Roll the Dice

Some people are gamblers. We have friends who make regular trips to the boats, along with the occasional pilgrimage to Las Vegas.
And some people are not.
I count myself among the not-a-gambler types. The idea of putting spending money on a horse race or a scratch-and-win ticket makes my skin crawl. One time, on a vacation trip through the Southwest, we had to stop and get a picture of me putting money into a slot machine in Las Vegas. It needed to be recorded for the unbelieving eyes of my friends and relatives. Because this is something I would never, ever do.
Usually.
Not so much any more. In fact, a couple of days ago I found swinging a hard left in u-turn against oncoming traffic--solely to make it to the convenience store on time.
"Do you have a dollar?" Mike had asked on the cell phone, as I was returning from errands.
"Well...Maybe," I said suspiciously. I remembered that there was, indeed, just one dollar floating in my billfold. I wasn't parting with it without a fight, though.
"Go buy a Powerball ticket. The payoff is huge."
Powerball? Boo-yah. I'm there.
See, the financial advisers will tell you that the lotto and powerball and all those various forms of gambling are just state-designed ways to soak the poor. The odds are so stacked against winning that only the mouth-breathers among us would fall for it, they say.
I used to think that, too. But now...huhhh....huhhhh...huhhh...Just call me Dumbo.
A lot of things in my world don't work the way they're supposed to these days. For instance: If you're careful and save your money, you won't eat dog food when you retire. If you watch expenses and do things yourself, you'll have a little left for fun in the future. If you're a hard-working, conscientious employee...well, we won't go there.
It doesn't seem to matter what I do. Someone else is going to get our money anyway. So why not be optimistic? Why not put something down on the fantasy of winning big at Powerball? If I'm going to be cheated, at least I got that much. It's a dollar I didn't spend being gouged by the gas company or the grocery store.
It was raining as I pulled up to JB's One Stop. There were so many cars, I had to go around to a weedy spot in the back lot. I waited in line with my dollar. Then I decided, "No. If I'm going to buy a Powerball ticket, I'll be more likely to win if I put all my money into it."
So I scraped together ten dimes and bought two tickets.
The next day, we checked the numbers.
Nope. Not a single one.
But it felt kind of good, anyway. Take that, Man! Maybe I'll put all my money into gambling from now on, instead of paying my bills like a good citizen.
Well, it's Friday, and if there's one thing I know, it's that alcohol and blogging don't mix. So I'm going to stop now. Happy weekend!

Nowhere to go but up

There was news in the world of optimism today. Really.
Front page of the Kansas City Star. No, look down and to the left. Below the fold. Lower. See it? Way down there, lower left corner.
"World pretty optimistic, KU grad student finds."
The story revolves around this heart-stopping statistic: 95 percent of all people around the world are optimistic about the future.
Other headlines on the front page: Fairfax local approves concessions; GM bankruptcy filing still likely; North Korea tension builds; Trafficking in workers is alleged (with the subhead, Hundreds of victims were "modern-day slaves," according to federal indictment.)
The study, done by Matthew Gallagher for the Gallup World Poll, is based on answers from 150,000 adults from 140 countries. There were some demographic differences, but for the most part, this sunny view prevailed over all age, gender, and income groups.
What's going on here? Have I lost my mind completely?
The most optimistic countries were Ireland, Denmark, New Zealand and Brazil. The good old US of A, which usually prides itself on its manly strength in adversity, came in a shame-faced 10th.
Brazil, I can understand. Sure, they've got bone-grinding poverty in the slums. But the sun, the beaches, hot guys in Speedos, and that crazy martial arts capoeira. How could you go wrong with that?

And New Zealand's beautiful and has all that filming going on.


But Ireland? Denmark? Ireland's been bitterly divided for years and now the economy's in the tank. And Denmark is up there in the winter-darkness belt with Sweden and Norway. (Think Edvard Munch's The Scream.)
What's going on? The majority of those polled said they expect their lives to be as good or better five years from now than they were five years ago.
Oh, well when you put it that way.
Yeah, I'd probably say the same thing. Things probably will get better in five years because the have to, right? And if things were worse in five years, well, I'd probably say it again for the same reason. It's a survival instinct. We could have a deadly worldwide outbreak of swine flu or, say, nuclear war, and if I was alive in five years, I'd be optimistic. Because I didn't die! Thus the horrible reality becomes the new "normal" against what the future is measured. It didn't take my life, so how bad can it be?
I suppose we need this, because what's the other choice? You can't survive as a species without the will to fight for life, no matter how bad things are.
Does that answer make me an optimist, though? Expecting life to be "as good" or even the wimpy "better" sets the bar pretty low. Yeah, my life will be better because I'll be five years closer to parole, or the sweet release of death. That just doesn't do it for me.
It would have been interesting if they'd changed the question a little. Instead of, "will your life be as good or better," how about "will your life be great?"
"Do you expect to wake up every morning, five years from now, without the knot of sick fear in your stomach? Do you expect your life to be going so well in five years that you can be forgiving, even magnanimous, to those who have wronged you?"
If there was a 95 percent positive response to that question--now that would be impressive.

The Grocery Store Epicure

I remember eating out. Mike and I used to do it often--when we both had full-time jobs in the early 1980s. Ah, the prosperous '80s.
That changed when we had kids and I went to part-time self employment. We'd get the kids McDonald's once in a while, of course. But the sit-down restaurant experience for us became restricted to a couple of times a year. A birthday, graduation or anniversary.
Now that we're both part-timers, well, I was beginning to despair that I'd ever see another non-home cooked meal.

