Category: Money
Sunday, Sep 4, 2011 | Family, Kids, Money, Summer |
Signs, balloons, excited preparation.
A Friday-afternoon notion turned into a Saturday morning project. We’ve been talking about doing this for years.
The kids did the pricing. And chose the toys from the cornucopia in the attic. Household items were added from basement and garage. There is always, but always, too much stuff. How did we accumulate all of this?
No one bought the office chairs for $1.00. No students came by, which surprised us. (We also had two working TVs for sale, neither of which sold).
But the lemonade and popcorn were a hit. We used last year’s sign, but we didn’t have any “chocolate treats” to sell this year, so we marked them as “sold out.”
We met lots of neighbours. Nothing says, “hey, drop by for a chat” like arranging the contents of your basement and attic on your front lawn.
What didn’t sell was loaded up in the truck and donated to the local MCC store. Everyone chose something to keep (like this pink flashing butterfly wing musical device we’d forgotten existed).
It was fun. But these photos look a little melancholy to me, as I put them together in Blogland. Maybe it’s the concept of arranging your belongings on the lawn and waiting, wondering, who will show up? What will happen? Will anyone want these things that we once wanted and needed and used?
Thursday, Aug 4, 2011 | Backyard, Fun, Kids, Money, Play |
This was an all-family project. At the start of the summer, we talked about getting a trampoline for the back yard. The kids seem to keep growing. And the old swing set looks kind of destructible with several ten-year-old boys playing on it. But trampolines are expensive. So, we started saving for it. In the end, the kids emptied their piggy banks (literally), we wrapped coins (a project still underway), used the money from the long-ago “reward jar,” found a whack of Canadian Tire money, and, after a lot of online research, chose a trampoline. It’s supposed to be the safest one around. Fingers and toes are crossed.
The trampoline came home from the store in three boxes. Putting it together was a two woman/man job requiring a lot of physical strength, and some smarts, too. Albus and AppleApple were both very helpful with the smarts.
We were hosting a double sleepover yesterday evening, so we had some extra help. After many hours of labour, the whole thing was finally built before it got dark.
The boys thought it would be funny to show this.
Followed by this. (I hope the trampoline doesn’t laugh last.)
We do have rules. Our rules are: no shoes, zipper closed, and only two kids at a time (kids of similar weight).
Oh, and it’s not just for kids.
Thursday, Jul 7, 2011 | Money, Siblings, Spirit, Work, Writing |
My friend Rebecca wrote this thought-provoking post on ‘thin spaces’, the Celtic concept of places (or moments) where the spirit world comes very near to our world. We can reach through and touch it; or it brushes us. She asked where we find our thin spaces. It might be a physical place, or it might be an experience. It might be something we can seek out, or it might be something that we can’t, that just comes upon us.
Here is my short list, the things that jumped immediately into my mind:
– being with someone during labour and birth
– sometimes while writing, when the words seem to come from beyond me
– when someone reads a poem out loud
– when my body is working very hard and my mind becomes very quiet
I was out with my siblings last night (and Kevin!), and I was thinking about how all five of us Snyder kids are both creative and impractical (thank heavens Kevin is practical). I don’t mean we’re disorganized or incapable of functioning in the world, but I do think we look at some practical things, such as work and earning a living, differently. Somehow, we must have been raised to value the making of things more than the buying of things. I think within that is some quiet value, never spoken of, of thin spaces. And our thin spaces maybe aren’t that profitable, but we were raised to choose unprofitable over practical if unprofitable feeds us in other ways.
I think many people choose the work they choose because it brings them closer to those thin spaces. What’s your work? Does it take you to unexpected moments or places of peace / calm / meditation / joy / insight / grace / giving / acceptance / fill-in-the-blank-with-your-word-for-a-thin-space?
Wednesday, Jul 6, 2011 | Kids, Money, Mothering, Parenting, Work |
My girl takes after me. I like to write my ideas down. I have to write my ideas down, more precisely. It’s my version of “thinking out loud,” and I recommend it to my older children when they are having trouble with anything: mean siblings, unfair situations, anger management, you name it.
Yesterday, I took my own advice. The big kids are at overnight camp, and the little kids are at a dance camp during the mornings, just for this week; and I have no projects on the go. I’ve completed the triathlon, and the related Chatelaine.com blog. I am waiting for line edits on The Juliet Stories. I seem unwilling to commit to a new character and a new story, just yet. I am at the crux of something. Restless. Curious. So I spent the morning talking to myself in terrible printing (barely legible, even to me) inside the pages of a handy notebook.
Did anything come of it? But of course! If not exactly peace of mind, then peace of purpose.
My mother has a phrase she uses often: She likes to “stay open to the possibilities.” And while there’s plenty to recommend the idea, I’ve decided that rather than staying open to the possibilities, I prefer to pursue, invite, and seek out possibilities–and when the time is right, to choose and to commit, which is kind of the opposite of staying open to more and more and more. Commitment means closing off possibilities–at least, some of them. But it also means believing in the possibilities before you and available to you, and not forever hoping that something better may be waiting around the corner. It’s kind of like getting married. When I commit, I like to get it right. That comes with a certain amount (okay, a giant unreasonable amount) of agonizing and analyzing.
