complicate matters, another reasonable interpretation of what said is what you say doesn't matter, we were his family first.)

Things between us went downhill from there.

Maybe he thought I was making shit up. (If he did, he had chances to clear this up in person: we invited them for a visit and he could have asked Civs "is your crazy wife making things up?")
   Maybe he was trying to figure out how to comfort himself.
   Maybe R's mother was so wildly distressed his dad was willing to try anything to make her feel better — even at the expense of his son.

I wasted a lot of time trying to figure it why the hell he was doing what he was doing. I had this belief that perfect understanding yielded perfect love.

After Roscivs died, I came across The Ring Theory of Kvetching. The basic rule is comfort in, dump out. A lot if not all of my problems with his parents came from violations of the Ring Theory of Kvetching. As I saw it, they were dumping in. Of course it was (and is) awful for them. I get that. But they dumped in.
   Not okay.
   There was another problem. Though I wouldn't have used Kvetching Ring language at the time — I didn't have it yet — they behaved in ways that communicated to me that they thought they're closer in to the center of the circle (Roscivs) than I. That made me a whole other dimension of upset.


When something horrible happens, when things go terribly awry, I like to think that at I least learn how to make them better next time.
   Unfortunately, I don't feel I have gained constructive insight here. At least now I have a kvetchy hyperlink.

a most awesome and beautiful thing

This morning. I went out to buy bacon. I took Euclid. I bought bacon. We didn't go right home; we went on an extended walk.

   We were heading E on Dickinson (like the poet), a few streets N of home. At the dead east end of Dickinson is woods — a greenbelt running north south. There is a heron rookery.

---d--------  ^^^^^   ~~~~~~
            ^^^^†^^   ~~~~

---L--------   ^^^^^   ~~~~

             ^^^^^^   ~~~~
---b--------  ^^^^     ~~~

            ^^^^^      ~~~~~
---b----------------  ~~~~~

              ^^^^^^   ~~~~
---g---<3---   ^^^   ~~~~~~

Much of the greenbelt is a hillside.

Legend:

• d = Dickinson St
• ~~ = sea water
• --- = street [see that the southerly "b" street is a steep through-street down the hill to the water]
• ^^ = trees
• † = an approximate location of the rookery [known to me previously]
• <3 = home

An eagle! and a heron! swooped in front of us, so close — I saw individual feathers of the eagle's wing. The eagle was chasing the heron. I exclaimed — surprised. I exclaimed more — awed. They paid no heed to me, yawping monkey with a little dog.
   The eagle seemed calm, if lethal focus can be said to be calm. The heron beat it; the eagle pursued; the heron seemed to lead the eagle to the rookery!? Euclid and I ran after them! They flew out of sight, into the woods.
   Then we heard the heron(?) start shrieking. It started and didn't stop. We halted at the ivy-laced skirts of the woods. Then exploded a cacophony of what must have been all the herons — louder, louder! Other birds in the woods started too. I couldn't see but trees and little flitting birds fleeing, but beyond us it sounded like a great battle.
   The whole woods' air was rent with avian screams.

We ran home to Bjorn. I could hear the herons nearly the whole way.

Count Your Blessings Now

My miscarriage headache is gone.

This morning I brought in (in containers, not in belly) a pint of raspberries and a pint of blueberries, and — and! — counted 30+ Honeycrisp fruitlets.

Berries, Eggs, gadZukes

Since ~solstice we've had ≥ half a pint of berries / day from our yarden.

This week we got zucchini in our CSA box ... one zucchini = funny! I didn't know what to do with just one.
   Bjorn said three times how much he liked the dish I made with it, so it's getting recorded.

