shishnit.org

Yes we live there…sometimes.  I mean we have excursions to the island and then sometimes we actually live on the mainland where funds seem to grow on trees.

Rick took a 2^nd job.  He’s making pizza’s at a restaurant.  Expensive high end pizza’s…we’re not talking dominoes.  He’s still working at the moving company. It’s been a crazy few days of juggling.

On Friday (or was it Saturday..the day’s are running into each other lately…) he worked during the day at the moving company.  He was running late and had to be at the restaurant at 4 p.m.  At 5 p.m. he called and told me he had already called the restaurant manager and told him he’d be in late. I called the manager too (something I rarely do…I think this is the first time I’ve ever called on my husband’s behalf.  THE FIRST! 

While driving the moving truck back to port (the office) the truck broke down. I donned my Wonder Woman outfit and his restaurant clothes and shoes and jumped into my not so invisible plane and drove out to where he was…he had me turn around once saying the truck had started, but alas it broke down again…and I turned around yet again…and went out to meet him at the moving truck.  I picked him up.  He took over at driving and he changed his moving clothes for his restaurant clothes..mostly in the car on the way.  I was Wonder Woman and he was Superman.  And when we arrived in the back parking lot of the restaurant he jumped out and swapped his work shorts and sweat pants for his restaurant jeans and shoes in the parking lot.  It was stressful..this juggling of two jobs.  I felt guilty because it was I who was having insane bouts of worrying about being struck on the Island of Poordom or would it be my fear of landing on Recession Row and not being able to get back out. I’ve lost so much in the past that sometimes I just get the damn jitters about things. It’s really irrational fear.  I am so on top of finances in some ways and in other’s I have more debt that I’m comfortable with.  I’m not comfortable with any debt really.  I hate it. Loathe it in fact.

So…after dropping my Superman off at his second job (we left his personal truck in the moving company port parking lot) and had a moment to catch my breath after solving that crisis….it dawned on me.  My husband was stressed the hell out trying to rush from one job to another job all because his wife has stressitis about the island of poordom.

Do we live on the island of Poordom?  I think that’s a subjective question because I say no the majority of the time because we have such a lovely life together.  But then on the flip side I look around at everyone losing their jobs, their homes, etc. and I get this pit in my stomach.  A pit of fear.  It’s highly irrational, but then again is it?  So many people do not plan for emergencies and live only for today.  I could go buy a new car….in fact part ofm e wants to so bad, but the biggest part of me cannot rationalize it because of my irrational fear of the Island of Poordom.  My goal is to make twice as much as I currently make.  I know that’s a crazy harsh goal, but it’s there in my head.  Not because I want to spend twice as much as I currenty earn but rather because I want to save exactly what I make now each month.  I’m insane..I know.

Rick is working right now at the moving company.  He’s moving my hairdresser and her two young foster son’s.  I, of course, am a walking advertisement for the moving company he works for.  Most people seem to trust me when I tell them he’s a great guy who will come and do a great job.  She called and requested him.  That makes me insanely proud inside. I have a husband I can be proud of and in turn know that other’s will be happy with him as well.

Rick has work from around 7 a.m. to around 11 p.m. every day for the past 4 days (I think…again I’m bad at keeping track of day’s lately) and he amazes me.  I dropped him off at the restaurant the other night and as I drove away….shining up my Wonder Woman bracelet’s after some harsh clinking trying to resolve a crisis…I had this overwhelming pride in Rick…it filled first my mind, then my heart, then overflowed from my soul.  I pulled my wondermobile over and I cried…tears hot and wild….and I wiped them away from my smiling lips.  I love that man so much it both terrifies and amazes me.  

I gave him a Valentine’s Day card yesterday..he had nothing to hand me because he’s been non-stop working.  He didn’t open it. I asked why.  He said, “Because I had nothing to give you yet.” My superman thinks about making me happy, he thinks about giving….he has no idea how happy he makes me.  He’s so selfless.  He’s so amazing.  Not to mention, his cape..it’s hott!! 

