modern life - Surviving and Thriving

The day I saved Heckboy.

January 6, 2014January 17, 2012 by Donna Freedman

On my way home from the store recently I found nine cents, a My Coke Rewards cap and two ice-cream bars.

About that last: While waiting for the light to change I saw a discarded plastic grocery bag on the ground. As a rule I pick these up for my sister to use when she walks her dog. This bag held one of those Klondike Bar six-packs, with four missing.

The supermarket register receipt indicated they’d been purchased only about 15 minutes earlier, and it was a chilly day. You bet I took them home.

If you feel you must say “eeewww,” go ahead. I’ll wait.

To men everywhere, from a woman who’s got your number.

January 8, 2012 by Donna Freedman

Who here is sick of receiving e-mail forwards like “To women everywhere from a man who’s had enough”?

Normally I have at least a nodding tolerance for such stereotypical humor. Not this time. Maybe it was the wrong time of the month for me to be reading it.

I kid! In fact, I just thought it demanded an answer – especially if it would give me a chance to be just as sexist and condescending as the original author, whoever he is.

Want to survive “Blue Monday”? Maybe a Chicken Chucker would help.

January 6, 2012 by Donna Freedman

Each year a mid-January day is designated “Blue Monday” — allegedly the most depressing day out of the 365 or 366, according to a formula concocted by a guy named Cliff Arnall.

A former tutor at the University of Cardiff, Arnall seems to have created Blue Monday as a publicity stunt for a travel agency. Still, the reasoning seems pretty sound to me: A combination of consumer debt from holiday spending, post-holiday letdown, crappy weather and failed New Year’s resolutions make us feel like hell.

Strategic pizza.

December 15, 2011 by Donna Freedman

Last month I was fried extra-crispy: too many things to do in too little time before I left for a seven-week trip to Alaska. Will Chen over at Wise Bread did a telephone intervention, i.e., I sort of melted down while he was on the line.

Bless his heart – he didn’t start to make bad-cell-reception noises and say that he couldn’t hear me so we’d have to talk some other time. (Like, um, never.) Instead, he listened to me whirl and howl about so many things I wanted to do, so few days until my plane left, so many professional plans but no time in which to bring them to fruition.

Then he gently encouraged me to think about how I’m spending my time.

I see bad people.

October 15, 2011 by Donna Freedman

Until recently I was a fairly confident person. I took buses and trains both here and in other cities.

But after being mugged in Seattle’s Westlake Center transit tunnel, I lost my happy thoughts. To paraphrase the little kid from “The Sixth Sense,” I see bad people – everywhere.

Never dumpster-dive for plastic containers. (Warning: Immature language.)

August 1, 2011 by Donna Freedman

Getting older is not for whiners. Since my late 40s, midlife health concerns have included thyroid imbalance, elevated blood pressure and creeping weight gain. A couple of mammograms looked iffy but turned out to be OK. The asthma could be better.

Mostly I’ve handled these issues with equanimity. But that was before the doctor ordered me to spread my own poo on a chemically treated card.

One of my hostel roommates got arrested for importing machetes.

February 23, 2011 by Donna Freedman

Made you look, didn’t I?

Seriously: One of the six people in my “pod bed shared room” brought some machetes back from the Congo. The situation is too convoluted to explain because I’m on free wifi at McDonalds and I’m getting glared at for sitting here so long.

Short form: He spent several hours in a jail cell when his souvenirs were discovered.

“They took my pocketknife, too,” he said, sounding dispirited. “They told me any blade that locks is illegal, and any blade longer than three inches is illegal.”

“Most machete blades are longer than three inches,” I agreed.

Could your family survive on one salary?

November 28, 2015November 27, 2010 by Donna Freedman

Some couples choose to go to one income: to have a baby, to go back to school, to start a business. For others the change is involuntary and terrifying: layoff, illness, a business going under.

Those who seek change have the option of preparing for it. Those who have change thrust upon them can only scramble to minimize the damage.

If life is the currency, I’m already rich.

October 5, 2015September 16, 2010 by Donna Freedman

J. Money has started a “Million Dollar Club” at his site, Budgets Are Sexy. Nicoleandmaggie from Grumpy Rumblings of the Untenured isn’t rushing to join.

(I’m not really sure which of the two bloggers wrote this, so I’m going to guess that it was Nicole. I have a 50% chance of being right.)

Nicole and her spouse are making some smart choices, such as paying the mortgage off early, being canny about retirement funds and living on less than one salary. In this post she noted that throwing every extra dime and spare minute toward millionaire-hood would get them there faster.

But.