Frugal Fruit Smoothies (not what you think)

My name is Dara and I am a Frugal Frannie.

In real life, reckless is not an adjective anyone would use to describe me at all when it comes to personal finance. For the past four years, I’ve been slightly preoccupied with money management, learning best practices, pitfalls, and carving out my personal finance (PF) philosophy. I’ve got budgets out the wazoo! (Seriously, if you need a budget sheet, inbox me. I’m all for Project #GetDebtFree.)

My husband has been in graduate school for most of our marriage. This has provided me with an awesome opportunity for sacrifice, as I LOVE sacrificing for the greater good. (No sarcasm intended). We’ve sacrificed cable. We sacrificed travel. We sacrificed shopping sprees and random dinner outings. At first, this was more out of necessity. We needed to clip expenses to stay afloat when he first began his program.

By God’s grace, we have been able to pay off all our debt except our mortgage. We worked really hard to do that. We can breathe a little easier now. But I think, in the way of many Frugal Frannies like me, sacrificing has become so second nature that I have a hard time spending money. I am what the PF community calls ‘a saver.’ Money looks better in the bank to me than anywhere else. Even when the difficult decision to Spend Money has been made, like most married couples, my husband and I debate about iPads vs. draperies, Bose sound systems or luggage sets, Toyota vs. Mercedes.

Young Kingston

I recently polled a few friends of mine about when to enjoy the fruit of your labor…when to stop scrimping and scrounging and relax? My friend MJ gave me this nugget:  “I make smoothies every chance I get with the fruits of my labor…” So, I’ve made a conscious effort to do the things that we enjoy, like visiting Atlanta’s many festivals, spending time with friends, or taking our Miniature Schnauzer, Kingston, for jaunts in the park.

Those, clearly, don’t cost much, but I am a work in progress! I will gradually get to the point where I can make frugal ‘fruit-of-my-labor’ smoothies…mixing sensible savings with spending on fun items that we can afford. Tasting the milk and honey of the land, sweetened with liberal amounts of laughter. Not because I deserve it, but because I earned it.

Real. Positive.

How about the road NEVER traveled?

Part of my personal philosophy of punctuating my life with meaning has run counterpoint to a character trait I have.

I am a realist. To an annoying fault.

In some cases, this serves me well. I count the cost of everything until it cannot be counted any more and then I count again. I make decisions, when I can, based on the facts available. When I take on freelance gigs, I give my clients a fair estimate of my ability to fulfill their requests and how long it will take me to do so.

But other times, my tendency toward realism devolves into pessimism. I never saw it as such until recently. I had so programmed my thoughts to say, “No, this isn’t going to work out,” that I wasn’t giving myself the chance to change something. If I have given up before I begin, then I rob myself of any burgeoning greatness. Worse, I have declined to mentor young people because I don’t want to dampen their spirits.

You can find me in the A.

I moved to Atlanta six years ago to work in editing and writing. My career path has been winding, but I have always had a job that involved words. For this, I am grateful. The chutzpah it took to move from Florida (the day after graduation!) with no job and no hardcore plan except, “Find a job. Soon!” landed me here. I am still striving to accomplish goals, but it can be difficult at times.

Previously I thought that looking on the bright side was for folk who were too blind to see straight. But when I look back on my drive up I-75 all those years ago, I can feel my excitement, a palpable current of energy that told me Atlanta would be good for me. And it is. I have learned that it takes faith to start out on a path you’ve never taken, but perhaps even more faith to stay the course of that dream when it takes a curve.

So, today, I start a new path toward positive realism. If I say I believe there is power in words, then my own self-directed words should reflect the good that I want for my future. See and say great things about yourself and then work hard to make them tangible.

Real? Yes. Positive. Oh, yes.

Parley-voo Frenchie, Frenchy?

luh pah-vee-yohn

When I was nine years old, my family moved to Belgium from Florida for three years (courtesy of the US Army). The greatest consequence to come out of that move was that I learned how to speak French. My mother placed me in a French-speaking, Belgian school on SHAPE military base, and I was then forced to care about the language, if I wanted to pass the 4th grade.

Fast forward and you have me now, a Francophile who has an affinity for all things Francophone because I live in an English-speaking country. My ears perk up when I hear the language in public…I will strike up a conversation with almost anyone in French. My French isn’t perfect, but I try, and I suppose people appreciate that.

