The Budgeting approach to Christmas

Another Christmas has come and almost gone. Dinner is over and we are cleaned up. The turkey was a bit salty from the brine but the green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, stuffing and homemade bread were pretty tasty. My husband is from The Netherlands and after marrying me he received an education in Christmas consumerism. He stood by and watched me over-buying and over-spending for the kids' Christmas and had told me again and again to establish a budget per child and track against it. But until this year I did not follow his advice. The kids would supply a wish list (referred to by Gerard as the demands) and I would buy all the stuff on that list. That would be the the first phase of my shopping. In the second phase of the shopping, without any real dollar figure to support it (because I wasn't tracking what I was spending), I would develop a sense that one of the kids was getting less than the others, so I would buy more for that kid to balance things. Then I developed the same feeling about one of the other kids and so I bought more for that kid. The cycle continued until several days before Christmas when I stopped buying only because anything ordered would not arrive in time for Christmas.

This year I tried budgeting by setting a per-child budget of 25% less than what I usually spend. I recorded everything on an Excel spreadsheet and kept a running total for each kid. Santa probably uses spreadsheets, don't you think? Here's how I ended up:

• Kid A: was 60% below budget. She has been away at college and I'm out of touch with what she likes, she doesn't like surprises, is picky, she didn't have much on her Xmas list to begin with and finally, and dumb me, I actually forgot to order a few things she did ask for. We are going to go out after Christmas and get her a few items she needs before going back to school.
• Kid B: right on budget.
• Kid C: 15% over budget but one of the items she got was a desk chair which I would not have normally bought her as a gift.
• Kid D: 40% under budget. But this is our littlest kid and a dollar goes a long way when buying plastic horses and littlest pet shop stuff.
• Dog: Not officially in my budget, but she got a purple latex monkey toy, new collar and a huge rawhide bone.

Factoring in what I spent on a few family board games and puzzles, unplanned gifts for the dog, and what I additionally spent on sundries for the kids' stockings, what I still need to spend on Kid A to get her in family with the others, I came out just about on budget, everything considered. And the heap of gifts under the tree from me did not look quite so embarrassingly monstrous this year. It was a nice change to not get looks of disgust from my husband on Christmas morning. So, I conclude that setting a budget and tracking expenditures works pretty well to contain my runaway gift spending.

So how my husband do this year? Does he budget and track? I asked him and it turns out he spent 3 times what I did and he won't really know exactly how much until his credit card bill arrives.

Photo: our ceramic Christmas tree next to some roses taken from our garden yesterday.

To the Movies

If you had not been to see a movie at the theater in the last 70 years, what movie would you see? What movie best exemplifies the difference between a movie made in 2009 and one made in 1939? My mother-in-law Anna is visiting from the Netherlands for the Christmas holidays and we gave her the choice of going out to see a new movie called Avatar from 20th Century Fox or staying home and watching a kids Christmas video. She said that either was fine with her, so we went to the movie. On the way there she told us this was the first time she had been to a movie theater in 70 years. We asked her "are you sure?" and she told us the last movie she saw in a theater was "The Seventh Son."

Before we realized that Anna had missed two generations of revolution in the movie-going experience we had thought Avatar might be a little much for Anna. Our concerns were due to the scantily clad blue aliens, and the animated fighting action. While this movie has those things it turns out to be a really amazing movie -- it has an engrossing plot, amazingly realistic animation combined with film footage and real actors, and it is in 3D, very beautiful and surreal. All during the movie I kept sneaking a glance at Anna to see what her reaction was. Was she sleeping, was she horrified? No, she was staring at the screen intently for the full 2 and a half hours. She came out of the theater looking dazed and she kept repeating "unbelievable" and "I loved it" when we asked her what she thought.

I think that there are not many 86-year-olds who share Anna's interest and appreciation for things that are new and novel. Since she enjoyed the action/alien 3-D movie so much maybe a Monster Truck event is in store for her next.

