Mandajuice

Momentum vs. perfection

According to that rocking little Wii Fit exercise board dude, I've lost 5 pounds since Christmas day. And honestly, I'm a bit happy with myself, especially since I haven't been dieting at all. I simply started working out on an infinitesimal level - 30 minutes a day playing Wii with the kids and occasionally reminding myself to do Yoga and strength training. I also quit drinking cocktails except for two days a week (on the weekends or sometimes during the week if we plan to go out). I still have something like 12 pounds left to get to my goal (of weighing as much as the average man), but I'm giving myself the rest of the year to do it.

Did I ever mention that my only weight loss/fitness goal after my gastric bypass surgery was to someday run an 8-minute-mile? Yeah. I know. What was I thinking? But my ten year surgery anniversary is coming up on August 8, 2012, and I think I should try to make that my goal. Of course, that means I need to get myself slowly into shape over the next two years if I want to make that happen. I like the idea in theory - a numerical physical goal that has nothing to do with my weight or my pants size - but the reality is that every minute I spend running is a minute I also spend contemplating the sweet merciful release of death.

And what am I going to do with my boobs? No. Seriously. WHAT? I need a harness of some kind. Preferably something steel belted, maybe the kind of structural engineering they use to keep skyscrapers from collapsing in Japanese earthquakes. I'll happily take your sports bra recommendations.

My other new year's resolutions seem to be going fairly well too. I'm trying to make money. (Still offering a discount on any financial planning services through the end of January!) I'm reading more non-romance novels (and rather loving it. You can click on my Goodreads links to see what I'm reading.) I'm trying to be a better blogger (Facebook to the rescue!). I'm reading more the kids, going to the library at least every week and doing my husband (although not yet on a cruise liner). My sister and I have been trying to go out and listen to live music, but twice our plans have been foiled by weird scheduling snafus. We keep trying.

The only thing I've rather sucked at is working on my book. It feels like I've lost my writing momentum. My mojo. I'm a little terrified to open my manuscript and work on it. (It's always a work-in-progress. Even if it ever gets published, I'm sure I'll be taking a red pen to the printed copy.) But I'm anxious to write new stuff and finish my NANO book and since I won't let myself start anything new until I've completely finished submitting GRAVY, I'm ready to get back to work on it. I need to focus less on some unobtainable idea of perfection (which is really just an excuse to terrorize myself into a state of inaction) and just get-er-done. So this is me using my blog as an accountability intervention. 

Is anyone else keeping up with their resolutions? This is the time of the year by which I've usually forgotten about mine.

Recipe for Hot Dogs and Eggs

I know! This sounds like The Most Ghetto Recipe of all time - and maybe it is - but DAYEM, it's goood. In fact, Hot Dogs & Eggs is Dave's specialty. He's been making it for decades and everyone loves it. It works well for a crowd, for the kids and for a hangover.

It is also as easy as, well, hot dogs and eggs.

The ingredients are so complicated, I'm not sure you'll be able to remember them if I don't post a picture, so here you go.

A pack of hot dogs.

A carton of eggs.

ROCKET SCIENCE!

We REALLY love these all natural, uncured, all beef hot dogs from Trader Joe's. Every time I walk in that place, I grab at least ten packs of them and stick 'em all in the freezer. (That's why this package is wet - we defrosted it in a bowl of hot water for 4 minutes). In fact, I can't walk out of TJ's without spending $80, since we only go once a month and I always stock up hot dogs and grab a case of two buck Chuck Cabernet. (Which is really THREE buck Chuck here in WA.)

Anyway.

You chop up some hot dogs, like so.

And so.

And you throw them in your nonstick skillet. (A regular skillet would work just fine too, since the hot dogs are juicy enough not to stick.)

In the meantime, start cracking some eggs.

Here's where I'll give the only secret there is to this recipe.

The ratio is 1:1. One egg for every hot dog. You could bump it up to 1.5 eggs: 1 dog, but it's risky. This is a MEATY dish. Scale your recipe to the number of eaters you've got.

Then pepper the eggs, but do not salt them. (Dave hates salt and he will HUNT YOU DOWN if you ruin his recipe by over-salting. The hot dogs are salty enough.)

Please excuse my funky-looking grout. It's actually SUPPOSED to be gray, okay? But admittedly, it's been a while since I bleached it. (I hate my tile/grout! If it was up to me, I'd redo every counter in my kitchen with giant industrial slabs of stainless steel.)

Anyway, whip up them eggs and cook the hot dogs in your skillet until they're good and brown. This photo is ALMOST done, but not quite all the way there. (My DONE photos were all blurry.)

Add the eggs.

And scramble.

(Dave has a method for "ribboning" the eggs, but we've been married for 12 years and he hasn't shared his secret with me, so we're all out of luck. The kids refer to him as The Breakfast Master.)

Action shot!

When they're done, they look like this.

Serve with toast, garnish with shredded cheese and enjoy your ghettorrific goodness!

Also? Don't knock it till you TRY IT.

