JRo's Wonderland

Taxes

2008-01-30T21:15:00.000-05:00

Okay, so today I tried to figure out what tax bracket I am truly in....basically I took my gross salary, added up all the taxes they took out of it as stated on my W2...I included the state and city taxes taken out so I was figuring out the total % of my pay that went to taxes. I make a decent amount of money, I am not married and I do not have kids. So, I am usually in a pretty crappy position in terms of tax rate....but today I learned that about 40% of my pay went to taxes! That is NUTS!

I am tempted to go down and adopt a couple of kids tomorrow and to have a shotgun wedding just to reap the tax benefits. I'd rather do that than become a tax-cutting Republican. That tax cutting business is BS anyway. After the past 8 years they have shown that they can spend my tax money just as well as anyone else...and on wars and other horrible stuff. At least when Democrats spend money it's more often for the better of the social welfare, so that doesn't make me feel so bad about it being my money.

But, today's calculations got me thinking about whether I am really reaping the benefits of my insanely high tax rate. I live in New York City....and it IS the best city in the world, but it is also dirty, smelly, the public transportation is unreliable, the steampipes explode every now and then, the street grates randomly kill people and pets with electric current, and the roads are so potholed the ones in Libya are probably in better shape. So, besides the adopted kids and new husband, I might pick up and move my new family to someplace where the roads are paved, the sidewalks are clean, the trains and buses run ontime, and the infrastructure is not crumbling beneath my feet. I'm open to suggestions for a good new hometown....

Reflections on the Year

2007-12-28T10:35:00.000-05:00

Inspired by Charlie's impressive list of memories for 2007, I'm going to do my own brand of reflections on the year. Here are my three favorite things about 2007:

1) Meeting Charlie. It really is crazy how meeting one person can change your life. Looking back, it's hard for me to remember how I spent my weekends before we met. Charlie so quickly became such an important and wonderful part of my life that it seems like I have known him much longer than I actually have. One day when I am much older and write a list of my best and most significant life-events, I know "meeting Charlie" will still be #1 on my list. :)

2) Buying an apartment (OK, I actually moved on 12/29/06, but I am counting it for 2007). Buying my apartment, painting it, furnishing it and living in a place that I own has been a really great experience for me. It gave me a sense of accomplishment to go through the buying process on my own, and to turn this apartment from someone else's home into my own. Hopefully my 2008 list will include selling it at a huge profit! Haha

3) The holidays. Getting to share the holidays with someone I love and care about has made this time of year a whole new experience for me. I always looked forward to Christmas but getting to share these holidays with Charlie and with my family made me realize how special this time of year truly is. And knowing I would share this time together with Charlie made preparing for it more fun than I have had in many years!

Making Work and Making Babies

2007-10-18T21:41:00.000-04:00

I hate being busy.

I've been so busy for so many months now. I miss having time to myself. My work is getting busier, and more demanding. In a way that's good because it helps me to be more productive and to really get my priorities straight. But it's also really difficult to keep up the pace. Ever since the beginning of summer I have had court deadlines non-stop. And they just keep coming. This week I finished one brief, wrote two others, including one start-to-finish in four hours today, and filed an answer to a complaint. Plus all my subway rides home this week have been spent editing documents, and I probably did some amount of work on 10 other cases that are all at different stages.

I have figured out the reason for all this work. I work in an office with about 21 lawyers, most of whom are women. Our work is assigned on a rotation. So every time someone drops out of the rotation for some reason, that means more cases get assigned to the rest of us, plus all of their cases must get reassigned. Here's the rub - right now my office appears to be a baby factory. One woman has been out on maternity leave for about 5 months, another just went out last week, one just came back (for 3 days a week). And there are two other women who are pregnant and will go out on leave eventually. Plus there are 3 young, married women, all of whom are going to have children in the very near future.

This amounts to a lot of new and reassigned cases on my desk.

I know this is a very un-feminist thing to say, and typically I am liberal on such issues, but if my boss doesn't start hiring men who cannot get pregnant and go on leave, I am going to have find a job where my co-workers baby-making preferences don't effect my workload and, by extension, my free time. If they want to have kids and make their lives busier then that is their business and, hey, more power to them. But I have a cat, not a kid, BECAUSE I don't want to have a busy life right now. When other womens' decisions to have children cut into my ability to get home at a decent time at night, something just is not right. I should get to take non-maternity leave to get a break from all the work their kids are causing me!

