good day sunshine! or menus of Slop & Taxes

Wow! What a morning! In the space of an hour: 

Bjorn discovered the IRS messed up our taxes and their mess-up could result in penalties to us! 

   He took it upon himself to call the IRS; this raises his grumpiness to epic levels, +1 level for each IRS phone navigation menu! 

A plush toy was discovered to have a mysterious distribution of baby poop all over its face! (Not best beloved Mr Chicken Ambrosius Bock, thank goodness!) 

   The dog was discovered to have vomited! He began licking it up! Frothy Bile Two Ways is disallowed on his breakfast menu!

Person Breakfast got delayed! ... And yet, I got a good night's rest and I feel WONDERFUL!

severe retirement damage

Most people probably think I'm not properly retired. The Internet Retirement Police represent the Generally Acceptable criteria. 

   My main disqualification? I don't dedicate my time to leisure.

   When (a few years ago) I asked my sister Winn Dixie how much she would need to have saved to be comfortable retiring, she named a prodigious sum ‒ certainly more than is funding my retirement.

Though few peeps would count mine as a retirement worth having, the gooberment has its own rubric, and my Federal overlords cast a conclusion opposite that of the Internet Retirement Police: They won't let me put money in a retirement fund. Nary a single Bram.

a Picasso or a Garfunkel

Every once in a while, I write down what I fancy I'd do if I suddenly got a million dollars (net, i.e., post-tax). I don't set out to do it regularly. As far as I can recall there's always some prompt, some external event, that draws my attention to the topic. Most recently it was the book Julie and Romeo Get Lucky. It is interesting to see how my lists change over the years. 

   Take 10 minutes. Write the first things that come to mind. Here's my latest list, made mid-January 2016.

• invest half [500k]
• fund a vacation to Italy for Rita and her husband Luc (including a souvenir outfit for each (complete with Italian leather shoes)) [490k]
• buy art for my home (I have 4 specific pieces in mind) [430k]
• pay down scholastic debt for Rita and for my brother-in-law Grot [410k]
• book a month-o'-Sundays' worth of hotel getaways for Em, my sister-in-law [400k]
• fund Grot's retirement [300k]
• get regular massages and hair-stylin' (you wouldn't know it but I so do enjoy having my hair did) [290k]
• purchase something for my friend Luminous Fractal

Growing

It is the season of the first crocus. Of the pioneering daffodil. Sylvan's weight is in the 80th %ile and his height is in the 90th %ile.
   BOOM, baby.
   Gramma and Grampa bought us a stroller. We (Sly, Eu, me) strolled yesterday AND today, both times with the monkey's Unky.

This week he peed in the toilet away from home for the first time! Not surprisingly, it was at Gramma's house. :)

Big yesterDay

Yesterday Sylvan sat up by himself and crawled for the first times. DEVELOP ALL THE THINGS!

Today Grampa took Sylvan to the library, where Aunt Em does storytime for babies his age. Speaking of his age (6.5 mo), he's wearing 12 mo clothes.
   He drools much less than he used to. He enjoys smoked salmon, pork chops, and mamamilk.
   He is interested in shadows. He is fascinated by mama's and papa's headlamps. He might want one of his own someday.

media++ list from syllabus for DG course "Going Viral 101"

{Article} "Zika: Of Virus, Vector, Victim, Drought, Deforestation, the World Cup, the Epigenome & Evolution"
   Here was the first I heard of Zika, syncitin, and "aerial rivers"!
   I'd read a lot about how our genome co-evolved with bacteria, but not as much about it co-evolving with viruses.
   Junk DNA not so junky?

{Non-fiction} Acquiring Genomes
   Last read in 2008. Time to revisit it.

{Photograph} Trees; WANTED: dead or alive.
   A bat in its home. Courtesy "Nine Wonderful Ways Wildlife Need Trees" from nwf.org



{Article} "When a Country Without Abortion Tells Women Not to Get Pregnant" 
   The El Salvadoran government wants its(!) women to not get pregnant for a couple years. 40% are already sterile self-made. What's next?

