Winning the Lottery in My Mind--Financial Friday

                 A couple weeks ago, Jen Mann, of People I Want to Punch in the Throat fame, posted the lottery question:  "If you won the lottery, what would you do with the money?"  I answered that I would dump it into investments, then use the proceeds to pay off our house, pay off the debts of my siblings (in annual chunks of the IRS gift allowance, so I don't create more debt for them), establish some scholarships in honor of my mentors, and buy a few houses in the same neighborhood for friends and family so we can all live near each other.  Then, I would start buying up student and loan debt at wholesale prices and start forgiving it in IRS gift chunks as well.  The economy of the ordinary person in the United States is crippled by debt right now, and if I could improve the lives of a few people, why wouldn't I?

                The California Powerball is $127 million right now.  If I did all I listed, there would still be money left to buy anything that caught my fancy or to travel to any location I desired.  What to do with what's left after that?  Start making the world better.  And create a fund at every theatre I love to provide an assistant to the costume designer for every production, so that doesn't have to come out of the budget anymore.

                I was watching  The Home Edit the other day, and I get the feeling that I might be the only person on the planet without a walk-in closet.  They have one ordinary person and one celebrity on each episode, and one of the episodes had a Kardashian sister's garage, where she stores her merchandise, supply overflow, her art area, and her kid's cars.  Multiple.  The kid appears to be within a year of Tiny's age.  I'm mystified.   Why would a toddler need that many cars?  I realize that these aren't expensive toys to people in that tax bracket, but holy bananas.  Tiny is thrilled with the Cozy Coupe that was her big birthday present this year.  The main attraction is getting in and then getting out again.  She's like a cat that way.  The next biggest thrill is getting pushed around by Fuzzy "really, really fast."  Doing doughnuts is also a big attraction.  I'm not sure I would trust her with a motor vehicle of any sort, as she is two years old.  I don't think her joy would be doubled with a second little car, although we'll probably set her up with a tricycle next year.

                Do we really need more stuff to be living our lives completely?  Is there a point where it's too much, even if we do have space for it?  I've been considering the question since everything started changing in March and we started slowing down.  If I have so much that I can't locate it, what was the point of having it in the first place?  What do I really care about, and how am I making what I have and what I do match those values?  When things fell apart in the last recession, I was struck by how little all the things I owned could help me.  I would never be able to sell them for what I paid, and in the short term, they wouldn't do the important things like preserving our health or keeping my children fed.  It's part of why I have been so stringent about staying out of debt as much as I can--there's more flexibility in a lower monthly expense level.

                 In theatre, we call the running expenses of a show--the initial expenses of building the show, the payrolls of the cast and crew, the payroll of the orchestra, royalties to the creators and producers, printing costs, the rental of the theatre, etc.--the "nut."  A highly expensive show like Spiderman:  Turn Off the Dark may never make back its nut--someone estimated that the show would have to run for centuries before everyone made back the expenses, but most shows have reasonable enough budgets that they can keep the show going at a certain level of ticket sales.  The smaller the nut, the lower the threshold.  Part of why some shows run for decades is not only their popularity, but also their relatively low running cost. 

                As we face these continuing uncertain times, it's time to ask ourselves:  what's our nut?  How can we make our nut small enough for our show to run and run?  I know I want a A Chorus Line or Chicago instead of a Spiderman:  Turn Off the Dark.  Until we all win the lottery.

Catch-Up Library Thursday--What We're Reading

             I missed Thursday's post, so this is a do over.  It was a rough day, but I'm hopeful for today.  Kiddo wanted me to write some more about the Upside Down Magic series, as we are listening to the most recent book right now, but I feel like I've already shared a lot about it.  I worry that this might be the last book in the series, but there has been no announcement in that direction, so I won't ruin Kiddo's fun.  Once this one is done, though, I need to look around for another series of books for us to do together, because there appears to be one book a year, and we will be all caught up once we finish this one.  I might sneak A Little Princess into the mix before the next series, though, because Kiddo adored the movie and might like the book, too. 

                Is it unreasonable to worry that Kiddo prefers audiobooks?  It's becoming more and more apparent that she has some AD/HD tendencies, and I wonder if her preference has to do with that--she gets the stories, but she can wiggle at the same time.  Audiobooks have certainly helped my life, after all.  I'm also trying to convince her that if she just does her schoolwork every day, she won't have a massive catch-up project every few months (three guesses what this week's big activity has been).

                Tiny, meanwhile, is obsessed with Matthew Van Fleet's Heads, which is a fun interactive book with tabs to push and pull and flaps to flip and such.  It was Kiddo's first, so some of the flaps and moving parts have been torn off.  I'm debating buying a new copy, so she can have the full experience.  I know what it is to be the youngest sibling and have to put up with the damage that other kids did to your books before they were yours.  She loves all the interactions, so I'm also putting interactive books on her Christmas wish list for this year, too.  One of her uncles is very into pop-up and interactive books, and one of her aunts is just generally into all books, so I think such a request would be welcomed.

                I just finished Revenge of the Spellmans by Lisa Lutz.  The whole series is a lot of fun, following a woman who grew up in a family of private investigators and couldn't help but join the family business.  It's relieving, once in a while, to read a mystery in which nobody dies.  I love a good murder mystery as much as the next girl, but we are spending enough time with death these days.  It's a bit ironic, then, that I picked Belgravia, by Julian Fellowes, for the next book, as the story revolves around two people who died before their time.  I loved the series on Epix (which I binged on a preview weekend--suckers), so I'm looking forward to the book.  I'm a little concerned that, since Fellowes is a TV series creator, there won't be many revelations in the book that weren't already in the series.  If his name sounds familiar, it's because he also created Downton Abbey, as well as the book (script) for the Broadway musical version of Mary Poppins.

                It's the end of the month, so I borrowed the rest of my allowance from Hoopla.  I need more good audiobooks that take less than 9 hours for November.  Any suggestions?

Mob Caps--A Tutorial for What I Do Wednesday

  

                I am so close to the finish of this year's Halloween costumes.  Kiddo declared that she wanted to be Little Red Riding Hood this year, and she wanted it to be a family costume.  With everything shut down, I actually had time to make everything, and having just finished the fabric organization blitz, I can actually locate the fabrics, notions, and patterns to do it without shopping.  I cheated a little, and bought the nightgown fabric from the Pink Depford sale a couple weeks ago, but otherwise, the entire set of costumes, from fabric to notions to thread to patterns, is all from my (sizable) stash.  I'm doing my best to do all the sewing for the next few months from the amazing stuff I already own.

