Author Archives: Denise

Love letter to The Lodge

Posted on by
Reply

No sweeping lawn, ancient trees, stone towers, courtyard, or flapping flags decorate my personal Downton Abbey. Rather a wrap-around porch, with a semi-detached kitchen, and a peaked roof define The Lodge, a Cracker-style wooden house that has played a main character in my life.
IMG_6611
Pennsylvania millionaire Thomas Mellon, brother of the former United States Treasury secretary Andrew Mellon, built The Lodge around 1895 as a fishing lodge. The old house is perched on a constantly shifting spit of land jutting into the Atlantic, 15 miles south of St. Augustine, a town celebrating its 500th birthday. Author Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings played cards here. Other celebrities visited the family over the years. Now the house’s future is as tenuous as that grand fictitious English estate. Continue reading →

Beach sherds

Posted on by
Reply

IMG_6688Shells are my booty from a weekend spent with friends in a place called Summer Haven. (Evocative name. I think I want to call my house Summer Haven. However it is decidedly NOT in the line of a steady ocean breeze.)

Nothing like a beach littered with craft supplies, free for the taking. I have a little memory project in mind for these beauties, or ones very similar to these. More about the weekend, and the craft, coming in the next day or two.

Clara at Summer Haven.

Clara at Summer Haven.

Snail slime

Posted on by
1

Clara and Teresa

Delighted to find a brave and outgoing ambassador for its species, Clara quickly made a leafy home for one snail, Teresa, in a recycled yogurt container.

In her bedroom, she transferred the snail to a toy glass and left the room for awhile. A few hours passed. When Clara returned to visit, she cried out. Teresa had exited the glass, which was somehow tipped on its side and its leaves scattered. Clara and I searched for the snail, eventually finding her, camouflaged, attached to the side of the wooden toy box.

I suggested that since Teresa was obviously no longer content in her glass, that it was time for Clara release her, emphasizing that she would certainly be happier in her own habitat. From past experiences I know this release process can be an emotional one. (When Clara released a tiny spider she had caught in her room a week or so ago, she cried for a full 20 minutes. How was I to know that they had built a relationship over the three days Clara held the spider in captivity? I hadn’t even known the spider had been in captivity.) In order for Clara to say her proper parting words to Teresa, I left her alone on the kitchen stoop. She sat on the back steps and I heard her talking to the snail while I paid some bills over the phone.

What came next was unexpected. Clara pulled open the screen door with a set sad expression. She told me the snail died before she could set it free. She must have kept it inside too long. When I seemed unconvinced, she reluctantly led me to its remains, which were gooey and gnarled. Clara, what happened? I asked. Her set face dissolved. Her cover story dissolved (Wait, my daughter has learned to make cover stories?)  I didn’t know, she said. I should have asked you first. I wanted to take her out of her shell. I didn’t know it would kill her. There are a lot more snails. I didn’t know.

I listened for a minute as she tossed her mixed emotions out one after the other as explanation, denial, statements of innocence, confusion and pure sadness. I just hugged her as I confirmed she hadn’t meant to hurt Teresa. She didn’t know.

A very sad lesson, which days later Clara still brings up. She hasn’t picked up any other garden snails. When a snail appears in the illustrations of one of her books she looks at me earnestly and says she didn’t know snails were attached to their shells.

I spared the readers the “after” pictures. Teresa was just a snail, but she’d had a name and was Clara’s friend for a brief time.

Working Backwards

Posted on by
2

So where have I been? Certainly not online. My family and I have traveled along the edges of the country in the past few months, yet I have not written about our adventures here. Why not?

This is the question I ask myself as I sit down to get this blog and this budgeting project back underway.

I see now that the urge to get our home finances in order may have had roots in deeper places than, even, financial freedom. I think it might have been rooted in some personal things that have nothing to do with money: reaching “adulthood”, cultivating responsibility, acting from my will, having the courage of my convictions, overcoming fears, and, finally but perhaps most importantly, integrating my adult financial life with my husband’s adult financial life (which, given that we married in our forties, has some complexities).

Somewhere along the way, March or April, I began to realize that all the little steps forward I was making and writing about were illusionary. They were not really moving my project closer to my overall goals. Yet I couldn’t figure out, or was in denial about, what was keeping me from making progress. With some thought, and time, I now realize that I ran away from doing the hard work required to make leaps instead of small steps. But, more importantly, I understand that I hadn’t considered the need to work backwards before I started moving forward.

When my sister and I started this project, I gave only a passing thought to those deep-rooted issues I listed above. Those very character issues led me into my loosey goosey financial situation in the first place. Can I simply follow a financial formula to get me past them? Maybe. Yet, how did I expect to just start keeping copious, accurate financial records without a tool and a designated time or method of doing so? How could I fully integrate my financial life with my husband’s if we didn’t take time to strategize how to do it? Not even 10 minutes worth of time? How could I hope to maintain the courage of my convictions if my husband and I weren’t on the same page?

My plan to move forward involves addressing these lacks — because I will move forward, however slowly.

I’ve decided instead of giving up — or just going to therapy — I’m going to face fears, of financial shortcomings, of character flaws. I will try again to get my financial life in order and build on the small steps I have made, such as creating a joint bank account, tracking expenditures and creating a needs/wants/savings balance sheet.

The first nine months of this project haven’t been a complete wash. I have learned that when it comes to personal finances, numbers are not the only things that matter. Gone are my delusions I’d have my financial life in order in 12 months. Ha! Silly me.

To really move forward, I now realize I need to incorporate other aspects of my life into this spreadsheet, as well. Blood, sweat and tears are involved and I must go there. All the way there, by first working backwards. Two steps back – three steps forward.

That is my plan.