link love link love roly poly link love

garb week on medieval poc is awesome

What Ben Carson has in common with slave owners.

Hank Green finally addresses race in nerdfighteria and links to a video.

SXSW’s astounding ideals of cowardice  Yay Buzzfeed.

Teach them well (trigger: harassment, groping)

We missed this going down, but dude, internet.

Ana’s weekend comes with life lessons.

How to improve casual sex for women.  Apparently starting by getting rid of patriarchy helps.

holy excrement this is the best thing ever

do not use the force

kitteh delivereh

Can I interest you in a pre-owned cat?

need a midday nap?

foster the puppeh  Also this is cute.  And this is happy.  Catsby on insta.

Reading is sexy

Cabinets by POP

Donald Trump would have been richer by doing nothing.

dord

In my new job I guess I must be a historian

Ask the grumpies: What to save for after debt

First Gen American asks:

When you pay off all your debt, what then? What should you save for (presuming that you are already saving for retirement and kids college and you like your profession so you’re not necessarily motivated by extreme early retirement).

Opportunity.

Just make sure to allow yourself to take some of those opportunities before you die.  Or at least make sure that money gets you into a really swanky nursing home.

Middle school leaves scars

We’ve had this post title for a really long time in the draft.  And we know exactly what we mean.  But… we really don’t want to talk about it.

Middle school leaves scars that can hurt well into middle-age, possibly longer.  They’re revisited less frequently with age, but occasionally we will be reminded to feel completely socially inadequate, even though we’re adults and we know it wasn’t us it was them and once we were allowed to control who we spent time with we were no longer friendless or bullied or ostracized.  But the scars are still there.  Scars that one of us is trying her best to keep her children from ever acquiring.

John Green says it well.

 

RBOC

• I had a brilliant bon mot but I forgot it.
• I hate it when I have to discuss a paper at the conference and I get the paper and it is 90% literature review and then 10% summary statistics and… nothing else.
• Posted on a local discussion group that we’re looking for a piano teacher for our 8 year old who has been playing ~3 years.  Got a response, “is it a boy or a girl?”  Huh?  I don’t think I would want a piano teacher that cares what gender the child is.
• DC2 can read!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Like, zie can sound things out and everything.
• Cooking at home again [after two weeks in Italy] is fine.  I like other people making food for me, but I also like being able to stay home and not put on pants and not have to talk to people and not care about when things are open, etc.
• Case of the missing credit card solved– our neighbors have been holding on to our mail that got delivered to them accidentally since AUGUST
• Along with said missing credit card was a check from our insurance company (we changed both our car insurance and our house insurance) for $1385.  We called them and they said yes it is a real check and yes it is still good and we should cash it.  Whoops.
• Overheard on the subway, “I’m not saying her problems aren’t real, just that she creates them herself.”
• I’m done traveling until December!  Woooo!

I bought shoes

My feet are so happy that they have new shoes.  This whole walking around and my feet not hurting thing is amazing.  Why did I put it off for so long?

I know why: I hate shopping and the few times I tried to buy expensive shoes I couldn’t get anybody to pay attention to me to sell things so I just left.  I am very high maintenance when it comes to shoe buying, in that I need someone to tell me what to get.  (Zappos was also a bust after several failed attempts at purchasing the correct size– I really do usually need to try things on.)

Which is why I now have a new $100 pair of sandals and then two $200 pairs of shoes after the shoe guy realized I didn’t bat an eye-lash at $189 for a pair of shoes.  It’s worth $200 to me to not have to try on a million pairs of shoes (assuming I could have found cheaper good shoes if I’d been looking myself) given that I buy shoes so infrequently and hate shopping so much.  I think the salesman got an extra kickback from the $100 Cobb Hill sandals as well, but I’m ok with that!  My feet don’t hurt!

How much was the damage?  $527 for three pairs of shoes, including tax.  How did I spend that much without blinking an eye?  Well, right before getting them I deposited a travel reimbursement check for $538.  It’s like the money was already spent!  Yeah yeah, I know, bad thinking. But I only buy shoes once every few years. I need these mental tricks to keep from being a miser.

And I did put off buying shoes for far too long.  I mean, my feet were hurting because my two pairs of work shoes were worn down because I have had them for YEARS.  Since before I got pregnant (I have a three year old), and possibly quite a while before that– I can’t actually remember when I got them.  Similarly, my brown sandals that I love but are no longer made were falling apart.  (You may remember I replaced my black sandals for #2’s wedding, but it’s too cold to wear them to work!)  When you have two pairs of work shoes, two pairs of sandals, and a pair of hiking boots… they kind of need to be replaced more frequently than I’ve been replacing them.

So that’s me.  I spent a lot all at once on super expensive shoes that I will wear for far too long.  Am I frugal?  Am I a miser?

What I am is someone who should buy shoes more often because she shouldn’t have to marvel at her feet no longer hurting.

Do you put off any purchases for far too long?  What gets you to finally spend?

 

Return of the Link Love

Five black churches should > one cvs   Damn It, Racism.

this is all true

1964 literacy test for voting

racist origins of everyday sayings

The model minority myth

Sexism is life-threatening and career threatening

H’Ann with good advice

Time to update your memes.

let me take a selfie

Class mobility, decision fatigue, and budget failure

Famous quotes the way a woman would have to say them during a meeting

John Boyega watches the Star Wars trailer.

Joss Whedon would also have been a good choice.

item 2

How much sleep do you need?