                The only big thing left to do is to make a couple mob caps for Grandmother and the wolf.  I didn't want Tiny to be trapped in a fur suit all day, so I designed her into the wolf after he dresses as Grandmother, dropping the fur moments down to cuffs on the sleeves and drawers and a hood with ears.  Now the hood needs a cap, and so do I, so I can just pin up my hair and cover it.  As long as I'm making it, I'll do a tutorial along the way.

1.  Make the pattern.  Measure your head loosely across the top from ear to ear, and add four or five inches for the ruffle.  For me, it's eighteen inches.  Fold your piece of paper (I use freezer paper from the grocery store) into quarters, then eighths.  Use a ruler to mark half of your total (nine inches) out from the corner to make the arc.  Cut it out, then unfold to admire your circle. (I particularly enjoy not measuring every plate and pizza pan in my house to get a close approximation.)  Then mark a line two inches from your cut edge all the way around in a dark ink.  Let your pattern dry.

2.  Cut your fabric.  I like to use a lightweight cotton/poly blend for mob caps, because it sits well on the head and doesn't have to be steamed or pressed as much.  If you're making a stack of these (and let's face it--I'm always making a stack of stuff), fold your fabric so you can cut four or six layers at a time.  pin the pattern to the fabric, and cut.  Then, one at a time, put the cut fabric on top of the pattern so you can see your dark line, and lightly pencil mark your fabric for the casing.

3.  Serge your edge with flat lace.  I buy flat eyelet lace by the roll, so I happily use it to finish edges of a lot of things.  Make sure your pencil mark remains on the inside of the cap, and that your lace will be right side out once it has been flipped down.  The one big secret to successful sewing is putting right sides together to stitch.  Line up your edges as you serge, and fold the ends under at the beginning and end.  Overlap them.  If you have a big lace, it will bowl up as it goes around the curve, but the gathering of the elastic in later steps should solve the issue.  I recommend a lace no wider than one inch for this project.  Swing over to your straight-stitch machine, and top stitch the cap so the lace lays out flat from the edge of the circle instead of being tucked in, and top stitch the ends together.

4.  Pre-curve your bias.  It's easy to ignore this step, but it will make your life a whole lot easier.  Heat up your iron, and press your bias tape (I get the 3/4" kind) in a circle about the size of a dinner plate.  Just keep pressing the bias into circles.  It will stretch and shrink into the curve, and then you won't have to fight with it as you stitch it down.  Plus, it's oddly soothing.  Do this for bias binding necklines and armscyes and hat brims, too, and watch your quality improve.  I wish I could tell you where to get this ironing board cover, but I got mine brand-new in the package (score!) at the thrift store.  It's probably in the quilting section of the fabric store, but I can't check on that, as I am not supposed to be in the fabric store right now.

5.  Stitch your bias tape onto the cap, and add elastic.  Fold about half an inch of the end of the bias tape under and refold the edges.  Line up the inner curve of the bias tape with the pencil mark and top stitch it very close to the edge.  I usually eyeball it using my standard foot, but many people prefer using the edge stitching foot (sometimes called the blind hem foot, number five on your Bernina).  When you get near the end, cut the tape and fold it under and refold the edges to have two folded edges next to each other.  Stitch the other side of the bias to make a casing.  Cut a piece of half-inch (3/8" or 1/4" if you had to use half-inch bias) elastic that goes around your head, hugging it a little, but not to the point of headache, plus one inch for overlap.  Feed it through the bias tape casing, then either safety pin it to allow for adjustment (when it's going to now be fit to someone) or overlap the edges and stitch them together.  Then swish the casing over the elastic to make the gathering even.

                That's all there is to it.  Now you can start being the hero of the Drama Club volunteers, once we get back to having Drama Club and volunteers.  Use smaller circles for perching caps, and bigger circles for obnoxious floofy bits (I suggest lining those with organza for poof).  Move the casing placement out for a smaller ruffle, and in for a bigger ruffle.  These caps have been especially useful for maid scenes in musicals, when the ladies' ensemble need to all be maids, but have no time for wig changes.  Attach a couple wig curls, and pop them on over their wig caps. 

                You now have the option of saying, "Oh, this?  I just whipped it up this afternoon!" all casual and stuff.

               

Evita in October--Poor Choice? (With Bonus Guys and Dolls Content!)

                 It's usually Broadway Tuesday, but there's not much Broadway to go around right now.  I've been listening to some cast recordings I'd forgotten I owned lately.  With the recent discussion about Evita and especially the scenes around the Casa Rosada balcony, I pulled out the film recording from 1996.  I remember seeing the movie with my sister while visiting her at college, and acquiring the cds a few weeks later.  I had been listening to the original Broadway cast recording on cassette (You kids get off my lawn!) for quite some time by then.  I had it memorized, so every time the movie cut or altered a line, I noticed.  I bitterly noticed.  I'm the kind of obsessive that listens to an album over and over and over, especially back then, when cds were expensive and I only got a handful a year.  I also raided the library and listened to anything that sounded even vaguely interesting.

                I've spent a lot of time listening to cast recordings through the years, and one of the odd things I do sometimes is collect multiples of the same show and compare casts and orchestrations.  It's pretty much the nerdiest thing someone can do.  Example:  The 1990s revival of Guys and Dolls is lush and wonderful, and the original 1940s version is fantastic as well, but my favorite is the 1970s cast recording, from an all-African American cast that includes Ken Page.  It was produced by Motown.  It's magnificent, with added orchestrations to give it the 1970s feel.  Ken Page singing "Sit Down You're Rocking the Boat" is life altering, and every other performance on that album is spot on perfection.  "More I Cannot Wish You" will inspire tears, even on your fiftieth listening.  This album has been my companion for over twenty years, and I still love it.

