February 2008

tension

I find myself suffering a certain anxiousness. It translates various to a desire for excitement or a thinly veiled panic. I think it's because I'm worried about money. We just took on this expensive car payment when we really haven't been managing our income worth crap yet. I still don't understand exactly what's going on. We have enough coming in that we should have savings. We should have had enough to pay the taxes and the GST we're owing and still have something set by for ourselves. Yet we haven't even enough together when bills come in to pay them right away it seems. I have all these entries on what we've spent on yet still I don't grasp what it is we're doing or how to change it. I try and buy less at the grocery store yet wind up paying just as much. I try and cut back on electricity yet the bill goes up. I see the money go out in chunks and lumps here and there and wonder, does it really all add up so fast? If so, when each chunk seems negligible, how then do I stop up the leaks? How to restrain us? We see something we think we need and away we go.
Take last night. We're trying to economize so we aren't supposed to be spending on non=essentials, right? Well coming home from getting the car cleaned up by the dealership we decided that we should get floor mats for the car to keep the floor nice. At the store we get cheap mats, but then get the $20 trickle charger we ought to use on the car (that could have waited a year though) and then a $20 block heater timer which, again, could have waited a year (but really dan's truck 24/7 is expensive). Well so $20 floor mats expanded to $60 worth of stuff that was worth buying! So we're coming home. We're both tired and hungry, and get the idea to go to our fave restaurant. I said "yeah, lets, it's not that expensive, $25 gets us a meal, right?" Dan says "yeah, lets celebrate my landed immigrant status!" Dan got news yesterday that he's been accepted and will be recieving his papers shortly. Pretty good news really, it will mean he can work anywhere without a permit and travel freely in and out of Canada and so forth.
So we get to our fave restaurant only to find they're closed for the month for some unstated reason. What's our other favorite restaurant? Ok, ok, across town we go. It's a great restaurant but costs twice as much to eat there as our little vietnamese place. So next thing you know, we've spent another fifty bucks on food. ~sigh~ So there you go, we somehow, and I still am not quite sure how, went through four hundred bucks in incidentals this week! Probably half, mind you, went on gas for the truck and work supplies. It still alarms me to see money evaporate like this and I can't figure how or why! So how in the hell are we going to get eight grand together by end of april??? Nevermind we're already four hundred behind in GST savings this year and probably another two hundred for last year and then the gubbmint is gonna want our quarterly 2008 tax payment When?
So here I am feeling antsy. It translates to a feeling of restlessness, of wanting to go do something exciting. How useless is that? It's a panic and a restlessness all around and then I just feel this need to somehow get control over things, and I don't know how. When I bring it up with Dan he just gets impatient and the most he can answer is "I'm making lots of money, don't worry, I'll make more money." But that just means more taxes in my mind and besides, he already is making lots of money. Why aren't we gettign ahead? Why are we still owing the credit card? Why haven't we saved up? I suggested getting rid of the tv, that would save us fifty bucks a month right there, maybe more, but he doesn't want to give up his channels. But does $50 a month make much difference? It'd take several cuts like that to get anywhere and the tv is the only thing we could electively get rid of. Both cell phones are locked in contracts. The car payment is locked in. Utility bills aren't elective either. Not much else there. So WHERE the hell is it all going? ARRRGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!! Time to look back at the spreadsheet again and see where it's going I guess.
That's my whine for today.

