A nice quartet

I’m inexplicably blue this evening.  Could be a lack of sleep, could be that point in my cycle (although I’m usually prone to rage, not sadness.  I prefer rage), could be any old thing.  But these snippets make me happy.

From the New York Times science section on female friendships:

“You have to have somebody to hang onto,” Dr. Seyfarth said. “A friend gives you an element of predictability and certainty, and you can use that to buffer you against all the things you don’t have control over. There’s a biochemical component to this.”

A familiar friend calms and equilibrates, mops up the cortisol spills that can weaken the immune system, and in so doing may help lengthen life — in baboons, humans and other group-minded kinds. “Yes, having coffee with friends is good for you,” Dr. Silk said, “and we should all do it often.”

This blog is my coffee with friends — and particularly fun since I get to do all the talking!

From Robin Givhan, fashion critic extraordinaire, a piece about why she finds the focus on Beyonce’s motherhood dispiriting:

I know I’m taking this way beyond anything that Beyonce said. But her comment triggered a more general thought: Having a baby is a wondrous thing. And being a parent is a terribly difficult and important job. But it always makes me squeamish when people trot out the suggestion that a truly meaningful life is defined by motherhood/fatherhood. It’s simply a different kind of life than one without children.

(In the late 1990s Robin Givhan wrote a screed about white hose on adult women that remains one of my favorite fashion columns ever.  I can’t find it online, sadly.)

From Allie at Wardrobe Oxygen, a great post about why sometimes, making a garment work just isn’t worth the effort:

The thing is… I don’t want to make it work. Making it work makes sense when you’re in the 11th hour of a Project Runway challenge. It makes sense if the only skirt in my closet is this one and I have an event to go to in an hour where the dress code is Skirts Only. It makes sense if it was a gift from my husband’s grandmother and she asked to see me in it for her 90th birthday party. There’s no other reason why I should try to make a garment work.

If a garment doesn’t work, it doesn’t deserve real estate in your closet. 

Stop trying to make it work with belts and tights and control garments and half-baked DIY projects. All that effort does is make the same not-quite-right garment not-quite-right, but now decked out with opaque tights, a skinny belt, and a weird band of fabric that sort of ruins the flow of the piece. This isn’t to say that with a bit of sewing skill one could turn trash into treasure. What I’m saying is if a piece isn’t right and you don’t have the creativity, skill, and desire to make it right… get rid of it.

I love her blog.  She’s very sane and funny.  Regular readers have noticed that I’m not writing Closet Archive posts anymore.  I think this is why — even though I can make an effort to make something work, I usually don’t want to.  I haven’t gotten rid of the closet archive items I’ve featured (except the one I dubbed “first clear failure”) — I’ll probably keep most of them for sentimental reasons.  But after reading this post, I spent 30 minutes filling five giant shopping bags of stuff for Goodwill, and another bag for the consignment store.

I was going to stop at three, but then Allie posted this on Wardrobe Oxygen, and I found it so charming I almost forgot I was feeling droopy.  It’s annotated pictures of a 1998 copy of Allure magazine.  In 1998 I was dating Daniel, effectively living with him, working at the same place I work now (I quit in 2001 and came back in 2008), and wearing a lot of brown lipstick.  It seems quite recent, in that I was all grown up then, or so I thought, with mutual funds and retirement savings and a real job.  But oh so very long ago…

The best clothing purchase this year

Today I am thankful for my funny little dog, who loves me so much.  Milo and Daniel are exuberant and effusive dog lovers.  I was the one who declared (to absolutely zero effect) the new dog would NOT sleep in the bed.  That didn’t even last a night.  I have never had a deep affection for an animal, but somehow this dog just can’t get enough of me.  He’s behaving lately as if he loves me extra, as if he knows I need the extra love.  (During the first awful fight with Daniel ten days ago, Percy climbed up on my lap and attached himself to my chest.  In the midst of the drama I thought, “Aha! Percy knows I am right!”  During the second and significantly more awful fight, Percy fled the scene.  Smart dog.)

