Walking meditation, budget brain.

I've been back on the elliptical machine at the gym these days, and since I am not by nature okay with cardio (in the past, I've watched DVDs of TV shows to bribe myself onto the machine), I've been trying to do what Jon Kabat-Zinn refers to as "walking meditation". In his books, he seems to assume that this would be walking around in circles in one's place of residence, or around a track or some other set thing where the scenery is not a big deal and the surface is unchanging; personally, I find that it's perfect for the treadmill or the elliptical machine. I can close my eyes and spend 40 minutes ignoring the rest of the gym, ignoring the lights and buttons on the control panel, vaguely hearing the music from my headphones, and just concentrating on being right here with my body, step by step by step.

Sometimes it works better than others. Yesterday it worked exceptionally well, as I tried to unwind a nasty tension headache (and if you make it through the rest of the entry, you may understand why I had that headache)

Five days through our first pay-period on Mvelopes, and all's well thus far. More than well, actually; I'm hugely relieved that when my Hub asks, "Hey, how much do we have left in the budget for groceries?" or "Do we have any extra cash in the budget for gas?" I can open my account, point at the screen, and give him precise answers. The embarrassing thing is how much better I feel to have the numbers coming from somewhere else; it's like when I was doing the math, it was somehow my fault that we didn't have more cash in the budget for gas, but now that I can point at the Official Numbers a la Mvelopes, I am blameless, 'cause it's just the way it is, no arguing with facts. I don't have to freak out about my math maybe being wrong, but more than that, it gives me a feeling of having Authority behind me.

I think what this means, mostly, is that I am a wuss, and am not really that good at being the iron hand o' the law at home because, in my head, it seems to be less important to have all the books balanced than to have my Hub like me. So sad. Ah, well, at least we have something in place that works, you know?

I am enthralled at being able to see how much money is left in each envelope. If I look in the checking account, it'll say $1,000, which I know in a vague way means money for X, and Y, and Z, and all that, but it's so absolutely, uncompromisingly clear in Mvelopes what that money really means. This is for life insurance; this is for the phone/internet bill; this is half of the rent that's not due until the first, but which the paycheck on the 31st won't be able to handle entirely; this is for groceries, and no, it's not equipped with a great deal of wiggle-room. It's like having a little imaginary account for each one. My anal-retentive, obsessive-compulsive side is in ecstasies over this, but mostly, it's just such a relief to have it all laid out like this. I don't have to go back to our Excel budget and do math every time I want to know if we have money in the account for such-and-such. I just know. Every time.

Totally can't lie to myself anymore, or conveniently forget after a while and thus miss the trends. If I have to transfer money from my Clothes envelope to fund my splurge-y purchase of Mario Badescu products (I totally bought some, will let you know how that works out), then that notation is still there next month when I talk myself into buying frozen pizzas and beer, and the month after that when I ask "hey, why do I never have money for clothes?", I'll know why. Oh yes, I'll know.

I'm looking forward to showing this to our financial advisor. I am such a kid; something in my head is longing for approval, praise, and possibly a gold star on my chart (gold star = an elementary school thing, at least in my experience). This is the hardest thing about being an adult; no praise for doing your homework or washing the dishes, it's just expected. Phooey.

Re: this week's groceries, I brought the thing in under-budget for the first time in... well, as per my records, at least eight months. (Probably more like five years. Oy.) This took a strict list, striking several things off of said list because we didn't really need them this week, adding up an estimate before I left the house, and (I am such a geek) crouching over my grocery cart in a corner and doing some feverish work with a calculator before bringing everything up to the counter, still holding my breath. About eight bucks under budget! Hooray! I did a little dance right at the check-out counter. AWESOME. Best part: this included bacon and spinach, which had been on the list provisionally "for if we have enough money".