Traveling for Business

2007-08-14T01:22:00.000-04:00

This is where I am right now. Denver, Co. It looks pretty much like it does in this picture. I'm here for business. It's a nice city from what I can tell. It has a lovely mountain backdrop, it's clean, or at least it's clean compared to my typical stomping grounds in NYC. It's got a cool street closed off to traffic where all the stores and restaurants are that is right outside my hotel. The hotel is ok. And for someone who is not crazy about flying, besides the 2 hour delay before leaving Laguardia, I am happy to say the flight here was uneventful. I passed the time with a movie that was thankfully about as long as the flight, so I didn't focus on how many hours I was cooped up in the plane. Did I mention I don't like to fly? I'm here for a massive conference (I would guess more than 1,000 attendees) focused on an area of my practice. So far it has been educational, the speakers entertaining (including Native American storyteller/performer Kenneth Little Hawk who brought down the house this morning while imparting his stories' morals about equality), and the food is pretty good. By lunch time today I had already been offered a different job, so I guess the networking aspect of these things is for real. But...I still do not like traveling when it's not for my own purposes. I don't like someone else deciding WHEN I travel, WHAT city I go to, WHAT plane I fly on to get there, WHAT hotel I stay in, and WHO else goes with me. I don't mean to complain - I'm seeing a new city, I'm not paying the tab, and someone else makes my bed in the morning. But, I still would rather not be here. Being here means I have to go back to the airport in a few days and get cooped up in a plane again at the mercy of the turbulence Gods and whoever picks the movies that will show on the flight, lose 2 hours of my life to the time zone changes, and go to work to tackle the pile of things that is already accumulating while I am away. My last vacation with my boyfriend was wonderful - we chose the what, when, where and how of it all, and I was with someone I adore so I had a great time. So, while I like to travel, I definitely prefer it on my terms, when I can schedule it, pick the destination, mode of transportation, hotel, how I spend my time, and with who it is spent. It's nothing personal, Denver.

A long long time away

2007-07-17T22:28:00.000-04:00

I wonder where I will be 5 years from now. That's always the stupid question they ask you on job interviews, right? But for some reason lately I have been thinking more about my "future". My future typically meant next week, or maybe a month ahead, but now I am starting to think more long term. Maybe it's because I have more aspects of my life in order, or just that I am getting older and starting to see how fast time flies by even if you don't plan a path for yourself and carve out your place in this life. I believe that I could pretty much be doing anything with my life five years from now, or doing exactly what I am right now (which would be A-OK, I am not complaining). I could be at the same job in this city or I could transfer to another city, I could have left my job here to take another one, I could be a mom to a son or daughter, or still a mommy to my cat Alice (she's enough of a handful!), I could be living in my same apartment, or have left here for other, perhaps greener, pastures.

Five years ago I was still in the first job I took after law school. I'm on my third job now, and went from poor to being able to buy a place, move in and make it my home. I've had a couple of boyfriends, made new friends and lost some old ones. With everything I've been through and done in the last five years, it has me wondering where I'll be five years from now. I guess figuring out where I want to be is the first step to making sure I get there, but figuring that out is the hard part.

We now rejoin summer in progress...

2007-07-16T19:41:00.000-04:00

Well, I am back from my extended weekend in North Carolina with Charlie and it was a great trip! I had some feelings of trepidation about driving instead of flying, but Charlie convinced me a road trip would be fun and he was right. (He is usually right...) We learned some new roads, how to navigate around the NJ Turnpike (which I am sure will come in handy again) and that Satellite Radio (with nationwide traffic updates) is indispensable when you are driving ten hours with only two 20 minute stops. And I learned that if you can spend that many hours in the car together and turn around and drive back three days later and not get tired of someone, it tells you something very promising about your compatibility! Oh sure, we got annoyed, but usually together at the bozo in front of us holding up traffic!

I got to meet Charlie's brother, B, who moved to NC recently and bought a beautiful new home. B did a wonderful job furnishing his home and it will be a great place for him to start a family some day. I hope he'll be very happy there, and I know he'll have fun gardening once the sod goes down and the trees get planted! I'll admit it was a little depressing that he paid A LOT less for his 3 bedroom, 2 1/2 bath home than I did for my one bedroom apartment, but as Charlie and I observed this weekend, we get SCREWED in NY with housing, even more than we thought.

