All posts by laurahinnj

Small truths, Whatever

In which I foresee the future and rant some

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Today was a beautiful day, so beautiful and warm for the first time that it was hard to stay inside at work for so many hours.

Spring fever got the best of me this evening and I skipped the gym (again!) and wandered around the garden instead to encourage the bluebells and bleeding hearts in their progress towards blooming. I checked in with the fish in their temporary home until the pond is cleaned (soon!) and tried to find a frog or two hidden amongst the muck at the bottom. Once it started to get dark, I walked the farm fields in back hoping for woodcock. No luck; it’s too late and I missed my chance for the year. I knew it was all wrong when I heard only robins caroling and no white-throated sparrows. Usually, I know to expect the peenting to begin once the white-throats have quieted down for the night. The robins are singing at dusk and the woodcock have moved on.

In short, it was another of those days that left with me nothing much to blog about. Around 9 pm I finally got to open the mail and found my topic for the day: my impending poverty.

😉

My birthday’s coming up in a couple months and as you working people know, Social Security sends out an estimated benefits statement each year. Mostly I don’t pay much mind to it because the idea of retirement is so far off for me now that it feels like a waste of time to even contemplate it. But I spent some time looking at those numbers tonight and am sort of sorry I did.

The bad news is that if I continue to work two jobs until I’m 62 (another 25 years or so) I’ll have earned enough to qualify myself for a whopping $576 in monthly benefits. $576 a month is way below the federal poverty level, you know.

Worse is that if I continue to work two jobs for another 30 years, I’ll still qualify for benefits that keep me below the federal poverty level, but which are too high to entitle me to food stamps or any other sort of government assistance.

Worse still is that if I continue to work two jobs for another 33 years (until I’m 70 for christsakes!) I’ll barely qualify for enough to keep me out of the poorhouse.

Does anyone else find this terribly depressing?

Can anyone wonder why I try to be so kind to my poor downtrodden clients? I’ll be one of them someday!

😉

Granted, I’ve not made lucrative career choices and don’t believe it’s up to the government to support me in my old age, but jeez! Where’s the motivation to go to work on a sunny spring day?

The truth of the matter is that I can also expect a pension as a public employee, assuming the other taxpayers in my fine state don’t whittle that away to nothing by the time I’m old and gray. ‘Taxpayers’ seem to think that we public employees, your teachers and public health nurses and garbage men, and even us dopey social workers, have too many perks and earn too much and shouldn’t also earn a nice pension for our old age. The truth is in those numbers though… I earn so little as a public employee that, were it not for that anticipated pension, I’d be going to work everyday for the rest of eternity only to set myself up to be poor in the future.

I’m thinking of leaving it all behind… running off to join the circus or finding a band that needs a groupie or setting up a lemonade stand on some deserted beach in the Bahamas; anything to avoid the seeming drudgery of working everyday for nothing.

Maybe I should just find a really good financial advisor instead.

Birds, In the neighborhood

Meet the new neighbors

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I’m using the word ‘neighbor’ very broadly, of course, but these two eaglets set a state record, so I’m allowed to be proud! Their nest is very easily viewed and is conveniently located at one of the nicest county parks in my area.

This nest is one of 3 or 4 in my county; another is within a mile or two of home, but the exact location of that nest is a well-guarded secret. I don’t have bald eagle on my yard list, yet, but someday soon I’m sure I will.

Photo from the Asbury Park Press. Full story available here.

Birds, PSA

Spring pitch

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It’s time for me to pitch the Cape May Spring Weekend to any of you that might be interested in the chance to see Cape May and its birds in the Spring. I know Susan is pushing hard for the flock to head to Magee Marsh and she’s promising foot rubs, but Ohio’s the weekend before and why not make a week of it and stop by NJ on the way home?

😉

Click on the link above for details. The spring weekend has an entirely different feel than the fall (and hopefully it won’t rain the whole time again!) and is worth the trip, if for nothing else than the diminishing spectacle of shorebird migration along Delaware Bay. They’re also offering those wonderful back bay cruises that were cancelled for the fall festival.


I haven’t been down in the spring for a few years and it makes me sad to know that my memories of stopover shorebirds are history, even now.

Anyway… anybody want to think about it?

Birds, In the neighborhood, Pastimes, Whatever

Overheard at the bird observatory

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An egg story to rival Delia’s:

“Hello? Is this the Audubon?”

You can assume this means trouble at 10 am on a Sunday morning.

“We had a bunch of dead trees cut down in our yard…”

Uh oh. Why don’t people know enough to do this in the Fall?

“and my husband was cleaning up the stump grindings and found this egg…”

Oh dear.

“buried about four inches down in the dirt.”

Huh?

“It’s huge! And I know it’s an owl egg because my neighbor is one of those people that’s into all that nature stuff and she looked it up on the Internet and she says that owls burrow down, you know, to make their nests and…”

The bird observatory is located in NJ. The person was calling from NJ.

“and the egg must weigh at least a pound and I think it’s still alive so I put it in a basket..”

Wasn’t Easter a couple weeks ago already?

“and filled the basket up with dirt and buried the egg again and it’s been out on my deck for the last couple days..”

In the sun, I hope.

“and I’m not sure what I should do because I think it’s alive and it’s so heavy and could I bring it to you and you’ll tell me what it is and maybe take care of it or whatever?”

Sure… bring it on over. We’ll sit on it and hatch it for you.

————————————————————————————————–

How do you think I handled this particular phone call? With patience? Did I cackle in this woman’s ear or take the rare opportunity to educate?

