Small Moment: Grateful For The Small Moments

To say that Life (with a capital "L") has been demanding as of late is an understatement.

Maybe "understatement" should be capitalized too.

An Understatement.

That's better.

On the Dad front, he is finally home from the skilled nursing center and regaining strength and balance and independence. It will be a long but steady (we hope) haul. He got home just before Warren and I headed off to Mayo and Chicago (and points in between) so it is only recently that I got a good look at Dad in his home environment. Massive improvements.

On the myeloma front, my labs continue to be flat line steady. Yes. that is good news. With an asterisk: the cancer continues to progress, albeit slowly, and my body is wearing down. For now, though, we (Warren, my two oncology teams, and I) are staying the course.

The individual whom I mentioned in my last post of 2019 as being homeless and having premature twins and mental health issues? We (the team) hope that tomorrow she will sign a 9 month lease and at least get that sliver of her life stable. For now. After that piece is secured, I will write more because this is a situation that will take more than a village.

Did someone say Carl Sandburg? 

But here it is Sunday morning. In the last week, I have spent time with family and good friends in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Chicago. I have seen effigy mounds that I was unaware of before (not that I am any expert on them), including one we were directed to by a local metal artist at whose shop we discovered while turning the corner in a tiny Wisconsin town a week ago today. (The metal artist is Tom Nelson—no relation to my knowledge, the shop is Dark Metal Artworks, his works are amazing, and yes, we bought one.)

And this morning, despite the concerns and issues hanging overhead, I have had a most excellent day so far sharing breakfast and good talk with Warren, a Facebook exchange about Carl Sandburg with my friend and boon companion Judy, a discussion about the above referenced individual with Kelsey (a key member of the team), and the poem "Kindness" by Naomi Shibab Nye with my friends on Facebook.

Even folding the laundry hanging on the basement line was a quiet small moment.

I'm not sure it gets any better than that.

December Money Review

So here I am three days into 2020 and looking at the numbers from 2019. I have been tracking groceries all year long, both food and common household items (laundry detergent, dish soap, cleaners, toilet paper). I ran figures last night and am both pleased and aghast at what I discovered about our 2019 spending.

Let's start with the easy stuff: what did Warren and I spend on groceries in December? To my amusement (well, kind of), we spent $174.27 for food/household items, just a smidgen under the $175.00 I had been using as a benchmark all year long. $12.16 of that was household. Some of those food dollars were spent on baking supplies for biscotti, so coming in this low surprises me. When I add the December dollars to our yearly totals, we finished the year at $2231.04, or a monthly average of $185.92. In essence, we shot over the monthly goal by $11.00 for the year. Last year we came in at a monthly average of $191.00, so we actually reduced our spending. Bonus points!

Of the total dollars spent, only $124.97 was spent on household goods. Seriously? That is about 5% of our overall expenses. Dang.

The figure that caused me to wince (Wince? How about "react violently" instead?) was our eating out for 2019. In 2018 we spent just under $885.00 for the year "eating out," a phrase which covers everything from grabbing a coffee with a friend to dinner between a rehearsal and concert when we are out of town to "hey, let's go out," which includes getting take out as well. (The latter is the least likely to occur, incidentally.) 2019 total? $1391.61, or about $110.00 a month.

Ouch. That hurts.

Now, when I dive deeper into that figure, the numbers reveal other things. Rehearsal and concert-related meals and snacks? About $170.00 of that. Conferences (less reimbursement, in my case, of my per diems from the Court)? An eye-watering $466.00, more or less. Okay, there were multiple conferences this year, but still, I was staggered. Mayo trips cost us, even with packing some of our meals and the ever bountiful and ever cheap Kwik Trip deli, about $195.00 (four trips in 2019, so about $50.00 a trip). And our vacation to Portland cost another $93.00. (All of these figures are rounded up.) Take those figures out and we spent about $397.00 for the year on eating out, or about $33.00 a month.

Wow. Well, the first and most obvious statement I will make is that we will not have five conferences this year. Warren will have a couple, but my Court-related conferences should come in at zero. That alone should make a dent in the figures.

I have not yet thought through 2020, either on the eating out or the grocery front. We are about to leave for (wait for it) Mayo, so there will be some eating out costs right out of the gate. On the other hand, I just bought two massive containers of laundry detergent for $1.05 total, including tax, through a combination of the sales price and Bonus Bucks (or whatever they are called) from CVS. (I earn those extra dollars through my pharmacy purchases, not by shopping at CVS.) So the first few days of 2020 hold both challenges (the trip) and wins (the detergent) right out of the gate.

I'll be thinking about our spending habits while we are on the road, and will share some of those thoughts when I get back. Warren and I are delving into more serious retirement discussions, both between ourselves and with others. I'll be sharing some of that too as we examine 2020.

