Finally. I Have Returned

Two months. I know; it's a long time without an update. I'd tell you I'm sorry and beg your forgiveness, but honestly, I'm not sure my eight or so readers felt a significant vacuum in their lives for my absence. Just another blogger who didn't stick with it.

The thing is, I actually will stick with it. You just have to put up with the occasional dry spell. I really am sorry. Mostly just because that's not how I want to blog, not because I think my absence did a powerful harm to the Internetz.

So April 23, I posted about depression. Several things have happened since then. Perhaps most significantly, I've carried a pregnancy past the first trimester (officially today). I'm as shocked as the rest of the world, and I'm slowly getting excited.

The difficulties in our marriage have been getting better. Both of us work hard, and while I think we're also both kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop, we're also enjoying this anomalous experience of actually liking our spouse.

So much and yet so little has happened in the past two months. Burgundy finished 9th grade with straight As for the second semester. She went to Chicago with our church's youth choir, and they sang in churches, cathedrals, and nursing homes as they toured their way up and back. She saw Blue Man Group on the trip, and I think she's decided to become Catholic just so she can marry in a St. Louis cathedral with which she fell deeply in love. She began a summer school enrichment program at Rice University last week.

That's a post in and of itself. It's a testament to the power of great teachers that young people in their teens, an age glorified for recalcitrance and rebellion, flock to this school in the summer. Burgundy's boyfriend begged his parents to let him go (I'm sure Burgundy's attendance had nothing to do with that), and Burgundy, who is 14 and starting her Sophomore year in August, a musician and an English nerd, comes home chattering gaily about Calculus and Chemistry. I mean, really. Maybe standardized testing isn't so effective after all? Maybe giving teachers the freedom to teach to their students is effective? Pshaw, you don't say.

It turns out that Burgundy's Calculus teacher (who has her gobbling up the limits and derivatives regardless of her lack of pre-Cal and tutoring her classmates) teaches at the Awty International School. I wanted so badly to send her to Awty when she was little. I could go on and on about them. I'm tempted to pull him aside toward the end of the summer school program and ask him about scholarships. The tuition is tens of thousands per year, but if we could put her in an environment where the teachers are free to teach (and she could earn her International Baccalaureate), I know she would thrive.

Oh, once I start writing, it's so easy. I missed, you, little blog!

Mark has been working on his book business, and I've been laying on the couch whining about morning sickness that lasts all day and all night. His business is going pretty well now, and I would guess he's selling an average of two to three books per day. He still needs to take one more class before he can sit for his Project Management Professional (PMP) certification, but NASA keeps cancelling or completely overselling its occasional class for PMs. I think we're going to just pay the tuition for him to take this class. It will hurt financially given our impending unemployment, but given the value of a current PMP cert, I think it's completely worth the effort. It could double his salary.

I've continued to work part-time right up until now. I received word last week though that beginning next week, I will begin working full time. This is a blessing in disguise for me. I have been so tired and sick for the last three months that if I had needed to go full time even a week earlier, I don't know if I could have done it. Luckily, the sickness is getting less and less prohibitive, and my energy is coming back now. By next week, I should be ready to go. The real blessing in all this is that we'll be able to almost double our emergency fund if we're very careful. If we can (God willing) find a way to fully fund it and pay for the midwife before my employment ends, I'll be so very grateful.

I think that has to be all for now. I could go on and on, but I think I need to save some words for tomorrow.

Unemployment Armageddon

We found out two days ago that in addition to the end of my current employment on September 30, Mark's contract ends October 1.

I feel angry, paralyzed, motivated, frightened. I am a walking maelstrom of emotions.

The only things we can do are the obvious:

1. Job hunt. My company has said that if we can move, they will help us find positions elsewhere in the company. In addition, Mark's skills transfer easily across industries. If he can find a position in petrochemicals or one of the other industries around here before the rest of NASA is laid off and saturates the market, we can stay in Houston.
2. Cut expenses. This will be the most difficult proposition because we already live pretty close to the bottom of the threshold, and there still are many things we need to buy. Burgundy wants to attend the Rice summer school again, this time for enrichment. Given the trouble she had in Algebra last year, we really want her to take a pre-Calculus enrichment class before she takes it for credit next year. She wants to take a class in writing, a class in Chemistry (she's taking Chem next year), and a class in US photographic history. We will pay for this because her education is important. It's worth it. $775. And that's only one expense. There's my truck, repairs to the house, medical bills . . . you name it.
3. Save money. As much as we can. We're working on that now. Mark is selling his books again over the internet, and I'm thinking of selling all but my most cherished yarn, fiber, and fabric. With all the above expenses, we're going to have to be brutal with each other about saying no.
4. Sell the house. This decision hurts the most. Mark loves our house. His garden is thriving, and we like our neighborhood. We're five minutes from Burgundy's high school, great location, yada yada. However, once NASA "refines" its workforce, housing here will plummet, and we'll lose our meager equity. We need to sell it now. Mark and I disagree on this, so the common ground we reached is that we need to get it ready to sell. I plan to call a realtor friend next week and ask her to help us prioritize what needs to be done. I know we need to get the clutter out of the house; Mark won't want to get rid of anything, so that will represent more expense. As will new carpet, replacing the tub in the guest bathroom, painting rooms and landscaping. We have pine trees.* I hate pine trees, and I have ten of them in my front yard.

I'm not sure exactly how, but I know we'll make it. Even if we end up drawing unemployment, we should be able to make it.

* Good God I hate pine trees. Perhaps it's that I grew up dirt poor in pine country, Mississippi, but they scream, "I AM TRAILER TRASH AND CAN'T AFFORD OAK TREES OR LANDSCAPING, SO I PLANTED UGLY, WEEDY, FAST-GROWING TOOTHPICK TREES INSTEAD! FEAR MY SHOTGUN!"

If 2 Days Slip Away, are the Days Slipping?

Or am I avoiding? I rather strongly suspect I'm avoiding. On the other hand, Burgundy didn't get home until nearly 8:00 PM last night what with set up for her science fair. I had my hands tied up in cake batter and Portuguese custard tarts when she came home. By the time she finished her tuba, shower, and getting ready for bed, I had finished the custards, cupcakes, and Swiss buttercream frosting (oh my God, die of rich, buttery, silken heaven right. now). Of course, when we finally sat down to evaluate whether she had all the information she needed to study for her 9-weeks exams that start two days after her return from spring break, it was 9:45 PM. Already 15 minutes late for lights out.

All day today, Burgundy will be at the Houston Science Fair; thus, I made cupcakes. I only made custard tarts because the Swiss buttercream frosting (oh my God, die of rich, buttery, silken heaven) required a cup of egg whites, and I didn't want the yolks to go to waste; the custard requires 6 yolks; the frosting took 7 whites. Match made in heaven. Oh, and wild kudos to Our Best Bites for the frosting and cupcake recipes.

Tonight I was supposed to meet up with some friends at another friend's new place to watch dumb movies, but the host begged off last night. Now I'm trying to decide whether to host it myself or just call the whole thing off. Love the idea of getting together, but I kinda want to be a homebody in advance of our trip to Hill Country.

And in ultimately crappy timing, my employer messed up my paycheck. It was an honest mistake; when they changed my status to be hourly instead of salaried, they calculated my pay based on half my annual part-time salary instead of half my annual full-time salary. The result was half a paycheck two days before we leave for Hill Country. Happily, we have no worries because we work it a la Dave, so we have an emergency fund that can handle the trouble. Meanwhile, the employer is plugging away at fixing the problem, and I should have my paycheck this time next week.

We Need a Car

Oh my goodness! I just realized I haven't posted yet today. I've been working on an internal Wiki for the organization I'm leaving, and it's taken over my free-time thoughts, too.

Since I hurt my leg, I've been driving Mark's car. I knew it was pretty bad off, but I think I hadn't really understood how bad off it was.

Before I ever climbed into it on the first day I drove it, I asked Mark to put more power steering fluid into it. The car is a 1986 Toyota Celica; you would think something so small would be okay without the power steering, but it isn't, let me be clear on that.

With enough power steering fluid, my attention was free to notice other problems with the car.

The first problem to really catch my attention was the collection of gentle plumes of smoke escaping from beneath the hood as I waited in line at Starbucks. It wafted from the left side of the hood, and it's a testament to my Profound Cheapskatery that my reaction was not the expected, "ZOMGWTFBBQ," free-for-all as I tumbled from the car to escape the obvious impending explosion. No, I looked at it for a minute then decided it was just fluid of some kind dripping onto the hot manifold and smoking off. I picked up my latte and moved on with a shrug.