I do wish we had more money. Apparently part of the reason I avoided getting the budget this detailed was that I didn't want to know just how tight things were, and now I do. An extra $500 coming in every month would let us step up the repayment of my Hub's student loans (er, more on that momentarily), put a little more into savings, and give us a little more leeway so I could budget in some non-essentials like Christmas gifts and birthday gifts. An extra $700/month would make it so that we could do all that and handle something like, oh, say, child care. I'm considering the idea of a second job, since the headhunter hasn't called me in three months (grrrrr) and it seems like there's no new job for me on the horizon. I have to admit I'd prefer to make money off my small talent in writing instead of doing retail work; perhaps I should put up a sign that says WILL BLOG FOR $$. (Seriously, I would. If anyone wants to hire me, e-mail me and we'll talk. I can swear less and make more sense if called upon to do so.)

My Hub is adjusting to the current regime, which at the moment is the most I feel comfortable asking for. I did get him to add his student loan info and his 401k info, so now I can get a much more accurate look at our net worth, and for that, I am grateful. (It may take a strong stomach to deal with watching our 401k accounts in the current market, but I gotta remember, long term.) I asked if he wanted to put his checking, savings, and credit cards on Mvelopes, and he snapped that he was just going to assume that his fun-money was being "frittered away on parking, restaurants and video games." Which... well, fair enough. He seems to have sniffed out my clever scheme in which I hoped that, by tracking his expenses for a few months, he'd eventually start to see patterns, and start planning ahead a little, and maybe, maybe decide that he was spending entirely too much damn money on parking and restaurants.

Note to self, #1: Remember, he's not dumb, and he can read me like a damn book. My subtle little schemes are nowhere near as subtle as I think they are, and he doesn't like it when I do that. Say it all out loud, or don't say it at all.

Note to self, #2: It's enough for the moment that he's no longer being backed up and/or occasionally subsidized by the shared account. He's doing more thinking about things now. As long as this doesn't turn into a credit card issue, which would impact both of us, then it's his money and if he isn't ready to deal with being responsible with it, then he's not ready, and that's fine.

Note to self, #3: Get him used to checking Mvelopes for info. Do not answer questions anymore or look info up for him; tell him to go to Mvelopes and look it up his own damn self. If something happens to me, he's going to have to know how to find this information.

I complained to one of my buddies on Friday that I still kind of resent the whole thing because before we got involved, I was pretty flighty when it came to finances, myself. It was finding out about the balances on his credit cards and his student loans that shocked me into the realization that he was even more financially flighty, and that this meant that if I wanted to avoid a 21st century Dickensian fate, I was going to have to step up and not just get my own shit straightened out, but his, too. Deep down, I'm still kind of mad about that-- about being so alone in this, most of the time, and feeling like he's undermining my efforts or, at best, being a heavy weight that slows me down.

Even more, I resent the student loans. More to the point, I resent the years he spent not paying them, back when he was with his ex (who is even worse with money, if you can believe it), and the extra year of deferment he took during the first year we were living together, that I couldn't talk him out of taking. Particularly the part with the ex, because the money those two wasted together could finance a small but well-equipped army. I know the money this woman makes, and even though I know that they're both financially retarded and that actually paying down the balances of those student loans would never have occurred to either one of them, on days like Friday-- when I got access to his student loan history online, and saw just how much interest racked up over those years-- I am still pissed. It's not right of me; he's apologized, hundreds of times, and I really need to be able to forgive this for my own sake, if nothing else (unforgiven stuff just burns in the back of my head and adds to the stress levels). For some reason, though, I feel like I need some kind of big extravaganza of an apology and a thank-you, from both him and his ex, for shouldering this where they couldn't. I feel like I deserve a parade, and flowers, or at the very least an acknowledgement of what a shit deal it is, and how much they fucked over the future by making those decisions, which eventually became fucking over me.

I know I'm not going to get it. Most days, I'm okay with that. Friday, I was not okay with it, which made it an exceptionally unfortunate day for us to have dinner with his ex. (Which is a thing that we do, 'cause we're all still friends, mostly due to her exceptional grace and generosity of spirit.) To make it even less okay, we had a flat tire, and this led to some friendly advice from her direction on how old the tires were and how I ought to put some room in the budget for all new tires. I managed not to say the first three things that came to mind, all of which had to do with ancient history and her less-than-stellar track record with money and all of which were really not acceptable, but I did snap at her that I really wasn't comfortable with financial subjects tonight and could we please change the subject?

