have a little faith

Faith. It’s when we believe and trust that positive outcomes will happen. If we don’t have faith, we don’t have hope.

Sometimes I need to have a little faith.

My son was in an auto accident. No one was hurt. It wasn’t my son’s fault. But it was my vehicle and it’s never a pleasant thing to hear that your car, which you weren’t even driving, was in an accident. And no matter who caused the accident, it’s still an inconvenience to have to take the vehicle, assuming it’s even drivable, to a body shop for an estimate, deal with the insurance agency, file a claim, hope that the other party’s story corroborates with yours or the claim may not be paid at all, and if you get the repairs done, be without that vehicle for up to a week or more, or if you don’t, live with an ugly gash in the side of your car forever.

This time we were lucky. This time the person whose huge, new Dodge Ram pickup hit our not-such-a-slouch-either SUV was woman enough to admit fault and deal with the consequences in the proper manner. Why is that surprising? Well, we’ve had several occurrences where the other party didn’t have insurance, wasn’t even a legal driver, and/or caused a hit-and-run accident, without leaving as much as a note on our damaged vehicle. Those times, you’re stuck. There’s nothing you can do unless you want to pay out of pocket for the repairs or file a claim against your own policy. Usually, it’s not even worth the trouble because the costs are exorbitant even going through the insurance, since your rates will increase or you have a deductible that still means a good chunk of money will come from you before the balance of the costs are covered by the agency.

So if you’re going to be in an accident, you hope it’s the other person’s fault and he or she admits to it and that person has an up-to-date policy with a reliable insurance company that pays for the repairs. I should have been happy that this accident ticked off all those boxes, but, being me, I wasn’t. When my son told me what happened, I wasn’t level-headed, calm, and adult about it. I got angry, I became accusatory, and I was upset because this vehicle is supposed to be mine to drive and not my son’s (he lost his own car in an accident a year ago and never replaced it), and I knew that I would be the one who would have to deal with the repercussions, not my son, not my husband, but I. And I was right.

But I was also wrong, because I thought it would be a horrible ordeal that would be time consuming, emotional, and dreadful, and it really wasn’t. Yes, I had to make the appointment for the estimate and take the vehicle in on a Saturday morning while my son lollygagged in bed, and, yes, I had to make the call to the insurance agency and file the claim. And yes, I will have to field the calls from the body shop (who just now rang, by the way) and listen to service reps who try to convince me to get the repairs done and not pocket the check, but it’s nearly over. (It will be when the check in my name arrives in the mail–and the phone calls stop.)

So all in all, as far as auto accidents go, this one was fairly simple. I’ve got to remember all things do not have to be incidences of Sturm und Drang. Yeah, I’ve got to have a little faith.

rosie the riveter

There was a big, gaping hole in our wall (holes, actually) after a plumbing leak. The pipe was replaced so there was just one thing left to do. Call the drywall guy, you say? Hire a contractor? No, of course not. I just tackled this one myself. A couple weeks later, the patchwork of holes has been filled with a couple 2 foot-by-2 foot sheets of drywall cut to size, some joint compound, and a little ingenuity (and a lot of YouTube videos, I might add).

I guess you’d call me a handymom. And I learned it from my dad. I grew up in a family who never once saw a contractor, a plumber, an electrician, or any other skilled tradesman enter our house. With five kids and a blue-collar lifestyle, money was always an issue. My dad’s do-it-yourself attitude stemmed from that and the fact that he was quite handy–or he became that way because he always gave it a shot. There wasn’t anything he wouldn’t attempt. He could build a home addition and change a carburetor on our station wagon, to boot.

My dad was born during World War I and was a teen during the Depression, a time when there was no such thing as credit cards. You either had the money to hire someone or you did it yourself. No putting it on the Visa card and paying it off down the road. The only time I saw anyone other than my dad doing any kind of work in our house or yard was when our town had everyone hook up to the new sewer system, and even then the worker stayed in the yard.