                Back to Evita.   It is not a good idea to deep dive into a rock opera about the wife of a dictator the month before a contentious election, but here we are.  Is it uncomfortable to listen to passages like, "We have ways of making you vote for us, or at least of making you abstain!"?  Totally.  Painfully.  Is one of the problems of the show, and by extension the movie, that they show some horrible behavior of both Eva and Juan, but then expect you to cry for her death at the end (not a spoiler)?  One of the first things she does upon arriving as Juan's new mistress is to remove the fourteen-year-old who had held the position before.  Later, as they attempt to take over the country, he muses, "How annoying that we have to fight elections for our cause.  The inconvenience, having to get a majority.  If normal methods of persuasion fail to win us applause, there are other ways of establishing authority."  The movie tried to soften this one by transferring the lines to the narrator, but they stayed, illustrating the murkiness in all of this.  The movie also cut out some of the reference to the Perons hiding money from Eva's foundation in a Swiss bank account, but that was in there, too.  They made no secret of the spending spree to outfit the formerly destitute Eva in mountains of high fashion, including thousands in couture for the Rainbow Tour.  Ultimately, Evita is the story of a girl with nothing who wanted everything and stopped at nothing to get it.  It's also the story of someone who turned charisma into power, and who gave enough back to the poor to become a hero.  There was no doubt she was charming and that she worked hard, but everything else is up for discussion.  At the best, she was the humanitarian face of a dictatorial regime that did do some good things for the workers.  At the worst, she was the dictatorial regime, running her husband from the sidelines.  He fell from power a few years after her death, then spent almost twenty years in exile before returning to power again. 

                The movie is gorgeous.  Alan Parker and his cinematographer, Darius Khondji, and costume designer, Penny Rose, do an unbelievable job.  This thing is just as good on mute as it is with sound, not because the singing is bad, but because the design and direction is just that incredible.  Penny Rose was allowed access to Eva's wardrobe for research, and the costumes are spot on.  It's also fun to play spot-that-baby, as Madonna was pregnant throughout filming, and they manage to make it less obvious through use of creative costuming and careful shooting.  For those of us in the know, though, it can totally be spotted, especially in the dancing in "Buenos Aries," which was clearly shot in stages.  The last bits of the movie were shot when they were finally allowed access to the Casa Rosada, so glancing views of Lourdes are easily available there.  Awesome.

                Again.  It's ooky this week, but it's still a good piece of art that is very conflicted.  Bonus points if you put it on mute and play the Broadway cast recording.  It doesn't always line up, but it's damn good.   Sing it, Patti.

Momming Monday--Sleepy Toddlers and Tie Dye Magic

                 I am in for it.  Tiny was in one of those Shroedinger's baby situations (It's quiet, but if I open the door to check if the baby is asleep, she will wake up, although I'm not sure if the baby is asleep...), so I ran around and did some chores.  Then I sat down and took care of the online chores and read some articles about how the world is ending in various and sundry ways.  Now, it's past eleven, when I usually start giving her second breakfast and prepping her for her nap.  Part of me wants to check on her, and part of me wants to see how long she intends to sleep.  I'll just peek in for a moment...

                Yup.  Still out like a light, with her little butt in the air.  I put a blanket back over her.  She clearly needs the rest, since she was still up last night at 10:30, when I had exhausted my repertoire of baby-friendly showtunes.  Something tells me that we're going to have a taller toddler on our hands in a couple hours.  And that taller toddler is going to be very hungry.

                I'm grateful for the break, though, because we cleaned out the fridge last night, which means I had dishes and leftover containers all over the kitchen this morning.  While Tiny slept in, Kiddo did distance learning, and I did the dishes.  I put everything I could into the dishwasher, but the dish drainer and the extra towel on the counter are both overflowingly full.  As a bonus, I am now finding the dishes I missed in their various (completely obvious) spots, so the sink is stacking up again.  Thank goodness Fuzzy didn't marry me for my domestic skills.

                Fuzzy and Kiddo did a tie dye day in the backyard this weekend, so I spend a goodly amount of time rinsing and prepping their projects for the final wash.  I taught tie dye at a summer day camp for three years, so I'm not as enchanted with pouring dye on things as they are.  It appears that they did not locate that bag of rubber bands that I thought I had next to the bag of gloves, though, as everything was tied with the little rubber bands that Kiddo uses to make rubber band loom stuff.   I guess that counts as a clever solution, but I now wonder what happened to the bag of rubber bands that are covered in dye.  I must spend some time looking around on that today. 

                I fell into the job as a tie dye teacher quite by chance.  Two ladies from Dickens Fair had been running this summer day camp for a city recreation department in Marin County for twenty years or so, and they needed a couple new teachers.  They called my friend and boss, who is also the Costume Director for Fair, and asked her to take over a set of classes, and then they asked her if she knew anyone else who was looking for summer work.  They had some classes that were deeply popular, and they just needed someone to run them.  She recommended me, and I agreed to take Tie Dye and create a crochet class.  They then hooked me up with the woman who had retired from teaching Tie Dye to help me figure out the structure.  The woman who used to teach this class was amazing--a fiber artist who specialized in dye techniques.  I learned a lot that afternoon.  Here are some of the most universally useful tips from her.

Useful things to make your next tie dye afternoon so much more successful:

1.  Put a plastic tablecloth on your tie dye table (which should be in the yard or somewhere easy to scrub).  Then put a couple layers of cardboard down to prevent dye puddles.

2.  Wear old clothes.  There are so many kids who assure you that they will be tidy, and this is not an issue.  This is always an issue.  I'm one of the most obsessive people I know, and I ruined a couple shirts before I got wise and put on an apron.

3.  Prep all your pieces before going out to the dye area.  All the folding and tying and rubber banding should be done before anything gets wet.  It cuts down on transfers and also dye-covered children tracking drips into your (previously clean) home.

4.  Put the gloves on.  You say that you think you don't mind getting your hands multiple colors, but then you have to go to church looking like you're responsible for a Smurf massacre.  Also, having been through multiple Right-to-Know workshops, I can assure you that just because it came in a package with a group of happy children pictured on the front, doesn't mean that the chemicals inside are practically food.  Gloves are available again, and the kits often come with them as well.  At the very least, you will have an easier time with cleanup.  At the most, your liver will stay the same color it was at the beginning of the day.

5.  Keep the project off the surface of the table.  We have several plastic baskets from the dollar store that we turn upside down and put the projects on.  That way, you can squirt the dye without your project sitting in a mushy puddle of previous colors, making the whole affair a lot closer to what you wanted in the first place.

