Blowin' in the Wind

Random thoughts on a day when I really should be outside, enjoying the warm sunshine:

We should rearrange our economy (and our work ethic) so that no one has jobs anymore. How much better would life be if all we had was hobbies instead?
Well, yeah, you'd obviously have to make money some way. Like maybe charging people from the busy church next door to park in your driveway, or whatever. But you'd only do it enough to just get by. Then you'd go on to your hobbies.
Hobbies are just so much more fun. Cooking, for example. I'm not enslaved in an endless run of meals and dishes. It's a hobby! Writing? It's not hours of slogging on--forward and backspacing--to the inevitably unsatisfying end. It's a hobby!
There's just something about a hobby that makes anything more bearable. So why not switch to an all-hobby economy? It wouldn't matter so much about the pay, because everyone else would be in the same boat.
Music, nursing, teaching, physics, commercial fishing, even day trading. All interesting hobbies. And I'm sure someone somewhere will want to indulge in his telephone soliciting hobby, or the interesting pastime of analyzing and adjusting insurance rates. As a way to kill some time.

I got onto this subject because it's occurred to me that the reason I don't get more accomplished in my life is that I like to do too many different kinds of things. So then I have trouble settling on the thing that I should get done because--there are so many things. And only so many hours in a day.
If I spend all my non-paying time trying new recipes, say, then there's none left for reading. And there's certainly not any time left over to expand into the things I've always been interested in, but neglected to study when I had the chance. Like chemistry or acoustics. And when am I going to find time to design the "smart" solar oven I've been mulling over during my morning runs?
How did earlier people solve this? In Victorian times, gentlefolk just hired droves of servants to do the menial labor, so they could work out the details of the orbit of planets and Calvinism.
But even if I had enough money to have servants, I'd start to envy them the chance to hang out clothes in the morning air.
See what I mean?

Yesterday, in fact, I was feeling a little down, a little sad that I have done very little music composing lately. Despite the fact I have a degree in it.
So I got out my old manuscript paper notebook (itself an anachronism, now that I have Finale notation on the computer). I looked back at my sketches for a suite for late intermediate piano I started a couple of years ago. One of the pieces is done, and I'd written some ideas for following pieces. There, beneath the first piece was one tentatively called, "The Hen Takes Flight." Apparently it would contain something I called the "dammit motif."
I cannot recall now, what exactly the "dammit motif" was. It must have been something that was running through my head so much that I didn't see a need to write it out.
All I know is, this is too irresistible. Anything called The Hen Takes Flight with a "dammit motif" must be finished.
I will get back on it for sure.
Just as soon as tonight's piano lessons are over.

Sure, why not

When I was a teenager--a surly, unresponsive, depressed teenager--my grandmother used to give me a lot of advice that I never heeded.
One of her main themes was: Just stay busy. It doesn't really matter doing what. Just create some busy work to keep your mind off your troubles.
I never much cared for that idea, though, mainly because I didn't want to look back on a day spent in trivial tasks of the kind she usually suggested. I didn't want a lot of hobbies. I wanted my life to be so much bigger.
Now that I've lived longer and find myself somewhat stuck in a pessimism pattern I don't know how to get out of, I'm willing to take a second look at busy-ness as an attitude adjuster.
I've been busy before. The years I was working on a music composition degree while teaching and raising kids were busy. And I was so, so glad when things finally began to let up.
But to be honest, there are good points to busy-ness. You get the satisfaction of having accomplished a lot. When it's over. You get the exhilaration of the deadline push and the feeling of being needed by others.
Maybe that's what was going through my head when I agreed to take on not one but two big tasks for music teacher organizations this fall. Then again maybe it was just good old-fashioned mental illness.
Whatever the subconscious reason, I find myself heading up the directory yearbook for Federated Music Teachers and coordinating Fall Festival for the Kansas City Music Teachers--two volunteer jobs at which I have no previous experience. Fall Festival, in particular, gets unusual and amusing reactions from most other piano teachers when I mention I've signed on (ducking down, covering the face, the index-finger sign of the cross).
As advertised, Fall Festival doesn't happen until fall. But already I've had one mini-heart attack crisis having to do with the venue.
It's funny how the events of the past year have loosened me up and reset my personal bar of crazy. In the past, I might have been too terrified to take on the festival. But you know what went through my head when they called me this year? "Fall Festival? What's the worst that could happen? Would it be worse than a pay cut? Worse than the erasure of our college fund? Fall festival? This is nothing."
So, yes, by all means, let's test this idea. Let's keep my idle hands from becoming the devil's keyboard--er--playground.
Perhaps it will end in disaster. But it couldn't possibly be worse than the year we've just endured.

