Landslide

"Children get older and I'm getting older too." - Fleetwood Mac

This year, for the first time ever, I had to send high school graduation cards. Sure, I should have been sending them for a couple years now,  but this is the first year that I finally took a deep breath, pulled my big girl pants on, and actually sent out the cards. It's very strange to send out graduation cards because as much as the cards are really about saying "congratulations" and sharing a bit of college "start-up" cash, signing the card makes me feel like I'm declaring, "Look at me, I have sage advice to offer you young grasshopper." And really, at age 28, I don't exactly exude sage advice in my daily life.

But maybe I'm overthinking things. Just a little. You think?

I suppose it's strange to be on the sending end of graduation cards because I remember myself at age 18 so vividly. I can still feel the elation of being done with high school forever, the butterflies in my stomach at the thought of heading to college on my own, the bravery and resolve that was needed to make it through college orientation and just how long a time four whole years seemed then.

And yet somehow, despite the fact that I'm still a 5' 6" English major from northern Minnesota, ten years have passed since my own high school graduation and I've changed significantly in both perceivable and invisible ways from the person I was when I was on the receiving end of high school graduation cards. My  high school reunion (which I will likely not attend as this seems like a pointless judgmental social affair in which my peers will decide that the fact that I can still zip up my prom dress is my one major accomplishment in ten years) is just a month and a half off and that means, in the eyes of the under 20-year-olds in the world, I am officially old. 

As a  young old person, I felt advice practically oozing out of me as I penned those graduation cards a couple weeks back. I wanted to help ease these young grads' fears for the future, but also remind them that they're still at the very very beginning of adulthood, so for the love of Pete, don't take yourself so seriously.

I wanted to tell them that the next decade will be more about poking holes in your assumptions then it will be about proving their intellect. I wanted to say that adulthood is not a magical metamorphosis; that you will carry your unique challenges (shyness, procrastination, a hard time finishing projects, or what have you) with you for your entire life. That despite how hard your life felt at 18, you actually had it made then and that by about your senior year of college, grocery shopping will no longer be a fun exercise in independence, but a  somewhat tedious errand that must be repeated week after week, year after year, for the rest of your life. That talent is actually like the broken down vintage car in the front yard; until you spend endless hours of hard work on it, it will get you nowhere. That college cafeteria food really does make you fat. That nothing pegs you as a college freshmen faster then wearing pajama pants and flip-flops to class, even the 8 a.m. one, so please, please, please, put a pair of jeans on, eh?

But I spared them all those rambling thoughts, because really they were more about me then they were about these individuals' futures. Instead, I turned to a Mark Twain quote featured in a few of my own high school graduation cards that even just ten years out from graduation, I can already see the wisdom of: 

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." 

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You Know You're Wealthy When . . .

Every so often, the radio program Marketplace Money runs a segment where they ask people on the street to finish the following sentence, "You know you're wealthy when . . . ."

As you might imagine, people are over the map with their responses. Some say you're wealthy when you own a car. Others say when you're debt free. Some put a social spin on the question and say when you've been married 25 years.

What's so interesting to me is that it seems like it should be such an easy question. Shouldn't there just be some set of criteria that determines whether or not we're wealthy.  But it turns out there's no standard dipstick for testing a person's financial well-being, partly because our economies and social values vary so much from region to region and country to country and partly because we all have such different attitudes and ideas about money.

As I listened to all of the differing and sometimes contradictory answers, I couldn't help pondering my own definition of wealth. Even without taking a philosophical (and dare I say, somewhat sentimental) take on the question (i.e. you're wealthy when you have people who love you, blah, blah, blah) on the question and using only a financial context to shape my answer, I found I really had to mull over things to come up with a satisfactory answer. Part of me said, why define wealth, I know it when I see it. But then I thought, hey, maybe the lady wearing only designer labels is actually the Isla Fisher character from Confessions of a Shopaholic and up to her eyeballs in debt. Would we call her wealthy? No, we would not.