♣ bacon renderings, 1 zucchini, 4.5 eggs (6 yolks 3 whites), basil leaves, ground black peppercorns to serve

I had a 14-inch saute pan thick with day-old bacon fat (my precious). I sliced the striped zucchini (very evenly, moderately thinly ... I'm sure I had the patience only because it's the first zucchini of the season) while I heated the pan til the fat was clear. I put the slices in the pan in a single layer, covering the bottom of the pan.
   I let it fry while I cracked 6 eggs, removed 3 whites, mixed the yolky mess and poured it over the fried slices after setting the heat to low. I washed and dried basil (Sacred or Thai (I'm not sure which)), separated leaves from stems, and set the leaves to wilt over the setting-but-still-wet eggs.

The key here is to add each ingredient just barely before the previous one's done cooking. Secondarily, make sure your basil is dry.
   It's kind of like a temporal lasagna, the way I cooked it in layers. It served up kind of like a pizza — in slices!

--

We've been getting eggs from my in-laws, who are in a joint chicken venture with their neighbor. Neighbor keeps the chickens, buys and prepares their feed (she ferments grains for them!); Da provided coop and capital. (He designed and built the coop in fact. Very cool.)
   Bjorn and I provide, um, empty bellies. We help eat the eggs.
   Neighbor-in-law is first on my list of where to send overflow blueberries! (We've none, yet; we're kind of having a Sal situation.)

(That reminds me. I wanted to name the baby Ursula. Bjorn said we can't unless she's born hairy with claws.)

Stuffing the Lily

Nudiustertian supper: daylilies stuffed with sardine salad (fennel bulb, pearl onions, garlic scapes, a mustard sauce, olive oil).

Going to the Doctor with Dog

EuEu was getting recurring ear infections. His ear(s) would get red, waxy, stinky — and with the last case, seemingly painful; he'd scratch his ear and whimper. Le sad!!
   The allopathic veterinary treatment we were given is a liquid "for canine otic use only", squeezed into the external auditory meatus, made of antibiotics (my enemy) and steroids (not my friend).
   Dutifully I squirted it into his ear. He didn't like it, and the only nice thing for me about the procedure was that I was supposed to massage the base of the ear immediately after administration, to squelch the liquid around, and I liked the sound.
   When Euclid got his latest ear infection, even after my not bathing him for a month and a half because I had been told it was because water got in his ears in the bath (he has flop-down ears), I was fed up.
   I believe that the recurrence indicated some internal disorder; if his system was healthy he wouldn't have chronically inflamed ears.
   Bjorn wanted to take him back to the vet, but I ... was upset at the idea of paying money to be told to do the same old thing that WOULD NOT FIX THE SAME OLD PROBLEM.
   I said I'm not willing to pay a vet unless we see one who will help us address his health, not just his ear, and try to prevent this from happening in the future. Bjorn Googled up some alternative dog docs for me to call. I selected a favorite, called to chat about her practice and — satisfied — secured an appointment, then filled out and sent in a detailed 9 page intake form.

Our appointment was at 7:30 on a Tuesday morning. We arranged with Em and En to borrow a car; En made sure to bike to work that morning so we could have one available to us.
   This vet runs a right smart set-up.
   Guess what initial treatment she gave us? A liquid "for canine otic use only", squeezed into the external auditory meatus ...
   ... the same stuff.
   BUT FIRST she actually took a swab of his ear and sent it to the in-house lab to see if we were dealing with something fungal, or bacterial, or what. She tests before treatment. She thinks that the type of infection is significant. It could, for example, suggest an etiology, or put us on the alert to certain co-morbidities.
   Is this not medicine 101?!?
   She also gave us formulae for drying his ears after a bath (involving hydrogen peroxide, or vinegar, or rubbing alcohol; all non-toxic household agents). She gave us a dropper to apply them. These liquid agents will reach where water will reach but they're dehydrators. She addresses my concerns. She freely shares information.
   She also suggested measures we can take (mostly by way of supplements Euclid can take) to boost his immune health. And her practice is right next to the local high-end pet food/care store, and she doesn't carry or sell (and thus doesn't have monetary incentive to push) certain supps or drugs. She had recommendations, but they were based on health considerations. She's not a drug lord.

Basically, she's awesome.

