Silver Linings

It was going to be far too easy to make this a very whiny post. However, if I've learned one thing in the last four months through my dealings with Cousin Cancer, it's that attitude really does matter. No, it's not going to turn a horrible diagnosis into a garden party, but I need to sometimes remember that I drew the best draft number available in this war - my diagnosis was made earlyearlyearly and my treatment has (so far) been far more inconvenient than tragic. So let's look at a few weeks of silver linings here.

DOWNSIDE - as you know from my previous post, right as I started radiation treatment (I'm not quite half-way through right now), we had a bad windstorm which knocked a tree down into the fence around the dog pen, scaring all of us (especially the Spookster!) and causing quite a mess. Well, the tree is cut off the fence and we have to have fence work done. To be on the safe side, we had a friend who's a professional arborist (let's call him "Big Tree") come and inspect the rest of those ivy-covered trees. Upshot - wow! Tuesday, we're having about half a dozen trees taken out. So a hefty bill for both tree removal and fence replacement.

UPSIDE - I'd trust Big Tree if he told me to dance counter-clockwise around an oak. He inspected my trees when I first moved into this house - which was nearly ten years ago. (Side note - wow! Ten years!) And trees are beautiful, but less so when they've smashed through your roof and are in your living room. Having one tree come down prompted us to do some "what if?" work, which in the long run, is likely to save us from a much worse scenario than having a couple of bills for tree removal and fence work.

DOWNSIDE - Like all rational people, I hate Carolina ice storms. They aren't especially pretty and they cause havoc for days after the storm itself moves through. We had record low temperatures here over the last few days, which has a tendency to make me move at sloth-pace, so I got a little behind at work. Nothing bad, but we had to re-arrange our weekend a bit. Making plans is a surefire way to make God laugh - yesterday, when it finally warmed up above freezing, FryDaddy and I had to deal with our first (and please, last!) burst water pipe. Sigh.  Huge mess, and a plumbing bill on top of the other expenses.

UPSIDE - Aside from a ten-minute period during which I was a full-scale raving lunatic, we came through this one pretty well. I found the water cut-off under the house without too much trouble, although it took FryDaddy's Hulk-like strength to actually get the valve to turn. We went to my gracious mother-in-law's house for showers and laundry facilities and our faithful plumber (seriously - a great guy!), Piping Hot, had us up and running (water) within three hours. Also, it was an outside pipe leading to the washing machine, so no flooded kitchen. We got the mess dealt with toot-sweet and I just flipped over our first post-broken-pipe load of laundry, so we're all good.

ALSO UPSIDE - Being stuck in the house waiting for the Big Thaw, I moused around one of my favorite Websites and located a Little Free Library near me. (It even has dog treats!) A friend had pointed it out to me, but I couldn't remember exactly where it was - the roads get rather twisty in that area. I dropped off about ten books yesterday and picked up a light chick-lit read. Now that I know where it is (about a mile from the house and again - dog treats!), Spooky and I will visit regularly.

ALSO ALSO UPSIDE - People are kind. Coming home from radiation this week, I stopped by my favorite coffee shop in town and realized that the trees ringing the old courthouse square were festooned with scarves. Seems a local chapter of a women's service organization had done that to provide warm scarves for anyone who needed one in the bitter cold weather.

DOWNSIDE - Radiation treatments five times a week.

UPSIDE - By going to the treatment center, I learned about a great organization in my hometown called "Because We Care" that raises money for cancer patients undergoing treatment to cover the auxiliary costs, such as medications, transportation, utilities, etc. They had a big fundraiser last night and I received two tickets, so FryDaddy and I got ourselves slicked up and went out on the town. It was a New Orleans-themed masquerade party with wonderful food (avoiding the sweets table and the roving trays of beignets was hard, but Lent calls), Mardi Gras style decor, and dancing. Yes, FryDaddy and I danced - a little 80s funk, a little shag (I'm a bit short for him with that, but we still managed to twirl a little), even a touch of contemporary whatever-it-is-the-kids-are-listening-to-these-days.

