#98 To think about..........

Women love.  Men desire.

#97 What Kind of Intelligence?

I don't agree with this.  The quiz did not take into consideration that I am shy, and have a miserable memory.  In an ideal world, however, this would be the ideal me.  (I noticed immediately the typo in "convincing".)

Your Dominant Intelligence is Linguistic Intelligence You are excellent with words and language. You explain yourself well. An elegant speaker, you can converse well with anyone on the fly. You are also good at remembering information and convicing someone of your point of view. A master of creative phrasing and unique words, you enjoy expanding your vocabulary. You would make a fantastic poet, journalist, writer, teacher, lawyer, politician, or translator. What Kind of Intelligence Do You Have?

#96 Remorial?

Item on TV news, heard in passing:  a family is raising donations to build a "remorial" in Albany.  My immediate thought was "Remoras are a butt-ugly fish.  Why would someone want to build something for remoras?"   Later, I find out that it's the family of a female college student who disappeared a few years ago (upstate NY seems to have a lot of missing coeds), and the structure is to be dedicated to missing students.  They want to call it a "remorial", which they define as a combination of "remember" and "memorial". 

I wanted to both cry and throw up.  Are they really unaware that the operative part of both words is "mem"?   They removed the remembrance portion, the memory, from both words!  "Remorial" is devoid of meaning, an insult to the language, and just plain ugly stupidity. 

It reminds me of when Daughter's elementary school called the combination cafeteria and auditorium a "cafetorium".  I flatly refused to use the word.  (It reminded me of vomitorium, given the way I felt every time I heard it.)  The school administration thought it was a combination of "cafeteria" and "auditorium", but it was really a prime example of the ignorance of those charged with my daughter's education.  "Cafe" refers to eating.  "Audit" refers to hearing.  "Teria/torium" means room or  area.   "Cafeteria"="eating room".  "Auditorium"="listening room". (*)  So "cafetorium" is still "eating room", with the gender of  "room" changed.    It is not combination of cafeteria and auditorium except to those who are blissfully ignorant of the roots of the words. 

* Yes, this is simplified, but it will do.

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I got home from Saturday evening's  hafla at about 1 am, and got to bed about 2.  I'm not sure when the phone rang - I didn't have my glasses on, so my view of the clock was fuzzy - but it was either 2:30 or 3:30 am.  I tend to think the latter.  It was the new widow, calling to invite me to a holiday dinner at her home on the 18th.

We chatted about the arrangements for the dinner, and when it began to look like she was settling into one of those "talk until her phone batteries die" marathons, I begged off, telling her that I have to go to bed now.

I was left wondering what was going on in her head.  She seemed to be completely unaware of the hour.  I felt bad cutting her off, but I really needed to go back to sleep.  I remember once telling her that it was best to call me in the afternoon or evening, because I frequently stay up very late and then sleep late.  Maybe I should have defined "late" better?   We had worried that she might take to drinking after her husband died, but she seemed to be doing ok, and she didn't sound drunk when she called.  A little maudlin, but sober.

I'm a social slob.  I should have called her the next afternoon.  I'll call her today.  (I hate the telephone - never call anyone if I can avoid it.........)

#95 My Back

I mentioned to a friend recently that back in the '70s, the doctors wanted to fuse my back in three places - my neck, just below my shoulder blades, and at and above the tailbone.  I would have had very limited motion.  She expressed disbelief - "They don't do that any more!"  Well, yes, things have changed in the past 30 years, but they DO still fuse.   Ex-husband #2 recently had rods implanted, same basic idea, just more expensive.

So, here's the history of my back:

I was born with a fairly common genetic error, shared with you, Daughter, and with my mother, my little sister, and possibly my other sister.  Our tailbones are incomplete.  Normally, each of the four bones that make up the coccyx are one solid piece.  Ours are each two pieces with blanks in the center.  The centers of the bones never developed, and the edges are sketchy.  A doctor once told my mother that if she were a dog, she'd have two tails.  Not true, but illustrative.  Anyway, the rest of the spine sits on top of and is supported by the coccyx.  We do not have a good foundation.  So even with no other complications, we are prone to sciatica.

