On the road again (and in the air again)

This has been a big travel week for yours truly.  I'm writing this post in what is the wee hours of a Long Beach, California morning -- although the hours don't feel all that "wee" to me, since 5:30 a.m. local time is 8:30 a.m. back at home.

I'm going to back up and do a small bit of bragging.  This travel is all funded by some professional development money that landed in my lap because, last May, I won a fancy award for teaching at my college.  The award is semi-ironic because, of course, last year I was on sabbatical and wasn't teaching at all.  So either I won this award now because my school figures, "She's a great teacher when she's away from her students; once she gets back in the classroom, it's all downhill from here, so we'd better give her the award now before she spoils it."  Or it's because they figured, "She's so freakin' good, that even when she's not in the classroom she's a better prof than all the others."

Me, getting a teaching award, trying to look all humble and that.

At any rate, whatever the reason, I got to stand up on stage at Commencement and make the already-long event last even longer, keeping students from their degrees while they listened to yet another boring citation.

With this award come a sizable chunk of money that I could use either personally or professionally.  I decided not to plunk the money straight into my own bank account, because what I really want to do is travel around to do some math, and so I put the money into a "professional development" fund where then money doesn't get taxed (meaning, more money for travel).

And this past week, I've been spending that money.  A 3-day trip to North Carolina used up about $250 of the moolah; it also gave me a chance to chat with some mathematicians who I met last summer, and whom I might want to work with again in the future.  It was a seriously great trip.

In the Miser Mom way, I tried to keep expenses low.  The university I was visiting paid for my hotel and meals, and I used my travel money to spring for a rental car and gas.   The more I do rental cars for long trips, the more I love the idea of not owning cars and just "borrowing" them from the cosmic car library when I need them.  Cars have gotten so much nicer since 2001 when my old (dented up) Prius was made, and my Prius is a pretty nice car!  Intermittent luxury is sort of fun.

This trip to California is even more of a treat, if that's possible.  I'm at a conference hosted by SACNAS (Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in the Sciences), so it's not as much about my research as my NC trip was.  But because I have this big fat pillow of money buried in my professional development mattress, I could afford to bring other people along.  I'm paying the way not just for myself, but also for an undergraduate math major and for a visiting professor (that is, a prof who just got his PhD two years ago, and who has a 3-year position, not a tenure-track position,  at my college).  So there are three of us who made the 14-hour trip from Pennsylvania to California yesterday.

And again, frugalizing.  I couldn't trim the hefty registration fees, and airfare+shuttles for three people is some serious dough, no matter how careful we are.  But I found a cozy AirBnB three blocks from the convention center that cut the lodging costs in half, compared to nearby hotels.  We all packed super light, minimizing luggage fees, and I have been doling out the trail mix that successfully tided us over through crowded airports and traffic-jam-laden shuttle rides.  (LA traffic-- Sheesh!).

Sort of ironically, this money that I got for teaching (or for not teaching, since I got it at the end of my sabbatical) is taking me away from my students yet again.  I've co-opted some of my colleagues into giving my students an exam while I'm away from them, and my travel schedule means that I won't get to grade and return their exams to them for a while -- I'm neglecting my students temporarily.  But I'm so glad I'm here (my first ever SACNAS conference! woo-hoo!) and I'm so glad I got to bring some people with me who wouldn't have gotten the chance to come on their own.   Huzzah for frugal communal traveling! 

A web site that I love for frugal reasons

As a person who believes strongly in community, conservation, and frugality, I have been having a lot of fun lurking on local frugal-enabling sites.

One of my most constant lurks is Freecycle.  (Does everyone know what that is nowadays?  It's basically like Craigslist or a local E-bay, except everything offered or asked for is free).

There are ways that Freecycle is a bit overwhelming, I admit.  I get an email every day listing about a gazillion things (well, only 25, but it seems like a gazillion).   I almost never actually get anything off of Freecycle myself.  (The one thing I did get that I remember is a beautiful giant colander; I love it.  That one colander alone would be worth a year of skimming through my daily morning emails.)  Most of the time, I skim the daily email and delete it immediately.

So, potential for free stuff is there.  But the reason I really love Freecycle is that it allows me to give away stuff that I wouldn't have been able to take to Goodwill or other re-use it stores. Last week, when I was cleaning out my garage, I realized I no longer wanted

• 20 cinder blocks,
• 2 large fluorescent light fixtures,
• a lounge chair cushion (sans lounge chair), and 
• a half-gallon of windshield washer fluid.  

I posted all of these on Freecycle, and 36 hours later, all but the windshield washer fluid are gone.  And my garage looks so much cleaner!  And I got to hear a lot of neat stories about other people's upcoming projects -- one of which is my former next door neighbor whom I haven't seen in years.  Hooray for connecting with frugal people!  I'll re-post the windshield washer fluid again later in the year, once snow starts to fall.  I'm sure it'll go faster then.

When I run through my nearby upscale neighborhood on trash day, I'm often amazed at what people send to the landfill:  about a month ago, on just one morning, I saw several large pieces of furniture, an electric fan, a chalkboard, and I forget what else, all out at the curb awaiting the trash truck.  It's just so sadly wasteful!  And then later this day, I saw on Freecycle this little "Taken" post that made me giggle:

My mom used to save the hair from her favorite dog and give it to one of her friends with a spinning wheel.  My mom's friend made dog-hair-yarn that my mom then crocheted into a little doll's house rug.  My sisters and I were NOT delighted by this -- we were adults by this time, and I think my mom was in the early stages of the dementia that would eventually take her life.   I don't know if the dog hair from the Freecycle post went to a spinner or to someone's garden (where it might help keep pests away), but I just love the fact that someone, somewhere, wanted something as seemingly pointless as dog fur.  That is totally grossly adorable.

