2016 in review

So—the end of the year blog post.

2016 has been a tough year for me, I won’t lie about that. I thought 2009 was the toughest year I’d had so far, but 2016 is its equal if not a bit worse. I’ve been thinking about why that’s so, and honestly, I think Kent and I were a little too far down the sunshine and lollipop path in 2009 and heading into 2010. For example, we didn’t realize at the end of 2009 that we would be displaced from our home for five months (yeah, we were crazy optimists about that rehab timeline!).

This year I finally realized that I was being bullied at work, and had been bullied since I started in May 2015. It took me eight months to put that together, and I thought I was crazy the entire time. I finally started speaking up to my direct manager (not my bully) and talked with HR and used our Employee Relations Services to get counseling for tips and tricking on how to cope. Just using the term “bullying” helped open people’s eyes and you’d be surprised (or maybe you wouldn’t) at how many people told me privately that my bully had also bullied them. That part of 2016 has a decent ending in that my bully ended up finding another job and leaving the company at the beginning of November. Thank God.

In April, my company went through a pretty drastic round of reorganization and layoffs. Because the person who’d been bullying me had been with the company for years and was very knowledgeable in a specific area that the company absolutely needed (and was the only person with that knowledge), I fully believed I would lose my job. I was so sure, in fact, that I’d cleaned out my desk. As it turned out, I didn’t lose my job, which was a relief—but then the presidential campaigns started and our incoming president called out the company I work for as one he wants to put out of business.

I would characterize this year as being death by ten thousand cuts rather than having one great looming catastrophe. I am looking forward to putting this year behind me—I am, at my core, an optimist.

• In June, an old Army buddy of mine died from a very specific kind of cancer directly linked to his exposure to Agent Orange when he served in Vietnam. Dave was a great guy, wonderful musician and very kind to me when I was young and immature.
• In July, Kent was laid off and we lost 2/3 of our income.
• In August, we had a lightning strike at the house which fried some appliances, and our cats racked up nearly $3,000 in vet bills.
• Also this summer, two friends who are important to me had their husbands walk out.
• In September, my younger son was deployed for the second time.
• In October, on a positive note, I picked up another team to manage (which I am evilly pleased to think annoyed my bully to no end).
• Also in October, we learned that Kent’s mother’s health had taken a nose dive. She is 80, so it’s not unexpected. Kent’s been to visit her five or six times since, and in early December it became clear that she needs to be in an assisted living facility.
• In November, we were able to spend a great Thanksgiving with our daughter-in-law, the grandchildren and our older son—and did some video calls with the younger son.
• In December, Kent’s been mostly in Tulsa helping his mother. In fact, he will leave again early this next week and I will join him on Thursday to help move his mother into her new apartment. She’s in good spirits about the move although she’s sad about leaving her house.

So with all of that out of the way, here are my answers to the usual end of year blog questions I’ve been doing for a few years now.

What did you do in 2016 that you’d never done before? My answer goes back to what I wrote at the beginning of this post—I think in 2009 and early 2010, I didn’t realize how close to the edge of utter financial ruin we actually were, nor did Kent. When Kent was laid off in July, we both knew immediately that we were on lock down for spending and that his job search was likely to take a very long time (the more senior you are in an organization, the fewer positions are available). While we’ve had his unemployment since August, it’s not a lot of money and we are living on what I earn. That’s both cool and terrifying—cool that I am able to do this and terrifying that it has to be this way.

Did anyone close to you give birth? Not this year.

Did anyone close to you die? I already mentioned my friend, Dave.

What countries did you visit? Sadly, none. We did get to Miami again over Memorial weekend, and Jordan joined it for a great get away. We had a lot of fun, but it wasn’t international travel.

What would you like to have in 2017 that you lacked in 2016? I would love a little more stability across my professional life. Our incoming president makes that very difficult.

What dates from 2016 will remain etched upon your memory, and why? To be honest, I would rather not honor the dates of bad shit happening.
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What was your biggest achievement of the year? I essentially got a promotion when my manager asked me to take on a second team. With my bully out of the picture, I like what I do and I’m quite good at it.

