Author Archives: Feisty Harriet

Financial Detox: January Spending Freeze

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Last January I decided to go on a spending freeze, not realizing that the first month you move into a new house is a TERRIBLE time for a spending freeze. Terrible. I big fat failed it. So, I’m trying it again. My rules are that I can buy groceries and gasoline and pay all my bills, of course, but that there is no “fun” spending, no unnecessary spending, no “I’m bored and This Thing will make me un-bored!” spending, nothing. I’m still finalizing my 2017 Resolutions, but I know this will help kick-start at least two of them, one about eating healthier (and bringing those healthy things to work for lunch), and one about saving more dollars now that I’m officially debt free.

I have two events in January that will necessitate spending a little money, and my work-around is that I have already set aside the dollars for that in cash. But, for the rest of the month, my focus will be on using what I have, tucking away all the little extra dollars into a savings account, and finding ways to entertain myself that don’t cost money. The gym (ahem, resolutions), some hiking, painting, and riding my bike will be figuring in heavily, especially while the Arizona weather is so nice. I won’t be popping over to Target to “see what they have” or ignoring my healthy lunch in the fridge in favor of something else in the cafe at my office building. Mr. Blue Eyes and I are saving up for something really fabulous this spring, and hopefully that will help me keep my eye on the ball. Christmas just happened, I got spoiled a little with some lovely gifts (a shiny new bike! new books! a wonderful tote bag for work!) and I would like to enjoy those thoroughly.

How do you budget and save money? Have you ever done a financial freeze? Want to join me?

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2016’s Resolutions: Recap

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I know a lot of people poo-poo on New Year’s Resolutions, however I really enjoy having a guiding list of priorities for the year, even if I don’t end up hitting all those priorities. Last January I came up with seven things that I knew would stretch me, but also that would be manageable if I kept at it. As 2016 winds down, it’s time to recap how I did:

2016 Resolutions: End Results
  • Sweat four times per week: running, yoga, exercise class, whatever
    • I was hit and miss with this one; from March thru October I did this consistently and I ended up losing 30 pounds. I…have not been very good at it since. Need to get back on the wagon.
  • Consistent meal planning and healthy eating
    • Yes! I’ve been keeping a grocery list and meal plan list on the side of the fridge, and I have been really good at making a healthy plan and then sticking to it for the week. Win!
  • Consistent writing: blog, notebook, and/or personal journal
    • Yes!! Not only have I blogged consistently here for the last year (my goal was to publish here three times per week, or 156 times for the year. I am currently sitting at a cool 146, which makes me really happy.
    • Additionally, I have been writing a few sentences about my day in a diary-planner type book, and I’ve loved flipping back through it to see what book I was reading, what I was looking forward to, or what was frustrating me. I will do this again.
  • Set and stick to household budget, bulk up savings and retirement plan
    • Yes!! I paid off all my personal debt this year, and my savings and retirement accounts both are beefier than they have ever been! I will continue to focus on this for 2017 to ensure I’m solidifying these better financial habits.
  • Family camping trip with the kiddos
    • Not exactly. I went camping by myself. Blue Eyes and I went camping. The four of us went to Montana for a week and spent the bulk of it outside in the mountains doing camping-type things, but we stayed in a cabin, not a tent or trailer. So…kind of? I’m counting it.
  • Visit two new National Parks
    • Yes! I actually visited three new-to-me parks! Joshua Tree, Sequoia, and King’s Canyon
  • Learn Spanish
    • Uh, no. I spent a little bit of time with Rosetta Stone, but this was not nearly the kind of priority that I had planned on it being. Oops.

Ok, so of the seven I rocked four of them, one (camping) I’m counting as a “yes”, one (working out) was a solid B+, and one (Spanish) was a big fat fail. Overall, I am not mad about this. I mean, 2016 was a dumpster fire in many ways, I am happy with how I did on this list.

How about you? How did you do on your resolutions?

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Confession of a Bookaholic: Stories from World War I & World War II

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There are approximately twenty-hundred-million books written about World war I and World War II, this is just a handful of them, but it’s what I’ve been reading lately.

