Old Work

Looking for an old apartment where I used to live, I happened across two articles that I'd written for the magazine Travel Weekly 20 years ago! The first one was about renting a houseboat on Lake Mead and the other one is about Las Vegas for kids. 

The digital format seems to have erased a bunch of the punctuation, which is weird.

The biggest thing I remember about writing these was that Travel Weekly paid $.25 per word for their articles ($.43 in today's money), which was easily 4 or 5 times what other outlets were willing to shell out. I remember being so giddy when one of the articles was about 900 words, because that was an absolute fortune to me, and the most I'd ever made writing at the time. 

I've gotten paid more for other pursuits since then, but writing about traveling to Las Vegas was my favorite thing I've done. Local bank commercials and sports reality show pilots weren't nearly as enjoyable for me.

I wanted to save these links, so I am posting here. Thanks for being my diary, journal!

Why do I keep turning down work?!

As you know, we need moolah! 

Twice within the past month, I have been offered work. Paid work!

And twice I have turned it down.

WHY?

I literally applied for that job at the library. I'm not afraid of work. Believe it or not, I've worked before!

Technically, this wasn't a job; it was a volunteer thing. But I worked!

But I didn't take either of these opportunities because I realized that I really just don't have time for a steady gig right now.

The first one was something that I could have done from home, but it would have required many hours of intense concentration, and it's a challenge to get that in my house. D has a room, Mal has a room, James has an office. I do have a bedroom, but I share it with James and it's kind of open for business when anyone wants to hang out. I don't really have a space where I can put up a "do not disturb" sign and get things done. So I had to turn down the opportunity for a gig in the writing field. I just wasn't confident that I could give it my best.

Then the other one was something here in town, walkable like the library, but would require a couple of full days per week. It was flexible; I could pick what days worked for me. But we have things almost every day of the week and, ironically, I've lined up even more stuff over the summer when Mal's friends are often out of pocket, and when some things like open gym take a break until the fall. He's still young enough that I need to be around at least somewhat during the day. And James's schedule is so random that we can't plan for me to work when he's off; we never know what that will be until a couple of weeks in advance.

I guess this means we're not desperate yet? I do have three mystery shops tomorrow, which is the most I've had in one day in YEARS. We'll get three free meals, and then there are actually shopper fees on top of that. That used to be the norm, but I guess the market is such that companies can basically say, "You'll eat this free food and you'll be freaking grateful!" until they can't get jobs scheduled and are willing to throw more money at it. 

I am also doing gimmicky things like opening a new credit card to get a bunch of on-board cash for the cruise so we save $300 on gratuities. It's not income, but it prevents outgo, so that's kind of the same thing, right? And it's not taxable! Huzzah! My credit score is suffering a bit, but it will rebound.

Adventures in gardening

I do not have a green thumb. I have never been able to grow stuff. But through trial and error, I have some mostly successful plants in our house, and a variety of trees and shrubs in the yard. These have come alongside many failures.

For instance, right now I have several pears growing out on the pear tree I planted in 2021. But we got 4 different apple trees that died one at a time (there have to be two for them to cross-pollinate) until after a few years, we gave up.

I also have a fig tree, Texas chaste tree, and mountain laurel that all seem to be thriving. However, the lavender that was doing so great in the pot that I needed to move it just did not like being planted in the ground. Same with a different really pretty purple plant that refused to root in the yard. Who nows why.

My philosophy is "If you can make it, great. If you require too much input from me, you're not the plant for this environment."

I have grown everything so far from sapling. I also killed a tiny pecan tree I put in the ground, and have never been able to get lantana to take. But my neighbor gave me honeysuckle that I expect to more than double in size every few months, just based on how it's been going since it warmed up. 

This is my first foray into seed-sprouting. I have so many seeds in my freezer, waiting until the "right" time to plant them. One is my favorite pride of Barbados, but I'm so scared I'll mess it up that I haven't yet made an attempt.

However, we were recently out and about the Hill Country and I saw a beautiful Goldenball Leadtree that had an embarrassment of dry seed pods hanging off of it. I took one and brought it home.

James did a lot of internet sleuthing for me, and we decided that the best way to set up for success was scuffing the seeds a bit in one area to thin out the shell, soaking them on a damp sponge in a plastic bag over night, then planting them one per trough in a cardboard egg carton.

I put 9 seeds in on Monday afternoon, and by Tuesday morning, we had a sprout! I got overly-eager and put that sprout in a pot, but it stopped growing and I accidentally broke it so we'll count that as a successful sprout that got deaded due to human error.

Yesterday, Wednesday, four more had come up.

Having learned my lesson, I left those alone and this is what they looked like this morning, Thursday.

I'm going to leave these until they grow "true" leaves and then just cut the trough off and plant the whole thing in a pot instead of trying to extricate the sprout. At that point, we'll leave it outside at night to get it used to nature. Then we'll see how it goes from there.

Later, I'll put them in pretty big pots and leave them outside to plant in the ground early next spring. This is what I did with the Texas chaste tree my neighbor gave me, and it worked a lot better than putting such a small tree into the ground like I did with the pecan.

I'm hoping to get one good tree in the ground from these seeds, and I'm pretty hopeful at least one will survive. What James read online was that we could expect 1/4 to sprout, but for us, 6/9 sprouted! (And, yes, we have 5/9 now because of me.)

I've learned to ask online before I try to buy pots, because lots of people have pots sitting around they're willing to part with. Can't wait to see what happens with our babies!

The benefit of no one I know in my every day life reading my blog...

... is that I can share exciting stuff here that I do not want to share in my daily life for reasons that will make sense later.