I also realized that using many of my definitions of wealth, I myself would be considered wealthy. When I wonder what our dinner's going to be, it's just that, a decision to be made about what food I should take out of the fridge, pantry, and/or freezer and prepare for dinner. I own a car. I make all of my payments on time. There's an emergency fund and I can afford to save a significant amount of each paycheck.


Yet I spend a lot of time feeling decidedly un-wealthy. I grow weary of being hyper-conscious of money. Sometimes, despite leading a very rich life on so many levels, I complain to Andy about how hard it is to financially responsible and why can't I just have everything I want already. (Psst, that's not poor, that's selfish.) Am I really poor if the fact that I paid a hella expensive car repair bill in cash means I can't take a trip to this spring? Really? 
 
But then I thought, although I do quite well for myself now, it would be bad news bears if I had a child and/or a mortgage. So if I can't support an alternative lifestyle, does that in fact make me not wealthy?  





I tried out various wealth "litmus tests" such as:

You're wealthy if you can let a check sit on your desk for weeks before you cash it.

or


You're wealthy when your finances aren't managed by a "if this, then not this" strategy. You know, if health insurance than no more than one dinner out a month. If contributing to my retirement plan, than no overseas travels.


In the end, I decided that wealthy means an abundance of options without negative repercussions.

Want to buy those beautiful purple pumps you saw in the boutique at the Bellagio (purely hypothetical here, folks) and still stop for gelato? If you're wealthy, you get both and you don't even have one little shred of buyer's remorse.

To me that's wealth, but is it happiness? Do those purple pumps decline in value to me when they become attainable? Having everything you could ever want . . . where's the fun in that?


What do you think? When you think a person is "wealthy"?
 

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Sweet Dreams Are Made of THIS?!

As an adult you find yourself getting excited about the strangest things and your dreams take on a rather dull, realistic tone. Lately, as I lay my head on the pillow each night, visions of these guys dance through my head.

Yep, happy little heel-clicking washing machines haunt my dreams. (Or they would, if washing machines had heels.) 

We bring our laundry into town to wash, usually on a weekly basis. But last week, the stars aligned only for  brief dash through town to grab the gas and groceries we needed to make it through another work week. There was no time to sit around and wait for the laundry to finish a spin cycle. Now as I sort through my work clothes options, things are looking pretty grim. How I wish I could come home from work and pop a load of laundry in my very own machine. Just imagine listening to the washing machine whir quietly in the background while I fix supper and hanging the clothes out on the line to get that wonderful air-dried laundry smell. 

But since, given the size of the cabin, I have a choice between a washing machine and a pantry (and I love to eat), maybe something like this is more my speed:

Or how about this guy?

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to go put my pants on inside out. Maybe no one will notice. . .

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Feels Like Home to Me

Feels like I'm all the way back where I come from
Feels like home to me
Feels like home to me
Feels like I'm all the way back where I belong

A window breaks down a long dark street
And a siren wails in the night
But I'm alright 'cause I have you here with me
And I can almost see through the dark there's light

-- Chantal Kreviazuk

It's been a rough couple days around here. Both Andy and I spent the weekend away from the cabin: me at my parents' place in town, Andy at an out of state sports show. The last few days have been low on sleep, high on drama. While I'm normally a huge proponent of shaking up the everyday, this go-round, I just wanted to be home.

So imagine my delight when we pulled into the cabin late yesterday morning.

Back with the cheeky squirrels.

Giving the houseplants a well-deserved drink of water.

Hearing the fire roar into life in the stove.

Making a batch of homemade chicken noodle soup.

Enjoying the quiet twilight hour when only chickadees and nuthatches flit quietly about the feeder area, delicately selecting a sunflower seed before fluttering back to the shelter of trees.  

Dorothy said it best: "There's no place like home."


What's your favorite part of being home?

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Missing the Boat

This past weekend, I was flipping through digital pictures while Andy looked over my shoulder. As we flipped through pictures of summer sunsets, boat rides down the lake, weinie roasts, and blueberry picking ventures, we both grew a little nostalgic for summer. Running around in a t-shirt was a pretty good time . . . .