Did you suffer illness or injury? No—my health is good.

What was the best thing you bought? We got an Instant Pot (love it!) and also took our daughter-in-law’s recommendation and bought a steam mop. That thing is amazing and cleans our wood floors really well.

Where did most of your money go? Home repair from the lighting strike and vet bills. Oh and also repairing cracks from the foundation work we did in 2015, plus rebuilding the built in storage in our dining room (blogged about here).

What did you get really excited about? We got an electric leaf blower that has an attachment you use to clean leaves out of gutters. It’s amazing.

What book(s) did you love this year? I finished Justin Cronin's trilogy (City of Mirrors) and also read two books by a new to me author (N. K. Jemisin) and enjoyed them both. I hope she writes more.

What song will always remind you of 2015? While I liked David Bowie, none of his songs defines 2016 for me. Honestly I think the song I will remember is a George Michael song Jesus to a Child.

Bye, 2016. I won’t miss you.

On this Christmas Eve

We are in Oklahoma for Christmas; Kent has been here since Tuesday. This is his third or fourth trip since October—his mother has been having some health issues and he’s been here to help her with the house, her doctor’s appointments and so forth.

But it’s time for her to leave this house. She’s been a widow for nearly 20 years, and has downsized a couple times. The first house where I met her was huge and had a gigantic yard. So, then she moved into a smaller house, although I had to laugh—it was still about 3000 square feet! But the yard was smaller, which helped, and the house was definitely smaller than the first one.

Then about four or five years ago, she moved into her current house. It’s smaller than the second house, it’s in a small, gated community and yard care is included with the homeowner’s fees. She’s done well here but in the last year, she’s realized it’s gotten to be a little much.

Our arts & crafts project

Kent and I have been helping her sort out her options and she’s found a place that’s quite nice—it’s a one bedroom apartment that faces south so it’s got lots of light. It’s also near where Kent’s brother works so it will be very easy for him to drop by also. Today, Kent's made a floor plan of the apartment and drawn the furniture she thinks she'd like to take. It looks like her gigantic couch won't make it, but pretty much everything else she'd like to have will fit just fine.

Looking ahead, we’ll need to help her pick the furniture she’ll want with her and then help her with selling the rest. It’s a little overwhelming, to be honest. While she’s not a hoarder by any means, she has a lot of stuff and it will take some serious work.

Thinking back to my grandfather, I remember how he purged nearly everything after my grandmother died. At the time, I found it a little weird and depressing. Now, though, I get it. And more than that, it’s how I see myself being as I get older. I’ve always had the urge to pare down. I think that will only increase as we help Kent’s mother.

Raspberry almond tart

For now, we are working to make this a good Christmas for her and for us. I’ve cooked a lot of savory food that she’s been enjoying (like this tomato soup, and this blueberry oatmeal bake). Tonight, we’ll have spaghetti pie, which is a recipe from my own mother. And tomorrow we’ll have my mother’s pork, mashed potatoes, peas, and applesauce. Oh and raspberry tart for dessert.

I hope you are spending this holiday season with people you love.

Why I like this song

Have you seen the contest on Facebook about getting through the holiday season without hearing Little Drummer Boy?

I have a special fondness for that song. When I first switched from playing flute to oboe the fall of 7th grade, I felt like I found my true instrument. I've seen this with other people too: when you find the on that fits your personality and lets you do things you want to do, it becomes more than just being in band.

All seventh graders played in what our conductor called beginner band (we were all so miffed--beginner band was that thing we played in last year and this year we were big bad seventh graders!) But because I switched to oboe, I got to play in the advanced band for our winter concert. That band always played an arrangement of the Little Drummer Boy that had a oboe duet. Normally Mr. Connally tried to have two oboists in each band (partly, it must be said, so they could encourage each other). That year, he had only one in the advanced band so had me play second oboe. Well I was flattered and scared and confident and so excited. This was a Very Big Deal as far as I was concerned.

