Today, I officially became a full-time permanent employee of the University of Colorado Boulder.  This is the culmination of a three-month job interview.  I started on July 11th, and officially today, I’m the Real Deal.  Of course, I took this job interview at a leap and a run, knowing these first few weeks, and then months, were going to make or break me.

And I don’t regret a thing.

It hasn’t been perfect, this move across country.  The house I had to rent sight unseen has some issues, but we’re working through them.  Food prices have been much higher than I anticipated, which has meant some adjustments in how we eat and how I cook.  But there have been some trade-offs. Like the lowest electric bills I’ve ever had, and a climate that is so comfortable that I rarely have to run the a/c in the car, giving me better gas mileage than I’ve ever had.

Then there’s the mountains.  And the people, who are mostly friendly and helpful and happy to be alive (kinda like me).  I work with a complete cast of characters, which makes my days interesting and eventful, in a good way.

I still have a lot of anger toward my old employer.  I was treated poorly, and lied to consistently for months.  When I look back on my life, there are likely to only be a few things that will make me cringe.  The six months between when I was told of my layoff, and my actual last day of work, were the most difficult of my entire life.  Being teased, then thrown to the ground, over and over, and having to pretend that everything was okay, was torture beyond measure.  And yet, I held my head high, and I did my job until the very last day.  No one can say I didn’t.  And in the ensuing months, I’ve heard nothing but regret from those that had the power to save my job there.

Not that it matters now, anyway.  I am in my dream state, fully ten years before I thought I’d be here.  I’m working at my dream campus, which I never thought would happen.  I wake up every morning and know I’m going to see my mountains, in various stages of dress (snow, yellow Aspen, green and black pine).  I don’t cough anymore, and I don’t need my inhaler.  I fix my hair in the morning and it stays that way all day long.  My greasy, perpetually pubescent skin has cleared completely.  I’ve spent more time outdoors in the last three months than I did in the previous year in Missouri.  I’ve lost more than 20 pounds and am wearing my “skinny jeans.” Next year, once it’s been two years since my knee surgery, I’m going to learn to ski.

I pinch myself every single day.  It still, somehow, doesn’t feel real.  But I’m still grinning ear to ear!

I know writing this blog post may just alienate or outright anger some of my friends and readers.  But I want to make this perfectly clear:  I do not feel “lucky.”  I do not feel I got any more of an advantage in my life than anyone else.  I made choices, good and bad, that brought me to this place I am now.  Choices are what it is all about.

So, I watch with some interest the “Occupy Wall Street” crowd, listening to some of the rhetoric.  I’m a registered Independent, but I also know I have some Democratic leanings.  I also have some decidedly Republican sensibilities.  Someone I knew once said they were “socially liberal, but fiscally conservative.”  That probably describes me as well.  I believe in health care for all, but I don’t believe in welfare.  I believe in religious freedom (not just tolerance), but not in government support of any religion in any way, shape, or form.  I believe in jobs programs, scholarships, and access to education, but not in student loans.  I believe in cash spending, but I don’t believe in buying on credit.

I also believe that money is what makes the world go ’round, and that if you want to change your world, you have to be choosy about where you spend your money, and how you spend your money.

The “Occupy” folks have plenty of things going for them – righteous anger about how banks and other financial institutions have behaved, about how the government has bailed out these corporations that have been close to failing (while being touted as “too big to fail”), about the high unemployment numbers and the huge discrepancy between the very rich and the rest of us.  For all that, however, I have yet to hear one speaking intelligently or convincingly about their goals.  What I hear is a lot of “you you you” accusations, but no talk of a solution.  How, exactly, do we fix this?

We fix it with our pocketbooks.  If we’d had not been holding our wallets hostage to our desires for the last twenty or thirty years, we wouldn’t be in the mess we are in now.  We bought ourselves into where we are.  And worse yet, we bought ourselves into this mess with money we didn’t have.  We borrowed it.  We borrowed lots of it.