6.  Bag each project separately.  I buy gallon-size bread bags from the dollar store for just this purpose.  The major goal with this is to prevent dye transfer between projects.

7.  Let the projects sit for a day before rinsing them out to let the dyes work their best mojo.  Then take them out of the bags, one by one, remove the rubber bands and ties, then rinse them in cold water until the water runs clear.

8.  Wash them on warm with a handful of Color Catchers, and never wash them with light clothing for as long as you own them.  Some colors are less stable than others, so color bleed can continue to occur.  Wash something with lower stakes, like dark sheets or cleaning towels in your washer after the tie dye load, just to be sure no dye remains in the washer.

9.  Clean the dye area as soon as you're done.  Wet dye cleans up more easily than dry dye that has settled into surfaces.  The cardboard and plastic tablecloth will hopefully have done their jobs and cleanup should be pretty fast, but life does wacky things every day.

                At the day camp, we used the materials offered by Dharma Trading Company, which is also located in Marin County, because it was not only local, but also the leader in the industry.  They are an amazing resource for all things fiber art--dyes, paints, methods, fabrics, and everything you can think of dyeing, available in ready-to-dye cotton.  They have a wonderful website with fast service, as well as a fantastic storefront (with dedicated parking!  And a killer yarn collection!) in San Rafael.  Proceed with a set budget--it's quite inspiring, and you can end up with three new hobbies before you're through the store.  This is not a sponsored post.  Dharma Trading doesn't know me from a dent in the wall, other than as that woman who orders several hundred t-shirts and a ton of dye once a year.

                That reminds me.  I should switch that stuff to the dryer and see if that noise I just heard was a rolling-over moan or the sound of a waking baby.  More tomorrow.

Thoughts Upon Discipline and the Nation at Large

                 Kiddo is off her grounding, and I'm so relieved.  She firmly believes that if she makes us miserable enough, we will release her from any punishment she is under.  I'm guessing it's typical kid, though I am not entirely sure.  The internet, when I was a kid, was something that scientists on television used, not something that parents needed to make rules about, especially in our out-of-the-way little town.  We barely had cable. 

                Kiddo had, unbeknownst to us, been skipping out of her online classes to watch videos on a site that has been only allowed under supervision since she first figured out how an IPad works.  We didn't create the rule lightly, but rather to protect her, as there is some odd stuff that a kid can fall into on the site, and we don't want her hurt.  We had been trusting that she was doing what she was supposed to be doing, while I dealt with Tiny and attempted to get a moment to myself.

                I walked in one afternoon to check on her classwork progress, and caught the tail end of a hair tutorial.  When I checked her history that afternoon, I found that she had been sneaking onto the website every day when everyone was supposed to be working on their own.  What really hurt was that I had been waiting patiently for hours for her to finish her work so that I could check it, as it had been slipshod before.  I was livid.  Grounding for a week seemed like a fair punishment.  She fought it the whole week.  It's been exhausting to keep her inside and to force her to entertain herself.  I can understand why so many parents are pushing so hard for in-person school to start again, but I'm just not comfortable yet.  There's so many things that can go wrong, and the consequences are so high.

                There's a lot of "over it" attitude in our area around Covid-19, and I can understand that.  I'm tired of wearing masks and distancing and staying home and no longer having an industry.  However.  We are not being asked very much compared to our grandparents' sacrifices during World War II, and not nearly for so long.  I don't know how to solve the worlds' problems, and I don't know if, ultimately, I am doing the completely correct thing. 

                I will say this, however.  We are being uniquely challenged to show our compassion and caring of others, and we are failing.  We are choosing our temporary comfort over the lives of others.  We are choosing politicians who value the wants of the very few over the needs of the many.  We are cheering for appointees to lifetime positions for reasons that have little to do with the job for which we will be paying them.  I have no idea when this will stop.  I don't know how we as a country will heal from the fever dream that has been created here, but I think the first thing we will have to do is own our parts in it.  For now, I will pray for the right thing to happen, and I will use the free will I have been granted by my creator to make the best possible choices for my family.  I only hope that others in states that have more power than mine will follow suit.  If you are choosing something because you like to see the other side cry, examine yourself.  If you think the larger states should just shut up and pay their taxes, examine your opinions about welfare.  There is a graphic going around that imagines if certain states broke off and formed their own nations.  If that actually occurred, the United States could face some very unique challenges, the chief being the loss of large portions of their tax base, as well as access to some major industries.  I doubt that will ever occur, but I will say that the unfortunate thing is that the internet has a much longer memory than most people, and while many had the opportunity to burn the photographs and writings that linked themselves to being on the wrong side of history in the past, such a situation does not exist today.  We can find your fansite dedicated to Nickelback in high school, and we can find your bigotry.  It won't even take a government-grade hacker.

All of My Financial Education in One Handy Post--Financial Friday

     Happy Financial Friday, everyone!  This is a long one, but it pretty much covers how we handle our money.  Enjoy!

                One of my sisters has dubbed me her financial mentor.  In her opinion, I have it all together, though I don't always see it.  Mostly, we have been very lucky and have made somewhat wise choices with the luck we've been offered. 

                I listen to at least four financial advice books a year.  Many of them advise basically the same things--budget, save for retirement as early as possible, buy housing and vehicles you can afford, and avoid debt whenever possible.  Most don't completely fit the life we have in particular, but they have allowed us to develop our system, which looks like this right now:

1.  If your employer offers a 401K with a match, take advantage.  I love free stuff.  I have a whole basket of hotel soaps in my bathroom, a good portion of my furniture came from other people's downsizing attempts, and in the before-times, I would totally try everything at the Costco sample stands.  Fuzzy's company offers a good match, and they offered a stepping system that bumps his contribution up one percentage point every year until we hit the savings goal we set (10% in our case).  We started at 7%, because that was what we could swing, so we should be up to the goal in the next year or so.  We've started late, due to a lot of little and big issues through the years, but we're on our way with that.