{Novel} When She Woke, pp 1-100
   In dystopian-future Texas, a woman gets an abortion and is caught and convicted of murder.
   She is jailed for 30 days and released after punitive variolation. The virus changes the pigment of her skin.

{Scent} phial of Victoria's Secret perfume "Bombshell"
   See this NPR article for the mosquitoid relevance.
   Not only is this the sole non-media item on this list, it's the only one I haven't knowingly encountered / read / experienced.

I Am Arachne

Today I have an appointment at which I will be evaluated for physical therapies in service of movement reeducation. My plain ol' doctor recommended and referred me to treatments from a particular clinic more than a month ago. Many demands and distractions on my time kept me from biting this bullet in a more timely fashion. (read: Scarcity: why having too little means so much)

     Setting the appointment was an itsy bitsy spider of an accomplishment. Getting the paperwork completed, the directions written, and the take-with items collected the night before the appointment is a tarantella of an accomplishment. Here is a Miss Muffet of accomplishments: I have already made breakfast and lunch for today. I shall pop! the prepared food into the oven, and violin! Food! Moreover, I didn't wear myself out yesterday, or any day, preparing for today. I made today's breakfast on Tuesday morning. Most wondrous awe-ccomplishment of all -- the spider nebula -- I do such every week: on Tuesdays I double-batch breakfast. I made today's lunch three weeks ago (on a rare quadruple-batch Monday). And here's the deathly ticklish little red spider on top: this morning I had enough freed time to blog about it all. I am my hero!

not the weightiest matters

at 25 weeks

• total weight increase: 07.4 lb

the more things change

• sleeping with 4 pillows, 3 of them king sized; cannot sleep without them; would fight a chicken to protect my pillows

the less things change

• had – at one point* – expected stretch marks by this time (was fairly small and taut before, have expanded SO MUCH); none yet (*I've since learned that women pregnant and Paleo often get none)

25-27 weeks

remarkable

• (my brother-in-law En) “So how far along are you now? Third trimester? Because you look like it.”

• (our neighbor) “You must be growing by the minute!”

• (my Bjorn) “Your bellybutton is disappearing.” and “You don't look pregnant from behind.”

• (my doula) “Some women just don't put on as much weight [in pregnancy]. Your body just isn't preparing for famine, that's all.”

at 29 weeks

• total weight increase: 11.6 lb • fundal height: 29.5 cm • fasting blood glucose level: 74

new

• Never before has wearing a bra felt so comfortable. Got measured by the local professional for a new one: 34C. (Previously 32B.) 

now

• can't wash the dog (can no longer lean over the utility sink without significant straining)

at 31 weeks

• total weight increase: 13.6 lb

Subvital Statistix

at 21 weeks

• total weight increase: 4.2 lb (3.2%) • fundal height: 21.0 cm • baby heart bpm: 150 • blood pressure: 101/60

at 22 weeks

now can't

• sleep on stomach

can yet

• put socks (and shoes) on while standing up (with some awkwardness, though) • get from the floor to standing using only my feet • poop like a champion • wash dog while standing at the utility sink

at 23 weeks

• total weight increase: 6.0 lb (4.5%) • fundal height: 23.5 cm • blood pressure: 104/64

Gung Hay!

The Chinese New Year is absurdly significant to me. I love turning the leaf, reckoning a new year; and of feasts movable and immovable, I favor the movable. I used to live next to Seattle's “Chinatown”, the ID, and I have pungent memories of firecracker holiday hubbub. Dragons dancing. Street food, calling extra rats. I feel some sort of cosmic hum at the exchange of red envelopes around good ol' bloody ol' St Valentine's Day. January is mostly dead, but February starts to quicken. 

This is the time to live. Again.

Tons of Caucasians love to discuss their Chinese Zodiac signs while breaking fortune cookies. I can tell you the sign of most of my relations. There is soon to be one more.

Archer Dog
and
Scaley Ox
To Have
and
To Hold
Baby Sheep:

Announcing the Gestation of Crabby Lambykins
•

EDD 11 July 2015

How Do You Rate | How Do They?