And it's been a month and a half since Euclid had any trouble with his little ears. This is a record.

Keeping It Real

I sometimes tell people that I make EVERYTHING my family eats.
   This isn't strictly true; I do not make, for example, the tahini we eat. The other day I was at the co-op filling up a jar with bulk tahini. A little kid in a grocery cart (who was shopping with a father figure) asked his dad "what's that?" His dad said, "it's tahini. It's ground up sesame seeds. You know the little white seeds we put in stir fries and stuff? That what they look like when you blend them all up." And the little kid said, "oh. But that's not homemade. That's co-op made." He repeated it, a note of disdain in his voice, "co-op made. Not homemade."
    [Note: it's not even made at the co-op; they just stock it there! So it's even worse than he thinks ;)]
   I thought it was so cute that this little kid's a homemade food snob .... though my dreams of this 100% homemade food family were dashed when I saw the man buy PASTA (gasp!) 30 seconds later.

I don't roast and pulverize my own sesame seeds. I don't make our own vinegar, either.

eScape

My garlic scaped! Woohoo!

On 10 June while I was out watering ... at 5:50 am ... I noticed the scapes. They were not a bit there on 3 June when I took my visiting niece and nephew out to the garden.
   I planted hardneck garlic because I wanted scapes. I like hardneck garlic better for its bulbs, too. I wondered, with hardneck's scapes and better bulbs, why would anyone plant softneck garlic?!

My most recent library-gotten Cook's Illustrated gave me an answer.

"Of the two main garlic varieties, your best bet at the supermarket is softneck, since it stores well and is heat tolerant."
     ...     
"Distinguished by a stiff center staff surrounded by large, uniform cloves, hardneck garlic yhas a more intense, complex flavor. But since it's easily damanged and doesn't store as well, wait to buy it at the farmers' market."

(It also occurred to me that some people might like garlic braids so much that they'll pick an otherwise lesser garlic just to be able to braid it.)

Germ Therapy with Dog

One-third at least of the reason I wanted a dog.
   As a bonus, this made me way less upset about the dog messing in the house as he got pottytrained.

ri¢h #3 : on my own terms

My old definition of being rich was I am able to go running outside in the light of day any day in the dead of winter.
   So how did this fail me when Roscivs died? Technically, I could still do that (at least for the first winter).

When I was a newly-married college student, I was dirt poor. If you look just at $ in the bank vs my expenses, I was perhaps the poorest I've ever been.
   But I was student poor. That's not poor poor. I didn't even feel poor. I didn't even know what it was like to feel poor. I felt like I didn't have a lot of money, but that's not the same. I wasn't expecting it to get worse; I wasn't expecting it to stay the same; I was expecting it to get better. When you're poor poor, that expectation is absent.

Last year my SIL Thea said that "Leon's poor". Bjorn said no, "he's not poor. His earning potential is heavily weighted toward the future."
   A reasonable expectation of future earnings is an important sort of rich. This has to do with how I felt poor when Roscivs died. I had a lot of expenses, with no reasonable expectation of future earnings. It got worse every day.

Now it's getting better all the time.


My old definition belonged to a universe that ceased to exist when Roscivs died. Furthermore, it had a lot of non-monetary contours mixed in with its monetary ones. There's the rub when it comes to me and riches. To me, for me, rich is about outcomes way more than it is about income.
   {What about to me, for others?}
   My current definition (I have the funds I need to pursue and support my health) has a lot of the same elements as my old one: outside time, free time, health [running], security in times of scarcity [sun in winter]. It's intertwined with (if not predicated on) Bjorn's love and support.

(I tried to make it one that wouldn't fall apart like the last one did, but that just can't be helped. When everything falls apart everything falls apart.)