But despair is an emotion that shouldn't be in an optimist's repertoire. It should be possible to have fun in the midst of a depression. Our grandparents did. Forget the cheap restaurant meal. It should be possible to eat for free (or almost free). It should be possible to do that without taking a spot in line away from someone truly needy.

It should be. And it is.
No need to be beaten down by circumstances. I declare this the Year of the Free (or almost free) Meal. It is my goal to find somewhere each week to eat something free.

First up: Costco.
Yes, Costco has a snack bar right up front. That is not what I'm talking about. That is not free.
To have a Costco meal for free, grab a cart at the door and start strolling. (Caveat: To do this you must be a member. My membership is paid through August, so I consider this "free" for the time being.)
The first thing I learned about Costco dining is that it matters what day of the week you visit. My first trip was on a Thursday--just before payday when groceries were getting low. I found the selection that day to be cheese-heavy and somewhat disappointing.
Still, I was able to have a helping of Kangaroo Pita Chips and hummus, followed in short order by a square of delicious queso blanco fried to a golden tan. The next starter, some Bel Gioioso fresh mozzarella, seemed a little bland by comparison, as did the Sensible Portions garlic and chive pita bites. The Rice Works sea salt crisps were toasty and satisfying, though. The whole thing was washed down by a cup of Tree Top orange, cherry and mango juice.
This was a so-so trip. But I think most diners would agree there's a lot missing from the menu.

So okay. Maybe Costco is one of those places that doesn't get cranked up until the weekend. Maybe the kitchen was having an off day. I decided to make two more trips, Friday and Saturday, just to be fair to the management.

Friday was more like it. The starters, salt and pepper Kettle Crisps, and Raisin Bran Crunch, were a nice yin and yang of sweetness and salt. And the Veggie Straws were an airy, ethereal delight. The entree, salmon sauteed with McCormick seasoning, was perfectly done and paired nicely with an in-house 3-potato salad. The portion size was also a welcome change from smaller fare of the previous day.
Zarda baked beans were good but a bit spicy to be an apt compliment to the salmon. Still, when you add it all up with some Fuze tea, I left the store feeling that the edge of my hunger had been blunted.

Saturday, though, was the real jackpot.
I began with three appetizers--Cambozola Triple Cream cheese and cracker, Rotisserie chicken salad with rice crackers and La Terra Fina spinach and artichoke spread with Snack Factory Original Pretzel Crisps. All were excellent, but the cambozola was the real standout with its creamy texture and hint of bleu cheese bite.
From there I moved to the salad course. The Earthbound Farm Organic Caesar was good but a little over-dressed. The same was true of the Zarda cole slaw, which was a bit on the sweet side. (there was a choice of cole slaw or potato salad, but they were temporarily out of the potato)
The entree was a meat trioka--a slice of Tyson Polish Kielbasa, a half sausage patty from Jones Dairy and almost half a Coleman hot dog. Sadly, the bacon slices weren't done yet when I went by. The cured meat was set off nicely by a slice of mango, which also upped the health benefits.
The meal came to a satisfying conclusion with a serving of Kirkland vanilla ice cream, topped off with a perfect foil, a Sugar Bowl brownie bite and finished with a good sized cup of Kirkland Green Tea.
As would be expected in any grocery store meal, the ambiance was problematic. Lighting tended toward the garish and did little to improve the mood, and the occasional bird flying above the warehouse pallets was a worrisome sight. And there were occasional glitches in service--the missing toothpick in the hot dog, the long lines and traffic jams in front of some stations. At one point, I had to wait patiently while an older gentleman inquired whether cream of mushroom soup would come back on the menu.
But I have to say the servers were without exception friendly, courteous and unobtrusive, some going so far as to point out where the menu items could be purchased.
By the time I was finished, I felt comfortably full. In fact, a little overfull. As providence would have it, some Benefiber Drink mix was available as a kind of after-dinner mint. Although I skipped this offering, the store's consideration of their patrons' digestive tracts has to be noted here with approval.

So there it is. Costco can be a great dining experience. But come on the weekend.

Roxie's rating: Five out of five stars.

Don't say "we"

Maybe the secret to optimism is not to take any advice from bald guys with facial hair.

I don't know. That just occurred to me today after reading two economic crisis stories in quick order from my MSN homepage and the New York Times.
The front pageTimes story (I feel guilty about linking to it. Please subscribe) tells us how the relentless job losses may bring foreclosure to the safer, prime mortgages held by people who didn't borrow beyond their means. People like our family, for instance. Once this happens, the whole snake-eating-tail thing kicks in, as lenders are hit hard and the economy will be driven downward.
The MSN story appeared a day earlier. Entitled "Tough Love for Tough Times," it is a Q&A with Dr. Phil (Phil McGraw) about how we should deal emotionally with the economy.
I'll quote a little here:

How can people protect themselves emotionally?

Dr. Phil: We have to recognize that we have contributed to our financial problems with our own choices. If we are living beyond our means, if we are absorbing all of both mom and dad's incomes to just get by, it is time to scale down. The rule of thumb of having six months of living expenses tucked away in case of an emergency is a great goal. In many ways, it is lifestyle and decision-making rather than just amounts of available money that created this problem, and those same things can become the solution.

And later:

Do you think we as a society will fundamentally change?

Dr. Phil: I certainly hope so, because as I have said, we have contributed to this crisis with lifestyle choices and decision-making, and nothing short of changing how we measure success and live our lives will keep us from landing right back here in the future.