Next I noticed that on sharp corners, I could hear a pretty disturbing knocking sound. Now I've driven my fair share of beaters, and I've endured my fair share of knocking. I know what a bad tie rod end sounds like, and this ain't it. No, this knocking sounds like a yard gnome caught in the spin cycle. A deep, throaty thump, rhythmic with a slight echo. Happily, most of my route to work is a straight shot, so I grimaced a little and kept driving.

On the last road before turning into the Johnson Space Center where I work, the speed limit (once you're past the school) is 45 mph. The moment my speedometer hit 40, the steering wheel started to shake. Not shimmy as though it needs an alignment, no. That would be a gentle, steady rhythm moving the wheel no more than a fraction of an inch side to side as I drove. No, it shook, displacing inches with each back and each forth. It made the fat on my arms jiggle until my skin itched.

Ironically, the brakes seem to be in pretty good shape, and the air conditioner works. We Texans have our priorities.

My little brother climbed into the car a couple of days later for a ride. We came to a stop light, gently slowing until we rested. My brother, a 24-year-old Veteran of both Iraq and Djiboutian conflicts, looked out the front windscreen and said, "Mel, is your car smoking?"

"Yep," I said, "But I own it. Besides, I think it's just power steering fluid or something."

"You might want to get that looked at," he responded.

"Oh."

A few minutes later, I wrenched the wheel (it needs to have another 1/2 quart of power steering fluid every couple of days) around and pulled us into my drive. Brian climbed out. "You mind if I have a look?" he asked. Brian is nothing if not polite. He even opened my car door for me. Sweet kid.

He didn't even pop the hood. He leaned over, sniffed the still-wafting smoke, and said, "Yeah. That's oil."

Now my first instinct is to take this car and our little emergency fund down to the dealership and combine them to buy my dear, long-suffering husband (you really wouldn't believe how much he doesn't complain about that car) a spanking new slightly used car. Spend ten grand or so, put the roughly six grand we don't have on a small note, and pay it off in two months.

It is painful to know that DH is going to have to get an only slightly upgraded beater rather than the fairly nice car we were hoping for just four months from now. But we agreed: no more debt. And we're sticking to our guns. Maybe we can make the Celica run until February.

So I Quit My Job

A couple of days ago, I mentioned that I had big news to share. All the right people have been told; this won't surprise anyone who reads it on the internet.

For the last ten years, I've worked full time for contractors in the space program in Houston. I've worked in safety for the Shuttle and the Station, in quality assurance for the Station, and on Constellation for the Orion Project.

Orion is our next vehicle; it's a descendant of Apollo. With Orion, we plan to haul humans into space, to the Space Station, and to the moon. For the last two years (almost to the day), I've served as a meeting coordinator, technical writer, event logistics manager, and general Jill-of-all-Trades on this project. And last Thursday, I handed in my notice in order to accept a part-time, short-term position. I still will serve in our space program on the Constellation Program; however, I'll be working in Mission Operations, a completely different project.

I know many people out there think, "Why, in this economy, with so many people hurting for money and jobs, would you quit a long-term, secure, full-time, well-paid job?" Well, I'm so glad you (sorta) asked.

Remember a couple of weeks ago when I posted about becoming debt free? Remember how I said that we are completely free to decide how, where and why we spend out money? Well, an ancillary product is that we also are free to decide what level of income we want.

I know, that sounds crazy, doesn't it? I mean, obviously, everyone wants a very high level of income, right? Well, Emily at Under $1,000 per Month has really helped me to articulate a long-simmering, sub-concious belief: We choose who we will be, how we will live, and what we will do regardless of income. Even with only one full-time income, my husband's, our monthly income is more than 2.5 times higher than her family's. And that's after the cost of health/dental/vision insurance, higher taxes imposed, retirement savings, long and short term disability insurance costs, etc. Yet Emily is living our dream. Oh sure, we would do some things different. We want a farm, for one. I'm not interested in living in a tiny space for another. For a third, based on our apparent infertility, we won't have a large family, and we'll minister to the world around us as foster parents. So our missions and choices would be vastly different, yes.

The only difference between Emily's family and mine is what we chose to do with our potential income. Emily chose to trade her potential income and disposable wealth for the value of being at home with her children. Mark and I, for the last few years (understanding that as a single mother in the beginning, I had far less flexibility to choose than I do now; someone had to make money) have sold our time with Burgundy and our purported values (green living, frugality, time lavished on those we love) for disposable income.