So. Ok. Health funds are enough for me to be rich. I went out of my way to make my new definition money-focused. I thought it to be an important part of the exercise. But when it comes down to it I just can't seem to conceive of me feeling rich without a bright future filled with health and family. My semantic wobbling is unveiled: "rich" can involve a nebulous "happiness" as much as "money".
   I've been trying since the outset of this li'l blog series to clarify my terms. Clear terms are, after all, linguistic manifestations of clear thoughts. I don't know how successful I've been (uh oh?), but the exploration has gotten me closer to clear. If it's all still murky, at least it's an examined murkiness! 
   It would be less sloppy if I consistently used one term (say, "rich") to mean being rich (having money) and another term (say, "wealth") to mean feeling rich. And not having money ("poverty"?) and feeling poor ("destitute"?) could use their own terms too. Maybe I'll try using those clarified terms now.

I'm about to get less rich and more wealthy. I'm closing my studio; I'm going to stop teaching. It's fair call it retirement. What I say, though, is that I'm trading some income for some outcomes.

ri¢h #2

Before Roscivs died I thought that owning your privilege was an important ethic. (Still do.) I was writing a piece anent in the days before he was diagnosed. I was proud of my claims to privilege. I owned up!
   I sometimes have trouble when privileged folks want to have their cake and deny it, too.

When I moved house from BeHi after Roscivs died, a doctor friend—a medical doctor, a general care practitioner—helped heft and haul some of my larger items. After the heavy lifting was done, a little group went out to get pastries.
   I remember sitting in a tiny pastry shop hearing Mr. Dr. declare he's not rich. He spoke with deep, bitter frustration about how people think doctors are rich, but he's not: it's surgeons and specialists that make the big money.
   You can't brain someone with a croissant. I didn't even try. I just sat there.

Employment fact: (in these parts) even the lowliest GP makes 6 figures. How is six figures not rich? Seriously?! Mr. Dr. may not be the 1%, but he's the 5%.
   I would feel less chagrined hearing Jeff Bezos say I'm not one of those rich tech people: it's Bill Gates that makes the big money. Pretty much everyone (like, 99% of people) would see that that's just plain ridiculous. But move it closer to home and people put "rich" back on the horizon; people somehow don't see that Mr. Dr. is playing the same game.
   Poor schmuck.

Dirty Richie (warning: privilege ahead!)

Being poor and feeling poor don't necessarily co-occur. Being rich and feeling rich don't either.

Roscivs thought that most folks should work out a personal definition of being rich. For him, it was I can buy any food I want. He declared himself rich.
   A good "personal definition" is one that could actually apply to the person who makes it. Being rich is a location, not a horizon. Even if one's not there now, one (theoretically) could get there.
   (If you've already attained it when you define it, all the better for you!)
   I believe this outlook is key in a healthy concept of "rich". Beware of changing the goalposts: If every time your cup is about to o'erflow you make your cup bigger (SuperSize Me!) you're in for a life of ingratitude and greed. Maybe that doesn't sound so bad to you, but it sounds bad to me.

Gratitude improves quality of life more powerfully than pretty much anything else.
   I submit that greed detracts from one's capacity to enjoy and the capacity to be satisfied. And obviously(?) I value those.

While I've struggled a lot with feeling poor since Roscivs died, I've refused to be the Red Queen when it comes to being rich. I've fought to maintain the mindset that rich is a location and not a horizon.
   It was somewhere I had been.
   Maybe I could go there again.

I just wanted to say, I'm back. I'm here. I'm dirt rich!

Some Bat Time, Some Bat Channel

I love bats. If I could pick my reincarnation animal, I'd pick bat (or otter). I've held a bat (a fruit bat, wounded and in captive recovery), been licked by that bat; I've seen the bats swarm in Austin, TX. I've seen two bats mate (in captivity: zoo bats).
   Many bats nest under the bark of dead trees. One more reason to let the dead decompose naturally. One more reason to leave nature less disturbed. Many bats are being harmed by insecticides (their food having been poisoned). One more reason not to use poisons.

I've been told that my new house is under a "bat highway". During the summer there is a week where the bats zoom overhead. I wish I knew what kind of bat! I'm very excited to see it.