Just Gravy

[Mousse]

@Mousse [...] I’ll have better data at the end of 6 months, but in a nutshell there was a lot of fat in my budget to help cushion myself from the stress of the job that is slowly melting off.

That's already insightful, thanks for sharing!

[chenda]

There was a Viking warlord who agreed to be christened on his deathbed, but also ordered the sacrifice of a number of slaves in order to cover all bases in the afterlife. I think there is a lesson there for all of us.

[Biscuits and Gravy]

@chenda The lesson of CYA? Are y’all telling me that people participate in religion and affect a belief in a higher power simply to hedge their bets?

[jacob]

@chenda The lesson of CYA? Are y’all telling me that people participate in religion and affect a belief in a higher power simply to hedge their bets?

You might be surprised? Cynically as it sounds to a concerned/educated citizen, the morally of a rather large fraction of humanity is only sorry if/when they get caught and punished (20-30%). If we include the people who think of morality and social standing in terms of how they are seen to follow the rules by others, it accounts for the majority of people (60%). Moral concerns covering the in-group in particular (30%) and extending towards the out-group in general (10%) is relatively rare, ... by the numbers.

[Henry]

I have a perverse admiration for Christopher Hitchens for adamantly rejecting God as he was dying of cancer and pointing to the hypocrisy if he switched teams in the bottom of the ninth inning of his losing the big game of life. He was the exception to the no atheists in foxholes rule. The issue with the Devil is he knows God exists but refuses to bend the knee to His authority. I recognize the Devil, but don't pay him or his legions much mind. My own divided house is my biggest concern.

[Biscuits and Gravy]

I guess color me naively surprised. If you’re gonna eradicate entire cultures, legislate your beliefs on to others who are minding their own fucking business, and kill or whatever in the name of your religion, the least y’all could fucking do is sincerely believe, like the merchant’s 250 pound wife. To quote Bubbles from TPB, that is fucked.

[Henry]

Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire in 380AD. Did he believe in Jesus Christ or he was he just a lying ass politician? Probably a little of the former but largely the latter as the real reason he did such was that in a culture saturated with worship, he wanted all the gods in his stable to protect Rome from her myriad of enemies. It was a pure syncretic play. When Rome was sacked 30 years later, everyone blamed Christianity. Hence, Augustine's City of God. My point is that shit, and this specific type of shit, has been going on forever. I guess you've been too busy with the kids to notice.

[Biscuits and Gravy]

Haha, guess so! I just never think about religion; it’s not part of my life and I don’t find it very interesting. Anyway, thanks for the education, Henry. Hugs.

[chenda]

I've been dry for 15 out of the last 17 days, and I am really proud of myself.

Well done biscuits! This might be useful for the summer https://drydrinker.com

[Biscuits and Gravy]

I'd really like a drink, but I won't have a drink, because it impairs my functioning, makes me feel bad, and does not align with my goal of sobriety.

That sentence is chock full of executive functioning. In the making of that sentence, I am exhibiting self-awareness, self-restraint, foresight, self-directed speech, and self-motivation. These are, I think, essential tools to living our human lives and functioning well in our society. They are also the very tools that my son does not have and will not develop fully over his lifetime due to his ADHD. And that is a problem that begets many problems, and those are my problems to own, because he cannot and will not be able to own his own problems well past when most people can. I'll have to be his fierce advocate, but not his steamroller. I'll have to be his executive functioning, but avoid infantilizing and enabling him. I'll have to prepare him for adulthood, knowing full well that he might never function on the level of most adults. I am not sure that I will be able to do all of this well, and to the extent and with the quality that he needs, but I have no choice but to do it.

The final and most important point about adaptation is really a crucial caveat: no organism is primarily adapted to be healthy, long-lived, happy, or to achieve many other goals for which people strive.... [A]daptations evolve to promote health, longevity, and happiness only insofar as these qualities benefit an individual's ability to have more surviving offspring. - The Story of the Human Body by Daniel E. Lieberman (emphasis in original)

I cannot stress enough how grateful I am that I do not have to have a full time job right now, an outcome achieved by the combination of my past self saving, my present self budgeting, and DH making sweet, sweet bank. I need, and my family needs, all of my energy and time just to keep us treading water down the right fucking stream. I walked into an office building the other day and had a pang of missing the mutualism of a workplace, but that's for later on. Right now I'm where I'm needed, and it feels good, it feels right.