When I finished the first draft of the first chapter of my book (which my co-author didn’t like at all, but okay, that’s why it was a first draft), I bought myself this bracelet:

I had been admiring big cuff bracelets, and noting how much they transform an outfit, but I can’t tolerate any weight at all on my right wrist (carpal tunnel tendencies), and I wear a watch on my left wrist.  As I was paying for it, I thought, “This is a very silly purchase.”  But I pile it on with my watch, in a very Ines-inspired way (so I tell myself) and wear it 4 days out of 5 . It’s a pop of color!  It’s another pattern for pattern mixing!  It’s a piece of the tribal-inspired trend!  It does more for more outfits than just about anything else I own.  I’m going to wear it to shreds (and that’s a realistic possibility — it’s already fraying at the edges.)

I tell myself that I should stick to very basic clothes and make my mark with great accessories–and then I do things like blow the budget on two wildly patterned skirts, as I did last month.  (For a combination of both simplicity and wild prints see here — of course she’s French.  Note how the pattern is always on bottom.  I do that, too!) This bracelet is a strong argument in favor of my aspiration.

Best of times, worst of times

Today I am thankful that I’m back to writing.  I’ve been hesitant about it, and it’s time to dive back in.

I could take the last ten days and write a cluster of posts about a lot of dark, sad, and painful stuff in my life and my marriage.  Last week, in 48 hours Daniel and I had two of the worst fights we’ve ever had.  And I thought I couldn’t blog for a while, because I couldn’t write about it (still can’t, other than that) or that if I did blog I would have to say, “There’s a lot of badness in the background here, but I can’t write about it, so I’m going to write a lot about clothes and work.”

But I could also take the last ten days (well, more like six), and write a cluster of posts about how brilliantly things are going at work, how I’m making great-feeling decisions about time and money, how I took an online course on time management that might be changing my life and strengthening my marriage,  and how a $30 bracelet I bought on a whim may be the best accessory ever.  And all that would be true, too.

For now, I’m going to chose the latter path, and write about some lovely and gratifying discoveries and fruitions.

Meditation seems to be working.  I am noticing more beauty — admittedly, not hard, because my city is brilliant in spring, and this spring is the most brilliant in a long time.  I am finding happinesses.  Yesterday I thought, “This is the gift my daughter gave me” (the daughter I didn’t have) — this gift of seeing and appreciating and having more channels for happiness.  I don’t think I would have been able to get here without all I’ve been through, without the loss that made me  search so aggressively for compensations, even though they aren’t really compensations or comparable.   I like meditating — it feels good when I do it.  It gives things back to me.

Meditation is wonderfully supported by my new time management systems (ach– what a terrible and infelicitous sentence!  From poetry to base prose in 10 words. But  there’s no good or elegant way to describe this).  I took a course from my work/money guru Ramit Sethi on time management.  In five podcasts and worksheets, he recommends some very basic stuff, like blocking off time, taking intensive screenless breaks, taking note of how you feel at particular times of the day to match energy and will to tasks.  It sounds so basic, but it’s been transformative.  I have a lot of systems and schedules at home, little things like choosing my outfit the night before, or when to do laundry, and they help.  I had systems for school, and they helped.  I’ve never had systems in my work life.  It’s not coincidental that I feel much more successful at home (in terms of day to day managing the house; we’ll hold the marital aspect of home off to the side for a bit) and felt much more successful at school than I ever have at work.

I have never been truly self-directed at work.  This is making me self-directed.  I have always felt that there were basic ways of working that I never learned.  I feel that less now.  I am much less anxious.  I have more energy and better energy.  I am more creative (a direct result of less anxiety and more energy).

Because I’m feeling better about what I do at work and how much I’m getting done, I have done another good thing, which is sign up for an unlimited monthly pass at a new yoga studio 3 minutes from my office.  (One intention fulfilled!  Or, two — meditation was also on that list.)  There were so many reasons not to make this commitment.  It would have been so easy to say I couldn’t afford it, or I didn’t really have time.  But I can afford it.  Committing to yoga once or twice a week is one of the best uses of my money.  And I do have time, because if I write (or research) intensely in the morning, I need a good break at midday, and yoga provides that.  And now, yoga twice a week at midday seems like the most obvious and necessary thing in the world.  It’s not what I fit in around everything else; it’s what I do.

