The Paradox of Children

My children were on vacation last week.  In order to economize on babysitting, my wife and I each took off some time to watch them.  I had two days, and on one of them we went to the zoo.

I love the zoo, not least because I loved it as a kid and my children still love it.  I like watching the wonder and joy in their eyes as they  watch the  animals.   Aside from the bathroom trips and the incessant requests for popcorn, they are engaged.

I also enjoy zoos, though, because they help me to reflect on our own lives.  Zoos bring home to me the basics of life.  We are born; we nourish ourselves; we breed; and we die.  The the enormous bulk of life on earth the fundamental goal is simply to produce more life.  Children are the point.

There are many things that we strive for, whether it is knowledge, fame, or the accumulation of stuff.  But in the end, of course, none of it really matters – only the lives we create and personally touch.  I cannot articulate the love that I feel for my children, and I am grateful for those moments that remind me that this, in fact, is what it is all about.  For humans, though, it goes beyond mere procreation; it is not enough just to create life.  We also nurture and shape it.

And here is the paradox.  I know that I am not an ideal father, but I do my best to at least do no evil.  I also realize that if I am privileged to reach a ripe old age, I will never regret having spent more time with my children, even if it means that I would have written less.  I know this.  But for much of the time that I do spend with my children I feel anxious, guilty, and a little resentful that I am not working.
They being to annoy me; I crave time alone.  I do spend a lot of time with my kids, but it is not all quality time.  Much of it is conflicted.

It is usually at about this point in my reflections that we come to the lions.  On occasion we’ve been lucky enough to find them with cubs.  Watching the interaction between cubs and parents is little different qualitatively from watching household cats and kittens, but with lions the entire charge is certainly dialed up a notch.  The cubs grab and play with their parents, who are generally gracious.  Until they aren’t.  Then they take the cub in their mouths and throw it several yards.  The cub yelps a bit, but is back soon enough doing the same thing.

What do lions have to teach human parents?  Maybe that it’s fine to look after oneself, not only our kids.  That we, at base, are animals too, and that we too can draw strong boundaries between us and our children with no guilt.  That we can love and protect our children fiercely and recognize that they are in fact the very purpose of our own existence, while at the same time carving out a space for our own lives.

It was not a particularly light day at the zoo, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.

I Will Never Have a Six-Pack

I work out. In an ideal week – which admittedly I have not had for a while – five to six times a week. More typically I’m at the gym 3-4 times each week. I alternate between classes (spinning, body sculpting), running on the treadmill, using the crosstrainer, and lifting weights. I tend to go through phases of gym attendance, usually about 3 months of regular use followed by a lengthy hiatus. I am now at about the 3 month mark of this phase.

My numbers have improved during this phase. I can now make it through the classes without too much trouble (although I ache the next day). On the treadmill I run about 3.25 miles at a 1% incline and a 9 minutes/mile pace. I bench press 80 lbs (plus the bar) and squat 180 lbs (plus the bar). I try for 450 sit-ups (combined, of different kinds) each time. Once upon a time I used to be able to run 5 8-minute-miles outside, but I’m not unhappy with my progress. And, as I have noted before, I walk or bike to and from work (1.5 miles each way) most days.

I also eat right. I eat little junk, lots of fruits and vegetables, whole grains, and little meat. No soda. I might have eggs for breakfast; a bowl of soup for lunch; and then a regular dinner (at which I do often take seconds). If I snack, it is almost always fruit and nuts. I have a few drinks at night, but otherwise avoid nighttime snacks.

Yet my belly does not budge.  I look good at 180, great at 170-175, but I do not go below 190.  I am not really fat, but my belly is discernible.  I never remember trying as hard as I do (which, admittedly, is not extremely hard) to slim down a little with so little to show for it.

There are a gazillion “10 point plans” for getting rid of your belly and thinning down generally.  They all pretty much boil down to platitudes and, frankly, bullshit.  We all know that if you burn more calories than you consume you lose weight.  Period.  No matter how many “ab fat burner super crunches” you do, it won’t change that simple fact.  The more sophisticated of these plans, which combine exercise with diet, are simply impossible for middle-aged family men like me.  They require more time in the gym than even a professor on leave has, or taking over the family-dinner menu to the point where the children revolt, or eating dinner alone or with a “skinless chicken breast” the size of a pack of cards while your family eats  from the large pasta bowl on the table.