Borrowed money isn’t magic.  It isn’t invisible nor does it go away just because we didn’t see ourselves spend it because it was virtual money.  Borrowed money is money enhanced:  enhanced with interest and penalties.  Lots of penalties.  A house bought the traditional way, with a 5% down-payment and a 30-year mortgage actually ends up costing three times its original sales cost.  A car bought with a tradition 5-year payment plan even at a reasonable 8 or 9 percent interest rate ends up costing the buyer almost twice the original sales cost of that car.  A refrigerator purchased with a store credit card, at a 16 or 18 percent interest rate over a three-year loan will cost the buyer as much as three times the original cost of the refrigerator.  If you purchase things with a standard credit card, depending on your payment cycle and amount of payments, you could be paying ten times what those items cost originally.

Many Americans have been convinced that they must live beyond their means to be “happy.”  A bigger house is better than a smaller house, even if we can’t really afford those payments.  A new car is better than an old car.  “Making do” isn’t part of the vocabulary.  Reusing isn’t even considered.  And that habit, which is now ingrained in almost two full generations of Americans, has brought us to this place.

It is time for us to rethink, as a people, and as individuals, about what is important.  New clothes vs. used clothes.  New fancy big gas-eating car vs. used older gas-efficient car.  New furniture or recover the old furniture.  Putting everything on the credit card because it’s easy, or using cash or debit instead because it’s cheaper and less of a temptation.  I can “want” a lot of things, but what I need are three or four decent pairs of jeans, seven shirts, and a pair of sturdy shoes.  Everything else is gravy.  I can “want” that Subaru or Toyota 4Runner I slobber over, but what I need is a fuel-efficient car to get me to work and back every day.  I can “want” to eat out every day for lunch, but what I need is to eat up those leftovers in the fridge so they don’t go to waste. I can want that fancy Swiffer cleaning system, but all I really need is a broom, rag mop, and bottle of cleaner from the Dollar Tree.

There are those that will argue that they pay their credit card bills off every month, and that they haven’t made some of these poor choices in spending.  But I dare say everyone (including me) can do better.  We live in a very consumer society where we are bombarded with advertising and a push to buy buy buy no matter what the cost.  I see my neighbor’s pretty truck, and wish I had one too.  “I wonder if I can manage to find the money for a monthly payment on that,” I might muse to myself, especially when I see my old, rusting, not-so-shiny-anymore Corolla in my driveway.

But I know that the biggest reason why I’m able to continue to live in my house, have THREE cars for the three drivers in the household, eat a home-cooked meal every night for dinner, have a bowl of fresh fruit on the counter, and have plenty of Diet Coke in the fridge, is because I’ve made deliberate choices elsewhere.  I do not buy on credit, for any reason.  I don’t eat lunch out but once a month when it’s required of me for a meeting at work.  I buy second-hand whenever it is possible, which is most of the time.  I take care of the things I have, and find ways to make things work.  I could have gone and bought a fancy cover for the swamp cooler that lets lots of cold air pour into my kitchen, or I could just cut a piece of cardboard from an empty box to fit the front and tape it on with a little duct tape.

Do I wish I had more money, and could be more careless with the money I have?  Sure.  Everyone does.  But in the end, I refuse to pay anyone to borrow money.  That’s just a waste, in the short AND the long-term.

As for those Occupy people out there.  Time for them to take some responsibility as well.  Banks cant make money unless we are giving them ours.  Banks aren’t the problem.  WE are.

P.S. Just read this in a weekly newsletter I get through email for living thrifty.  This is in regard to a credit card balance you may carry and pay on:

“If you have a balance of $5,000 with an APR of 14%, and you only pay the minimum of $100, it will take 22 years to pay off the debt in full, according to a Federal Reserve credit card calculator. You’ll also hand over $6,110 in interest. Boost your monthly payment to $150, however, and you’ll be debt-free in four years and pay $1,369 in interest.”

Something happened this week that has left me scratching my head.  I haven’t figured out if it is good Karma repaying me for good deeds, or bad Karma setting me up for a big fall somewhere down the road.

