Where do we commune these days?

We, like most middle income  families in America, have multiple ways to stay in touch.  I can update 70 friends and family members with a simple post to Facebook.  My son, with the same post, would reach over 200 of his closest friends.  With my phone, I can talk, text or email almost anyone I've ever met or tweet with millions of strangers.  In many ways, we've never been more connected.

Today, I did something I hadn't done in ages.  I sat in a friend's living room and visited.  We talked face-to-face for several hours without having any sense of the time that had passed.  Besides sharing stories of our pasts, we talked a little about our frustration with our attempts to spend quality time with a group of friends.  After much conversation, I boiled the issue down to one of location.

Living in a major metropolitan area has it's benefits if you are willing to travel, across town, to the suburbs, into downtown.  What's tough is finding a place that is convenient to just sit and visit.  We have structured most social events around food and drinks.  Getting together for dinner or happy hour can be fun and filling but it doesn't lend itself to just chatting.

Getting to know someone and really connecting requires time and attention.  As a told my friend, you need to be able to share upcoming plans and then have the follow-up conversation.  How was that movie?  Did you enjoy your vacation?  Have you finished that book you were reading?  These are the conversations that would happen around the kitchen table or over the back fence forty years ago.  Today, to gather in that relaxed setting requires planning and travel.

We couldn't even think of a public place to meet for conversation.  The local Starbucks might work if there are only two or three gathering.  If its four or five, maybe not.  Libraries have meeting space but local budgets require that a fee be assessed by the hour.  It's hard to have a casual conversation while watching the clock and your wallet.  Whole Foods has space but it feels pretty institutional and open, not conducive to sharing.

I would love to have people in my home.  Unfortunately, I live in a gated apartment complex at the top of three flights of stairs.  This has proven to be an obstacle to casual gathering of any kind.  What I really want is for my friends to live in the same neighborhood,  if not on the same block.  I want to walk next door to borrow a cup of milk.  I want to sit on my front porch and have the neighbors, my friends, stop by to just sit and share the evening.  I don't want to drive thirty minutes or thirty miles to just share a glass of wine before turning in.  I want my friends to be able to step into their kitchen to show me the new seasoning they found for Chinese food.  I also want to be able to say, "It's time to go," without production,  packing or calculating the  drive time.

Just like Rascal Flatts, I miss Mayberry.

Too Many Choices or Too Few

I often hear people talking about feeling overwhelmed.  There's too much to see, too much to do and the fear that we're going to miss something really good.  If you haven't felt overwhelmed lately, you must not have been to the grocery store.  A single stroll down the cereal aisle should prove my point.  Send the kids down that aisle  and you won't hear from them for thirty minutes as they pace up and down trying to decide on the one box they want to take home.

The choice I find frustrating of late is found  a couple aisles over from the cereal in the paper products.  When I  was a child, my mother was rigid in her toilet paper choice.  There was only a single brand that she would bring in the house.  When I left home and started buying my own, I trusted her choice buying the same brand through my 20's.

In my 30's, I began to assert my independence both from my parents and from ex-husband #1.  I tried several brands based on multiple factors including the cuteness of their ad campaign.  Then, one day, the search was over.  My daughter and I agreed that the latest purchase was the one and only paper we ever wanted to use.  She was so committed that she refused to use the restrooms at school.  I think we can all  agree that institutional paper products are their own brand of torture but for her, the difference was too much to handle.  She wasn't going to settle for anything less than what we now had at home.  I was less rigid but did take great pleasure in the home experience.

Sometime, several  years after we settled on our toilet paper brand, I was doing the regular shopping.  Suddenly I noticed that there was more than one version  of our brand.  Today, there are multiple versions. My brand now comes in strong, soft and extra soft, double rolls, jumbo rolls, 16, 24 and 48 packs.  While I  don't deny anyone the  right to diversify, I  think they  have  gone a little too far.  I've heard that companies believe we are always looking for the "new, improved" product and therefor strive to keep their products fresh but seriously.  The jumbo rolls don't even fit on the typical dispenser.  Bigger is not always better!

Most of  all, I can't figure out why they insist on requiring us to buy a year's supply at a time.  When you pick up that 48-roll package,  the cart is instantly full.  If you happen to drive a smart car, you may have to make two trips to get all the rolls home.  And, once you get them home, where do you put them all?  If you have an apartment, I suppose you could use the pack as an end table.  What about older Americans trying to get those big packs in the house? That's clearly a safety risk.

My final issue with these huge packages of toilet paper is one of cost.  Since I get paid once a month and am not very good at money management, things are often pretty tight that last week of the month.  If we happen to be low on toilet paper, I would like to buy enough to get through to payday, maybe a 4-roll package.  Unfortunately, that is a choice I don't have.  The paper companies have decided that the average American family has three or more bathrooms, several household members with diarrhea and a need to stockpile paper in anticipation of a natural disaster.  That's not me.  I have a household of two people.  Neither of us is home full-time.  If I have $50 to supply us with food and other necessities that last week of the  month, I don't want to shell out more than 20% on toilet paper!

This is clearly an example of too many choices but still too few.  I want to purchase the excellent quality product I love in a quantity I can carry and store.  Is that really too much to ask?

Today's Financial News

Stocks Take Nose Dive On Global Economic Fears

by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Double Dip: Is U.S. Headed For Another Recession?

by NPR
Obama Signs Bill To Raise Debt Ceiling

by NPR STAFF AND WIRES

The headlines are not very positive these days.  Maybe that's why I make no effort to catch the news.  Instead, I ponder my own debt ceiling and try to calm my economic fears.  I don't think about the national debt or the current figures for unemployment.  I have my own budget to balance and that takes all the financial energy I've got.

I am lucky to have a secure job at a fairly good salary.  Many people are suffering much more than I am.  I've been with my employer for a long time and we get along well.  I have a good retirement plan, or at least I think I do.  Again, I know I am one of the lucky ones.

What I haven't had in several years is a pay increase.  Not a penny.  I work in the public sector and one of the first belts that gets tightened is personnel costs.  An across the board freeze on cost of living increases can save millions of dollars in the annual budget without measurable taxpayer complaints.  The only taxpayers complaining are the employees who didn't see any additional dollars in their take-home pay to cover ever increasing food, utilities and insurance costs.

Well, after years of cutting this corner and that, I am really starting to feel the squeeze.  Maybe it's the teenage boy who is suddenly consuming his weight in groceries each week.  Maybe it's the increased availability of technology that seems like such a good deal since our entertainment budget has been slashed.  Maybe my priorities are just screwed up.  I don't know.

What I do know is that there was no family vacation this summer, no time on the beach, no time surrounded by my children to feed my soul.  The joy of giving has been diminished in direct proportion to the ability to give.  The stress of getting from one month to the next has taken some of the fun out of life.  To balance the scales and my checkbook, I have to strike a balance between worry and letting go.

I may have grown a little too comfortable seeing my accounts in the red.  I need to force my spending be more thoughtful.  In deciding what to spend where, I have to allow for a little bit of fun and a whole lot of creative thinking.  Just like the big guys in Washington D.C., I have to weigh cost versus benefits giving careful consideration to lost opportunities.  Unlike our nation's decision makers, I have to do this analysis, research, weighing and measuring alone.  I don't have any committees to hold hearings.  I don't have anyone to debate. There are plenty of lobbyists who would like to advise me but their self-interest is obvious.  Blocking their messages is another full-time job but I lack an administrative assistant, too.  That position was cut long ago.

So, what's my point?  Only that I need to say that I hate it, that budget management sucks, that I'd rather sit on the beach and watch the sun set but I can't afford that right now.