No. I asked her if she was certain it wasn’t just a really big rock.

Or a dinosaur egg, maybe.

Remembering, Whatever

Comfort foods

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When I was a kid, one of my most favorite things to eat was Kraft Macaroni and Cheese in the dark blue box. You cooked the macaroni, added some milk and margarine and the little packet of powdered ‘cheese’and voila! Add a little salt and lots of pepper and it was delicious. (Still is, if I’m being honest.) My dad never wanted to believe that I loved the stuff so much, I mean… it only cost 49 cents for the whole box! He tried to convince me that the more expensive box, the ‘creamier’ version with the little package of cheez-whiz-like-stuff, must be better. I’d have none of it.

There’s probably nothing better than homemade mac and cheese, and the way my mom made it was delicicous, but dad could never quite master the recipe, for whatever reason. So I guess that’s partly why I liked the stuff in the box so well. Dad would try to dress it up with hot dogs or canned tomatoes, to make it seem more like something ‘worth’ eating, but no amount of improvisation beat the stuff straight out of the box for me.

Well! I found a recipe that I love. It’s simple enough, but grown up with Gruyere cheese and extra-sharp cheddar, nearly a pound of cheese, and a quart of whole milk. Yummy! I add some vine-ripened tomatoes on top with fresh bread crumbs and it’s sinfully delicious, but certainly not low-fat. But, who cares, right? Comfort food, pure and simple. Plus, the recipe makes enough for a week’s worth of lunches.

Any favorites from your childhood? SpaghettiOs? Cinnamon toast? Hamburger Helper? Have you managed to improve upon them as a grown-up?

😉

Whatever

A Jersey Girl manifesto

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OK. So… Susan’s making fun of me. I’ll own up to my deep dark secret. I don’t know know how to pump gas.

Do you still like me anyway?

I tried to think of something I could make fun of Susan for. Couldn’t think of anything. Couldn’t find a single thing online, even, to make fun of her for or anything about that place in the middle of nowhere that she’s from. That says something, I think. There’s lots written about NJ and lots written about Jersey Girls. Making fun of us is a hot topic, almost. Bruce Springsteen wrote a song about us, even. You don’t hear anyone singing songs about Mid-Western girls. So there.

Anyway, I spent a couple hours with my tongue in my cheek and came up with this, excerpted from a dozen different sources and meant to make you wish you were me, or at least, wish you were from NJ.

I was born and raised in NJ and while I often feel very damaged by this, I’m still pretty proud of it. I know what real pizza tastes like, and I know that a bagel is much more than a roll with a hole in the middle. I judge people by what exit they get off the Parkway. I can navigate a traffic circle–with attitude. I know that 65 mph really means 80. When someone cuts me off, they get the horn AND the finger. And they expect it. It’s a sub, not a hoagie or, worse yet, a hero, and I wash it down with soda, not pop. Yes, I drink cawfee, and lots of it. I’ve always lived within 10 minutes of a mall.

In NJ, I can watch the sun rise on the east coast and watch it set on the west. I can climb a mountain in the morning, swim in the ocean in the afternoon, and get robbed at gunpoint in Camden by night. It’s the only state where massive oil refineries and dairy farms are just a few miles apart.

Where I’m from… the shore… makeup, shoes and bras are optional, salty hair and sand under the fingernails a given, a strong attitude and a tough mouth a plus. I say what I mean and I’ve got a nice, cheerful laugh. I’m a Jersey Girl, and I’m one of the Garden State’s most enduring icons- a readily identifiable personality, as much a part of America’s cultural landscape as that other great Jerseyan, Frank Sinatra. I’m spunky and witty. I’ve got confidence- everyone from New Jersey has that confidence. A Jersey Girl is crunchy on the outside, and soft in the center. At the center of the crunchy sweet exterior, I’m tuned in and know how and what I’m working.

The Jersey Girl mystique is hard to put into words. One would never say earthy-that’s way too California. Gritty gets closer when you understand that a true Jersey Girl sleeps just fine with sand in the bed. Jersey Girls go to the beach, or “down the Shore” They’re not formal. We know good corn and tomatoes when we taste them, and we never pump our own gas!!!

So there.

😉

Is there anything people from your part of the blogosphere are known for or made fun of for? Big hair or a bad accent or ?

Dog days, In the neighborhood, Seasons, Snapshots, Wildflowers

Woodland stirrings…

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I made it back this week to the woods and the little brook to see the beginnings of Spring emerging…
There were just a few Spring Beauties blooming, hidden among the more vigorous periwinkle. The miracle here is in the beginning… the budding that is happening everywhere in the woods. The willows are impatient, as are the swamp maples with their reddish haze; both reaching from their winter nakedness to the early sunlight for encouragement.

Flecks of gold from an early trout lily nestled in the fallen leaves of winter. Here is beauty perfected… ephemeral yet timeless in its allure. No sooner will they bloom and they’ll begin to fade, a part of the process and wonder of the season.

Squill was the flower of the moment this day and the early bees were paying attention to its carpet of offerings, however slight their nectar. My father always claimed Spring as his favorite season and as much as I love the Fall, I’m seeing now how we need Spring, or our hearts need the Spring and the chance to participate with time and sunshine; to be a part of that partnership.

The photographer’s assistant was most interested in partnering with the forest faeries to cast shade where it wasn’t wanted, or to set his rear on the prettiest patches of Squill to compete with their handsomeness, or to sample the edibility of fresh Skunk Cabbage leaves… (“Ick”, says Luka.)

Spring. Have you tasted it yet?

😉