Monday we took the SUV to have two tires put on the back.  We went to a place called Discount Tire, which is all over in this area.  They were friendly, quick, and we were on our way in no time.

So Wednesday, I was home from work in the morning because Tater had late start at school, which means I had a few hours to kill.  I went to the DMV and got my Colorado license plates, then headed to Discount Tire with my two studded snow tires in the trunk, intending to have them put on the front of my car.  After all, there is snow in the forecast and I need to have those tires on.

Well, turns out this place will not install only a pair of studs.  It has to be all four.  The two have been fine for me, I have a front-wheel-drive car.  But they refused to install the tires unless I bought a pair for the back of the  car.  You probably know what my answer to that was.  I turned around and walked out, telling them I’d have no trouble finding someone who would put my tires on.

I did not get to my car before a manager was behind me, asking if we could “work it out.”  I said flat out I wasn’t buying tires, that I’d bought tires earlier in the week for another car, and that I didn’t need tires.  This is where it got strange.

“How about I give you tires.”

That’s what he said.  That’s exactly what he said.  I made him repeat it.  Twice.

“Oooookay,” was my response.

Inside we went.  He took info from me, looked to see if the tires were in stock, and showed me the estimated bill.  Zero dollars.  And yes, they could have me done and out in time to get Tater to school by 11.  And they’d put on my license plates for me.  For zero dollars.

I walked out 20 minutes later with my old studs on the front, new studs on the back, and all four of my summer tires bagged up and in my trunk.  Read that last part again:  all four of my summer tires BAGGED up and in my trunk.  And I’d paid zero dollars.

Two days later, I’m still a little stunned, a little incredulous, and waiting for the other shoe to drop.

One thing I know is that I will be doing business with Discount Tire for years to come.  When I was walking out of there without my tires being done, I was considering how many people I was going to tell about my terrible experience there.  Now?  I’m telling everyone about my incredible experience there, and not only that, I’ll be taking all of my work to them in the future.  I’m sure the manager was out maybe $100 for the tires.  But he’ll make way more than that on us in the future, so this is a gamble that will certainly pay off for him.

Me?  I’m happy to be tooling down the road on my noisy studded snow tires.  Just waiting for that first flake to fall… Oh, and the sidewalls of the tires are etched with bears, mountains and snowflakes.  How cool is that?

In a study by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unwanted Pregnancies, it was found that Christian teens and young people were almost as likely to have engaged in premarital sex as their non-Christian counterparts (of those polled from age 18 to 29, 82% of Christian singles were sexually active compared to 88% of non-Christian singles).

In other words, despite the pledges for chastity and abstinence, despite the teaching of the Christian churches against sexual activity among non-married people, sex is still happening.  It’s happening a lot.

I am an old married lady now, but I was a bit of a late bloomer.  If they had polled me back in the day, I’d have been the 18% they spoke of.  At least, for a while.  I am the mother of a 21 year old son and an 18 year old daughter.  I have never tried to drill abstinence and chastity into their heads, because it wouldn’t have made any difference.  Instead, I drilled in knowledge.  Knowledge of where babies come from.  Knowledge about sexually transmitted diseases.  Knowledge about how to at least minimally protect their pride and their hearts as they reached adulthood and the inevitable shift to becoming sexually active.

In other words, I preached prevention, caution, and care.  Telling them not to do it was not an option.  Instead, I made sure they were fully informed of the methods they should use to prevent pregnancy and disease, and hoped for the best.  Because I, as a sexually active being with the same human urges as any other human being (most of them, anyway), realize that thinking my kids won’t do it because I don’t want them to, or because I don’t think they will, is just stupid.

Better well-armed, than ignoring the problem.

I hope you’ll bear with me as I post about September 11th.  I’ve made no secret of the fact that I think these yearly commemorations are a real waste of energy and time, and do nothing for the survivors.  I’ve heard the arguments about “if we ignore history, we are destined to repeat it,” but the truth is, nothing about 9/11 was anything I had control over, and another such incident is not anything I can avoid or change or prevent.