So here's to 2020.

The Stub Ends of 2019

How did it get to be December 31 already?

In my late November post, I noted that the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving had been hard, making that unexpected Thanksgiving so much the more special. The pace and the issues did not slack off after that holiday, but steamed ahead into December.

The last two months of this year have been brutal, including grandson Orlando being hospitalized in PICU for RSV. But there are slivers of hope and light: Orlando got home and is healthy again. Dad will be coming home from the skilled nursing facility this Friday after a long stay. Another person in my life who has been homeless and recently gave birth to incredibly premature babies and lives with significant mental health issues (can we say "Enough" yet?) may be (we hope; I hope) approved for an apartment with the help of community agencies and others stepping forward to get and keep her housed. (I'm awaiting the approval call from the leasing office.)

Little bits of hope, of forward progress.

December is always a whirl for the musician in our household. Warren's last gig, a Christmas cantata at a Columbus-area church, was on December 22.  It is such a relief when the last one is done, beautiful though some of them are. I attended most (all?) of the performances, which included a stunning choral concert one weekend and our Symphony's holiday concerts (possibly the best ever) two weekends later. There were times when I closed my eyes and let the music wash over me.

Little notes hanging in the air.

Hanukkah just concluded. Warren kept me close company while I lit my menorahs. The second night, in large part because of the chaos and hardships going on, I sank to the carpet in front of them and lit them from that position, my voice cracking from stress and tears coming into my eyes. (I put my menorahs on a small outdoors table positioned by our front windows; the menorahs are at eye level if I sit on the floor, as I discovered that night; it turned out to be so gratifying that I lit the menorahs from that position the remaining nights.) Lighting the candles, saying the prayers, and reflecting on my beliefs (spiritual, personal) carved out some much needed space and silence. On the eighth and final night, I looked up at Warren (in a chair next to me) and asked "would you like to light one of the menorahs?" The thought had never occurred to me to ask him and it caught us both by surprise. Yes, he did, and yes, it meant so much to me.

Little bits of light.

So here I am, on the last day of the year, thinking of what the year held (including our new grandson) and what the year ahead may hold. I am looking to focus even more on the essentials and cut away the excess and the unnecessary, whatever that may mean. I am looking to try to truly hold each day in my heart.

Little bits of light, little bits of hope.

November Money Review

I started my October Money Review with the observation that if (if) we spent $175.00 in both the month of November and the month of December, we would finish the year with an average monthly outlay for groceries and household items of a little over $180.00 a month. We would have to spend $140.00 or less those last two months to bring the monthly average to $175.00, my target. I then sagely noted, "I'm not sure we will hit that mark."

We did not hit that lower mark ($140.00) or even the higher mark ($175.00) for November. We came in at $236.13, all but $2.14 (two boxes of tissues) in food. Our monthly average year-to-date? $186.98.

I made some quirky marginal notes about our November shopping patterns  that I will share here. On the first day of November, we spent $9.75 on "candy." The candy in question was delicious gourmet dark chocolate peanut (or almond) bark from The Milk Shake Factory, a stunning fixture in Pittsburgh for over a century. There were two turkeys, one thawed for our unexpected Thanksgiving, the other still deep in our freezer. Those came to a little over $10.00 because Meijer was selling their brand frozen turkeys for 33⍧ a pound. There was almost $36.00 worth of butter purchased at $1.99 a pound because butter has been sky high and we have room in our freezer. There was a little over $10.00 worth of food costs related to two events I hosted or co-hosted. There was also $9.00 worth of Krusteaz boxed cookie mix because Krusteaz mixes are delicious and when baking for something that comes up quickly, they do the trick.

And then there was the Thanksgiving Eve dash to the store to replace a can of canned pumpkin. For the first time ever in my life, when I went to open an ordinary can, the contents first hissed and then oozed up through the first opening I had made with the can opener. (I thought the lid had looked a little flexed, but I wasn't sure.) I'm casual about food safety but not stupid. What was stupid was opening the can of coconut milk (I use a pumpkin pie recipe that calls for coconut milk) with the same can opener and realizing too late that there was pumpkin ooze now contaminating the coconut milk. Both went down the sink and the resulting run to the store cost $3.59.

Note: The pie was delicious. 

Further Note: The Thanksgiving turkey carcass was made into delicious dark stock that Very. Same. Day.

So if you add up those little marginalia notes and then subtract them, our food costs would have come in below $160.00.

There was a grocery triumph or two, nonetheless, the greatest being the almost $40.00 worth of groceries purchased for $4.92, thanks to a combination of coupons and a quarterly rebate I get by using my Kroger Mastercard (a card I pay off in full every two weeks: no balance carried forward here).