Paint It Black

Yesterday was an anniversary of sorts. One year ago yesterday, Friday March 13, was the day our family joined the growing number of un- and under-employed--the day Mike was called in to find he'd been cut down to part time and would lose a third of his income, not including benefits.
It was a cataclysmic event for us, and we both lost a lot of sleep over what would become of our family. Over the months we've had some crazy highs and lows. But although nothing has changed employment-wise, and although there's not much budgeting room for things beyond food and housing, we're still here. Still in our home. Still healthy. Still out of the clutches of pay-day loan sharks.
How do you mark an anniversary like this one? I think the only way is to mock it.
Hence Black Supper, 2010. But it's not what you think.
Yes, black has traditionally been the color of mourning. And true, the guy with the black hat in old westerns was usually the bad guy. But lately people have been messing with color symbolism. Take the Democrats and Republicans, for instance. For all the time I was growing up, Democrats were represented by red and Republicans by blue. In my young mind, that meant Democrats were wilder and hot blooded (like Communists!) and Republicans were rich blue bloods. But somewhere along the line, it switched. Now Republicans are represented by the wild color red and Democrats are the cool blue.
So messing with color significance is what I intended to do with the Black Supper. Instead of mourning and feeling loss, black will mean the same for us as it does for merchants on "Black Friday." That's the day everyone starts making a profit because it's the biggest shopping day of the year.
So yes. Profit. Money. In The Black. I'd do it with food to celebrate the fact that we're still eating.
To commemorate Black March 13, the meal would be entirely of black food. And hey, it turns out some foodies say black foods are healthy, too. So there's an extra plus.
Anyway, the appetizer was black sesame rice crackers with black olive tapenade or grocery-store grade caviar left over from New Years Eve, take your pick. For a salad, I boiled some black rice, added a few cut-up Black Mission figs and doused it with raspberry vinaigrette. The "vegetable" was black beans with onions, cumin, garlic and some home-canned salsa I needed to finish off. The main dish was a grilled sandwich of Black Forest ham and cheese (regular colored, sorry) on pumpernickel. I stayed with the Black Forest for dessert, with a trifle made with some instant dark chocolate pudding, some cherries from our tree cooked with sugar and thickened to pie filling consistency, topped with chocolate wafer crumbles. The drink was Point Black Ale (which was pretty good.)
And the after-dinner drink? A Black Russian, of course.
Where we raised our glasses: To full employment. To more fun. To less fear. To better times by March 13, 2011.

Frugal Fatigue

Does my family have symptoms of Frugal Fatigue?
I've been mulling this over after coming across the term on the Colbert Report this week. Actually, Frugal Fatigue entered the popular lingo a while ago. Back in the run-up to Christmas shopping season, there was much excited talk among retailers hoping against hope that the average shopper was fed up with cutting back and ready to go crazy with the credit card again.
Did it happen? Well, there were a few reports of improvement in the Christmas sales figures. But MSN Money reported today that Wal-Mart is a little freaked out that it's same store sales are a bit down this quarter. Apparently, ever lower prices have not been enough to boost the buying power of the average customer.
So is Frugal Fatigue real, or is it just wishful thinking by retailers? Everyone knows the job and wage outlook hasn't improved. So are people like us just going to snap and spend into debt as a backlash against all that bean soup we've been eating?
Early stories made it sound like a sort of neurosis brought on by the steady drumbeat of layoffs, downsizings and pay cuts. This story describes it as an emotional response, a throwing up of the hands, maybe even a psychological disorder.
But if you've lived it, as our family has, you'll understand that the slight uptick in spending--against all wage and unemployment figures--is not emotional at all. Nor is it just more evidence that our generation is selfish and unable to control its impulses to overspend.
For most of us, the recession didn't start when the stock market fell in 2008. That crash was just the thing that made powers that be take it seriously. Here are a few other things driving small spending upticks that have nothing to do with hysterical self indulgence:

