Moolah

So, Readers, now that we are safely out of the range of New Year’s resolutions, I have another resolution to tell you about. I made it quietly. It wasn’t a sneak-up-on-you resolution like the one I eased into about morning sun salutations. This one is an actual resolution I made, and kept to myself. I know, that’s amazing, right, considering how many things I do tell you? Well, this one was bigger and scarier to me, so I had to keep it quiet, until I was ready to do something about it. I made a promise to myself that I would get a grip on finances. You may recall, from earlier posts, that I have a little problem dealing with finances and moolah. Perhaps I mentioned that under professional advice, I stepped away from paying the bills and turned that over to the husband. This wasn’t because I’m incapable of paying them. It was because I was having panic attacks every time I considered our financial situation. Indeed, under professional advice, I  even stepped away from the husband when he paid the bills, because I had to sit someplace soft with my head between my knees. 

Healthy, no?

NO? 

Well, we could argue about that all day. The fact remains that I was instructed to leave it alone for my own sanity, and so I gladly did. However, that was a few months ago - a few dozen months ago, if I’m honest - which I am, to a fault. As a grown up feminist female, I feel that part of success is handling moolah. So I quietly and silently promised myself that I would take it up again. Look into things. At least check our bank balances. 

I know, a major step. Perhaps you are sputtering at me through the Interwebs. You are sputtering, “Hope, you don’t even check your bank balances?” I am wiping your judgemental spittle off my cheek, Readers. I can only do my best, and even if that best is quite poor, well, it is my best. This goal, getting a grip on the moolah and finances, is a multi-step process. 

So with that in mind, I am proud to tell you that I have just returned from an event called High Anxiety: New York Gen X and Baby Boomers Struggle with Stress, Savings and Security. I went for three reasons:

1. What I said above - to prove I can begin to take control.
2. A writer colleague who helped organize the event lured me by saying it could be blog fodder
3. The husband and I have an appointment with our accountant this afternoon (yet another positive development, I might add,) so I figured I could debrief there.

4. I had to dress nicely, which is something I enjoy.

So, pat, pat, pat. I have taken another step towards financial bravery. 

Ok, to come clean, this event was hosted by the AARP. Which I am apparently eligible to join. (Shhhh, don’t tell the husband. He thinks I’m thirty-nine.) That in itself is embarrassing. Oh, bother, why go there. 

The event was part of a campaign by the AARP to promote a state-facilitated retirement savings option for everyone. The idea would be that part of every paycheck would go into these accounts automatically, the way it might go into a pension if you were lucky enough to work someplace with a pension. This would help keep millions of senior Gen Xers and Boomers off of public assistance in their declining years. Something like that. Basically, the kind of thing that usually sends me into my handbag for the Xanax. I’m not sure I’ve mentioned this, but one of my deepest fears is that I’m going to spend my final years impoverished and alone in some state-run nursing home, propped in a collapsible wheelchair dribbling onto a paper bib. Well, the event went over the results of a survey about how worried Gen X and Boomers are about being able to retire.The upshot is that apparently, I am not alone in my anxiety about finances. Apparently 74% of Gen Xers and 67% of Boomers are worried about not saving enough. But the bad news is that there is reason to worry. We are not saving enough. 30% of GenXers in NY have no retirement savings at all.

However, I came away not rattled or needing a Xanax. I came away even more determined to figure out this financial stuff. 

So, pat, pat, pat, I pat myself on the back.

I also took the 11th grader to the bank and opened a new account for her, instructing her to deposit at least 10 percent of her allowance into savings every time.   

Baby steps for you, Readers, perhaps, and baby steps for me, too, it turns out. But - steps. 

#TBT A Parenting Fail

Ok, this is the husband's suggestion, so blame him if you don't like it. What is "this"? Why it's a Throwback Thursday (#TBT) blog post. I wrote this when the 7th grader was in 3rd grade, right at this time of year. I thought it was a fun look back.

Why am I doing this? Aside from being a way to post more frequently, it's a fun way to see where I've been, and how I've looked at success and failure and (of course) myself over the last few years. As my book proposal sits on the desks of editors - please send positive vibes, as many as possible as frequently as possible - I have to admit that things have changed. For the better. Except for my body. But I'm supposed to look at that in a new way: being grateful for my body for being here for me, for being healthy and strong. And so I do. And so I do.

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A Parenting Fail

While it's stimulating to discuss theories of success and failure, most of my time is wrapped up in the ongoing venture called motherhood, an endeavor whose ultimate success or failure is my biggest concern, and whose outcome depends on myriad small choices.  Like the following one.