Our eating out costs were all related to conferences: no coffee dates, no "let's just grab a bite to eat." Eating out costs came to an eye-watering $155.29, with $79.48 of that being assigned to Indianapolis (our annual trip to Percussion Universe) and the rest to our two days at my conference in Pittsburgh.

Yeah, November was expensive.

I'm not sure what December will bring. One of our November purchases was raw peanuts for Warren's holiday peanut brittle (about $17.00 worth), so that is out of the way. On the other hand, I will be making biscotti as always; while I certainly have enough butter for the cookies, I have yet to purchase the almonds. I'm not sure what the holiday meals will bring (who is going where for what); Dad is still in skilled nursing. So our costs may come in (she writes optimistically) around $170.00.

Or $150.00.

Or $250.00.

Stay tuned.

The Unexpected Thanksgiving

There was not going to be a Thanksgiving this year, at least not in the traditional sense of family members gathering to eat.

This November has been a hard month. My silence on this blog reflects that: I have been pulled and stretched too thin to find the quiet inner space in which to be still and write. November held two conferences out of town: one to Pittsburgh (mine), one to Indianapolis (Warren's). November also has been a bucket, filled to the brim and slopping over, of family and friends struggling: financial issues, health issues, hospitalizations, deaths.

Certain friends and I at particularly difficult stretches of life will say in passing, "So, other than that, how did you like the play, Mrs. Lincoln?"

It's been a Mrs. Lincoln kind of month.

Two of those hospitalizations involved my dad, who just earlier this week was released from the hospital to a skilled nursing facility to regain his strength and independence. Throughout it, my siblings, our spouses, and I were all dealing with long hours at the hospital, irregular schedules, broken days, and lots of stress. We're not at our best as a result.

Originally, my and Warren's Thanksgiving was going to be at dad's house, where my youngest brother Mark and his wife now live too. After dad's well-being took a tumble, and after we wore ourselves out (Mark has a chronic, progressive illness which wears him out and I am into a decade and a half of my progressive, incurable cancer), my brother and I talked and agreed to cancel Thanksgiving. They were tired, we were tired. That worked for the four of us, and our other brother Mike had his own family to host, so his plans were already set.

Well, that was his plan until his wife Kate called me earlier this week. Could they join us for Thanksgiving? Please? There would be five of them. Warren and I talked. Okay. But wait! If we were eating at noon (our plan), that would eliminate two of them (son Mike Jr. and daughter-in-law Hannah who would not be coming this way until later that day). Okay. Then a granddaughter who didn't want to go to her stepdad's family was added. Okay. Six of us total. More plans were made: you bring this and that, we'll make that and that.

On Thanksgiving morning, their youngest son, Timon, driving down from Cleveland, showed up early. Per his mother's instructions, I put him to work helping pull chairs out, washing china, setting the table. Then I get a phone call from Mike Jr.: they were coming earlier after all. After I got over my shock (I ordered him to hang up and call his mother immediately), I recalculated. Okay, now we're up to eight. That meant reconfiguring the table settings, adding another table, washing more china. That's okay, though: I had help. So we all worked some more, although Timon said, as we rearranged things, "I bet you they don't make it in time. They'll be late."

My brother, sister-in-law, and their granddaughter arrived. The turkey was close to done; we may have had it out of the oven already. One of their phones rang: the travelers are turning back to switch cars because the check engine light came on. Sorry, they are still coming, but they will be late.

Timon pumped his fist in the air. "I told you I'd win that bet!"

We pulled down the folding table that had been added to the end of our kitchen table to fit eight. We hastily took up the extra place settings. Warren started cutting turkey and piling it on a platter. Food went into bowls, water glasses got filled, and we all sat down.

I anchored one end of the table, my brother Mike the other. He looked around the table, beamed, and said "It's good to be here at this table and to all be together."

Those were more than just casual words tossed out to make everyone feel good. Mike was the brother I was least close to, both when growing up and as an adult. In the spirit of full disclosure, I am the one who kept Mike at arm's length over the years; Mike did nothing to create that breach. When I was diagnosed with the myeloma in 2004, I apologized to Mike for how I had treated him by, frankly, not treating him at all. Mike just smiled and said, very gently, "It's okay, April."

Mike meant it. It was okay. And now here we were at the most improbable of Thanksgivings, a Thanksgiving that wasn't supposed to happen and surely in a million years would not have been spent with Mike and crew.

The meal was wonderful. We shared good food, good conversation, and laughter. Mike and I shared stories from our childhood of Thanksgivings (and Christmases). We passed the turkey, we passed the rolls, we passed the love.

The pies were delicious.

As Kate, Warren, and I started clearing plates and making containers of leftovers, the door opened and Hannah and Mike Jr. walked in. We made a clear spot at one end of the table, rescued the settings we had swept off the table earlier (I had just set them on a small couch in the study) and loaded them up with food. Warren started the dishes. Several of us grabbed dishtowels. Talk flowed through the kitchen; talked flowed in the living room.