Working with one’s hands was a necessity in generations past. It’s a lost art today. But it’s not always people’s fault. With cars becoming evermore computerized, for instance, no one can work on their own cars for fear of messing with the brain of the vehicle. That lack of effort or fear of trying may have flowed into home-repair projects as well, despite what you see on HGTV. Although Home Depot and Lowe’s are doing a bang-up business, it seems that most people (the ones I know anyway) hire out for jobs. Those must be the contractors and the handymen loading up on supplies at the home-improvement stores. Or they’re homeowners who buy there and hire out the work. Rarely does the fiftysomething female buying the sheets of drywall, screws, and mud hang it herself.

Not only did I get the desire to do the work (and save the money) from my dad but I also got his slapdash way of working and a less-than-amazing finished product. I have to admit, my completed projects are more Walmart than West Elm, but I can at least say I did the work myself, saved the money, and have a sense of accomplishment from doing it.

Some of my friends will say, “Oh, but you’re good at doing stuff like that. We aren’t handy.” To that I say, “You just have never tried.” I’m no handier than anyone else. I just put in the effort and give it a go.

The next time you’re thinking of calling the plumber or the drywall guy or the electrician, if it’s not too difficult a task (and it’s often not if you watch online videos and have the proper tools), you may surprise yourself that you’re handier than you had thought. We can do it! 0828151150

looking forward

With four kids, my husband and I have never taken much time for ourselves. We’ve had children in one public school or another for the past twenty-four years. Yes, twenty-four years! In a row! Without a break in between. We have two more years to go–well, a year and a half–until our youngest graduates high school.

So, being the dutiful parents we have been for a long, long time, we’ve not done a lot of fun things for just the two of us. For one, we’ve been married thirty years and have yet to schedule our honeymoon. Kids arrived pretty soon after we said “I do,” and they kept coming. And never having been well-to-do, we have had to scrimp and save, taking just one vacation of one week long per year ever since we started taking vacations, which wasn’t until child number three was two. And 90 percent of our vacations have been in our car and along the West Coast.

My husband has been a steady provider. He doesn’t earn a fortune and if you saw our house, you’d think he wore a blue collar to work instead of white, but he’s made enough to pay the bills, save for a rainy day, and help the kids out when they needed it. And I’ve provided for the additional stuff–those unexpected bills that spring on you just when you think you’ve got the spending pattern under control. Being thrifty and just making enough means there have been a lot of dreams deferred to raise four kids to be reasonably well-adjusted adults. Fortunately that takes more time than money, but in a world where time is money, being present can equal not buying presents–especially for ourselves.

Last year I lost a dear friend who was younger than I am. Her daughters have now been without her for six entire months and they will never get her back. I’m sure if there was a way to buy an extra day, a week, or a year, my friend would have emptied her bank account, gone into debt, or robbed a bank just to have a little more time to spend with her girls, travel more, and experience more.

With that in mind, I booked a Memorial Day weekend trip to Sedona, Arizona, where several of my husband’s friends just visited to ride mountain bikes. I saw him eyeing those Facebook photos the way a bear looks at honey. I just knew he needed to get away. We lost his mother just two weeks after my friend, so it was a tough row to hoe for all of us last fall, then winter, and now into the spring as we sift through the probate process, packing up her property bit by bit, cleaning up and getting ready to sell a place where maintenance had been deferred for decades, while his sister and brother sit 2,500 miles away, waiting for the final check to arrive. It’s time to take a breather, to spend time doing for ourselves. To spend time just doing.

So in a few weeks, we’ll pack up the ten-year-old SUV and hope that the kids will want to come along. It sounds like a beautiful place and in May it won’t be as hot as in the summer months. It won’t be free, of course. There are two days of hotel fees, gasoline, and food on the road and at our destination, but in the end, I’m sure we’ll be happy to share one more experience and a couple more days, because when you’re gone, they’re gone. And there’s no buying them back.

moving on

In a half hour I am meeting a friend at a bagel shop. Her job with a company she’s been with for twenty years is in jeopardy. I’m sure I’ll hear again everything she’s already told me, but part of being a good friend is sitting through the anguish of another. I’m good at that.