Note the pronoun. "We." As in "we have contributed to this crisis with lifetsyle choices...." blah, blah.

Uh, excuse me but "we" didn't do anything of the sort. We were too busy putting food on the table. When our oldest went to college we didn't raise tuition 22 percent each year. We didn't raise gas prices to $4 a gallon last year by riding our bikes most places and we didn't make all those cuts in our paychecks and health insurance.

However, Dr. Phil thinks we should take responsibility for them anyway.

I've grown tired of these guys who use "tough love" as a guise for whipping the middle class. When they say they want us to take responsibility, what they really mean is take the blame. If we actually took responsibility, we'd organize ourselves into guilds and unions. Somehow, I doubt that's what these guys are after, though.

Here's what I know: The Dr. Phil interview, juxtaposed with the Times story, made me furious. So much so that I feel hindered in my search of optimism.
So how's this for tough love: Whenever I see this guy's face, I'll turn off the TV.

Pass the Pickles

All that immersion in Dave Ramsey world got me thinking about an old summer job I used to have way way back in college.
You see, Ramsey is a salesman who comes from Tennessee. That, plus the motivational patter that runs through The Total Money Makeover, takes me straight down memory lane to my days as summer door-to-door seller for The Southwestern Company.
Yes. Drink that in for a second. I was one of those college kids running (and they always encouraged you to run! from house to house to keep up the energy) around suburban neighborhoods with a sales case full of children's dictionaries or Bible study aids or cookbooks.
We worked on straight commission--a simple percentage of each book sold. I think it was about 40 percent, but I may not be remembering that correctly. There was a one-week (free) sales school in Nashville, then you drove to your territory, took orders all summer and, during the last two weeks, had your books shipped in and you hand-delivered them. The last thing was check-in and reconciling accounts and selling back leftovers--once again in Nashville.
I did it all four summers of college (Texas, California, Ohio, Texas) In fact, we'd be driving down for Sales School this very weekend.
People who do personality assessments to determine what your ideal career should be would no doubt be prostrate in seizures, if they knew me. My adventures as a door-to-door seller are a classic bad fit. Think of trying to make this guy:

Into this one:

Of course I was horrible at it, which is why I call myself a "seller" and not a "salesman."
Selling things door to door is an experience like no other. The hatred and disdain of the customers, the harassment from police, the fear for your personal safety and of course, the money worries leave every nerve raw and sensitive. To do it and do it well, you need an inner reserve of self confidence I certainly had never dreamed of. That plus the ability to lie to yourself and really, really believe it.
I took several things away from this experience:
a) A resourceful outlook on obtaining food. One summer, when my roommates and I were short of cash--which was always--we'd drag ourselves into a fast food place that was open late. One of us would order something small. Fries or something. Then she would go up to the condiment bar and heap a napkin high with pickle slices. Someone else would get ketchup. That was our feast. Thanks to pickles and ketchup, we never went to bed hungry.
b)A twisted attitude toward "positive thinking." We were expected to work 80-hour weeks, Monday through Saturday. Sunday was reserved for church with your host family (we stayed in one place all summer, and were encouraged to join a church and find a landlord from amongst the parishioners). And for "sales meetings" that lasted hours. Of course, no one stood over you to make sure you worked that hard. You could get away with a nap in the car--if you had one--or a nice cool afternoon reading at the library. But if you did that, you didn't sell any books. The managers preached "positive attitude" pretty hard, to keep us going.
c)A blinding, unreasoning hatred of Texas and all things Southern. (So sorry, Lone Star State. I witnessed some true ugliness there, up close.)

The Southwestern Company didn't like you having a lot of extra time on your hands. If you did, you'd surely start thinking about home and how much you missed your family. So most of our "down time" was devoted to calls from the student managers and sales meetings designed to cheer us up. There was a whole positive attitude regimen we were supposed to follow as well.

When your alarm went off (and it was supposed to ring at 6 sharp, every day) you were supposed to leap from bed and jump straight into a cold shower. Cold! It had to be cold! because that's what got you pepped up. Then off you went to the mom-and-pop diner for breakfast. On the way, be sure and practice screaming, "I feel happy! I feel healthy! I feel terrific!" And smile! Big smile! BIGGER!

The Sunday sales school was a combination of inspirational, uplifting stories and ridicule of those who had jumped ship and gone home early. The quitters. No one wanted to be a quitter.
In a lot of ways, it was like a cult, or at least what I've read cults are like. You didn't want to argue with the group think. You didn't want to be "negative."

Believe me, I tried. But all the affirmations just never sank in. No matter how many times I yelled, "I feel happy, I feel healthy, I feel terrific!" I knew the truth. I felt fearful, nauseous and wan. And to deny my roommate, who had tears in her eyes with homesickness, a shoulder to cry on seemed cruel, even though it was the rule. I know the company thought it had my best interests at heart, but all those "positive attitude" rules felt like psychological bullying to me.

Given all that, why did I join up? I just wanted a chance to get out of my little Iowa farming town and see some sights. My grandparents had been through the Depression (I think I've mentioned this before) and did not believe much in vacations. As a result, one of my own family's priorities has always been a yearly trip of some kind.
Why did I stay with it four summers? That's harder to answer. Partly, I bought the bit about being a "quitter." And partly, I wanted to become a different person. Deep down, I wanted to become like those sales manager guys who walk into a room and are instantly laughing and joking and chatting with everyone. Like it's easy. Like my grandma always wanted me to be.
Don't get me wrong. I had some good times and made some good friends, too. You don't eat ketchup and pickles for supper several times a week without finding some way to make the experience worthwhile.

