FundyNutter

Worse than an obvious mess staring at you from the kitchen sink, taunting you, saying “Any minute now you will be tied to the sink washing this disgusting mess. You will be here until your hair turns white and your kids graduate high school. why fight it. Come to me now….”  worse than that, is the mysterious stink that sometimes makes an appearance in an otherwise clean home.

My first experience with mystery stink was at our second apartment. The apartment was a marvel of plyboard and plastic veneer. It was three years old. I didn’t vacuum often enough, but there was a dishwasher and few enough people to clean after that there should have been no room for stink.

And yet, there it was. Especially when I ran the microwave.

The mystery remained until the day I moved.  I don’t know…I think that I would prefer it still be a mystery.  At elast I had my pride still then.

The microwave was ours, and moved with us.  I pulled it out from its corner and discovered the stink. One bagged loaf of bread. I know it was bread once, because the bag said so. Inside it was a mottled green fur. The bag itself was painfully distended, swollen with the gasses of decomposition.  I presume I could smell more when I used the microwave because it heated the bag up.

There has been a mystery smell at this house recently.

In the kitchen. It took me a couple of months to pin point it.  It wasn’t the dishes, I promise. They may pile up in a day, but they are washed up with regularlity (see my tired, scruffy hands for evidence.)

The answer to this mystery stink was staring me right in the face. Everytime I went to the sink I stared right at it, but didn’t recognize it.

It was a ripe, rotten smell. When I  opened up my front door, especially on those hot days a couple of weeks ago, a sick, sweet smell wafted over to me.  The whole house, just smelled like it had gone bad.

Yes. It was the compost. Sitting in an open flower pot in the sunny kitchen window.

I keep a pot full of disgusting food in a sunny place, and couldn’t figure out where the stink was coming from?

I have hopes that I fixed it though. I replaced the charming flower pot with a big plastic Folgers bin–the one with the “aroma fresh” sealing lid.

And just so you all know, I was emptying the pot pretty frequently. It was small so it would fill up fast and require emptying. But sometimes, speed just isn’t enough.

How to keep your children safe while they cook alone over the summer.  Because [insert corporate sponsor] knows that family matters.

Children are home cooking by themselves all summer? Where on earth are their parents? Oh yeah, at work. And generally speaking, stuck in a situation where they just can’t afford to send the kids somewhere safe, controlled, and caring for a whole summer. (You know, like that fancy camp in Parent Trap, or Grandma’s house.)

This is sticking in my craw, despite spending most of the last hour thinking about going back to work.

It was the result of my day of budgeting, of course.

I feel like, to afford some things that are exceedingly important, we need to accept a small hit on the wallet and the pride,  sell the minivan and get something cheaper. Yes, just a month after refinancing it at a lower rate with shorter term and higher payment. The thing is, we can afford the payment just fine, so long as it is more important to us than other things. Which it isn’t.

There is something in the works right now, much more important. But.  We can’t seem to afford it.  It doesn’t help that we’ve spent twice what we planned on the deck already (and it’s not half done.) But count as count can, I can’t figure out how to get our family to Kansas this Christmas and…well, we’re not really talking about the other thing yet. And we may never get to talking about it, if we can’t scrape together the first bits of our funding.

My immediate, horrified response to the “keep kids safe in the kitchen” ad was good for me.  I hold that every family needs to make their own choices, but obviously I would rupture some important part of my psyche if I tried to go back to work right now.  Good to know.

Our plans and our course for the next few months look like a puzzle, I can see the picture on the box really clearly, but some of the pieces seem to be missing. Not uncommon in my house, for puzzles. Pardon me now, while I go rummage through the seat cushions.

I was chatting personal finance with a friend recently. Like so many of us, she carries a small balance on her credit card on a regular basis. I was telling her about sitting down with my bank statement and balancing my budget. Not actually balancing my checkbook, an old fashioned and quar-turned activity I haven’t done since seventh grade math class. Balancing my budget is somewhat more fun than that checkbook thing our grandparents did, and definately less precise.

My friend was really surprised by how much work I put into our family budget. With the credit card and its low, not entirely paid off balance at her convenience, she didnt’ see the need for the work I do. Her surprise prompted me to blog. Maybe what I do is uncommon enough to be interesting to my friends who pop by here.

I do my banking online. In years past I was able to download transactions to Quicken and run all sorts of reports on my spending. Lately Quicken and my bank have stopped speaking to each other. Something about Quicken not being able to tell the bank what the name of my first pet was everytime I log in.

