Simple greed

I had pretty much decided to kill my blog, for various reasons, but before I got around to it I suddenly got an increasing number of advertisers wanting link placement on TBH, both directly and through Linkworth, which is the only third-party ad network I use anymore. Some of the new direct advertisers are from Australia or the UK. Maybe the weak dollar makes sites like mine cheaper for them? Who knows?

I'm not strong enough to resist the mostly passive income, so the blog lives on, with infrequent posts and a stale template. I still think it needs a major overhaul if I'm going to keep it long term, but for now it will continue to limp along as it is.

Thanks to all the readers who keep coming back.

City taxes on self-employed income

Every person desiring to engage in or to continue to engage in any business within the City of Philadelphia shall, whether or not such person maintains a place of business in the City, prior to engaging in such business, procure a business privilege license from the Department of Licenses and Inspections.

Crap.

Crap crap crap.

I need to get my butt down to the Municipal Services building and get a business license right away.

Just what I needed. More taxes to pay.

Mayor Nutter, help me out here.

Stimulated!

I got my stimulus payment today, all $886 of it for myself and my little dependent. I am trying to figure out how to pay my credit card bill and preschool tuition before M gets paid next week and before I get reimbursed for some work expenses, but I am going to leave that stimulus payment burning a hole in my savings account for a couple more weeks. I'll need it when we RIP OFF THE FRONT OF OUR HOUSE later this month. The excitement is starting to fade about the pretty new facade we'll have, and I'm fretting about the four-figure estimate.

M will be stimulated later because I don't think he elected direct deposit.

Money, money, money. What a headache.

Feeling the pinch at last

Back in January, I wrote that I didn't anticipate feeling much impact from the economic turmoil. My employment is pretty secure. I can fairly easily afford my life as I have been living it. I'm one of the lucky ones.

Now, only a few months later, I'm beginning to feel a bit more strain from the state of the economy. My list of complaints sounds pathetically minor when I think of all the people losing their homes to foreclosure, losing their jobs and their health insurance, watching the revenue from their small businesses plummet, etc.

But still. My favorite kid-friendly neighborhood restaurant recently raised their prices by $3-4 dollars per entree. My small Japanese car is starting to seem like a gas guzzler to me, since it costs me almost $30 to fill the tank these days. And for the first time in my life, I'm seeing concrete examples of inflation, especially at the grocery store. Some of our staples have gone up so much that I'm often coming home from the store without buying them.

Take avocados. We consume a lot of them in our house. I'm from California, and avocados really make life worth living, as far as I'm concerned. And my spouse uses them to replace other, less healthy things. For example, he spreads a thin layer of avocado on bread when he's making a sandwich, instead of using mayonnaise. So avocados are one of the things that gets added to the grocery list when we see that we're running low, and that might even occasion a late-night, mid-week trip to the store.

In the Northeast, I expect to pay $1.50 at the high end, but usually closer to $1 per avocado.

Now, I can't find them anywhere for less than $1.79 each, and most of the time they're over $2. For the non-organic kind! It used to be I'd only buy one at that price, and wait til they dropped closer to a dollar before I'd stock up.

Artichokes, too. They're not a staple. They're a treat. But every time I go to the store I check to see if they're affordable. Affordable means two for $3. Now, they're usually $3.99 each. Recently they dropped to two for $5 and I pounced.

Don't even get me started on asparagus. Or milk. Or yogurt or spaghetti sauce or bread.

Again, I realize that my money problems aren't truly problems, not even close to what other people are experiencing. But I hate it that our income keeps going up, and our quality of life stays pretty much the same.

I'm no longer looking at the upcoming economic stimulus checks from the Feds as gravy. I'm now looking forward to getting the money because it will help me catch up a bit, so I'm not always playing a cup game to pay my bills.

Got my refund, but not my rebate

I checked my savings account balance today (I've been trying not to obsessively check it every day) and saw that my tax refund has arrived. I won't be in the first round of people who receive stimulus payments, because my tax return wasn't processed by April 15. I didn't mail it til around a week before the deadline, and my refund arrived by direct deposit in my account on the 25th.

It looks like the refund, and the stimulus payment, will all go toward the $4000 house project I am suddenly compelled to do. When two different contractors look at your hosue and say the words "termites" and "water damage", you pretty much have to get out your checkbook.

Also, we decided at Xmas to replace our old car. Today the gear shift has been getting stuck in park again. I have had to get out of the car three times, in the rain, to jump on the back bumper a few times. That seems to jog it enough that I can get it into reverse or drive. So, gotta get off my duff and buy a new car SOON.

All this spending. I guess I'm doing my part to support the economy whether I like it or not.

Cafe etiquette

Dear person sitting at the next table in the cafe:

Hot beverages require some moderate slurping to avoid burning your tongue. Cold beverage can be consumed almost silently.