So if you see any of these kids with the plastic sales cases in your neighborhood, be good to them. Offer them a glass of water or tea, even if you don't buy anything.

But be careful. You might want to steer clear of asking any of them how they feel.

I see they still do the "pie contest." Here's a clip from a Seattle group, 2008.

Sleep is for the Weak

Only three days to go until payday. Only three more days. Just three more days.

Despite all our best calculations the new budget is going...well...it's going. We were at "zero" by last weekend, then dipped slightly below because I had about $30 in piano recital expenses I forgot to plan for.
We can do this dipping below zero because zero isn't actually zero. When I do the bills, I take all the larger, but predictable ones (like electricity) and deduct half from each paycheck, so we don't get socked just because of the billing cycle. The problem with this system, though, is that when you go under zero, it eats into the little shadow funds I've set up to deal with things like biannual car insurance, pool passes, etc.
Right now we're at negative $28 (which I'll have to make up from a piano check).
Three days until payday. Just three more days.

It's hard to be optimistic when you have no eggs in the refrigerator, let alone in one basket. Clearly, if I'm going to become an optimist, some changes will have to be made to our finances.
So I look to the experts. Today: Dave Ramsey.
Dave Ramsey has a popular radio show on personal finance and is apparently a well-known public speaker. I'd never heard of him, though, until I saw some advertising for a recent appearance in Kansas City. There was a lot about "hope" and "inspiration."

Hmm, I remember thinking. Maybe I'll go. Then I looked it up online. Tickets were over $30. So no, I didn't go.
I did the next best thing. I read his book The Total Money Makeover. (I didn't spend money on it, of course. I checked it out of the library. Sorry, Dave.)

In Makeover, Ramsey pitches a series of "baby steps" that, if followed correctly, would have you living off your investments in your golden years. Primarily, it's all about saving money for an emergency fund, paying off and clipping up credit cards and then going to work on the home mortgage, retirement and college savings.

There's a lot to like about this. As a member of a low-debt family (we only have our low-interest college loans and a remaining 8 years on a 15-year mortgage) we know the benefit of staying off the credit cards. Those things are evil, no two ways about it. And Ramsey knows how to keep up a patter that keeps you moving through the pages. It's quick and the complex issues are well explained.
But there's also quite a lot that's irritating about The Total Money Makeover.
First, you have to wade through a lot--and I mean a lot--of testimonials to get to the meat of his advice. I did a quick count and found 51 pages of italicized success stories from fans. That's about 21 percent of the total pages in the book. And these are only the italicized sections, mind you. There are plenty more stories woven into the body type, along with a lot of sales talk from Ramsey about why you should follow this plan. OK. I get it, I get it. You're a motivational speaker. It's what you do.
It would be a little easier to take, though, if the examples weren't so cherry-picked. Most of the people report wild spending on boats and fancy cars they could not afford. Some were in hock for $25,000, $40,000, $85,000 and more. Ramsey loves to talk about how financial fitness is like losing weight so I'll make the same comparison here. These testimonials are like those obesity shows, where the hugely overweight makeover subjects have cupboards loaded with Twinkies and buckets of Gummi Worms. Your own extra flab gets excused (gee, I'm not as bad as them), but there's nothing to help you lose that last 10 pounds.
Should the guy with $70,000 in credit card debt sell his fancy motorcycle? Well, duh. But how can the average middle class person ever get ahead when employers have been eroding his/her paycheck steadily for a decade?
This book is copyrighted 2003 and that's part of the problem. A lot of Ramsey's advice goes out the window when you're in an economic collapse as bad as this has been.
Income a problem? Simply go out and find another job to moonlight. Or sell the house and move into a less expensive place. Use your profits from the house sale to pay off debt and with the extra, invest in money market funds.
See what I mean?
To be fair, I checked the Internet to see if Ramsey has updated his advice for the recession and...oh dear. He did not see this one coming. In early 2008, he blamed the media for overplaying economic fears and said the economy was robust and safety nets would prevent a crash. (Here's a report about an interview on the Early Show).
As for our own situation, we have the emergency fund. Check. We have credit cards paid off. Check. But our sudden and precipitous income drop now makes it impossible (temporarily, we hope) to continue to pay the college loans.
The next step Ramsey would recommend would be increasing income by either a) selling something or b) moonlighting.
We've already thought about the selling. So far this year, we sold an old weight machine and parts from a broken trampoline. But that profit went to buy a replacement trampoline. Unlike Ramsey's success stories, we don't have a garage full of expensive junk. No speedboats. No furs. Most of our furniture was refinished from garage sales and the occasional garbage picking trip. I have a few mostly sentimental things from my grandmother, but they're worth more to me than they would be to anyone else.
So our best hope is for extra work. We have the book, but that's future income (we certainly hope). There aren't enough hours in the day to add other work on top of piano teaching, the column the book and the resume writing.
Ramsey is very big on psychology. He's adamant, for instance, that you should pay off the loan with the smallest balance first, regardless of interest rates--just for the psychological victory.
So it's strange that he ignores one of the big psychological reasons people overspend. Their children.
That's how we went wrong. Even in times we had debt paid off, we'd delve right back in again to get the things that give our children a chance in life and to make them happy. The encyclopedias, the lessons, the sports teams. When you're rewashing plastic bags and never going out to eat or to a movie, you just get so tired of always telling your kids, "no, no, no." They're only going to be with you a few years of your life.
Should we have taken that road trip through the Southwest? Or the driving trip to Seattle for a special soccer camp? Should we have gotten a life-sized wall poster of football player Cristiano Ronaldo for $100, when it was the only thing she wanted for Christmas? (And it was!) Probably not. But then again, we have family memories that can never be replaced. Under Dave's plan, we would never have done any of that because we would be focused with "gazelle-like intensity" on saving and investing.
I get the impression Dave never had to deal with these issues. Or maybe his wife did all of that, I don't know.
So what will I do differently now that I've read The Total Money Makeover? Well, I'm a bit more enthused about going through the shed and basement for old construction stuff we could sell. The problem is finding enough time to do it plus the other jobs I'm taking on in hopes of making more money.
Maybe I should invest in some No-Doze.