It’s hard to ever feel poor..it’s hard not enjoy this island we work so hard to maintain…this sometimes Isle of Poordom, because my life is truly so rich in so many ways.  I never have a day when I don’t feel lucky to be working so hard to have all we do have…with someone who’s willing to jump through hoops of fire with me to have this life.

I can be an asshole of the grandest kind…
A few weeks ago Rick and I did our annual trek to H&R Block and we sat stunned upon realizing how much we didn’t earn last year versus the year before.  Thank you recessionary ass raping…we hate you.  Yet…our lifestyle is one that largely lends itself to straight poor-dom.  What is poor-dom.  It’s the island that I largely have always lived on because of no-choice.  Now I think we live there collectively because we’ve done it well for so long.  Ok ok let me explain.

Poor-dom is that island that allows you to live happily without the latest Coach purse.  I own precisely one Coach purse and while I love it for some reasons I don’t think it’s the end all be all purse.  The knock off I bought at a flea market for $40 gets more compliments than my real Coach.  The knock off is a Dolce & Cabanna.  I openly admit to every woman who compliments me that it’s a knock-off and they are amazed.  Suffice it to say designer purses don’t really matter in my world at all.  I need a purse to carry my important book, wallet, Ipod…but nothing else.

Speaking of expensive electronics. I’ve had my cheap $499 Compaq laptop for a few years now.  I did buy an Ipod…but it’s not a touch.  I use it every single day and love it.  We do not have a flat screen TV, oh wait technically it’s a flat screen but the TV is far from flat and is not hanging on our wall.  We each drive a car that is paid for, neither are even from this decade.  I look at new cars, but there’s never been enough about them for me to think of incurring more debt because to me more debt equals more stress.

That trip to H&R Block was a bit scary only because we had so not noticed a substantial decrease in our collective income.  To offset this decrease and to perhaps shut off my stress talking, Rick picked up a part time job working in the evenings making pizza. This is a job his brother has done for over a dozen years exclusively.  Oddly enough Rick is working at a high end Italian restaurant that is a small family owned “chain” now that they’ve opened location #2 (right around the corner from our house).  His twin brother works at the first location.  Their pizza is their main menu item because it’s so damn good you want to swim in it. I would venture to even say it’s a bit of a gourmet pizza.  At $32 for an 8 slice pizza, it certainly is. As a side note Rick and I served their pizza at our wedding and still to this day people talk about our wedding food.  I digress but we’ll get back to that later…

So now Rick is working two jobs.  Standing in a hot restaurant kitchen doesn’t phase him.  Flour painted jeans and tennis shoes…also doesn’t phase him.  I suppose when your main job is moving people’s heavy furniture, throwing around pizza dough is a cake walk.  Pizza cake? Ha…so anyways….

I have finally come to the conclusion that I got exactly the husband I always thought I needed most.  A husband that steps up to the plate to take on more when necessary.  How many people do you know who would walk into a restaurant kitchen and start swimming in flour for hours on end to make their wives recession stress go away?

Ok lets back up.  ALL of our bills have gotten paid all along.  That missing or phantom missing money on our W-2’s has not affected us.  We never even noticed until the W2’s showed up and we sat mouths ajar in shock.  Perhaps it’s because we were paying roughly $200 more a month before we bought a house and then in the year following our taxes went down thereby making our mortgage go down.  We now pay $138 less than we did when we leased a house.  YES, we bought a house and our monthly bill for housing is $138 less.  I also paid off my car right after we bought the house in 2008. 

Ok I’m doing a bit of rambling but I’ve learned something over the past 7 years with Rick.  You can’t always control your income but you can control your outgo.  I think I spend far too much money on books, music and coffee.  These are my 3 vices in life. They are the 3 things I get the most consumer joy from.  If I purchase an album from iTunes for 9.99 I guarantee that I listen to that dang thing for hours upon hours of joy.  If I purchase a book for $10.50 ($14.99 – 30% coupon) (or about that price at Target give or take a buck), I am enthralled for roughly 4 to 5 hours.  

