Playin’ The Edge

We saw our Money Guy last week which was mostly depressing because there’s not a lot to talk about these days.  He suggested that when i’m back to work we should figure out a real retirement plan for us.  He said, you know, like decide what age you would like to retire and we can figure out a plan around that.

Boy that inspired some deep thinking.  Because the first thing i thought, like probably everyone does, is that i want to say “take this job and shove it”, retire early and take those month-long trips to exotic destinations.  But I also have an infant in the house which means realistically I’m on the Freedom 95 plan. 

Honeybunny asked me, can you retire when you still have kids in the house?  I’m like, I dunno, what do growing boys need besides lots of food and a bedroom?  It’s conceivable that if they go to university in Halifax they could live at home.  And I’d love to help them out that way but maybe I would need a job just to cover the Costco food bills.  I can’t think that far in advance.  I can’t imagine Leo forming words yet, let alone studying Anthropology.

And then I think about work and I know I’ve been away from it for  a while on maternity leave, and heck maybe that gives me perspective, but I kind of like it.  I’ve always enjoyed what I do.  Sure there are nutty days and crazier managers and intense situations but isn’t that life?  If I found the ideal retirement cottage on the beach thinking I’d just ridded myself of crazy managers forever, wouldn’t I just discover that my new neighbour is as crazy as a bag of hammers?  That’d be just like life right?  You never avoid the crazies forever, you think this is a free ride

The other questions I ask myself are – am i healthy at 65? Am i doing a job i love? Can i follow my interests like i would in retirement? Does my job allow me flexibility to travel? Maybe not the exotic month-long trips, but what about a well-planned 2 week trip, would that be enough?  If yes to all those, why rush to retire early?

And I look at my family.  My Grandma Fox for example, was a hard-working woman.  She did her part to run the farm when my Dad and his 5 brothers were growing up because there was no shortage of work before handy things like electricity.  She had her own business after the kids left home, she ran a diner in a small town in BC.  Then she went to Vancouver and became a practical nurse, worked for years at the Vancouver General.  Then at 65 they told her to retire and she wasn’t ready.  So she used her nursing skills and worked night shift at a Seniors home near Granville Island. 

She didn’t have a touchy-feely bone in her body and we used to laugh at her stories of helping the seniors get up in the morning before her shift finished.  If someone didn’t want to get out of bed because they were feeling lousy or depressed she’d say, Get outta bed!  No one cares that you’re feeling sorry for yourself, get up!  That wasn’t the funny thing, the funny thing was that these folks were usually 10 years younger than she was.  She worked there until she was 75 and then they told her to retire.  At 80 she took up painting because she was bored.  She lived to be 94.

And just to remind me that Grandma Fox is not an anomaly, my Dad is in his early 70s and is also still working.  He stopped for a while after his first retirement but now he’s on his 4th or 5th career.  And guess what, he mostly works night shifts.  The best part about his job is that it funds month-long exotic journeys.   He and Mom have been to places I haven’t even gotten interested in visiting, yet.

So maybe I don’t get to choose to retire.  Maybe it’s in my genes to keep working until they kick me out.  Maybe my boys will be able to live at home and enjoy huge Costco-provided meals until they have their PhDs.  I’ll warn them that their mission is to find the perfect job they can do until they’re 75.  And to feel free to change careers until they do.  And better yet, it should be something they enjoy doing at night.

So I’ll tell my Money Guy that we don’t need to make retirement plans.  I’ll be too busy working.

A lovely quote from the Dalai Lama I noticed in my friend Rosie’s blog:

“I am nothing special,” the 14th Dalai Lama said, “but I’m warm hearted, and my mental state is quite calm.  Real healing power is a compassionate heart.  It reduces stress, and blood pressure, improves digestion, allows one to sleep soundly.”