In my youth, I had several severe but untreated back injuries, including a ruptured disk between my shoulder blades, and some cracked and broken ribs.  (You know pretty much how they happened, and why they were untreated - let's just say that if it happened now instead of the '50s, my father would be in jail.  Or a mental institution.) 

By college, the early '60s, my back was "going out" regularly.  I was also getting calcium deposits in the areas of the old injuries.  "They" were giving me ultrasound treatments (the wonderful new thing at the time) to break up the deposits, but that just spread calcium sand all through the muscles, which abraded and tore the muscle fibers, and caused incredible bruising and pain (there was one whole semester when it hurt so badly to move my arms that I had a medical slip saying I was not to carry books to class), but it did nothing for the basic problem.  All the prescription pain killers upset my stomach, so for several years I was badly addicted toAPC's - the military issue souped-up aspirin. 

When I was teaching, in the late '60s, an osteopath decided (without benefit of x-rays) that my left leg was more than an inch longer than my right (the favorite diagnosis at the time for back problems), so for several years I wore a lift in my right shoe.  It didn't help my back much. 

By the late '60s, my body looked funny.  My left leg was obviously longer than the right.  My chest was lopsided - the right side ribs bulged out in the front, and the left side ribs caved in.  My neck was perfectly straight, no forward curve.   I had finally learned what I could and could not do, how I was "allowed" to move, so my back went out only once a year or so, but that once was a doozy! 

In the early '70s, I was taking a shower in an old classic hotel in Chicago, while there for Company training, and I swung my head (my hair was small-of-the-back length), and whacked it on a heavy old porcelain lip on the wall.  It didn't knock me out, but then and for several days afterward I had that "floating" disconnected feeling.  And then ... the pain started.  I had tic douloureux (aka trigeminal neuralgia) on both sides of my head for 18 months.  (See http://www.intelihealth.com/IH/ihtIH/WSIHW000/9339/10867.html) 

The pain was incredible.  It literally felt like my face was in fire, and there was a white-hot bar that passed through the center of my head from one side to the other.  Anything would set it off, any touch to my face, turning my head, a vibration.  I had anywhere from 3 to 10 episodes a day, lasting from 5 to 20 minutes, day or night.  I couldn't wash my face.  Brushing my hair was risky.  My pillow touching my face at night frightened me.  The doctors didn't believe me at first, because they said it never occurs on both sides, it never occurs when you are sleeping, it never lasts that long. They were convinced I was faking - until one day I had an episode in a doctor's office.  In the first few seconds I produced several cups of saliva.  You can't fake that.

The pain was bad, but after a while, I learned the Native American trick of leaving my body.  I knew that it would get bad, until it reached a peak, and then it would begin to slacken.  So when it started, I'd go into the bathroom and rest my shoulders on the edge of the sink and my forehead on the faucet, and let everything slump.  I drooled into the sink.  There was a lot of drool, and I couldn't swallow when the pain was on.  I'd leave my body, and wait.  Every so often I'd "drop back in" for a second to test whether it had peaked yet.  When I was out of my body, I was a few inches above and to the left.  I could see me.  It didn't strike me as remarkable at the time.  (What was remarkable was that ex-husband didn't know how to deal with it, so he ignored the whole problem.  If you don't acknowledge a problem, it doesn't exist.)

Anyway, this finally kicked the doctors into action.  We eventually discovered that my spine was twisted, to one direction at the bottom, and to the opposite direction at the top.  It had probably twisted itself in an effort to take pressure off injuries.  My left leg was not longer - it was dislocated at the hip, because my hip was twisted to the plane of my body.  My ribs were sprung on one side and caved on the other because of the twist in my upper back.  My neck was too straight because it was twisted.  (In old photographs, you can actually see that my head is carried off center.)   The only reason I still looked reasonable in clothing was because I was so muscular - it was my muscles that maintained a frontal orientation, not the inner structure (which is what had caused the hip dislocation - I had actually worked it out of the socket by trying to walk and stand straight).

