Hey Canada, our birthdays are in the same month!

Happy Canada Day!  It's July 1, formerly Dominion Day, now Canada Day, celebrating the birth of the country now known as Canada (from the Iroquois word "Kanata", meaning: village).  Though I need another year of residency and good (pro forma) citizenship before I qualify to apply, I spent a good part of today's day off from work reading "Discover Canada", the official guidebook for persons hoping to become Canadian citizens.  All questions on the recently-revised citizenship test are based on information in this book.

Here at home in E.L., other than it being Canada Day, it is also the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the founding of the city.  Various days since last weekend have been earmarked for activities relating to the history of the city, including the Uranium Festival (uranium mining was the whole reason for the first birth of the town), now named the Homecoming parade, since the mines closed more than a decade ago and took with them the boom and bust cycle of resource mining.  The big celebration will happen this weekend, with a street dance showcasing Canadian artists as the main attraction.  I am hoping to swing the budget in favour of G and I attending, The Roadhammers will be performing and my first Canadian concert was watching their front man Jason McCoy in concert around Christmas 2013.

June was a significant month, marking as it did the half of the year.  It also marked our fifth wedding anniversary.  Wow, five years.  When we were getting married and watching a lot of wedding shows on The Learning Channel together, we joked that for our fifth anniversary we wanted to go to Hoboken, New Jersey, to meet Buddy of "The Cake Boss" fame and challenge him to make a cake that used the colours of our national flags: red and white for G, black, green, and gold for me.  We didn't make it to Hoboken, but in secret we both made plans to do something along the same lines: I commissioned a wreath from his sister's shop Wreathamania by Aiesha that would incorporate those colours and themed items significant to our relationship.  He ordered a beautiful bouquet with red roses, white and yellow carnations, ferns, and a black bow.  We both laughed at ourselves, being so secretive and doing the same thing.

In June, I only managed 75% of the $98 I needed to save for the 52 Week Money Challenge.  The fault lies entirely with my planning: I based it off the expected income from my seasonal job, completely forgetting that I would be working only 3 weeks there, not 4, so I needed to have split the required amount into thirds and not quarters.  Salient lesson there.

I completed my goal of 180 days straight meditating with Headspace.  In essence, the roughly 30 minutes each morning when I do a short yoga  session (less than 10 minutes), then sit in silence for 15 minutes with Headspace, is now inseparable from my morning ritual.  It's how I begin my days, and I can't have it any other way.

During the month, I also entertained friends I met through the immigration forum G and I went to for information and advice when we planned my emigration to Canada.  By the time the Canadian wife and I first communicated, I was already gaining a reputation for having some answers when it came to Family Class issues, which is why she reached out to me.  Eventually, what started as a plea for help became a friendship, we met in Toronto when I first came to Canada and G took me there, and since then have communicated through a successful appeal of the denial of her husband's visa.  He landed last year after a 4-year process, and finally I got to meet him in person as well.

We shared the joys and tribulations of settling in for the long haul, and introduced each other to our cultures, mostly via food.  I cooked a full Jamaican lunch of ackee and saltfish (Jamaica's national dish), fried plantain, callaloo (Jamaican leafy green, resembles spinach and prepared in a similar fashion), and fried dumplings.  Nearly all the ingredients were had thanks to my friends' living in Scarborough, with its Jamaican and Jamaican-descent population, having access to grocery stores carrying these items.  In turn, they prepared a Sri Lankan dinner for us of dahl, puri, and coconut sambal.  On the second day of their visit, G prepared a Canadian dinner of barbequed chicken, salad with a homemade vinaigrette, and I fried a breadfruit he roasted in a fire outside.  (Yes, my Caucasian husband knows how to roast a breadfruit, he paid attention when he lived in Jamaica!)

The moon is full and high as I type this up, and I can hear the fireworks starting as dusk deepens outside.  I am due at work tomorrow, so I will call it a night for now.  Later this month, around my birthday, I will try to look back on the half year that has gone by, and see how far I have come with the goals I set and where I am going for the last half of 2015, and the beginning of the 40th year of my life.

180 days of Headspace

With my friend's help, I wore a saree for the first time

All the coconut on hand called for coconut drops!

My friends brought me a gift of tea

May the fourth...er, first, be with you!