And when I come home in the evening, having meditated or done yoga and having had a good day at work, I am nicer, lighter, less anxious.  I don’t need to control my home life so much to make up for the feeling of lost-ness or ineffectiveness or anxiety at work.  It’s all working beautifully together and I am deeply grateful for that.

And somehow this is usefully spilling over into money and my budget.  First of all, when I’m less anxious and more energetic, I’m less likely to spend as much money for self-soothing (buying something feels like doing something I have control over).  And having less money to spend helps me focus on what’s most important.  I’m setting priorities and “affording” things I never would have thought of before.  It’s like not eating junk food — I’m doing less junk spending.  It’s still a work in progress, but things are moving in a very good direction and it all feels of a piece.

Meditating and getting my time in order makes it easier for me to be my best self to myself.  And eventually I will be my best self to my beloved.

Short spring break

How many times have I said “I won’t be posting because…” and posted three times over the next two days???

So I won’t say that I won’t be posting for the next few days.   I will say that completing the Passover cleaning, packing, work, and avoiding fights with Daniel will be my highest priorities, so wise readers will have low expectations.

Money and shame

Today I am thankful that I have a very strong body (even with a sore back) that enabled me to go to a difficult yoga class and then spend almost 5 hours in various kinds of housecleaning — laundry, scrubbing my oven, reorganizing a couple of cupboards, and then scrubbing, scrubbing, scrubbing my refrigerator.  Some time during the last year, heavy cream spilt on the top shelf, and then dripped down and collected under the vegetable drawer.  I remember catching the top-shelf spill when it happened, but didn’t know what would await me when I did my Passover cleaning.  Judging from the other stains and drips, there was a root beer disaster at some point as well.  But it’s all sparkly now!

So… money.  Money money money.  I am struggling with it.  On Tuesday, to save $7 on cab fare, I lugged home a new blender.  It didn’t feel that heavy when I left my office, but I checked — it’s about 10 pounds.  Long and painful story short: saving $7 on a cab cost me $180 in two chiropractor visits — and my chiropractor isn’t covered by my insurance plan.

An unexpected $180 expense at the very end of the month wasn’t in my new budget.   I have this new budget because I gave myself a 10% paycut, starting with my most recent paycheck.  Daniel and I always get socked by taxes because he has a substantial amount of freelance income, and the simplest way to deal with it is for me to start withholding more from my paycheck.  Or, rather, that seemed the simplest way to deal with it before I blew the budget this month.  Those chiropractor bills came after a deeply unwise shopping trip.  That shopping trip more than ate up the money I had budgeted for emergencies and screw ups.

Here is my family history with money: I grew up in a family that was extremely moralistic about money and over the top in our efforts to pursue a good deal (never mind that “a good deal” still means spending.)  My mother and I once drove around for 3 hours when it was 102 degrees outside so she could save $25 on a dress.  My father knows every pawn shop and Goodwill store within a 50 mile radius of my parents’ house.  (Somehow the cost of gas never figures into their calculations, and the value they place on their time is zero.)

My father once described his childhood this way: “We always got everything we wanted, we just knew never to want that much.”  I was raised that way, too.  There was always money for what was important, and even luxuries, like the country-club membership so my mom could play tennis and my dad could play golf and I could be on the swim team, and piano lessons and running shoes.  There was no deprivation, but there was clearly a ceiling on what was to be wished for.  There was a clear line, beyond which it was “too much,” and “too much” was frowned upon, severely.  I remember my mother rolling her eyes at the profligacy of her mother in law (my grandmother) for using (expensive) paper towels to wipe up spills, rather than a (cheap) sponge or rag.  Even now, my mother, grandmother and aunt will criticize my cousin’s dear and lovely wife by saying, “She likes to spend money!”