Some people near me throw out perfectly good bicycles and furniture and shelving, just for lack of imagination or effort.  And some people near me go to the other extreme, and find good uses for dog hair.  Given my druthers, I'm going to stick with the dog hair crowd.

When people ask me for money, I . . .

I spend a lot of my financial thinking time thinking about getting a good portion of my family's money out of our hands and into the hands of others who can use it.  I've written in a bunch of different places about donating money, belongings, and time (sometimes, even body parts) to charitable organizations.

It's not surprising, therefore, that we get a lot of requests from charitable organizations.  Actually, what does surprise me is how seldom I get requests for money from people I know.  I've been serving breakfast at a nearby homeless shelter one morning a week for about a year now.  Not one person has hinted at money -- I've loaned one person a book; I loaned one volunteer a cloth bag (to bring home spare bagels); and another guy (who got out and moved away) calls me once a week just to chat about life.  But not one money request.

Funny side story:  A friend of mine from work, whose son goes to the same Quaker Local School that my sons went to, asked my husband if I was going to go to the school's benefit auction.  "C'mon, she's gotta go," my work-friend urged him.  "These Quakers are frugal; they're her kind of people!".   My husband laughed his head off:  "These Quakers drive their kids to school in SUVs, and their kids all have the latest iPhones! They're not Miser Mom's people!"  And no, I didn't go to the auction to buy artwork (etc) I don't need, but mostly because I hate buying stuff.  So, apparently, auctions are the wrong way to ask me to help with a charity!

Occasionally I get funding pleas from distant family members or former students of mine who are taking on an activity for charity.  My ex-aunt-in-law, who is a wonderful person, did a cross-country ski thing to raise money for cancer research; an alum of mine grew his mustache in Movember for a similar cause.  In general, if I think the cause is one that I don't find objectionable, I'll go ahead and donate $25-$50 to the charity they're promoting.  I like hearing from my distant aunts and from my former students, and if this is what it takes . . . well, I know the College I work at asks them for money, so I don't mind setting a good example while simultaneously bribing them to write to me.

But of course sometimes I get hard-luck stories from people I know, and a couple of times a year we'll get requests from kids from church who are trying to raise money to go on missions trips. I've been reading blog posts lately regarding some new (to me) phenomenon called "GoFundMe", and good timing, because earlier this summer I just got my first GFM request.

Hard-luck stories: it took me a while to come up with a good response to them.  For example, I knew a woman who I'll call "Beverly".  She'd been in and out depression (even going to a hospital for a while).  She stayed at our home for a week or so after one hospital visit, not because she was homeless but just because she didn't want to be alone.  She got so far behind in her various payments that she was afraid to open her mail or answer her phone, because it was always creditors or other bad news.  But she (mostly) had the money to pay for her debts (mostly, not entirely).

When Beverly moved back into her apartment, rather than give her money to pay her bills, I went two or three times to just sit with her while she sorted mail.  I'd open the envelopes and put things into piles.   She paid bills online, if she could, or create an IOU pile if she couldn't.  I was just the calm, non-anxious presence, and she really needed that.

That was years ago.  I most recently saw Beverly at the homeless shelter where I serve breakfast.  She'd lost her apartment and was now living at the shelter.  She eventually had to leave the shelter, too -- I don't know where she is now.  I don't know how much my sitting with her all those years ago helped (if it helped at all), but I know that money wouldn't have made a difference.

So.  I got my first GoFundMe request, this one from a former student, a student whom I will call "Pat".  Pat and Pat's twin sibling (raised by a single parent) have a pile o' student debt.  Pat is interested, long-term, into going into grad school, but in the meanwhile, wants to go work overseas at an "underfunded school" in a region of the world that is very much related to Pat's intended grad work.  There's very little money to go around in the family; does anyone want to help?

I've never asked my former professors (and other internet-connected people) for money; but I have gotten travel grants that helped me early on in my career.  And I had parents who put me through college without any debt.  So I don't at all sneer at Pat for asking for money or think that I'm better because I wouldn't do the same myself.  On the other hand, since I'm not going to open my wallet, how can I support this young scholar?

For what it's worth, here's what I wrote, deciding to share advising and philosophy as opposed to sharing cash:

What a wonderful adventure lies ahead of you!  You have a good heart, and I think you're right that this could be terrific for you, both in terms of your professional but also in terms of expanding your own views.

So, the bad news is that my husband and I have a policy of not giving money to people going on trips.  (For example, we sponsor children in other countries, but we don't pay for people who go on missions trips to those countries).  

On the other hand, I'd love to help you achieve all these goals.  It turns out, I'm particularly good at figuring out how to do big things on a little bit of money.  When my husband and I got married, I "inherited" his huge financial obligations.  Somehow in spite of all this, we got things under control and managed to get to the point where we could pay off our home early, adopt a bunch of kids, get multiple kids through college with little-to-no debt, and set my husband up for early retirement.

SO . . . if you'd like some advice on how to frugalize your life, advice that might make the upcoming trip less expensive but that might also help you financially through the rest of your life, I'd be happy to offer that.  Ooh, and books.