My friend is in the midst of making a decision about moving to another place.  And I’ve been watching my own reactions to it, pretty entertaining stuff.  Because of course I’d miss her like hell but I’ve also been reacting to it from the belief that there’s a right way to make the decision.  Thinking, here are all the ducks that *should* be a row before a decision like that is made.  It’s like I believe there’s a perfect way to make a big decision.  What a load of horse puckies. 

And it’s funny because I’m one to talk, I’ve moved cities on a flyer.  Before I came to Halifax I’d visited all of once.  And look how that turned out?  Still here, still lovin’ it - but I want to continue loving it with my friend.  So I realize I’m being over-protective which is cute and annoying, especially for her I’m sure.  It’s also making me examine this knee-jerk response about there being a “right” and “perfect” way to do anything. 

I’m reading an odd book called the Disappearance of the Universe and came across this:

Do not feel bad when you temporarily lose your way….The myth of living a perfect life in terms of behavior is self-defeating and unnecessary.  All that is necessary is to be willing to receive correction….The jet airliner is always going off course, but through constant correction it arrives at its destination.  So will you arrive at your destination.  It’s a done deal; you couldn’t screw it up if you tried.  The real question is, how long do you want to prolong your suffering?

It’s true, there are so many choices we make every day.  You make a choice and then another one.  There is plenty of opportunity to adjust.  And adjust.  And adjust.  And sometimes making what appears to be a “wrong” choice can turn out well in the long run. 

I moved to Halifax to continue a relationship with a guy and then bailed after a year of living here.  I felt completely unmoored.  I didn’t know what to do.  I didn’t want to move anywhere else but hadn’t been here long enough to feel at home.  Moving here didn’t feel entirely wrong - I loved being near the water, I had a funky downtown apartment,  a decent job and the start of some good friendships.  But I felt so unsettled that it didn’t feel entirely right either. 

But over time it changed.  This is where I met HoneyBunny and I wouldn’t have met him if I lived anywhere else because he’s not going to leave.  He knows a good spot when he finds it.  So are there really any ”bad” decisions?  Or decisions that just haven’t played out yet.  Or decisions we haven’t learned a lesson about yet. 

I should have learned from my move here that sometimes decisions are neither right or wrong, they can feel both and you just have to let them run their course.  I’m getting to learn that one all over again.  Which seems to be how the best lessons come to me - repeatedly.   So I’ll stop being so protective of my friend, keep my mouth shut, be supportive and tell her how much I’ll miss her any chance I get.

I’ve been thinking more about finances since writing  this post and I even read a money book too.  I’ve been self-reflective about money since I’m on maternity leave and not making a real pay cheque.  I’m thinking back to how I was living when I was blissfully unaware of any existence other than having money dumped into my account every two weeks. Lately I’ve been thinking back to my history with money since I started working for the Man. 

I lived slightly beyond my means for a long long time.  There was always a balance on my credit card, sometimes a big one, sometimes less, but that interest just kept being piled on.  It was HoneyBunny, who’s much better with money than I am, who challenged me to get rid of it once and for all.  And I knew it made sense number-wise to not carry a balance but I didn’t realize how it would make me feel.   I liked buying stuff and I didn’t like the thought of  “depriving” myself of all the awesome things I “deserved” and figured that that justified the debt.

But you know how the skinny chicks say that “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels”?  Well the money version is that “nothing you can buy feels as good as debt-free feels”.  It was like a load came off my shoulders I didn’t even know I was carrying.  I hadn’t realized that credit card debt was one more thing to feel responsible for.  It was something that needed to be done,  and feel a little bad about.  But I paid it off and the tension was just gone. 

And I saw clearly all those times I bought something and thought it was amazing and then by the time the credit card bill came in and I didn’t have the money to cover the purchase I wondered why I bought it at all because I didn’t think it was so amazing anymore.  And felt lousy because I couldn’t pay my bills.  I was the queen of consumer and debt remorse. 

So after being debt-free for a while I realized that I got a perverse pleasure in *never* giving the credit card company money for interest.  Sure, they still got their annual fee, and it’s a good one because I collect travel points, but never any money for interest.  Take that Royal Bank!