So the whole week leading up to the 10-year anniversary of this event brings on a lot of eye-rolling on my part.  Every news report seemed to lead up to it, and there was this commemoration and that commemoration.  Even my little town got in on the act, with the newspapers extolling the virtues of the local firefighters who went to NYC after the event to help.  There was a parade, and symbolic events scheduled at one of the parks.

This is a part of history.  I get that.  I appreciate all that our first responders did to aid those directly affected by the crisis.  I understand the great loss we suffered as a country.  I don’t think any of us will truly forget this happened.  But as someone said to me last Sunday, “We all know what day it is.  We don’t need graphic reminders of it throughout the day.”

Amen, sister.  I kept the television off, hid posts from my friends on facebook who made posts about the date and what we “shouldn’t forget,” and generally stayed away from any media that would have forced me to remember the day for this one incident.  This date is also someone’s birthday.  Actually, several people I know had birthdays on that day.  How would you like that to be the topic of conversation everywhere on your birthday.  Joy.

It made me wonder what those that were directly affected by the event were thinking about all the activities surrounding this dubiously celebrated anniversary. Turns out, many of them just want everyone to shut up and move on already.  I listened to the September 11th episode of This American Life podcast, a few days late.  I almost didn’t listen to it because of the topic, but I like the podcast and thought I should at least attempt to listen to it.  I was not disappointed.  Ira Glass has a way of putting together interviews that make me think, make me feel, make me see things just slightly differently than I might have before.

This episode was no different.  Act 1 introduced us to a young man whose experience with 9/11 took him to Kabal and eventually to resistance activities in war-torn Afghanistan.  His early interviews vs. the current ones show the incredible and frightening shift in his purpose.  Act 2 featured an interview with a woman whose firefighter husband died in the aftermath of the attacks on New York.  The most poignant thing she said was when she repeated a statement she made to Dick Cheney during a White House function (he had asked her her opinion about the war in Iraq): “I feel like you are using the death of my husband as an excuse to involve us in this ridiculous and pointless war.”  Act 3 featured a story of a soldier deployed to Iraq, who upon returning home was so severely affected by PTSD that he almost beat his wife to death, and doesn’t remember a thing about it.  Act 4 told the story of an Iraqi-born translator who had to move to Norway to excape the death threats he and his family were receiving for “aiding the Americans.”  Act 5 told the absolutely shocking story about an American-born Muslim child harassed and persecuted in her town for simply being Muslim; she was 8 years old and her life has never been the same.  Act 6 tells the story of a woman who escaped the Twin Towers by following her coworkers down 89 flights of stairs.  She has left New York and has never been the same.

The overriding theme in these stories is how these people just want everyone to shut up about it.  Not to forget, but to stop “commemorating,” “honoring,” and dissecting all that is part of the event and its aftermath.  They want “normal,” they want things to be the way they were.

And I can completely understand that.  In fact, I agree.  It is sort of like someone sending me a card every year on the anniversary of my grandmother’s death.  It would do nothing but make me angry.  I know what day it is.  I don’t need a graphic reminder.

I can only hope that as the years pass, this need to relive and revisit  will dull and dim.

As I’m still easily impressed, even at my ripe old age. I’m constantly finding “characters” in my daily interactions, and there are an awful lot of characters here in Colorado.

For example, the tall, thin, rustically-bearded 30-something man I see at the gas station almost every morning when I’m getting my daily Diet Coke:  he drives an older Jeep Cherokee, lifted, with more mud than paint, and no front doors.  I’m wondering how long it took to get used to driving like that.  I’m sure that it’s a cooler-than-most drive in the summer.  This morning I noticed he’d put the doors back on his truck.  He still has his rustic beard, and has traded his cargo shorts and t-shirts for jeans and long-sleeved t-shirts over his boots.