Not today, I have a headache

I had a post all planned for today, I swear. It would have been brilliant, too.
Unfortunately, instead I spent the entire work day--and I mean the entire day--learning the updated version of a program I use to figure and print piano lesson bills.
I won't bore you with the details, but suffice it to say that nothing on the new version was in the same place as on the old. Once I did find them, the commands did not work the same way. And for one last insult, the finished product wouldn't print properly.
So here I sit, hours later. I had just enough time to get them printed before lessons. Now lessons are done, I'm too tired to blog. That brilliant post will just have to wait.
In the meantime I'm grateful and optimistic because....
because...

okay, got it. I'm grateful and optimistic because my brain did not calcify today. And because some things work better on the new program. (But not all).

There. Time now to de-stress. Think I'll revisit my old friends, the dolphins.

It's a Brand New Day

Hate. Love. Positive affirmations.
Listen to me rave on.
Today, though, it's down to business. It's time to take a hard look at our finances.
We've crawled through about a month on the new, "streamlined" regimen now and a few things have become apparent.
Let's start with optimism. We can make it. It won't be pretty, but we'll be able to provide the basics of food and shelter (clothing may be a different matter). And hey, all those guys giving motivational seminars have a bounce-back-from-doom narrative. Why shouldn't we? If we can make a success of it, maybe we'll be the ones going on talk shows. Maybe I'll start writing the book right now. Hell, yeah.

Let's recap. In March, my husband was told he would be cut back to two columns a week (from three), he would become a part-time hourly employee and pay would go down by 33 percent.
Okay, fine. He wasn't laid off. At least the part-time option gave us a little time to work things through.
We've had a pretty good run at things, really. Over 20 years of work and this is the first time anything like this has ever happened to either of us. But that's small comfort. In fact, all those years of uninterrupted work made it impossible to imagine anything except disaster for our family when the bad news hit.
Reality is what we needed. The first thing we did was guess at the new paycheck and go to work on the budget. I ran the new paycheck estimate, subtracted expenses and we ended up with--whoa!--$46 left over after groceries to buy gas and any other frills. That's $46 for a two-week pay period.
Clearly, adjustments were in order. Since the "bridge payment" (a kind of severance given when you go from full to part time) had tax withholding at a rate of something like 40 percent, Mike changed the deductions. Then we took $2,200 of that bridge payment and paid the last of our credit card bill.
I ran the numbers again. Better, but still not good enough.
Our second biggest expense right now (excluding the house) is the college loans. We had a savings for this that was doing well in the '90s, but our first kid went to college at the turn of the century, just as the tech bubble burst and state colleges began increasing tuition by double digits per year. So yeah, the college fund was completely wiped out, and we still have loans.
College loan payments amount to about $275 a month. When my sons graduated, they were able to get deferments until they started working.
But when we checked into deferments, here's what we found: They're only available if you're laid off. Working 30 hours or more? Then you get a "forbearance." With a forbearance, you still have to pay the interest for the time out (limit, one year) and if you opt not to pay it monthly, it becomes capitalized. Result: You end up paying more for the loan.
We applied for forbearance anyway, though, because there's no other way around it. Now the end-of-the-bills number is doable--but only if everything goes just right. There's no room for extras, like the $100 plus it will take to enroll my daughter in public school, the tags on our 1997 Ford van, or the $175 per quarter to extend Mike's life insurance, formerly a company perk.
We won't lose the house. That was my biggest fear. We have only eight years left on the 15-year mortgage. But I think if worse comes to worst, we could cash in the 401k and pay it off.

No doubt there are some Mike haters out there who chortle at this as some kind of imagined "comeuppance." Conservatives have from time to time speculated on Mike's pay with hilarious numbers usually pulled straight from...well, you know. These guys (in some cases sitting on their own comfortable cushions) are so brainwashed they believe if you're the least bit liberal you must live in a mansion house and have a trust fund.
So let me set things straight. Mike's mother was a nurse, divorced, who often worked nights to make sure he and his brother had a good start in life. If anyone was an "elite" it was me. My grandparents had a successful hog breeding operation in rural Iowa. It had to pay for me, my brother and my mother, whose disability did not allow her to raise us. Neither of us has rich relatives or a trust fund.

So to business! We still have work to do in the expense-cutting area. HBO is in our sights, for instance. But--and this is crucial--we'll have enough on hand not to be totally consumed by anxiety over every-day bill paying.

We will not shuffle off in obedient acceptance of lowered expectations and a dismal old age.
We are, from this point on, all about the money.

Is Hate More Powerful than Love?

