All Crises Pass - Budget Review

Finally, a review of first quarter budget, which did not reveal any major surprises. I set our budget for the year by taking the amount spent in each category for the previous year and dividing by twelve for each month’s budgeted amount. This way of doing things doesn’t really allow for inflation, so there’s a risk of running over. And while I do try to budget in emergencies — say especially in the “Other Auto” and “Pets” categories -- I probably don’t budget quite enough, mostly because I can’t make the income side balance. We try to get close, then cross our fingers and hope for the best.

For the quarter we were over about $200 on expenses, but also over on income thanks to Kat’s overtime. In fact we were a little ahead for the quarter, but May has seen some setbacks that will show up in the second quarter review. Our expenses for first quarter weren’t too over because we were under in a few categories, including — miraculously — Pets. 

I do “pad” the Pets budget line to anticipate vet expenses, and we were slightly under budget even with Beano’s dental work. But a couple of weeks ago we took our two senior dogs in for full physicals, vaccinations, and x-rays. Guess how much? One thousand dollars. $1,000. Un mil. Our vet has a new loyalty card that gives us 10% of each visit toward our next visit, so the lovely thing is that we now have $100 credit at the vet’s office. I have no doubt we’ll use it before the end of the year.

I should be ok with our first quarter financials, and I am, but it’s hard to rejoice when here in May I’m floating among the wreckage of the budget. It’s not just the vet bill — our cushion savings will take care of that — but I have felt out of control of our spending since I started hobbling around on this torqued leg. I’ve started massage therapy (expensive and not in the budget) and I’ve bought cushions and I will say here that I’m willing to pay whatever will end this pain and release me from the fringes of my own life. And then the gifts!! May/June is becoming Christmas II with all the graduations, weddings, mother’s and father’s days, and birthdays. All happy occasions, but hitting at the same time. 

One of my favorite sayings — “All crises pass” — has become a mantra these past couple of weeks. It’s not just the financials, though that adds to it, it’s the scattered and out of control feeling that comes from not being able to maintain former routines. It had been a goal of mine for the spring to create a routine for my writing, and it wasn’t until I was unable to sit at my desk that I realized I DID have a routine. It just didn’t look like other people’s routines or what I thought a writing routine should look like. When I enter the work-bubble that is my desk, usually late morning or early afternoon, I slip into writing mode. It’s a nice, warm, captainish* feeling, and I’ve missed it and can hardly wait to get back to it. 

All crises pass. This one will too.

* To borrow from Rabbit of the Hundred Acre Wood

Using Pain to Improve Life

Since my last post my life has taken a turn for the unexpected. I developed a literal pain in the butt that extends from the cheek down to the calf. Ouch!! Boy does it hurt. Hurts to sit, stand, and walk, which leaves lying down, but I can’t afford to do that all day, so I sit, stand, and walk, wincing (gasping) all the way.

After checking to ensure that a pinched nerve or my back isn't somehow involved, my doctor prescribed a powerful anti-inflammatory and some exercises. There’s no quick fix for this, and the pain wears me down by the end of the day. The silver lining is that I’m using the pain as motivation to work on some areas in my life. 

First, I figure that the body has an enormous capacity to heal itself as long as it’s not sabotaged. I’m helping by eating as healthily as I know how, with plenty of food high in antioxidants and anti-inflammatory properties. Guided by George Mateljan’s The World’s Healthiest Foods, an “essential guide for the healthiest way of eating,” I am learning the health properties of different foods and the best way to select, store, prepare, and cook them. 

Anti-inflammatory foods and herbs include salmon, tuna, and shellfish, pineapples, papayas, olives, garlic, ginger, and turmeric. There are others, but that’s where I’m starting. Yesterday for lunch Kat and I ate avocado halves sprinkled with lemon juice and stuffed with tuna salad (a recipe from the book). Tasty! 

Second, having this grinding, relentless pain actually helps with my mindfulness practice. Sometimes the pain overwhelms, and I have to stop and just breathe deeply. I try to follow the advice in the book to focus on breath and welcome any discomfort or pain instead of fighting it. It’s not easy, and it doesn’t always help, but most of the time it seems to. It keeps me from panicking anyway. Anxiety magnifies pain, and to the extent that mindfulness practice diffuses anxiety, it helps.

Third, I am forced to practice patience. Not a virtue of mine, but one I want to cultivate. The healing process takes time. I can eat all the right foods, exercise diligently, and take my meds, but I can’t force the pain away or hurry the healing process.  Impatience — when will this pain end? — like anxiety, just makes it worse. 

So there it is. I wrote most of this while standing at our kitchen island, and finished it off sitting at my desk. My new life for a while. I hope that when this chapter of life draws to a close, I will have acquired or deepened a few good habits.

Thwarted but I'm Good With It

April turned out to be a busy and out of the ordinary month (the skin stuff alone threw my calendar off kilter), and I was looking forward to my recent birthday as a day just to knock around in. A fun lunch in Gruene followed by naps and reading and movie watching. Kat was off, and she’s always game to do whatever.

That morning I rolled out of bed, and the first thing I did was charge my Kindle. This was going to be the kind of day that required a fully charged e-reader!