[Biscuits and Gravy]

"When I get a truck, I just jack it up,
Find myself a mudhole, go and get it stuck."
- Chris Jansen

100 days out from quitting and I've a learned a few things and read a few books. I've learned that I need structure, suffering, and goals in order to grow and excel. It has to be an external structure, too. While I'm perfectly able to outline a schedule for myself, I'm also really good at talking myself out of doing any task. It's not laziness, as I originally worried. No, it's intelligence. I'm just smart enough to know how to outsmart myself, and then how to outsmart myself outsmarting myself. It's a curse. I'm smart, but not smart enough to be useful to anyone or myself. I'm only smart enough to know how stupid I am.

Structure
I got a 3-month membership at a crazy gym run by a swol country boy that comes with accountability coaching, a small "gym family," and 5 day a week training. He does a full body composition scan and provides nutritional guidance and strength training. I'm really curious to see how this works out. It's completely outside of my comfort zone, but having the freedom to experiment like this is one of the reasons why I quit my great job and I'm hoping it provides the structure I need so that I don't flop on the couch after dropping the kids off at school.

Suffering
In Lonestar: A History of Texas and the Texans, T. R. Fehrenbach details the migration of the Scotch-Irish and their particular cultural traits. I had never before heard my people described as he described them. While it has been nice to have an extended vacation, sometimes I prowl the house, anxious and desultory. My life isn't hard anymore. My life is too easy. My people were callous frontiersmen who crossed an ocean and lived hard and died young. Now my parents telling me "If it bleeds, we can kill it," doesn't seem so fucked up anymore--it's just who we are. We thrive when we're suffering, and we expect suffering. I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH ALL OF THIS LEISURE.

Goals
I need goals. 1) Get swol. 2) Do some standup? DH suggested the standup, maybe because he's tired of me using my material on him. I think I'm too small-chested to become wildly successful, but maybe if I talk out of my ass then I'll get some eye candy points. 3) Raise some decent humans. I should not have become a parent. I'm too nurturing and loving and embrace too much of the ambiguity of life to properly provide the boundaries and direction that children need. I'm also only halfway through the ADHD book. DH says I'm studying for a test I don't want to take, and that is on the nose. Even though my son gets sent to the principal's office nearly every day, they recommended him for the Gifted and Talented program. They say he's "double gifted" which to me just sounds like he's "double fucked." Juuuuuust smart enough to know how stupid we are.

[Chris]

Do some standup? DH suggested the standup, maybe because he's tired of me using my material on him. I think I'm too small-chested to become wildly successful

Yes, do some standup!

People with all sorts of body types have become successful doing comedy. Tig Notaro and Fortune Feimster both ended up on TV as stand-ups, based on the ha-has, not the ta-tas.

[Biscuits and Gravy]

It turns out I was much more burnt out than I realized. It took about 4 months to finally start feeling rested and curious and 5 months to lose enough weight to fit back into my normal jeans. I did a terrible job of staying within my budget, but I figure it this way: I still haven't received what will be a sizable check for my pension contributions refund, so I've been living off of savings and the $8 grand I got at separation for all of my unused vacation days. So, let's call the last 172 days the extended vacation I never got to take while working. Squared.

Part of the reason why I haven't been stressing about money is because I know I will eventually go back to work (and I know how employable I am). Work, it turns out, checks a lot of boxes for me: social interaction, being useful, suffering, extrinsic purpose, excess money to spoil my children with, etc. I stuffed away nearly $200k in my 401k during let's call it my First Round of Real Employment (ages 22 - 36) and so I consider my post-60 year old self sufficiently provided for (I am real honest with myself here: hubby is 10 years older than me, and once he's gone I'ma straight up die of a broken heart, so I don't have to provide for my old fart self until I'm 100 or some nonsense). Now for ages 36 - 60 I just have to pay my bills and be able to provide for/spoil my kids (all five of them!).