Is it? Is hate more powerful than love?
It's a question I've been wrestling with a lot lately.
Had you asked me this question in my early 20s (and no doubt someone did. It would have been introduced at a party and talked about for hours. That's just how some parties were...) I would have said no. No hesitation. But with every passing year of life experience, the arrow on the agree-or-disagree meter has moved slowly toward "agree."
This is not cynicism. It's just coming to terms with facts.
Hate is easy.
Anyone who's flitted, cruised or lurked around the Internet knows this. Personal attacks, either through web sites or anonymous comments, abound. (Here's a Newsweek story, with my obligatory plug to subscribe.) When there's no chance of repercussion, people think nothing of putting up horrible, damaging things. Because we are none of us real on the Internet. We are only a collection of pixels.
I also think hate is ingrained from an evolutionary standpoint. From my position as an observer of science (I'm a blogger. I have no actual expertise in science. That doesn't stop me, though because remember, I'm a blogger.) I'd bet that we needed the instant rush of anger to protect ourselves from danger.
I know that's how it is with me. Throw an insult at me or my family and, in my mind, I'm whirling around and jabbing upwards with that broken bottle. I am so there, so living in that place. Even thinking about it, hours later.
Hate is more powerful. It has to be. It's the only explanation for the success of wildly fluffy stories of the "chicken soup" variety. You just have to try so much harder to find examples of love.
So the question is how, as an aspiring optimist, will I deal with that?
...................
Long, long pause.
Apparently, I don't know the answer. So I'll just leave it at that.
Here's a memorable clip from Spike Lee's Do The Right Thing. Take note of the background music.

Lift Up Your Voice

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the maiden broadcast of the Comfort Music station. Well, I can't call it that because there already is a Comfort Music, a Comfort Music blog about Comfort Radio, which is dedicated to sharing music from the Burning Man gathering of 2003. Then, of course, there's the company Comfort Music. Which is funeral-music oriented.
So maybe forget the word "comfort," even though that is exactly what it is.
When hard times hit, people turn to music. Music therapy can help people with certain disorders (UMKC offers a major in music therapy). But in the lower case version of music therapy, you plug in your ear pieces and tune in. (Check out this precious "how to" from wikiHow. I think everybody reading probably knows the Watchtower piece, so here's a little sample of the Mussgorsky)





Can you--or should you--think of music as a tool to built optimism? My grandparents always did. Whenever I practiced piano, they would always praise the happy, bouyant pieces. One of their gifts to me was a big collection of lead sheets for their favorite stuff: Little Brown Jug, Happy Days are Here Again, Sunny Side of the Street. No matter how I worked on the Chopin nocturnes, it was always these songs they wanted.
Of course my preference was for anything dark and minor with lots of chromaticism and a soft ending. I always resented that they didn't like this. But then depression runs in my family, so I suppose to them the happy music was a kind of folk tonic.
My teenage struggles drove me to expression through sad music. But in a way, wasn't the music also shaping my perception of life?
As hard times are upon my family, I am now interested in persuing this question. Up-tempo music helps me get through my long runs. Maybe it will also help me even out the rollercoaster highs (see last Wednesdays post) with the can't-get-out-of-bed-why-am-I-always-tearing-up lows.
So here, for your listening pleasure, is some comforting music. Let's see if it helps. The first offerings come from my grandparents' play list:





And here is a version of a song that never fails to make me feel better.



I plan on making this a continuing feature, but I'd like your help. If you have a favorite uplifting song, please send a message, either through comments or on the contact link on my profile and we'll make it a community effort.

The Numbers Crunch

The April unemployment figures came out Friday, and even made the rolls of some of those "good news" web sites over the weekend.
Just to show you how much lower the bar is this month than it was six months ago for the all important feel-good story.
Although unemployment has reached 8.9 percent and 539,000 jobs were lost, some economists are saying that's cause for optimism. And why? Because 539,000 jobs lost is so much better than the 620,000 projected, or the 699,000 jobs lost in March.
I've gotta hand it to these guys. This is a feat of positive thinking I don't think I'm ever going to be capable of.
The argument is that a lower-than-expected number, plus other positive news in housing, etc., are signs that the economy is turning some kind of corner, and that the worst may be over. That may be true for some, but I bet it doesn't feel so great for the 539,000 people who have lost their jobs.
I bet those people, plus those of us who are still reeling from drastic pay cuts, feel a little twinge of panic when they hear talk about the worst being over or the bottom being hit. How long before the people who still have a livelihood start saying that the recession is over and the economy is growing? How long before all those long-term unemployed, and those older workers with not enough life left to bounce back, are forgotten?
We've seen it before. The last recession, after the terrorist attack, for instance. Before you knew it, the stock market was back and people supposedly in the know were mystified as to why the general population didn't feel better about the economy.
Short answer: Wages and jobs never came back along with the market. These people saw their finances stagnate, or worse, lag behind as pensions and health care benefits were cut.
This speaks to my number-one rule of optimistic thinking (yes, I now have "rules." Keep a lookout for my self-published book someday.)
That is: Never use "it could always be worse" as a positive thinking crutch. "It could always be worse" may make you feel better, but it also makes you smug and lulls you into complacency. As long as you're thinking "it could always be worse," you're probably not worrying enough to make the changes needed to protect yourself.
As for myself, I don't concede any optimism to such a cruel number as 539,000 for one month alone. Ask me again when wages go up so the average person can buy the things they need.

