Examined Lives

The life(style) I'd like to live

I was pondering City Mom's post about how hard it is to get a toe-hold on a decent lifestyle these days.  Let's face it -- even taking a decent vacation and owning your own home can seem woefully out of reach these days.  Perhaps that's one reason why more Americans are placing an emphasis on doing, rather than having, as The New York Times reports.

Thinking over this, I recalled two families whose lifestyles I greatly admire -- so much that it occurred to me when visiting them, "I love the way they live."  Neither involved a great deal of money.

The first family are friends who live in Seattle, whom I met while working abroad.  An extremely well-educated, -read and -traveled couple, the kind of folks with whom talking for hours is an end to itself. Calm. Funny. They were vegetarians to boot, and could make a mean cup of strong coffee with a French press, which you could drink while listening to Ira Glass on the radio of a morning.  You get the picture.  They shopped at Goodwill; their small Craftsman home had old shag carpeting and a huge compost heap.  They shopped at a co-op. Their little girl was bright and talkative, and enjoying lounging on the belly of their friendly big dog.  Mount Ranier glimmered in the distance on the rare day it didn't rain. So strong was the pull of this  lifestyle that I up and moved to Seattle to try it out for myself.  Sadly, it proved hard for a single 20-something from Manhattan to achieve. (It might work now, but The Dude is reluctant to move again.)

The other family lives down south, off of the Intercoastal in Florida. Again, hyper-intelligent and well-read and quirky. Their home is similarly modest, but is equipped with top-notch dive equipment and a big, well-used fishing boat.  Family factions take off now and then to kayak in Costa Rica or to visit friends in Hong Kong.  Pull up there, and someone will dust off a wine glass (and a seat for you) and check the lobster traps for a catch, which, if you're lucky, will reap a simply prepared, scrumptious feast. There are no formalities; folks drift in and out of the party, sometimes to nap; sometimes just to read the paper. Come as you are. Stay as long as you want.

I'm not saying I didn't deeply desire the life of a couple of my Manhattan friends, who will inherit their folks' classic six. I've often thought, while considering a well-turned-out, older couple leaving a performance at the Met, "This is how I want to spend my golden years." It just seemed like these other modest folks had no interest, or use for, profligate lifestyles. In fact, their homey surroundings just allowed their priceless values to shine more brightly. Just like my friend CityMom.

On the other hand -- both of those families did buy their homes relatively cheaply, way back when.  And their excellent educations would cost dearly now.  And the stylish couple leaving the opera?  One is probably a banker.

-BurbMom

Getting into the holiday spirit ...

... has been challenging these days. I don't know about you, but life feels over-full, and not always in a good way, on our end. 

The good: A Thanksgiving made very happy by visits from family. We were packed like sardines in our apartment, but feeling lucky to reconnect. Also, happy, sassy kids still blissfully unaware of the world's woes. And jobs. We are grateful, indeed.

The bad: CityDad has had a pay cut this year, and freelance jobs that supplemented our steady incomes are sparser. A few friends are facing health challenges; one's negotiating a divorce. And with the teetering economy still malingering like a bad guest who knows no better, it's gotten so overwhelming for so many.   Maybe that's why movies like Up in the Air, which, among many other plots, chronicles the travails of the laid-off and disenfranchised, are hitting home among critics and viewers. (I saw it; it's phenomenal.)

 

But those are actors, and there's nothing like hearing how it is from those in the trenches right now. The New York Times has collected videos from ten Americans who've been laid off and they are stunningly affecting. Just watch. The cost that this recession has exacted is palpable. Never mind figuring out how to pay for presents this year; one father speaks of watching his kids playing sports and, instead of just enjoying himself, praying they don't get injured because there's not much more they can do without insurance but put a band-aid or duct tape on it.

So what to do now? Not really sure. We're 10 days away from Christmas, and maybe the only thing to do is to put one foot in front of another and, in the words of a singing teacher I met years ago, "show up." Who knows? There may be a party, not another trying encounter, just around the corner. We all could use a party.

—CityMom

 

Finally, (almost) meat-free

Finally, almost a year to the day when I posted about my angst over still being a meat-eater, I am finally, almost, meat-free. I say almost because I'm still eating fish, and because, over the past month, I have slipped, to the tune of two meatballs and a chicken leg.

How did this come about?  Was it the noxious factory farming?  The animal cruelty?  The risk of e-coli in my hamburger?  Nooooooooooooooo...it was pure selfishness.  I've read quite a bit lately about the negative health effects of consuming meat, particularly concerning how it relates to the risk of developing dementia. As I may have mentioned, my mom is suffering from early-onset dementia; whatever the gene that causes that is, if I have it, I would far prefer that it lay dormant. Eating fish, on the other hand, reduces your dementia risk; hence my refusal to give up eating those poor beasts.