PASS

Before I left this morning, Dave asked me whether I usually do better on real tests or practice tests. I wasn't sure, but I think I usually do about the same. I don't generally get test anxiety and I'm the QUEEN of retaining facts in my short term memory (ie: waiting until the last minute to study and then cramming my butt off) and then promptly forgetting everything I studied within 48 hours.

But man. Apparently my RAM is low a few gigabytes these days because I actually FELT my brain getting slippery. Since I passed the same exam a decade ago, I figured it was just going to be a matter of pointing my brain in the right direction and clicking refresh a few times until I memorized everything again. But there was stuff I literally COULDN'T memorize. Especially facts that experience has taught me I'll never need or use, like whether a certain securities law passed in 1933 or 1934. Apparently my brain just decided there was no room for such useless (not to mention GOOGLEABLE) information. 

Is this a sign of old age? Childbirth-induced brain atrophy? Too many cocktails?

I was doing decently well on my practice exams before I went into the test today - scoring in the 80th percentile consistently - but about half-way through the test, I realized that my study materials hadn't covered something like HALF the topics I was being asked about and I was sure I was going to fail from making too many 'educated' guesses. And I was already getting embarrassed about how I was going to explain my failure.

But I somehow managed to pass anyway.

Now I'm going to go fill my RAM up with a good book and some bad TV. Have a good 3-day weekend!

Delurking Day: Facebookage

I somehow finally managed to link my blog to my Twitter feed and to link my Twitter feed to Facebook. I know! I must be a GEEENIUS. (It literally required me to log in ONCE and then click a single button when I post.)

Generally, I try to avoid Facebook because once I click on it, I can't stop myself and three hours later I'm in the middle of a heated discussion about religion with someone I haven't seen since we snuck behind the gym to smoke cigarettes in 8th grade. Don't get me wrong, I *LOVE* it, but it's a time suck, is all. But now that everything's cross-posted everywhere, I promise to be better with it and actually RESPOND to stuff there.

So in honor of DELURKING DAY, leave me your Facebook info and we can all be FB BFF's. (I can't believe I just typed that.) Or send me a request (Amanda Del Buono) mentioning the blog. Or just say hi or leave me a link to your blog so I can read it.

You're here. I can SEE you with my super sonic bloggervision goggles (aka google analytics). So suck it up and leave a comment in honor of delurking day.

ALSO: if you're on Twitter, LET ME KNOW and I'll add you there as well.

All work and no play

Sorry for the unintentional silence lately, but I've got my nose to the grindstone STUDYING. I'm taking my Series 65 on Friday (the test that licenses me as an Investment Advisor Representative). The thing is, I took this exam ten years ago and passed it on my first attempt (well, actually it was my second attempt because on my first attempt, my car died on the way there in the middle of the highway in a bad part of Sacramento in 100 degree heat and I had to call Dave to get a rental car to come pick me up. We only had one car and it was a piece of shit. I remember hovering terrified under the freeway overpass with nothing but my own tears and a hunting knife Dave left had in the glove box for protection. Boy how things have changed in a decade).

Anyway, when I took five years off to stay home with the kids, my registration expired and I have to retake it. The hard thing about studying for such a test is that I know that I MUST KNOW the answers because I've passed the damn test before! But that doesn't mean my brain can actually FIND said answers. So yeah. Nose meet grindstone. I've been cramming for several days now since I'm the original procrastinatrix.

Bringing sexy back in surprisingly inapropriate ways

A few nights ago I found myself strategically positioned on the couch in the living room so I could simultaneously avoid watching Glenn Beck (who I don't dislike as much as I feel like I should given his average decibel level), read (I was reading Jonathan Tropper and laughing my ass off) and still hear my children playing upstairs with the two girls who live next door.

Have I mentioned that? That not only do we live across the street from Grandma Carol, but we live right next door to a family who has two girls the exact same ages as my two kids? That we carpool to school every day? Add in the big back yard and you know why I'm so desperate to stay in this house.

Anyway. We not only have The Girl Next Door, we have TWO of them. And the kids have finally hopped on the bandwagon and started trekking back and forth to play between our two houses, which is ideal. I can practically SEE the happy childhood memories crystallizing as they happen - Genoa half-strangling their shy black-and-white kitten (adorably named "Hello Kitty"), Alex caving to the feminine majority and negotiating a few rounds of dressing up as the prince in exchange for a few minutes of gun play, and most recently, Alex complementing the girls on their dress-up choices.

This is what I overhear:

"How do I look, Alex?"

"You look sexy, Ashley."

"Sexy?"

"Yeah, you look sexy in that dress."

"What did you just say?!" I holler from my perch on the sofa, my ears having perked immediately to the sound of my son taking the dress-up game to a whole new level.

"Uh... sexy?" Alex answers with a shrug.

"Did you learn that word from the neighbors?" (As a parent, it falls to me to assume anything even remotely inappropriate was learned outside of our neat little walls.)

Then Ashley appears at the top of the stairs decked out in one of Genoa's Disney princess dresses adamantly shaking her head in denial.