I didn't exactly avoid being rude. I have mixed feelings on the subject, because current-her didn't deserve being snapped at when we were just having a friendly evening, but past-her deserves a lot of ire for putting me in a lousy situation, in spite of the fact that I walked into this with my eyes open, and that by anyone's standards, as her ex's new wife, I owe her apologies just for existing. It's complicated. I'm still hashing out how I feel about it. The long and short of it is that all the complications came, once again, from not relating to someone on a purely here-and-now basis, and by over-thinking things and letting my head get in the way. Gotta work on that. I can't fix the past, I can't change it, I gotta let go-- and, apparently, I gotta let go every day, because it seems like I don't have the mental oomph to let things go for good.

In other news, off to the doctor's today, to ask some questions about some funny stuff going on with one leg (this somehow makes me feel like a horse) and a weird spot in one eye. I'm hoping she'll just tell me that this is nothing to worry about, but if either of them is something to worry about, I'd rather I actually told her. Besides, it's a good point to check in; three weeks off Zoloft. So... well, we'll see how that goes.

Cut for length-- click to read more.

Let the fun begin

I've got two half-finished posts sitting in the queue, so I'll try to finish this one, at least, and get it up. I have not forgotten you all, I'm just getting all scattered this week. Bah.

So, I took my last bit of Zoloft on Tuesday. Since I've been taking half a pill every third day for the past month, today (Friday) would have been when I was supposed to have the next pill, and I didn't. Haven't. Which I'm pretty sure means that if anything is going to happen, it may well start happening today.

Trying my best to stay calm. I've talked myself out of a few trees already, spent more than half my allowance for this pay period in an hour's time (but, you know, AWESOME CLOTHES, so I'm kind of okay with that), doing my breathing, trying to get a little one-minute meditation in whenever I have a chance. I think I'm okay, but I've got this strong sense of impending financial doom going on that is kind of hard to pin down. It's tied in with my recurring freak-out about how the hell we're ever going to manage to afford kids; we're pretty much breaking even right now-- not managing to save any more, but not going into debt-- and I'm not only irritated that we can't manage to get money saved, and am pissed that our nest egg, safely ensconced in a brokerage account, is apparently LOSING money, but add the concept of affording kids to that and... I break. I kind of feel like giving up, selling all my belongings, and moving into a nunnery. Pretty sure that we're actually fine and that this is just my stress-generator talking, but at the same time, it's kind of uncomfortable.

Also: Lollapallooza is now in full swing, two blocks away from our office building, and it's so fucking loud that not only can I kind of hear the music, but the windows-- fifty-plus stories up-- are SHAKING. I would say that this means I'm getting old, but I've always been averse to ongoing sessions of very loud noise, so I'm still just as cranky as I've always been, I guess. Still. If this was our downstairs neighbor at home, I'd be banging on the floor asking if possibly he didn't need to make it so that the entire apartment complex could hear Sexyback for the eighth time. As it is, I'm feeling peeved at a large swath of humanity congregated in Grant Park. GRRRR.

Cut for length-- click to read more.

I get to meet DietGirl and you don't! NEENER!

Just got off the phone with the brilliant DG, who sounds positively adorable. Plans for tonight include touring Millennium Park and then hitting Boystown to discover margaritas the size of our heads; not generally a bright idea for mid-week when one is planning on working the next day, but what the hell, how often does DG show up in Chicago? Every day? I THINK NOT. Special occasion, then. Huzzah!

I am so bouncy and delighted that I'm having a difficult time getting anything done today. FIVE MORE HOURS and I get to meet DG! There is always the possibility that we may hate each other on sight, but I suspect this will not happen. My Hub is going to meet her, too, in order to insure that there are no axes or chain-saws about her person, and the evening will end either with a) watching fireworks or b) watching pre-recorded, downloaded television, depending on how many margaritas I consume. Considering my alcohol tolerance of late, I'd say... one should do it.

