b) it required a rejection of a fear of heights.
bananas
Friday, May 27, 2022
21. take a trapeze class (50 x 50)
35. grow tomatoes (50 x 50)
37. go blueberry picking (50 x 50)
Roddy and I went blueberry picking at Timberlost last summer. Timberlost is the name that we've given Grime's (Roddy's way of spelling "Grammy") house in Canaan Valley, WV. There are wild blueberries all along the Yoakum Run trail.
We put ours in blueberry pancakes, which none of my picky-eater kids ate. It's the journey, right?
23. get a library card (50 x 50)
Monday, July 12, 2021
36.attend kindergarten graduation (50x50)
When it's all said and done, Roddy loved this year at the New Century School and he'll get to attend two kindergarten graduations because we're redshirting him.
Redshirting is the practice of postponing entrance into kindergarten of age-eligible children in order to allow extra time for socioemotional, intellectual, or physical growth.
This was such a hard year. He was the youngest of his class and it showed. Our first month was virtual and it was fucking hard, man. Jason and I aren't educators, nor do we want to be. Roddy is an adventure in and of himself, regardless of the activity in front of him. When we made the decision to move, we also decided to sign him up for kindergarten at his new school, Stoneleigh Elementary.
He'll thrive with the confidence and all of the new disciples he can attract into his cult.
43.save ~$675K (50x50)
Even though Jason grew up in the Baltimore area, both of us were open to living in other cities as long as it made financial and recreational sense. Baltimore is the second most cost-effective place to live in the United States - you're close to DC and high paying jobs, but don't have to deal with the snobbery inside the beltway when it comes to living expenses.
I'm no stranger to moving; since getting clean I've moved 10 times. From DC to VA to CA to VA to DC to DE to VA to MD to VA to MD and again in MD. The last three times have all been to set ourselves up for financial stability. We moved from Fells Point to my mom's to save money for a down payment on a house. Then we used that down payment savings for a house in Charles Village. We chose Charles Village because of it's proximity to Penn Station, so I'd be able to get down to DC and those projects easily, because of the diversity in the neighborhood, and because we could walk to the grocery. #RIPeddiesCV
We felt so good to own one of the painted ladies on Calvert (well, potential painted ladies, it was on our list of things to do to the house - paint the outside as brightly as others' in the neighborhood)
One of the assumptions when we moved was that we would have some financial help to send the kids to private school, because, well, Baltimore isn't exactly known for it's stellar elementary and middle school programs (see all of the Sun articles on broken air conditioners, no heating, also, season four of the Wire). They are very well known for their magnet highschools - and I was holding out for them - until I couldn't anymore. After getting pregnant the third time, we couldn't make that assumption about financial support, and it's reasonable that when the circumstances changed that the financial expectation changed.
We did the math. Three kids, average private school cost per year is $15k, from primary school to 12th grade, equals $675,000. That's the equivalent cost to an upper middle class house in Roland Park! Except at the end of 18 years, we'd have that amount of equity to sell if we wanted. We started thinking of how we could get the kids into a public school district that was ranked better than Margaret Brent.
This is where the guilt comes in. We are in enough of a financially stable situation where we could even have these conversations. I had joined the Friends of Margaret Brent parents group in 2017, as soon as we moved in. There are twelve other kids on our block in Charles Village who were zoned to go there, all the kids would have to do is cross Calvert street and they would be in the building from kindergarten to 8th grade. There are other families who are sending their kids there who are just like us (DC/NoVA transplants). Maybe if I had done more with the Friends group, we could have seen some movement with the school ranking factors. There are a lot of maybes.
Jason was on a bike ride when I took the kids to the Waverly farmers market in October 2020. After picking up donuts and a breakfast burrito we walked over the open space in the Abel neighborhood and met up with our neighbors who had just moved from Charles Village to Armagh, which is a tiny little neighborhood in northern Baltimore/south Towson. They had a covid baby too and had moved during the pandemic, so Lindsay's words were immensely comforting when she said that it was important to do what's best for our family, right now.
When we came to the decision that we would move, we were offered financial support to make the move faster than we had moved the last time to Charles Village (which took two years). Like, we needed to move before Congress counted the electoral votes in December 2020! I resent that I didn't put my foot down and say it was going to take as much time as it was going to take. Instead, when told to jump, I said, "how high?"
That lived with me until ... still lives with me.
Friday, July 9, 2021
39.remain employed after current project ends (50 x 50)
Since starting with Deloitte, I've had an amazing journey. Multiple projects, multiple accounts, two maternity leaves (completely paid for 16 weeks) and amazing coworkers. Not only have I remained employed, but I like what I do, it's easy to get up in the morning and go to work. #lovethislife