I've been noodling on all sorts of Second Round of Real Employment options, from the pie-in-the-sky (bestselling author!) to the gig economy (dog walker!) and to the most obvious, reasonable, and safe (employment in my old field). The option that "sparks joy" the most is the idea of working for a law firm again. Now, it will have to be the *right* law firm and at the *right* time. The right firm would be on the smaller side (but not too small), working for a younger partner (who ideally did not go to an Ivy league law school), with a manageable yet pressing docket, in a subsection of law that I personally find interesting and meaningful. And there will be time boundaries set upfront and when they elbow into those boundaries (and they will, constantly) I will viciously push back with all of my FU money and I-know-I'm-good-at-this energy. Yeah. I think I'm mature enough and experienced enough now where I could take the good of a law firm (the energy, the shared purpose, the idealism) and leave the bad (the interpersonal drama, the overtime, the manufactured stress).

But, that's for down the line. This is not the right time. I'm going to stretch my pension refund out for as long as possible. I need this time off. My kids need me to have this time off. And hanging out at home with hubby during the day is just so nice. If I could stretch my time (or dime? hah) off to two years, I think that will be good. Then I could go back to work, make a little bank, find a little purpose, help some clients out, and have the extra money to pay for the kids' braces and therapists and colleges and gaming systems.

But Gravy, is there anything you want to accomplish during your time between Employment Rounds? No, not really. I got sober, and that was a big get for me. I have a lot of books I want to read and maybe I'll work up to riding my first century. I read MountainFrugal's post yesterday where he breaks down his upcoming year into the hours that he plans/wants to spend on everything in his life, and I was really inspired by that. So I sat down and figured what I generally spend the bulk of my hours on (sleep, chores, kids) and what I would like to spend more hours on (exercise, reading, language study) and that was a helpful exercise. I always feel inspired by the way y'all optimize, and it's interesting to look up and see y'all playing telephone about some grand future post-consumerist society from the uppermost rooms of your ivory towers, but I don't mind at all being down here in the weeds of life, just hoeing my row. Chopping some wood, raising some kids, carrying some water, going on some bike rides. I used to think there was more, but the life I live is so damn good, I was ignorant to ask for anything additional or different.

[jacob]

Four months is nothing, really Faster than average...

[Frita]

Good for you! It sounds like you have clarity and are at peace.

[Biscuits and Gravy]

@jacob Aw, thanks for the pat on the head. I'd chalk the speed up to the 10 years of reading this forum. So, thanks, DL!*

@Frita Ommmm I think it's because I finally fit back into my jeans. I lose all equilibrium when I get chubby.

*ETA this Aldous Huxley quote:

Perhaps men of genius are the only true men. In all the history of the race there have been only a few thousand real men. And the rest of us–what are we? Teachable animals. Without the help of the real man, we should have found out almost nothing at all. Almost all the ideas with which we are familiar could never have occurred to minds like ours. Plant the seeds there and they will grow; but our minds could never spontaneously have generated them.

[Biscuits and Gravy]

"'Life in San Francisco is still just life. If you want one thing too much it's likely to be a disappointment. The healthy way is to learn to like the everyday things, like soft beds and buttermilk--and feisty gentlemen.'" - Augustus McCrae in Lonesome Dove, p. 351

We had a freeze so I moved the plants in, including my goji berry plant who was cheerfully laden with berries. While I was in another room, my daughter "helpfully" harvested every last goji berry and ran around eating them and now my rug and couch are stained with goji berry juice and the damn stains won't come out. It's the goji berry on top of the holidays, which I generally dislike.

The highlight of the holidays (for me) was during a visit to my sister's in-law's house. They live in a neighborhood that is fenced, gated, peppered with fake ponds (with fountains!), and even has a live man at the gate to superciliously question you before you're allowed in. The houses, of course, are massive. As we entered and removed our shoes, my son immediately hounded the owners: "Why do you live in a mansion?" There was an awkward pause, and then they said, "We don't." Which, yeah, people, you do. Just the two of you. Up here in this mansion, like you're worth all of this space.