But this post isn't about missing the boat as in "I wish I could have me a boat right now." It's about wondering if some boat's gone by recently which I've failed to get on. 

Today, ladies and gents, I turn 26 years old, which puts me firmly closer to 30 than 20. I realize this doesn't exactly render me ancient, but it does make you realize there's no escaping adulthood now. 

But as a childless, unmarried twenty-something, now closer to 30 than 20, you can get to wondering about your adultlike accomplishments. (Truthfully, after enough time spent over at the neighbors and watching their one-year-old have a diaper blowout that blasted poo down to his socks, I'm okay with not ever having kids . . .  for a while.)

Andy's been talking about owning his business since we reconnected a couple years ago. It's one of those sometimes dreams. Something that seems a long ways away. But sometimes we brainstorm business names on late night drive homes and inevitably, I feel the need at some point in the conversation to assert that I'm "not making any beds!"

In the last couple weeks, we've heard news both of a young family buying a nearby resort and of someone I know is younger than me (if only by a couple months) purchasing their first business. I applaud their success, but it does leave me wondering, are we missing something? How have they figured this out while I've spent the past week pulling my hair out because I have to figure out what it means to be self-employed on my taxes. (I suppose we could argue that having to file self-employment taxes would indicate success, but it sure doesn't feel like success when you're in the midst of a tax filing nightmare.) 

Maybe I'm already in the midst of adultlike accomplishment. Maybe I'm confusing accomplishment with glamor and life in the woods this winter has certainly been low on glamor. All I know, is the ice can go out any day now. I'm ready to get on that boat.

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Adultlike Wonder

When we're growing up, we're kind of told to enjoy it while it lasts. Pretty soon we all turn into big, bad adults and we drop the rosy-colored glasses. We cease to get excited about the little things, like getting to have a whole can of pop or finding exactly what we wanted under the Christmas time. We start to realize those creepy gray statues on the sidewalks are just street performers pandering for spare change. After a while, all that childlike wonder just sort of fades away. (To be fair, I still find the body paint coated street performers jaw dropping. Why would you do that to yourself?!)

But I think there's adultlike wonder too.

How else do you explain the sheer glee and excitement Andy and I experienced when we found this beauty waiting for us on the porch Wednesday?

Yep, a vacuum. 

(Okay, maybe there are some kids out there who get excited about vacuums, but I most definitely was not one of them.)

We ripped into the box and started pulling out attachments. "A pet brush," I squealed before I remembered we don't have any pets. Andy held up the carpet attachment, awe in his eyes. Setting down the carpet attachment, he preceded to brandish about the hardwood floor attachment.

After a few minutes of getting a bag in the vacuum and the hoses and all attached, Andy fired up the little vacuum. As the slightly beetle-esque appearing vacuum whirred into life, we smiled at each other.

So quiet. Such smooth action. And oh, the suction. It was a beautiful, beautiful thing. 

What with hauling fire wood into the cabin nearly every day during the winter months, there always seems to be a layer of crud on our floor. That layer of crud translates into a fine layer of dust on everything else. But no more. Just maybe, the vacuum means a clean cabin could become a reality instead of a goal.

Is it bad to get borderline ecstatic about a vacuum?

"Nah," a friend told me. "We adults get excited about new appliances and car washes. We're simple folks."

Come to think of it, I do feel downright giddy when all the dishes are washed and there's nothing molding in the fridge.

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Lessons Learned as A Bird Brain

We fed the birds last winter at the Shack, but I feel like life in general took place on a smaller scale at the Shack. The living space was certainly more cramped. We weren’t quite as deep in the woods. It was kind of a mini-life, where we got to try on adulthood. A trial run if you will. You should never make assumptions based on a trial run.

So why, when the few chickadees, woodpeckers, and grosbeaks who stopped by the Shack’s two feeders last year consumed about 100 pounds of bird seed, I assumed that was how much bird seed we’d go through in every winter from there on out, I have no idea.