Then there’s the neighbor on the other side of the cul-de-sac.  He’s the dad of the little girl Tater plays with a lot.  Sunday, as I came out of the house in a fog of hunger on my way to the grocery store for bisquick (Sunday means waffles in this house!), he waved at me.  I waved back,  Then I realized how big that man is.  He was getting into his older Suburban, and his shoulders came to the top of the truck.  Good Lord.  I’ve probably seen him a dozen times or more since we’ve lived here.  Why didn’t I notice that?  Their kids have unusual names, despite the fact that they appear to be Hispanic (although the kids do not speak Spanish): Scarlett, Sierra, Thorn, and Chasper.

My boss is a complete character.  She has big, meaty hands, and types on her keyboard like she just learned how to do it last week.  That poor keyboard gets hammered! And I don’t know how her mouse survives more than a week of that pounding index finger she hovers at full extension above it.  It makes me laugh.  She is fervant, zealous, and totally dedicated to what she does.  And she doesn’t like it when people touch the monitors with their fingers.  But keyboard be damned!   She has been awesome to work for, and I couldn’t ask for anything better.

And when I was at the salon getting my nails done a few weeks ago, one of their techs came in, his two little boys in tow.  I did a double-take and tried not to stare.  The guy looked just like Vin Diesel.  Yes, with tattoos and everything.  He gathered his supplies and sat down on one of those tiny little pedicure stools and started working on some lady’s toes.  Unfortunately, mine had already been done and I did not get the Vin Diesel treatment.  Hey, I think Vin did great in The Pacifier taking care of kids…why couldn’t he be a nail tech too?

And I like seeing the middle-aged Hispanic men in the grocery store.  Or anywhere else.  They may drive the rattiest, beat up old car ever (either a Chevy, Toyota, or Nissan), but when they are going to the store, they dress like gentlemen.  They wear long-sleeved dress shirts, sometimes plaid, sometimes western-style, buttoned down, with a bolo tie at the neck, a white t-shirt underneath.  They have that shirt tucked into crisp black jeans or dress pants, over cowboy boots polished but not to a shine.  They have black belts with big silver belt buckles, and they wear a sharp, clean straw cowboy hat.  Their hair is oiled and slicked back away from their dark, leathery faces, and when they smile, there’s a gold tooth to show.  If they have a mustache, it’s neatly trimmed, and there’s never a beard.  These men don’t go anywhere without dressing appropriately, neatly, cleanly.  By contrast, their younger brethren wear droopy clothes and oversized t-shirts, their hair buzzed to their scalps.

Characters.  They are everywhere.

There is such an interesting mix of tattoos, colorful clothes, oddly-colored hair, interesting shoes, Jeeps/Toyota Trucks/Subarus that there is always something for me to look at.  And enjoy.

I have been a few places in my life.  I’ve seen at least a small part of 38 states.  I’ve liked some (Mississippi is gorgeous) and hated others (Washignton DC comes to mind).  But there was only one I’ve fallen in love with.

There are days, like today, when I just pinch myself, because it’s so hard to believe that I am living in the place I fell in love with so many years ago.  I’m living here, working here, and I never have to leave here again unless I want to.

And I just don’t want to.

This morning I left about 5 a.m. and drove up into the mountains.  I had never driven the mountains in the dark, and it was a bit spooky.  But I was alone and I could take my time, which I did.  An hour later, I stopped at a pulloff on the top of a rise at about 8,000 feet and watched the sun come up to the east.  I got out of my car and stood and listened.  It was so quiet I could hear my ears ringing.  Usually there’s enough ambient noise that I don’t hear that.  After a while, as the sun got closer to rising, I heard birds.  Just a few, and they didn’t keep it up.  I almost felt bad for walking along the fine-grade gravel and sand in the parking area, it made so much noise.

And it was cold.  I didn’t bring a jacket and was wearing shorts and a t-shirt, and wished I’d had a jacket.  Not that that made me get back in my car, because why would I do that?  I sat on the hood of my car (it was warm) and ate a cup of yogurt with fresh raspberries, and drank an almost-still-hot cup of Earl Grey Tea (with cream, of course).  I love my Aladin thermos cup – keeps drinks hot for over an hour!  I have not spent a more perfect morning in a very very long time.

And I live here.  “Awesome” is not a strong enough word for what I feel.