I managed to get through the song and not totally embarrass myself, although I'm sure the other girl and I probably sounded like dying ducks. After all, oboe is one of the hardest woodwind instruments to play and I had a whopping six or eight weeks of experience by the time we performed that song. She had a year more than me but as I recall, she quit after that year. Oboe will do that to you, you either love it or you hate it.

Anyway, ever since that concert I've sort of considered that song mine. Silly, I know, but I think that's true of every piece I've ever performed, even the ones I didn't like playing.

I leave you with Pentatonix' version of Little Drummer Boy, which is light years better than my debut as an oboist way back when.

Of pins and hope

I have a group of friends, some of whom I know face to face, and some only virtually. There are eight of us altogether and for the fourth year, we’ve had secret Santa gift exchange. It’s lots of silly fun, and the gifts are sort of beside the point. It’s the friendship that counts.

Glass head pins

This year, my secret Santa was Harriet. She sent a collection of things—some of her favorite hand lotion, an ornament in the shape of a sewing machine, the pins you see in this photo (glass heads are essential in sewing, the plastic ones are useless because they will melt and ruin your project).

What got me was what she said about these gifts:

“These things are from one of my favorite local shops. They also sell clothes -- some handmade by the owner --and teach sewing. Next time you're here, I'll take you there!”

Next time I’m there in New York—which means there will be a next time.

I won’t lie, this has been an extremely tough year, maybe the toughest of my life. It’s been harder in many ways than 2009. We’ve been dealing with a lot, all external and most are out of our control. Kent’s mother has some very serious health issues and he’s been there three or four times in the last two months and he’s been managing all the decision making and sorting out of options long distance. I watch him worry and stress about making the right choices for her, and being a good son. He does make good choices and he is a good son, but it’s very hard.

So to hear from my friend that she will share a favorite place with me the next time I’m there? Well it’s like one of those clichéd Thomas Kinkade paintings where the sunbeam pierces the doom and gloom. Frankly I can use the hope. 

Everything I know about cats—for Julia

Disclaimer: I’m not a vet. Always listen to your vet over anything I say.

Cats are obligate carnivores. This means they can’t really digest grains or fruit and that their entire diet needs to be meat. This link takes you to an article on PetMD and here's a quote from the article:

The cat cannot sustain its life unless it consumes meat in some form.

Cats are also actually lactose-intolerant. While they will drink milk, they shouldn’t.

Vitamin D capsules are deadly for cats. At least one of mine loves those capsules so if you take vitamin D, don’t let your kitties near them (just in case).

Not all cats like cat nip. It’s sort of like cilantro—some people love the taste, others think it tastes like soap. All three of my current kitties love nip but I’ve had others just look at it and walk away.

In the wild, cats get most of their water from eating their prey (mice, birds etc.). So drinking water isn’t their first preference and cats tend to not drink enough. This is especially true for male cats, who can end up with kidney issues. I use a CatIt fountain, and it’s made a real difference in how much water they drink.




Cats are territorial but it’s different from the way dogs are. Dogs will have a spot they consider theirs and that spot doesn’t change. Cats will have areas and they’ll shift their spots. Some prefer to climb (Wally is our big climber right now) and others just want a soft, warm spot to curl up on.

You can (and should) trim your kitty’s nails. Start doing it now when they are kittens and it will be no big deal for them.

Cats are also crespucular, which means they are most active at twilight, morning and evening. That's why you may get demands to get up and play, or feed or generally interact with your kittens.

Cats scratch. Some scratch horizontally and some prefer to scratch vertically. We have this “lounger” that all three love, and there are lots of other scratching pad/post options out there.

Hope that helps!

December's cat--last one!

My mother has given me lots of really cool cat calendars over the last 15 years or so. She inadvertently created a tradition for me with the first one, which was of cats in Greece. The light there is so incredible and of course when you add in cats, it's just that much better.