highly accurate clock

Scientists, I have read, have invented the most accurate clock yet, not losing even a second over 200 million years. So they say. It measures time from the tick of protons suspended in laser light, or something like that, ticking at such high speed as to be unfathomable for one such as me. Accurate clock? Measured against what? How do they know it's accurate? They're creating something that is accurate against itself? Against what? You ever wonder? They've created a device against which all other measures will be compared.
I think distance is a better unit to explain this, so I will translate first in distance illustrations then ask you to extrapolate to time. A king decided one day to standardize measures so carpenters and boat builders would be able to share sizes and pieces and regulate building in general. He used his own body to set the standards. Previously a carpenter would use his own foot to measure a foot, his own hand to measure a hand, etc. A yard was the distance from thumb to shoulder or thumb to thumb. I forget the details but they don't matter and you can look them up if you care. I don't really, it's the idea that matters. So this king used his own body, had the amounts set into permanent artifacts and all our imperial measures to this day follow down from that. A french scientist used a carbon rod to set his metric system in place, following measures taken from science and extended by increments of ten. Again, the details aren't hard to find if you're interested so I'll spare my wrist and brain from typing, research, etc. My point here is that both systems are arbitrary! How does one measure the distance from your farm to town? As the crow flies? As the horse runs? As the tractor ambles? As a man walks? How far is it in a speeding ambulance? A muscle car on a summer day? The arbitrary measure of miles is extremely useful for standardizing communication because from it the horse rider, the walker, the driver, can all extrapolate their version of how far it is. For the walker, it might be an afternoon. For the horse rider, perhaps the time between morning tea and lunch. For the driver, a short jaunt. For the ambulance passenger, it could take a lifetime and the blink of an eye all at once. So how can we say how far it is, just from saying how many miles, and have that be a true factual statement? Well simply that we've all measured ourselves by that standard.
We don't need that measure to discuss it though. Consider the following exchange:
"How far is it to town?"
"How are you getting there?"
"I'm driving the corvette."
"Oh about fifteen minutes."
Now, instead of distance, we've measured in time. We need some agreed measure, but instead of minutes it could have been any common experience between the two, such as "about how long a kettle takes to boil" or "the time it takes a log to burn" or even "about a gallon of gas."
Again, I wish to point out that the item by which we measure these things is arbitrary. There is no actual measurement outside of our choice to create it. Not for time, not for distance. The experience we have of time and distance is entirely relative to our moment. The distance from you to the phone may be only ten feet, but if you have fallen and broken your hip it's a good deal further away than it is when you're waiting for the call-back for your pizza delivery order! The apparently immutable measures are, in subjective experience, entirely flexible. How long is a minute to a child going to the fair? How long is it when you're having fun? How long when you are waiting for a verdict in court? Again, completely different subjective experiences.
I submit that our subjective experiences are the only thing that is real. The only reality on which we can truly depend, however much we all agree to use the same measures on our experiences for the purpose of relating to each other. I move at a different speed from my world. They used to say "dances to the beat of a different drummer" and that in fact is a great way to view it. My drummer has no rhythm and his beat is pretty funky but it's fun to dance to, so that's fine. However, it does mean I'm usually a bit out of sync and my happiest choices in life were when I threw away measurements. I still keep a weather eye on the clock now and then but I only count in half hours at best, usually in hours. A measure that fat has enough slack in it to account for the variability of my time experience while allowing me to synchronize with those around me.
This is why I ask, against what do they measure this fancy pants new clock of theirs and how do they truly prove it sets a time beat that is regular? When a second might be any length of time from instant to eternity, how can they claim to be regular?
Einstein tried hard to point out to us that time and distance are relative but he used an absolute language to do it, and most of us missed the point. Nothing is absolute except human attitudes!

