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dragonlady7via http://ift.tt/2fTA6zV:
Dude’s boss is after him to take a vacation, because he never takes vacations apparently.
I mean, we took a long weekend in July, but that didn’t count I guess. We took a week in June? May? Whenever it was, but we spent that working, loading my sister’s house into moving pods and such. I had a blast mostly, but I guess that’s too much Work for a Vacation.
(ugh personal wittering behind the cut but tl;dr is Peru nice in January and am I the kind of person who can even really think about that??)
Thing is, after our long weekend in July, he was freaked out about money, so I’ve been severely restricting myself since then on spending. Fair; I earn basically nothing. (Less, lately; usually my b-i-l gives me cash for farm work, but he didn’t this last time, so I earned $0 in September, and bought three tanks of gas and two twelve-packs of beer.) (I rely entirely on other people for my room and board so I can actually itemize my spending really really well.)
Dude is like “we should go to Peru in January because you’re busy up until then”, and that’s true, I am, but I’m not really going to get paid much in that time, and I mean– well, criteria for where to vacation is kind of weird; I said “not too sunny” and he said “not too cold” and I said “not actively on fire, under water, or in active riot” and he said “Peru”, so that’s the extent of homework I’ve done.
I mean, I know a bunch (relative to my peers, I guess) about Central and South America, in that I’ve read like five books and my mom the Spanish teacher would be mortified if I didn’t know my Aztecs from my Olmecs from my Inca, but I don’t know anything specifically about Peru except that my high school Spanish teacher was from Colombia and told us Peruvians were “muy ladrones”. (Somewhat tongue-in-cheek I think? but? you know high schoolers aren’t great at irony.)
Also the way he keeps saying “you’re busy until January” is making me feel really weirdly guilty like I’m supposed to be able to help that, and it’s all compounded because I’m busy doing things that don’t, by and large, earn money. (I’ll mostly be at the camera store and they pay me $10.75/hr. so I gotta work a lot of hours for it to amount to much of anything.)
Sooooo I guess that means I have to pull up my big girl panties and have a Serious Chat and explain to him that I’ve been lowkey constantly panicking about money since he freaked out in July and if he really thinks I’m going to enjoy going to South America with him while constantly freaking out about money that’s not really a reality-based impression he’s got, there, and also we’re traveling to Maryland in December so I had been thinking more along the lines of like, a road trip to Washington DC or something, not a flight to South America.
But at the same time it would be so unimaginably cool to go to Peru, can you imagine???? Instead of my whole brain shutting down from the dark cold like it does every January?? I could look at like, some awesome ruins in a mountain and like meet a llama and stuff? I’m not even letting myself Google it because I don’t want to think too hard about it yet.
But like.
Here’s the thing, when you earn possibly-less-than-$10k-a-year and have no real prospects for advancement, you can’t just be frugal. You have to literally not spend money on anything. I subscribe to one (1) Patreon at $1/month and have guilt over that. I bought myself lunch once this week because there were no groceries in the house, and it took me three hours to psych myself up to buy that $3 fast food burrito. That’s not a headspace where you can blithely consider international travel.
I understand Dude’s money freakouts. He earns a pretty reasonable salary, but in software development, which is incredibly unstable (he’s never had a job more than 5 years, ever; even if he’s great, the company gets sold to assholes and that’s the end) and also notoriously ageist. He figures sometime around 50-55 he’ll hit a wall and never get hired again, so he’s got to be prepared for retirement by then, which means every possible dollar has to go into retirement, which means I get considerable flak if I’m not covering my own expenses. He figures he’s fine covering rent and food and all, but my car, my gas, my insurance, and whatever I buy myself, I really ought to be able to cover that, and I sort of do but mostly don’t. My only solution to that, since I am a human who is not worth dollars mostly in this capitalist society, is not to spend money, and I’m pretty good at that, but occasionally I snap and, like, buy myself new jeans or something. (Or in July when I lost my mind and bought $250 shoes in Toronto. Lest you think me sincerely thrifty. No, I just don’t buy things. I’m wearing them right now, though. They’re the best everyday shoes I’ve ever owned. I’m a ridiculous human.)
I did discover while my bestie was visiting that she figures on putting me in her will, though, LOL. She told my sister that it was ok, Farmbaby wouldn’t have to be responsible for putting me in a home, her kids would be left in charge of it. I feel weirdly better to know that. But I should be a better godless-parent to them. (What’s a godparent for a child who was never baptized in any religious organization? IDK.)