2.  Buy used cars, with cash if possible.  With the exception of the car Fuzzy's father bought him a couple years ago, we have never owned a new car.  It's a fact well recognized that you can save thousands by getting a good used car.  It gets even better if you can pay cash for it.  The last time we needed to buy a car (The previous car had failed smog testing, despite being a hybrid.  I'm still sad about it, because it was such a trooper, and I wanted so badly to get it to 200,000 miles. ), I raided the emergency fund, which wasn't the most perfect solution.  I didn't have to get funding or add another monthly payment, something we wanted to avoid with Tiny due in a few months.  Instead, we focused on getting the emergency fund back into shape as soon as possible.  I drive a car that looks suspiciously like a peanut M&M, but it's ours, free and clear.

3.  Discuss the big purchases.  I'm amazed by the people who drop hundreds on random things with no discussion with their partners.  Are you kidding?  We're in a partnership, and we recognize that if that partnership is going to survive financially, we need to make decisions together.  This doesn't mean that we rule over each other, or that I have to call from the store to get approval for the big tray of chicken.  It means that, when we are thinking of replacing an appliance or something along those lines, we talk about it.  We set a budget and discuss the options.  We talk about what features matter to us, and then we make the choice together. 

4.  Discuss the windfalls.  Any time we receive money in chunks larger than Fuzzy's biweekly paychecks, like tax refunds, bonuses, or stimulus checks, we talk about it ahead of time.  Money is like a group of volunteers.  You can get a lot done with it if you are organized and can tell it what to do, but if you don't have a plan, it can fritter away quickly.  Over the years, we've come up with this system:  we agree on a no-questions-asked amount for each of us to "blow" as we choose.  Fuzzy usually chooses a couple Lego sets, and I often opt for upgrading sewing equipment or new shoes or something for the girls.  After that, we divide the money up into paying off debts, getting ahead on the mortgage, and savings.  I make sure that none of it sits around in the checking account, waiting to slowly disappear.  For example, when the stimulus check arrived in April (May?  It's all running together), we gave ourselves $50 each, then made a mortgage payment to get ahead, then put the rest of it into the emergency fund.

5.  Build an emergency fund, and add to it automatically.  Just about every financial advisor agrees that one of the best things you can do for your financial health is to get an emergency fund that covers at least one month's expenses to start, preferably building to six or eight months.  It's up to you to decide what that actually means.  Some people want to replicate their full income, while others choose to replicate their bare bones budget.  After all, in an emergency, you will probably make minimum payments on as many of the bills as you can, and it's a lot less likely that you're going to do the everyday extras you indulge in right now.  Plus, in the case of a job loss, you will be spending less on the job-related expenses, like commute gas and tolls, dry cleaning, and coffees and lunches.  We've done a blend of the two, with a bit over the bare-bones budget, though not fully replacing  the full income.  I figure that we have about five to six months at this point, so there's still some work to do, but we're getting closer.  We add to it with an automatic monthly transfer from the checking account.  It took five minutes to set it up on our bank's website, and it's much more effective than promising myself that I will remember to do it when we have money someday at some point.

6.  Plan and save for big events.  We have a second savings account specifically for Christmas.  I figured out how much we would need to be able to afford what we like to do for gifts, decorations, wrapping, etc. for the holidays, and then I divided it by twelve.  That amount transfers automatically from the checking account every month.  I set it up at the same time as the emergency fund transfer, so that five minutes on the bank website several years ago has really paid off.  I know several people who do the same thing with their plans for vacations and season tickets.

7.  Don't stretch too far for a house and get a fixed rate mortgage.  The real reason we can do all that we do with the jobs that we have is that we bought at the bottom of the market and didn't do anything dumb with the mortgage.  My father gave me some very valuable advice when we first started shopping for a home:  if they can't explain your mortgage to you in less than two sentences, don't sign anything, and if the paperwork on closing day doesn't match what you've been promised, raise hell.  Bless him--he was so right.  For the first house while I was in grad school, they tried to get us to agree to a piggy back mortgage for the down payment, although we had assured them multiple times that we had the down payment at hand.  We have a boring mortgage here in California.  The payment is pretty much the same as the payment we had at the beginning.  It was a little bit of a stretch at the beginning, and it has been tough in other years, during spotty employment, but it's an unbelievable deal at this point--half of what similar homes in our neighborhood rent for.  Lucky us.  At this point, I throw extra money at the mortgage pretty regularly.  My plan is to pay off the house completely by the time Kiddo finishes high school, so that we will have some more room in our budget to help with college costs.  I feel that it will also assist with our retirement planning to have the biggest bill out of the way.

8.  Make do and mend.  Despite being larger than I was ten years ago, I still have clothes that are pretty old.  Anything that still fits and feels decent gets kept.  If it develops a small hole, I darn it back together.  If I stain it, I attempt to remove the stains.  Fast fashion is doing a real number on not only our pocketbooks, but also our psyches and our environment.  If you can't see wearing it more than a dozen times, why are you buying it?  Especially now, when so many of us are working from home or off work for a while?  It's worth asking yourself why you are buying something to outfit your house or yourself--is it to buy something, or is it because you need it?  I organized my closet a few weeks ago, and discovered I own several black cardigan sweaters in various shapes.  It didn't stop me from seriously looking at another black cardigan on my way to the checkout.

9.  Clearance, used and hand-me-downs rule.  When Tiny was in her first few months, she had so many clothes that they didn't all fit in her closet.  I had purchased about four of the pieces.  The rest were gifts and hand-me-downs.  When she outgrew them in a few weeks, I packed them up (except for a few sentimental ones) and passed them on to other new mothers, who were thrilled to have such a great variety of soft, warm clothes for free.  I hope they passed them on, too.  Half our furniture and decor also came to us at low or no cost to us from friends and family who were downsizing, redecorating, or moving.  That solid-wood dining set that you're tired of storing in your basement?  I'll be glad to take it off your hands!  That cute dresser in your garage sale for (gasp!) ten dollars?  Take my money!  My mother-in-law went to culinary school and used to run a catering company, so if I need something cooking related, I am required to ask there first.  My father-in-law was personally offended when we mentioned that we were considering buying a cooler for sodas at parties.  He had gathered all of theirs from various storage spots around the house...and they had ten.  As our parents retire and start clearing out their homes, we are positioned to be offered a lot of stuff.  Some of it is going to be better quality and more stylish than what we can buy, and our parents want to give it to us.  Stop wasting your money and start shopping castoffs.  The world will be better for it.