Nonetheless, the years of Quicken use have built spending catagories into my brain. These catagories translate to my paper budget.

I write my paper budget at the beginning of the month (every month since March 2003.) The italicized words are the catagory heads, written on their own line. Each word in that catagory gets its own line on my notebook paper, with a colon and a dollar amount next to it. I generally leave three spaces between each catagory in case something comes up that I forgot. I catagorise like this:

Priorities: Tithe, Charity, Life insurance Daniel, Life Insurance Traci, Retirement Daniel, Retirement Traci, College Fund, Christmas Fund.

Home: Mortgage (includes taxes and insurance), electric, phone, internet, water, trash

Auto: Payment, Insurance, Gas (maintanence comes out of monthly misc.)

Other: Groceries, Misc., Entertainment

Irregular monthly expenses also go under Other, these would be things like doctor bills that come in, saving up for the deck, etc.

The part that really surprised my friend, is once, or twice a month, I review my actual spending against the amounts in the written budget. I go to my credit union’s personal banking page and print out my check registry. When my banking was Quicken based (that ended last year) I would just run the report and it would show my my catagories. This new, low tech way takes a little more time. I look at each item, catagorize it, write it on another notebook page, and add things up.

As a college kid with few expenses and as an untrained newly wed, I just spent money in a bewlidered fashion and hoped for the best.

Now that I am a lean, mean SAHM machine controlling the money is my favorite brain activity. That guy I mention sometimes, Dave Ramsey, says we should tell every dollar where to go before it reaches our hot little hands. He also says we need to write our budget every month. It is really difficult to come up with a once-for-your-lifetime style budget. Needs change over time, income changes as well. To do a “budget” that tells you where to put your money for the rest of your life puts the money in control. Rewriting and reviewing each month keeps you in control.

Now, just a tid-bit more information than is necessary, I am not a very in-control person. Things easily get away from me, so retirement and college savings are paid automatically. It’s not the largest sum ever put away, but it goes there without fail each month. For me, at least, that money needs to be in control of itself before it becomes more profit fpr Target.

That’s all. Fairly simply stuff. But it keeps our family afloat. It keeps me able to stay at home and it keeps Daniel able to do the work he loves rather than hunting down a bigger paycheck.

When Adam James was born a couple of months ago his big brothers came and stayed a night at our house. It thrilled Norah and Lucy, we had a big waffle breakfast and a nice long chat with their daddy while their Mamma rested in the hospital. All around it was more social activity that we generally get in a month. It was exciting and fun and we all had a brilliant time.  And yet, their momma and daddy felt like we had done them a favor and wanted to say thanks.

They gave us a gift certificate to a restuarant a couple blocks away, and strict instructions to use it without the kids.

!!

This is a thing we haven’t done since October. Okay, so a couple of weeks ago we went to a meeting together and had a coffee afterwards.  But a proper date, meant to reconnect us and get us romantic? Not since October,

The gift card is generous enough that we should be able to imbibe a drink each, with our dinners.  And my parents are coming to watch the kids and put them to bed.  We don’t have to pay them.

And the restaurant is just down the street. So we don’t have to drive. We can stroll. And when we are done, we can stroll home through the twilight, taking our time.

And Daniel has today and tomorrow off.

I love it when my friends have babies.

I was in first and second grade with a boy called Willie. His mommy played bunco with my mommy. In fact, his mommy just left the bunco group recently, after some 25 years of playing together. She and her husband moved out of the neighborhood, across town. Downsized. And moved to give Willie, in his late twenties at the time, a chance to break from the drugs and crime he was involved in. Willie’s little sister just came home from Africa, where she was working with the Peace Corp.

On Friday my mom told me that Willie’s mom has a brain tumor. On Monday my mom told me her friend was gone. The cancer didn’t have time to take her, as fast moving as brain tumors are. Her legs were riddled with blood clots, and one of them took her life . Her daughter was home from Africa. Her son, making his way, clean, after so many years. She stood up, said she was feeling faint, and fell to the ground. Her daughter was alone with her.

My friend Kristin’s mother passed away recently as well. I don’t know the circumstances. But Kristin’s father is alone in California, striken by the grief, an older man, confused and overwhelmed. Kristin told me on Sunday that the funeral home has lost her mothers remains. Kristin and her husband Ryan work full time and have five children, 16 to 1. Her father says, “Please help me. I can’t do this alone.” I’m bringing a meal to them in two days, but that isn’t really what they need.