When I had bonked my head in the hotel, it had actually lifted my skull off the atlas vertebra.  The atlas vertebra had been under tension because of all the other twisting, so when my skull came back down, the atlas vertebra was almost an inch out of alignment.  You could feel one end of it under the back of my left ear, the other end was under my right molars.  I was told that I was very lucky - the spinal cord could easily have torn.  That high, it would have been fatal.

My spine had to be straightened, or eventually I would simply collapse.  The doctors wanted to surgically fuse the three areas of greatest weakness - the bottom, the middle, and the top.  That was how they would straighten it, and keep it straight. 

I was only about 28 years old.  I couldn't face never again being able to turn or bend.  I was willing to take a chance, and work on the slow fix.  I went to a chiropractor three times a week for a year.  He'd work everything into place, and I'd try to hold it there until the next visit.  Eventually, muscles, tendons, ligaments stretched and shortened as needed, and everything would stay in place for longer and longer periods.  After a few years, a chiropractor suggested that I strengthen my back.  He recommended either weightlifting or bellydance.  The weightlifting class was full.  The rest is history.

The entire time I was dancing, (REALLY dancing - I did everything, and I was GOOD!), my back didn't go out once.  My next back problem was after I had left husband 2 and started working for the Company.  After not dancing for six months, and sitting at a desk all the time in a chair that didn't fit, it went out big time - that's when I lost the nerves to my right ankle.  (And they screamed bloody murder as they died - so did I!)

Since then it has been spotty.  I need to do something more to strengthen my back, but I can't really dance any more, because of my weight and knees, and I'm afraid to lift weights.  Walking is good, but I can't (won't!) walk in the cold.  Don't worry - I'll manage.  I know it well.

So, that's why I got annoyed when friend poo-pooed my saying that the doctors wanted to fuse my back.  What does she know!

#94 Bellydance Jam

I went to Willow's "Bellydance Jam" Saturday night.  $5 at the door and a dish to share.  It was very enjoyable.  There was open dance and performances, potluck yummies, and some vendors selling pretties.  (I wonder if I could have sold a veil or two....)  I lost count of the performers after the eighth, Willow said there were twelve.  There were sword dancers, and some Egyptian, some Turkish, some gypsy, some fusion, and a tambourine performance - which I haven't seen in a long time.  (I was disappointed that no one danced with a cane.  Cane is more difficult than sword.  Sadly, cane seems to be getting more and more rare, probably because of those flimsy canes you see everywhere now that are next to impossible to balance.)  Willow herself was in fine form - I've never seen her so sinuous - it was like she had no spine at all!   

Two performances were especially thrilling.  One woman had fire balls on chains, which she whirled as she danced in the dark.  Another danced with glass candle balls in her palms.  What made her dance so special was that she had a veil draped over her forearms, and as she moved the candles under her arms and over her head in large figure eights, she wrapped, unwrapped, and rewrapped the veil around her arms, over her shoulders, across her back - without setting fire to it.  It's hard to describe, but it was beautiful and fascinating.

I would have liked to have played around during the open dance periods, but the sound system was full of vibration and echo, and I couldn't hear the music very well, especially over the conversational rumble.  Also, Willow's taste in music is evolving, and a lot of the open dance music was "different", and I'm just too old to "feel" new stuff.  Old dogs and new tricks, I guess.  Plus, having had no exercise in the previous two weeks, I was stiff and fragile. 

I was fragile in class last night, too.  My back kept saying "Don't you DARE!"  I finally just quit and took pictures with Willow's camera for her website.  This class is fun, and even when I can't keep up (they go through some very fast transitions now, which I just can't do, ye olde brain problem) I love to watch them - they are starting to look really good!  But since I'm not there to dance, just to stretch and move and strengthen my back, I'm thinking it might be best to find another beginning class again.  Beginning classes concentrate on the movements with less transition.  I'm not real happy about leaving this group, but one must be realistic.