That photographer either moved on from cats or else the publisher stopped publishing them. So Mom found another line of cat calendars which I also enjoyed. But as I mentioned way back in January, this calendar is the best of all because my mom either took the photos herself in Greece or else friends /family gave them to her just for this calendar.

Normally I recycle my calendars but this one is one I'm going to keep. Thank you, Mom, this calendar has been amazing.

Here's December:

Our Thanksgiving visit

So Google is both creepy and helpful. Creepy because it created this video and helpful because it created this video.

Vote!

I voted by mail two weeks ago. I hope you've already voted, or will make the time today.

November's kitty

I find looking at cats far more enjoyable than reading all the political rantings and ravings online. And this cat is especially soothing.

About fashion, clothing and me

In the last six weeks, I’ve read the following:

• 85 percent of the stuff we toss ends up in landfills, while only 15 percent gets donated and recycled, per an estimate by the Environmental Protection Agency.
• A recent survey found most fashion purchases are now worn just seven times, with 33 per cent of women considering clothes ‘old’ after a couple of wears.

There’s a slow fashion movement going on that urges us to only purchase clothing that can be worn 30 or more times. Obviously, if your clothes are going to be worn that many times, they can’t wear out. So equally obviously, most fast fashion items won’t make the cut.

I think the part that’s missing from all of this is the emotional component. Thinking back over my clothing purchase over my lifetime, need is almost never the driver. In my 20s, I shopped like a good little consumer because all the media influences in my life suggested that shopping was a worthwhile activity (almost like a hobby) or because of the thrill of the hunt. Never mind that I didn’t need what I was hunting, the thrill was still there.

I’m not the only one who’s felt that way. Most of the people I know have done much the same thing. If we are very honest about what’s needed in our closets, I think we’d all agree that we don’t actually need anything.

But again, shopping for clothes every year or every fashion season is also part of how we fit in. Every year, Pantone announces the color of the year and boom! All of last year’s clothing in last year’s color of the year look dated and frumpy (here's the colors for right now). Same thing with the cut of pants or blouses or coats. Think about bell bottom jeans from the 70s, or the 80s peg leg jeans. Sure, you can find variations on those themes but they don’t look the same and the older versions look dated.

Case in point—the unfortunately named pussy bow blouse. I remember those in the 80s, when Margaret Thatcher wore them. They were practically the essential piece for women in business back then. They’re back now but the lines are subtly different and for sure the shoulders are cut differently. If you wore one of the 1980s ones today, you’d look strange.

Lots of bloggers who are far more articulate than I am have talked about capsule wardrobes that end up being uniforms. Some like it, some don’t (I fall on the “like it” side myself).  I suspect those who don’t like the idea of a uniform end up feeling constricted and confined at the thought that their clothing would be so similar, day in and day out.

Which brings me to my last thought. A month or so ago, I read an article about food and eating; the article said something about how people generally fall into one of two camps: those who like to have really full bellies (think post-Thanksgiving dinner) and those who don’t. I wonder if clothing falls into the same sort of grouping. Maybe the people with super stuffed closets and lots and lots of shoes absolutely love that full feeling.

This entire train of thought was sparked the day my son was deployed. I’ve lost a fair amount of weight this year (not on purpose, it’s from stress). Almost everything in my closet was way too big, unwearably big. I can’t even describe the mental burden of all that stuff—every time I opened the closet to get dressed, there they all were bugging the daylights out of me. But I felt obligated to keep them and make them work somehow; I felt so much guilt at the idea of purging those clothes.

The day Ben deployed, I was a mess. I needed to feel some control somewhere in my life so I purged my closet. Weird, I know. But I was careful as I did it. I do have a uniform of sorts, I have items that no matter what I will always repurchase:

• Jeans
• A white fitted shirt
• Sweaters
• A black skirt
• Black dress pants
• Some sort of geometric black pants (current iteration is checks, the one I saved is diamonds)

I kept those in a plastic bin under my bed. I kept the underwear that’s too big, and the bras too. Also the workout gear (running clothes mostly). All of those are things I have no matter what size I am. And I felt peaceful about the whole thing. I also realized that I’m one of those people who doesn’t like the super full belly after a meal, nor do I like a super full closet. Instead, I want everything in there to work for me right now, to fit me today.