The Republic of Happy

Turns out one of the side effects of more optimism is less desire and time to post blogs on optimism. This week, anyway, I haven't felt the need to obsess on it quite as much.
Wednesday, I wrote about the positive things happening in our lives--the book, the increase in student referrals. So there's that, taking some formerly free time.
Then, as Mike's new paycheck becomes stabilized (we had to do some adjusting for taxes) and as we negotiate with the banks on our college loan payments, it's beginning to look like we won't go down the tubes right away, at least. A year from now, things might be different. But at least temporarily, we can pay our electricity, mortgage and heat and still have some left over for groceries. Scary though it may be, it looks like we can put that worry aside for now and concentrate on improving our income outlook for when those loan forbearances expire.
The end result: I haven't been as focused on seeking out optimism this week. As a result, I find I've missed a potentially good TV special about optimism and Michael J. Fox.
Fox, whom everyone surely knows has had Parkinson's Disease for about 20 years, hosted a show called Adventures of an Incurable Optimist on ABC. And no, it wasn't just another maudlin show about beating the odds on the disease. It was something deeper. Fox interviewed people--sick and well, celebrities and ordinary, American and from other countries--about the nature of optimism.
At least I think that's what was on it. That's what the various Internet reports said. I don't watch much network TV, so missed any promos mentioning it. At this point, I haven't been able to find a scheduled repeat or any sign of it on Hulu or YouTube.
It sounded interesting, though. If it clued me in on ways to be more reliably happy, I'd watch it with the recorder on and notebook in hand. Fox also has a book Always Looking Up, on the same theme, which I hadn't heard of. It will be a while before I can review it here, though, because I'm 154th in the library's queue (we're on a budget, remember?).
One interesting thing I picked up from reading the online accounts: The Himalayan country of Bhutan has an state policy on happiness. In every decision, the government of Bhutan must consider whether it's action will promote the happiness of its people. So if traffic lights, for example, frustrate the populace, the government goes back to a human traffic cop instead. (BBC slide show report here)
Here's the interesting, yet ironic thing. Bhutan only allowed television and the Internet into the country in 1999. Apparently, it's rulers felt these media were not sufficiently happiness-inducing.
Can't say that I disagree. But it means they would have missed Fox's special on optimism.
I don't know how Bhutan arrives at it's views on what is or isn't happiness inspiring. I suppose it helps if you have a monarchy. It's been 10 years now. I'd like to know how access to reality television and the blogosphere have impacted the "Gross Domestic Happiness."
Ooh. I feel a grant proposal coming on.

Happy Thoughts

It's Day Five of the new positive meditation regimen (see previous post).
A mere three minutes a day to reflect only on positive thoughts. And how's it going so far?
Glad you asked. Here's a summary:
Saturday--forgot.
Sunday--forgot.
Monday--forgot.
Tuesday--remembered for a few minutes but later...forgot.
Which brings us to today. So far, in fact right up until the minute I looked at this blank form and wondered, "What shall I post on?" I had forgotten. I guess this would be an opportunity for a little accountability.
So I'm going to do the meditation right now, in real time, as I write. I've always thought of writing as a meditative act, so let me just go get my timer.
Okay. Go.

Hmmm. Well, I just finished reading an online Newsweek article (we subscribe, you should too) about the dark side of the Internet, and how anonymity allows people to send horrific messages to each other and speaking of that, yes, I've felt a little of that dark side and...
Hold it, hold it. This is not positive. This is the opposite of positive. Try again.
Okay. Running. I went running today. Through the park and it was nice out. Looking at the park gave me ideas for garden blog posts and that will help the book.
Yes! There it is! The garden book is a positive thing. Mike and I signed a deal recently to put our 24 years experience into a yet to be titled book that will be out around Christmas time and hopefully making us money shortly after that. So yes. The book is positi....
Oh, dang. There goes the timer. That's how much writing I can get in in three minutes, leaving the typo fixing and spell checking for later.
But I'm on a roll here, so may as well keep up with the positive flow. Maybe I have more than three minutes of optimism in me after all.
The garden book and blog have been a lot of fun so far. In fact, we got a scoop on the creation of a kitchen garden at the Missouri governor's mansion similar to the one at the White House. (That is to say, it's a vegetable garden and it's on the residential grounds of an executive officeholder.)
Right now I'm revisiting some of our more spectacular garden flops for the "experiments gone horribly wrong" chapter.
It seems other aspects of life are also improving. I've gotten a few more calls from prospective piano students. I've applied for a couple of jobs (although one turned out to be just a way to get you to list yourself on Monster.com). So that whole process is beginning to lose its scariness.
And the past few days, I've come up with idea after idea (coincidentally, I've also been having terrible nightmares the past few days. Is this connected?) For example, I've jotted down hooks for three possible songs, come up with an idea to market some electronic music I already have out there, and have plans for a piano piece. Now I need more time to do them, because the extra students and garden book are taking more of my time.
All of that has to be positive, doesn't it? It seems the ideas always come easier when I'm extra busy. I wonder if my brain doesn't fear failure as much when each idea is just one of a huge group. Psychology thesis topic, anyone?
Wow. And all that without, really, doing the meditation I promised Friday. Maybe I should see what happens if I actually follow through on that.