Let me say it much more simply: Emily bought the opportunity to live out her values using her potential income, and I sold that same opportunity.

Not to say that we've gained nothing from the sale. We're debt-free and have only our house for which to pay. We live in an excellent neighborhood, and our daughter attends one of the very best high schools in the state of Texas. I have expensive hobbies (you don't even want to know the value of the stuff in my craft room). Burgundy will not require student loans for college (indeed, she watched us go through FPU, and she's committed to staying debt-free for life. Burgundy's amazing fiscal responsibility is another post though). A real, intangible benefit has been that my husband, who is far under-earning his potential, has not had to deal with the stress of having it all on his shoulders. That's been nice as we've tried to work out integrating our family. One less thing to stress him out and argue over.

Which brings me to my next point: If we value the time with our family and the benefit of having me at home, why am I only going part time? Why not quit entirely?

A couple of reasons: First, I don't want to quit entirely. Part of this new-found freedom is the opportunity to really examine our values. My family is first, of course. But with a teen, I don't need to be at home all day every day while she's in school. The new job will allow me to continue to bring in a very good income (more on that later) while only being absent from the house while my daughter is at school (excepting the summer, but more on that later, too).

The second reason is that I think Mark is not quite ready for me to quit entirely. Our mortgage payment would be a little high (38.5% of take-home), and who wouldn't be concerned about suddenly being the sole breadwinner? It feels like tight-rope walking without a safety net. And taking care of his peace of mind and well being is important, too.

As for the change in income, because the new company offered me a significant hourly increase (about 20%), my actual take-home pay will decrease by only about 40%.

We are very excited about this. The kids (I genuinely think of Julia as my kid) and Mark are excited about folded laundry and homemade meals. I'm excited about a clean, organized home and decluttering. We're all excited about having more time together that isn't spent doing chores and playing catch-up. This is a wonderful, amazing thing.

Oh, and About the Cost

Materials were not cheap. I think I paid $105 for lye, coconut oil, palm oil, peppermint essential oil, vanilla fragrance, shea butter, grapefruit seed extract, and beeswax enough to make a little over two batches of soap and shipping for all of those. Then we also purchased distilled water and olive oil separately for $25; there was enough water for four batches and olive oil for three.

So if I engage in a little fuzzy math and round out the number of batches to 2.5, the cost comes to $52/batch of soap or $1.11 per bar. Probably not super-frugal; however, we didn't add the value of the chemistry lesson for the girls, and when you consider the cost of buying handmade soap as a gift, it becomes incredibly cost-sensitive.

Thanks to Miss Hannah for the instructions and help getting supplies!

Also, it looks like another mutual friend found a local option for buying supplies which would cut out the exorbitant shipping costs.  The first list of supplies was $27 to ship, which added $10 to the cost of each batch or about $0.21 to the cost of each bar. Apparently, the local option also is less expensive for the supplies, as well. Win on all fronts!

Being Debt-Free

Mark and I are 35 and 34, respectively. We have been married five years and two months, and two months ago today we made the last payment on our last non-mortgage debt. We liberated ourselves.

We started our journey three and a half years ago in January 2006. We had been married about a year and a half, and that month, Mark started his first professional job out of college.

Our income doubled overnight, and I feared that we would end up broke all over again because we were so unaccustomed to having any money. So I asked around, and several people recommended that I try Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University. So we signed up at the church. Money was so tight that we had to ask the church to cover the $100 cost for us. At that time, we had no commitment to being debt-free. It was a kind of pipe dream for us: something everyone said you should do and no one believed you could do.

During the second or third class, we watched the “Dumping Debt” lesson. If you never watch or read anything else by Dave Ramsey, watch him teach that lesson. You actually can buy just that lesson here. This lesson gave us our first glimmer of hope. I went home, pulled all our bills – from $45 owed to the dentist to $24K owed to student loans – added them up, and found that between us we owed $63,754 for cars, furniture, student loans, medical bills, computers, and general living.

Dave says that, “Children do what feels good. Adults make a plan and follow it.” By his standards, I guess we’re teenagers. We made a plan and more or less followed it. In fact, we even paid it off ahead of our original schedule; however, we could have gone even faster if we’d been a little less impulsive. For example, my husband encouraged me to buy a spinning wheel. We bought a laptop. We ate out.

All the same, on September 4, 2009, Citifinancial Student Loans debited the final $1,501.01 from our checking account, and we went to bed that night free of all debt except our mortgage. When we started, we had so many monthly payments that we could only pay $50 a month extra on our debts. By the time we focused on the final debt, we made a consolidated $2,500 payment each month on that debt.