All the way from Glengerry, Victoria

Which is in Australia.

I fell down the Etsy rabbit hole a couple of weeks ago, sparked by a blog post about patterns and capsule wardrobes best suited for traveling. I have more to say about that in another blog post, but for now I wanted to share the three patterns I got and how amazing it is to me that I could look online at vintage patterns that were the right size and reasonably priced—in Glengerry, Victoria, Australia!—and have them show up in my mail box not two weeks later.

It’s a small world, after all.

Here are the patterns (yes, the last one is most definitely a child of the 80s, don’t say anything mean about it, I love it and can’t wait to make it up):

Playing around with a new app

Well it's new to me, anyway.

Original photos are on the left, the Prisma versions on the right. Link takes you to the Google Play store, it's also available on iTunes but you'll have to find that stinky link on your own.

No, I really can’t lift it (and you probably can’t either)

See the broken belt hanging down?

I was heading out the door this morning for the 9:30 service at church. I greet there the first and third Sundays and of course today is the first Sunday in October.

I pressed the garage door opening, and it made the normal noise for about a second, then stopped. Huh, I thought, maybe I didn’t really press the button? So I tried again and got the same results. This time, I knew for sure I’d pushed the button properly and when it didn’t open again, I sort of stood there staring at the door. I tried one more time, realized that nope, it wasn’t going to open so I ran inside and emailed the woman who coordinates all the greeters to let her know I was stuck at home.

You might remember that I’ve tried before to open the garage door manually—I tried after the lightning strike that fried the motor but couldn’t even budge it. We have just the one garage door across a two car garage. It’s solid wood, and original from 1958.

Fortunately, I brought my work laptop home on Friday, the way I always do. Here’s hoping that the company that just installed this new motor can get out to our place tomorrow.

October's cat (with bonus real cat)

This may be my favorite photo so far. I love how the cat's just sitting there, coolly observing the world. But that's cats for you.

An idea from a friend

I have a friend—M—who’s imaginary only in the sense that I have not yet met her face to face. We’re part of a small group of friends, eight in all, and we’ve been mailing cards and postcards to each other for going on five or six years.

A couple of weeks ago, M sent me a card and when I got it, I thought it was perfect for a friend at work. That friend, Jane, has accepted a job with another company and is leaving her current job this week. While I’m sad for me (Jane and I have the best conversations about everything under the sun), I am ecstatic for her. The new position is a promotion and will let her move her career in a direction more in keeping with her interests and her abilities.

I told my imaginary friend, M, that the card was perfect for Jane. She said well you should figure out a way to give it to her. Here’s what I did.

This photo makes the card look much bigger than it is, it's actually fairly small. 

Dining room is back to normal (at last)

This is one of those projects that took a long time. It started with the foundation work we did in April, 2015; the house had nearly a three inch drop toward the street side and before we could make any other changes, that had to be fixed.

Getting started

Then we had to wait . . . and wait . . . until everything settled into the new position and any cracking that was going to happen did happen. So then we needed to find someone to repair the cracks, which we did in July. The guy we used suggested that rather than getting rid of those built in cabinets, we reuse them in the garage.

So we did.

Bye bye built in cabinets.

Repurposed cabinets in their new home.

Then we asked him to come back because we knew we were going to use the Billy bookcases from Ikea and wanted them to look as built in as possible. So he did.

Kent assembled the bookcases. 

You can see the framing John added around the bookcases.

Kent stained the framing
and put a coat of poly on too.

In a way, this project reminded me of the kitchen renovation we did when we lived in Crush House. That kitchen had a peninsula that just made no sense at all. We were stymied about what to do until one night (while on strong pain medication after major surgery), I told Kent he should just get out his circular saw and take that sucker out. He warned me we might have to live with the hole in the floor for a while, and we did; it was nearly a year later before we were positive we didn't miss the storage and had a good idea of what we wanted to do.