Your coffee is cold. I know it is, because we arrived at the same time and that was over an hour ago.

Therefore, you have absolutely no excuse for continuing to slurp so loudly.

Please, go work at home if you insist on making that noise.

Signed,
Tense Freelancer Working Beside You

She ugly

In 2004, we moved from a relatively integrated neighborhood to one that was almost completely black. My partner is Jewish, which means in this country he's considered white, and I'm sort of a western European mutt. Our son is blonde and blue-eyed. Our son was a baby when we moved in, and I was home with him a couple days a week, so I walked a lot. Hours and hours every week I spent walking with the stroller, trying to get him to sleep, trying not to go crazy in the house. I met tons of people. I gawked at the houses and gardens. And I used to amuse myself seeing how many blocks I'd have to get away from our house before I started seeing other white people. If I saw another white person within, say, four blocks of our house in any direction, I did a double-take. Then I usually recognized the person, and thought, oh, it's that one woman who lives by the train station. Or, oh, it's that social worker who visits my neighbor with all the kids once a month.

I was always aware of being an interloper. Maybe people didn't want us to be here. Maybe they saw us as gentrifying the neighborhood. Maybe they hate that I grow food in my front yard. Maybe if I pick up the trash in front of their house they'll think I'm judging them.

But almost every single person who I encountered in our neighborhood was welcoming. If they were surprised to see us there, they were careful not to show it.

Today I was out pruning in my front yard in a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. Three teenage girls walked past, talking to each other.

"This the wrong street. I'm telling you."

"No, this Herman Road. This the one we s'pose to turn down."

As usual, I butted in.

"You guys lost?" I asked.

One of the girls looked at me, dumbfounded. "She white," she said to her friends, not answering my question. "Look, she white."

"Shut up," her friend said.

"She ugly," the first girl said. By now they were past my house. I could hear her voice on the other side of the hedge. "She white. She ugly."

"I can't go anywhere with you," said her friend, laughing.

I guess you can trust teenagers to tell you what they're really thinking even if the adults won't.

Living in a row house

When we bought our house four years ago, it was infested with roaches. It was so bad we had to wash every dish before using it because there was no telling what had befallen that dish when it was sitting in the cupboard. I avoided going downstairs after dark because then I'd have to see all my little housemates running away when I turned on the light. Ew, I get grossed out just thinking about it.

We live in a row house, which is like a glorified apartment, except that there is nobody above us and nobody below. We share walls with the neighbors on either side. When they cook, I can smell it. So I approached the next door neighbor, and asked her if she had a roach problem, too.

She was amazed, and pleased, that I asked. She said the previous owner never would have admitted to having bugs. Now that we were talking openly about it, she said yes, she did have roaches. We both called exterminators and the problem was pretty much solved.

The neighbor on the other side--not so open. When she replaced all the siding on the front of her house last year, I heard through the grapevine that she was doing it because her house had termites. I thought, my house is smack up against her house, so if she has termites I want to know about it. Maybe my house has termites, too.

But when I asked her about it, she was horribly affronted. She acted like I had asked if she herself had bugs. She claimed that the siding was letting in water (probably also true, but not the whole truth as it turns out).

Today I found out that my house DOES have termites. The houses were originally stucco, and back in the 70s when siding was The Next Big Thing, everybody on the block had their houses sided. But first they had to put up strips of wood so they'd have something to nail the siding to. That's where the termites are. What followed was water damage because the termites compromised the seal between the roof and the siding. Now the masonry underneath is crumbling from the water.

The end result is that I have to have all the siding torn off my house. I'm going to get quotes on getting the thing stuccoed, and also on getting it re-sided. I happen to have an irrational and passionate hatred for siding. So I'd like to do the masonry, even tho it will require more maintenance.

I feel several things at once:

What is wrong with my neighbor that she wouldn't tell me the truth when I asked? We're both middle class Americans. I guess I underestimate the cultural differences between us sometimes. I'm a Gen-X white girl from California, who thinks there's no shame in admitting your house has termites. She's 70-something, African American and churchgoing, and she's from the south altho she's lived in Philly for most of her adult life. Apparently she thinks I don't see the exterminator's truck coming to her house once a month. I just don't get why talking about bugs is taboo.

Also, christalmighty, this is going to cost more than anything else I've ever paid for, with the exception of the house itself. I've never even had a car that cost as much as this is going to cost.

Also, whoopee! I am going to have a new facade on my house! My house will no longer be so ugly. I couldn't justify tearing down the siding when it was just cosmetic, but now I have to do it.


I'll feel better when I get all the quotes so I'll know how much it will cost. Plus, we STILL have that hole in the floor in the front room. I got the quote on it, but still haven't had time to choose which tile I want.