Queercents

I was reading through the 10 Diets You Probably Want to Avoid and beyond the odd ones where a danish author was forced to eat his book and an automobile maker ate weed sandwiches… there were a few that got me thinking.

“When Ernest Hemingway was writing his works of literary genius, he certainly wasn’t dining on filet mignon and caviar. Nope, most of his books were written on a diet of peanut butter sandwiches.”

“British wrestler Sir Athol Oakley maintained his physique by drinking 11 pints of milk every single day for three years. That’s 12,012 pints of milk. When asked how he had arrived at that particular amount, he said it was because a wrestler he admired, Georg Hackenschmidt, gave an interview once in which he had professed to drinking exactly that amount. Hackenschmidt met Oakley and informed him that the 11 pints had been a typo - he actually drank just one pint of milk a day.” Read the rest of this entry »

I heard on NPR last week that some financial analysts are officially using the word recession to describe the state of the American economy. Finally, the suits are understanding what those of us in the trenches have been feeling for quite some time!

Recessions are stressful. Massage helps with stress. And for people with chronic pain, massage can feel less like pure indulgence and more like a medical necessity. I know for me, I’m happiest and most productive when I’m receiving regular bodywork.

But the going rate for massage where I live is around $65/hour, with at least one massage therapist I know charging $85/hour. (That’s the discounted rate, if you don’t have workman’s comp insurance to cover her normal cost.) I don’t know about you, but I can’t afford that every week or every other week. If you value massage therapy like I do, it’s still important even if you can’t scrape together the change because you’re too busy buying beans and rice.

Here are some ways you can get free, or extremely inexpensive massage. Read the rest of this entry »

I recently got my yearly Social Security statement of my estimated benefits and they are always interesting to read through. For my age (1973) I will get full retirement benefits at the age of 67 and at this point, in today’s dollars I would get $1,710 a month.

Disability would be less and if I took the benefits early (age 62) the amount would be even smaller a month. And I like the fine print that is in the benefits area or the ‘buyer beware’ area.

“Congress has made changes to the law in the past and can do so at any time.” - meaning, don’t count your chickens yet. Read the rest of this entry »

“My dog is worried about the economy because Alpo is up to 99 cents a can. That’s almost $7.00 in dog money.” - Joe Weinstein

I get on weird kicks every now and again where I go through ‘what if’ scenarios in my head. I think it relates to my fascination with the end of the world and survivalist stories. Or perhaps it is my motto, “Plan for the worst and hope for the best”. Either way I get caught up in stories of rising grocery prices, oil/electricity rationing, or if we will go through another great depression.

In some ways it can be a depressing to dwell on, but in those dark daydreams there is inspiration. It makes me think of ways I need change in case the ‘what if’ becomes the news of today. Read the rest of this entry »

With all the Earth Day events this past week, the topic of making green choices is all over the news. The benefits of going green are numerous, but can you afford it and are you willing to make the choices so necessary to literally save our planet and save ourselves?

The first decision has to do with your willingness. Do you care about your environmental footprint and the future of the planet beyond today and perhaps even beyond your own lifetime? And, if so, are you willing to do your part to ensure the future generations of humans and creatures have a sustainable and healthy place to live their lives? It really does boil down to that. The bottom line is that we are all connected and what one person does has a ripple effect across the planet.

I get a lot of snarky comments from family on this topic. No matter how much I love them, though the argument “Well I’ll be dead long before that [insert global warming of 2 degrees, melting of all the glaciers, or any other deplorable possibility] happens” doesn’t cut it with me. It is a cop out of epic proportions. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s raining here in DC. It rained yesterday. And I’ll bet it will rain tomorrow. My one-year-old is going stir-crazy; usually, we spend as much of the day outdoors as possible. It is on days like this that I question my commitment to a t.v.-free household!

But motherhood is the Queercents invention of ingenuity. Realizing that we faced many such rainy days in our family’s future, my partner and I started brainstorming for fun, cheap, creative, t.v.-free ways to entertain our kid, both at this age, and older ages. Of course there are always museums and so forth, but I’m most interested in stuff that you can do in your home, for free, without schlepping/parking/paying. So here goes: our five cheapo rainy day projects. What are yours?

1) Become a published author: make a book.
Use the situation at hand as the theme: what would your kid rather be doing on this rainy day? Going to the moon? Surfing in Mauii? Surfing on the moon? Read the rest of this entry »

This morning I was grabbing a bowl out of the cupboard and knocked over a batch of plastic containers we have stored in the cupboard for left-overs. It appears that we have reached that fine line that is saving for a need and the ‘just in case I need this’ situation.

One of the things that I noticed growing up when my mother would save containers is that she would save a few of various sizes but anything beyond that got pitched. Even though she tried to keep a limit on what she kept for plastic containers they still seemed to breed like bunnies, and had to be sorted every few months.

It appears that we have reached that stage as well and it is time to decide what is needed and used and what is not. Read the rest of this entry »

I lead a fairly simple life, for a city girl. My partner and I are slowly but surely uncluttering our lives, our home, and our brains. We don’t tend to buy a lot of consumer goods (not always difficult, since we’re not usually marketed to directly.) Living frugally is not really a choice at the moment, either, unless we want to rack up huge credit card debt, so I’ve been avoiding planning any large purchases that don’t have anything to do with my impending career change.

But last week, one of my colleagues at massage school shared some excellent news with me. He knows that I live my other life as a web developer, and since I’m tech-savvy, he knew I’d appreciate the new toy he’s bought for himself: his new iPod Touch.

(Actually, he bought a pair: one for him, and one for his wife. Very cute.)

Cue the choruses of angels! That thing can play music, sure, but it can also play videos with great definition, keep track of appointments, surf the web wirelessly — it seems like it’s got all of the stuff the iPhone has, minus the phone functionality. And I want it. Badly.

Read the rest of this entry »