Unexpected in March

My daughter is throwing snowballs at my office window, and it's March 22nd.

The kids have a snow day today, which adds another day to their extremely lengthy spring break.  They already had their spring break extended by one day because the freeway is being shut down.  That was extending what had already become a two-week holiday due to budget reduction days.

My kids have twelve days of school off for spring break.  Twelve!  With weekends, that is eighteen days!

I weep for the future of our country.  Our kids barely go to school.

And climate change has turned out to be much colder than anticipated if we're getting several inches of snow for spring break.  Forecast for tomorrow: freezing fog.

Mindy posing with her lovely snowman. 

Am I rambling about the weather in a blog post?  Why, yes, I am.  I've been embarrassingly lax with my blog and haven't posted for a month.  Consequently, I have to post something, no matter how inane.  Let's see if I can make it more serious.

I told my son he had to build me a snowman, and he went outside and kicked snow around instead.

I weep for the future of our country.  Our kids don't want to build snowmen.

But fear not!  My daughter, in the footsteps of great women throughout history, braved the snow flying from her brother's boots and built a snowman on her own!  The nation will survive as long as plucky young women continue to fight against all odds to preserve our nation's greatness.

Did I manage to infuse this blog posting with real meaning and value to society?  Nope.  Still just me blogging because I said I would, regardless of whether I had something to say.

But isn't that really what blogging is all about?

Living the American Dream

We just bought a house.  It's the American dream, right?  A house with a lawn and a backyard and a two-car garage.  Bonus points if it's in a cul-de-sac.  We've got it all, baby, even the cul-de-sac.  Or we will once everything is processed and the loan is funded.

Orange dining room

Honestly, I'm a little nervous about returning to homeownership after several years of renting.  Renting has been awesome.  It's cheaper, for one thing, and we have the world's best landlords.  Renting has managed to hold back a lot of my renovation instincts to the point where I don't even like looking at house mags anymore.  We've saved a lot of money simply because I haven't had anything to paint.

Pink bathroom

That's all going to change.  We already have paint colors picked out even though the ink isn't dry on our closing documents.  Nothing inspires a desire to paint quite like the Pepto Bismol pink of our upstairs bathroom.  Isaac told us that he refuses to use that bathroom until it's a different color, and I can't blame him.  The previous owners were not afraid of color.  Normally I admire this kind of bravery, but they took it too far even for me.  In addition to the bathroom, his bedroom and the dining room are slated for a color change.

Isaac's aqua bedroom

My daughter, who hates change of any kind, has come to terms with the move only because the house has an enormous hedge surrounding the backyard.  Unfortunately, I may have ruined that for all of us.  Last night as we were tucking in the kids I might have mentioned something about dark fairies living in the hedge.  Oops!

Mindy's gold room

So, let's hope that the paint goes on smoothly, the roof doesn't leak, and we all stay employed so we can make those lovely new house payments.  And if there's anyone out there who'd like to help us move, I promise that there aren't actually dark fairies living in the hedge.

Sleeping well at night? Let me fix that...

Last Saturday I demonstrated my love to my mother (Hi, Mom!) by missing my daughter's first basketball game of the season, a Ladies Retreat meeting, and a beautiful, sunny Saturday morning in February to sit in on a 4-hour seminar on the public employees retirement system (PERS) for upcoming retirees.  Did I mention this seminar was in a windowless room and nearly every other person present was retirement age?

I learned several important details about PERS that I hadn't known before, not least of which was that if I had been smart I would have started working as a public employee in Oregon prior to 1996.

The best part of the seminar, however, was the second half, in which an extremely small, energetic financial planner gave lots of financial bad news with unholy glee.  Honestly, none of it was really news to me.  I work in the financial industry, so I'm well aware of the issues our nation and our world are facing on the economic front.  I did really love a graphic she used in her presentation, though, and I wanted to share it here.

If I can direct your attention to the graphic at left, I will point out something that I think every American of all political persuasions needs to understand.  See the tower on the left?  That's our federal spending.  That really big chunk at the bottom?  That's Medicare and Medicaid.  That biggish section in the middle?  That's Social Security.  Everything else . . . EVERYTHING ELSE that the federal government spends money on is in the top two sections, and that includes defense.

Now look at the tower on the right.  The black areas are all the revenues the federal government brings in.  I'd like to point out to you that all those revenues are not enough to even pay for Social Security & Medicare.  See that?  We can cut expenses out the wazoo, but if we don't do something to change revenues or those neat programs that take care of our parents (Hi, Mom!), we are sinking into a deep quagmire of debt at an amazing rate.

In the last issue of Newsweek, Eleanor Clift had an interesting column highlighting the findings of the Simpson-Bowles commission (and subsequent inaction) that gives a little more information on the political side of this, but I hate politics, so I'm not going to go there.  You can, though.

The bottom line is that we're going to have to do something daring and innovative in order to balance the federal budget.  We're going to have to cut spending (a lot) and raise revenues (probably also a lot).

This is why I don't run for political office.  This is probably also why all the characters in my novels end up with superpowers whether I originally intended it or not.  Sometimes we just need some superpowers.

Speaking of plots...

A couple of blog posts ago, I mentioned that I have started a new book and that the main character is an accountant.

When I start a new book (except when I'm doing NaNoWriMo), what happens is that I get a character in my head, and then that character has a lot of conversations with other characters.  They're interesting people, and I enjoy listening to their conversations with each other.  There's drama, there's conflict, there's something to listen to in my head while I ice my knee at physical therapy because ESPN just doesn't do it for me.