10.  Side hustle your dreams into reality.  Full time jobs that pay all the bills are a hard thing to come by a lot of the time.  Fuzzy has his full time job, but he also works at a local church/community center as their A/V tech and builder of odd things (the set for the summer bible camp's play, the stage for outdoor entertainment, the houses for their attempt at breaking the world record for the largest game of Monopoly, etc.).  Right now, he's usually only working on Sundays, running the video camera for their outside church services, and a smattering of hours to maintain equipment and create storage space for their upcoming holiday outreach supplies (they give away thousands of toys, gifts and meals in November and December every year and are anticipating an overwhelming need this year), but he still brings home enough every month to at least pay the power bill, and when gyms reopen, one of his benefits is a complimentary family membership to the center.  My career, when it comes back together, is a whole series of side hustles that add up to a nice amount of flexible money for us, along with a decent trickle of comped tickets to shows and events and some really nice castoffs from stock culls and show strikes.  We can get by on just Fuzzy's full time job, but we accomplish a lot of our extra goals on the side hustles.

So there you have it.  This is just about all my financial wisdom in one handy post.  We're not rich, but we are also far below the national average of debt for people our age, and we have something to work with if the bottom drops out.  My favorite financial authors are Dave Ramsey, Suze Orman, David Bach, and Gail Vaz-Oxlade (Her show, 'Til Debt Do Us Part, is on Amazon Prime Instant Watch right now), if you want to start learning how to take control of your money.

Library Thursday--What We're Reading Now

                 Is anyone else having trouble concentrating on books right now?  I have been on the same physical book for months now, and I can't seem to do more than two or three pages before I get distracted with something else.  Maybe if I can get to the point that I feel like the family is safe and secure, I can stop researching how to emigrate if the election goes sideways.  I've been getting my literary fix by listening to books via Hoopla online, mostly, though I've also been reading chapters out loud for Kiddo.  Here are this week's recommendations:

                The Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle series, by Betty MacDonald.  We finished the Harry Potter series this summer, despite my carefully dragging my feet at every turn in an attempt to get Kiddo to wait for the later books until she was a bit more mature.  It was a lot of emotion toward the end, and we had tears on the way to bed many times.  We have discussed the things we have learned about J.K. Rowling's attitudes about people we care about, and she has decided to keep the HP things she has, and to continue enjoying the stories, but to stop buying any new things that would enrich the author.  I think it is a very mature decision, and I am supporting it by using up the materials we have and exploring crafty options. 

                After we finished The Deathly Hallows, though, Kiddo desperately needed something less fraught, and I had just read an article praising the tongue-in-cheek humor of Betty MacDonald, who wrote several memoirs and children's books in the 1940s and 50s before dying relatively young of cancer in 1958.  Her most famous book is The Egg and I, which is at times achingly dated in attitudes, especially to Native Americans, but is a funny, insightful look at living in a very rural area in the later 1920s/early 30s.  It was turned into a movie that in turn spawned the Ma and Pa Kettle genre.  At the same time, she created children's books about Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, a very nice magical widow of a pirate who loves children.  Throughout the books, Mrs. P-W helps various fed-up parents to solve oddities in their children, such as avoiding tooth brushing, truancy, and sibling fighting.  Most of the stories are gently funny, and the children's behavioral issues are outlandishly bad, allowing the kids reading to feel slightly superior, even if they have the same challenges in a smaller scale. 

                For me, it's been fun to look in on what was considered typical in the middle of the twentieth century.  Mother was in charge of the entire house, every meal, and all the logistics.  Father was in charge of making the money, telling Mother there were problems with the children, and reading the newspaper.  As the books continue, Father does get more involved with the children, but just about every mother seems to be doing everything, especially for the male members of the family.  One mother despairs of how messy her son's room is every time she goes in to straighten it up.  Am I doing something wrong?  Am I supposed to be cleaning my school-age child's room?  Oh, wait.  My kid's a girl, so according to Mrs. P-W's world, she is in charge of keeping her room clean in addition to learning how to run a household from me.  The mind reels.  I guess it might be more plausible once Tiny goes to school as well.  Here's the other nostalgic moment:  the children walk themselves home from school.  Mother drives them if she's also dropping Father at the train station, but they often walk themselves to school as well.  When Kiddo goes back to in-person school, this Mother is looking at an hour on the road per day to drop her off and pick her up from school, since she goes to the GATE magnet across town.  And the children!  Go to their friends' houses!  Without Mother having to arrange play dates weeks in advance!  This is so fancy that I might faint.  Honestly.  I guess that there was less pressure back then to utilize every available minute of free time, and less expectation that the parents know precisely where the kids are at every moment.  Maybe that's how Mother always has cake or cookies freshly baked for the children's return from school.

                Kiddo prefers that I do the reading, as I apparently do better voices.  This has been observed with Fuzzy in earshot, and he refuses to feel bad about it, as he enjoys not being in charge of the reading.  It's been a challenge to come up with different-sounding voices for all the children and parents, and I often catch myself wondering if I've been consistent for Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle and her magical pets.  It's been fun, though, and we're now on the sequel books that were created by Ann M. Martin, of The Babysitters Club fame.

                We also have been barreling through the Upside Down Magic series, by Sarah Mlynowski, Lauren Myracle, and Emily Jenkins, in between Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle stories.  I'm surprised by how much I like them, and Kiddo is just obsessed.  It looks like the newest one just dropped on Hoopla, so once we're done with her current grounding  (Mom expects that you are doing school stuff when you're on the internet during school hours.  Deeply unreasonable, I know.), we'll be listening to that.  Yet another magical world, with magical schools, but this time, the book follows the kids who are magically different.  The parallels to special education in our world are carefully handled, and the whole affair is well crafted.  The movie that came out this year doesn't follow the books very closely, but Kiddo's also a big fan of it.

                Meanwhile, I've been listening to audiobooks in the sewing room while crafting quilts and Halloween costumes and masks.  This week, I finished My Lady Jane, by Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, and Jodi Meadows, which takes the story of Lady Jane Grey, the nine-day Queen who reigned between Edward and Mary Tudor in a power-grabbing plot created by her father-in-law, and explores an alternate story that offers a better chance for most of the people involved.  It's a fantasy novel, and the authors apologize to the English people for their treatment of their history at the very beginning.  At the start of the second part, they warn their readers not to expect any recognizable history for the rest of the story.  It's a total romp, and I loved it.