I am going through my own turmoil but will try to keep my emotions in check and listen to her because I remember what it was like for us when my husband lost his job and had to scramble to find another. The job he currently has is the job he took then, in 2012, spur of the moment and just in time. It’s not by any means the perfect fit for him, but at nearly 55, he is happy to have employment. Even though the recession is behind us and things are looking up, men and women in their 50s still have the hardest time of anyone finding meaningful employment.

This is from a June 2012 Wall Street Journal article titled “For Middle-Aged Job Seekers, a Long Road Back”:

“As of May [2012], the unemployment rate for people ages 45 to 64 was 6%, some 10 points lower than for people under 25. But the lower rate disguises the fact that when middle-aged people lose their jobs, it’s much harder for them to find a new one. Those between 45 and 64 take almost a year on average to find a job, more than two months longer than workers between 25 and 44.”

We’re supposed to be in the prime earning period of our lives in middle age, sending kids to college, beefing up the nest egg for the next chapter in our lives–retirement. But after the recession, employers got savvy about who to keep on and who to let go and they chose to save money by hiring the young, who are willing to make less money when starting out in their careers.

My friend is contemplating taking the severance package if it’s offered, and it should be, and then taking a part-time job to make ends meet and until she can pay off her condo. She’s also considering moving to a less-expensive part of the country, which, if you live in Southern California, is just about anywhere else.

In the meantime, my husband holds on to his job by a shoestring. If he were to be let go, and his little firm has a history of letting people go on a regular basis, we are not sure what we’ll do. He’s been looking for work for years. He came close a couple times, but nothing panned out. Once again, the firms are opting to hire the young and inexperienced to give them a reason to pay less. Ironically, the job my husband took is for someone with five years’ work experience, not the 25 he has, but he had to take that pay in order to be employed. It’s not our parents’ America anymore. And our kids will have it even worse, I’m afraid.

My work, unfortunately, has also petered out dramatically in the past year. As a freelancer, I’m hired as needed and not used whenever the work slows or stops. I have zero job security, and it stinks. I’ve lost a lot of work this past year and a lot of my income. One-third. And I look constantly for more work, but it’s all so piecemeal that even if I get something to keep me busy, it’s often short term and the pay is horrific. I just wrote some entries for a book and my paycheck when the book is published, probably in 2016, will be a meager $250! For about twenty hours of work.

Well, it’s about time to go meet my friend, listen to her woes, and provide support. If nothing else, we middle-aged have a lot of support because there are a lot of us in the same predicament. Unfortunately.

where do i start?

I cannot believe so much time has passed since I last sat down to type words into this blog. So much has happened that I wouldn’t even know where to begin.

The meat of it, though, is mostly bad: My mother passed away. One of my dearest friends passed away. Then my mother-in-law passed away. It’s been a lot of pain. It’s been a lot of tears.

I was in the midst of all of it too. I wasn’t a bystander waiting at the curb a good distance from where the action occurred. I was rolling in the mud. I was toiling in the muck. I was in the hospitals, the nursing homes, at the chemotherapy infusion centers, in the hospital cafeteria explaining to two preteens that their mother has cancer and, by the way, I can’t tell you this but she will die sooner than you’d like. I was at the graveside. I saw the flames and felt the heat from the crematory.

I wish I could erase 2013 and 2014 from my life, to not have to live through the pain, feel the sting of hot tears running down my cheeks, and most of all, not have to say goodbye to three of the most influential people in my life. But it happened. It will happen to all of us. It would have been a bit easier if it didn’t happen all at once. And if there weren’t casualties left behind.

But I’m still here and I will share my thoughts and my voice. I am still here.

ups and downs toward the end of 2012

This has been a year of changes like no other.  Things were going along swimmingly for quite some time before the last quarter of the year hit. Now, after having four working cars in the household–a 22-year-old Corolla, an 8-year-old Honda SUV, an 11-year-old Camry, and a very old minivan–two of our cars are kaput.