Things break, don't they... Our family, like many others, has been cutting back steadily for most of the 2000s. Pay may have gone up a little, but it's been offset by the fact that we're paying more out of our own pockets for benefits like health insurance and for sending our kids to college.
For us, that means driving our cars until the cost of fixing them exceeds the cost of a new one. When one car was towed off to the Salvation Army, we just didn't replace it. As appliances and furniture aged and wore out, we made Band-Aid type repairs that cost the least. When glassware broke, as it inevitably does, we replaced it at the church garage sale.
But you can't go on like this indefinitely. Sooner or later, it will just be stupid to call the repairman again for that major appliance with the ominous smoke coming out of it. You could do all the dishes by hand, sure, or take your clothes to the laundromat. But you need that time to be finding paying work.

Frugality is not the same as scrimping...although the two terms are often interchangeable in news stories. Frugality is a choice to live within your means. Scrimping, on the other hand, is something you're forced to do to get by. Not even my grandparents, who lived through the Great Depression, expected they'd always have to make clothes out of flour sacks. They were scrimping until times got better. Once that happened, they spent with a vengeance, disdaining things like canned tuna and macaroni.
In either case, though, you expect a reward of some kind, otherwise what's the point? You get by on a little less so one day, you can afford that sparkling new toaster oven, or the new DVD player. It's that little reward that, oftentimes, keeps you going.

Your not getting any younger, and neither are your kids...When you've been cutting back as long as we have, you wake up one day and realize your kids are only going to be at home for a little while longer. Maybe you believed a sport or music lessons would help your kids do better in life. You can't tell them to wait until the economy turns around in 10 more years. They need the sports camp or the upgraded instrument now. Unless you want to be remembered as the parents who made empty promises.
Or, let's say you're in your 50s, worked hard and lived without the things everyone else enjoyed because you didn't want the debt. Then you suddenly find yourself with a 50 percent pay cut or even unemployed. With ageism as rampant as it is, can you hope to ever make up what you've lost in the time you have left on earth? You could continue to scrimp, I suppose. But if you dip into your savings once for a little fun, does that make you a selfish Boomer brat? I don't think so.

So Frugal Fatigue? Well, we're fatigued, definitely. And we're frugal.
But that doesn't make us silly.

Now Git!

Today I'm writing a post that will be upbeat and positive despite the fact that this is the opposite of how I feel.
Normally, this would be called dishonesty. But I'm calling it "beating back the demons," because they are out there, pounding on the door and demanding to be let in.
Let me explain. Last night was one of those nights where you wake up for just a split second too long. In your head, you snap on a little light above the bathroom sink. Outside, one of your personal demons is driving by (because he's stalking you) and pulls in the driveway. You talk on the step for a sec, then go to answer the phone and when you come back, the demon and his buddies are in the kitchen pulling stuff out of the refrigerator. They've texted their friends that there's a buffet and an open bar, and soon your head is full of your personal demons--fears, regrets, bad memories--and they've put on the rave lights and the thumping Euro-pop music and it's now 3:30 a.m. and good luck getting any rest.
Trouble is, when the new day starts, I'm not ready. Some of them have passed out on the couch and will not leave (just like this sad analogy, unfortunately).
So, rather than dwell on them, I will think about the very good weekend Mike and I had sitting in a booth talking to people at the Johnson County Home and Garden Show.
I know that sitting all day for hours on a weekend doesn't necessarily sound like a good time. But after this one (and the one two weeks ago at the KC Royal) I just came away feeling...grateful.
This is an expo filled for the most part with local small business people--home remodelers, hardware store and garden store owners, people with interesting inventions (have a look at Jacket for Two, a Kansas City business).
We're newcomers to all this, and writers, to boot. And everyone was way nicer to us than we had any right to expect. Show bosses Pat and Kate Riha kindly set us up at the last minute (we signed up late) and even stopped by to chat and introduced us around. Patricia Lanza, Lasagna Gardening author and superstar, even took an interest in us, stopping by our booth and offering us tips and advice about the book business.
The cutthroat nature of business gets a lot of press. And I'm sure there's some truth to the stereotype. But at the risk of over-romanticizing, I have to say that what we saw was just the opposite. People were nice, through and through. They reached out and helped us and seemed genuinely interested in our success. And as long as I'm thinking about that, the world isn't such a bad place.
There now, demons. Scat!