SO EXCITED. EEEEEEEEE.

OH FUCK I FORGOT TO BRING THE CAMERA. FUCK OH FUCK. Hrm. Possibly the evening will include a run home to Casa de Veres to find the camera and introduce DG to our two cats.

EDIT: It turns out that my Hub has remembered the camera. A king among men, he is.

I have two more doses of Zoloft before being DONE. I'm actually pretty calm about this, because meditation and working to restrain my rampaging toxic perfectionism has kept me calmer the past few months than Zoloft has done anytime after the first six months I was on it.

I now own Too Perfect: When Being In Control Gets Out of Control, and my advice to you, dear readers, if you are anything like me, is to find this book as soon as possible. Alternately, if you know perfectionist people (and I know more of those than of the normal sort), there is also a guide inside for how to deal with them (us). I am very tempted to get a copy for my parents, BOTH OF WHOM exhibit these qualities, only in very different ways. (Dad: crazed perfectionist overachiever. Mom: has such high standards for doing things that often she either does things over-obsessively, or is too exhausted by the concept of such a huge undertaking that she can't do it at all.) I came by this honestly, I guess.

The author gives some instruction in how to overcome these tendencies, but also stresses that the most important thing is to learn to recognize them in yourself, and to be aware of what's going on, and to remember, when things come up, that this way of viewing the world is optional. Very good stuff. Very useful. And, seriously, I can't believe how much stuff in my life that I thought was unique to me actually fits in with this mentality-- balking and dragging my feet at the barest hint that I "have to" do something, freezing in place and procrastinating because tasks seem so big, being incapable of telling what is an important task and what isn't because it seems like they ALL need to get done, being exhausted just by all the stuff in my head when I'm really not getting all that much done... all these things are typical. All of them. I can't get over that. Finally, FINALLY, there's an answer to what the hell is wrong with me, it's understandable, it's fixable, and I don't need medication or brain surgery or years of therapy. It's a huge relief.

So, right now I'm working on that, and keeping up on the meditation, which goes very well hand-in-hand with it. My brand of mental wigginess tends to put me more inside my head than in the current moment, at any given time, so training myself to a) recognize that I've sunk back into my head and am running in little circles, and b) get out of my head and back into the current moment, is a hugely important thing.

Just as important is remembering not to use the words "I have to" or "I should" about something unless I really do, and to use the words "I want" about stuff that I do, in fact, want. Part of using "I should" for everything is that it turns everything into a chore, even the stuff that is exciting and great fun, like games and visitors and going out. Which also means that I lose touch with the sensation of what it's like to want something, which means that I can't tell what I want. Which is just not good.

Shoulder still sucks. I'm babying it. No yoga, no upper-body lifting. I went through a few weeks of sporadic gym attendance but am back to a regular schedule now, just getting on the elliptical machine. I want to get back to doing lower-body lifting again, along with the elliptical, but we shall see.

Funny thing: I used a different elliptical machine last night, due to the fact that the INSANELY LOUD MUSIC was going on in the aerobics class area again. (I now bring earplugs as a matter of course. Just in case.) This one has the heart-rate monitor thingies on the moving handles, not on the stationary ones, so it has a feature where it automatically adjusts to keep you in your target heart rate zone. I vaguely assumed that this meant that I hadn't been working hard enough and that this would keep my ass kicked, but no, turns out... exact opposite. Had been working too hard, and it kept alerting me to calm the hell down.

Seriously, the thing that I wish I'd known a long time ago (and which I wish I could remember all the time) is that I make these things out to be harder than they are, because I think I have to overachieve, when in fact I just have to do an enjoyable amount to see health benefits. I don't have to kill myself on these machines and end up dreading going back. I can do a smaller amount and want to go back.

I think I'm slowly getting back into a mental zone where I'm ready to start up some stuff again, if I can keep it in the "want to" rather than "have to" headspace. We'll see. I'm still new to this "want to" thing, so I still have to figure out what I want.

Cut for length-- click to read more.