How to handle chronic complainers?

this is much more clever than I had initially realized.  Latin puns, who knew?

a tiny puppeh and its tiny pumpkin

Ask the grumpies: Favorite spring flower?

Rented life asks:

[What’s your] favorite spring flower?

#1 loves daffodils pushing up through the muddy snow.  Crocuses come second.  (Her favorite flower though is the hydrangea.)

#2 says, for spring, I think I’ll pick iris.

 Grumpy nation, bring us some spring cheer as we head into fall/winter.  What’s your favorite spring flower?

I suspect I might be a time minimalist

A lot of folks seem to be overwhelmed with everything they’re trying to do in life.

I often feel a bit overwhelmed at work, but since my brain shuts off after a certain amount of hard thinking and I start making mistakes, I hit actual hard limits on work work, and am thus forced to do things that are not part of my regular paid labor.  But I don’t feel overwhelmed with the things I need to do in non-work.

When I look at the lists of things that other people are trying to fit into their days… I realize that there are a lot of things that I just don’t do.  I don’t get in a morning jog.  I don’t work out after work.  I don’t clean the house (except when company is coming).  I don’t have a particularly onerous commute.  I don’t watch much tv and I’m way behind in Netflix watching (we really ought to decrease our subscription).  We don’t do date nights.  I don’t do mani-pedis.  I definitely don’t do book clubs.  Nor do I do girl’s nights out, except the occasional once every two years shopping trip.  I’ve been considering getting my hair highlighted because I don’t need to look old when I’m not teaching, but have been turned off by the time commitment even more than the monetary commitment (I noticed at a recent conference that my prominent female economist colleagues almost entirely have one shade of hair color– they dye but don’t highlight).  I don’t have hobbies other than the blog and mostly brainless romance novels (I’ve been assuming that my brain will be up to say, Malcolm Gladwell level non-fiction, while on leave but it really isn’t yet) at the rate of one or two a week (mostly before bed or while in the restroom).  We pile responsibilities and habits on our kids as soon as they’re able to take over them (DC1 most recently is in charge of cleaning hir bathroom).

I’m just not trying to do as much stuff as a lot of people.

I don’t think that’s better or worse than other folks.  Just like I don’t think having stuff (that you can afford) is in any way worse than not having stuff, despite what the minimalist movement suggests.  I try to pack stuff in at work and look towards my leisure time (including home production) to contain the chores I don’t mind doing (food, laundry, finances) and have everything else pretty much unplanned.  So it doesn’t feel like I’m missing out.  Maybe I am.  I’m sure I could fit more stuff in my leisure time if I made an effort to organize it, but I’m not sure that would make me any happier than being my standard lazy disorganized self.   Really, so long as I’m getting enough sleep and my kids are getting enough attention (and DH and I get enough together time) and everybody is healthy and happy and doesn’t smell too bad, we’re good.

I do, however, wish I were more productive and organized at work.  I’m just going to have to keep working on that.

The CSA will take over your life

Community Supported Agriculture is this neat thing where you give money to (usually) a local farmer, and then during the harvest season you get a box of random produce.

Paradise has an AWESOME CSA program.  Tomatoes, lettuce (cleaned!), potatoes, onions, garlic, fruit, fun random things in reasonable enough amounts that they make a side-dish but not so much that you’re drowning in kohlrabi.  Nary a collard or mustard green in sight (so far anyway).  All delicious and wonderful.   And we get it on Friday which means it’s easy to do menu planning and grocery shopping for the week after knowing what’s in the box.

Problem:  The vegetables are all so good and so abundant that they’ve really taken over.  We don’t finish things by the next Friday.  We don’t go out to eat because the food at home is better than what is close by and we feel guilty for not finishing things.  We don’t buy as much crazy stuff at the grocery store or farmer’s market even though the grocery stores and farmers markets are awesome.  We’re not eating a whole lot of meat.  Occasionally we will have just green beans for dinner because it’s Thursday and we’ve had those green beans for two weeks and we don’t want to make dilly beans again.

It is making riotous living hard, even though it is really good for our checkbooks.

We’re not stopping, but we wouldn’t mind if the boxes were a bit less generous!  (No, we don’t have anybody to split a share with– our local friends have their own box and they use the entire box because their kids love veggies at a much higher level than our kids do, though their kids are also not crazy about green beans.  The CSA version of splitting is every other week which is tempting except it is really hard to remember to pick something up every other Friday instead of every Friday.)  But I am a little bit looking forward to the winter.

What have your CSA experiences been like?  If you’ve done one, do you think it has saved you money or improved the quality of your eating?

What would you do if retired?

Back in May, Leigh talked about how when interviewing for her current job they asked her what she would do if she were retired.  She mentioned she’d considered graduate school, and they were all, you can do that now (if you take this job)!

That got us thinking about the general question– what would we do if retired?

#1:  We have enough money saved right now that we could retire to my DH’s home town if we really wanted to.  We’d rather work.  The answer is always different depending on how much money we have in these retirement scenarios.  At one amount we could retire to paradise permanently and enjoy events and hobbies and library books and so on– enough to keep us entertained.  At another amount it would be irresponsible not to be philanthropists and to use that money to make the world a better place.

When #2 was between jobs she loved it.  I have plenty of hobbies including riding horses, reading, napping, and fostering orphaned kittens.  I have friends to see and cool places to go.  I could do some traveling.  My partner was working (and supporting my lifestyle) so there was a limit to what we could do together.  I will probably never live long enough to read all the books I want to read, so I’d be happy to do that for a long, long time…. being temporarily retired is awesome!

Though making money is awesome too.