hyacinths

'If thou of fortune be bereft,
And in thy store there be but left,
Two loaves, sell one, and with the dole,
Buy Hyacinths to feed thy soul'
~Muslih-uddin Sadi
I read and memorized this verse many years ago and in honor of it, have bought hyacinths in February every year. I must say, they do feed the soul. Even in my most impoverished times I spent the money on these delightful bulbs. Right now there's a pot with 3 of them blooming on the other side of my TV. Oh me oh my, the scent fills the whole house deliciously! After the blooms are spent I keep the plants as houseplants till the ground thaws, then plant them in a sunny spot against the south wall of the house, sheltered and warm against winter's worst, they have been surviving and blooming the next spring, givng me some sweet early season flowers.
My smart car, named Iris for Inflated Roller Skate, had some grief with an ice crystal in Saturday's extreme cold so I had to take it in for a look-see and get the engine light turned off. When I picked it up I had them go over some things I needed to know about the car. It's nice to have it running again and now that the weather is a bit warmer I'm itching to drive it places, even though I have no places to which I need to drive! Besides, merely going a couple of miles with tools in the back for painting isn't that much fun, heh.
Walter is driving me batty on this paint job. I was hired to paint, not put on the finish coat for the drywall, yet I'm having to go back and fix, over and over, the many flaws in that new drywall. I know he's paying me but dammit I don't like working this many days in a row on a job, especially one I thought was finished! I put in some damned long hours to get it over with. I'm spending more time loading tools and driving back and forth than doing the work too. It's so annoying.
I haven't sold the Rabbit yet. Too little interest in it. I'm still avoiding having to field phone calls from strangers. If I advertised and got no calls would be as bad as lots of calls. One call from a definite buyer is all I want! We did take it in to the carwash to clean and wipe and vacuum it. It looks good. Then we had the engine detailed at the body shop nearby so that too looks lovely. Nobody's seen it since though. Soon I will have to advertise it in a high-traffic area. I should get onto kiji with it and craigslist. Maybe after Walter released me from servitude so I can focus myself on the problem rather than being pulled sideways by demands from all around.
I've been so damned busy this year and I can't quite figure out why. Part of the blame is this job for Walter. It's occupied way too much of my focus. Taxes aren't helping my stress level any. I need more info to be able to complete a return and thus far it's threatening pretty scary taxes owing! If I can even halve them, maybe we can find that money in time. Dan's work is a bit slower this last week which doesn't really calm me, yet if he keeps working like this, our taxes next year will be even worse! Oh dear oh dear. Money, the two edged sword.
I'm pretty skinny these days. Not athletically yet, but I have a figure and my face is back, that's nice. My rings, which I already sized down once, are floating and spinning uncomfortably on my fingers. I'm almost at my target weight and wondering if it's low enough or not. No matter. I am taking more days to be less stringent with my diet anyway. Realistically I will probably have to be on some level of food restriction all my life, greater than that I ever followed in my youth. My body simply can't process those calories like that anymore. Unfortunately, having to exercise greater self control and suffer greater restrictions on your behaviour, is the price you pay for getting older! There's a whole lot of fees, LOL, your beauty and vanity, strength, health, you experience more pain, have more stupid little irritations due to failing parts, can't do all you'd like to. The upsides are supposed to lie in the mental stability and wisdom you gain, and in the financial advantages you have from years of keeping what you've got and adding to it at whatever speed you can.
Well I've never said life is worth the effort, only that you make the effort because it makes inevitable life less unpleasant!

selling a car

God I have come to hate having to sell things. People can be such fucking ASSES about it. Here I have this perfectly lovely old VW rabbit. Ok, it's a bit tattered around the edges, but so is any car of a quarter century that's merely been a ride, not a restored beauty. As beater cars go, it's a real peach. It's compact and cheap to run, has tons of interior space for it's class, all the doors and locks, lights and brakes, and nearly everything else, still work. About the only things that don't work anymore are one heater vent, the air conditioner module, and the oxygen sensor on the exhaust system. The seats are torn but there's nice seat covers in place. It's dirty, I know. We'll fix that, since it seems to be SO FUCKING IMPORTANT out there! Everyone's got some look on their face when they come to see it like it has cooties. So I'll get the fucking thing detailed.

Rust? Precious fucking little compared to when I got it because a ton of it was fixed. Paint? Ok, the repair area at the back looks funky because I got the color wrong when I picked out the paint but shit, this ain't a mercedes guys. I'm asking a thousand. That isn't much at all for a running car but people keep acting like I'm asking a fortune for a chunk of shit. It runs. It doesn't guzzle oil. It starts when you turn it on. The shock absorbers absorb the shocks. The steering doesn't jump around. It stops when you brake, it goes when you gas, it changes gears, all by itself, as soon as it needs to.