Are you likely to be in [our town] any time between now and [the day of your trip]?  If so, I'd love to have you come over for lunch or dinner. 

If Pat hadn't written back, I would have been okay with leaving the conversation there.  But Pat did write back, with this message:

Hi Professor!!
Thank you for your kind words. They are very encouraging, as you always are.
All that you are offering sounds great! I would love advice and books and a meal. I'll let you know when I'll be in town, because I definitely will be.

And that's how Pat and I got together earlier this week. We would have had quiche, except that Miser Dog ate it first, while we were touring the garden (dang that sneaky Miser Dog!)  So we had homemade bread with store-bought peanut butter, plus homemade salsa and peaches from our tree.  I got to hear updates on Pat's very interesting life, and I got to load this former student of mine down with a few more books (the Tightwad Gazette and Your Money or Your Life).

What people ask for, it's not always what they actually need.  I'm so glad, though, that people ask.  Because the request gives me a chance to connect and reconnect with people, to share a bit of my own life and my own interests, but also to hear more about theirs.

But Miser Dog, man, he's got some 'splaining to do about that quiche.

I just can't pear it anymore!

Good-bye, pear tree!

Last summer, I wrote about how tricky it is to harvest pears; they're finicky about ripening.  Our pear tree itself has grown massive, shading our garden, dangling its pears several stories above our heads, and producing fruit that alternates between hard green rocks and brown slime balls.

Since we had other tree issues as well -- our maple tree (the one that holds our adored tree house) has branches that have been scraping the roof of the house -- we got a few estimates for tree trimming (maple) and tree removal (pear).  I mean, when I got this tree, I *loved* the idea of a pear tree in the abstract, but the reality has been less than romantic nine-ladies-dancing, in spite of the fact that my true love gave it to me.

Tree work is expensive.  I wasn't too surprised when the four-figure estimates started rolling in. We found a tree company that we liked and offered them the job . . . and then waited until they could work us into their queue.  Estimated wait time: four to five weeks.

And then we lucked out.  If you look at the very right edge of the picture above, across the alley you'll see the bark of a tree that belongs to our neighbors.  Or rather, I should say belonged, because the tree died in place, and the neighbors decided they needed to take it down.  Yesterday, I woke up to the sound of heavy machinery (cranes, chipper/shredders, and chain saws), and by the end of the day their tree was safely horizontal instead of dangerously vertical.

But while the tree crew was out there, a whole bunch of other neighbors (including me) started mobbing the crew, asking them for quotes on our own trees.  ("As long as you're here, how much would it be . . . ?").    And the crew very gladly took down a bunch of other trees, as well as trimming quite a few more.

The crane that worked on trimming
our maple tree.
Its feet stick out like a water bug.

Tree crews are just really fun to watch.  There are people high up in the air, in cranes, wielding chainsaws and ropes with pulleys, yelling lumber-jack-y things at one another.  The limbs come down bit by bit, sometimes dropping directly down, sometimes being lowered by ropes attached to pulleys that swing around other limbs.

Down on the ground are the kinds of trucks that my sisters and I loved to play with (in Tonka versions) in our own dirt piles, when we were kids. My favorite was a little beast that looked like a cross between a bull-dozer and a pair of giant salad tongs:  its job was to troll across the yard, scoop up branches, and haul them back to the chipper-shredder.

And just like painting a room, the real work in tree trimming and cutting isn't in the painting or trimming; it's in the set-up and clean up.   Getting all these amazing machines in place must be an amazing feat of scheduling in the first place.

Which is why I wasn't too surprised at the high price estimate when we started scoping out tree work, and why I jumped at the chance to grab this crew while they were already set up -- we'll end up paying only about half of what we'd have paid if the other crew had come around.  It's not everyday you can find a way to spend $500 less than you'd planned, just by running out in your back yard and waving your arms at workers in hard hats.

So the pear tree came down, and by the time I grabbed my camera, it was already being winched along the ground to the chipper/shredder.  In this picture below, the top of the pear tree looks like a bush just beyond the garage.

But you can see it's a bush on the move (thanks to the winch).

And what's left of the pear tree now?  A stump . . .

. . . with two rock-hard pears left behind.

The whole loss-aversion thing that we humans carry around with us makes me feel a bit sad to see the tree go. I mean, it was a living thing, one that I planted myself, and now I'm responsible for killing it.  Taking down this leafy green giant is not like what my neighbors did, taking down dead or dying trees.

But what's left behind is an open, sunny place that my garden will be able to expand into.  And the sunshine, which my vegetables yearn for, makes me happy.  

So, notes to self:

• Before I plant more trees, figure out how big they'll get first.
• Before I plant more fruit trees, learn more about collecting the fruit.
• Before I hire tree trimmers, check with all my neighbors to see if we want to work out a neighborhood deal.

I just can't pear it anymore!

Good-bye, pear tree!

Last summer, I wrote about how tricky it is to harvest pears; they're finicky about ripening.  Our pear tree itself has grown massive, shading our garden, dangling its pears several stories above our heads, and producing fruit that alternates between hard green rocks and brown slime balls.

Since we had other tree issues as well -- our maple tree (the one that holds our adored tree house) has branches that have been scraping the roof of the house -- we got a few estimates for tree trimming (maple) and removal (pear).  I mean, when I got this tree, I *loved* the idea of a pear tree in the abstract, but the reality has been less than romantic and nine-ladies-dancing, in spite of the fact that my true love gave it to me.