Dude’s boss is after him to take a vacation, because he never takes vacations apparently.
I mean, we took a long weekend in July, but that didn’t count I guess. We took a week in June? May? Whenever it was, but we spent that working, loading my sister’s house into moving pods and such. I had a blast mostly, but I guess that’s too much Work for a Vacation.
(ugh personal wittering behind the cut but tl;dr is Peru nice in January and am I the kind of person who can even really think about that??)
Thing is, after our long weekend in July, he was freaked out about money, so I’ve been severely restricting myself since then on spending. Fair; I earn basically nothing. (Less, lately; usually my b-i-l gives me cash for farm work, but he didn’t this last time, so I earned $0 in September, and bought three tanks of gas and two twelve-packs of beer.) (I rely entirely on other people for my room and board so I can actually itemize my spending really really well.)
Dude is like “we should go to Peru in January because you’re busy up until then”, and that’s true, I am, but I’m not really going to get paid much in that time, and I mean– well, criteria for where to vacation is kind of weird; I said “not too sunny” and he said “not too cold” and I said “not actively on fire, under water, or in active riot” and he said “Peru”, so that’s the extent of homework I’ve done.
I mean, I know a bunch (relative to my peers, I guess) about Central and South America, in that I’ve read like five books and my mom the Spanish teacher would be mortified if I didn’t know my Aztecs from my Olmecs from my Inca, but I don’t know anything specifically about Peru except that my high school Spanish teacher was from Colombia and told us Peruvians were “muy ladrones”. (Somewhat tongue-in-cheek I think? but? you know high schoolers aren’t great at irony.)
Also the way he keeps saying “you’re busy until January” is making me feel really weirdly guilty like I’m supposed to be able to help that, and it’s all compounded because I’m busy doing things that don’t, by and large, earn money. (I’ll mostly be at the camera store and they pay me $10.75/hr. so I gotta work a lot of hours for it to amount to much of anything.)
Sooooo I guess that means I have to pull up my big girl panties and have a Serious Chat and explain to him that I’ve been lowkey constantly panicking about money since he freaked out in July and if he really thinks I’m going to enjoy going to South America with him while constantly freaking out about money that’s not really a reality-based impression he’s got, there, and also we’re traveling to Maryland in December so I had been thinking more along the lines of like, a road trip to Washington DC or something, not a flight to South America.
But at the same time it would be so unimaginably cool to go to Peru, can you imagine???? Instead of my whole brain shutting down from the dark cold like it does every January?? I could look at like, some awesome ruins in a mountain and like meet a llama and stuff? I’m not even letting myself Google it because I don’t want to think too hard about it yet.
But like.
Here’s the thing, when you earn possibly-less-than-$10k-a-year and have no real prospects for advancement, you can’t just be frugal. You have to literally not spend money on anything. I subscribe to one (1) Patreon at $1/month and have guilt over that. I bought myself lunch once this week because there were no groceries in the house, and it took me three hours to psych myself up to buy that $3 fast food burrito. That’s not a headspace where you can blithely consider international travel.
I understand Dude’s money freakouts. He earns a pretty reasonable salary, but in software development, which is incredibly unstable (he’s never had a job more than 5 years, ever; even if he’s great, the company gets sold to assholes and that’s the end) and also notoriously ageist. He figures sometime around 50-55 he’ll hit a wall and never get hired again, so he’s got to be prepared for retirement by then, which means every possible dollar has to go into retirement, which means I get considerable flak if I’m not covering my own expenses. He figures he’s fine covering rent and food and all, but my car, my gas, my insurance, and whatever I buy myself, I really ought to be able to cover that, and I sort of do but mostly don’t. My only solution to that, since I am a human who is not worth dollars mostly in this capitalist society, is not to spend money, and I’m pretty good at that, but occasionally I snap and, like, buy myself new jeans or something. (Or in July when I lost my mind and bought $250 shoes in Toronto. Lest you think me sincerely thrifty. No, I just don’t buy things. I’m wearing them right now, though. They’re the best everyday shoes I’ve ever owned. I’m a ridiculous human.)
I did discover while my bestie was visiting that she figures on putting me in her will, though, LOL. She told my sister that it was ok, Farmbaby wouldn’t have to be responsible for putting me in a home, her kids would be left in charge of it. I feel weirdly better to know that. But I should be a better godless-parent to them. (What’s a godparent for a child who was never baptized in any religious organization? IDK.)