We all had lots of laughs together and I even got to watch some old VHS tapes that B had of when he and Charlie were kids and all the crazy things they used to do. My favorite was the one where B taped Charlie cooking dinner for some neighbors and kept rolling even when a small fire started on the stove and their friend fell onto the floor laughing!

While we were there we wanted to see everything there was to see, so we even drove out to the Outer Banks of NC. Now when the hurricane season comes and those dumb newscasters are standing on the beach in the storms, I can say "I've been there!". It was beautiful - not unlike the North Fork of Long Island but a lot more public/tourist friendly. If they have private beaches there, we didn't see any. All in all NC was a lot nicer than I had anticipated so I was pleasantly surprised, and I think being in such wonderful company really made the trip so much fun! Next up driving to Miami...just kidding! haha

Just Venting....

2007-07-10T21:10:00.000-04:00

I'm stealing the idea from Charlie Mc that he stole from Kate, and writing things I would like to, but never will, say to certain people, without saying who they are. I may not get to 10, but I'll get in the most important ones:

1. I wish you would stop being afraid of change and of challenge and would seek out a better life for yourself, an independent life, because at this rate you are going to turn around in a few years and regret having spent the best years of your life like this.

2. You were like my sister, but so much better than a sister could ever have been. We were identical in so many ways. How could you let yourself turn into something so horrible and hurtful, why didn't you stop it even when you knew it was wrong and destroying you? I get so sad that I don't even miss you because I cannot miss what you became.

3. You are such a good person, and you are caring and sweet and deserve so much out of life. I hate watching you continue down this path, and with someone who has nothing to offer you but promises of things that will never come.

4. You tried to ruin my life. You did crush my soul and show me how low my life can go. The change in my life without you in it is like black and white from bad to good. I rarely think of you, and when I do it is only with intense hatred and regret for every minute of my life I wasted with you and can never get back. My life is infinitely better in your absence.

5. We've grown up to be so completely different that it amazes me how fully we still understand each other. You challenge me to see my life from a different perspective, to embrace new beginnings, not to be afraid of what life holds. I admire and respect you more than you think, because I don't have the courage or the fortitude to live my life how you live yours. But I am grateful to be able to live vicariously through you, and grateful our friendship persists no matter what.

6. I love you. In my life I never dared to think I would find what I have found with you. I feel happier and more content than I ever have before because you are in my life. I don't want for anything more than for time spent with you. I think about you and us in ways that are new to me and wonderful. You give me hope.

7. I wish we had more time to spend together. I miss your friendship. We see eye to eye on many things, and I wish you didn't have a job that demanded so much of your time and energy. But I am glad for your success and hope it brings you a life of happiness.

8. Ours is a friendship that started with your guidance when I was fresh out of school, and grew closer through my personal pain, and now through yours, but no matter what happens we have stayed close and enjoyed ourselves, exploring gardens, museums, or just a brunch menu. It troubles me to see you wrestling with such hurtful things in your life, and I pray that you will come out of this a stronger and happier woman.

9. I'm sorry we grew apart over time, and that we couldn't maintain our friendship, but the advice you gave me was dead on, and I should have listened to you and heeded your warnings earlier. You knew me well, and I miss the things we shared.

10. You looked out for me and showed me, just by being you, what a "good" guy was supposed to be. You were like the older brother I never had, and I miss you terribly but I am so happy that like has taken you down such a happy and fulfilling path. You deserve it all and more.

Kate, you're right....I do feel better now!

Vacation!

2007-07-02T22:30:00.000-04:00

I had a wonderful weekend - but it went way too fast, as always! I've got one day of work before a nice long five day break! The last time I had a break this long it was a week off to do stuff around the house. This will be much more exciting! I have more plans for the next five days than I usually have in a two week span. But everything will be perfect summer fun...a water park, a big BBQ party, the Beach, a holiday morning run, and some good ol' relaxation! I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday and that at some point we remember and celebrate how glad we are that we aren't speaking with that snooty English accent, smiling with bad teeth, and putting weird condiments (vinegar anyone?) on our french fries.

2007-06-27T21:28:00.000-04:00

Just a thought tonight...
I am missing the man in my life, and it makes me realize how wonderful it is to miss someone...to enjoy so much about someone else that when you cannot see them or hear them, you think of them and long for them. How wonderful it is to have someone so incredible in my life that I miss him this much! It's been forever since I have had this feeling. I am so thankful for it, and grateful to the stars for bringing him into my life.