Tree work is expensive.  I wasn't too surprised when the four-figure estimates started rolling in. We found a tree company that we liked and offered them the job . . . and then waited until the could work us into their queue.  Estimated wait time: four to five weeks.

And then we lucked out.  If you look at the very right edge of the picture above, across the alley you'll see the bark of a tree that belongs to our neighbors.  Or rather, I should say belonged, because the tree died in place, and they decided they needed to take it down.  Yesterday, I woke up to the sound of heavy machinery (cranes, chipper/shredders, and chain saws), and by the end of the day their tree was safely horizontal instead of dangerously vertical.

But while the tree crew was out there, a whole bunch of other neighbors (including me) started mobbing the crew, asking them for quote on our own trees.  ("As long as you're here, how much would it be . . . ?").    And the crew very gladly took down a bunch of other trees, as well as trimming quite a few more.

The crane that worked on trimming
our maple tree.
Its feet stick out like a water bug.

Tree crews are just really fun to watch.  There are people high up in the air, in cranes, wielding chainsaws and ropes with pulleys, yelling lumber-jack-y things at one another.  The limbs come down bit by bit, sometimes dropping directly down, sometimes being lowered by ropes attached to pulleys that swing around other limbs.

Down on the ground are the kinds of trucks that my sisters loved to play with (in Tonka versions) in our own dirt piles, when we were kids. My favorite was a little beast that looked like a cross between a bull-dozer and a pair of giant salad tongs:  its job was to troll across the yard, scoop up branches, and haul them back to the chipper-shredder.

And just like painting a room, the real work in tree trimming and cutting isn't in the painting or trimming; it's in the set-up and clean up.   Getting all these amazing machines in place must be an amazing feat of scheduling in the first place.

Which is why I wasn't too surprised at the high price estimate when we started scoping out tree work, and why I jumped at the chance to grab this crew while they were already set up -- we'll end up paying only about half of what we'd have paid if the other crew had come around.  It's not everyday you can find a way to spend $500 less than you'd planned, just by running out in your back yard and waving your arms at workers in hard hats.

So the pear tree came down, and by the time I grabbed my camera, it was already being winched along the ground to the chipper/shredder.  In this picture below, the top of the pear tree looks like a bush just beyond the garage.

But you can see it's a bush on the move (thanks to the winch).

And what's left of the pear tree?  A stump . . .

. . . with two rock-hard pears left behind.

The whole loss-aversion thing that we humans carry around with us make me feel a bit sad to see the tree go. I mean, it was a living thing, one that I planted myself, and now I'm responsible for killing it.  Taking down this leafy green giant is not like what my neighbors did, taking down dead or dying trees.

But what's left behind is an open, sunny place that my garden will be able to expand into.  And the sunshine, which my vegetables yearn for, makes me happy.  

So, notes to self:

• Before I plant more trees, figure out how big they'll get first.
• Before I plant more fruit trees, learn more about collecting the fruit.
• Before I hire tree trimmers, check with all my neighbors to see if we want to work out a neighborhood deal.

In(ter)dependence Week

Independence Day, Shmindependence Day.   I know that July 4 is the day that the U.S. declared itself separate from England, but it's not a day about "independence".  We don't celebrate it by going and sitting in our own little rooms all by ourselves, do we?  No! We celebrate it by getting together with other people, sharing experiences communally.

So happy Interdependence Week, everyone!  Here's a few photos from my own fun gatherings.

Last Saturday, my running buddies and I kicked off the weekend with a "Red, White, and Blue (and all other colors) Run".

On July 4th proper, my neighborhood hosted a parade, starting with a gathering of the next generation,

and rolling over into a 3/4 mile traverse of the neighborhood

with an amazing variety of scooters, bicycles,

wheel chairs, roller blades, strollers,

and even paws.

And then, but of course, later this week we had to have a Special Dinner with our family plus a student of mine.  My host daughter Y was out of town, and J-son was off at boxing practice, but the rest of us dressed for the occasion.  (My husband was taking the photo; he came to the dinner, too).

Love the red-white-blue leggings on Baby A!

For the main dish, I started by making rows of white rice,

filled in between the rows with Tex-Mex, plus a square of blue corn chips.  

(I made enough for two of these flags, so we have lots of leftovers.  It looks like we'll be having Stars and Stripes forever!)

Dessert was the ever-popular (as in, "Please mom, make it!") cheese cake:

with strawberry stripes and blueberry stars.

Although serious tip-of-the-hat to nine-year-old Olivia, who heard about our upcoming dinner and made the following cake for her own family!  Way to go, Olivia!

And afterwards, we put together a puzzle I'd snagged at a yard sale for a quarter.

When we put this puzzle together, what do we have? Do we have the Independent States of America?  No, we have the United States!

It's good to spend time with others around us, and to remind ourselves of just how fortunate we are to be part of this larger, wonderful country.

A rust bucket for a wedding present

For a wedding present, I gave my friend Paul a rust bucket.

Almost literally.  I gave him a rusty metal bucket full of metal stuff, some of it rusty.

Oooh, and I also gave him a chest freezer that doesn't work.  Some wedding present, eh?

Paul is a guy who goes to our church who collects scrap metal.  For years, he used it to supplement his income to help pay for his wife's medications and medical bills; she was blind and wheel-chair-bound and had many other expensive ailments.  She was a salt-of-the-earth kind of person, and we were sad (but not surprised) when she finally passed away last year.