We have done some more staid activities while Anna has been here. Below are three photos of Anna at Tessa's class holiday party. In one, Anna is standing below Tessa's doll that Tessa (or actually Mom) dressed up in a Hollander costume. Anna is watching Tessa decorate a cookie in the second photo. Anna, Mrs. Britt (Tessa's teacher) and Tessa are shown in the third photo. The bottom photo is of Tessa and Anna at Stats, a seasonal store in Pasadena that carries some outrageous and corny Christmas decorations

The Case of the Missing Passenger Side Mirror

Natalie arrived home after taking her first quarter finals a UCLA in a sleep-deprived, zombie-like state on Friday evening. Because Gerard and I were planning to attend a memorial service for a co-worker the next morning we asked Natalie to drive Rachel to an appointment in Pasadena on Saturday morning. Natalie warned that she was out of practice driving and did not want to drive any unfamiliar routes until she was used to driving again. I felt that in typical fashion she was just trying to get out of waking up early.

Around 9:30 a.m. Gerard, me and Hannah left for the memorial service, and Natalie and Rachel left for Pasadena (Tessa had already been dropped off at Layla's house for a playdate). Shortly after we got seated at the memorial service, Natalie called and told us tearfully, "I lost the passenger-side mirror." I asked, "What do you mean, you LOST the passenger-side mirror?" "I got confused and thought I was lost and I was yelling at Rachel and when we arrived, we noticed the mirror was missing." I told her we couldn't talk right now and that she could explain it to me fully when we got home. When we got home I got the same story from both Rachel and Natalie, except that Rachel remembers she might have heard a teensy noise at some point.

After lunch, Gerard and I decided to retrace their route and see if we could find the broken off side mirror in order to reconstruct what had happened. We drove along slowly and finally saw it two blocks before their last turn. We found three pieces of the assembly but some other pieces were missing. The plastic housing had clearly taken the impact because it had a huge piece missing. Two parts were in the street and one part was on the grass near the curb. It was very obvious that they had gotten too close to a parked car and the mirror had been sheared off by impacting something on the parked car. There was a parked car near where we found our mirror, but that car was unscathed so probably whomever they hit had driven off, probably after collecting their broken mirror parts.

Our girls were clearly oblivious to what they did, but maybe we will be hearing from someone who witnessed the severing of the mirror.

Adventures in Car Maintenance

I suppose I am a backseat driver because Gerard turns a deaf ear to my well-meant advice to avoid certain of LA's highly congested roads or "turn here." He also does not heed my advice learned at my father's knee about car maintenance. We have recurring disagreements about the importance doing regular maintenance and in particular the necessity of keeping tires properly inflated. He owns a Jaguar and has to replace his tires every 1 to 2 years which he views as perfectly natural, although expensive, because the tires are butter-soft and made for performance not endurance. I point out that if he would just keep them inflated they might last longer.

But now I realize it is not just me he doesn't like to take advice from. He is impervious to the advice of everyone. About month ago a fellow commuter motioned to us to roll down our car window and told us that the left-rear tire was low on air. When we got to work we took a look. The tire did look low to me, but not to Gerard. This past Monday we were leaving the parking lot at work and Gerard's boss pointed out that all the tires were low but especially that left-rear one and that we had better get to a service station right away. Gerard looked and again wasn't convinced and replied to his boss "my tires always look low."

About a mile into the drive home Gerard was having trouble controlling the car as we were stopping at lights. He said "It's just an intermittent problem." Another mile later I could clearly hear a funny thumping noise coming from the direction of that left-rear tire, and he said "I hear a noise in the dashboard so that cancels out the noise you are hearing." We were passing the last service station on the route for the next 5 miles and I suggested that would be a good place to stop to check out the tire again. He drove right on by.

One mile later an unmistakable grinding noise was coming from the left-rear and the smell of burning rubber had filled the car and so Gerard finally pulled over to the curb. The location could not have been worse. We were on a commuter route, a two-lane road called Altadena Drive, on a curve, and it was pitch black with no nearby streetlight. He put on the hazard lights. Altadena runs through the foothills and the location where we stopped has spotty cell-phone coverage. I did manage to put a call through to AAA roadside service but their phone system cut us off after a couple rings. I called home and asked Hannah to make the call and the same thing happened to her. Next, I went to the neighboring house and rang the bell. I man came to the door and I asked if I could borrow a flashlight because we were going to try to change a flat. He replied, "What, are you crazy?, you'll be run over!" He gathered up several flashlights, and he helped us signal cars coming around the curve while I illuminated Gerard and the rear tire.