                Continuing on the lightweight vein, I just finished The Little Old Lady Who Struck Lucky Again! from the League of Pensioners series by Catharina Ingelman-Sundberg.  It's the second book in the series, again following the group of friends who happen to be senior citizens, as well as high-level thieves.  I am so sad there's only one more book in this series, because they are ridiculously fun, and the best kind of heist stories, with lots of near misses and scrapes.  They're so much fun, and they will make you crave cloudberry liquor with chocolate wafers and pray that you will never land in a nursing home.  Highly recommended.

                I'm starting to look for new audiobook options, so share your recommendations below.  I'll listen to just about anything except for horror.

How I Spent My Shelter in Place (What I Do Wednesday)

                 Since it's What I Do Wednesday, it's time to report on "How I Spent My Shelter in Place."  Spoiler--it's a lot and not very much at the same time.

                As previously stated, when everything stopped on March 13, I was working three jobs, and my workspaces showed it.  In the interest of ensuring a smooth process when it came time to finally perform the show, the folks in charge of Priscilla requested that I get the costumes I was working on ready for tech, so I spent a couple days finishing that lot and getting it out the door.  Then I made some masks for friends and family, including a big pile for a friend who works in the infectious diseases department of a hospital in Michigan.  I am still doing that when people ask me, though I've been trying to let the people who are in a less comfortable position than mine acquire most of that business.  Kiddo wanted to learn to use her sewing machine, but masks would be too complex for her skill level.   I pulled out the bin of animal and character fabrics, and we made a ton of fun, kid-friendly pillowcases for a local pediatric ward.

                I had spent the first couple months of the year finding and purchasing all the materials for the piecework part of my side hustles, so I was now sitting on enough fabric for a year's worth of big skirts, fancy belts, lovely cravats, and sweet reticules.  I had been so busy with everything else that much of it was folded into bins with no rhyme or reason, and then piled out in the garage, along with everything else we needed to do...something with.  Sigh.  I was still focused on making stuff, though, so I pushed through producing a bunch of skirts and some new pajamas and nightgowns for Kiddo.  The sewing room was to the point that I had a little path from the door to the sewing machine, and I had to set up an ironing board in the kitchen to do any pressing.  I could only open a few of the drawers, and locating the fabrics I could use was a nightmare. 

                Cleaning the room had been on the list for a while, but I just couldn't seem to get started.  Fuzzy finally stepped in and pulled a few boxes out into the kitchen/dining room area while I was taking a nap.  I organized things into categories, released a ton of stuff I had forgotten I had, and then pulled out a few more boxes.  It took a little over a week, and we ate a lot of meals in the living room, but I had a room where I could set up an ironing board, cut out a garment, and stage a big project.  It makes such a big difference.  I could actually take pictures of what I was doing without worrying about the background.

                I finished the order for the piecework, then started attacking the projects I had found while cleaning the sewing room.  It's amazing how easily you can do some of these projects when you remember that you have them, eh? 

                After the piecework went out, I put the stuff they couldn't buy right now into a bin, then took it out to the garage.  Finding a spot for it reminded me that I had a huge stack of patterns to put away from the great cleanout a couple weeks before.  Did you know that if you keep buying patterns after you have run out of space for them, it creates a problem?  It totally does.  It creates the problem I now had.  A friend from college who worked as a stage manager with a side hustle in vintage patterns had just posted on Facebook about losing her main job with the bankruptcy of Cirque/Blue Man Group, and I heard a little bell in the back of my mind.  I had held onto a lot of those patterns because a theatre might need them someday and because most thrift stores would just throw them away.  I came to the decision this spring that I don't owe any theatre free stock storage, and that if we needed patterns or other supplies, we would utilize the budget for them.  I didn't need to be the annexe for any company.  And, if I could send some of the patterns to my friend, they would have a chance of creating profit for her, instead of creating more garbage for the thrift store.  I messaged her, and she agreed to it, requesting patterns from before a certain date.  The project was on, and someone was waiting for me to finish it!  It took me about a week of evenings after the kids had gone to bed, but I went through all three of the filing cabinets, as well as the bags and bins that were waiting to be filed.  Suddenly, all the drawers closed, and I had a pretty big box started.  Liz from Pink Depford got wind of what I was doing, and she finished up her own pattern cull, handing me bags everything she was releasing.  I ended up sending out several boxes to Florida, and filling several garbage bags with the newer patterns, which should have a better chance at the thrift store.  I think I may have overwhelmed my friend a bit.  She did an unboxing video about it, so I'm vaguely anonymously famous.  I'm fancy and famous, y'all.  (Want to see how tightly we can pack a box of patterns?  Check the video!   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9JCOGLKJ1M&t=40s)

                Now I could walk in the sewing room, and I could locate my patterns.  The next step was obvious, and Fuzzy and I wondered how we could possibly organize my crazy fabric collection in the hottest part of the summer.  In the past, I had done fabric organization by lining up a bunch of bins in the garage, then dropping fabrics in as I emptied boxes and bags.  The garage was too full for that, and it was too hot.  He offered the idea that we take a weekend and just bring everything into the kitchen/dining room and sort it.  He would do the moving of bags, boxes, and bins, and also entertain the girls, and I would make the decisions.  We started with a bunch of the labelled bins from previous sorts, and after I had gone through them to cull things I really didn't need anymore, Fuzzy started bringing in the bags.  My organization method is a bit mixed.  The fabrics that were purchased for certain projects (skirts, belts/reticules/cravats, etc.) get their own bins, but others are stored by category or size (large-yardage wool, floral cottons, etc.).  All told, I culled over 20 garbage bags of all kinds of fabric and filled just about every available shelf in the garage with bins.  It took only two and a half days, and that includes rest periods and the time I spent crying and apologizing to Fuzzy for wasting our money on fabrics I wasn't going to use.  He refused to take the bait, and pointed out all the wonderful things I have done with so much of it, as well as how cheaply I had acquired so much of it.  God bless that man.  I am a lucky girl.