This winter, our chest freezer died on on us, and internet searches followed by conversations with repair people convinced us that repairing it (bad compressor) would cost more than replacing it via Craigslist.  Since a chest freezer won't fit in our Prius, we asked Paul to help bring the "new" one and take away the old one.

Which is when he told us that soon he'll be moving to Arizona.  He's getting married again.  So we told him this last set of scrap metal is our wedding gift to him.

I'm so glad for him, and I know his new wife is getting a real catch.  But I'm going to miss having him around.

(And now I have to find a new way to recycle scrap metal.  Dang.)

A half-year of retirement, update

My husband's job ended last June, partly because of his own design and partly because of timing issues from his employers' side.  What has retirement looked like for my husband so far?

I already wrote about the unexpected benefits of getting enough sleep; that by itself has showered manifold blessings on our family.  But have there been downsides to retiring?  A year ago, before he retired, he had a few areas of worry about what stepping away from his job might mean.

He worried a bit about money (in particular, if we had to survive on my salary alone, would he be forced to become as miserly as me?  And if he didn't become as miserly as me, would I resent him? 

The answer seems, at least so far, to be "no" on both counts.  Even though money is extra tight this year because of my lower sabbatical pay, we seem to be adjusting okay. There have been times when I've asked him to tighten the old money belt a tad, but that happened when we were both fully employed, too. 

For this, I credit the joys of having paid off or saved up for so many of our obligations.  The mortgage is paid (woo-hoo); future college expenses are squirreled away and past college expenses were paid long ago; we haven't had any credit card debt since I took over the family finances almost two decades ago.  The only large looming expense is next years' tuition to the Quaker Local School, and we should be able to swing that with a combination of savings, tax refund, and my salary bumping back up. 

I also credit the years of frugal living that have eventually become a happy habit.  My husband spends way the heck more that I do, it's true, but he's learned to search for bargains and to appreciate (some of/most of) the aspects of the MiserMom life.  Compared to the way he lived when we first got married, he's grown accustomed to living a simple, not-very-spendy life, and this makes the transition to our reduced income almost like no transition at all, at least financially speaking.

He worried about professional identity.  As a PR guy, he's spent huge swaths of his life engaged in professional gossip -- my daughters used to tell their friends, "Dad's job is to eat dinner and talk on the phone."  Would giving up his job mean surrendering those connections and all that they meant to his life? 

Again, the answer seems to be no.  In fact, because he doesn't have all the administrivia that goes with his job, he seems to enjoy the gossip/eating aspect of his life even more.  He still takes the train back to his former place of work about once a week, but now it's just to schmooze and trade stories.  People there still seem to be thrilled to see him -- he's even  been asked to represent a related organization at conferences far away (with travel expenses covered).  He enjoys trading stories even more now that he doesn't have to worry about meeting deadlines or proofreading press releases.

He was worried that caring for our sons would torpedo his bicycle racing.  (It's true that retiring wouldn't make this worse, but the irony of having extra personal time at the same time that his bike career was about to tank was really gnawing at him). 

For the third time, no --- but with a twist.  It's true that the boys have had their ups and downs (mostly ups lately, thank goodness!).  It's also true that my husband hasn't been spending as much time as he used to training on the bike.  But the bike reduction is not the boys' fault:  instead, my husband has fallen in love with foreign languages. 

My guy has been auditing classes at my college in Modern Russian, Russian literature, and Ancient Greek. He keeps signing up for classes that meet at the same times as his favorite training ride, and so he keeps skipping his favorite training ride.  For the first time in our married life, he's found something even more compelling than hurtling down steep hills at 85 km/hr.  With summer just around the corner, he's going to try to find a way to increase his mileage so that he can race with his fellow cycle-chums, but he's not feeling like circumstances are thwarting him.  

What he never worried about was being bored, and sure enough, he's not.  He's got a lot of stuff to do, and again, I think that's partly because of him and partly because of how we designed our life to be close to many of the things we love -- my college, our church, a nifty city, rolling farmlands.

And what I looked forward to all these years -- getting to spend time with my guy, and having him spend serious time with his kids -- is just as wonderful I always thought it would be.  So I think I'm going to declare this retirement experiment a success all around.   (woo-hoo!)
  

What to love about my ugly basement

The basement, which my husband and I sort-of cleaned out a bit after Christmas, is much less full of junk than it used to be. But still, it is not a lovely space.  At least, not lovely in a "home beautiful" sense.

On the other hand, Aristotle was pretty clear that every object has both form and function, and if the form of our basement is sort of . . . ugly . . . , even so, in function it turns out to be a wonderful place.    In particular, it is a wonderful place for my sons.

For a bunch of years now we've struggled with the whole teenage-boy-friendship thing.  It's partly a side-effect of their living in the realm of a Miser Mom:  we don't have video games, we don't have soda or snacky chips.  There's the impression that there's nothing here that outsiders might find "fun".  Ergo, the boys don't invite their friends here.

Ooh, not to mention they have a mom who uses words like "ergo".  Geeky.

One of the very cool kids that J-son hangs with can boast a "shack":  his parents cleared out a giant shed in the back yard, added heaters and electric lights and X-Box, and turned the place into a parent-free oasis.  It is the hangout place for young men of a certain age.  J-son has spent a lot of time there, sort of sucking up to the cooler kids who hang there.

***
Meanwhile, back at Chez Miser Mom, I do my frugal quasi-minimalist thing.  I store jars of food; I yard sale; I buy things on Craigslist.  In fact, a few summers back, I bought a weight set on Craigslist, for the fairly low price of (if I remember correctly) $150.  It's a pretty thorough set-up, and I've used this machine off-and-on a lot.