I received a piece of mail from my gas&electric company. (I handle the household billings.) I get e-statements so I was apprehensive about official snail mail from them. It turned out to be a paper congratulating me / reporting on my low energy usage. According to their little graph, over the last two months we used 4% less power than the top 20% most efficient neighbors. (“Neighbors” are “occupied, nearby” houses “similar in size to yours” which “have both electricity and natural gas service.”) We rated a "Great :) :)”.

Is this awesome?

__ yes

__ NO

Precious and Few | Seek After These Things

I have given up my meta-stress. It has been about six weeks now.

I might have expected to feel triumph, or arrival, or having overcome. Yet I don't; I don't feel that being this way calls for extra celebration. It is its own reward.

How many things are truly that? Rather, which other things are?

RE: TLA .COMs

My favorite site in the whole world wide web is Mark's Daily Apple. Some other sites I enjoy: a certain webcomic, and Mr. Money Mustache; the personal sites of people I love; Goodreads. When I use the Internet, I still site-check my comic, my fam/friends' blogs, and Goodreads. But MDA is the only site I really miss reading.

(If you read MDA, you don't need MMM. MMM is just a tiny, money-focused slice of how to build a beautiful life. MDA is the whole enchilada. I have derived a few things of great value from MMM. Nevertheless, I don't miss it since ditching the Internet. Maybe I've become so much more BadAss than Mr. BadAssity himself that I've outgrown it. ;)

XTC, Season Cycle

Bjorn and I wintered our house in the fall. We moved couches in to our kitchen area and made a hearth-centered home. The kitchen adjoins a little living space with a gas fireplace. My cooking generates much warmth. We have drapes (sewn to fit by Bjorn's ma) in the kitchen doorways to keep the heat in. We set the heat low in the rest of the house. We don sweaters, wool socks, hats indoors.

We did not move our bed into the kitchen. I shiver at night while we get into bed.
   In the winter, it is well to shiver, if it is cold, no?
   So. I shiver, then cozy up. I have Bjorn, and the dog, but now I have ALSO the hot, plush caress of microfleece sheets. J'adore!

2014: Triple Goodnesses

in chronological order

• I figured out that my body can't tolerate the least bit of dairy, and I have been sleeping through the night scratch-free since Passover. (I have now a strong fondness for Passover.) I have had ZERO eczema flare-ups since then. This, after 2+ years of utterly unremitting urticaria and atopia. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah.

• I retired.

• My sis [Mona], brother-in-law, niece, and nephew moved right into my neighborhood.

These grand events make my life — day-to-day, night-to-night — peaceful, rich, and gladsome.

netless

Bjorn and I no longer have an Internet connection for our home. FAQ: Why on Earth do such a thing? A: values|living alignment.

    I want to spend my attention in the most deserving places.

    I enjoyed using and having the Internet in our home. I now enjoy not having at home! It's turning out very well so far, 5 weeks in.

witch gifts

I've been invited to a Hallowe'en party. I shall bring fire cider! I've arranged little treats for the other guests. Each treat's Halloween themed.

For adults,

• garlic (a time to eat, a time to plant, and a time to keep away vampires — all one and the same time, and that time is Hallowe'en! — Eccl. 3:101)

or

• something orange and/or black (so, The New Black and/or the old black);

for children,

• a certificate to be redeemed for making a sweets with me. Sugar: totally creepy.

Sight

A man wants to die at 75. Someone asked him more about it: "Doctors Wanted to Extend Life. Instead they Extended Death."

Knowing what I know now, I would refuse the radiation treatments (and other medical interventions) Roscivs received in June-July 2010.

   I'm sorry. But not for everything. At least on the day he died I gave him slightly more morphine slightly more often than "allowed"; by that time I knew that to do otherwise would be extending death — and denying him his dying-wish.

I believe he may have suffered more because it took me as long as it did to see his death. I believe he suffered willingly. I will live with that until I die. This is how: Truthfully, if Bjorn or I got cancer I most probably wouldn't choose chemo. You live, you learn.

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.