A few weeks ago my mom told me that my youth pastor died. He dedicated himself to working with teenagers, teaching them about God’s love. He wasn’t a flashy, pierced and tattooed man making us play loud or disgusting games. He was a slight man, and when he lead my youth group, a decade ago, he was prone to wearing khakis and blazers.  He invested in all of the kids in the youth group, taught us about the world and the need for Christ. He left behind a wife who adored him and two children, just starting to make their way in the world. He also has an older daughter, a doctor.  When he spoke of he had awe in his voice, that she had grown up to do miracles with her life.   She was the daughter of his first marriage, with the woman who left him, broken and dismayed. He didn’t dwell on his previous marriage but taught that out of the ashes God makes new life.

I’ve know about Pastor Dan’s passing for quite a while now. But I haven’t had anything to say about it. Just sad. Just sad. And as the sad is piling up around me, my friends and old friends, and my mom, people grieving and confused about why cancer still kills. About why we need to say goodbye before we are ready. I want to contact his wife, Pastor Dan’s. Tell her that his ministry was worthwhile, that we were all blessed by him. But it has been at least five years since I saw her last. And I don’t remember her name. How would I find her?

And then it was memorial day. And my family gathered around the table for some food, to remember the loved ones lost in war. And in a glorious moment, for a brief, glowing, joy filled moment, we realized we had no one to remember. Adding up my family and Daniel’s we have two fathers and three uncles, five grandfathers, and nine great great uncles, who served in Vietnam and during WWII. We have one brave cousin serving now (on and off) in Iraq. And not one of them was lost to war. Not one. And my mom remembered that none of her cousins were killed in war, nor were my mother in law’s cousins.

That’s all. Some people are gone, unexpectedly, tragically. One friend is embroiled in a tragic and exhausting mess. But for memorial day, for a moment, we were the chosen family. We are touched right now by civilian loss. But we have never felt the burning grief of a military death.  On this memorial day, we counted our blessings.

Today I added 45 new things to my house.  Fourty-four of them are brackets to hold the support beams for our burgeoning deck.  So I’ll accept them into the clutter.  One was a brand-new queen size mattress, localy made, and purchased from the nice man who gave me free feet for the couch I bought on Craig’s List (even though they sell perfectly delightful new couches at his small, single location, locally owned furniture store.)  I welcome the mattress as well as the brackets.  We’ve been wanting one for a while.

Our previous mattress was a hand-me-down from Daniel’s old boss.  In addition to being about 15 years old when we got it, it was the mattress of a man known for his filthy talk and philandering.  We tried to block those things from our minds.  But still, for seven years we have been sleeping on a mattress of questionable morals. It also looked like the old sway backed mare.

The new mattress was cheaper than, and hopefully almost as helpful as, the chiropractic care it turned out we couldn’t afford but now maybe we can anyways…(ahh good old American private health insurance. Not only is it only for the elite it is also mindboggling to navigate.)

The mattress polished off our guvment money.  I pre-paid the kiddo’s preschool and put and extra 500 on the car loan as well.  And now, hopefully, will give Daniel a pain free back.

No matter what those 45 things are, 45 is still a large number of things to bring home in one day. So I feel the need to review what seven things I have abandoned in the last seven days.

• badly broken bear book (if you want a pet, beware! Be sure you do not choose a bear! He my look cute, he may look sweet, but all he’ll want to do is eat!)
• broken shape sorter toy
• ink-face Barbie doll
• broken coffee mug
• broken glass (after I broke it)
• broken bowl (after I broke it)
• old mattress of questionable morals (taken away by the nice mattress delivery men.)

Yes, I see a trend. I also tried to recycle a “broken” kiddy pool and electric talking toy, but they were rejected by curbside recycling and so loiter out by my mailbox.  I’d really like to send them to a shelter for homeless broken toys, but then I’d have to go engage them again. And engaging the homeless can be dangerous. You risk getting attatched and then the next thing you know they are living in your house.

The grand sum of things I have tossed so far, May 1 through the 21 (so twenty-one ish things, depending on how you count the box full of clothes for goodwill) is:

Five velvet jewelry boxes, empty lotion bottle, big box of clothes to goodwill, broken: picture frame, doll, bear book, toy sorter, mug, bowl and cup, grafittied Barbie doll, broken down old mattress…

I can’t wait to marvel at the list in 12 months. I’ll be down 365 pieces of rubbish–the kind of rubbish that sits around your home otherwise, doing no good to nobody and dragging your useful and attractive things down with them.

