debt

Farewell

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Insomnia, guilt, and a conversation I had today are the inspiration for this post. Why can’t I sleep when certain thoughts creep into my brain? More importantly, why can’t I let things, people, or “friends” go?

It’s all about the brownies. If you had one day inadvertently come across this recipe as I did, you would understand. The scrumptious perfection of these brownies, modified by my specification of Hershey’s Special Dark chocolate chips and dutch process cocoa, make every morsel a delectable experience. When I first started making them, it was an occasional treat, a decadence the whole family could enjoy. But I was quick to discover that they don’t last, that from-scratch bakery items must be enjoyed to their fullest almost immediately after emerging from the oven, or all sense of richness is lost. And so I brought a few to work. The reaction was astounding, and people began to ask about them. I brought in a few more. Soon I was making weekly batches of brownies and bringing the entire 9×13 pan into work, cutting them up, bagging them individually, and setting aside corners for certain colleagues and the coveted “center cuts” for a special few.

So as I lay in bed just now, thinking about the F-bomb and my purposeful use of it under imperative circumstances when the whole FUCKING world ought to agree it is necessary, I started adding up the ingredients of my weekly brownie list. Fifteen brownies a week, four eggs, two sticks of butter, a bag of chocolate chips, one and a quarter cup of cocoa, a tablespoon of premium vanilla, one and a quarter cup of flour, two cups of sugar, one teaspoon of baking soda, fifteen sandwich baggies. What does it add up to? $10 a week, $40 a month, 10 months in a school year, $400 a year.

Now let’s talk about my coworkers, who have two incomes and car payments and student loans and childcare expenses and every other FUCKING excuse in the world to NOT have any money. And me, family of five, ONE income, NO debt (other than a mortgage), who rides my ass up thirteen miles of hills with those heavy ass brownies ON MY BICYCLE and specifically sets aside the best cuts for the BEST people, and I am spending $400 a year so that if I USE THE WORD FUCK ON FACEBOOK I GET DE-FRIENDED??

That’s it. Farewell to the fucking brownie list.

Puncture Wound

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you are the hole in my tube,
tiny as a pin prick,
a puncture wound,
not for one second
able to hold the air
i fruitlessly pump.

your removal is tedious,
leaves road remnants
and layers of unwashable dirt
on my palms and fingertips,
takes an extra set of hands
and real strength to complete.

i haven’t the strength
to discover how you ruined my day,
only the muscles to move on,
to accept that you’re now
lying on the floor of my garage,
a haunting shadow
that tries to follow me everywhere.

Fancy

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i don’t need a fancy gym or P-90x
i just rode thirty miles with the Vittetoe Express
my bike, tag-along, and a trailer daisy chain
may look to others just a little bit insane

but you’re popping out seven hundred a year
i spent eleven on coffee and cheer
when it’s sixty degrees in January
my legs and arms made a workout fairy

yes, it took six hours to visit the zoo
but i still made a deal better than you
i didn’t sacrifice one moment from my girls
and that beats all the muscles from your fancy curls.

Underbelly

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we are here now,
sister, brother-in-law, niece,
grandparents who have filled
the underbelly of the tree
with Wal-mart’s
explosion of Chinese reality.

he and i lie in the dark
on our basement floor mattress,
the tint of the waning moon
lingering light upon his whiskered face.

Santa has already arrived,
stripped down because
the underbelly of the tree
regurgitated its recklessness.

i will never forget,
i tell him,
this time at my own
grandparents’ house,
when my mother,
her measly salary
half of my father’s pittance,
after seeing the
gifts my grandmother
inundated us with,
turned to him and said,
‘I hate being poor.‘

i try to remember this
as we rise before the sun,
set up the camera
in anticipation of their anxious faces,
and spend hours
exchanging money, goods
from the underbelly of the tree
that seems to mock,
wealth, wealth, wealth
with its shedding branches
that drop needles
like tears onto the hardwood.

How to Live on One Salary (Remix)

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1. Forget about owning a new car. If you can’t forget it, stop reading now. You can eliminate up to $800 a month in payments if you don’t have a car payment and its ensuing expensive insurance.
2. Buy the minimum coverage for car insurance. Take a risk. It’s worth it.
3. Pay off all your debts (other than mortgage) before you consider it.
4. Save for retirement in a 401K, 403b, or whatever you can. It may be the only money you save for a while. But it’s something.
5. Take advantage of refinancing when the interest rates are at their lowest.
6. Eat at home 90% of the time.
7. Bike or carpool to work.
8. Use your tax returns wisely: pay off debts, save a little, use the rest for a small vacation.
9. Speaking of vacations: drive. It’s better for the environment, less scheduled, and more up to you. Have kids? Drive at night. They’ll sleep, you’ll be happy.
10. Buy used. Buy used. Buy used. I just bought three sweaters, a hat, and two nice pairs of pants for work at the Goodwill for $22. Brand-name products that look brand new. Craigslist is a great place to find virtually anything you need, from kids’ toys to bikes.
11. Create a monthly budget. Stick to it as much as possible.
12. Expect the unexpected. Cars (especially the old one you’re driving) will break down. It’s better to put it on a credit card you can pay off in a few months than to pay a car payment.
13. Do a babysitting exchange with another family. Enjoy an occasional night out without the extra cost.
14. Look for sale items at the grocery store and stock up.
15. Cancel your cable. You can watch a variety of things on the Internet, and Netflix is much more affordable. There’s nothing on TV anyway.
16. Get books and audiobooks from the library. Music too.
17. For gift giving, take advantage of after-Christmas sales and stock up on kids’ toys and Christmas wrapping paper. Flip the wrapping paper inside out to wrap gifts for every occasion.
18. Give up hair dyeing, manicures, pedicures, and salons. You’re beautiful the way you are.
19. Weather-proof your house as much as possible to save money on energy costs. Use cold water for washing clothes.
20. Decide what you really need to buy versus what you want to buy. Make sound choices, and you’ll have extra money (occasionally) to blow on fun items.