The problem is that it's a bit like watching an episode of Seinfeld.  There are lots of amusing vignettes, but no plots.  So I spend weeks or months getting to know my characters and trying to convince them that they have to do something more than just sit around and talk.

When I'm doing NaNoWriMo, it is a whole different situation.  I don't have time to get to know my characters and politely suggest that they do something with their lives.  I have to come up with 50,000 words RIGHT NOW, so they have to get their butts moving.  That's why this last year my fairly normal teenage girl had been stabbed, traveled to another planet, been kidnapped by ninja pirates (thanks, Meagan!), survived a bombing attack, been drowned in acid that turned her into a superhero, stole a spaceship, and saved the planet by the time I'd come up with 50,000 words.  That is desperation, people.  Jacob loved it.

Lacking the NaNoWriMo desperation, so far my main character has complained about her boss, argued with her boss, and flirted with a client.  Amusing, but none of this is going to get us anywhere.

I'm afraid I'm going to have to bring ninja pirates into it, and I'm just not sure what that has to do with public accounting.

There might be a good reason why I tend to add paranormal elements to my fiction.  What do you think?  A mind-reading CPA?

Guest Blogger

Today I would like to welcome my brilliant daughter, Mindy, as my guest blogger.  She is in third grade and just turned nine years old.  The following is a bit of writing that she wrote for a school assignment:

Wire-Haired Werewolf from Rotten Island

By Mindy Moran

January 2012

Rotten Island is crawling with creepy creatures. The Wire-haired Werewolf’s head contains one torn-out eye, one good eye, a carnivorous mind, a bitten-off ear, and a black stripe down her nose. She loves her four short legs, despite the fact that they make her clumsy. Her lithe body would have been graceful, if she didn’t have such short legs, but she doesn’t care, she loves being as rotten-looking as possible. The Wire-haired Werewolf’s long fur is so long that her short legs keep on tripping over it.

Wire-hair likes to steal food from others, especially hard-working ones. When they don’t have any food she just eats them! She loves to climb trees, though her short legs and long fur makes it hard. Very near the long, long list of what she hates is cats. She doesn’t like them because instead of charging after prey like she does, they stalk silently.

The Wire-haired Werewolf is a horrible, predatory carnivore. Her favorite food is caribou or reindeer. She likes them because they’re hard to find and powerful. What she hates is fish, she’ll eat anything but it. Wire-hair hates fish because the (1) are slimy, (2) live in water, which she loathes, (3) because they have scales instead of fur or feather, (4) get water all over her when they thrash. I could go on and on…

A special thing that she can do is make anything wash up on the shore without being poisoned. She does this because sometimes she’s just not in the mood for fresh monster, and really in the mood for real prey. In the picture, The Wire-haired Werewolf has washed up a mouse and some nuts. When she does this, she waits to “invite it over for dinner” until it has finished the nuts. Wire-hair wishes you bad luck and a full night of nightmares. I think she likes you.

The End

Oh, right. I'm supposed to be blogging...

So, my mother reads my blog.  (Hi, Mom!)  That led to a little awkwardness from my last post.  Also, my husband asked if I'd written anything else since the depressing one.  I said no, and he said I might want to write something a little perkier this time.

Everyone is a critic.

I went back to work today.  I've been excited about it since, as you know, I have a hard time not valuing myself based on my productivity.

The house that is costing me my sanity.

I was, in fact, productive today.  I'm also absolutely exhausted.  I've gotten used to running at a pretty easy pace, and there was way too much happening.  Mostly I'm to blame.  I sort of put an offer in on a house yesterday, so I was trying to handle my first day back at work - new hire paperwork, welcome backs, a pile of tax returns to prepare - along with phone calls and emails and requests for documentation.

Tomorrow will be easier.  Really.

I started a new book, by the way.  All of my books have been very slightly autobiographical, other than of course things like telekinesis and turning into blue superheroes.   You write what you know unless you want to do research, right?  So, in the new book I decided to go whole hog and make the main character an accountant.  I find the job rather interesting, and hopefully I can convey that to a reader.

Many of my main characters start as me.  Then I add lots of really cool stuff that isn't me and take away all the things that relate to me that I think are too obvious or that I don't like.  Perhaps I should try a different tactic, but it will have wait.  This one is a CPA.

What do you think?  Should you write what you know?

The End of 2011

As 2011 comes to a close, I've been thinking back over the year.

(Before the two surgeries that got rid of the glasses and 20 lbs)

• Our family vacation in Yosemite
• Eye surgery
• Paying off all our debt
• Quitting my job
• Hernia surgery
• Two of my best friends moving away
• Starting this blog

It wasn't a bad year.  In fact, because the surgeries went well it was a pretty good one.  However, there were some momentous changes in there that leave big questions in front of me for 2012.  I'm not the same person I was a year ago.

What will I do in 2012?  I am going to miss my friends (a lot).  I also don't know if I can let myself stay unemployed.  I tend to think I have to be doing something constructive in order to have value.  If I have no product (income), aren't I just a loser?

I'll tell you what my main goal is for 2012.  I want to be a more loving, accepting person of both myself and others.  I'm not going get annoyed with other people for being disorganized and difficult, and I'm not going to despise myself for relaxing and enjoying the moment.

And I'm going to make some progress toward getting published.

What?  Did you think I was just going to lay around and watch old Bones episodes all year?