The biggest change I made was putting a stop to impulse purchases.  I worked across the street from a mall at the time and I’d go there when I had time to kill or just needed to wander at lunch.  It’s funny how the simplest money strategy is to find something else to do than shop.  Because  I would inevitably find things I’d want and I’d get excited.  The case of the gimme’s would be overpowering and I couldn’t whip my credit card out fast enough.  So I stopped. 

I decided that even if it meant taking a special trip back to a store the next day I would put 24 hour mental hold on whatever I was yearning for.  And I discovered that most of the time  the next day rolled around and I didn’t even remember that gotta-have-it potential purchase.  It couldn’t have been that great right? That one strategy saved me so much money and also kept my closet from over-flowing. 

But I’ve realized that since becoming debt-free I plateaued and stopped trying to improve my financial situation even more.

The money book I read was one by Dave Ramsey and he features people in the book who have a household income of  say,$45,000 who pay off mountains of debt, some of them twice their income.  I was reading and wondering how they do that.  Well, in small increments over a long period of time with incredible focus and persistence, that’s probably how.   *So* impressive.

He lays out his suggestions for financial wellbeing, paying off debt, building the security fund of 3-6 months of expenses because life happens, the college fund for the kids, the insurance, not necessarily in that order.  And HB and I are generally good on all that stuff, we pretend to be responsible.  The security fund is gone right now  because I’m on maternity leave but it’s been put to good use and we’ll build it up again when I get back to work.  Having a security fund is another thing that makes me feel really good. 

So Ramsey’s next step after all that is paying off the mortgage and then the step after that is having buckets of money around that you can give away and have fun with yourself.  That sounds like a place I want to get too.  But I realize I’ve gotten stuck about the mortgage.  I have been ok with frittering away small amounts of money because as long as I have it and I’m debt-free and have money in the bank, why not.  I “deserve it”. 

In other words I’m right back to justifying my purchases the way I did when I had credit card debt.  But come on,  if I know how good being debt-free feels I can only imagine how good being mortgage-free would feel.  Like 10 times better or something right?  Can you imagine actually owning your whole house and saying “nyah nyah nyah” to your bank?  Wow.  Financial Nirvana.

But the trap I get stuck in is thinking that the mortgage is too big.  I mean, it’s not big for a city mortgage, but it’s a good chunk of money.  So I figure, why bother.  Buy a t-shirt instead, it woudn’t make any difference anyways.  But logically I know that any amount of money I put on the mortgage goes right on the premium which means the bank can *never* charge me interest on it ever again.  It’s another chunk of my house I own.  Sure, a small chunk, but better mine than theirs.  Regular mortgage payments are always a mix of premium and interest, quite a bit more interest for the first decade or so.  Have you looked at those charts of how it breaks down?  They’re very good for the bank, not so much for us.  So putting extra money on, no matter how small is really powerful.

So I ask myself, why is paying my mortgage any different than what the amazing people in Ramsey’s book do who doggedly pay down huge debt over years?  I’ve been operating on the belief that debt is bad but mortgages are a fact of life, so who cares.  I guess I want to start to care.  It’s my new goal.  I read somewhere that 95% of people never put extra money down during the life of their mortgage.  So it seems I’m not the only one who has seen their mortgage as something they live with - forever.  But I want to change that.  So that one day - it won’t be soon and that’s ok - I can experience financial nirvana.

I haven’t started my Wild Rose Detox for the year, it’s too early.  I just can’t dig into chilly salads while the temps are low so I’m practicing until March or so when I open the box, dig out the food lists and bottles and start up again.  Last year I was pregnant and I didn’t detox, so this year I’m excited, or at least as excited as you can be about eating a diet of brown rice.   I’m convinced that it really helps my body and re-educates my taste buds.