My love for French gets me into linguistic pickles. I hear melodic French words in my head that sound entirely wrong when pronounced by American tongues. Foie gras is NOT “foy grass.” I don’t care if you’re from Texas. I correct people when they pronounce “vinaigrette” as “vinegar-ette.” Do they really care? Not one iota. Worse, I am rather critical of awful accents in movies. If you’re going to be paid millions to act, gosh darnit, hire a dialect coach and get it RIGHT! Or the casting director should hire someone native to that region to lend authenticity. (Just for kicks, you can find a great list of bad accent acting here. My personal favorite is Cool Runnings. Leon with a Jamaican accent is HI-LARIOUS!)

If you have seen Tyler Perry’s Temptation, then you know there are other issues in that movie greater than language. But my pea brain stuck onto Vanessa Williams as Janice, the French-obsessed owner of a matchmaking company. The character went to Paris for two weeks and returned with a French accent so bad that Pepé Le Pew was offended. It stank up all her scenes. Throughout the movie, I cringed whenever Janice spoke. It was horrrrrrrible, I wailed in the theater. The caveat is that the bad accent was a plot device; Jurnee Smollett-Bell’s character yanked the wool from over Janice before the movie ended and accused her of being a phony. 

Someone asked me why, if I knew that Williams was an American actress, did her interpretation of a bad French accent rankle so much? I sputtered and spouted about how actors and actresses should try to be as correct as possible when attempting accents, or not attempt it at all. I was accused of (gasp!) elitism. I don’t entirely agree with that. But I do think that, just as so many native French speakers have graciously ignored my clumsy syntax and quasi-Southern US & Belgian French accent, mayhaps I should show some appreciation that actors and actresses do try.

Naahhhhhhhh!

What do you think? Am I being too hard on them? Or should they do better? 

Fatherhood, Feminism, and Feeling Left Out

Water your flowers before they wilt…

In the US, Father’s Day is upon us. I know a good amount of fathers, and I was thinking a bit about fatherhood and its portrayal in the media.

I am speculating, but my theory has long been that the recent treatment of fathers in television sitcoms is in direct response to the 50s and 60s type of Father Knows Best characters. Shows such as the aforementioned one, Leave It to Beaver, and even 70s staple Good Times all featured a strong, authoritative father who everyone loved, but never quite took seriously.

That stereotypical father has largely faded from the minds of television writers. Whether it’s a natural phasing out of an antiquated convention or a reflection of reality, I can’t say. But Dads like King of Queens’ Doug Heffernan (played by Kevin James) and Julius from Everybody Hates Chris (played by Terry Crews) are portrayed often as bumbling, highly flawed men whose wives often show them up. They have little authority over their mouthy kids, who also outwit the befuddled men. These dads are lovable, but clueless. Well-known comedians act out these roles, and maybe that’s why the comedic relief centers on the father-who-doesn’t-know-best, but pretends mighty hard to.

I never took notice until a male friend complained to me about how Dads seemed to be the butt of every family sitcom joke. He quipped that restaurants would most likely be empty this coming weekend, because America doesn’t value fathers like they do mothers.

He may have a point.

Coincidentally, I recently read an article titled “In Defense of Dads” that highlights the internal conflicts men face when they adopt non-normative roles within their families. Writer Aaron Gouveia attests that men, again, are the butt of jokes, accused of laziness and devalued in terms of their contribution to the home. Gouveia hints at the part feminism has played in getting mothers more active in the workplace, but more strongly indicates that a side effect of this gender role shift has resulted in men’s uncertainty about their own roles.

And even just colloquially, who gets the majority of book flap shout-outs, the Grammy win thank-yous, the random I’m-on-TV quotes? Mothers. But who thanks Dads? Why are they invisible in popular culture, except to be laughed at and shown up? No one shows up on mother’s day clamoring to uplift the “fathers who serve as both mother and father!” My friend, who is a father himself, feels the distinct impression that Father’s Day is commercially and personally a back burner holiday. And he’s right. We do not lavish Dad with personal gifts he loves, but with stereotypical Man Items or goofy kitsch gifts that bear his name, “Dad.”

I would like to think, with all the shifting definitions of womanhood/manhood, that our culture can still craft a place for fathers that is meaningful and dignified. No, fathers don’t have to know best in that cornball sort of way. But they should be honored for who they are: caregivers, not babysitters; breadwinners or vital support; diaper changers and tea party companions. For as much as we love to laugh at Dad, it’s no laughing matter when one is not present.