At the cabin this year, the feeders went out in early November. Since then, we’ve consistently gone through about 50 pounds of sunflower seeds . . . a month.

Don’t be fooled. Those little buggers can really pack it away. Lesson learned.

Just the other day, when Andy mentioned needing to run into town for something or other, I asked him to pick up some more bird seed.

He turned a little green when he glanced at the deflated bag of bird seed in the corner behind the front door.

“You mean they ate all of that seed already?”

Just a few short weeks ago, I’d made the belabored bag boy at the grocery store haul a 50 lb bag of bird seed from the back of the store out to the truck.

“Sure did,” I replied.

The temporary thaw last week exposed a veritable birdie wasteland of discarded sunflower seeds. It’s gonna look real classy around here come spring. . . .

Now I know why those birds are so chirpy and cheerful all the time: they’ve basically found the land of milk and honey in our backyard.

I think I’m going to put a little jar by the feeders, kindly requesting the little birdies drop off a nickel every time they belly up to the feeders. Squirrels and Mr. Al “the man who came to dinner” Pine Marten, I expect a dime (or two) when you come calling to the “Sunflower Seed Buffet on The Lake.” I need a little more of a return on this feeding the birds thing than just your colorful (dare I say, heartwarming) company and the guano calling cards that you’re so keen on splattering all over everything.

After all, times are tough. The economy still stinks. You guys, ladies and gentlemen of the birdy world, are wild animals. Go, head off into the woods and fend for yourselves. (You know, the way you’re supposed.) The fact that you are eating me out of house and home is just too ironic.


Do you feed the birds? How many lbs of bird seed do you go through in the winter?

 

This post is part of Mama Kat's "Pretty Much World Famous" Thursday writer's workshop. Thanks for stopping by!

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False (?) Dichotomy: a good time or gum disease?

My senior year of college, I wrote a weekly column for the student newspaper called “Preparing for a Paradoxical World.” I was in my second year as news editor for the paper and why I decided I had time to pen a weekly column addressing the hypocrisy that most college students will face following graduations, I don’t know. Anyway . . . .

The real point is, we twenty-somethings face a barrage of contradictory advice: take time to build your career, don’t rush into a relationship, have kids before you’re too old to enjoy them, travel now, don’t go without health care. Obviously we can’t have everything and when we sidle up to the life decisions’ counter, we have some interesting mixing and matching to do with an infinite amount of choices. Just yesterday when Andy went into the clinic for a minor (minor) illness, his prescription ended up costing more than $100 out of pocket. Even when we make decisions, like to be one of the young adults with health insurance, we’re not always in for a straight forward ride.

Last week, I wrote about my resistance to get my hair cut with any regularity. Today’s topic is another source of procrastination: making a dentist’s appointment.

My teeth are pretty much just fine. I never had braces and my parents (bless their souls) had the foresight not to feed my brother and me tons of sugary pop, candy, or other “teeth busters.” Cavities are not something I have to contend with. Still, my teeth are due for a check up and cleaning. To be honest, they’ve been due for a check up and cleaning for nearly two years.

Yet, there always seems to be some expense that takes precedent over a dentist appointment. Just last week, as Andy and I pondered whether or not we should go down to Duluth the night before his seminar and spend the night in a hotel, it struck me that the cost of the hotel room for the night was just about the cost of a visit to the dentist.

Really, I thought, I’m making a decision between a good time and gum disease? It should be a no-brainer. I mean, plaque that builds on your teeth is the very same stuff that can clog up your heart and lead to heart disease down the road. And I’ve written enough health and wellness articles this year to know I’d rather not deal with cardiac rehab anytime soon.

But the money spent on the dentist is just high enough and my teeth are just fine enough, to make me think this is an expense that can be put off, for another month here or another two months here. Keep up that behavior long enough and before you know it, it’s been two years since the last time I had a dental hygienist yelling at me about not flossing.

Being an adult often means the fun thing to do is not the right thing to do. And that’s an irony I don’t always feel strong enough to deal with. But I’ve really got to make a dentist appointment one of these days . . . .

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