Happy Go Lucky

Rain. Clouds. Cool weather. Resume writing. Job hunting. Our newly tightened budget. After days and days of this, we were looking desperately for something to cheer us up.
What we found was movies. Two movies, specifically.
And they did cheer us up. Just not for the reasons you'd think.
We depend on movies to transport us--however temporarily--from the problems we've dealt with all week. Usually this means letting Netflix send us whatever turns up at the top of the queue (What. You didn't think we could afford to go out to see them?)
A week ago, that didn't work out so well. We ended up with The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (based on a true story about a guy whose stroke left him almost completely paralyzed but his mind intact. He had just enough time to blink his way through a book before he died.) And The Orphanage, a sad ghost story about love and revenge from beyond. It ends with a suicide.
So, yeah. We had to do better than that.

I went through the queue and found one called Happy Go Lucky. The synopsis said it was about an irrepressibly sunny elementary school teacher--and it was a comedy. Maybe it would give us a lift, I thought. Either way, I could write about it here.
Happy Go Lucky, directed by Mike Leigh, is about a perky, friendly 30-something woman named Poppy (Sally Hawkins) who lives in London. She always tries to see the bright side in everything. So when her bike is stolen she doesn't brood about it, as I probably would, but immediately signs up for driving lessons. Her teacher, Scott (Eddie Marsan) turns out to be a racist woman hater brimming with anger over perceived slights and conspiracy theories.
He ends up being attracted to her, but this doesn't go the usual Hollywood route. She never returns his interest and their relationship ends with his explosion of violent jealousy and her complete rejection.
This was billed as a comedy but it wasn't, in fact, funny. Not in the "ha, ha" way. There are no sight gags, no gross outs. Not even much clever dialogue that you'd be able to quote. The most humor came from Scott's non-stop rants during the driving lessons. And they were more "amusing" than funny.
So why did this cheer me up?
For one thing, it didn't make fun of the optimistic main character. A main character with a positive attitude in a movie who is not also a ditz or a buffoon is as rare as a main character who is super smart and also happy. Look at A Beautiful Mind (brainy main character succumbs to mental illness) or Phenomenon (John Travolta suddenly becomes brilliant only to find out it's because he's dying of a brain tumor.) It just doesn't happen. If you're an optimist in a movie, you're either a member of a cult or some kind of flim-flam man.
In fact, fear of being made fun of is one big reason I've avoided the whole positive attitude thing. So it was comforting to see that an optimist can be seen as a good person by people in the creative community.
It also left me feeling good because it was a movie with a female lead that didn't end up being all about men.
There aren't many movies like that. In fact, I can't think of any. Even The Women, the George Cukor classic from 1939 with an all-female cast is really all about women trying to steal husbands or win them back.
Happy Go Lucky is the movie Cukor should have made. There are a few men thrown in, but the biggest character, the driving instructor, is not that important to Poppy's life. She isn't really paying attention to him. And her new boyfriend, while handsome, is more of a walk-on.
Instead, the screen is dominated by women. Working. Drinking. Taking flamenco lessons. Living their lives. This is so rare in movies that at times, I found myself marveling at the higher general pitch of the dialogue for extended periods of time. Maybe there's hope for the movie industry yet.
But I do go on.
The other movie we saw was O Brother Where Art Thou? We've seen it before, of course, but it was on TV. Its depiction of the Great Depression made me feel downright rich. Hey, at least we don't live in backwoods Mississippi on a failing dirt farm.
Might as well sing about it.

Good Times...Good Times

During the Great Depression, I've heard it said, there was a sense of brotherhood and community. People pitched in to help each other out.
At least this is what my grandparents, who lived in those times, used to tell me. Apparently everybody chipped in to help with crops, food, clothes and whatever they could for their neighbors.
So far, during this depression, or Great Recession or panic or whatever you want to call it, I've noticed just the opposite. On the Internet, various interest groups cackle over the misfortunes of others, from layoffs to swine flu. Instead of following that old piece of optimism advice (Count your blessings. It could always be worse.) most people dwell on how it could always have been better--if only the forces of the universe didn't screw them over.
I know that has been my own personal struggle. It would have been better if I hadn't stayed home with the kids; it would have been better if I had majored in engineering (could I still go back?) It would have been better if I had been born at a different time.
Of course, it's useless to think this way. Just as useless as it is to think about how much worse off other people are. Things can only be what they are and it's too late to go back now.
I hear it all around me, too. "I have no sympathy for (fill in your own category: laid of executives; the poor; other ethnic groups) They have it way better than I do."
So which is correct? Do we really pull together in hard times, or are all those Great Depression stories a lot of hooey? Or maybe they're true and we have changed so much for the worse as a country that we have no empathy left.
The old me doubts those feel-good Depression stories. People were always rotten and are no more so today.
But...but...maybe all this stuff about optimism is beginning to sink in a little. Or maybe it's the brain waves CD. I think there's another explanation: Both viewpoints are right. You pick your own belief.
Pessimists would automatically say what I just did. And optimists would dwell on the chicken-soupy stories because they automatically emphasize the good.
I'm not there yet, that's for sure. I've seen up close and personal how rotten some people can be, just for fun. It's going to take an intensive reprogramming to get myself to the point that I only remember the good. It's not going to come naturally.
So maybe I'll approach it like physical fitness, or laughing yoga or anything else. Maybe I'll force it.
New experiment. From now on I set aside 15 minutes...no, 5....no, 3 a day to meditate only on good and uplifting things. No unhappy childhood memories or malevolent revenge fantasies allowed. If they break through, I'll blast them away with rainbows and lemon drops.
I'll keep track of how I do. Maybe even a diary.
Tomorrow is another day.

Stumbled upon this video on YouTube which expresses my sentiments exactly. Apparently it's available on iTunes.