Now that N-son and J-son have been doing boxing workouts regularly, they've started to use the weights, too -- particularly J-son (who alternates lifting weights and asking me to feel whether his biceps have gotten bigger).  (To which the answer is "yes"; he's ripped, and keeps getting ripped-er.).



Somehow the boys in the shack found out about the weight set.  Compared to N-son and J-son, they're sort of scrawny kids, but they like the idea of getting pumped.  A few of them have started coming over to work out here occasionally.  They profess admiration for J-son's boxing skills, and I'm guessing that he enjoys showing off his strength for them, too.

And so, all of a sudden, we have a cool place for friends here at the house.  It's not cool in the same way the other houses are cool, but it's cool in a way that really has integrity with the way we live our own lives.  I'm happy about this for so many reasons -- not just because J-son finally feels he can bring friends over to the house, but also because he's getting to see that you don't have to imitate everyone else's possessions.  You can do your own thing, and own your own things, and still hang with the cool kids.

Twisted resolutions

I love making really creative, convoluted resolutions that combine multiple goals in a sort of back-door way.  One of my most successful resolutions of years past -- successful in the sense that I'm still happily incorporating them in my regular life -- combined my goal of wanting to get back into shape and also spend more time with friends: the resolution was,  "Run gregariously".  Likewise, our family's "Special Dinner" series was my answer to finding ways to build traditions among a group of people who come from many backgrounds but who now lived together in one home.  They're fun; they're funky; and they worked.

So here, below, are three of my favorite twisted "resolutions" for 2016, along with a description of how & why I came up with these particular ideas.

1.
What I really want to do (that is, the goal behind the resolution) is build up my upper-body strength: lift weights more often, do pushups, yadda yadda.  In the past, there have been times when I just *loved* lifting -- bur recently, as much as I love the idea of it, I somehow just never seem to get started.  So putting on my thinking cap about what was different then than now, it was that the love-lifting-times came when I had a natural clothing transition time that coincided with a lifting space -- for example, I was going from class to swimming, so I happened to be right near the weight machines right as I was changing from normal clothes into other clothes. In that situation, a small detour to the weight machine just seemed like a gift to my body and my mood.  What worked was a combination:  the swim was a signal, and the geography made the detour easy.

Hence, Exercise resolution #2:  "Stretch and do pushups before any shower".  

The shower is the signal, and stretching/pushups is something I can do anywhere.  Better yet, since I usually take a shower on those four days a week I go running (gregariously), I can do my stretching/pushups while I'm already warmed up and stinky.

2.
Likewise, a huge desire of mine is to keep J-son out of jail/not let my family members strangle J-son have lots of regular "Time In"s with J-son.  I also want to try to take care of some deferred maintenance on the house before my sabbatical is over.

Hence, Home resolution #4:  "Weekly fix-it project with J-son".

3.
This next one is already one of my favorite ideas of the year for being convoluted in its conception, even though I have no idea if this'll actually work.  I've mentioned once or twice that N-son has some mild physical issues because of a stroke -- one of these is that he slurs his words.  This slurring is both persistent and mild: persistent in that all of our family and all of his teachers know that it's often hard to understand him, and mild in the sense that every speech therapist we've taken him to says he's fine.  The most recent speech therapist noted it might be "laziness" -- rather, that he speaks well when that's his only task, but when he gets distracted with other thoughts (especially in crowds) he just relaxes his mouth a lot.  He needs some strength training, she suggested.   And on a completely different side of N-son, he's loving playing drums and also the new mostly-adult chorus he's joined, both for the music but also for the no-judgment camaraderie that his new social circles provide him.

Hence, Home resolution #1:  "Find affordable voice lessons for N-son". 

(Don't you love it?  Building on his current passion, but also giving him a backdoor to speech therapy . . . I'm so psyched about the potential for this idea.  We've already found some $1/minute lessons; but I don't think we want to put quite that much money into it if we can find a more frugal alternative).

Qmart versus Yard-Mart

On Friday, in anticipation of a round of applesauce canning, I made a quick bike trip to a store I will just call "Qmart" to pick up two dozen more canning jars.  (Dang, I keep thinking I have enough jars, and then I keep running out!  And Qmart is the only local place I've found where I can buy them).  Then on Saturday, after running up and down hills with my girlfriends, and before actually doing my applesauce canning, I biked around to a bunch of yard sales.

So, Friday was Qmart; Saturday was Yard-mart.  The contrast continues to strike me.  Friday I was looking for a specific thing; Saturday was just taking advantage of random opportunity.   Friday I was surrounded by shoppers who wanted to get more stuff; Saturday I was surrounded by people who wanted to get rid of what they'd already bought.

Melissa summed up the angst well in a comment she made on an earlier post of mine:

I now live outside of the US and on a trip back to the States earlier this year, I made a few strategic stops at thrift stores to search for things I needed. I was stunned at how every single one was stuffed to the gills with...stuff! I wasn't even going to retail establishments and yet every inch of store space at every store was full of the outcasts/excess of American life/consumerism. Made me feel that my gleaning was just as much public service as it was a matter of caring for my own family!

