well tempered

I have sat down at the computer with a PB + choc + frozen banana + other stuff smoothie in hand, with the purpose of finishing the taxes, so that we can get a tiny refund (if only young Dot or Scott were on the outside, with a social security number stamped on its forehead!) but more importantly so that my husband can file his FAFSA and ... get some money to live on in grad school? (We still don't quite understand how this works.)

I wanted to put on some calm yet stimulating music so I chose Glenn Gould Does The Well Tempered Clavier. "Always" liked his Goldberg Variations but never listened to this one. Hopefully it does not take me the entire WTC to finish the taxes. The very first piece startled me out of my tax-filing ambition and into posting on my blog. It's the only one I can play from the WTC and I just never would have thought of doing the end of each phrase staccato like that. Ballsy move!

Speaking of taxes and money and stuff, check out Mr. Money Mustache. I'm reading through the archives from the beginning. The idea is to become a millionaire and retire early just by being frugal, paying down debt aggressively (if you were stupid enough to get into it) and saving smart. Much of his advice doesn't apply to us right now (it's all predicated on the assumption that you're making a "normal" salary and that you have lots of stupid expenses that you can get rid of, whereas we are making much less than normal salaries and are already pretty dang frugal) but the attitude is empowering. I'm committed to becoming a frugality ninja, because what else is a stay at home mom supposed to do but be... oikinomical? For us, that's a third to half of the point of me withdrawing from the work place.

I will surely be writing about frugality in the future. In fact I have even pondered opening another blog on the subject of being extremely frugal in whatever expensive city we find ourselves. It would provide me with some accountability and maybe I could even make some money with it... nah.