Borrowing

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my new favorite band
sings just to me
when you have pain or debt
who do you borrow from?

i think of Dunbar again
(just one riotous day)
and the root, of course,
in my love affair with words.

debt: Latin (debere), to owe
how ironic, rhymes with borrow
and i wonder if the Avetts, whose
name sounds like the Latin avis (bird)

are asking me (they sing to me)
if i borrow pain (can we borrow suffering?)
or if debt is a form of pain
or if it is life we borrow.

i will never know.
i am just a listener of songs
like all the other listeners,
borrowing their music to bury my pain.

Birthday Party

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it is her first invite
(i wish it was her last)
and we sit in awkward silence
exchanging knowing looks

we’re surrounded by excess fat
skimmed off meat
once set aside just for the rich that has
oozed into our barely-middle class neighborhood

in gluttonous globs it surrounds
even the youngest rosy cheeks,
tripping and slipping their every step
as they unwrap, unwrap, unravel.

by coming here today, we are guilty,
and though our portion size is smaller,
it sits at the edge of the heaped-to-ceiling plate,
torn to bits in minutes by a ferocious four-year-old.

we take our leftovers in six baggies home,
but they are not for the dog. they are for us,
our girls, to chew on all evening, to try and
fill the growling hole in our gut-wrenched stomachs.

Only One

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You were the Only One I chose.
My sister would call me from New York
and ask periodically.
“Only One?” she would say,
her voice apprehensive and expectant.

I knew. I always knew, even then.

Perfect. Small town,
old architecture,
friendly professors,
far away from home,
one of the few with
a major in creative writing.

How could you deceive me?
Your price tag floating down
from the clouds and stabbing me
in year one, your ridiculous parties,
your drunken frats and sisterhoods,
the teachers who were too snobbish
to help me with the simplest questions.

But I can’t say I didn’t follow you,
didn’t tuck my gumption into my pocket,
pack my bags, and head east.

It didn’t take long before I realized,
filing cards in the catalog at my
tiresome, tedious, minimum wage and hours
library job (the one that made me gag
about going into a library for years afterward),
that I wanted to be a teacher.

So even if you didn’t hand me my dream
(as you had promised in your glossy brochure),
the wind blew me west again
and my Only One stayed put,
waiting for another deception.

Ten Million Shades of Green

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for less than you paid for the
plastic tarp that covers the addition
you’re attaching to your
6,000-square-foot, $10 million home,
we enjoyed the same priceless views

a sky as blue as God’s eyes
with puffy white clouds dancing
in front of distant snowcapped peaks,
the green hills and weeping willows
decorating the winding, perfectly flat path,
the ponds with cattails, the canal,
the endless crabapples dressed in
pink and white flowers for spring,
the sprouting green bushes,
your gorgeously manicured yards,
green grasses galore,
green buds of leaves popping
out on trees as tall as back east.

your green may have seven figures,
but mine has ten million shades,
strength in my calves,
a content-with-books-to-read-in-the-trailer
oldest daughter,
and priceless views
that I didn’t pay a penny for.

Ten Random Thoughts

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1. Though I thought I really had earned that 99-cent bag of Cheetos after my eight-mile run, I decided, as always, that it’s better to share it with my girls. Everything is.
2. Libraries are the best places I know. From browsing through the online catalog and reserving books and CDs to their wide variety of audio books and DVDs, I can think of few places where our tax money is better spent. It’s a shame more people don’t think like me.
3. A frugalista’s version of a car wash is to squeegee all the windows at the gas station. It’s not like we need to see out of the doors or the hood, so why do those need to be cleaned? Ever?
4. Having a handful of kids’ DVDs can make the weekend much more relaxing.
5. Why didn’t I think five years sooner to give the girls a bath BEFORE dinner? That way they’re mostly ready for bed before we even eat and their hair dries on its own. Duh.
6. Having second-degree-burned myself as a child (resulting in plastic surgery and permanent scarring), now when I make a quick burn mistake I have catlike reflexes, rushing to the sink and running my hand in ice-cold water, preventing another scar. Or, everything happens for a reason.
7. iTunes and iPods are the greatest modern inventions. In ten minutes I made the perfect playlist for running with an iPod that fits in my tiny yoga-pants pocket. Remember the days of mixed tapes and Walkmans?
8. Always go for the sale items. Today I saved 30%. Tomorrow I’ll have money to pay my bills. So simple.
9. Cheap wine (my favorite is Barefoot) tastes as good as expensive wine if you share it with someone you love.
10. The only thing I remember from that Life’s Little Instructions book my mom gave me when I graduated high school: “Marry the right person. It will determine 90% of your happiness in life.” Almost twelve years later, I must concur.