But that's not all. Once I got started, I found a surprising amount of evidence that the huge amounts of meat modern humans eat may be doing us in. T. Colin Campbell's The China Study lays out how consuming animal products, particularly the casein in milk, stimulates the grown of cancer cells in lab studies. Dean Ornish, M.D., talks about how a very low-fat plant-based diet, combined with exercise and stress control, can reverse coronary artery blockages and diabetes. The Dude constantly struggles with borderline high-cholesterol and blood pressure, despite running six miles daily, and needs some heavy dietary support on the home front to stay healthy.

So, goodbye, blood and guts and veins and marrow. As you may tell, I've gotten this far through a goodly bit of psych-out. It was opening a package of rotten chicken meat that jump-started this latest effort, and thinking about that moment still works.  As does remembering what my friend S. says: "I wouldn't bite into my cat. Why would I eat another animal?"

I haven't even begun to address how I feel about eating animals morally, because I've simply never gotten that far, number one, and because boy, that's a slippery slope. I've stopped buying leather, but according to an editorial in The New York Times today, there are animal parts in all kinds of stuff, from wine to the little pads on my lady-razors.  Egads!  I still feel, somehow, that I need an out every now and then. I can't imagine not eating what a hostess serves as a dinner party, for example, or turning down my sister-in-law's plump pork dumplings. Hypocrisy? Perhaps. Similarly, I'm not demanding that my kids stop eating meat, though I'm gently weaning them away from meat in their lunches.  After all, they may have the dementia gene(s), too.

Right now, I'm still fairly clueless about what and how to eat this way, hence the ridiculous amount of   packaged food I'm eating; I simply could not survive without the Indian food packets from Trader Joe's, and canned chickpeas. I also know my way around a stir-fry; kale, above, is fabulous with peanut oil and a generous amount of garlic cloves.

The few slips I have had have been out of desperate hunger at the end of a long day. I know packaged goods aren't healthy or green, but until I get a few good lentil recipes under my belt, they will have to do.

-BurbMom

A family travels the world

Green-eyed monster is throwing a fit over here, after I read this New York Times article on a family that has managed to live out something I've only dreamed about: traveling around the world. Indefinitely. 

The indefinitely part wasn't really in the cards for us, but the traveling around the world was. Back in 2000, after the husband and I got laid off, we thought about selling our house for a pretty penny and then home-schooling the older child—we had a baby, too, at that time—for a year while we circled the globe. We'd had it all planned out, even a budget of sorts. A book we'd read about a family that did something similar gave us a ton of tips. (Australia allows foreigners to enroll their kids in their great public schools, which gave them a break from homeschooling.) 

But then old-fashioned pragmatism prevailed. Naysayers—and there were many—said the kids needed stability. To which another friend cried "bullshit," because, as she so eloquently put it, a loving family is most of the grounding a kid needs. So we sold the house, moved east, got jobs and an apartment, and here we are. 

Sometimes I wish we'd gone on that trip. It would be difficult now, especially with one child in high school, when her social life and future plans for college hold lots of sway. When she was 7, it wasn't such a critical thing to home-school her one year. (We were moving, anyway, so it's not as if we weren't cutting ties.) Now, it feels like a major upheaval.

If you look closely at the comments on the Times article, there are critics aplenty. But from my vantage point, this set-up seems mostly win-win. Your thoughts?

—CityMom 

Waste or Want: Pantry oddities

I started thinking about this post when I noticed a few truly antique items in my pantry and freezer - packages crusted over with ice; dented boxes of exotic grains; twelve varieties of stale nuts.  Too many items to list individually, really, and plus right off the bat, we know they're going to waste.

But I'm going to plow ahead anyway, because the amount of stuff sitting there unused is truly wasteful.  I mean, imagine if you added up the stuff everyone had sitting unused in pantries and basement freezers!  I bet you could come up with Thanksgiving dinner for every homeless person in New York City.