People come over. They look under the hood, listen to the motor, peer at the tires (rather good ones at that) and sneer at the poor thing. They act like I'm a cheat and it's a monster with cooties. I love that car, you assholes. You look at it and you see a shabby dirty old thing. I look at it and I see a reliable ride that's carried me for years and would carry you just as faithfully if you just loved it. I won't give it to you for cheap, ya moron. You wouldn't appreciate it if I did and you'd probably hurt it. I want you to keep it running, appreciate the miracle of affordability it offers, the incredible cargo, the loyalty this iron steed can give.

They get in and turn up the heater and wave their hands in front of the vents. What, does your car have some instant-on heating coils so it's hot when the engine just started at twenty below? For fuck's sake dumbass, it's cold, of course it isn't going to be pumping out hot air! Then you sneer and ask if it gets warm enough. When I assure you it does after you've driven it a short while, you sneer like you spotted a lie.

Goddamnit if you ever saw some of the crap I was grateful to drive you'd understand why this car is so wonderful. The dash is intact, not cracked and falling apart in chunks. It's got a heater and a radio and, look, I'm giving you new speakers! Ohhhh, I'm supposed to install them for you???? Asshole. The seats are firmly bolted down. The headliner, ohhh, it's actually NEW! It's not that dirty either. Not layered in dust and grime, just winter foot dirt on the floor and road splash on the exterior because, and I'm sorry to have to point this out, IT'S FUCKING WINTER!!!! How often do you detail your car in the winter????? Last time I did a wash in winter the doors froze shut and I broke the lever on the passenger side trying to open it. Oh, but that's FIXED NOW. Like everything else that's ever broken, I fixed it. I fixed the broken window cranks, the dead alternator, the old battery, the worn tires, the busted shocks, the dying tranny, the ruined differential, the water pump and the giant decayed rear end. I got that ALL fixed. Did I mention the headliner? Yah, that's fixed too.

Look, there's no cracks in the windshield. It's a quarter century old in Saskatchewan and the windshield hasn't even got a stone chip!!!

I hate this shit. I hate them contacting me to hem and haw about the asking price. I did some shopping last summer when the differential went out. Even though it cost us $1,500 (50% more than the asking price of the car) to fix it, I spent that because... WE COULDN'T FIND ANYTHING THIS GOOD FOR THAT MUCH MONEY!!!!!!

I hate when they come over and cast disparaging glances at my winter gear. Ooooooh Sorrrrryyyy, I don't shop at the mall for a coat that doesn't keep me warm in these temps so I can look cool.... Nooo, instead I wear the same damn coat, year after year, till it's too worn to wear anymore, then I go out and find the cheapest and warmest coat I can to replace it. I have better things to spend my money on, like my domain rental, or computer gadgets, or... Hmmm, my new car for instance? That doesn't mean I'm dishonest when I tell you it's a good car! You want to take it to a mechanic for a look over or crawl around under it? No Problem! I have not misrepresented a single thing.

Well. All that doesn't change the fact there's still my old car sitting there filling space in the yard and wasting money for the plates. We'll get the engine shampooed so the old black dirt and oil is gone and you fuckwits don't think it's spraying oil all over the place. We'll spray down the exterior and vacuum out the interior and i"ll even wash the seat covers. Then you'll know it hasn't got cooties or bedbugs or some damn STD.

Then, I hope, maybe Goddess Phyllis in her infinite care, will send to me someone truly worthy of my fine old steed. Someone who'll hug the wheel like I did and say thank you when it somehow manages to get home on an empty gas tank (yah, I fixed the broken gas guage too). Someone who's glad to have a car that hasn't got a hole in the floor and that won't make the cops come chasing with a thick ticket for safety violations. Someone who's been looking for a decent car for only a thousand. If they're polite enough and really smile to see my Bunny Blue, I'll even let them keep some of their money. I won't give it free though, you don't appreciate that which costs you nothing.