We have cable (something that to me is a perk not a necessity), internet service (necessary for my Master’s degree), we each have a cell phone.  We live rather frugally.  I buy most of our household items at Target and I do buy the Target brands. I think every 50 cents counts.  I am not cheap or as frugal as I would like, but we live rather lean most of the time.  We went out to dinner the other night, one of the first times in months.  We really see the value of making our own meals at home and I love a nice grilled meal at home on the back patio far more than most restaurants in the area.

I have rather lost my way on this post, but I was surprised we didn’t miss that amount of money last year. I was shocked that for us life was per normal.  I have learned this from Rick.  Rick is a saver.  Rick is a hard worker.  Rick is stable, like a rock. Unfaltering. His biggest vice…smoking.  Yet, even with this…he keeps up his end of the bargain.  I love that about him.  We don’t fight about money, we really don’t.  We bicker (ie: not real) about lots of things daily…but we mean little of it.  That’s just how we engage in conversation with each other.  I don’t harbor resentful feelings; I get them out and move on.  I think he does the same.  It’s been a good thing for us.

So….all of this to say…Rick’s gone today, throwing pizza dough.  I wrote a paper today for school.  I did some laundry.  I drank a lot of coffee.  I missed him last night and I miss him today.  It’s possible I was wrong and that what matters in life is not what that stupid W2 says in terms of stress related concerns, but instead that I don’t have to miss him.  

Missing him however makes me want to make dinner, hunker down with him when he’s around me.  It makes me appreciate the small things, the things that made me happy all year.  Music to sway the mind away from missing.  A book to serve as something tactile for the mind and hands to do.  Even dirty laundry serves it’s role to keep my mind and body busy busy busy….no energy for missing.  Alas…it is not working.

What do people who are driven by dollar signs miss out on?  Just imagine.  My island of poor-dom ways of thinking and making do….and yes we are far from poor. We’re both gainfully employed.  No one’s been laid off.  I think Rick has had crazy hours all year but often we haven’t paid attention to how those hours add up.  He also gets tips that we fortunately don’t have to pay taxes on.  We also don’t do anything to track those funds.  So who can know for sure what we tallied up last year.  

I just know for sure that this afternoon as I tally things in my own mind I have much to be grateful for…..a husband who slings pepperoni and green peppers for 5 to 6 hours at a clip after slinging couches to and fro’ just to calm his wife down.  How can you quantify that type of love?  Most often while living our simple little life…I stress, I worry because I have lost far less and that pain felt overwhelming. I know the despair of homelessness and I often stare at the ceiling letting false monsters scare me to death.

BUT….to lose this life…would truly break me forever.  This life I live is so damned good, it scares me. Sometimes I get off on a tangent yet it’s mostly because I find it impossible to explain what was…how sometimes I forget what is and how powerful it is when it hits me again, this realization that all that matters are all the things that I already have.  All the things I didn’t always have…and just how lucky I am and how I feel like I won the happiness lottery.

I love you honey and I’m always happier each day that you’re still here.

Trust me I’m all for education and brain power.  I’m getting my Master’s degree right now. I’m even in favor of good management skills, something few few managers and business owners really have.

Today in a cultural diversity management class I explained that this is Florida, it’s a right to work state and your boss can fire you for being late to work even one time. I pointed out that my husband’s boss at the moving company yammers about all the reasons he could fire a person and how I couldn’t tolerate that from my boss on a continual basis.  A fellow student replied and wrote to me and said this of my husband’s moving company job.

Now that I know the background I can definitely say I agree with you that these “tough as nails” bosses will fire someone at the drop of the dime because it does not take brains to move a family.  Unfortunately, for leaders in our positions we are conditioned not only to enforce company policy but to have compassion for our employees and our families. 

I got really pissed off and wrote back to him. I used to think it didn’t take “brains” to move a family. I now beg to differ.  As a mover you must arrive at the job on time (ie: better use mapquest) and with all of your tools ready to go.  The customer wants to pay someone else to do the job but they also want to dictate, manage and tell you what to do all day long. 