If you're wondering how come I am writing this post before noon on May 1st, and not on the weekend, it's because I took the day off from both my jobs.  March and April have been a two month-long orgy of work, work, and more work, and I knew this going into these months, so I planned a day off to reward myself, and I am taking it.  I'm going to work tomorrow, which was unplanned: this was supposed to be a long weekend off but circumstances beyond my control threw a serious monkey wrench into that part of the plan.  However, that is no reason not to enjoy today, so here I am.

I started the day off a little early: last night I ate about half the pint of Haagen Dazs ice-cream I had been saving for this day.  It made for a great dinner, if I do say so myself.  Today's meals will consist largely of the rest of that ice-cream, and chips and salsa of the Tostitos brand, but only the "Medium" salsa and not the "Hot" one because after nearly three years of scouring every place in E.L. that has food for sale to the public, I have come to the conclusion that either none of the stores stock it because no-one buys it, or everyone buys it so there never is any when I look.  My money is on the first alternative.  I've eaten about a third of the jar by now, and have a somewhat interesting tingle on the sides of my tongue, but that's about the extent of the "spicy" factor in a "Medium". Oh, well.

Looking at my day book, I would say April went well, indeed.  I wrote 7 goals and 2 notes, and, of the 9 items, 8 were actionable in April.  The ninth item requires some budget adjustments starting in May, so it will be carried forward to this month.

I planned to save for the April weeks from the 52 Week Money Challenge ($15+$16+$17+18=$66) by setting aside $22 from 3 each of the weekly paycheques from my seasonal position, and did exactly that.  If you're wondering why I didn't save each week's amount from a cheque in each week, it's because I wanted to have this particular item accomplished well before the end of the month.

Three other goals for this month were also financial, namely, to keep paying down the balance of one of our two low limit credit cards, to pay both off once I received my income tax refund for 2014, and then to snowball the payments I made monthly on the lower limit cards to the card with the next higher limit (multiple credit cards is the bane of the modern North American's financial existence, if you ask me!).  My return was duly assessed, Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) agreed with my figures, and refunded the excess income tax deducted.  Both smaller cards now have a nil balance, and I have quite the sense of accomplishment in keeping both at nil.  I was able to make a second payment on the next-higher limit card in April, and the plan for May is to put a little from each pay towards it.

One goal and two of the notes involved writing: I wanted to write my April blog post over the Easter weekend, which I did, and the second goal and note involved reading then writing "take-away" points from a book I borrowed from the Library at Job #1.  Since last year, I have been reading through the Self Development and Personal Awareness list compiled by that library, and each time I borrow a book on the list I try to write a summary of what I read that really resonated with me.  April's book was "Smart Women Finish Rich" by David Bach, which was so popular I had to wait 3 weeks on a waiting list before I could take a turn reading it.

I would recommend the book as reading material for any woman, no matter where she is in life financially.  It is solidly grounded in the reality women face in dealing with finances, and written on the premise that any woman can hold the reins of her financial life and do just fine at it with some guidance under her belt.  Bonus: the book was originally written with American women in mind, but the version I read was specifically targeted to Canadian women, and contained some eye-opening facts and information about my financial future as a female Canadian resident.

My carried forward goal actually relates to something I learned from reading "Smart Women Finish Rich", which was to figure out where you stand financially and where you want to go (Chapter 3).  After doing my figuring, I decided to "max out" my Registered Retirement Savings Plan (RRSP) contribution room for Job #1, and after doing the calculations demonstrated by the book, I realised I was only contributing about half of what I need to in order to make that a reality.  (RRSP contribution room is set by the CRA, currently the figure is 18% of earned income for the previous year, up to a set maximum limit of $23,820.)   In composing my Goals & Notes for May, I now need to state my plan for making it happen, and get it done.

One goal was related to G's business, namely, doing the bookkeeping for January through March of this year.  In 2014, I tried to do the bookkeeping on a monthly basis as much as possible, chiefly because I had to the bookkeeping for all of his first year (8 months in 2013) in four or five days in a rush to get his information ready for having our taxes done.  I would learn later on from our tax preparer that had I not done the bookkeeping myself, his fee would have been considerably higher than the sum I paid.  This year I fell behind because I have been working every weekend since mid-February, but with winter 2014/15 as slow as it was for him, I was able to do the first quarter over the course of a day in April.  Hopefully, I can go back to the two hours or so each month now that my weekends are soon to be mine again.