The Camry, which was my husband’s, has developed a stalling problem that only occurs on occasion, like once a week or once every two weeks. After taking it to our very competent mechanic who could find no problems with it, it is now at the dealership. The mechanics there too are finding nothing out of the ordinary.

We’ve done our own research and found that this problem is not all that unusual with this fifth-generation V6 Camry, but there never seems to be a definitive reason for the stalling. One post we read on a forum sounded as if we had written it, the problem was so identifiable. That Camry owner ended up selling the vehicle, so we never heard what the resolution was, if there ever was one. Very frustrating for a car that has up until now displayed no problems.

Then, the transmission on our ’96 minivan that our teenage son uses went out–again (American made)–and we are not putting good money after bad to fix that thing. We will look for something small and affordable. Or he can learn to drive the stick and take over our 22-year-old Corolla while I get a more decent used car, although I do love that bare-bones Corolla.

I guess this is a lesson in “things don’t last forever”–cherished vehicles or human beings. We have to get the most out of them while they are with us and move on when it’s their time to go–or not “go,” as the case may be. I just despise car shopping–whether for used or new–but it will be nice, if it comes to that, to have a brand-new car to start from scratch with. So, it looks like 2013 will be a year of “new beginnings.”

 

don’t take anything good for granted

Tonight is Halloween, but instead of spending it with my youngest child, who is out trick-or-treating, I’m home. This is the first time in about 25 years that I haven’t taken a child trick-or-treating. My youngest is now 13 and going around with a friend and his dad, plus his friend’s sister and two of her friends. I didn’t feel like being the fifth wheel (and kind of felt uninvited anyway), so I’m home.

My husband is across the cul-de-sac, hanging out with our neighbors. That’s been the neighborhood gathering every Halloween night. But I don’t feel very social this year. I found out today that one of my dearest friends has colon cancer. She had emergency surgery today. Her husband just called to let me know the surgery went well, but that 10 inches of my friend’s colon was removed. Her life will be irrevocably altered from here on out, which is so devastating for a woman in only her forties with two middle-school-aged girls. Like many women but to an extreme degree, this is a woman who puts others ahead of herself. When I tell people of her generosity, they are amazed that someone like her exists. But she does and the day I don’t have her in my life will be a tragedy, not because of the things she’s given me that I’ll miss, but because with her will go one of the biggest hearts and kindest souls I’ve ever experienced. No, make that the biggest heart and kindest soul. I love her dearly.

Hurricane Sandy blew through the Northeast yesterday and with her came massive amounts of destruction along with a reminder that there are things in this world–hurricanes, and in the case of my friend, illnesses–that are out of our control. We cannot decide our own fate fully; never have been and never will be. We have to take the cards we’re dealt and be happy that we are even in the game.

 

still pinching pennies, but it’s getting better . . . we hope

My husband has been at his job for nearly two months. It’s hard to believe. Because the company insurance plans won’t kick in until he is employed there for three months, I’m still paying the health insurance premium on my individual coverage plan for the self-employed. It’s over $1,100 a month, which is a ridiculous amount of money for people who rarely if ever see a doctor. I go for my annual checkup and a mammogram every couple years (though my doctor would like me to go annually). My sons haven’t seen the doctor in well over a year. My husband is the only one who checks in with his physician on occasion. And he takes a daily pill for high cholesterol. But that’s it.

The job is going a little roughly, as there seems to be much more to do than hours in a day to do it. The other employee who was hired at the same time as my husband to do the same work was let go after just three weeks. (This firm, we’ve learned, is notorious for its turnover rate.) But my husband, being the hard worker that he is, is sticking with it. He’s earning his keep, and then some.

I’m in a bit of a lull with my work, but the pace should pick up later in the month and into November. I look forward to that, if for no other reason than to pay for that health insurance bill. I cannot wait until that’s behind us and I can start banking my earnings instead of paying for services we don’t even use.