Gerard is pretty adept at changing flats since he has been required to do this so frequently. He quickly put on the spare and did not get run over. The left-rear tire was completely shredded but he had not done damage to the rim, amazingly. The next day he had all four tires replaced to the tune of $1K. I really restrained myself and told him "I told you so" not more the 3-5 times. Has he learned anything from this latest experience? Yes, he says he will not buy another Jaguar.

A night at the Los Angeles Zoo

I recently signed up to be a co-leader of Tessa's 3rd grade brownie troop. This is a group of 15 very sweet little girls. The troop is in its third year and my role is to get us ready to go camping in tents. Getting to know the great outdoors is a core value of scouting so we're going to be doing that whether the girls like it or not.

We have a plan in place to gradually reach the tent camping goal. Last spring we made a two-night trip to LazyJ Ranch in Santa Monica (sadly we just learned that place is closing). Our brownies were just 2nd graders so all the moms except two came along to make sure the girls behaved and that no one would be homesick. This past weekend we stayed over one night at the LA Zoo. We had fourteen girls and just three moms. And the girls were just great. Not a one complained about her mom not being there, and they independently packed up their sleeping bags and duffles in the morning without even being told. And they schlepped their stuff without a complaint (well maybe Tessa complained a little). There was only one teeny bit of drama because one group of girls didn't leave space for another girl's sleeping bag on the floor, but we were able to resolve that very easily with our "let's include everyone speech." Below is a picture of our troop leader Cathy surveying the sleeping arrangements with satisfaction.

As mentioned, I have set myself up as the camping expert who is going to lead the troop on the outdoor voyage of discovery. So the first thing I did to establish the respect of everyone was leave my sleeping bag and pillow at home. It was all packed and ready by the door, and I simply didn't put it in the trunk. Brilliant! I did however, pack an extra blanket for Tessa so I swiped that from her when we arrived and made a makeshift pillow out of some clothes. I had brought my Aerobed and I figured with the blanket, the makeshift pillow and the Aerobed, I was still going to be getting a pretty good night's sleep. But I wasn't counting on the itty-bitty leak that had developed in the Aerobed. As I was drifting off to sleep at around 11 p.m. (yes, our delightful girls actually all quieted down and went to sleep as soon as lights were out) I did notice that the mattress was not quite as firm as when I first inflated it, but I figured I was just imagining things. I awoke at 2:30 a.m. to the realization that my mattress was half-deflated. But I calculated at the rate it was deflating I would still be somewhat aloft by morning. After that I woke up about every 45 minutes and by 5:00 a.m. I was lying flat on the cold cement floor and that was the end of any further sleep. After this, I'm not sure whether I should trusted to supervise the setting up of tents and attaching of propane tanks.

The zoo sleepover itself was somewhat lame. I chaperoned Rachel and Hannah's NJ troop when they went to a similar sleepover at the Philadelphia Zoo and it was much more educational because it was a backstage tour where we went into the nighttime quarters of the animals and the keepers demonstrated how they are cared for. At the LA Zoo we just walked around to the same exhibits you would see in the daytime, except that they were in darkness and many of the animals had been put inside. Tessa's comment was, "you can see the animals better in the daytime" and I had to agree. But the girls gave the event a 10 out of 10 because they love being together for sleepovers no matter where it is. Hopefully they will feel the same when they are in a cold tent and it is raining outside!

This next photo is of Tessa's friends, Eden and Catrina:


and here Tessa with Layla and Mallika.


This is my best animal shot -- the problem with taking photos in the dark with a LED screen is that you can't see a thing! This might have been a decent picture if the camera had been pointed just a bit lower.

I made my first blog entry and came back today to see how many followers I had attracted. It was a big fat zero. On the news today I heard that men who are using internet dating services are most attracted to women whose profiles say they are interested in yoga and cooking. Being married I am not interested in dating but still, since 50 percent of potential readers are men it might make sense do a little update to the profile. It's not a terrible stretch (excuse the pun). I do cook sometimes and I did try yoga once.

Tomorrow is my choir's perfomance of Beethoven's Mass in C (that right, one of my real interests is choral music). This is a very beautiful work, but not much fun to sing for a 2nd soprano like me. Every phrase seems to lead to a high G which has to be sustained over several measures. After a while I feel like I'm shrieking and I probably am! Gerard is taking a group photo of the choir before the concert and completing the headshots of chior members tomorrow. He has been so generous to do this for me and the choir.