I thought I could imagine how it would feel to be debt free, but I was wrong. It’s more liberating than the sweetest siren song could make it out to be. More importantly, our dreams have gotten much, much bigger. Four years ago, I could barely entertain the notion that people could live without consumer debt. Now we have a real dream: we plan to pay off our house.

Of course, paying off the debt really just brought us up to the starting line. We still have plenty of Responsible, Grown-up Things to Do. Right now, we’re working on our three-month emergency fund. After that, we need to replace Mark’s car, a decrepit 1986 Toyota Celica. We anticipate replacing the central heat and air system (including extensive duct work) and insulating the house. We plan to complete all of these without using debt by June 2010. Then we'll pad the emergency fund to cover six months of expenses. After that, all our extra money will go toward Burgundy’s college and paying off the house.

Get that: We have the freedom to decide what we want to do with our money. We can sell the house and live in a yurt. Buy cashmere goats. Carve totem poles and sell them on Jamaican cruises.

Anything. We. Want.

Note: This is a lightly edited post originally published on my old (mostly locked) livejournal account. Apologies to readers who came here from there.

Planning for Christmas

We always fill our weekends with way too many activities, plans, and goals. This weekend was no different; however, I accomplished so many things that I’m beginning to feel giddy. I finished making the jam two weeks ago, and I made three loaves of bread and a batch of yeast rolls Saturday. I finished another Morsbag, and we took the girls to Houston Grand Opera for the second weekend in a row, this time to see Lohengrin. We really enjoyed it, but I don't think I will see live opera two weekends in a row again anytime soon. Especially not when one of them is Wagner. Holy cow.

I’ve now completed six out of twelve Morsbags for our Christmas project. Basically, I'm going handmade this Christmas. For all our parental and sibling sets and for our close friends, I'm making each family a Morsbag. So far, I've made one bag from fat quarters I had, four from a large-ish scrap of cloth I found in my craft room, and one from an IKEA pillowcase. The remaining six probably will be made from the rest of the IKEA sheet set. It cost $1.99, and I bought it to use in place of fabric on a different project.

We'll stuff each bag with a jar of homemade local jam, a bar of homemade soap, a hand-packed beer bread kit, hand-dipped chocolate spoons, homemade hot cocoa mix, and a mini-loaf of my homemade bread. If the girls feel like it, they can bake cookies or brownies or cookie bars and add those to the gift bags.

The Morsbags are by far the most time-consuming aspect of the gifts. Each one takes about an hour to make by myself, and neither of my girls knows how to sew or how to iron precisely enough for machine sewing. Of course, after a while, my ironing isn't terribly precise, either.

In the spirit of the Under $1,000 per Month blog, I calculated the cost of our gift bags vs. their value. The fabric for the bags themselves I consider free for two reasons. First, I already had the fabric in the house; likely, I've had it for a few years. Second, by using up the fabric, I'm saving on the cost of a decluttering professional to save me from my crafty hoarding tendencies.

• Reusable grocery bags are usually on sale 10 for $10 at the grocery store, so I'll call it $1/each. My cost: $0.
• A half-pint of homemade jam probably could fairly cost $3. My cost: $1.88/jar (including the cost of the jar)
• A bar of homemade soap from Miss Hannah's Handmade Soap would cost $5 - $7, so we'll call it $6 even. My cost: About $2 (and many thanks to Miss Hannah herself for her kindness and generosity in teaching me.
• I last saw beer bread mixes sold at a craft fair for $7 in a baggie or $10 in a beer bottle (a cute gimmick to be sure). I'll call that $7 because I won't be using beer bottles. My cost: $0.25
• A six-piece chocolate spoon set was $6.50 on Etsy. My cost: $0.60
• I found a three-serving set of hot cocoa mixes on Etsy for $6. My cost: $0.31
• Finally, it disturbs a bit to say, but I found homemade bread on Etsy for $12 a loaf. Mine are mini-loaves, so I'll call them $3 a loaf. My cost: $0.34

So I will spend about $5.38 per family while giving each family a gift valued at $32.50. My family will love receiving these handmade gifts that they can eat and enjoy. Most of our family and close friends are very green-conscious and will love having their own Morsbag. And noone has to coo over another Christmas figurine that they didn't want and now can't re-gift.