Things got off to a great start with a breakfast of kolaches and coffee. Then Kat surprised me with a light box for my sewing room. Hooray! The timing couldn’t have been more perfect as the quilt I’m working on requires applique. 

After lunch and a walk around the shops at Gruene, we drove back to San Antonio, into the neighborhood, turned the corner, and I saw this:

Hastily decorated by a neighbor

I gasped! No!! 

Yes, surprise party. The last guest left at 11:00 pm. My fully charged Kindle sat untouched.

So, my birthday went not at all as I had envisioned. Had I been asked, I would have said emphatically that I did not want a party. But, as with life when chaos intrudes on the hopeful vision of orderly days, I accepted it (after a bit of struggle) and it was good. It was good to visit with friends I haven’t seen in a while, and of course I was touched (after I got past wanting to kill her) by Kat’s eagerness to make the day special. 

I haven’t yet peeked at the credit card to see what this set us back. I have a budget session planned for tomorrow to review March and April. I’m hoping all the big birthday surprises are behind me :-P

Breaking Rules and Re-visiting Goals

Just back from a whirlwind visit home (near Houston) to visit my folks. The trip is exactly three hours and twenty minutes from my door to theirs. Most of the time I have to make a pit stop along the way. When I take Dobby, I stop off at a rest area so I can take him with me into the restroom.

I pulled into a rest area as usual and for the first time noticed a sign that clearly stated “No Pets Allowed in Restroom.” What?? But I can’t leave him in the car! What if he were stolen? And during summer months the car interior heats up far too quickly. Impossible to leave an animal in a car, even with the windows cracked. I might have to disguise him as a human baby and carry him in a pouch. Think it will work?

Time to check in with April goals:

Create a routine, writing at least three hours every (work) day. Still no routine, but I did manage the floating three hour period on days I wasn't on the road, plus more on occasion.

Close e-mail during writing sessions. Yup. 

Close internet during writing sessions, or use internet blocking or my alphasmart. Nope. The internet is like chocolate to me - irresistible. I cannot bring myself to use an internet blocking program; I don’t know why I even wrote that down. I haven’t yet unearthed my alphasmart. I really like typing on my laptop. A lot. And I use Scrivener. Though I know I can transfer my alphasmart stuff to Scrivener, I like working in Scrivener. So, I’ll have to figure this one out. I suppose if I’m hitting my writing goals (I’m now into daily word counts for my fiction), I can ease up on this one.

Practice mindfulness. I googled for some resources and came up with a bewildering number of books and blogs about mindfulness. Finally I downloaded Mindfulness for Dummies to my Kindle, figuring it would give me the basics. So far I like what I’m reading, but I’ve only just begun putting it into practice (as in yesterday). I plan to review this more fully in a future post.

I will now turn these goals into May goals. They’ve been helpful, and I want more time with them. 

A Detour into Zombieland

Wow. Monday was supposed to be getting-organized-again-after-company day. Instead, after a very busy Saturday/Sunday, we mostly laid around. That's ok. I'm good with an unplanned catch-up-on-rest day. (Kat is off Monday and Tuesday, so that's our "weekend").

On Tuesday I went in to have my skin thingies removed. I hadn't really thought much about the procedure; I certainly didn't think it would be what it was.

Kat went with me. She sat in the waiting room for three hours. She said she kept seeing people called to the back, then less than an hour later walk out with a patch somewhere on the arm or face or neck. I came out after three hours with huge pressure bandages on my arm and face, looking stunned I'm sure. The thingie on my arm was a basal cell carcinoma (mostly harmless because shallow, though can become dangerous if not removed), and on my face was a suspected melanoma (a severely abnormal mole with atypical cells that could become a melanoma if not already).

The face "wound" they left open in case tests revealed more needed to be cut away. The nurse used a mirror to show me the open incision so that I would be prepared in case the bandages came off before I could return today. I laughed out loud when I saw it! It was so incredibly gruesome; it was either laugh or cry. I looked like a zombie, flesh falling from bone. Wow.   

Test results today were good. The atypical cells were not yet melanoma, and all bad cells and carcinomas were successfully removed. My face has been stitched up and bandaged, and I'm good to go.

People have asked me whether I sunned myself when I was younger. The answer is no. I've never tried to tan. My skin is pink, and it freckles and turns pinker in the sun. I simply don't tan. I have Irish ancestry on both sides of my family.  Irish skin and the Texas sun are two things that do not go together.  I've always used sun block, but I intend to be more consistent about putting it on every time I go out.

Three things I am grateful for at this moment:

1. My health. I can't help but think of all those who go in to the doctor to hear a diagnosis of cancer. Whatever treatment follows, there is a lot of pain and anxiety and being tired and having to calm the anxieties of loved ones. I've had the very smallest of tastes, and I am awed by friends who have survived much more invasive and dangerous forms of cancer.

2. My insurance. In 2011, the mayor and city council voted to extend health care benefits to domestic partners of city employees. That enabled Kat to put me on her insurance. Before I had a high deductible insurance. Due to this, we're out of pocket a few hundred dollars instead of a few thousand.