I took your tomato dish to the hafla, Daughter.  I took the recipe to the grocery store on Saturday morning to buy the ingredients, and by the time I realized how much this dish was going to cost (as soon as I looked at the basil - two little sprigs with about 5 leaves each were $2.99) it was too late to change horses.  I'm such a klutz when it comes to food, and I stood there in the middle of the grocery store trying to think of something, anything, else I could do, and I gave up and paid.  

I doubled the recipe, and this is what it cost:  Fresh Mozzarella $6.99;  2 cans of small pitted olives $1.98; small bottle red wine vinegar $1.89; 3 pkgs basil $6.87; 4 shallots $2.98; 3.25 lbs tomatoes (on vine) $9.72; garlic $.89; small bottle olive oil $1.99.  Total:   $33.31.  Well, at least I have 1/3 bottle of vinegar left.

Almost everybody else brought chips and dips and the like.  My tomato salad filled one of those big stainless steel mixing bowls, and there was nothing left at the end of the evening, so I guess it went over well.   However, it gave me very bad gassa-pains-Maria, and I wonder if it was tummy pains that kept some people off the dance floor...........

#93 Random Ravings

Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed that Barry Manilow looks like Rod Stewart's wimpy cousin?  (BTW - Rod, I've always loved you, but your voice is NOT suited to standards.)

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Early in November there were stories on TV news about the harvesting of the trees for Rockefeller Center and Albany's downtown.  Those stories always make me sad.  "Oh, look! A huge absolutely perfect tree!  How beautiful!  Let's kill it!" 

Once it's gone, it's gone forever. 

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A few days ago a grilled cheese sandwich sold on eBay for like $20,000 because it had "the Virgin Mary" on it.  It was just a woman, young, pretty, fluffy hair, rather Spanish looking.  Why is it that whenever something appears on a building, or potato chip, or whatever, that looks even vaguely like a beardless human, it is declared to be "the Virgin Mary"?  And if it seems to have a beard, then it's Jesus?  And so many people are so eager to believe it?  I guess because if you called it "a woman" or "a man", you couldn't feel special.  Or couldn't make any money on it.  There are a few old photos in my photo storage box of people I don't recognize.  It would make as much sense ............

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I found the answer to the BIG question!  The smoke detector goes HIGH, because hot smoke rises (I knew that).  The CO detector goes LOW.  CO sinks. (I wasn't sure about that.) 

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I have a question about fuel cells in cars.  "They" say that the only byproduct is water.  Will there be a tank to catch the water?  How MUCH water on a 300-mile trip?  I read a article about fuel cells for cell phones, and they DO catch the water, and you do have to empty the reservoir, and it was more than a few drops.   A car is bigger.  I get the impression that it will be allowed to simply dribble out of the cars, but won't this cause dangerously wet roads?  Ice in the winter? 

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Speaking of water, I read that Las Vegas is the fastest growing city in the US.  What are they doing for water?  I thought there were already water wars in the southwest.  Mexico is pissed.  Shouldn't there be a moratorium on growth until they figure it out?

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A woman bragged in her journal that she made the most wonderful pumpkin pie, absolutely out of this world.  Rich and creamy.  Others pleaded in comments for the recipe.  She put it in her journal.  Later commenters said they'd tried it and it was indeed the best they'd ever had.  They raved about it.  Never had any like it.  So, I went back to her recipe entry and reread it. 

It looked familiar. 

I went to the pantry and got out the can of Libby's pumpkin.  Yup.  Right there on the back of the can.  Except that the journal woman used the ready-mixed spice and Libby used the individual spices, it was word-for-word the same.  So now I wonder what canned pumpkin those commenters used.  Did no one use Libby's?  Did no one look at the recipe on the can? 

I dunno, but whenever people compliment something I feed them (rarely!  I don't pretend to cook!), I always tell them where the recipe came from. 

The comments on this woman's journal are invariably fawning.  Does she selectively delete?  Does she write comments to herself under other ids?

I guess it's becoming obvious I don't like or trust this woman.  I always have the feeling she's pulling a con.  There are a lot of things that don't add up.  I don't believe her.  I'd stop lurking around her journal except that, well, it's like a soap opera.