To wrap up April on a high note, my seasonal employer has asked me to continue on throughout the summer on an ad hoc basis, whereby she will turn over to me some of the work she usually does herself in that business, so she can focus on another that she co-owns.  I will not have as many hours as I did from January to April, but even a smaller income stream is better than no extra income at all.  I will have access to additional training resources and information, which means I can also upgrade my skills to be of even more worth when the next season rolls around.  I am very excited about this opportunity, and need to do some forward planning to make sure I take full advantage and give the best possible service.

It's a beautiful day out there, I think I have rambled enough for today.  It's time to get some air and sunshine!

Reading projects, and more changes

Yes, I have an agenda now, to schedule things in and remind myself to get things done.  It doesn't help if I don't write everything I need to do in there.  Like keep up with this blog.  I am making a note of my next scheduled post date right now.  Honestly!

Two months ago, I was starting out my grandly-titled (in my mind, anyway) "Year End Reading Project".  A Song of Ice and Fire (Books 1-4) had been languishing on my TBR (to-be-read) shelf for more than a year since my birthday of 2012, and I decided it was time to give them a go.  Or, I should say, another go.  I started reading A Game of Thrones in October 2012, but quit within the first hundred pages.  I simply couldn't get into the book, and the author's use of character names instead of chapter numbers almost guaranteed I would end up confused and lost about who was whom, much as I was the first time I read The Lord of the Rings.

However, I decided that four months left in the year and four books in my boxed set was serendipitous, so I embarked (again) on the journey into the fantasy of George R. R. Martin.  I resolved to read the books on my lunch break at work, and read something else on the weekends.  I bought myself a book to use as a book journal, so that I could keep people straight, then discovered that the books had appendices naming the major, and not a few of the minor,  characters.

Fast forward two months, and instead of being halfway through, I am very nearly done with all four books.  I have been sucked into the Westerosi universe, and leave only reluctantly.  As a consequence, I read the second book over the space of 4 days, and the third and fourth in about two weeks each.  I only managed to stay true to my original calendar with the first book.  The fifth is now on its way, ordered via Amazon.ca, thank goodness.

Since I took over the organization of our home finances, things have been somewhat more orderly.  After a mis-communication that saw us over-paying the hydro and under-paying the gas bills, G and I have worked out a system whereby he opens and sorts the mail, hands off all the bills to me, I input them into the spreadsheet I use for tracking, and all bills are sorted into 3 neatly labeled caddies (one for unpaid, two for paid).  At any point in time, I can hand him all outstanding bills if needed, or confirm all paid bills.  Although I pay everything online, I print the payment confirmations.  Computer systems do fail, occasionally.

Another recent contribution of mine to our "home economics", is the use of a menu plan for weeknight meals and grocery shopping.  For some many months, one of my main bones of contention with G has been how late we eat on weeknights.  Often it is not until he collects me after work that he turns his mind to what we will eat for dinner, and that usually means some amount of waiting for food to be prepared.  Jamaicans do not eat dinner at 9:30 p.m. very often, at least not the ones I know.  However, that was becoming a normal practice for us, and it began to annoy me to no end.  Two weeks ago, I decided to end this practice by using one of the dozen or more cookbooks we have as a basis for menu-planning.  Specifically, Betty Crocker's Big Book of Weeknight Dinners.

The results have been encouraging so far.  Rather than going to the supermarket every couple weeks and spending $300-400 to buy random items we might like to eat, and still complaining that there's nothing available to make dinner (or lunch for work), we select recipes for each night, plan our shopping list accordingly, and I make weeknight dinners now, with help from G where needed.  Leftovers become lunch the following day, and usually there are leftovers.  So far we have not spent more than $140 on each week, and it has not been necessary for me to purchase lunch (usually between $5 and $10 per day), or any items specifically for lunch (such as prepared salads).  Saturdays and Sundays, meals remain G's sole responsibility.

As of this week, and for the foreseeable future, I will not need a lunch anymore.  My hours have been cut at work, the usual "budget cutback" cry has become fashionable in my workplace.  It came as a blow, but with many of the major bills out of the way for this year, such as the property tax, I won't complain.  For the rest of the year, or until my hours go up again, we will just have to tighten the belt a little further.  As a Jamaican, this is nothing new to me.  I am new to being a part-time employee, having been employed full-time in salaried positions since I started working at 20, but with a new life comes new things.

Something new is up next tonight: With the end of the Showtime series Dexter, it became necessary for G and I to find a favourite series to spend some of our "couple time" watching.  After seeing my enthusiasm over the Game of Thrones book, he agreed to give the HBO series based on the books a try.  We are halfway through the first of three seasons, but I can confidently say we have a new favourite series!