Size or Laughter?

2007-06-25T23:25:00.000-04:00

I read a short article today in a weekly magazine I subscribe to on the Health and Science page, called "The Great Penis Survey". This article states that researchers conducted an analysis of 50 penis studies from around the world in order to determine average penis size, circumference, and satisfaction with penis size from both the male and female perspectives. The crux of the article is that size is not that important to women (85% are satisfied with their partner's size), but that 55% of men still consider penis size a major worry.

The article goes on to quote the study, saying that "The issue of attractiveness for women is complex, but most data suggest that penile size is much lower down the list of priorities for women than such issues as a man's personality and external grooming." I'm not shocked, considering I would never be interested in seeing what an unkempt man with no personality had in his pants. I'm guessing most women would agree with me on that.

This theory of what is "attractive" to women is in line with what a guy told me recently. He claims that the key to getting a pretty woman (or any woman, really) to pay attention to you, is to make her laugh. This works, he says, for any guy, whether he's good-looking and in shape, or not. I've been thinking about this theory and there is definitely some truth to it. (Although it's not foolproof -I'm not going to sleep with George Carlin or Lewis Black any time soon, while God knows they've both made me laugh plenty.) I feel safe in saying that women do like to laugh, and it is fun and enjoyable to be around a man who can bring a smile to your face and make your belly hurt from laughter. I just think the reason women may love a man who makes them laugh is more than that.

I may get a bit tenuous in my reasoning here, but bear with me. Women today have a lot of responsibility. We have careers to nurture, we own our own homes, care for pets, meet or exceed our share of family responsibilities, maintain friendships over time and distance, take care of ourselves physically, and stay informed and knowledgeable about the world and, don't forget, the latest style in dresses and handbags.

What I am getting at is how taxing and stressful life can be for the average woman. So while she may not need a man to support her as in decades past, now, more than ever, a woman needs someone to remind her not to take herself, others, or life, too seriously. Life is, after all, something to enjoy since we only get one shot at it. A man who can make a woman laugh allows her to stop worrying for a while about the "To Do" and shopping lists, the stresses at work, the chores to tend to at home, and the phone calls she should have returned by now. He helps her to relax, enjoy herself and him, and to enjoy the moment before it gets subsumed in all there is to do.

I don't know if this is how other women view the value of a man who makes them laugh, but I do. I've met a man who makes me laugh constantly. I'm typically a grump in the morning, especially on a Monday and, especially before my tea and oatmeal. But this morning I was actually giggling before my head even rose off of the pillow thanks to the man laying next to me. He had me laughing and smiling as soon as my eyes and ears were open. The value of the laughter he brings into my life is immeasurable, because it is worth so much more to me than just the smiling and chuckling you see on the surface. He, and the laughter he creates, keeps me centered and focused on what's most important in life. He also happens to be extremely good-looking, smart, fun, caring, and generous. For those reasons I may not be the best judge of whether even ugly guys who make women laugh get the girl, but I figured I'd share my theory on it anyway. And since my guy is not one of those who needs to worry about penis size, I guess that doesn't hurt either.

They Don't Like Their Own Kind

2007-06-20T21:25:00.000-04:00

Recently I met three women who don't seem to like me. Normally, this is something I might take personally or I might try to determine if I did something to offend these women. But not with these 3. They are the type - and I am sure you know girls like this - who don't get along with other women (except their own type, of course).

For example, I like to spend time with my female friends over a dinner and dessert so we have plenty of time to catch-up on what is new in our lives, with our other friends, our families, and with our work. These women, I have observed, sit with a bottle of wine, some fancy cheese and bread, and talk about other women (in a not so flattering way), discuss the salaries of the men they know, and talk about their boyfriends, in what I will call fairly shallow terms (e.g. "He's a nice guy - he saved me a parking space."). These are women who come over to your house for a party and take over the job of "hostess" because it is abundantly clear (to them) that only they can handle that role and make your party a success.

I make efforts to be nice to these women. When I say "Hi, how's it going?" in a cheery voice I usually get barely a look in my direction or a "Hi", but their tone says "bitch." When I am the third party in a conversation with these women, they look at the other person, never acknowledging my contributions to the conversation. They don't even try the "I will pretend to like her" thing.