Oops, I should be careful saying that - although I've tried to be careful not to advertise my journal, one never knows who might find it.  She and all her friends recently tore into some slob who dared to describe her as a drama queen, and ask her if she has a job.  I prefer not tofind out how they could hurt me.  Frankly, I thought it was a reasonable question. 

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My computer is at least 8 years old.  I think it was one of the first with Intel.  It has massive hard disk, but it's so slow that some websites with music will cause it to hang up, and because I use a phone line, it takes forever to download large files.  Anybody want to send me a new one?  (Anyone who recognizes "recipe lady" will know where this entreaty came from.)  Actually, I'm not ready for a new one yet.  I'm not really disgusted with this one.  What it doesn't do, I don't really need anyway. 

What IS disturbing is that after this computer was purchased, we bought a new one for Daughter, and the next year for Jay's father.  I never did find out what happened to Daughter's computer - it seemed to have disappeared with no trace, just one day she didn't have one and I know better than to press, she'll just snap at me and refuse to answer, and it's none of your business anyway, which makes me think that it was stolen, and she's being defensive - and Dad's computer was replaced two years ago.

I'd have been happy to give either of them a home. 

I'm still using this one......

I must be easily amused.

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I'm worried that "conversate/conversating" is going to make it into Webster's.  The verb is "converse/conversing", people! 

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Have you ever noticed that in the grocery store, product A, a blah national product, has 8 feet of shelf space, and product B, a delicious regional product, gets only 2 feet, even though product A remains untouched until product B has completely sold out - usually within two days of being put on the shelf?  And there won't be any more of B for a week, so then you are forced to buy A.

Have you ever wondered why?

Wouldn't it make sense for the grocery store to stock more of what their customers want?

I wondered, and I asked.  It turns out that the grocery stores don't stock the shelves based on what sells.  They stock them based on who buys the shelf space!  I didn't know that.  Product A actually pays the grocery store to stock 8 feet of shelf - even if it doesn't sell.  Product B, being a smaller company, can't afford a lot of shelf space.  It's a catch-22.  Product B company can't afford more shelf if they can't sell more product, and they can't sell more if they can't get the shelf space, but they can't get the shelf space if they can't sell more.  And the grocery store makes out selling shelf, so they're not as worried about selling product as they perhaps should be.  There's something wrong there. 

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Daughter - the word I couldn't think of the other day was "menengioma".  Jay said his mother had "melanoma" in her spine.  I wonder if there wasn't a miscommunication somewhere, and it was actually a menengioma.  That would make a lot more sense.  Sorta like when my mother said she had "congenital heart failure".  It was actually "congestive heart failure". 

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The show "Friends" is all over the dial now.  I've noticed two rather odd things.  First, all the women seem to have had breast reduction surgery somewhere along the line.  They were all very well endowed in the early episodes. 

Second, I think I've seen every episode a dozen times by now- except for one.  Back when Friends first started, I kept hearing about this great new show at work.  That was when I wasn't watching TV much (Yes, Daughter, there was a time when....).  It had been on for quite a while when I finally decided to watch.  The episode I caught that night was the one where one of the young women had been dating a guy for a few months, but was upset and embarrassed that he had not yet tried to get her into bed.  Her friends were sure there was something wrong with him, and they set out to try to get him to bed. 

I never found out how it ended because I was so horrified by the message that show was sending to their young audience that I turned it off.

That was before "Sex in the City".  Before women were appearing in offices on TV in streetwalker attire.  Before the morals of the entire country were corrupted.  We are all inured now. 

But what's really odd is that after thousands of reruns, I've never seen that particular episode again.

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Comments on current fads:

What's with the striped hair?  Frosting isn't so bad.  Tipping isn't so bad.  But those heavy zebra stripes are just plain ugly.

I'm really tired of the women who've turned their lips inside out.  Some of them have gone way too far.  Their lips look like slabs of liver flapping when they talk.  I wonder if they would have done it if they knew why many men find thick lips attractive? 