We had a marvelous time - although our assigned seats were purloined by several women who apparently are still stuck in junior high. Ladies - all the sequins in the world can't cover up that type of ugly. I suppose I should thank them, as we wound up at the table with the band, who were undoubtedly more fun anyway. It was huge fun to dress up and see other people all gussied up - I learned that my college president is a huge Dexter fan (hmm??), his wife goes all out for the Oscars, and my oncologist can well and truly bust a move.

It really is all in how you look at things. And my overarching resolution to "be kinder to myself" seems to be intact and even growing!

Checking In - May!

Yes, this post is a little bit late and I'll let my previous post (centering on my college reunion) serve as both my explanation and my apology. But here I am, ready to check in and report on my progress through the merry month of May.

Let's recap - the ambitious goals I set to work on throughout the year were:

• Keeping a tidier, less cluttered house. I just can't stand the chaos of "where that thing?" as I'm trying to dash out of the house. But I work full-time, on top of several other large scale projects this year, so this goal involved finding a happy medium of “clean and tidy” versus “doable.”
• Money is a sore point with me – as it would be with anyone who has spent years clutching the trifecta ticket of frozen salaries, disrespect, and rising prices – so we decided (this decision had to be a “we” decision, so FryDaddy is in this one as well) to keep a realistic budget to lower our household debt.
• To strengthen my body, I decided to train to participate in a 5K race sometime this year.
• To improve my mind, I decided to read six "good books" that had slipped past me.
• Also to improve my mind, I decided to watch 24 "good movies" that had slipped past me.

      To be honest, May wasn't a very good month, goal-wise. Between FryDaddy's graduation (no, I'm not calling him "master," in spite of the fact that he's got the funny sleeves), exam week, some required travel, and a host of other activities, it was a full-out crazy month. Lots of fun stuff going on there, but it seemed that everything took precedence over the goal-keeping. So what's that mean?

     

     Well, after a bit of a breakdown - I have a nasty tendency to see things as "keeping score" instead of "this is going to make things easier, but there will be setbacks" - I think I can report some success, although it's been more in this most recent week rather than in May. Therefore, I'm not going to talk about my set goals as much as I'm interested in talking about setbacks and how to approach them. After all, this is something I know a fair amount about.  (Read as - I know A LOT about setbacks!)

    

      Read this until you believe it:  the bad days and weeks and months are going to come. They just will. Unexpected expenses will crop up and play merry hell with your delicate budget and you'll think you're a failure because - golly gee, you could've saved money by recycling dryer lint into creative Halloween costumes but no, you had to go off and buy something. Food that's not especially good for you is cheaper and requires less prep work and it's tempting when the busy times strike. There's no time to clean and you can't settle down enough to concentrate on a "good read" and you just want to be entertained instead of watching a movie from your list. Nothing is working, you've gained ten pounds and you wonder what happened.

      At the risk of sounding like I have things held together with peace and calm instead of duct tape and the use of Anglo-Saxon words as adjectives (look, it's been a few weeks of me yelling at the cats, okay?), when nothing you're doing is working, do nothing. Just stop. Look around. Reassess your goals (seriously - I've had three different people advise me to skip Thoreau's Walden which was my scheduled book. So I decided to read Beloved instead and still haven't started it, although I've read six other things in this period of indecision) and make course corrections as needed. Growth is not constant - that's why we have winter. It's a time in the natural year to recover from expending all the energy it takes to grow, blossom, and harvest to hunker down and consider the Next Step. If it works for carrots and bears, why shouldn't it work for people? (That made more sense before I typed it. I'm still going with it.)

      For example, I went on a shopping trip with my mother this weekend. I mean a SHOPPING TRIP, the kind where you wind up with new everything. Here's the kicker - I asked my mom when the last time was that we did a trip like that. She carefully considered the timeline and said, "Right after you finished law school and took that job in South Carolina." 