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World War I

Dead Wake: Last Crossing of the Lusitania, by Erik Larson (5 stars). I love Erik Larson’s writing style, his non-fiction reads in many ways like a sensational novel (doesn’t hurt that he selects gripping stories and the researches the hell out of them to find the stories that we care about). I knew very little about the Lusitania–a huge passenger cruiser that was sunk by German U-boats as it came into harbor in Great Britain–or really about the finer points of World War I history. Larson made this ship come alive for me, and placed within the greater war theater helped a lot of disparate threads of WWI come together for me, especially the isolationist role of the United States and, finally, America joining the Allies in the war.

One of Ours, by Willa Cather (4 stars). Willa Cather is a beautiful writer, so many of her descriptions and dialogue brought up ALL the feels. Claude is a young farmer from Nebraska who feels like he has always been waiting for his life to begin, and despite his best efforts, has not made much headway. He joins the army in WWI and it isn’t until he is working and fighting with a battalion of soldiers, marching across France and watching his friends die, that he truly starts to feel like he is home, like he belongs. This is not a fast-paced battle-heavy book, but a rolling story of a young man in his second coming of age. Winner of the Pulitzer.

Additional recommended WWI reading: All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque

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World War II

In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin, by Erik Larson (4 stars). There are easily ten thousand books about World War II, however, reading about the slow-burn rise to power of Hitler’s Nazi party, and then the violent overtake of the German government…it’s been chilling to learn more about that in the weeks immediately after the 2016 election. I am not comparing the incoming US administration to Hitler’s Third Reich, however the similarities in the rise of fascism and the decline of basic human rights for all people are hard to miss. This book is told from the perspective of the family of the American ambassador to Germany in the 1930’s, Dodd and his wife are fairly conservative, middle-of-the-road people and their reactions to the changes in Berlin, the lack of believable information coming out of Germany, and the steady takeover of a hate-fueled new government are, well, frightening. I think if I’d read this 6 months ago I would have given it 3 stars. However, 2 weeks post-election, I can’t not award any less than four stars.

Note: this review was written BEFORE there were literal Nazi flags and Heil Trump salutes happening on the regular…I don’t have the political energy to rewrite this to somehow make the analogy that the rise of white supremacy and an American Nazi party is currently in all (red) areas of the country and how we should FREAKING PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT HAPPENED IN GERMANY IN THE 1930s AND THE FUCKING OUTCOME OF THAT POLITICAL DISASTER! Ok, I have a little energy. But seriously, you should all read this book. An American family initially siding with Hitler and seeing his points (??!) and then realizing how full of supremacy-fascist shit he was, and begging the rest of America to BELIEVE WHAT THEY SAW IN THE NEWS about this dangerous Trump Hitler Trump & Hitler guys. Ok. Back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Everyone Brave is Forgiven, by Chris Cleave (4 stars). Throughout this book I kept thinking of “Life After Life” by Kate Atkinson (which I loved) and it made me like it even more. Not that there is really any similarities outside of stories about British people during the London bombing raids of WWII. I think the author has nailed some witty dialogue and characters, and I liked how the different components were woven together without too much jarring as you jump from story to story. I would probably give this 3.5 stars, but I bumped it up to 4 because of the humor in the dialogue, humor that the British narrator perfectly nailed in the audiobook. The little dry one-liners with an English accent? Perfection.

Salt to the Sea, by Ruta Sepetys (3 stars). Four teenager (or young adults) thrown together during WWII as they flee the advancing Soviet forces, each chapter told from the perspective of one of them. The good news is they are together early on in the book, the bad news is one is ridiculously unpalatable (Alfred), and the other three carry secrets that, despite the chapter being told from inside their head, they refuse to even think about, though their burdens dictate every single choice. I appreciate learning more about a little-known WWII tragedy, the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff a massive refugee ship that went down in just a few minutes, killing an estimated 9,000 passengers. I appreciate Sepetys detailing that maritime disaster and putting a new face on the WWII narrative, that of the Europeans caught between the clashing armies of Hitler and Stalin.

A God in Ruins, by Kate Atkinson (3 stars). Meh. I wanted to love this, but I didn’t. I felt like the jumping around in time absolutely did not work for me, the jumping through various families and three (or four!) generations was confusing and left me feeling discombobulated and disappointed. I really didn’t care much for any of the characters. I’m sure this was intentional, but I hated the little repeating phrases and descriptions that were 40 and 50 pages apart; I think this was something to do with the reincarnation theme that Atkinson writes about in Life After Life, but I didn’t like it here, this book is not nearly as well done as her first, and frankly, you could easily skip.