It’s a job that requires a high level of customer service skills, tolerance for people, etc.  Often my husband moves people that speak NO English.  Try that one on….they are telling him to move a couch to a certain area…it can take 15 minutes more just to figure it all out with hand gestures and drawn pictures.  He must explain paperwork, collect payment, explain moving insurance (what is covered and what is not) and get clearance from the customer to even touch their belongings. 

He must then load all of a persons belongings into a truck to avoid duplicate trips, and yet not damage or break anything of the customers because customers really don’t like damaged belongings, especially antiques and things that are clearly not covered in the insurance.  He must know about physics to know how best to pack a truck (there is a efficient and proper way and there is a every day Joe way). 

Amazingly enough even to me most movers have their own abbreviated language for everything they do. I know from experience with my husband when we moved that “SET” means put a piece down to give your moving partner a chance to gain a better grip.  Moving big pieces of furniture down a winding set of stairs can take upwards of ten minutes to properly plan and only 4 minutes of maneuvering…planning is key and often crucial.  He has moved piano’s down 10 flights of spiral stairs with only one other person.  His job does not entail brutal strength and no BRAINS.  I used to think that myself.  Oh moving…big deal…pick it up and put it somewhere else.

Not quite.  There is a lot of planning, communication and customer service.  It’s the only job I can really think of besides dentistry where your customer is yammering away (and even dentists resolve that problem) the entire time they hired you the professional to do the job they don’t want to do or can’t figure out how to do.  My husband has women tell him all day long how to pick up a refrigerator and yet those women are the same one’s who have never in their life picked one up. They like to play director and yet if they knew how to move they’d move without paying him to do it.

My husband and I have the brains versus brute argument all the time. He tells me he has a strained shoulder and I complain about my aching brain neutrons or my tired mouse clicking finger or my carpal tunnel from too much keyboard typing at my office job. 

However….I wouldn’t choose to put up with his customers for a minute. “Don’t scratch my hardwood floor but move that 1300 pound antique armoire across it and I don’t want to unpack anything inside of it..mmkay?”  Oh and don’t mind the cat hair covering everything and oh my look at all the junk under the couch..don’t track that dirt all over my new condo or I’m going to be mad.  While you’re at it, can you move that couch from that spot I told you about five minutes ago and put it over here on the south wall again, I want to decide which I like best”.  Oh and don’t mind Fido’s dog shit all over the bedroom  floor because you know I’m ignoring it so you should too.  And can you please stand in here and take apart my bed, my dresser and my damn ping pong table too and then put it all back together in the new place.  And don’t scratch it.

At the end of it all when the bill talleys up to $5,500 for a 12 hour all day move, the customer will then say “wow that’s crazy”  yet they had 5 people in their house, two trucks loaded up and unloaded, and they sat in a chair smoking a cigarette while someone else packed up even their boxers and deodorant and 5 guy’s walked in and decided who was doing what and had a plan to get them moved from a 5,000 square foot house to a 3,5000 square foot condo in 12 hours.

Do you honestly think that’s all just brutal strength and requires no brains?  Bosses at moving companies are strict because when you need to send 7 guys and someone doesn’t show up….the customer is NOT happy. I’m sure customers get mad and cancel an entire 5k job because a crew showed up at the customers house 3 minutes late.  If you owned that company, wouldn’t you be just like my husband’s boss?  He’s in a business and he needs people to d.y.d.j.  Do your Damn job.  If you’re job means being on time, then do it or lose it.

I too often focus in on structured organizations and how they do things. I  focus in on the Googles and the Starbucks and the IBM’s and HP’s etc.  But the reality is…these small businesses are more plentiful than the Googles and IBM’s of the world and this style or lack of management style is often what the real world copes with.  I’m trying not to lose touch with people unlike myself.  My husband and I are polar opposites. I would call my HR department if a boss ever talked to me like his does.  Different industry..different circumstances.

Incidentally….every time we’ve personally moved, my husband somehow manages to move an entire household in 7 hours flat with minimal help.  It’s not because of brute or speed.  It’s because of critical thinking and planning.  He has a plan and is efficient.  That takes brains.