I'm so incredibly susceptible to the excess/gleaning argument.  I think the most depressing thing for me at Qmart was being line with a bunch of other people who looked like they were struggling financially, but were buying all sorts of kitsch that I'd see people selling the next day for cheap.  The guy in the line in front of me bought clothes for his 3-year-old daughter, all tagged and with plastic hangers and such, and he spent $180.  For little girl clothes.  Which are like, everywhere at yard sales, sometimes with the tags still on.  sigh.

But let's look at a few other aspects of retail versus re-use shopping, compared side-by-side:

Location

• Qmart:  Off a fairly major road, with nasty traffic and an ugly, massive asphalt parking lot. 
• Yard-Mart:  All the heck over the place, but because of that, on neighborhood roads.   I stopped at four yard sales Saturday.
• Who wins?   Yard-mart! (local roads vs. major roads)

Travel Distance

• Qmart:  4.2 miles round trip
• Yard-Mart:  3.5 miles
• Who wins?  Yard-mart! (3.5 miles vs. 4.2 miles)

Ambiance

• Qmart:  Fluorescent lights, manicured shelves, huge lines.
• Yard-Mart::  Blue skies.  Wind. Fresh air.  I mean, wowwww!  It was a perfect day for being out of doors.
• Who wins?  Yard-mart! (fresh air vs. fluorescent lights)

Conversation

• Qmart:  I heard the couple behind me in the checkout chatting (I got to practice my Spanish eavesdropping skills; yay) and the guy in line ahead of me asked the cashier a bunch of questions about redeeming points from the card he'd brought.  The conversation I overhear is all about what we're bringing home, or what things cost.  No actual conversation myself with others.
• Yard-Mart:  So much fun!  Stop 1, a group of  friends decluttering.   They're supporting each other in getting rid of clothes they no longer want.  I help by taking a hoodie.   Stop 2, a solo woman clearing house.  People keep asking, "How much are you asking for this?", and she says, "Just take it!"  She's cleaning house for free, and keeps giving her things away for free. We chat for a while about taking insulin and about health in general.   Stop 3, a family at my church is (again) decluttering, and we catch up on family gossip before I take a tank-top and a jar, and then move on.  Hugs all around.  Stop 4, a cute young couple is moving.  They say, "It's hard to think about how much people accumulate if they live in the same place for many decades.  Make an offer!  Take this stuff off our hands!!"  We chat about a sewing machine they're selling, and the conversation veers to their mother (who bought it and used it once), to wishing they could learn to sew but not right now.   
• Who wins?  Yard-mart! (totally)

What I got

• Qmart: Two cases of canning jars (a dozen wide-mouth pint jars plus a dozen quart jars)
• Yard-Mart: Three tank tops, a hoodie, and two or three jars, plus a coffee maker.
• Who wins? Tie:  If there's something very specific and urgent I need, especially something that doesn't appear in yard sales, then Qmart wins.  But yard sales rule for random non-urgent gleaning. 

What I spent

• Qmart: $25.42
• Yard-Mart: $5.75.   One of the jars I picked up, though, was a reusable milk jar from our local dairy; on Tuesday I'll bring that down to Market and get $1.50 back.  Whoo!   So all that for $4.25.  Not bad.
• Who wins? Yard-mart!  ($4.25 vs. $25.42)

Frugal food thoughts

According to Mint, we've spent a lot on groceries recently.  Back in the beginning of September, the program sent me this dire warning:

Now, this $760 (or $437, if you want our "usually") monthly grocery bill is for a household of four hungry people, who almost never eat at restaurants.  And we're not particularly bird-like eaters, either:  when our family cooks potatoes, we cook five pounds at a time, and there's seldom any leftovers hanging around the next morning.  Ah, the joys of teenage-boy appetites!

Mint misses some of our expenses, so the number above is artificially low.  (It doesn't include school-purchased lunches, and it doesn't capture anything I purchase with cash or check, which probably averages out to an additional $100-150 per month).   Still, I think our grocery expenses are low enough to count as "frugal".  Certainly we're down there with what the USDA would call a "thrifty plan".

But although the number of dollars my family spends is one way to measure frugality (the easiest way to measure, and also the most obvious), it's not actually my own personal way of thinking about frugal food shopping.  I've been thinking about this a bunch, lately, in fact.

I've seen four main approaches to frugalling the food budget.

1. Coupons.  This is the most visible way of pinching food dollars, but I've always avoided it.  I started avoiding it because it was a suck on my own time and energy, but increasingly the reason has become more communitarian:  coupons are a suck on the time and energy of the entire system, because it requires that someone is there to create, promote, process, redeem, monitor, etc. coupons.  Relying on coupons as a regular strategy strikes me as one of those things that looks like it would bring food costs down, but long term drives them up by adding bureaucracy and inefficiency into the works.
2. Using the efficiencies of the system.  Several of my favorite frugality bloggers love Costco; some even groove to Walmart.  I don't (not that I'm arguing with my favorite bloggers, mind you).   There are a lot of ways that the efficiencies of the system map onto the frugalities I care about, but there are also ways that it doesn't:  here, I'm thinking about how these stores use more packaging than I do, and care less about building up local community than I do. 
3. Using the inefficiencies of the system.  My husband has become a big fan of this approach; he has taken to dropping into our local salvage store and buying whatever meat is just about to expire, now down to half or 25% of its original price. It's sort of a modern-day, corporate version of gleaning.  As a result, the boys are all reveling in lots more sausages, pork chops, hot dogs, etc than whatever they'd get from me.   (Yuck)
4. Focus on the food; move out of the system.  Back in mid-August, I spent $60 at a local farmer's market on 44 lbs of peaches ($44), 52 ears of corn ($10), and 18 bell peppers ($6).  The food was in season, locally grown, and went straight from the farmer's wagon into my own buckets and bins.   Later, I spent another $260 at our local Amish market on about 150 pounds of dry goods (flour, oats, nuts, etc.)  The food is now safely put up, and it ought last me through the winter, stored in my own glass jars and (for the flour and oats) old cat liter buckets.  All the packaging and trash I have to show for those big expenditures is a small pile of compostable/recyclable paper bags, a smaller pile of clear plastic bags (sigh), plus one receipt that I think is hilarious in its non-specificity (every item I bought is listed as "grocery").
   