I know that there is a lot of medical advice out there that says your body doesn’t need to detox, but my gut says that if I eat sugar, junk fats and alcohol, my poor liver is working pretty hard.  I figure bad gunky has got to get stored up in my liver and it makes sense that I need to clean it out. 

But even if that’s not the case (as some experts say) giving my hard-working liver a rest while I eat real single-ingredient foods has got to help it.  Because afterwards I will at times consume food that’s less than ideal for me, as surely as the Wild Rose laxatives will overperform within a dayor two of starting the program. 

What is it with those laxatives?  By day 2 or 3 I feel like a 16 year old bulemic doing penance for a Dream Whip and Count Chocula binge.  I figure the thinking behind it is that there are people doing the program who have never seen a whole grain before.  And when they go from a diet of Wonder Bread to the uber-fiber meals that make up this detox they’re guaranteed to get as locked up as the Hoover Dam.  The laxatives are for them.  But for me the moment they start working their magic I cut the dosage back to half or less.  I figure that living in my bathroom just can’t be good for me. 

But enough about that, let’s talk oatmeal, which may not be an improvement in topic for some, but stick with me.  Breakfasts can be challenging and repetitious on the Wild Rose Detox program.  Eggs are only 20% and you can’t have toast with them anyways.  There just aren’t that many cereal type options and unsweetened soy milk is not that tasty. 

I wanted to try steel cut oats because I heard they have a more rough texture, they’re less like the usual mushy oatmeal.  The challenge is that they take 30-40 minutes to cook on the stove.  While I have that kind of time in the a.m., I don’t have the flexibility to stand over the stove. 

So I thought I would try the rice cooker.  My handy instruction manual said it would do cereals too.  The rice cooker generally takes an hour to do its thing but at least I don’t have to stand over it.  The other bonus is that mine has a timer, so I could conceivably set it up the night before and wake up to a tasty hot belly-filling breakfast.  Here’s the detox friendly recipe, and in brackets are the ingredients I used yesterday since I’m not detoxing:

Steel Cut Oats Breakfast

 1 cup steel cut oats

3 cups water

1 cup unsweetened soy milk (milk if I’m not detoxing)

a sprinkle of cinnamon

3-4 chopped up prunes (raisins if I’m not detoxing)

a handful of coarsely chopped almonds (any nut or seed if I’m not detoxing, I used sunflower seeds)

a sprinkle of salt

I put it all in the rice cooker and simply turned it on, then gave it a stir when it beeped that it was finished.  How does the rice cooker know it’s done?  Those little machines are magic. 

When I served it, I added a bit more milk in my bowl and a sprinkle of brown sugar (again, because I’m *not* detoxing).  It was thick and creamy and tasty.  It also stuck with me all morning which I can’t usually say about my breakfasts.  A winner all around.

 I’m going to work on a few other new detox recipes which I’ll post, as well as try the old standbys while I “practice” for my detox.  There have also been good suggestions in the comments to this post that are worth reviewing.  Hopefully some practice time will make the real thing much easier, and my liver will hardly notice the difference.

I know a book about a marriage and family breaking up shouldn’t be on one’s holiday reading list but Happens Every Day  isn’t maudlin and self-pitying at all.  Here’s a bit I liked about finding happiness and good pancakes:

You start to look at the tiniest things to make you feel better, alive.  Anything to give you a moment of happiness.  My friend Eve told me to look at the fallen leaf on the road and try to see even the smallest glimpse of beautiy….One Sunday morning the four of us were at brunch.  It was painful.  We were faking being a family…The place where we were having brunch was actually the town bar, but on Sundays a renegade brunch cook took over the kitchen that usually slung out frozen bar food.  He produced world-class eggs and pancakes.  His specialty was savory pancakes.  I ordered pancakes with asparagus, Gruyere, and ham.  They were served with maple syrup and two eggs on top.  It was a leap of culninary faith to order them…..I did what the waiter told me to and poured the syrup over the dish.  It was sublime.  Somthing about the sweet and savory and the sharp cheese and the runny yolks.  I called out, “Sweet lord these are incredible!”  And I started to laugh.  It was as if I was eating dulce de leche ice cream for the first time.  A bomb of involuntary happiness went off in my mouth.  Josiah didn’t seem to appreciate my enthusiasm, and the boys continued to throw hash browns on the floor and dump the salt on the table, but at that very moment my life was being saved.