And then it was over. Mike, Kate, their granddaughter, Timon, Mike Jr., and Hannah headed out to go see dad before going their own way. Hugs, thanks, "wait, Grandpa forgot his phone," goodbye waves.

And, like that, our unexpected Thanksgiving was over.

2019 marks my 64th Thanksgiving. There have been some great ones.

This was one of them.

Small Moment: Soup Stock

What is it about soup stock—so blessedly simple to make, thrown together from an assortment of scraps and discards—that can make the house smell wonderful even before it gets down to the business of coming to a boil?

The aroma of soup stock: that's what is filling our house this morning. Both Warren and I were out working in the yard, doing some cleanup before the winter sets in harder, and the moment I walked through the door, the aroma wrapped around me.

October Money Review

As we start to wind down the year, I took a long hard look at my food dollars and did some calculating. Based on what we spent in October (keep reading), if we spent $175.00 and no more in the months of November and December, we would finish the year averaging $180.33 a month for all of 2019. That would be just above our goal of $175.00 a month for the year. We would have to spend no more than $140.00 in both November and December to bring the yearly average to $175.00. I'm not sure we will hit that mark.

As I look ahead to next year, one thing I am going to start calculating into our overall food costs is our eating out costs. I have been tracking those dollars for a few years, but do not count them in the $175.00 a month goal. The bulk of our eating out dollars directly relates to travel, especially Mayo and conferences, and performances, especially those in Mansfield when dress rehearsal falls in the afternoon, followed by a mid-evening concert. Yeah, some of our eating out dollars are just us taking the easy way out, and I still very occasionally have tea with a friend, but the bulk of the expenses are related to not being home. I will have to take a long, hard look at what we spent this year (and how much was strictly pleasure versus the travel/concert issue) and come up with some realistic targets for 2020. Just saying.

So what did October look like? In groceries (food), we spent $179.78, which, I am thrilled to say, included the reception we hosted after opening the Symphony's 41st Season. Back in April, I had budgeted $75.00 for the end-of-season reception and wildly overshot that amount, spending double those dollars. For this reception, based not in small part of on my notes of what worked and what didn't back in April, I spent a grand total of $67.38 for a wonderful reception (with a lot of leftovers)! So that revamping of our reception spending made a significant contribution to our overall monthly bottom line.

As for household items, our October expenses were a modest $5.18. Total spent in October? $184.96, $10.00 over the $175.00 goal. Monthly average for the year? $182.06.

As for eating out, our costs were not outrageous, but scaled up towards the end of the month because I had a conference in downtown Pittsburgh and the expenses were higher. (Most of the eating out expenses from Pittsburgh will hit in November and I will be reimbursed for much of my food costs, but it was still expensive.) Our eating out costs in October were $117.41, counting tips. That's pretty high for us.

One of those eating out occasions was due to my not standing firm on not eating out in a training session. Along with some close coworkers, I attended a lengthy training session through our local school district, with the training located in our downtown. As I always do with local training, I frugally packed my lunch. I had it with me. When the lunch break came, everyone started making plans to walk to different places downtown and done together. Everyone. I said "I brought a lunch." I got pushback. Then I said "Lunch is my most difficult meal to eat out because of where I'm at in my health" (a true statement). I got pushback. Loving, friendly, come-join-us pushback, but pushback all the same.

And I folded. I walked to lunch, I ended up sitting with some attendees I did not know well or at all but got to know a little (a positive), I ate very frugally ($6.00 with the tip), I took the planned walk to the library immediately afterwards so I could drop off the library book I had brought with me (a chore accomplished), and I ate the packed lunch the next day (so no waste). Was I better for joining the others? Perhaps. Certainly in the sense of getting to know attendees (all school employees) and sharing stories. That's always a plus. But I am nonetheless embarrassed that I let the peer pressure get to me. I'm 631/2 years old. I should be over this.

So that was October. As I noted in my last review, we did indeed miss Halloween. It snowed lightly in Delaware that night. (It probably snowed in Pittsburgh too, but I was inside.) According to a friend down the street, Halloween foot traffic was light as a result. So yes, I missed Halloween but I also missed sitting outside on a bitter night.

Since I missed Halloween here, I took great pleasure when pictures from the west rolled in:

All three of them, Ramona being the dinosaur posing! 

And in true Halloween fashion, the youngest of the trio didn't even last past the third house:

November is swirling all around us. We just ate the last of the lettuce (which I moved inside before going to Pittsburgh, knowing it would be getting cold while we were gone). And I will eat the very last 2019 tomato tonight. The. Very. Last. Tomato. We are joining Thanksgiving, not hosting it; I already have dibs on the turkey carcass. So we'll see where the dollars fall when we come out the other side.