But I’m seeing that commitment can be lighter than that, too. I have before me a flexible year. Certain elements are inflexible: my youngest is still a preschooler for whom I am the primary caregiver. But depending on my income generation, there are childcare options to supplement my responsibilities. And I am at home. I can juggle. I’m not tied to the structured hours of a 9-5 job.
One thing became very clear during yesterday’s brainstorming: I am finding more satisfaction from expanding my working life–my public life, essentially. To connect, to be engaged with the world–it’s what I want.
Something clear to me at this exact moment, as my littlest leans his face onto my leg and says, “I’m bored!” is that I’m not a great mother when I’m typing on the computer or trying to think. The balance … is so imperfect.
Thursday, Jun 30, 2011 | Money, Writing |
I made a budget earlier this week. There are certain fixed expenses that I cover every month, out of my writing. I had a sneaking suspicion that output was higher than input, and unsustainable, so I checked. This probably sounds ridiculous–shouldn’t I know exactly how much is going in and coming out? Yes, I should.
Looking at finances, for me, takes facing some demons. Sometimes I wonder if this is my last frontier, a foggy wasteland into which I’m afraid to venture. My parents fought a lot about money when they were married (to each other, I mean). One of the things I’ve appreciated about Kevin is that we spend money quite similarly, and almost always have similar financial goals. But the truth is that I also step back a lot, or worse, close my eyes and just say, you go ahead, honey, and make the decisions. I’d rather not know.
It’s strange. This desire not to know. To be deliberately in the dark.
But I have my own bank account, too. And my own expenses–largely childcare. And my own income. Which is sporadic and not-to-be-relied-upon and if I had to support our family on it, we would live in someone’s basement. Maybe yours. You’d have to feed us, too.
Where was I? Oh, yes. Tracking a path toward financial non-ignorance. My conclusion is that I will need to earn more money this year. I haven’t got enough socked away to cover the truly high costs of childcare. But without childcare, I am looking after these kids by myself, and there is no way to look after kids full-time and to write, too. Or to do anything that requires being out of the home, away from the kids. Want to know why parents are so happy about proposals like all-day every-day kindergarten? Check out the cost of childcare; which, by the way, is a pretty underfunded vocation, given that for childcare to make sense, it has to cost less than what the parents are earning by not doing the childcare themselves. There’s my feminist rant for the day.
Anyway, my brainstorming went something like this:
ways to earn $ – ??
doula’ing?
writing
babysitting
grants
Can you see why I fantasize about being a midwife? I think it’s the stable steady work that appeals as much as anything. If I were a midwife, I could join a clinic, I could practice, and I would know how much money would be coming in every single month. None of the options above offer any sliver of stability, at least not as I am currently practicing any of them.
A former boss of mine, who is a writer, made a very funny/for serious flier advertising his services: “January Blowout Sale. Book writer now and save 20%.”
I’m wondering … should I do something of the sort? Pitch, advertise, apply? (All of which take significant time and energy, too, of course). Or should I just keep doing what I’ve always done, which is to carve out bits of time, write and work, and sometimes get lucky–just often enough to keep the bank account at a slightly stable level. It seems such a haphazard way to construct a career. And that’s what I want–a career, not a hobby.
:::
Note: beautiful photo of clover and shoe-print by AppleApple.
Wednesday, Feb 2, 2011 | Money, Mothering, Writing |
I’ve been writing more regularly on my side-project blog, Swim/Run/Bike Mama (yup, it’s on the triathlon project), and less regularly, perhaps, here. Since finishing the 365-project (apparently, I thrive on projects), I’ve hardly picked up the camera. I am giving myself a full week of breathing before even thinking about what to do next, photography-wise; but one interesting discovery is that out of 365 photos, there are about thirty that stand out, and among those, a few that might just come together to tell an interesting story quite apart from the project and apparent subject matter: ie. I can make something else out of them. Maybe that’s reason enough to continue taking a photo every day. Because at any moment, something lovely is waiting to come into existence (surrounded by a lot of other moments and attempts).
I’m linking to a piece in the National Post by my former boss, Noah Richler: he argues that funding the arts provides a public service quite beyond what can be valued monetarily. The salient point is: some things aren’t done for profit–how do we measure their value? And what does what we value and support say about our country?
And, you know, on a very personal level my thinking has been heading this way, too: questioning my compulsion to evaluate what I do in a very black and white, cost-versus-profit manner. I wrote a few posts back about wanting to be independent, financially. That’s not a superficial desire. On the other hand, it doesn’t take into account–or value–all the ways that I do support my family and contribute, ways that aren’t and probably can’t be compensated in a “fair” way. In our marriage, we try not to do too much horse-trading, ie. I did the dishes so you have to put the kids to bed. Because that just creates a feeling of unfairness: maybe the dishes are worth only two kids being put to bed; or maybe on that particular evening, the kids need a bath, which is more time-consuming, so it should be worth an extra round of dish-washing; or … well, you see where I’m going with this. In the same way, there is no way of measuring the effort that goes into, say, writing a book, and compensating it “fairly.”
Do I need to be financially independent? That’s a really personal question, I guess. I haven’t got an answer yet. But I’m interested in all the reasons that maybe, maybe that question throws me off track. Maybe it’s a red herring. Maybe the question is: can I accept that the work I’ve chosen to do may never be compensated at a rate that would allow me to be financially independent? What matters? Is it money?