In the meantime, I count our lucky stars that my husband has found steady employment (a friend of ours has been looking for five months) and we haven’t had to change our lifestyles too much.

 

the austerity program, day forty-seven–a job, but it’s not over yet

A lot has happened since I last wrote. The interview my husband had had turned into a no, but he didn’t stop there. The firm was worried that someone with his experience wouldn’t be willing to take the pay they were offering. So he pressed them, saying he’d be willing to take a reduction in order to work for them. After a lot of agonizing days and nights, the word finally came down that they would hire him, but the pay was woefully low. So low, in fact, that it was much less than he used to make, and he was underpaid then. After some more agonizing days and nights and making a counter offer, the firm agreed to up the salary by a few thousand dollars more. Even though it is still a lowball offer, my husband accepted, worried that another job may never come his way, or not in the near future anyway.

So, this is how it goes: One day you’re up, the next you’re down. Up and down, up and down, and then things are on an even keel, steady as she goes.

Because we’re down a significant amount of income, I will have to work extra hard to try to make up the difference, and that will be a test for me, but I’m up for the challenge. I’d love, however, for one day to not have to worry about money, not have to care how much a car  repair or a home renovation costs before making up my mind to do it. I’d like to not have to juggle money between accounts to pay for heavier than usual bills in certain months. Or, scrutinize every discretionary expense over $20. I’d like to maybe get my hair cut more than twice a year (I trim it myself between cuts) and take a much-needed trip on occasion.

But there are people who have it much worse, who work hard and still can’t ever take that occasional vacation or who have no money to juggle between accounts, or who are disabled and can’t make a living. For having what I have, I am grateful. I am thankful too that I grew up in a family that had the discipline to save money, however little that was coming in every month.

So for now, I will continue the austerity program until the paychecks beef up, because the important thing is that there will indeed be regular paychecks.

 

the austerity program, day twenty-six–still wishing and hoping and praying

The saying goes that no news is good news, but to those of us with a strong sense of reality, no news can just be bad news put on hold. Still no word from the people my husband interviewed with for a job. And nothing else has come close to surfacing. It’s unusual to even get a ding letter these days, as most prospective employers are overwhelmed with applications and resumes and don’t even bother–or don’t have the time or resources–to get back to everyone.

So we wait.

In the meantime, I’m trying to keep our expenses down. I had to fill both vehicles with gasoline last week, but I’m garaging the gas guzzler except on occasion. And I’ve been able to keep our grocery bill down to around $70 to $80 a week. I did have to pay for my son’s college tuition the other day, which will set us back, and my husband had to see the doctor for a bad cough (it turned out to be bronchitis, which required a couple prescriptions, an over-the-counter drug, and an X-ray to analyze and treat). Now I’m sick, but I’m trying to fight it with OTC meds unless my sinuses feel ready to explode. It’s not easy looking at every trip to the store (or doctor) as a grab at your pocketbook, but that’s how it’s going to be for a while.

Yesterday, I talked with my friend whose husband lost his job recently. He’s applying all over the West Coast, trying to land anything he can, even if that means his having to move away from the family and getting an apartment in another city. That scenario has crossed my mind too, as there appear to be more jobs in certain cities for my husband. San Francisco, for one, which, ironically, is where we lived when he launched his career. I wouldn’t mind living there again, but moving no longer means packing up a diaper bag and a few boxes and small pieces of furniture and vacating one rental home for another. Owning a house, having adult children who have settled into homes in this city, having another child in college here and yet another in middle school, whose entire life has developed inside this house, is a whole ‘nother story. Add into that two elderly parents who need attention and one of whom has no other family in town, and things get even more complicated. I’m sure our friends feel the same way. They’ve moved around more than we have, but that was when the kids were not yet born or were just little ones, when the roots to friends, schools, and activities hadn’t yet taken hold.

I don’t know how things will turn out for us (or for them), but not knowing is so difficult. No news may mean that there is still hope, but that doesn’t make the wait any less painful.