Men's minds are twisted when it comes to sex (and with men, it always comes to sex).  They like breasts because the cleavage reminds them of something else.  They like the swollen lips because it reminds them of something else.  Most women probably don't mind displaying a pseudo backside on their chests, but do they really want to display a pseudo vulva on their face?

#92 Deprivation?

I was reading something the other day that had me thinking that I'm very fortunate in that I have everything I really need.  Then I thought that all my life I've always had all the material things I've needed.  I've never felt materially deprived.  I've been lucky. 

Then I thought a little harder, and remembered that there were many times in my life when I had next to nothing. 

My entire wardrobe when I was in college took up maybe 14 inches of closet space.  I wore bedroom slippers all summer one year (they were straw) because I couldn't afford to buy sandals.  One Pennsylvania winter I wore a rubber raincoat over a sweater because I didn't have a coat. 

Then after I graduated and began teaching, I bought my first sewing machine (used) with my first savings, and my wardrobe grew.  I had to resign 2 months into my second year because pregnant women in 1966 weren't allowed to teach.  I had like $200 in savings, and a husband who was away in the army.  The army took $125 out of his paycheck every month and sent it to me - but he never sent another cent.  Rent was $125 a month.  I ate dinner every evening at the diner around the corner from my apartment because they had a $.80 "blue plate special".  That and a glass of diet shake in the morning was all I had to eat every day.  I did my laundry in the bathtub because I couldn't afford the laundromat.  Then, just a few weeks before the baby was due, there was a fire in the store below my apartment.  Everything I owned suffered smoke damage, almost nothing could be saved, my bird died, and the day after the fire I lost the baby.

In 1968 I left husband #1.  I had $500 squirreled away in a secret savings account, in my own name, to use to move away.  I got a job in a different state, and when I went to the bank to get the money, I found that my husband had gone to the bank and demanded the money, and they had given it to him.  That was normal in those days - a woman's money belonged to her husband.  I left with what I had in my pocket and what I could fit in my tiny car (a rear-motor Volkswagon Karmann Ghia (sp?) which meant almost no trunk and a tiny back seat, and the mice, birds, and Smokey cat took up most of that).

The new employer gave me a"per diem" allowance for six weeks while I looked for someplace to live.  From that, by moving into a cheaper motel and eating in the company cafeteria, I was able to save enough for the first month's rent on a little 4-room cabin in the woods.  The landlady lent me a little lamp, which I carried from room to room at night.  I slept on the floor until I could afford a sofa.  I slept on the sofa until I could afford a bed. I ate standing at the sink until I could afford a little table and chairs. 

Then I married husband #2, who was a tightwad.  In the 70's, a working wife turned her salary over to the husband to manage.  The average woman had no idea what was where moneywise.  I would have had to beg for things, and I wouldn't beg, so we had no livingroom or diningroom furniture for the first 9 years.  When Daughter was born, I made her bassinet out of a laundry basket, and sewed all her baby clothes.  In 1979, my monthly budget for food was $70, and I fed two adults and a child quite well on that. 

When I finally left him, even though next to no money had been spent on goodies, there was strangely little to be split.  I left with $19,000 (half the equity in the house, for downpayment on a small house for Daughter and me), a few shares of computer company stock, my car, and $1,500 cash.   (There should have been a LOT more stock, but I didn't want to fight, so I didn't push it.)   I'd picked the absolute worst time to leave - I think it was 1981 or 82 - mortgage rates were through the roof.  The best I could do was 17.5% and 3 points, for a 30-year mortgage.  (Honest!  That was a real rate for an adjustable mortgage.)

Nonetheless, living the way same way I had been living before, and now on a low starting salary, after the first ten months I had over $10,000 in savings, almost half my salary.  (The ex was paying support - we had agreed on 40% of the difference in our salaries, but I put all of that money into a separate account for my daughter and for emergencies.) 

That was when I realized the ex must have cheated me.  There should have been more when we split, given his larger salary (over twice mine) and the way we had been living for so long.