But the real question is how much I really want to lose weight.  I assume that if I was willing to give up time to exercise more, or my family dinners, or the pleasure of having a glass of wine with my wife, I really could lose weight.  And I want to – I want to look good!  The cost, though, seems high.  If I’m healthy, why sacrifice some basic pleasures for the sake of vanity?

Maybe, instead, I should finally take the trip to the tailors, let out my pants, and just live with it.

Looking Good

We all know, of course, that we live in a world obsessed by image and appearance. There is no getting away from the media barrage; magazines, TV, movies all reinforce the message that we need to look good. They appear to be effective. The statistics are staggering: In 2005, Americans spent $12.4 billion on cosmetic and plastic surgery, but that is a small part of the more than $160 billion-a-year world beauty business. “Americans spend more each year on beauty than they do on education,” the Economist reported in 2003.

We know that this obsession with beauty is a little bit about health and a lot about money. A lot of people have a lot of money at stake in making sure that we continue to want to look good.

Although it is easy to be cynical about our cultural emphasis on appearances (and looking young), it is not easy to escape it. And I am no exception. Over the past four or five years, I’ve increased my desire to look good.

Why?

This is not a particularly easy question to answer. It is not to attract woman for any practical reason; I’m not looking for an affair. It is not to get ahead at work; it really makes no difference in my line of work. I don’t think it’s out of some sense of my lost youth. It’s also not as if everybody around me, in life and work, are beautiful and I simply want to keep up. They aren’t.

But there you have it. Although I recognize the artificial cultural expectations and I am unable to articulate a good reason, I want to look better.

Let me put a finer point on this. I want to be noticed, just a little.  I want my friends and colleagues to say to me, “You’re looking good!”  I want the women I know to think of me, just a little, when they make love to their husbands. I want the co-eds I teach to think I’m hot and to become the object of their fantasies.

(Important note to parents: I have never, ever, touched a student, graduate or undergraduate, whether of mine or simply at the universities I’ve taught at. Nor would I; it is well beyond the line. This, though, does not mean that I don’t fantasize.)

Now, it seems to me that there are four factors at work in looking good: genetics, physical shape, clothing (and other aspects of putting oneself together), and attitude.  Over the next few posts I want to explore each of these in more depth.

First, genetics.  I did not hit the genetic jackpot.  I don’t think that I am in any way “ugly”: I am decently proportioned, 6′, strong chin, dimples, hazel eyes.  But nor do I conform to any cultural stereotype of handsome.  I am not the “dark and handsome” type (unfortunately, the type my wife prefers).  I have light hair, but don’t have the whole “blond bad boy” thing going on.  My shoulders are not broad, and my butt does not tend toward “tight.”  And my hair, as I previously mentioned, is thinning.

These are things I can’t do anything about.  I’m in the ballpark, and I know that that leaves my “hotness” pretty much up to me.

Real Numbers

I’ve been asking others for their financial numbers for some time now, so it is only right that I go first. This is, of course, not entirely accurate – I know that my deficit is larger than indicated here. I also know that I would need to start tracking my expenses better in order to locate the bleeding. But let’s go one step at a time.

Two other preliminary comments: Posting this makes me feel naked and vulnerable. It makes me think about how we are trained to think and talk about money. So while I could always use feedback (which numbers seem way off-base to you?), be gentle. Second, as I indicate in my previous posts, this is in no way an attempt to whine or otherwise complain. To have this kind of income is a blessing, and our inability to live within it is entirely a matter of our own choices. But that’s what financial management is all about, isn’t it? Choosing some things over others.

Anticipated Income, 2008: $160,000

Expenses (annual):

Income Taxes (including FICA) $21197

School tuition $24000

Health insurance $4749

Dental insurance $1200

Misc. health costs $3125

Contributions to retirement accounts $7008

Mortgage payment $31992

Home equity payment $5040

Student loan payment $1260

Auto payment (Note A) $2400

Auto insurance $1670

Umbrella insurance policy $259

Professional Membership Dues $614

Auto gas and maintenance $2320

Food and household (Note B) $16220

Utilities (Note C) $4520

Gas and Heat $3200

Clothing $2700

Recreation $4560

Vacation $5000

Life insurance $1213

Church dues $1200

Children’s childcare (Note D) $4008

Children’s after school lessons $6350

Summer camps $5200

Miscellaneous (including haircuts) $3000

TOTAL EXPENSES $163405

NOTES:

A: This is really a $200 payment made to a very low interest credit-card to which we transferred the car loan a few years ago.