I barely know these women, so there is nothing they could have against me, as far as I can tell. I am not dating one of their exes, or their brothers, and they know very little about me. I don't look like a supermodel, so they don't hate me because I am beautiful. I have female friends both at work and from other parts of my life who I have had for years, so I am confident the problem here does not lie with me. With the exception of one occasion for woman #1, I have never seen these three women with, or even mention, female acquaintances or friends. They are together, alone, or with boyfriends. I am going to hazard a guess: this is because everyone else has already figured it out...these girls just don't like other girls, and are cold and pretentious when they deal with the rest of us.

I'm not sure what the proper way to handle this is, because I am not able to totally avoid these women. I'm open to suggestions....I guess for now, instead of going out of my way to say "Hi!" to women #1, #2, and #3, I will save my energy.

Home Owning

2007-06-18T22:09:00.000-04:00

I recently bought my own home. OK, so maybe it's only a one bedroom apartment, but we all have to start somewhere, right? With the busy life I have during the week, I barely have any time at all to care for my new home - I do what I can during the week and I hope to find a few hours on the weekend to tend to the place. I live in an apartment building where someone else mops the floor in the hall, shines the railings and the elevator buttons, paints the gates, picks up the trash I only have to take to the chute across the hall, washes the front stairs and sidewalk everyday, shovels the snow and just generally keeps the place in running order. I don't know how people who buy actual houses have any life at all. Thanks to the two porters and the superintendent, all I really have to do is break out the Swiffer and Lysol wipes within my four walls to keep the place in presentable condition. This leaves me time for myself to do stuff like write blog entries about home owning, or to make cupcakes in my lovely new kitchen. If I had to worry about gutters getting clogged, lawns and bushes getting overgrown, driveways getting cracked, a roof falling down, a deck in need of a powerwashing and a garage door that never closes right, I'd never be able to sleep, let alone go to work with so much house and yard work to tend to. My parents did, and with two little kids running around, so it must be possible. But I would like to know...how do those "house" owners do it?

Relaxation and Vacation

2007-06-14T22:14:00.000-04:00

I think the people who inhabit the rest of the world are on to something. They take vacations. Actual vacations that last more than, say, the 4 days of a long weekend. Vacations that are actually long enough that when you return to work and home, you feel refreshed and rejuvenated. Not jipped and like your vacation sped by. I've realized that when I take a vacation, anything less than 7 days is useless because I spend the first few days unwinding and the next few worrying about seeing and doing everything I want to do before I have to catch my plane home again. It's just not enough time for my mind and body to really let go of all the stress I typically carry around at home and work. I think a minimum of 4 days are needed to unwind and be able to settle into the "vacation mode" followed by, at the very least, another 4 days to enjoy the feeling of stress free relaxation. Then another day to pack before I have to leave would be ideal. I have that much vacation time, and I could take it, but I have let my work drive my schedule, and I plan my short vacations around the slow times in my calendar. As I've gotten older I've realized that the work will always be there, and it'll keep piling up whether I am on vacation for a week or not, and I might even be more productive if I had some new experiences and travel under my belt. Why do we Americans have such a hard time with this concept of vacations?? I am going to try, in this next year, to put my new attitude into practice, and to take actual vacations, work be damned. I hope I can start a trend!

Inspiration

2007-06-13T21:47:00.000-04:00

I've been very lucky in life in a lot of ways, and I'm grateful for all I've been given, worked for and achieved and for all those intangible experiences that have made me the person I am today. I'm very proud of who I am today, and for most of my life I was my own inspiration - driven and hard working, and a dedicated friend to those who knew me. But I've been at a loss for inspiration in my life in recent years. I've had a rough go of things and was involved with people who drained all the positive energy from me and left me with none left to inspire myself or to find inspiration in the experiences and people around me. But maybe I had to fight my way through the darkness to come out into the sun on the other side, right? So, as it turns out, I have finally found my way back into the sun, and I've been inspired to start writing here by an incredible man who has come into my life. This is one of many things he has inspired me to do, and that's why my inaugural post about inspiration is about him. Thanks to him I have been able to see myself through new eyes, to be myself again, to laugh again, to smile, to have fun, to be silly, to enjoy the time and things we share together, and most of all, to love. If I had to go through what I did in order to be with him, then it was all worth it. Thank you, Charlie, for all the inspiration you bring into my life every day. I hope you realize it, and how much I cherish you for it.