May 2009
100 posts
on deserving more
Tell me if this is reasonable. John’s family friend, a kid he grew up with, graduated last May, same as us, with a degree in economics. In looking around for a job, he found he could only get one in Jacksonville, Florida, and it only offered $30,000. He turned it down, and his parents supported him. He is now taking a couple of classes to try to get into a master’s program and living with his parents.
Why does our generation feel so entitled? We just graduated, and I don’t believe I deserve $60,000 or even $30,000 just for being my wonderful self. Our friend complained he wouldn’t be able to live off $30,000, but here’s the thing—John and I are living off under $20,000 this year, and that still means dog, health care, one car, housing sans parents—even the occasional Whataburger.
I’ve really enjoyed the challenge and romance of living on so little. Each of us gets allowance of $20 a week which keeps us cheerful. We live in a lovely but very, very small house with basic cable and so-so internet, both of which are included in the rent. Probably we could make more money, but we’re enjoying the extra time together. The first three months of the year, while we were in Uganda, we made only the royalties of John’s iPhone game. Now, John works 7:30-1:30, straight through, at a software company, then comes home and plays with me and rides his bike. We’re in Tallahassee such a short time I gave up on finding jobs, and spend my days keeping costs down by cooking from scratch and reading blissfully. In August, we’ll start living of John’s stipend and whatever part time (likely secretarial) work I can get. Eventually we’ll work more so we can have a family, and in the meantime, we’re saving everything over and above John’s paycheck for that future time.
My degree was in English and I loved it, but I really didn’t expect anything different.
I’m not saying people living in metropolitan areas or those with children should be expected to flourish under those conditions, but $30,000 for a single kid straight out of college (with a degree that is solidly not engineering or even business) sounds pretty reasonable to me.
Right?
Accident, Mass. Ave.
I stopped at a red light on Mass. Ave.
in Boston, a couple blocks away
from the bridge, and a woman in a beat-up
old Buick backed into me. Like, cranked her wheel,
rammed right into my side. I drove a Chevy
pickup truck. It being Boston, I got out
of the car yelling, swearing at this woman,
a little woman, whose first language was not English.
But she lived and drove in Boston, too, so she knew,
we both knew, that the thing to do
is get out of the car, slam the door
as hard as you fucking can and yell things like What the fuck
were you thinking? You fucking blind? What the fuck
is going on? Jesus Christ! So we swore
at each other with perfect posture, unnaturally angled
chins. I threw my arms around, sudden
jerking motions with my whole arms, the backs
of my hands toward where she had hit my truck.
But she hadn’t hit my truck. She hit
the tire; no damage done. Her car
was fine, too. We saw this while
we were yelling, and then we were stuck.
The next line in our little drama should have been
Look at this fucking dent! I’m not paying for this
shit. I’m calling the cops, lady. Maybe we’d throw in a
You’re in big trouble, sister, or I just hope for your sake
there’s nothing wrong with my fucking suspension, that
sort of thing. But there was no fucking dent. There
was nothing else for us to do. So I
stopped yelling, and she looked at the tire she’d
backed into, her little eyebrows pursed
and worried. She was clearly in the wrong, I was enormous,
and I’d been acting as if I’d like to hit her. So I said
Well, there’s nothing wrong with my car, nothing wrong
with your car…are you OK? She nodded, and started
to cry, so I put my arms around her and I held her, middle
of the street, Mass. Ave., Boston, a couple blocks from the bridge.
I hugged her, and I said We were scared, weren’t we?
and she nodded and we laughed.Jill McDonough just won the Pushcart Prize for this poem
via maddow
This makes me very very VERY happy
Things Martha Has Taught Me Today
(while baking my first Martha Stewart recipe)
1. There is no such thing as too many bowls. Use as many as possible.
2. Every recipe should generate enough of the given commodity to feed an entire class of ravenous kindergarteners.
3. Every ingredient deserves an electric mixer.
We’ll see how these cupcakes turn out, though I’m using regular salt for coarse, dark chocolate cocoa for regular, and maple cream cheese frosting for chocolate ganache (because I thought the dark chocolate could use a sweeter complement). I’m apprehensive, especially because I will have produced something like 30 of these suckers.
This is why i don’t cook anything except pasta and bagels. (is toasting something even considered cooking?)
If you run the risk of burning the food in question or yourself, I think it counts as cooking!
martha update
Ohmigosh. In the name of science, I just et one of the less attractive of my Martha cupcake progeny and even pre-frosting, DELICIOUS.
Here’s the recipe for interested parties.
Note: I suspect there is a reason there’s no health information for the recipe. Even stretched over 36 cupcakes (I counted!), three sticks of butter and a cup of sour cream is an awful lot.
Things Martha Has Taught Me Today
(while baking my first Martha Stewart recipe)
1. There is no such thing as too many bowls. Use as many as possible.
2. Every recipe should generate enough of the given commodity to feed an entire class of ravenous kindergarteners.
3. Every ingredient deserves an electric mixer.
We’ll see how these cupcakes turn out, though I’m using regular salt for coarse, dark chocolate cocoa for regular, and maple cream cheese frosting for chocolate ganache (because I thought the dark chocolate could use a sweeter complement). I’m apprehensive, especially because I will have produced something like 30 of these suckers.
visions of uganda
Power was just out for an hour and a half and I came to the dismaying discovery that electricity outages in Florida are actually even more boring than in Uganda. In Uganda, I could still bake and do laundry and use internet as long as the laptop battery held out. Here, I went back to bed. I was just reaching for the box of Frosted Flakes to eat a sad cold breakfast when the power compassionately returned. Hrmph.
“The road beyond ran along the crest of a ride where the barren woodland fell away on every side. It’s snowing, the boy said. He looked at the sky. A single gray flake sifting down. He caught it in his hand and watched it expire there like the last host of christendom.”
—The Road, Cormac McCarthy
“Would Catholic universities now providing housing for married couples be required to accommodate same-sex couples? Would church or synagogue facilities used for wedding receptions have to be equally available for same-sex celebrations? How would provisions forbidding discrimination on the grounds of marital status affect employment and benefits policies or adoption services like the specialized adoption services that Catholic Charities in Massachusetts suspended after the state legalized same-sex marriage and ordered the church group to place children with gay couples?”
—wider questions on legalizing same-sex marriage, in this article
“Angel shrugged. “I really don’t understand,” she said. “Because I’m thinking that these people love me and I love them, but I don’t know. Tonight’s a different story.”
—A Prom Divided, on segregated prom in a rural middle Georgia town