So, I polled a few friends to find out what they had in their freezer, to compare similarities with my own excesses, and here is the resulting list of items that linger, in order of popularity (or non-popularity, however you choose to think about it):

1. Quinoa. A grain-like crop that originated in South America, cheap and very high-protein, most of those polled mentioned quinoa (KEEN-wa).  Fabulous, but I've yet to find a person who can cook it so that it is edible, or even knows how to cook it.  Boxes of these pebbly bastards grace a lot of shelves, including mine, if they haven't been trashed already. I vaguely remember using it with cauliflower and cheese to make a casserole a decade ago. 
2. Coconut milk.  Why, why, why?  Because the name sounds good.  Meryl Streep once said on The Actor's Studio, when asked her favorite word, that she had posed the question to her young daughter, who immediately mentioned the infamous unused ingredient.  Yep, sounds pretty.  But unless you've got the curry and lemongrass and rice noodles and what-all that usually go with this to make a dish, you're screwed.
3. Bulghur wheat. Same story as quinoa.
4. Panko bread crumbs.  Because you never know when you're going to fry up a batch of tempura shrimp!
5. Matzoh meal.  Making matzoh ball soup must be complicated.
6. Tomato paste.  Classic thing that you pick up, thinking, "Oh, think I'm out of that!" and you never are.
7. Turkey chili and beef jerky for a planned camping trip that evidently never occurred. Or if it did, they ate wild greens.
8. Soba noodles.  They're great.  I just never got around to cooking them.
9. Confectioner's sugar.  Quite a few bags and half-bags out there.
10. Lotus nuts in syrup.  (That was my husband's inexplicable contribution.)
11. Half-box of frozen ice pops. Weather changes, who wants 'em.  The other half of the box, still in liquid state, sits on the pantry floor.  When I bought these, the cashier cheerily said, "Hey, I've had a box of those in my room for about five years!" 

The moral here:  Beware of buying ethnic food ingredients if you aren't making the entire meal tonight, and already have everything you need.  Clean the pantry every year or so so you don't keep buying the same staple items over and over.  Go easy on seasonal items. Oh, and stick to a list when you shop.

Now, would they like Panko crumbs for the school Thanksgiving food drive...

~BurbMom

What's it all about, Alfie?

A week ago today, I stumbled out of a screening for the movie Motherhood that threw me into a funk that lasted three days. (Granted, I was already on the precipice, and I was getting a cold, so perhaps I was vulnerable.) In it, Uma Thurman plays Eliza, a Manhattan mom who struggles to get everything she needs to do done in one day: Walk the dog, feed the kids, shuffle the car in a daily ritual known as street parking, shop for her daughter's birthday party to be held that evening, see her best friend, take her younger son to the playground, pick up the cake, decorate the apartment and, somewhere in there, make a deadline. 

To a certain extent, I felt validated watching Eliza whirl like a proverbial dervish, trying not to screw things up. That's the story of my daily life, except my deadline's not a blogging contest to get a job, it's a job that helps put food on the table. But I also felt depleted, reminded once more of everything it takes just to sustain an existence that sometimes feels woefully fragile. (Eliza and her husband aren't rich, and their home is, like the apartments of my friends and neighbors, cramped to the gills.) Aren't the movies supposed to offer an escape?

Don't get me wrong: I am grateful for my life. I live in a city that allows me to strive or hide, depending on the day. I have friends who are kind and interesting. And I have a family that keeps my heart, and days, full. But of late, when I look around at my friends, many of whom seem to be juggling as fast and as hard as me, I think: Why? What for? It just seems as if no matter how hard we work, we don't get as far anymore. 

A friend who once wrote for all the big-name women's magazines goes from one underpaying freelance copywriting gig to another to help make ends meet. She'd like a permanent job, but—and you've heard this story before—no one's hiring. And she's brilliant! Her husband has a creative job in marketing, and he makes decent money, but after taxes and rent and expenses for their three kids—what we call essentials, not dining out at Nobu—it's still a stretch. Another woman I know is an academic, her husband's in technology. But after childcare—and she doesn't get much, seeing as she's with her kids whenever she's not in the classroom—and, again, reasonable expenses, there's not much left. 

Suze Orman would say, Watch your spending. And believe me, we have. My husband and I go on a date maybe once a month; the cost of babysitters tacked onto a $12 movie ticket (apiece) plus dinner is prohibitive. (Sometimes, we just take a walk for an hour in Central Park.) We eat out only once a week, and it's usually pizza or inexpensive Chinese. We brown-bag lunches, don't own a car, and walk everywhere if we can. The last purchase I made was a coat, and only to replace the five-year-old one I had with a ripped-out lining. (My copywriter friend hasn't shopped for new clothes for a year.)

Some people I've vented to say it's because we live in the city, that the cost of living is sky-high. But they don't understand. Our work is here, and if I had to commute the cost of gas, or monthly train pass for me and my husband would pretty much get rid of the savings we'd see by moving to the burbs. Plus, our kids are in crazy-good public schools here. And is the only solution really that we move? 