So the 3rd grader is in a school play. Something about fish and finding your unique self.  There has been lots of drama about this play around our house, with involved daily updates about rehearsing for various parts and about when parts would be finally assigned. Each child would rank their first four choices and hand them in to the teacher. Then, one day, accompanied by lots of pouting and complaining, the update was that the 3rd grader's class had agreed to perform the play with another class, which meant each part would be doubled up.

"It's supposed to be a play about finding our own unique selves," she pointed out. "It doesn't work if there are two of everything." Well, she had a point, but two children reciting in unison would be cute, from a parent's point of view. I told my child it would be fine, meanwhile marveling at how much she seemed to care. She's not the most obviously dramatic of my two children, but she was actually in tears.

Two days later, the 3rd grader's traverse from the school bus to the front door looked like the gallows walk. Parts had been assigned. My child had been given her fourth choice, Clownfish 1.

Oh the tears. Oh the misery. So much angst. "Clownfish 1 doesn't even get to tell Swordfish his problem. All the other fish get to tell Swordfish their problem." So there I am, staring at my usually rather stoic child, in tears again, this time over her lack of lines. At least I'm assuming it's a lack of lines that is the problem. I'm also thinking, wow, how did acting get to be so important to this child? She has recently joined an after school acting class, and I guess she really likes it. Maybe she'll become a movie star and I can finally go to the Academy Awards. I hope James Franco won't be hosting by then. Maybe Tina Fey.

Anyway, it seems the trouble is the lack of lines, and that she didn't get her first or second choice part.

So here's where the parenting needs to happen. Do I say, in effect, look, not everyone can get her first or second choice, and some people don't even have a line, so buck up? That's the "Sometimes we don't get exactly what we want but we're all part of a community" lesson.

Or do I say, well, look, if you're really upset, maybe you could talk to your teacher about adding a line to your part, so Clownfish 1 can tell his problem to Swordfish, too? Advocate for yourself. Maybe that's the parenting lesson here.

Reader, I chose the latter. Immediately my child wanted me to e-mail her teacher. No, I said, you can write her a note, or write her an e-mail from my account, and we'll make sure she knows it's from you. So during the 7th grader's piano lesson, the 3rd grader wrote a note, apologizing for being upset and making her suggestion about the line. I open up my e-mail, make the subject line state who the e-mail is from, and my child types out her message and we send it.

Cue to dinner time, when the 3rd grader is relating all the iniquity of the situation to her sister and her father. There's a certain amount of sympathy, and a certain amount of tearful eye-welling.  Before dessert, I check my e-mail. The teacher has responded that she's sorry my 3rd grader is upset; that she'd had her do Clownfish 1 because she got the beats on the humor so well in all the lines. She'll be happy to talk to her about the change tomorrow.

Do I detect a certain weariness?

Lines? Plural? I go back to the table. I confirm with my child that she does, indeed, have several lines.  How did I miss this? How did my child miss this? Now I'm annoyed. And embarrassed.  Look, I tell the child, your teacher gave you a real part with lots of lines and said you're good at it. If you want to be part of a play, you have to accept you might not get the exact part you want. That's the way acting is. At least you got a part. So buck up, quit being so negative, and do your part.

I go back to the computer and send another e-mail to the teacher, subject: Sorry. I tell her I'd encouraged my child to advocate for herself. I had also told her, I assured the teacher, that her request might be denied.

I had a parenting choice, and I made the wrong one. That's what my 7th grader calls "a fail."

Update on Bunny

Well, I've been dragging my feet about publishing a new blog post. Maybe it’s just time for a quick update on what I’ve been doing instead of working on my success book.

• Avoiding my freelance writing assignment until almost too late and telling myself I was working on it internally - letting it percolate. A better analogy would be to ferment, since fermented foods are enjoying prominence these days as super-nutritious, promoting digestive health, being pre-biotic, stuff like that. Improving by sitting around in their own juices. Just like writing. Just like it, I tell you.

• Skipping appointments for my mammogram because of mixed feelings about whether the benefits of annual screening outweigh the risk of extra annual radiation exposure. This reminds me that when we went through security at Newark Airport to fly to Italy, the TSA personage handed a special magic paper to the 10^th grader that excused her from the full body scanner. I don’t know if she was chosen at random, but I suspect that magic paper had something to do with the recent scandal that TSA personnel were looking at those full body scans of young women for non-official purposes. Thanks to that paper, and because we were clearly a harmless, typical vacationing family with a mom carrying a bottle of Xanax in her purse, we were all allowed through the good old-fashioned metal detector, instead of going through the somewhat humiliating hands-up-like-a-criminal machine.