"No," Alex admits.

"Where did you hear it, then?" I ask.

"From Daddy. He says it all the time."

Oh, right. DADDY.

Oops.

And then it hits me that he DOES say it all the time and I'm flooded with memories of him saying it, the most recent of which took place in the car when Dave pointed out that my thighs were jiggling. I scoffed and shifted in my seat to lessen the jiggle-factor, but then Dave squeezed my leg and said, "No. Girls are SUPPOSED to be jiggly. It's sexy."

Only now does it occur to me that the kids overheard the whole thing, that they were listening intently from the backseat and that they probably overhear a lot more than we think they do. It's one thing to hear it from your husband and quite another to hear it from your six-year-old son's mouth. A little like nails on a chalkboard. How do you even BEGIN to explain "sexy" to a six-year-old? All I said was, "only grown-ups can be sexy. Not kids." But, gah. Yet another parenting FAIL.

New year, new business plan

For years I've had this business plan trapped in the back of my mind patiently awaiting the day I could let it free to roam. In fact, part of the savings account we've been living on since Dave lost his job was money I've been saving to some day open my own financial planning business.

The only reason I never did it sooner was that I hate working alone. I've always thought that every good planner needs a second set of eyes. Clients deserve a second opinion, a fresh perspective on their numbers, and I dreaded the day I'd have to start my own business ALONE without the benefit of someone else to bounce ideas off of.

So I pitched Jason my business plan.

And within two weeks of meeting him for the first time, we were business partners. Jason did all the dirty work by quitting his desk job two years ago and starting his own business. I'm just hopping onto his coat tails and helping him grow it. The more we get to know each other, the more we've realized that we're ideally suited to work together given we have the same ridiculously specific ideas about financial planning, investing and ethics.

Anyway, our plan is so simple it's almost stupid: to make high-end, sophisticated financial planning advice available to REGULAR HUMANS. The last firm I worked for had a $10,000 minimum annual fee, which meant our average client was a millionaire several times over. Don't get me wrong, it was an ideal place for me to hone my financial planning skills, but it always bothered me that we couldn't serve a broader client base and that the people who MOST needed financial planning were the least likely to be able to afford it or to seek it out in the first place.

But the truth is - you shouldn't have to be wealthy to get good advice. EVERYONE needs a financial planner.

So instead of charging commissions for financial products that our clients may or may not need (commissions = objectivity FAIL), we offer flat-fee services, so our clients know up front exactly how much our services will cost. We actually have a price MENU, so clients can pick and choose what they actually want, not just what we think they need. Our services are broken down into modules, so you don't have to buy a big scary financial plan, you can just get answers to specific questions, like this:

Cash Flow Planning Module:

What do your income and expenses look like?
How can you get and remain out of debt?
What should your budget look like?
How do you start one?
What tools should you use to manage your spending?
Are you making the best use of your resources?
Can you afford to ________?

Or this:

Investing - Current Snapshot:

What are your current investments?
What is your current asset allocation?
What are the underlying costs of your current investments?
What are the tax consequences?
What were you thinking?

I'm not sure if you can tell, but I'm RIDICULOUSLY excited about this. It's something I've always wanted to do and do well. So if you or anyone you know has any BURNING FINANCIAL QUESTIONS, our doors are officially open:

Pearl Wealth Financial Planning

We work online and by phone, so there's no need to be local. I thought I'd start off the year by offering anyone who mentions my blog a 10% discount on our services during the month of January.

Genoa does the Wii Victory Booty Shake

Is it just me or is this the cutest thing ever? (It gets extra good right around 37 seconds in.)

Happy New Decade!

In case I look back ten years from now with the same unbridled curiosity I currently have for the year 2000, let it be said that Dave and I toasted in the New Year with a $3.99 bottle of Korbel Brut, having paused to watch the ball drop mid-way through the movie Paranormal Activity, which scared the ever-loving crap out of all three of us, my sister included. We then spent the first day of the year un-showered and unkempt, gnawing our way through a vat of leftover homemade cashew chicken, alternating between playing Wii with the kids, reading (online or onKindle) and sneaking upstairs to "talk" and/or nap.

Not a bad start to the decade if you ask me.

I'm thinking a lot about my resolutions for this year and decidedly trying to avoid calling them resolutions. So far, I've come up with a few:

1. Cash: make it.

2. Fiction: sell it. Then write more of it.

3. Blog: get better at it. (ie: get off my ass and start responding to comments again.)

4. Ass: reduce it. (I gained 17 pounds in 2009; in 2010 I'd like to say goodbye to them.) (My ONLY plan is this: move more, DRINK less. No diets for this girl.)

5. Read: just as many romance novels, but significantly more literary/mainstream fiction.

6. Kids: read to them more consistently and hit the library weekly.

7. Husband: do him, preferably on cruise-liner.

8. Music: listen to more of it, preferably LIVE and with my sister.

9. House: keep it.

10. Friends: see them more often.

What are your resolutions? Anything I've forgotten?