One of the things I’ve done with with my teen is Real World Math. I present her with a problem and get her to try to solve it.
Examples:
We get a message from our mortgage company that the escrow account has a shortage. We have two options: pay the full amount now, or spread it out over 12 months? Is there a penalty if we do the latter?
We have a choice between two credit cards. One offers 5% cash back on all purchases. The other offers $100 travel rebate for every $7500 we spend. Which is the better deal?
Your college GET account could be rolled over into something called Dream Ahead, a 529 plan, but it doesn’t have to be. Given the vagaries of the stock/bond market, and looking at the amount paid for each credit, should we roll it over or keep it in GET?
She correctly got the answer to 1 and 2, but gave up on 3 before even starting.
When I like a person, I like the person, even if we have little in common, and it is rare for me to unfriend some one or reject their companionship entirely.
I’m not going to say I have never cut a person out of my life. I have had people who felt like they were putting me or people I cared about in danger – situations involving stalking, threats, guns – but I think there should always be a bit of soul searching that happens when you reject another person, to understand why what this person has done is so deeply offensive to you.
I’m thinking about people who have written me off, rejected me, avoided me, chewed me out or cut me out of their life, and all the various reasons that they have done so, since childhood onward:
— I didn’t give them a turn on my bike
— I invited someone they didn’t like to my birthday party
— I wasn’t cool or popular enough
— I had super short hair and was kinda quiet
— I had a boyfriend over to my dorm room
— I married into the “wrong” religion (1st marriage)
— They were fascinated by a new TV show but because I didn’t like the show, they didn’t know what to talk to me about anymore
— Because I talked about how I used homeopathic medicine with apparent success
— Because I tried my best to post supporting comments on someone’s Facebook, but accidentally misinterpreted what their post was about, and they got offended
— Because we disagreed on politics, or they didn’t like something I posted on social media
— Because I am messing around with AI Art
And there are people who have been in my life where I have no idea what I did that made them suddenly decide to not share their address with me when they moved, or to call off contact with me in some other fashion.
The funny and sad thing is is that I still have fondness and appreciation for all the people in my life who I’ve ever called a friend, in some way or another.
Anyway, I just wanted to say that I am still going to be here doing the things that I do, regardless of whether you like them or not. I would encourage you to do the same. Just be who you are, and anyone who doesn’t like it, ah well, there will be others who come along to spend time with.
[here’s something I wrote in 2018 that I found in my drafts]
I’ve been seeing a lot of articles that conflate emotional labor with administrative tasks. Usually, the articles try to tell you that as a woman, you should be making your male partner feel guilty, because you’re the one who is always buying the greeting cards for his family, arranging the play dates, figuring out what to take to a potluck, etc.
My understanding of emotional labor is that it is the sort of work that waitresses, airline attendants, and receptionists do, when they put on a happy face for customers even on days when they are upset, stressed, or feeling sick. As an introvert, I feel I am performing emotional labor when I am forced to be in a social situation longer than I want to be, pretending like I can actually hold a conversation without getting overwhelmed, even though I burned out half an hour ago. To me, this is emotional labor.
Contrast this with administrative tasks. These are tasks that often revolve around remembering dates, time, birthdays etc. And yes, women tend to be better at these sorts of tasks then men. But this is not emotional labor.
What bothers me about all this, is that administrative tasks are one of the few things I am actually good at. So I resent it when I see an article trying to make me feel as if I should not be doing these things, and making my partner feel guilty instead.
Painting I did in two hours at a Cat Painting class at Push/Pull. This is my cat Max who died 8 years ago.
I started National Poetry Writing Month with the idea that I would write a poem and then feed it (or at least part of it) into an AI Art generator to see what came up and then use that generated art piece as an illustration for the poem here on this blog.
I found that the poems suffered, because eventually I found myself thinking about what sort of image I might end up with, while I was writing. It’s a little like writing song lyrics…since they are meant to be combined with melody and music, the words can be in service to that alternative purpose. People tend to give song lyrics a pass for being dumb, because they enjoy the music, but I feel like people (at least me!) are less forgiving of words combined with visuals.
So though I am still playing a bit with AI Art for inspiration, I am likely done with feeding it poetry for now!
As for the poem writing itself, well, I didn’t manage to write every day as you can see. The combination of trying to buy a house, going on retreat and just generally being busy with work did not bode well for writing a poem every day. Better luck next year!
Coiled to Spring 