B: Our grocery bills average about $200/week ($10400); we eat out rarely. Other costs in this category include routine household maintenance ($1500); cleaning ($3120); lawn service ($1200).

C: Electricity: $1560; Water and sewer: $800; Telephone, internet, cable (bundle package): $1200; Cell phones: $960

D: We employ a babysitter for about six hours/week @$13/hour during school weeks (36/year): $2808. For vacation and transition weeks, we paid approximately $1200

Financial Sacrifice

Partly in response to an ongoing conversation, DebtFREE-Revolution has posted on “Common to Sacrifices to Get Out of Debt.” The point of the post is that the sacrifices that one needs to make in order to live within one’s means are relatively painless. Throughout our conversation I have played the role of an admiring skeptic, and I’ll continue that role just a little bit longer.

There is, of course, waste in everybody’s budget, and attention to trimming waste is painless. But I have two responses to the particular sacrifices Ana identifies. First, again, I’d like to see numbers – exactly how much is saved by these measures? Second, are the trade-offs worth it?

Let me be specific and personal. Ana identifies a cluster of what I might call “communication” expenses: TV, cell-phone, DVDs, home-phone. I’ve bundled my cable, internet (not mentioned in this list), and home-phone into a $100/month package. We have two cell phones amounting to another $90/month. We could probably trim this a little, but at significant sacrifice. Maybe with a lot of moving things around I could get the “bundle” down by $30/month. Two cell-phones are necessary, but maybe we can get our costs down another $20/month, which I would quickly give back every time we needed the phones while traveling. Best case, we’re looking at trimming $600/year. With a $15/month Netflix, assuming that in any case you see at least 2-3 movies a month (we see more), the annual savings are even more negligible. Why would anyone buy a DVD?

Some of the other “sacrifices” are just common sense and we’ve been doing them for years. Of course we use store and generic brands. Of course we don’t window shop for entertainment.

Clothing is a bit more complicated. Our clothing budget has always been relatively low (we’ve used tons of hand-me-downs for the kids, and I own only a single suit), but this has been a sore point for us too (see my post on “My Wife’s Coat”). How much is an appropriate sum to spend on clothing? I’m thinking less of the high that some people get when they acquire new things than the satisfaction and boost of personal well-being many receive from dressing well.

Eating out is similarly complicated. Budgeters always advise eating out or buying take out less. We almost never eat out, and we almost never take in. Once a month or so, we might go out as a family to a pizza joint. Another time a month my wife and I try to get out for a nicer meal. If we cut back further – and of course we can – we would really feel it, and for how much savings? Another few hundred dollars?

Thus, when I apply this list to my own situation, I can make out maybe $1500 in annual savings, that would come with sacrifice that we would feel. This is not a tiny number, but it would not make a substantial impact on my budget, and debt, either.

I like numbers. When we talk budgets, real numbers help.

Hair, Mine and Hers

My wife has a mustache.

It not very noticeable, and most of the time it is not noticeable at all. But once in a while she doesn’t bother, for whatever reason, to bleach it. And then it appears, a light but perceptible line over her lip. It’s not attractive.

A few days ago I debated about whether to mention to her that it was getting visible. Against my better judgment, I did. Her reaction was a little frosty, but restrained. So I followed up by asking her about the possibility of waxing, and since she might be at it anyway, she also might want to try waxing her….

A little later that day, we were watching tv together and an ad for Rogaine came on.  Obviously still with our earlier conversation in mind, she pointed out to me that it might not be a bad idea for me to try this.

Now, I have a balding spot on the top of my head.  I’m a little sensitive about it, but have always accepted it as part of aging.  My wife and have joked about it, and its existence did not seem to bother her.  Maybe it really didn’t and still doesn’t, but as I followed up with her that night she did not back down from her comment.  She wanted me to have more hair on my head.

The next day I went to the drugstore and bought the generic equivalent of Rogaine.  I’ve been applying it twice a day, and it makes me feel ridiculous.  Could I be so vain as to use this stuff?  Isn’t it a waste of money?  Could I even tell my friends and the rest of my family that I’m using it and still retain my self-respect?

On the other hand, my wife wants it, or at least said she does – and she did dye her mustache.  This is the payback, and maybe my willingness on this issue could lead to other waxings from her side.  In any case, I’m also embarrassed to say that I’m intrigued.  Maybe I really can grow this hair back.  We’ll see.