Did you know that you don’t pack what’s in the dresser drawers…you move them as is.  You don’t pack up books, you shrink wrap the entire bookcase and make sure it’s weighted out properly on all sides and use a hand truck..etc.etc.etc. I could go on and on with all these boring details but it’s not brute like people think.  Trust me the garbage man even has to use his brain to be efficient.  You don’t know a job until you do it.  Calling someone’s job a “brainless” task is really b.s.

Someone recently asked me about reviewing books.  Do I review the ones I don’t like? I don’t officially do that. I don’t write about books I can’t promote because just putting the book cover up there is publicity.  And I hardly feel that bashing an artist’s work is my objective.  However, from time to time I must speak up and THIS is still my personal blog.  I cannot promote a book when I can’t find anything worthwhile within. Nor can I when my stomach turns and I cannot even finish it!

“Her marriage challenged by an insane, irresistible love affair, Julie decides to leave town and immerse herself in a new obsession: butchery”.

Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession by Julie Powell

Ok that’s the blurb for the new book by Julia Powell called Cleaving.  I picked it up because I rather enjoyed Julie and Julia and this is NOT a full on review because guess what? I couldn’t read it.  Why? Because guess what? She’s a major trainwreck in this book.  The affair is her…she’s banging the hell out of someone else and her husband knows about it and she tells him and oh…”that’s just the way it is” is her attitude.  I didn’t buy the book, I read 40 plus pages of it and then skim read through the rest.

Insane irresistable love affair?  Now, I have a tainted past when it comes to marital problems. My ex-husband cheated on me with his first girlfriend swooping my then 8 year old son off to New York State from Florida after advising me that he was going down the street two blocks to get some dinner. In actuality my son dissapeared for 2 days with his father before I knew where either of them was.  21 days later my ex called asking me for money to feed same said child and returned home, kicked to the curb by his “insane irresistable love affair”.  So the topic of extramarital love affairs is something I don’t take lightly and the way this publisher is providing that above blurb peevs me and makes my skin crawl a bit. 

Now, let me admit this as I always have. I cheated on my first husband. A lot.  Both emotinally and physically (the a lot mostly emotionally with an online boy I called “him”) but it was after that 21 day debaucle and in my mind we were never a marital unit again. I could not trust him and I did not feel any bond with him, aside from our beautiful child.  I was a mess for a long long time over his and my “insane, irresistable love affairs” and it’s sad to me that we now live in a world where this stuff is exploited and used to sell books.  I love books but this issue saddens me.  The pages I read spoke about Julie getting text messages from her boyfriend (affair partner…not sure what she called him in the book) while sitting with her husband and how she felt them buzzing while husband was sitting there with her.  Disturbing at best.

Shame on you Hatchette Book Group for promoting this as lighthearted!  Marrital affairs are lighthearted?  Really?  And described as “hilarious and ferociously articulate” by Entertainment Weekly.  Again, really?  Marriages falling prey to cheating is hilarious?

I will never forget the pain caused by affairs.  If you’re the other woman, the woman, his woman, the one he won’t tell about, the online affair, the real affair, the emotional affair…AFFAIRS ARE NOT merely challenging, nor are they hilarious. If you’re the wife and he’s cheating chances are you’ll end up cheating back, becoming suicidal or at the very least be a train wreck for quite some time.  Nothing funny about any of those outcomes.  But hey I could be wrong, if you had someone cheat on you and you feel it’s hilarious or merely a challenge to your marriage feel free to contact me and set me straight.

disclaimer: I only read 40+ pages and skimmed this book but geesh….hated the entire premise because I couldn’t get past feeling for the “husband” being cheated on. 

p.s. personal disclaimer…”him” and I don’t speak any longer. I’m happily married these days, immensely happily married and to talk to “him” would be cheating….emotionally…but I still won’t do that to a husband who’s faithful to me.

This year Thanksgiving falls on our 4th wedding anniversary.  It’s hard to believe it’s been 4 years already.  It is also hard for me to believe how lucky I am.  It is however very easy for me to know what I am thankful for this year. A happy marriage….its the new joy! I love you Rick!