The first thing is that I got a gig offer that I actually turned down. It was to do an editorial letter after reading a work of literary fiction. It would have been a respectable amount of money, but I'm afraid that my personal bias against "overly" (to me) artistic prose would be difficult to get around, plus I'm not 100% confident that I have the time to dedicate to such an in-depth reading, notes, and writing everything... plus my second-guessing about having been told my feedback is "harsh." Shrug.

All of that to say that none of that is what this post is about. It's about something else, but in case my younger child happened to take a peek (he has done this before), I wanted to bore him so he'd stop reading.

What this IS about is that picture up there: budget stuff. But FUN budget stuff.

As you know, if you know my family, my younger kid LOVES cruising and wants to cruise all of the time. His friend went on a cruise the week before we went to Mexico, and I was glad he wasn't going to see her much before we left, because he would definitely have had FOMO and maybe not enjoyed our trip as much.

We're definitely putting the kibosh on extensive travel like our trips to Canada, California, and Mexico. We won't be flying for a long time. James can't take that much time off from his newish job. 

However.

I found a great deal on a ship with a line we haven't tried yet, and it leaves shortly after Christmas, so we decided to get this for Mal's gift (and ours!).

I have some money-saving plans, too! That is what's exciting to me at the moment.

First of all, when I booked, we got $100 on-board credit. Second, yesterday I got approved for a credit card that will allow me $300 in on-board credit when I spend a proscribed amount (which will be no problem). This will take care of our gratuities!

Third, there is a website where I can buy gift cards for a percentage off, so I'll finish paying in the fall with those. It will save us a couple hundred dollars.

Finally (for now), there is a place we like in Galveston where we just haven't gotten around to staying yet, and they have free parking for the entire cruise! This will save us over two-hundred dollars, as well!

One last thing I will mention is that I noticed in some online menus that the main dining room seems to have a cold fruit soup every night! No pavlova, as that seems to have gone the way of the dinosaurs (our most recent cruise was the only time I've been on a ship and not had pavlova; alas, that is the trend). But I adore fruit soup! Don't tell me it's just a smoothie, either, or I'll have to start throwing hands.

Okay, so keep this secret, will you? Thanks!

The Second 13th

At the beginning of the month, James and I celebrated our 13th anniversary (by going to see the Super Mario Galaxy movie).

Top: Mexico City, 2026; bottom: Austin, 2013

You might be aware that this is my third marriage.

My first marriage lasted about 5 years and some change. The second one, we got to 13 years but I remember knowing it was over even as my mom posted "congratulations" to us on Facebook on our anniversary (I called her and asked her to take it down, which she did; I think that offended my husband at the time, but he knew; everyone knew). 

All of this to say that when we celebrate our anniversary next year, it will be my first 14th. 

Just today, someone disparaged someone who was on their third marriage. I have some extended family (by marriage) who spread my wedding video shortly after we got married and who said, "I thought these people were supposed to be Christians, but this is how unseriously they take marriage??!" 

What's kind of interesting is that I take marriage a lot less seriously now than I did then, but that's a whole other digression.* 

However, I didn't get divorced twice because I didn't take marriage seriously. I got divorced twice because I got tired of being neglected, ignored, bullied, and diminished. And I tried especially hard to hold out during the second marriage because 1) I'd already been divorced once, and 2) we had a kid. 

A lot has changed since James and I got married. And THAT is its own digression, as well. But what I will say is that I think we stand a pretty good chance of going the distance, for several reasons. The first and most important is that we genuinely like and enjoy each other's company and that we want to stay together enough to actually work through issues, annoyances, and problems in good faith instead of just bickering and arguing to assert dominance or control or to be "right."

Plus, I figure that we made it through that 7th year and then nearly two years of unemployment intact. We'll figure the rest of it out okay, right?

*book rec: Stepping Off of the Relationship Escalator

ImPastaBle!

Mal wanted plain pasta or ramen (NOT MAC AND CHEESE) and we don't have any, so I decided to make pasta from scratch.

It's not difficult, per se, just it has to sit a while so it takes some time. AND I don't have my pasta roller anymore (when I moved into the trailer, I had to let some stuff go), so I had to roll them out by hand and it is DIFFICULT.

My noodles ended up being thicker than ideal, but whatever. It was fine and Mal said they were "okay" (meaning he's eating them).

When I explained that maybe I'll get a pasta roller again (I can get one to fit onto my Kitchenaid mixer) so the pasta will be easier to roll out, he said, "Now you know what it's like to be an Olive Garden worker."

So I guess he thinks Olive Garden is hand-making all of their noodles??

One more thing I just thought of about Mexico City that I LOVED!

When we're traveling, we try to take public transit. Even if we drove to the location! When we were in New Orleans, we parked our car in a garage and took buses and ride shares when buses weren't a timely choice (or it was raining and walking to a bus stop would have been miserable).

We did this in Mexico City, as well. I'd hoped to take the metro more often than we did, but going up and down stairs is a challenge for James, who was on the tail end of a gout attack and we did not want to add an Achilles tendonitis flare-up to that, so...

We did take quite a few buses (including trolley buses that operate on an overhead power grid, which is neat; and some buses with their own lanes so that traffic only sort of impedes their progress).

A couple of times, the drivers managed to get food in ways that just delighted me. 

The first time, we were heading out of CDMX to Teotihuacán. After picking up at all of the stops, the driver rounded a corner in a neighborhood, got out, ran to a stall, and they had a bag waiting for him. He hopped right back in the bus and we kept going.

Another time, we were heading down a main thoroughfare and got stopped at a light. The driver motioned to a vendor, and at first I just thought she knew the other woman. But before the light changed, the vendor hopped on board, gave the driver some food, and the driver handed her payment.

These moments and other times of people recognizing each other at a crosswalk with 200 people waiting for the light to change helped Mexico City feel less like a sprawling metropolis and more like a series of small towns whose borders are murky. It was very charming,