Additional recommended WWII reading:

Unbroken, by Laura Hildenbrand (READ THIS!)
The Hiding Place, by Corie Ten Boom (about standing up and doing the right thing, read it!)
Lest Innocent Blood by Shed, by Philip Paul Hallie (about protecting refugees, read it!)

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Tongue Tied

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Carrying on a conversation has never been something that is difficult for me. I love talking, I love having in-depth conversations about Real Things with new friends and old. I have a pretty low tolerance for small talk. There have been a few times this year that I’ve been tongue tied. Blocked. Unable to express all the thoughts and feels and fears that are running around inside my head. The feeling of choking on consonants and gagging on vowels, literally swallowing my words instead of letting them out can bring me literal physical pain. It’s like a smoldering in my chest, a tightness I cannot loosen, threatening to cut off my air supply. Going through days and weeks feeling like I’m slowly suffocating ramps up my anxiety and soon I’m caught–again–in the middle of a hurricane that is gaining momentum.

Deep breaths. Breathe in. Breathe out. Repeat.

It seems that every time I have to go back to my own basic building blocks–things like remembering how to breathe–I get better at refreshing and moving forward. I don’t know if that’s some kind of defense mechanism where the internal warrior draws her sword and throws up the defense walls quicker; or if my armor is stronger so the blows don’t do as much damage? Or maybe my expectations for life are finally being trimmed down to size? I don’t know. I think, like all of us, I am just waiting for 2016 to be over. I am well aware that January 1 does not hold any magically fantastic solutions for moving forward, but even so, I’m looking forward to the new year.

I am working on my lists, I live and die by lists these days, I am determined to attack 2017 with a gusto not seen for many many years. I’m not talking about one particular thing, or a neat list of resolutions, I am making plans to improve my work life, my personal life, my relationships, the works. I am getting better at keeping my lists manageable and in order, and getting better at seeing a long-term plan and drawing in the building blocks to get there. This is all still a work in progress, the plans and the lists, but I’m hoping in a few weeks I’ll be able to start sharing. For me, getting it all out in the open is the only way to break the gag.

So. That’s how I’ve been*. How are you?

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*This speechless, voiceless feeling is not something just from the last few days; it’s been lurking and growing for months, tightening it’s grasp with long weasely fingers sneaking into many areas of my mind and heart. However, I was finally able to give it a name, and naming the monster has, in a small way, helped me break free from it.

The first year is the hardest

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Joshua Tree NP_feistyharriet_May 2016 (7)

One year ago today I left my beloved Salt Lake City and became a permanent resident of Arizona. A few weeks prior we had unpacked the moving van, but I had a few work responsibilities to wrap up before I could leave. I packed up my Mini Cooper, said goodbye to the dear friends who had been housing me, and sobbed as I drove south. Twelve hours later I pulled into my driveway and a little welcome party that Blue Eyes and his kids had been planning, balloons, streamers, cupcakes, big signs. It was tremendously sweet and the best thing to come home to, I’m sure I cried all over again. The last year has been full of so many adjustments, learning to live with Mr. Blue Eyes, trying to navigate my role as a stepmom, adjusting to working remotely and then re-adjusting to my new Arizona office. We’ve painted all the walls in our house, I’ve hung art and filled up the bookshelves, we built a backyard and have set off on adventures near and far.

However…

I still don’t feel like Arizona is home. This valley is a harsh mistress, the sun and the heat continue to suck my soul (yes, it’s mid-December and I still have the air conditioner on), it has been slow going in making new friends and I have no family here. Our suburban neighborhood has been a huge adjustment from my downtown Salt Lake life. When I think of all My People who I left behind I still get a lump in my chest and tears in my eyes. I know, technology, we talk and email and text and heart things on social media. But, it’s not the same. I don’t know if this cracked earth will ever feel like it’s mine. And perhaps it doesn’t need to. Most people have one place they consider “home” above all others, sometimes it’s their childhood house, or their hometown, or their grandparent’s farm that they visited every summer, or something, somewhere.

I am not happy here.

There. I said it. There are good moments, good days, and sometimes even good weeks, but I am not happy.

Most people tell me that the first year is the hardest. My heart of hearts hopes that they are right. I truly hope that the next 12 months will have more acceptance, fewer days above 120* F, and more happiness.

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