At the end of the calendar year I get so many requests for money from charitable organizations.  And normally I’m pretty good about writing cheques, but this year, because I’ve been on maternity leave for half of it, I, without thinking, was in the mode of “no, sorry, I don’t have enough”. 

And then two things happened.  I read the Yoga Journal article on giving where Snatam Kaur Khalsa, the chanting chick who has a bunch of CDs out,  says she gives 10% of her income.  I always wonder, is that before or after tax?  Anyhoo she does it to keep the flow going in her life.  When she gives back, she allows more good stuff to come into her life. 

The other thing that happened is that I got an email from UNICEF.  And someone had pledged to match donations until the end of the year.  The email listed the good things that amounts as low as 30 cents can do for poor hungry kids around the globe.  And all donations were going to be doubled by this generous person.  And I was like, Corilee, wake up!

It’s scary to see how easily I can forget about my values.  Because I also believe that by giving I’m allowing good things to flow back.  And I thought I knew that it didn’t need to be *alot*.  Instead I was being all-or-nothing - like I have *nothing* to give because money is “tight”.  I fell so easily into scarcity thinking.  I so easily made the assumption that just because my income isn’t what it usually is that I need to hoard or my kids will look like the ones in the UNICEF email.  Which of course is crap. 

What, are we living in a motel and I didn’t notice?  There are people so much worse off. I happen to still have some savings, I know I’ll be back to my regular income soon enough, so what am I whining about?  And if I do run short,  that’s why God made lines of credit.  We are so OK.

But it is easier to have an abundance philosophy when money is not tight.  It takes a lot more courage and faith when it is. 

So I wrote some cheques and did the online giving for UNICEF and felt good.  Then I figured out what percentage of my income I’d given and felt lousy again.  Then I read about a 19 year old here in Halifax who is gathering up shoes to take to a town in Zambia this coming summer.  So I’m going to involve my son and go through our closets and provide a pile of shoes for a town in Zambia.  I wonder if we can send crocs or if they’ll send them back to us with a note that says, “no thanks” on them :-)  It hasn’t ocurred to Angus that some people in the world don’t have shoes. 

SoI’ve done something and I want to do more, but the most important thing I’ll work on is reminding myself that there is enough and I can safely give back and look forward to seeing good things continue to happen in my life.

I love winter solstice rituals because I’m not big on winter or the dark.  Recognizing and celebrating the shortest day of the year makes me feel like it’s ok, it may even be useful and it reminds me it will pass.  I like that “from the darkness into the light” imagery. 

I used to go to a winter solstice get-together at one of the big ol’ churches in Toronto.  Everyone sat in benches in a circle with a candle and called out things, people or issues they wanted to remember.  It was beautiful and moving.  I didn’t find anything similiar in Halifax when I moved here, although I understand one of the local studios did something this year.

Honeybunny and I used to do something at home regularly and then we stopped after Angus came along.   But I felt the urge again yesterday.  We haven’t been consistent with all the elements except for 3 questions: 1) What are you grateful for from this past year?, 2) What do you want to let go of from this past year? and, 3) What intention are you setting for this coming year? 

It had been a busy afternoon and evening so last night we skipped all the possible soltice elements and just answered the questions for each other.  It would have been powerful just writing them down, but there’s something uber-powerful about saying stuff to another person and being heard. 

And it’s funny because HB and I talk all the time, but it’s not the same.  We talk in those clipped practical sentences that parents probably everywhere do.  “I have zero thoughts on dinner”,  “what’s up with that kid?” or, “when’s cocktail hour?”