3. Kat. I love her and can't imagine life without her. We've been together seventeen years in May, each year better than the last. We never had a wedding, but we have a wonderful marriage. I hope the State of Texas will one day recognize it.

The Backside of Company

Company has come and gone. A few days of hectic high energy plopped into my mostly placid life.

My niece and two nephews are 17, 15, and 12. They like to play games, and play we did -- some of the classics like Sorry and Yahtzee (and Battleship with my niece), and hours of a card game called Golf. It’s funny how much we love board games and cards, but I’m sure they play as often as Kat and I do, which is never, when we’re not all visiting each other.

I was proud of myself for achieving peace in chaos. There was a time when my siblings’ visits would jangle my nerves to the point that I couldn’t fully enjoy them. I’m not used to the energy that children bring, and I would spend some visits counting down the minutes to departure time.

Several years ago, I decided that I had to change my attitude and become more tolerant of disruption and noise and messiness, or I would miss out on the fun of being with my nieces and nephews (I have ten total). They were growing up, and I was growing old.

So I did.

Through prayer and journaling, and a lot through psyching myself up before a visit and choosing to let go and enjoy the craziness, I’ve found the visits to be more and more fun. Some of it may have to do with their age; most of them are teenagers now or close to it, but I can tell that some of the inner work is paying off.

So the visit was great, but now Kat and I are struggling a bit to get back into routines. I’ve had meetings that were postponed until after the visit and smushed all together at the end of the week. The house is messy, my grocery situation is out of whack, and I’m flying without meal plans. I have another long meeting tomorrow morning, and an event I’ve organized Sunday afternoon that, along with church in the morning, will take the day.

It’s push-through time, and Monday I’ll take stock and organize myself. Until then, I’ll just have to float along with the disorder and not let it get to me.

Distraction Busters

I am sitting at my desk, fingers flying across the keyboard, while I watch out the front window at workmen in our neighbor’s yard. Two of the men are digging a hole. Why are they digging a hole? They are digging in the side yard near the street. Something to do with the water?

Dobby - A Cute Distraction

My dog is napping on my lap, making it somewhat difficult to type. I glance at the time. I want to beat the crowds to the grocery store. With guests arriving Monday, I have a largish shopping trip planned. Fortunately, San Antonians don’t seem to grocery shop much before 11:00 on a Saturday morning. Everyone has a sleep-in.

This is how my morning writing session is going, unconnected wonderings and worries interspersed with moments of actual work.

Distractions nip at me constantly. An inevitable part of the writing life I suppose. I don’t think I handle them very well. I’ve written that a life goal of mine is to attain a feeling of wholeness. I dislike feeling scattered, and this constant succumbing to distractions contributes to that feeling. 

 I want to blame external factors for this inability to sit still, to focus, to feel integrated. Aside from musing-type distractions (staring out the window), there are distractions that willpower won’t make go away. Family members like to visit for a couple of days at a time, and I like to have them, but the bed and breakfast times can disrupt an entire week — cleaning, meal planning, shopping, and the visit itself.  I have too many volunteer commitments, with lunch and evening meetings. Even one meeting in the day can make the whole day feel disrupted. Home care, cooking, the dogs, the bills. Really it’s no more than others have to contend with, and less than most. But they’re MY distractions, and I’ve got to learn to integrate them into a good, creative life, because they’re not going away.

The root of the problem is internal. A resistance to the work that I know from experience will melt away as soon as I sit down and let myself fall into it. So today I am going to list distraction-busting practices for the month of April, and re-visit them on May 1 to see how I’ve done.

• Create a routine:  This is a biggie. I have tried for years, without much success, to have a set, daily routine. Largely because of Kat’s second-shift schedule, my best writing time is between about 8:00 and 9:00 am, and then early afternoon, like between 1:00 and 3:00, and then again for a couple of hours in the evening. With meetings popping up here and there, mostly in the evening, and family visits, and Kat’s weird days off, I stick to this routine maybe two days of any given week. So, I will practice getting in three hours of writing every day, regardless of the ‘when,’ though I will try for that morning and early afternoon rhythm.  That’s my practice goal for April. A separate, long-term goal will be to set my writing times/days, and not accept volunteer commitments that conflict with those times. (This has to be long-term as some of my commitments run to the end of 2014). 

•  Keep my e-mail closed while writing.

• Keep my internet browsers closed while writing. We’ll see how this one goes. If it costs too much in willpower, I can either check out one of those internet blocking programs or write on my Alphasmart. 

• Practice mindfulness meditation.

I can think of others, but this is enough to start with.

It’s coming up on 3:00 now, and time to take Dobby — my little white ball of energy — on his walk. I feel good because I can count this as a successful writing day, and I have no meeting tonight, so I plan to get some fiction writing done. (That’s right. I have nowhere to be on a Saturday night! It’s ok because our Saturday is Monday. The life of shift work).

Postscript:  The men across the street are installing a sprinkler system. It looks like an archeological dig over there. Watching other people do manual labor makes for an almost irresistible distraction! Lucky for me they should finish today.