parenting goals

I had a recent thought, that if I were to have kids (and I still have no intention to), I would want to spend some time distilling into words some of the most important values I would want that kid to have. I would want my partner caretaker to do the same.

not wanting to spend too much time on it now, I would probably end up choosing among: kind / empathetic / fair, thoughtful, practical / realistic, confident, independent, curious / well-rounded intellectually, resilient, hard working, team player... normal things, really.

but some of these will shape HOW we bring up the child. and identifying what is most important to me should help to raise it according to those values. for instance, I believe it's better to be intellectually well-rounded than academically "successful." therefore, I would take my kid to museums, monuments, shows, and wouldn't hesitate to pull them out of school if something big was going on. like, maybe a political rally. I value people who are team players, so I would enroll my kid in some sort of cooperative thing: team sports, orchestra, drama, debate team, etc. so they can see how important it is to do their part and to be able to be counted on. I would be less inclined to enroll them into singles tennis or surfing. 

how much?

"Suppose you're one of five people who have been selected by a mysterious philanthropist to participate in a contest. The five of you all have comparable debt-levels and costs-of-living, as well as similar, middle-class financial situations. You're all roughly the same age, equally healthy, have the same number of children, and you all live moderately low-risk lifestyles.

Privately, and one by one, a representative of the donor approaches each of you with a blank check and a pen, and poses the following question: How much money would you have to be paid, right here and now, to retire today and never receive another dollar of income (from any source) for the rest of your life?

The catch this time is that whoever among the five players writes the lowest amount on the check will be paid that sum. The other four players will get nothing."

taken from: How Much Money Is 'Enough'? This Simple Thought Experiment Gives You an Exact Number to Aim For

this is such an interesting question! the above article says that "One way to calculate that point is to figure out how much money you'd need to make decisions based entirely on enjoyment and impact, without pressure to earn. This is the goal of the catchily named FIRE movement (for financial independence, retire early). Its boosters generally say that 25X your expected annual expenses is enough. So if $50,000 a year is enough for you to live comfortably, you need to save $1.25 million."

based on that thinking, I only need $650k. I make about $50k a year before taxes, and manage to save about 30% of my paycheck after taxes. which means I only need $26k a year to live on. that being said, I would love to some savings because 'merica and our lack of healthcare, and I'd want to factor in inflation. plus, all my grandparents lived to at least 80, and both my parents should hit that easily. which means I have maybe 45 years of life left. so 45 x let's say $30 is $1.35 million. I'd round up to $1.5million, and probably just to be safe, ask for $2m.

I wonder if I'd win. 

...the flaw tho, is that the story says you can never have any income (from any source) forever. tho the FIRE equation above almost certainly factors in bank interest. 

september 2020 donation

this month I kept it local and donated to the Long Beach Arts Council.

they help put on local shows (I've been to "hello, welcome" twice now), help sponsored so many of the covid murals, and also help with Pow! Wow! Long Beach. I LOVE murals and street art!!

I donated to them thru the Long Beach Gives site. this is a one week online fundraiser for 150+ non-profits all doing great work in Long Beach. 

non-profit / churches

The Hill - Thousands of Catholic churches received PPP loans: report

I get that churches have bills (like rent and utilities), and obviously they employ people, so sure, they need money too. plus, I imagine many of their donations come from passing around the "hat" every week. so if they're closed, they aren't getting their usual donations. so i don't really have an issue with them getting ppp money.

that being said. i do have an issue with it. as someone who works for a non-profit in fundraising, i know pretty well what our revenues and expenses are. our biggest expenses are salary and programs. our salaries take up about 30% of our total expenses, which sounds like a lot, but isn't (we each get under $65k a year and we have NO benefits). of course there are other expenses like rent, utilities, insurance, office supplies, stamps (nearly $1000 a year!), but the majority of our expenses are on programs which go directly back to the community we support. we mostly spend on teachers and students. we get audited every year, we have our annual reports on our website, easily found public 990s, and grantors regularly request our financial information going back several years. they generally also limit our overhead expenses to a max of 18% of our total grant money because they want us spending their money on our programs, not on our people (and while I get that, I also very much don't get that, but that's a conversation for a different day).

but, like, what are churches spending on? I feel like (honestly, this is based on nothing other than feeling) the majority of money is spent on their own parishioners, and not on the outside community. basically, it's a social club you pay dues to, and you get snacks every meeting, and occasionally you invite the homeless dude down the street. I doubt many of their parishioners ask what their money is going to, what percentage on the programs and what on operations. 

it's funny because the other day, this topic came up. g was upset so much PPE money went to churches. I agreed but was also more cautious. but as I said this, t gave the example of how the church of scientology is getting a lot of money that isn't spent on programs but I wanted to ask her about if she know what percentage her tithe is spend on programs at her church? it took a minute to find her church's EIN (it's not listed on their website), and even with that EIN I can't find their 990 (apparently churches aren't required to have them public) or any sort of financial information, and they don't have anything resembling an annual report on their website. like... wtf knows what they're spending their income on? and how much income do they even have? and the biggest thing is, NO ONE SEEMS TO CARE. not even t who so quickly tried to throw scientology under the bus. 