The ubiquitous Ming and his obsession with blending seafood are at it again. I don’t know what kind of shows he has or is a part of on cable, but just the other day I was watching him on his “East meets West” show on PBS Create and as the guest chef on Rachel Ray at the same time.

Rachel Ray was (is still? I don’t know) running a cooking competition where regular folks who know how to cook a mean dinner get to test their chops (so to speak) and Ming was going to taste their results. I wish I had seen him tasting their meatball surprises–if anyone deserves a surprisingly bad American meatball it is the man who is out to ruin seafood one blender at a time.

I’m not generally a vindictive person… um… well… generally… yeah. My own vindictive tendancies aside, Ming was on create horrifying me with his newest satay creation. “It’s like a shrimp lollipop!” he effused.

And in case you were wondering, yes, you must indeed process the shrimp in your blended first. From the notes I scratched out at the time I see indeed, you put your shrimp in the blender with shallots, hot chilli, and lime leaf. Yes. The leaves off of your lime tree.

Hit that go button and make it a lovely gooey mess. He recommends microwaving a bit to taste your spices. He would hate for you to have a bland shrimp lollipop.

When you are assured of its lime-leafy goodness, form the goo in to balls, wrap them in a leaf of butter lettuce, spear with a satay stick, and deep fry. Please plate this appropriately. I suggest putting the pops lettuce side down, with thier handy sticks pointing up, right into your sink dipsosal. Grind thoroughly and rinse. Do not recycle the stick.

I do like seafood. I swear. But made to a goo? Wrapped in lettuce and deep fried? I shall have to take a pass. It may taste divine, frankly. The taste combinations sound very good. But I feel like I have a moral stand I need to take. Save the blender! Keep the dratted Ming and his fishy ways away from your family blender! Your future crushed ice will thank you for it.

I grumbled and fussed and trudged my way over to Walmart just the other day. I was after some boxes for our closet, a vinyl table cloth, and shoes for the kids.  I thought I did the shoes for the kids trip months ago with my mom. I was at target and picked out some cute brown lace up converse type shoes.  Then grandma showed the girls the white and pink shoess, which the preferred by a landslide. Now, it is my own fault, I bought the pink and white shoes. But I am paying for it now, I am constantly washing their shoes.  These were supposed to be their summer play outside shoes.  So the washing thing is getting under my skin.

After finding the boxes and table cloth and some other hodge podge we wandered down to the shoe aisle.  There weren’t many that I liked. The cheap foam shoes were cheap and foamy. The big sneakers were heavy and expensive. The sandals all seemed to have glitter and high heals.  My mind wandered to Norah’s lack of shorts too. I wondered if we needed to go another aisle down and get summer clothes.  I didn’t want to though.

Norah and Lucy were both very patient. They were both very sweet. No tantrums, no whining. But Norah really wanted to the light up Care Bear sneakers.  $14.95. No way. Besides which, they looked too hot for summer, and were white and pink. Not the best match for her heavy on red wardrobe.

The super-sports that are my kids were honestly thrilled with the $5 foamy shoes (you know, those croc style cheapo’s) that we picked. Lucy only ever wants to wear her purple shoes now and on her very own Norah picked the navy blue which coordinate exactly the way I wanted them too and can handle some mud pie making.

Then came Sunday.  My patron, my friend, the woman who blesses us continuously with her handmedowns nabbed me during break. “Traci!!” she cried out. “I have a huge bag of clothes for you!”

She ran out to her car and came back with a huge sack, bigger than both my kids together.

I sorted all of the clothes yesterday. I would say I sorted them through my happy tears, but I was actually too happy for tears. I sorted them, beaming at the world.  From the bag I pulled a whole box worth of realy nice fall clothes for Norah’s first year of preschool. Also, there was a whole summers wardrobe worth of shorts and t-shirts for my growing, almost four year old.   There was a Minnie Mouse hat perfect for Lucy, and a Hawaiian print dress for her.  Both were delightful surprises for my wee girl.  We got our two year old sized handmedowns from this friend years ago. I didn’t expect to find something for both sweeties.

In the category of blessing or curse, there was a Wiggles singalong microphone in the bag too.  It’s caused more contention than any other toy we own, so I guess its a big hit.

And in that bag was one big, unquestionable blessing. A gift of grace for a little girl who was nice about blue foamy shoes when she really wanted something else. You got it.  Care Bear Light up sneakers, exactly her size.