                At this point, I am doing my best to not purchase anything for new projects, as I can now locate my stuff.  I made a little exception for Pink Depford's sale last week, but I bought a quarter of what I would have scooped up before.  I'm proud of myself for that.  Right now, I have the family Halloween costumes on the work table, and other than the flannel  I bought at Pink Depford for nightgowns, everything is coming from my fabric stash.  Kiddo requested that we go as Grandmother, the Woodsman, the Big Bad Wolf, and Little Red Riding Hood this year, and I'm doing my best for her.  I also have quilts for the girls in the works, made entirely from fabrics I already had, and plans for a few other things around the house.  Being able to find things has really reignited my creativity, and I look forward to utilizing it.

                In conclusion:  How did I spend my Shelter in Place?  I spent it facing my crafty hoard, and making it into my crafty home.  And keeping my children alive.

Back Again

                Hey, look!  A new blog post!  Life fell apart a bit with Tiny Magoo getting bigger and my attempts to have a career and a baby at the same time having to be renegotiated (the kid won, as she should), but I am going to try again, armed with the knowledge that only my sisters and about three friends read this, so I can say basically whatever I want.

                Let's start with the obvious.  When everything shut down in March, I was toggling between three jobs--one day a week filling orders at Renaissance Fabrics, and working on productions of 9 to 5 and Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.  We were two weeks from tech on Priscilla at the college, and three weeks from tech on 9 to 5 at the local center for the arts.  It was a push, but it was all getting done, and I thought I was doing a pretty good job keeping all the balls in the air.  I had even started my traditional "Once This Show is Open, I'm Totally Gonna..." list, including luxuries like getting my hair cut, cleaning the sewing room, and maybe even just putting Tiny into day care for one extra day to give myself a few hours of just hearing my own thoughts.  Oh, the irony.

                Sheltering in place with the kids has been a mixed bag.  Kiddo Magiddo was going through a difficult time, and we were able to get her into weekly zoom meetings with a therapist, which has also allowed her to have a place to vent her frustrations.  After all, when I picked her up from school on March 13, her heart was broken due to the cancellation of her class overnight trip to a Gold Rush experience.  By the end of the day, school was closed for the next two weeks.  She still hasn't gone back, other than the reverse parade put on by the teachers and admin, and the materials drive-through pickup.  Her birthday trip to Legoland is still postponed.  Fourth grade, and now fifth grade, has turned out to be more about learning resilience and recognizing that one is living through history than about the usual school stuff.  Tiny Magoo is enjoying having unlimited time with Mom and having a regular naptime, but I worry about her development, as all her peers live inside the television now.  We've been in the new normal for almost a third of her life now, and while I look forward to the day she can be part of a playgroup again, I worry about it as well.  Unfortunately, we live in an area in which science is only believed when it is convenient, so it's going to be a long time for things to settle.

                We are safe and only moderately inconvenienced, thankfully.  One of the jobs was near the Costco and closer to Kiddo's school than home, so any time there wasn't enough work to fill the whole time before school pickup, I ran through for free samples and to prep for the back-to-back techs.  At our house, we have always done our best to prep the household for the solo parenting times.  By the second week of March, we had a full stock of paper goods and non-perishables, and Fuzzy and the kids did a grocery pickup that week as well.  I had tried out pickup services when I was hugely pregnant, and it was (and continues to be) deeply convenient for us.  Instead of creating a list and being available by phone for the person who went out, we put together the shopping cart online and finalize it together.  Long story short, we had a decent setup going into the emergency, especially since I had combined a button run with a baby food restock that Friday morning, before everything started shutting down.  Grocery orders for the next month or so turned into wishlists, and getting the ingredients for Kiddo's birthday cake was a slog, as that was everyone's moment to be obsessed with baking.

                You know how in every war movie, someone always says that it's going to take a month at the most to defeat the enemy and then come home?  And then later on in the movie, there's a sad scene in which they realize that the enemy was also planning on winning, so this is going to take a much longer time?  That was this spring, as I watched my career completely disappear.  The theatres closed immediately, which is reasonable, and I am intensely fortunate that both jobs paid me for the hours I had worked, and promised to hire me again in the fall to finish the shows for opening when it was safe to open again.  It wasn't safe to bring the kids out to RF, so I had to back down from that commitment, other than filling in for sick leave while Fuzzy took the day off work to take care of the girls.  Then they started closing fairs, and the folks for whom I was doing wholesale piecework scaled back their orders.  The next blow was the complete cancellation of Dickens Fair, which represents about half to a third of my annual income, between extra piecework, custom costume orders, and working in the onsite costume shop, where I do alterations and repairs for participants and performers at the Fair.  By May, I was working under the assumption that my only income for the foreseeable future would be unemployment.

                Meanwhile, Fuzzy's job continued exactly as before, but with masks.  He works for a government contractor that makes parts for the military, so his job was declared essential immediately.  He had also earned a raise a few months before that made it possible to cover almost all our bills without too much contribution from my work, so we were going to be okay for right now.  It's scary, though, to wonder how fast an infection might go through his workplace.  I have never seen the inside, and I never will, unless I start working there, so I have to work off of his assurances that it will all be okay.  I decided to take anything that came in on my end and use it to add to our security, so for the weeks that the government added to the unemployment benefit, I made sure our mortgage was paid ahead, that our emergency fund grew, and that all bills were paid before they were due.  If the bottom fell out, I reasoned, we needed to at least not be behind.  I also continued utilizing the things I had learned growing up in a place where snowstorms could make a weekly grocery run a bit uncertain, keeping a reasonable stock at home and avoiding food waste as best I could.  

                It hasn't been easy.  In a lot of ways, my stress level is lower for the lack of a commute and for not having large, looming deadlines, but living my life at the whim of two small people who would rather eat ice cream and watch tv all day instead of learning to become useful members of society has been difficult.  Losing access to a career in which I was skilled, helpful, and valued has created  a major crisis of identity for me, and while I am lucky that we are in a financial position to allow me to not work for the time being, I miss contributing in a way that can be calculated.  I can't be the only one who is finding herself in a feminist crisis right now.  I am a stay-at-home mom who used to have side hustles, who is trying not to step on the toes of the people who genuinely need to sell things like masks to keep their lives afloat.  I'm incredibly lucky, but I spend a lot of time worrying that there won't be a place for me in the industry when it comes back, then wondering if that would be a terrible thing.

So, there you have it.  We are okay, it's a slog, we're doing the best we can, and we're learning to forgive ourselves that it's very very far away from where we thought we would be right now.