That was the first time in my entire life that I felt that I had been deprived.  Up until then, no matter how little I had, I just figured that was the way it was, and I took pride in managing with what I had.  I coped.  Besides, in college and in my 20's, most of my friends were in the same boat.  One of my friends in college had to sell her 15-years-uncut hair to buy textbooks.  I didn't even feel deprived when my visiting mother looked around my kitchen in 1979, and said "You don't have a microwave?"  I didn't figure I needed one.

About the same time I was starting to look back and feel like I'd been missing something (about 1984ish), that there should have been more, there was a young woman interviewed on TV - her home had been broken into, and the thieves had taken everything.   Her list included a large color TV (I had a small black-and-white), a stereo with all the goodies (I had an old one-piece hi-fi), a fox coat (my only coat was cloth), a microwave oven, a VCR (what's a VCR?), etc.  The kicker was that she was about 20 years old, childless, and on welfare!   I decided then and there that I was going to be deprived no longer.  I had worked hard all my life, and by darn I was going to have at least what a 20-year-old on welfare has! 

I put a reasonable amount into savings every month, and then the rest I spent.  For the past 22 years I have treated myself well.  Daughter and I took the first "luxury" vacations I had ever taken in my life - to England and Wales (3 weeks! Two of them on a houseboat on the canals), Disneyworld, Puerto Vallarta (sp?), Barbados, a dude ranch.  I bought shoes.  I wore store-bought clothes.  I bought books!!! 

My first 38 years had taught me how to be shrewd about money.   I still think beauty parlors are a waste of money, still cut my own hair.  I've still never been to a spa.   I happen to like cheap food and inexpensive restaurants.  Brand names are all pronounced "ripoff".  Not that I buy cheap stuff - I just don't pay for cachet.

When Jay and I got married, he was pretty well strapped.  His ex had taken everything, literally everything, they had acquiredin their entire relationship, even things she couldn't possibly keep or use.  She threw things away rather than let him have them.  She left him with a 20-year-old car (it was his first car, and he had an emotional attachment to it), and a lawn tractor, and he had to buy "her" half of the house (she'd "shopped around" for the highest appraisal).  She took half the savings and checking accounts, and half the stock.    She had been teaching, and all of her salary through the years had been going into a saving account in her name, untouched except for vacations.  Naturally, that was all "hers".  Jay just lay there and took it.  I don't know why he felt guilty - this was a woman who allowed sex maybe three times a year, and had banished him to the guest bedroom because his snoring kept her awake.   (It didn't take me long to realize that he had a severe case of sleep apnea, and that was when I really started to hate her.  How could she not have realized that he was struggling to breathe - the sleep center clocked him at 70 episodes per hour - especially if it "kept her awake"?  I don't think she cared enough.)

Anyhow, Jay was pretty much starting over when we got married, and then he lost his job 4 months later and was out of work for 9 months.  We lived on my savings that year.  My hard-earned money-squeezing skills came in handy, especially since Daughter had just started college - out-of-state Ivy League, no financial aid because her father was too well off, no matter that he was contributing nothing to her costs, them's the rules durn it.  When Jay went back to work, his pay was significantly higher, but he had no benefits.  No problem, because he could be on my health plan. 

That was enough to scare me a little.  I went back into save mode.  Within the next four years, we had more than tripled our savings and investments.  Then he got sick.  Then he died. 

I still don't understand the numbers during the three years he was ill.  The costs, even with health insurance, were enormous.  We had my retirement check, his disability check (40% of his salary), and our investment income coming in.  We had the bills going out.  No matter how I run the numbers, more went out than came in,but we were never hurting to pay the bills.  I can't figure it out.  The only time I had to dip into capital was when I sold $20,000 of my stock to buy the handicap van.  (I also borrowed $20,000 from Jay's father for the van, which I paid back at $500/month, and then in full from the life insurance.)  I don't understand it.   That must have been some kind of super-saving mode?!?  That $500/month loan payment is the kicker.  How?!?

So now I'm sitting on all that financial history.  And I don't at all feel bad buying oriental rugs and fox coats.  I saved for it.  I earned it.  I have been deprived so that now I can be indulged.