   

   $259.33 worth of "grocery", next to the entire amount of packaging from the food.

   I like that my purchases bring me closer to the people who grow my food.  I like that I'm not spending money on advertising campaigns, newspaper inserts, package design, excessive packaging, air conditioning, shopping carts, cross-continental transportation, giant asphalt parking lots, and other things that come with "normal" store-bought foods.   It might not be the most frugal way to buy food measured in dollars alone, but it feels increasingly right to me.

Apple-y ever after

I've mentioned the cherry tree (yay), the peach tree (more yay), and the pear tree (oh, sigh).  Did I mention the apple trees?   Planted a few years ago in our front yard, and this year all of a sudden hanging heavy with apples.

My stepdaughters were back in town right about the time I realized that -- even though it was early September -- the apples were getting ripe and it was either the bugs or me that was going to get them. I Tom-Sawyered my step-daughters and their girl friends:  You know how much fun it is to go apple picking?   "Oh, YEAH!", they responded.  "I remember when we did that once.  That was fun!"  Wanna do it again right now?

It was a selfie-kind of apple picking spree, with lots of posing amidst the picking, but fifteen minutes and ten gallons of apples later, the trees were bare and the apples had been safely removed from the threat of evil flying worms.

More Tom Sawyer-ing ensued; I called a gal who had just moved into the neighborhood.  You know how you said you wanted to learn to can applesauce?  Are you free . . . tomorrow?  She was.

Applesauce is one of the most delightfully easy (and, if you like, sociable) foods to make.

• Put about a half-inch of water in the bottom of a pan or crockpot -- not a lot, just enough to keep the apples from sticking.  
• Cut up the apples, possibly removing the seeds and core.  Leaving the skins on is perfectly okay in my book.
• Play a game with Miser-Dog:  try to drop the apple cores on the floor, while he tries to catch them and wolf them down before they land.  (Shhhh! Don't tell him that dogs don't like apples!) 
• Heat the apples until they're mushy, and then mush them.  

If it takes a whole village to make the applesauce -- family to pick them, dogs to clean up the scraps, friends to help cut and can them -- well, it makes sense that the whole village gets to eat the applesauce, too.  We've had fun sharing the apples around.  And we're all eating apple-y ever after.

Multi-Family Canning day

I've never done something like this before -- gone to a canning party.  But I was invited to one on Saturday with four or five other families, and all I can say is, WOW.  It was so much fun!

And in case you are inspired and want to host a totally-wow multi-family canning party yourself, here's how the event went down.  My hosts had pre-purchased about a gazillion tomatoes, based on our pre-orders (how many quarts of diced tomatoes and/or spaghetti sauce would we want?).  

Here are a few (just a few) of the empty tomato boxes, sitting inside in the living room. 

But we didn't spend much time indoors.  Outside, that was where the action happened.  My hosts owned  a few propane burners and rented a few more. They pulled out all their canning supplies, as well as inviting their guests to bring their own pots. We all brought our own canning jars or bags for freezing.

The first tomato station was the de-stemming station (or, as I explained it to a guy who joined me at the table, the "tomato circumcision" table).  We tossed the tomatoes into this large metal bin.

The circumcised tomatoes destined for dicing went briefly into a pot of boiling water, and then into these giant buckets of ice water, where an enthusiastic crowd of helpers peeled the tomatoes by simply pulling off the skin.

This was a job that people of all ages could do!

Actually, people of all ages flitted between many of the jobs.  Here's two grown-ups at the dicing table, but a little bit later in the day I worked there with a pair of sixth graders who earnestly told me about their favorite cooking shows.  (Hint: Junior MasterChef rocks it).

The tomatoes destined for sauce went into this machine--the funnel leads to an electric sauce-r.  Here the two MasterChefs on the left are feeding tomato pieces into the funnel, and then out comes sauce, collected in the plastic tub near the MasterChef on the right.

Onions, wine, other spices I'm not certain of made their way in and out of this blender and got added to the tomatoes sauced by the MasterChefs . . . 

. . . which my host stirred up into giant pots of spaghetti sauce.  

He had a bunch of help from my sons, among others.    Dang, but that's one huge wooden stirring spoon, isn't it?

Once the sauce was seriously underway, we started the conveyer belt:  our jars went into the oven to heat up, came back out to get filled with sauce, and then went into pots to get boiled. 

By the time serious boiling was underway, the kids melted off into the nearby fields and into the toy-filled basement.  The grown-up gossiped and compared life stories; I had an intense conversation with another professor about the active voice.   Lunch brought back a brief reappearance of the kids . . . 

. . . who all found that it's a joy to be able to stand on the shoulders of canning giants.

I came away with a few new friends myself, not to mention 3 dozen jars of spaghetti sauce for a dollar a quart.  

Wow.