Ugly peninsula (and counter top).

Hole in the floor tile.

An after picture; I'm really proud of this project.

We figured it out

Well—Kent did, actually.

Wally’s got a wound on his upper lip on the right side of his face. That’s the same side as where he had the upper canine removed. Since the wound appeared after the tooth removal, we knew they were related but weren’t sure why. We’d seen his upper lip catch on his upper gum in that spot but that didn’t seem like enough contact to create the wound.

Kent's been watching him off and on during the day and realized Wally is catching his upper lip on the point of his lower canine. He’s basically stabbing himself in his lip a little every time that happens.

Since it’s not infected, and it doesn’t appear to be inflamed or particularly bothering him (although it sure bothers me), we haven’t called the vet. We’re continuing to watch it, though. I don’t want anything else to go wrong with our kitties’ health so if it doesn’t show signs of healing in a week or so, we’ll have to decide which of the vet recommendations we’ll use and then endure the pain of taking him to another vet.

This instead of that

As we’ve run the numbers and scrutinized our budget on just my income, we’ve figured out that we’ll need to tighten up by about $300 a month when unemployment runs out.

Here’s an interesting side note: in Kansas, the length of time you can be on unemployment is tied to the state unemployment rate. Right now, the unemployment rate is 4.3% and that means you can get 16 weeks. If it rises to 4.5% over a rolling three-month average, then that time would increase to a total of 20 weeks. We probably won’t get there in time for Kent to have the longer amount of time and honestly I don’t actually want unemployment to rise (not to mention that unemployment pays very little).

Going back to our budget, we don’t actually do a lot of discretionary spending, Crazy Trips notwithstanding and also we haven’t gone on one in well over a year. Where we did spend like that, we stopped: we dropped my contribution to my 401K down to 10% and may drop it more after the first of the year, and we stopped paying extra on the principle for our mortgage and now just pay the mortgage.

I have one professional membership I’d already decided not to renew so that’s confirmed as money I won’t spend (I will keep my membership to SIOP, however, as that’s important to my career). But the rest of that shortfall will need to be made up in tiny savings, not big obvious ones.

We compare prices between Amazon, Walmart and whatever store we’d normally have gone to for the item. Walmart almost always has the lowest price (not in cat food because they don’t carry what we use), followed by Amazon. I know some folks who won’t shop at Walmart and to them, I would say that’s a choice you can make. Right now, we can’t (and honestly where do you think the employees of Walmart would work if all the stores shut down?), and I made no apology for that. 

Here are some of the choices we’re making:

I’m sure there are other, similar choices we’ll be making—but those are the ones we’ve identified already. Got any suggestions? 

September's cat

Yes, I waited until today—happy birthday, Mom! Also, I've always had a soft spot in my heart for black and white kitties. They seem to have such large, friendly personalities. 

Well this is weird

I’m not entirely sure how Fitbit calculates steps. You put in your height and your weight in the dashboard, and pick the hand you’re wearing the Fitbit on (dominant or non-dominant hand).

The reason I bring this up is I’ve noticed a difference between the results from my old Fitbit and my new one. It might be that they’re just slightly different in how they read steps.

I also wondered if weight is part of the calculation, maybe more than I realized. When I got my first Fitbit, I picked a likely number for my weight (I don’t weigh myself, since knowing the actual pounds I weigh tends to trigger my eating disorder—no thanks on that!).

Last month, right before a medical test that required sedation, the person gathering my health information told me what I weigh (I’ve been doing my best to forget ever since). So I put that weight in the dashboard for my Fitbit when I set it up.

Normally on non-run days, I’ll get between 5 and 6 thousand steps just going about my normal day. Now I get in the high 4 thousands. Runs are clocking in slightly less also, but my running route hasn’t changed.

In a way, I don’t care—I use the Fitbit as a relative scale that I’m staying active (and I rely on the silent alarm every work day, love that gentle buzz). But I do find it kind of strange that weight—if that’s the reason—changes my step count so much.