I don’t know why God is so kind to my family.  But I know how I am supposed to respond to such kindness. With thankfulness, worship, and generosity to the world around me.

I live in the land of the picturesque and the intentional statement. Once a local artist graffitied the town with his work–actual paintings nailed to electric poles. His goal was to make art available to the community. The art itself… it was just horrific enough for me to think he was unloading unsaleable stock.

Years ago this was also the land of the yellow bike. Wealthy local business person donated bikes to the city, all painted a distinctive yellow. They were posted all over town to give public transit commuters and those who had to walk an easier way around. The yellow bike was a picture of noblesse oblige, of green living before it was a call word, and trust in the goodness of mankind. Kind of a muddled message, but we are good at leaning on the muddled around here.

Just a couple of weeks ago we had another wonderfully muddled picturesque and intentional statement. The longshorepersons union wanted to make their own statement on the war situation. Being union, they are democrats. Being democrats they are against the war. I picture my friend JJ when say longshoreperson. I ran into him at a wedding. He was wearing a black toque, a turtlekneck and some well worn cargo pants. He was broad shouldered, grizzled, square jawed. He had a crust of bristley beard and callused hands. He hadn’t been a longshoreperson for more than two years when I saw him and already the soft, smoothskinned, jazz band kid I knew was gone-blown away on the cold east wind down from the gorge and off to sea.

So, what did these grizzled, callused dock workers do? They had a protest, of course. They took the day off of work. They had signs. And then. Oh the poetry. Oh the picturesqe. They do not want to dishonor the deaths of the men and women they disagree so wholly with. So they went to the waterfront, their own special place. And for every man and woman who was lost in the war they released a flower into the water. From their callused palms to the cold, commercial water of our great shipping channel. A picture of thousands of flowers floating away from the dock. Saying to the world–”We are so sorry you died. Come home. You are wrong to be there. Come home. We won’t let you into our Union. Come home. Brave Soldiers, so wrong. Come home.”

I think they may have held hands and sung Bind us Together a few times.

I am one of those kind of people who can’t figure out where the honor comes to the soldier when they are told they should not be in Iraq. Don’t take this as a statement of what I believe about Iraq. My beliefs on Iraq can be summed up thusly: what has been wrought be the devil since the beginning of our earth cannot be unmade in my lifetime.

Crusty old (and young) longshorepersons can float their flowers into the sunset, if they want to. But I don’t see how that honors anyone. It does, sort of, remember the ones we have lost. But the intent of their message was not to make the job of the military easier, safer or to tell them that their sacrifice has had value. Their intent was to point out how wrongminded, futile, and wasteful the work of the military is. They just muddled it up a bit with the grief that real families are carrying. The didnt’ want to seem mean, after all.

I swear, when I heard about the longshorepersons union and the flowers I just laughed. It could have been funnier only if it had been steal workers instead. And I wanted to paint that word picture and give everyone a guffaw. But as I processed it I realized how unfunny it was. It settled like a mantle on my keyboard, the grimmer aspect of their protest. The self righteous and deluded aspect. They won’t end the war by taking a picnic day. And they can’t hide their real feelings in their floating flowers. They made a real muddle of it.

That is–Marie at Memarie Lane (sorry that atrocious typo lingered for so long) on the subject anyway. And I am in the kitchen making dinner. Or was. Dinner’s kind of making itself right now.

But really, Daniel never should have said he liked it.

The first time I threw some ground beef and peas into the pan full or 29 cent macaroni I felt like a cheat. Like a shame to the name Hilton. Like I was giving up before I even started. Like I failed Daniel. Early on he asked me, “No matter how poor we get, let’s not scrimp on food, okay?” And I agreed. I agreed to keep Daniel in dinners better tasting each time he came to the table.

If anyone is familiar with formaldyhyde, they will know it is a chemical that folks claim causes all sorts of disease. All I know is it kills the sense of smell over time. Not entirely dead, but mostly dead. So, I actually haven’t needed to kill myself at the stove to impress Daniel.

And the day I put the mac and bling in front of him he thought it was great. And he said so.

Now, truth be told, I really like it too. Very yummy.

But it is a cheat! It is hardly home cookin’. It doesn’t even resemble healthy. He shouldn’t have said he liked it too. Because I make it all the time now. All the time. I feel a funny sense of shame mingled with happy expectation as I wait for Daniel to come home. I expect I’ll make it next week too. Or maybe this weekend.