It felt so good to be heard that I’m grateful for Leo and love him like crazy but am *really* looking forward to moving past the “all baby all the time” routines of having a nursing newborn in the house.  I’ve had quite enough. 

My intention is to find some balance in the coming year between my jobs, my passions and my family.  I know it will be absolutely impossible to find a thing called “balance”, but I at least intend to work on recognizing and addressing the imbalances to keep things from being completely out of wack. 

Then we had a good talk that turned into a useful discussion on strategies to use when Angus goes into zombie mode.  The times when he’s energetic and pushing boundaries and you try to stop him and he turns and looks at you with completely vacant eyes and then goes back to whatever he was doing that you were trying to stop.  At those times we try to get him to stop and listen but it’s an uphill battle for a five year old zombie and we agreed last night that maybe we need to lower our expecations. 

Do you remember the SNL skit “Lowered Expectations”, the dating service for less attractive people?  It’s kind of the parenting version of that.  Maybe we just need to hope that in this moment we can get him through zombie mode without hurting himself or much else and then enjoy him again when he makes it out the other side. 

Maybe we need to try distaction or involve him in something we’re doing so we make use of the energy in ways that don’t involve him breaking all his toys.  One day I’m sure we’ll know exactly what to do, or the secret to avoiding it.  But until we’re wise and all-knowing — lowered expectations. 

I keep telling HB that we d0n’t need to fix stuff with him *today*, we have 18 years of parenting this kid to get it right.  I’m trying to convince myself too.  It’s hard not to be focused on The Things My Kid is Doing That Makes Me Crazy.  When there are lots of things he’s gotten past because we were actually successful at talking him out of it, or he simply outgrew it. 

For example, he doesn’t eat toothpaste or dig in his nose half as much as 6 months ago.  We need to remember that too.  I’m convinced that trying to take the long view is the best way to remain calm.

I’ve been barfed on a lot recently too because Leo’s had a stomach bug.  But I never could have written about it quite this eloquently.

You know, the lousy thing about babies is that they keep your from getting all your stuff done.  The best thing about babies is that they’re an awesome excuse.  Before you even get out the whole sentence, “geez I just couldn’t get that done, the baby was fussy”.  The person is going “oh yeah of course no problem” because no one wants to be seen blaming a defenseless baby for the fact that you can’t get anything done. 

And then I chuckle inside and give Leo a kiss for getting me off the hook, again.

It’s been a common theme lately because my to-do list is long and there’s a lot going on and I’m often too tired to do much about it.  But I’ve realized that when I get overwhelmed and freaked out it’s a sign to Stop and Take Care of Myself.  Stopping work on the to-do list doesn’t seem like a logical way to deal with it does it?

But it’s always about my to-do list.  It gets all the blame.  If my to-do list wasn’t so freakishly long I’d be calm.  But I’ve finally come to realize that it’s me.  And if I’m feeling freaked I need to stop doing stuff and deal.  That means eat lunch, take a nap, do some yoga, get outside, take a bath, breath.  It does not mean work until midnight on my stuff or freak out at my family until they leave me alone so i can get more done. 

Because when I’m feeling overwhelmed and freaked I am not that productive.  When I’m tired and dragging my butt around everything seems 12 times harder.  So it’s best to deal with how I’m feeling because when i feel better it gets done much more effortlessly.  And sometimes with more creativity and fun. 

And you know the really crazy thing?  When I feel good I’m more forgiving about whether i’m getting stuff done.  I’m better at saying, “oh well, it’ll get done sometime”.  Leo gets blamed much less often.

I liked Sally Kempton’s article on this topic in the last Yoga Journal.  It was about how taking the time  for our yoga practice gives you more time.  It doesn’t seem logical either right?  But her point is about how yoga takes us out of the “busy-ness” mind-set and slows us down enough to really focus and get things done.  Slowing down rather than racing around in a frenzied sprint, so that we can focus on the important things.  And forgive ourselves for the rest.