I get that services to your own congregation are services. it just seems really unfair that regular non-profits are expected to provide free services to pretty much anyone who asks, without getting nearly anything financial in return from that same group. we're held to pretty high standards, especially by anyone who is offering to give us money. even for individual contributions we generally have to prove that we're helping people. I guess churches are different in that the proof is in you. if you feel good, you're happy to give money, even if it doesn't help anyone else. which also seems really weird somehow.

conclusion - I don't think churches should be considered non-profits. I do think they should be taxed. any entity that wants to be tax exempt should have a certain level of transparency. the public loses out on your tax money, so you should be able to justify WHY. regular non-profits do. churches don't. that's completely unfair.

grease fire

2 nights ago, september 11th of all days, i had the scariest night of my life.

joe had made french fries the day before and assured me it was very easy to make tho i've never fried anything before. he said to microwave the potatoes for five minutes, and to make the oil very hot, keep it on for like 5 minutes on before dropping the potatoes in.

so i turned up the heat and put on the lid (because that makes things heat up faster). the potatoes finished their 5 minutes in the microwave but the oil seemed unchanged (the pot has a glass lid). all the frying oil I've seen has been boiling so I thought to wait a bit longer. I was mixing my cookie dough (I'd measured everything out earlier) when i looked over at the stove and saw white smoke coming out of the pot.

i ran over and took the lid off. WHOOSH! a flame suddenly shot up several feet high out of the pot! I tried putting the lid back on but it didn't quite slide on correctly and there were still hella flames. I tried again and again but the flames were so high! there was SO MUCH smoke and I think at this point the fire alarm started to go off. our stove doesn't have a hood, and I was using the burner closest to the wall, so I thought to move the pot into our stainless steel sink which has a higher ceiling, and is further from the walls. I called 911 (first time ever I think!) and was crying (I think from the now black smoke) as I gave the wrong address, then corrected myself. by this time I finally got the pot in the sink, lid still only halfway on. the flames were so high! I thought we had a fire extinguisher under the sink (we don't, that's my parent's house). the dish towel I was using to protect my hands from the pot handles was catching fire so I grabbed the dog's pillow to use as an oven mitt. I grabbed another pot lid (thankfully two our pots have the same sized lid). and thought I was gotten it on correctly, but there was so much thick black smoke by that time I gave up. I ran to the door with Roux and got outside. 

I was only outside for a minute or two before the firefighters showed up. I rang the doorbells and banged on the doors of my fourplex neighbors but no one answered. I was so scared because my next door neighbor's car was in her usual handicapped spot in front of the house (mind you, she's also my landlord's mom so I really really scared I would accidentally kill her).

the firefighters came and I waved them down. by then I was pretty sure the fire was out. I didn't see flames anymore though the smoke was so black it was a hard to tell. a few of them went in and quickly came out, saying the fire was out. another set up a fan in front of our door to draw the smoke out.

they weren't here long. less than half and hour. they waited for the fan to do its thing, then they went in and double checked. they said there wasn't any damage. they were very nice, very understanding, and asked if anyone else was home, and any other pets, tho they didn't ask if I was hurt. strange because I was coughing a lot and my hand was actually in quite a bit of pain.

the neighbor above me showed up and we chatted a bit until the firefighters left and she went to move her car. I came back into the house; Roux did NOT want to, he was quite scared to come in and for the first hour he stayed near the door. eventually he came back to the sofa, but he stayed on the far side and did not go to his side, his kennel, or check on what I was doing in the kitchen. 

blah blah blah. it was scary. very scary. I think this was definitely the most scared I've ever been. in car accidents you think, it's just me and my car and that other driver and the car and cars are pretty fucking safe. when freaking out while snorkeling I KNOW it's mostly in my head. but this... oh man... I was very conscious that 6 people live in this building, 3 dogs, the neighboring buildings are pretty close, and there are major fires up and down the whole west coast right now. I was so scared I was going to start another fire, here in the city, burning down everyone's things, killing their pets because I couldn't make fucking french fries. 

all in all, it went as well as it could have. I did the right things after initially fucking up very badly. I only have a small first degree burn on my right hand (that actually hurt pretty badly for several hours. there wasn't any blistering or color changes but it hurt badly enough I thought it might possibly "become" a second degree burn. it didn't). the dog is fine, on his side of the sofa and in his bed. there was no damage to the apartment tho I did throw away the pot, the lid, the dish towel, and the kitchen mini-blinds. everything else is fine, even the sink, and the plastic soap dispenser above the sink. tho of course everything smells. smells bad. different, and I think worse, than a regular fire though I've never been terribly close to a wildfire so who knows. 

that night I tried cleaning some of the soot away and it smeared badly and I was worried we would have to repaint and we would lose our deposit. yesterday J and I did only some basic cleaning since we had to go down to SD for the day (my first real hangout since the pandemic started). but this morning we woke up, I googled some things, found some other cleaning products we already had, and guess what? the kitchen looks pretty good. it does look a bit grimy, but it's nothing serious. definitely don't need a paint job (until we move out anyway because we purposely didn't try to clean the walls or ceiling outside the kitchen knowing that it would make it look worse). but seriously, after about 5 hours of cleaning, it looks almost back to normal. I've never thought I'd had to clean a ceiling before; it's hard work.

anyway, lessons were learned. I do have a little bit of PTSD. I'm definitely never frying anything on my own again, we got a fire extinguisher (actually, g got us one because we all realized we should have one in the kitchen and she bought a two pack to share), I learned that I'm pretty good in a serious emergency, a little correct info about grease fires goes a long fucking way (un-introduce oxygen), and a little lack of information goes just as fucking far (don't turn stove way up when cooking oil!, don't cover oil when cooking!, don't open lids when there's smoke from oil!).