This week’s menu:

Sunday: Pot Roast with potatoes and carrots (didn’t end up making this tonight like I’d planned, but the rest of the week we stuck to the menu!).

Monday:  Smothered steak, rice, veggie

Tuesday: Pork chops, stuffing, veggie

Wednesday:  Spaghetti, veggie, bread

Thursday:   Veggies and Rice with sausage

Friday:  Chicken Tetrazini, veggie

Saturday:  Homemade chicken soup, bread machine bread

This is something I started  a couple of years ago.  I had read that weekly menus help you keep your budget under control by giving you a plan for each day, instead of having to pick up something on the way home, or forgetting to think of anything for dinner in the mad rush of mornings.  It has helped our family tremendously to stay in budget and also to not opt for eating out so much, which I can’t afford now anyway.  I had not had a weekly menu in place since before we moved from Missouri to Colorado, and I can tell you our budget was suffering.  So, now that we’re pretty much settled, and I have a freezer and pantry full of food again, it’s time to get back down to business.

This week’s menu:

Sunday:  Chicken soup, corn bread

Monday:  Bratwurst, mashed potatoes, milk gravy, veggie

Tuesday: Salsa chicken thighs (crockpot), salad, rice

Wednesday: Frozen Mac and Beef dinner, steamed broccoli

Thursday: Hamburger helper using ground chicken, veggie

Friday:  Bean soup (I have a half a pot of this already in the freezer just ready to be warmed up), corn bread

Saturday: Pot roast with potatoes and carrots (probably made in the crockpot but might use the pressure cooker instead)

I’ve had many of my friends tell my I’m “lucky” that I managed to get out of St. Louis and a job that was getting ugly.  I was “lucky” that I was laid off.  I was “lucky” that I found another job, in my dream state, doing what I love to do, living where I love to do.  I’m “lucky” that I am earning good retirement, no only from the previous job, but the current job.  I am “lucky.”

I don’t believe in luck, and never have.  I believe in being at the right place at the right time, which is just coincidence.  But mostly, I believe in hard work.  I believe in nothing comes for free, or without asking, and nothing happens that we didn’t set into motion in some way shape or form.

My job, being able to live in Colorado at the foot of the mountains I love the most, and having had the means to move across the country in the first place, are not matters of luck.  They are matters of my putting my effort into getting to my dreams.  The layoff was not of my choosing, but I knew it was coming even before it happened.  There had been signs before that I had ignored.  And when I got the news of my layoff, I spent a good couple of months hoping that something would change so that nothing would change; that is, letting the powers that be figure out that they couldn’t do without me after all, and put me back where I belonged.  Change is hard, and no one likes change (even if they say they do).  I didn’t like the idea of leaving a job I loved, after having done it for so long (more than ten years).

But change was inevitable, and finally I started looking for work elsewhere.  I had options, but I concentrated on options that fit my needs.  I started to plan carefully.  I cancelled all my days off so I would have a nice vacation payout when I hit my layoff date, enough to sustain me for several months if I needed it.  I stopped spending, except to make sure that our cars got some much-needed maintenance, and I paid some bills ahead.  The first job interview I had was a bust, but it led to me meeting someone else who was hiring for a position that was perfect for me.  I followed up on that aggressively, and more than a month before I was set to leave my job, I had another job secured. It helped that I was already well-known across the country for what I do (a very specific niche field involving technology and disabled students); my reputation preceded me.  It was there when I needed it.  I had enough money saved up to move us and our cars and our stuff across the country.  And I had enough to rent a house.

That didn’t happen by luck, or by providence, or because the Universe smiled on me.  It happened because I worked for it, planned for it, and made it happen when the time came.  I feel incredibly blessed, of course, but I also know that my own hard work has made so much happen for me.  It isn’t luck.  It’s more than luck.

And I hope all my friends, and my family, and especially my children, are able to do the same thing.  There is no reason to stay where you are uncomfortable, or be somewhere you are unhappy.  There is always a choice.  Mine was expensive but has been completely worth it!