So I learned very particular habits of frugality.  You could buy, but always buy on sale.  Buy generic whenever you can.  When you buy, make some kind of extreme effort so your purchase doesn’t seem careless.  In college, I had plenty of money from scholarships — but I rationed vending machine soda.  I only bought it twice a week.  Spring of my senior year, when I’d won another scholarship to graduate school, I was still packing my lunch everyday but Wednesday, when I’d spend $1.75 on a calzone from the food truck.

And about those scholarships… I had them to a big public university because I couldn’t attend the excellent private college that I desperately wanted to go to, because my money conscious parents hadn’t understood that private college was crazy expensive and nobody got academic scholarships to the top schools because everyone at the top schools is supersmart, and financial aid offices had a very different understanding of need than my family did.

What this all added up to was a feeling that certain things, certain freedoms, certain pleasures of money were not for me.  They were off limits to me.  They were unworthy, wasteful, and foolish, but I was also unworthy, I was unworthy of those luxuries, of that particular ease of buying what I wanted when I wanted it, not the off brand, not the knock off, not the 80% off when it’s no longer fashionable.  That’s the double-edge of money and shame for me — it’s shameful to spend freely, and I feel ashamed that I can’t spend freely.

It takes a lot of energy, or it took me a lot of energy, to maintain that kind of vigilance and that two-way force field of shame.  Over the years, I lost the energy for it.  If my parents knew what I spent on ANYTHING, from groceries to underwear to childcare, they would be shocked.  It would put distance between us.  I can change religions and that’s fine, but money it turns out goes even deeper than faith.

Once I started spending more, I enjoyed the ease very much.  I enjoyed feeling like I was making a decision about buying something, rather than having it be a priori off limits to me because of the price.  It felt like power.  It felt like the happy absence of shame.  So I am no longer frugal.  I am reasonably careful and not in debt.  And I usually like it, but I also lapse into guilt about it.  It will be a while before I forgive myself for not having the money for IVF.  (Of course, over the long term, that was absolutely the frugal choice — not only did we not drain our savings, we didn’t incur the expense of another child.  Funny how unsatisfying that is!) In post after post, I have to justify how much I spend, or when I buy new clothes, or somehow indicate that I have not entirely abandoned my frugal patrimony.  I am not bad!  I am not irresponsible!  I am not a financial grasshopper!

So being back in the land of NO, the land of budgets, is challenging for me — and it’s challenging BECAUSE it is challenging.  How can this be hard for me, given how much I earn and how unfrugal I have been?  Of course a 10% pay cut doesn’t mean a 10% reduction in each expense.  The big bills stay the same, so it works out to about a 30% cut in discretionary spending.  But… still.  Why is it so hard?  Why did I spend so much last fall, so much that I had to drain all the money I had saved for re-doing my bathroom just to catch up?  Why am I 30% over my budget in this first month?  What the hell am I doing? I am ashamed of myself, ashamed of my lack of control.  But in not spending, I feel the old shame, the shame of being the girl who always had to worry, to say no, who never got the best stuff, the stuff she really really wanted.

Of course, I have gotten the best stuff sometimes, but I choose to ignore that.  I’m only hearing the chorus of “NO! don’t touch that — it’s not for you.”

And I’m going to end this post like I’ve ended so many lately: I have no idea what to do with all this.  I think I will keep my larger goals in mind, so that I feel like I’m saying no for a reason — a good, honest, self-chosen reason (to save money, to ease Daniel’s financial burden, to wait and buy something better, to enjoy what I have more).  I will be open to a non -moralistic approach to money (which will be sorely sorely tested when I am in Bay City this weekend for Passover with my free-spending sister in law, who has money issues of a different kind, but has no trouble buying beautiful, beautiful clothes that make her look dazzling and make me ill with envy).  And I will remember what I wrote above, that I have gotten the best stuff sometimes, and that best stuff didn’t always have a price tag.  I will be open to the possibility of transcending.