• Marveling at how much some of my readers loved my two blog posts on beauty and style. One of my earth mother friends was inspired to have her eyebrows waxed! Another one wants to go shopping. So, okay! I feel like less of a schmuck for thinking about maintenance.

• Skipping my morning exercise to take a nap and then going to my first appointment for accupuncture for my hive-prone skin - and for anything else that would benefit, really. I chose Dr. X off the Internet because she studied at Beijing University and was chief of her department there for a long time before coming to the US. Or so her website says. Stab in the dark, so to speak. But I wanted a Chinese trained acupuncturist. She took my history, felt my pulse and commented that I have very low energy. That morning nap was on my mind. Dr. X had me lie on my back, and then she put needles in between my big toe and next toe, ankles, calves, one wrist and arm, a bunch on my stomach, on top of my head, and at my third eye. She directed a heat lamp to my belly, turned off the light, and left me. I anxiously asked how I could alert her if I needed her and she said, “Just call.” She said she would check on me, which she did about every ten minutes, I guess. After thinking about my strange willingness to expose myself to a total stranger, I eventually relaxed and left with flushed cheeks and feeling very good. And since then, I’ve had exceptionally good energy and haven’t needed a nap.

• Bidding on Mad Men style dresses on Ebay for a friend's upcoming birthday party. 

• Shopping with the 10th grader for an outfit she can wear to a work function of her father's. We found one - dress AND shoes. And both mother and daughter love both. This led to the following comment from her over soup at the food court: "We had a goal, and we met it. We were successful. If we hadn't had a goal and had bought these things, maybe we would be sitting here saying, 'I don't know if we should have spent money on this - will it ever get worn?' So you need to have a goal to be successful."

Look at that - I worked in something about success. Something that came unbidden from my own child. 

Speaking of things that came, look what arrived this weekend, via my MIL. As is fitting, Grandma is the heroine of the story!

That's Italian packaging

Winter Follies

Readers, it’s January, a new year, and I feel a metaphor coming on. God help me, I do. A clichéd metaphor about cars and drivers. I apologize. I am helpless before it. All I can do is put it out there for us all.

So this is it. It’s snowy out. It’s lovely and sunny and crisp and a bright day as I write; but I am thinking about our last snow, all the way back in last year. That snow happened to start late on a Saturday afternoon, just before a performance the 11 year old was in. That day even The Egg, our UFO shaped performance venue in Albany, cancelled its evening programs; but not the RPI Young Actors Guild. The Winter Follies were to go on, and since the 11 year old was in several sketches, she needed to be there. That venue is twenty minutes north on the highway. The roads were getting bad when we left, and they would be really awful on the return trip. The husband was on call, and when he’s on call, I drive. Otherwise, usually I do take the passenger seat, because he prefers to drive and I don’t care.

That day I was nervous about the weather. For a moment, I thought I would just let the husband drive. Probably he wouldn’t get paged, and it seemed easier if he drove. I wouldn’t have to worry about slipping and skidding on the road. I almost suggested it. Then it struck me that turning over that responsibility wasn’t going to help me, really, because I would be sitting in the car either way. And I thought, Now why do I assume I’ll be or feel safer with him at the wheel? I’ve driven in all kinds of conditions. I’ve had no accident since I was a teenager. I am perfectly competent to drive. Furthermore, because I am competent to drive, I might as well take on the responsibility in a situation that could be bad or dangerous. I will handle it as well as he will, and I will actually be more in control if I drive than if I don’t.

Look, it may not seem like much; but it was a Moment for me. Why not take charge? Why assume I’ll be better off if someone else does? No more waiting for someone else to tell me how to do it; no more thinking someone else knows how to do it better. I am in charge.

I suppose I ought to be ashamed to admit this. I suppose I ought to ashamed for coming to this realization so late. In my 50^th year. But I saw all those times I’ve wanted someone else to be in charge, and all the times I’ve allowed someone else to take responsibility. It was a Bingo! Ding! Ding! Ding! moment of seeing that I’m the one in charge of my own life. As much as that is possible.

As we’d feared, the roads were awful by the time we left the theater, which is on top of a big hill. The trip down from the hilltop in Troy was white-knuckle. There was skidding and fishtailing. When we got down, the plows hadn’t gotten to the highway yet.  There were no lane markings visible. There were no lanes. It was dark and snow blew at the windshield unrelentingly. I wished heartily that we could just pull over until morning, but I drove on, slowly, carefully, thinking that I knew in my heart this was not my time to die, and therefore that we would make it home.  In this manner, I proceeded, pretending to believe in fate, pretending to be in control, managing as best I could, knowing that while driving was hard, it had to happen.