Tessa and I have been canvasing our block to sell nuts for Tessa's Brownie troop and have now met most of the neighbors. The odd thing about this is that we have lived in this house for almost seven years -- and we still didn't know any neighbors! It turns out that we have a number of widows living on this street and they don't come to the door if they don't recognize who is there. There are a few well known cases of elderly women who have been overcome by force after opening the door and had their houses robbed. Well, you can't blame them for being careful. We must look harmless because we were cordially invited in to their living rooms and we have now made several new friends.

Well, in addition to selling the nuts, I am also running the sale for the troop. I have put in about 80 hours of effort for $400 profit for the troop so that is about $5 per hour of my time. I'm glad my regular job pays better than that! And our troop gets 25% of the sale price, the girl scout organization gets about 50% and the remaining 25% goes to the nut packaging company. It's a very good deal for the girl scouts organization but not so good for any of the other parties. This is about the same deal as with the girl scout cookies. But I'm not complaining because after all I volunteered to run this sale.

I'm waiting for a phone call from Rachel who is attending an English group meeting and should have called 30 minutes ago to be picked up. I am still in the business of picking up Rachel and Hannah from all their activities even though they are almost 17. I'm starting to regret not pushing them to get driver's licenses earlier because they could be driving by now. But if they were I would be staying up late worrying instead of staying up late picking them up. Hannah is at a marching band competition and will be getting back at 12:15 a.m.

As in most things, Rachel and Hannah are polar opposites when it comes to driving. Rachel is conscientious and remembers to follow the safety rules. She always looks left-right-left before making a right turn. But Rachel doesn't handle the car well so we are frequently in the oncoming lane at some point during her turns. She also has trouble telling right from left when under stress so I learned to point when when giving her turn directions. One day early in our practice driving it took two miles for her to finally make a left turn I was requesting. We were actually in the next town by the time she finally understood what I wanted. Hannah knows her directions and handles the car like a pro but she drives off before buckling her seatbelt, enters intersections without looking either way, and she speeds. She has a serious case of overconfidence. So with her I have to give a stream of safety reminders about the most basic things -- break now, slow down to keep the car under control during turns, etc. In California teens have to have 6 hours of professional instructions and I'm thinking about buying an extra 6, or maybe 60 would be better. Ok, I am cautious with my teen drivers. Natalie has had her license for over 2 years and has only been allowed to drive on the freeway twice.

Time to go figure out what is up with Rachel and why she is not calling. Not that she will answer her cell phone...

A blog of my own - inaugural address

Inspired by my friend Mia's blog, I am going to start my own in the hope that if some interesting experiences come my way I will have the presence of mind to write them here. Of course Mia's life is much more interesting than mine because she just moved to Japan and has much to report.

I will start with the trip we took to Orlando last week. Gerard (husband) had to give a keynote address at OOPSLA (sounds like LA had an accident, doesn't it?) which is a conference for Object Oriented programmers. Tessa (youngest daughter) and I went with him. We stayed at the Disney Contemporary Resort and visited the four Disney theme parts in four days. Gerard had to skip Wednesday's entertainments in order to give his talk at the conference. My favorite was Animal Kingdom, Gerard liked Epcot best, and Tessa liked whichever one she visited most recently. The highlight for Tessa was the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror ride at Disney Hollywood Studios, and the low point was when Orlando airport security confiscated her Epcot mini-snowglobe on the basis that the one ounce of fluid in the globe might potentially be flammable. The security guy was untouched by the sight of an eight-year-old girl standing silently with tears cascading down her cheeks. Mom was not untouched and is trying to get a replacement snowglobe.

I last visited Orlando in 1996 so that Natalie (eldest daughter), who was then Minnie's most devoted fan, could meet the object of her admiration in person. I had three little kids in tow and so we visited Magic Kingdom one day and spent the rest of the time around the hotel. So, I didn't see as much of the theme parks as I did on this trip. The biggest difference I see is the number of mobility scooters in use.

The picture is of Tessa in Tomorrowland at Magic Kingdom with our hotel in the far background.