      That was in 1998.

      So the deal was that I had to go through my closet and ruthlessly get rid of clothes that no longer worked. I just did that and it was hard - I want to think I'll be that size again and/or that I'll be able to wear that style again and it's hard to be realistic about that sort of thing. (And there were a few things that are getting thrown away rather than being given away - I'd crossed the line from "frugal" into "cheap." Shame on me.)  But I'd rather wear clothes that actually fit me instead of clothes that fit me in 1998 (and yes, I had still had some of those). I'll drop them off at Goodwill in just a little bit - the clothes will work for someone else and I believe in karmic concepts enough to think that giving away creates room in my own life for more good stuff to roll in. I'll get back to drinking water instead of diet soda and my other good habits. Sometimes life demands to be noticed more than the dust bunnies.

      It's okay. Really, it is.

Nine Month Check In!

A few new things to report.  September's been an interesting month, with the Wanna Cook? book project entering overdrive for the final push - by the next check-in, the entire book will have been drafted and the final bits will have been turned in for editing.  Breaking Bad wraps up its broadcast run this Sunday and next week, I have a paper to present on Saul Goodman and legal ethics at a conference (said paper is still - ahem - in a state that can most kindly be described as "rough draft" form.  Saturday's a busy, busy day!).  FryDaddy is also presenting and we both have school/work obligations.  As you can imagine, that's a lot of plates to spin.

This is the very reason why routines matter so much.  By now, housework has (mostly) gotten to a groove - laundry and dishes are caught up and the house is reasonably free of dirt (although pet fur is a constant accent to our decor) and that's a comfort in the busy, busy days that have been September and that will continue for another two weeks or so.  I scaled a few things back this month - I realized I was overdoing it and then beating myself up for not hitting every goal, every day.  A "star" day right now is exercise 30 minutes total (doesn't have to be in one fell swoop at 6:45 in the morning), drink 70 oz. of water, eat 5 servings of fruit/vegetables, limit the junk food (twice a week and only reasonable portions then), and do something positive for my overall mindset (I've discovered short guided meditations just before bed to help my crazywhirly brain settle and unwind from the day).  That's enough, I figure.  I'm a little less stressed, even though I'm in the midst of a very stressful period, so I'm marking this down as a win.

The big change this past month is that FryDaddy and I got serious about a very taboo area - finances.  Like many Americans, we have credit-card debt and were working from a budget that was more of a glorified checkbook balance than an actual plan.  We'd gotten tired of the stress associated with constantly being on a shoestring and we knew that we ought to be doing better - our income is decent and, while I still have a big chunk of debt from law school (and he'll soon have grad school loans to pay - but not undergrad, thankyouthankyouthankyou Mom Squared), we don't have car payments and our mortgage is quite reasonable - but it took us a while to commit to change.

Now we have.  We're just at the beginning, but already, I see a difference.  We've got a budget that tells our money where to go, instead of wondering helplessly where it went.  Any change in the budget (like when I forgot to include a couple of items and when we underestimated the amount we'd need for grocery money) requires us both to sign off on re-jiggering the columns, which still have to zero out so every dollar is accounted for.  We've committed to not using credit and throwing every extra dollar that comes into our paws at our debt.  It won't be short, and it won't be easy, but it's going to be SOOO worth it!  I hesitated to bring this up here (while nearly every American has debt, it's not something I find easy to talk about), but the point of these monthly check-ins is to be honest and accountable and, for me, debt is a dirty little secret.  It feels great to have a plan, instead of just drifting along, hoping that I get lucky with Powerball or some fairy dust hits my retirement account.  (For those interested, we're using the Dave Ramsey "Money Makeover" system.)  Again, it's not a quick fix, but we didn't get into this mess overnight, so it stands to reason that it'll take a while to sort out.  Journeys start with the first step, right?

Right.