I hope the kids remember this Christmas fondly. They were great ages for it: 5 and 7. I hosted this year and it was very burdensome. The decorating, cooking, cleaning, shopping, planning, and gift wrapping fell mostly on me. It seems the holidays happen on the backs of women. I wonder if one day we'll revolt and the children will be left looking around like, but where's the magic? Us, kids, your mothers. We're the magic. And it costs us. Anyway, my ex has them next year, thank goodness. I'll just show up at his place 5 am Christmas morning and drink coffee his wife brewed and eat coffee cake his wife baked and enjoy the chaos. At one point during the holidays I had to feed five adults and six kids dinner on the fly and I made no-knead bread, beef stew, rice, and a salad, and as everyone was chowing down I felt really proud of my economy, efficiency, and home-cooking skills.

I've had the flu the last two weeks and I've had the kids the last six days all by myself. It was rough at times, but in the midst of it I chuckled at my old self for relying so heavily on booze to get me through rough times. I'm 71 days sober and it doesn't suck to be sober anymore. Removing booze has simplified my life, and that's always a good thing. I've removed the financial cost of booze, the time cost of booze, the health cost of booze, and all of the general worries it brought me. My mom and sisters all teased me over the holidays for my sobriety, and that's okay. And a surprising thought did occur to me: wouldn't removing coffee also simplify my life? Sugar I've removed a number of times, but that's a hard one to keep since sugar is in practically everything and I do like me some ice cream. But removing coffee for sure would be a simplification. During power outages or hikes or vacations or sicknesses it's always been an inconvenience to feed that addiction.

I removed something else from my life: Lexapro. I started experiencing a health complication* from it, so I came off of it. Even though I had only been on it for about two years, it was much harder to ditch than my 18-year-long booze habit. Of course I titrated off of it slowly, but I still had wild mood swings, extremely uncharacteristic flashes of anger, dizziness, nausea, and headaches. It took about two months for it all to even out, and I wouldn't go back on it now for much. It was very helpful when I was dealing with full-time work, divorce, and young kids, and I'm grateful it exists, but I'm also grateful to be off of it.

*It was menorrhagia, which when you Google that you'll be like, okay? Sounds pretty tame. It's not. I've enjoyed a very predictable and docile cycle, but things have on occasion gotten weird and when it gets weird it's time to listen. Closely. Because the cycle is the canary in the coal mine. The absence of other factors led me to Lexapro as the culprit and a quick Google search confirmed, yes, SSRIs can have that effect. So when I brought this to THREE doctors, I was disappointed that they all said, "nah, it ain't the Lexapro, bro." My OBGYN insisted I start birth control to mitigate my symptoms and when I refused she said, "well, then you must enjoy suffering." Anyway. I trusted myself and came off of the Lexapro, and behold! My canary is singing again. Sorry for all the dudes who just read that. I wrote that for the ladies.

I read 23 books in 2024 and the only one I'd recommend is Lonesome Dove. My copy is 858 pages and it ended much too soon. I'm kicking myself for not having read it way back when I first heard of it. I'm hoping, since I won't be working outside of the home in 2025, I can read me a nice stack of books and one day be able to point my kids to what I think they'll enjoy and be enriched by.

I'm not going to set lofty goals for 2025. Truth be told the kids really do take it out of me and all I can really ask for myself is to maintain/slowly improve my health/fitness and read some books. Childcare and housework take up the vast majority of my time, and that's just how it'll be for awhile yet. I'm getting up the nerve to start writing something real, but I'm afraid I might spook myself like a doe in the woods and it'll never come to much.

[theanimal]

Lonesome Dove is an outstanding book. The rest of the series is just as good. There's a three part movie based off of the first one that's highly regarded, but I found the pared down story and characters disappointing after reading the book.

[Biscuits and Gravy]

Omg, when Captain Call beat that guy to death in Ogallala I was holding my breath and clutching my chest. Then his statement of "I hate a man that talks rude. I won't tolerate it." Lord. I got no interest in watching the film. The only film that was better than the books IMO was LotR, simply because Tom Bombadil was axed. He is my most hated character in any fiction.

[suomalainen]

I know we complain a lot about our kids, but a story from the weekend: gravy is taking some time to herself in our room and DS5 asks “Where’s mom?” He looks all around. Sees the car in the driveway and says she hasn’t driven anywhere. I say “It doesn’t matter. Just play.” He looks at me briefly and continues his search as he says “It matters to me. I would go thru a million hurricanes to get to mom.” So stinkin’ cute.