I worry about my retirement, I worry about college. And I suspect BurbMom does, too. You see, this isn't a city versus suburb argument. Whether you live in an apartment building on the Upper West Side or a house in a leafy hamlet, life these days feels tenuous at best. Where are the well-paying jobs? (Not in journalism, at least, for which BurbMom and I are trained. Not in academia, as my friend is discovering.) Where's the reward for hard work and years of schooling? Where is the light at the end of the tunnel?

Here's a trailer:

—CityMom

*New!* Clause to deny freelancers health coverage

Sent today.

 

*

October 20, 2009

 

Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey

Appeals

 

Dear Sir or Madam,

 

I have just been told by your Customer Service department that you will not cover hearing aids for my 8-year-old daughter, as mandated by Grace’s Law [state law that mandates paying for hearing aids for kids 15 and under], because our policy is self-funded.

 

That you would use this clause to deny coverage for my daughter for this very expensive equipment is unconscionable. Because we have the bad luck to have to pay for our own coverage, having been laid off two years ago, we are denied?

 

I realize that our particular policy does not cover durable medical equipment. But to be told that we are not eligible for special assistance in this unique case, while others who are lucky enough to have their employer pay your bills do enjoy this benefit, is simply unfair.

 

I hope you will reconsider this decision.

 

*

-BurbMom

 

 

 

Hot air

Was going to blog today about something entirely different, but like everyone else, was transfixed by Falcon Heene, the Colorado boy who, for a while there, appeared to have taken flight in a hot-air balloon. As it turns out, it was a false alarm. While the authorities sent everyone possible to chase him—even the Denver airport was affected—he had apparently fallen asleep in a box in the attic where he'd been hiding, worried he'd get in trouble for somehow letting the balloon loose. 

Already, the post-game quarterbacking has begun, and I'll leave that to the experts, but here's what the debacle taught me: Sometimes, we really do make a mountain out of a molehill. Not all disasters end up disastrous. 

Let that be a lesson to worrywarts like me. Seriously. 

P.S. Could there have been a more appropriate name for the boy than Falcon?

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

—CityMom

My own bizarre health care tale

There are plenty of scary health scare stories circulating out there vis-a-vis our proposed health care reform. This one went blind without coverage; this one will go blind if we change our current system. And so forth.

I've already added my own two cents here -- $751.23, actually, the amount we pay each month for a family of four, as both The Dude and I freelance. That covers hospitalization and related tests and a stipend for sick and well-care visits. Everything else, we pay for should we need them, including drugs; rehabilitation; home nursing if needed; mental health care. On top of the monthly premium, which is about 1/3 of what we pay for our mortgage and taxes each month, and is more than we spend on food and transportation. 

Oh, and it's roughly twice what we put away monthly for the kids' college fund.

So, I get sick.I think it's a cough and I'll get over it, but it doesn't go away. It ebbs and flows; some days better, some days worse. I have other stuff to attend to, like kids with their own coughs, and deadlines. Finally, I'm Sick. You know. When you just can't function anymore.

I go to the doctor, who diagnoses a bad bronchitis. We discuss the small possibility of pneumonia, and she says, given my health care policy, that we should perhaps hold off on getting a chest x-ray for now, because that would be forever on my health care record. The takeaway message:  It could imperil my current and future insurance coverage.  Apparently, if you actually get sick, the insurance company doesn't have to pay. Come again?

She also gives me drugs (suitable for both bronchitis and pneumonia) for free. Expensive drugs, drugs that would have cost me some $200 in co-pays on my former employer's plan. I imagine they might have cost some $400 out of pocket. I'm happy, because I really need that money to buy a new computer, because I need it to earn my living and contribute to the hopeful renewal of our glorious nation's economy.

But wait! Who's paying for those free drugs? Do pharmas really have that much profit, to give so many samples for free? Because this isn't the first time I've gotten freebies, and I know some of my other freelancer friends have as well. Or are they taking the costs of these samples out somewhere else, like raising prices for people who can afford them even less than I?

As for the chest x-ray -- I think we're test-happy in this country, and it's one reason for the ballooning health care costs. When my neighbor is told to get an MRI for a stomache, you know something's wrong. But three days from now, if my chest still hurts, what next? Do I wait it out a little more, or risk potential bankruptcy from having no insurance?

~BurbMom

The suburban housewife experience as interpreted by comedian Sally Brooks

Friend of mine forwarded us this YouTube video, and we almost spit out our cereal this morning from laughing too hard. All in jest, of course...

—CityMom