LeAventure:DivaLea

Sorry I haven’t been posting much, there’s a lot of divorce stuff going down. Last week, there was a huge setback (of the monetary kind) that pretty much blew my post-divorce plans to hell. After a few days of panic, I pulled myself together.

Getting the papers drawn up and getting everything where it needs to go is a white-knuckler.

Next week, I will be trying an experiment to see if I have the Long Tail to support myself and the kids. Yes, I know there are programs to assist, and I’m looking into them, but not everything is appropriate. (Unless you are a whiz at negotiating Texas’ assistance programs, assume I know what I need to know, and I am doing what needs to be done.)

Also, working like a madwoman on Rumble Girls: Runaway Lightning Ohmry. That’s part of the Long Tail.

That’s where my scarce self is.

It goes like this:

First, you really have to get to a crisis point. By this I sometimes mean an eight-month-old sandwich; but I also mean not being able to find the single biggest thing you know is in there; trying to reach into it, your foot hitting a slope of plastic bags and clothing, and falling into your closet, at which point you are devoured by Christmas ornaments enraged that they were not on the tree this year.

Second, find a place of acceptance that everything must come out. Everything. By everything I mean this: everything.

It’s good for your to understand the difference between linear and cubic feet. You can learn it as you moved everything from one tiny room to a bigger room.

Third: three piles and brutality. Keep, throw away, give away/donate. For that donation pile, keep in mind two things: just because it’s going to Goodwill doesn’t mean they want your garbage. A torn shirt is garbage. Scraps of fabric are garbage. A torn quilt is garbage.

Here’s how you decide what to donate: imagine yourself having to defend every piece you give to the ‘Will to an overworked donation worker. If you find yourself really believing you could answer “Well, someone’s poor enough to appreciate a torn quilt,” and mean it, and think I’m mean for saying so, you are a bad person, and the donation worker should be allowed to kneecap your ass.

Now you know that a lot of clothes and household items you want to donate are garbage. Goooood. They go into garbage bags, along with old papers, chewed paperbacks, 10-year-old sets of bath products, eight-month-old sandwiches, and so on.

If you’re keeping it, have a place and a way to store it, or you’ll be right back where you started.

Honestly, I’m surprised there were only two bags of donations, two bags of garbage, and a pile of boxes. It looked like a lot more all over my bed.

Why do you think you throw away garbage and donate the good stuff? So you have a place for your books, because that’s what closets are for.

All of my glasses have arrived from Goggles4U.com, and now here are the much-requested pix.

BTW, all three pairs have glass lenses with anti-reflective, scratch resistance and UV filter included, photochromic (darkens in sunlight) tint and shipped free. Total cost for all three pairs: a skosh over $100. , half of what my last (discounted) pair cost.

B&W Naughty Nerd:

Orange Lucky Charms:

Shiny Shiny Retro:

More notes at my Flickr set.

If you don’t buy your next glasses from Goggles4U.com, you are just wasting money on a ripoff! (Except for DareDiva, who has a badass script and has to have them made locally.) Just think: the money you save can buy you a commission from me!

Lay on your back, put your feet up and pretend to walk on the ceiling? Negotiate the light fixtures, try to jump and grab the coffee table?

Tell me!

A little less than four weeks ago, I bought myself jeans a size smaller than the ones I’d bought sometime in December. When I bought the new jeans in December, I tried the next size down and couldn’t button them. On Fberuary 7th, I bought the size I couldn’t button.

This past Saturday, I bought a pair of jeans I wouldn’t have even bothered twitching off the pile, a pair I could’ve barely gotten a leg into, never mind over my ass, in December. I was having to hitch up the February pants every few steps.

Glee! Two pant sizes in two months, three in six months. Riding the bike a couple times a week really sped things up. I’m looking forward to what the next six months brings beside replacing pants!

Thank you thank you thank you cars for breaking down and turning me into a walk/bike commuter!

The Crown Victoria returned from the dead shop yesterday, walking tall, looking good. It didn’t go in reverse for about six months before it conked our all together, so being able to back up is a beautiful novelty.

Thank you everyone for buying commissions so I could get the car fixed. Instead of fixing both cars, I replaced the seat on my bike so I have a near-commute vehicle and save on gas and insurance, and am much healthier and independent. If you’re still waiting for a commission, don’t panic, you’ll get your pictures. ♥

Some money-saving tips for y’all. Even when times are good, you want to get as much as you can out of that tall dollar. (If you’re a cartoonist, it seems like we usually see “dollar” in the singular. Am I right?)

What follows are me explaining why I use what I use to save dosh, illustrated with cautionary stories.

TAXES

I use TaxACT.com Free Federal taxes, $14. for state taxes. (Even though state taxpayers probably aren’t going to see refunds, you still have to file the fecking things.)

I used to get so stressed at tax time I’d get sick. Two years, I didn’t file because I made no money, stb-ex did, though. We were due refunds for those years, but since we didn’t file, fines for doing nothing piled up every year, and years we did get a refund, the IR$ kept it.

We got a great tax guy to help us unravel the mess. This guy is the $uperman of money, and it took him TEN YEARS to sort us. (We were dropped after we got the overdue refunds because stb-ex made a command decision to not pay $uperman. $uperman yelled at me until I cried, and was polite to stb-ex.)

There are two lessons here: pay the person that does your taxes and set loose the partner that decided that not paying was a good idea. (P.S. lesson in there about getting yelled at when it’s not your fault. Work it out for yourself.)

TaxACT walks you through everything step-by-step and double-checks at the end for questionable info, things to be cautious about, and suggests ways to get even more back (or off) on your taxes. They also e-file for free, and you can opt for direct deposit. We got our refund in about two weeks.

GLASSES

First, my sources:

Glassy Eyes, where Ira has made it his mission to convince people to buy glasses online, because optical shop prices are a huge ripoff. Lots of links, and discounts from Ira’s recommended sources when you use the coupon code “glassyeyes.”

Goggles4U, where I bought my 3 pairs of new glasses. That sounds extravagant, but read on and find out how much they didn’t set me back. Nice-looking frames, with photochromic coatings on all. I paid extra for the photochromic coating, the anti-glare, UV and scratch-resist came standard.

Thanks to some links from Lisa Jonté, and some agonizing hours comparing, reading reviews at Glassy Eyes, finding my faves sold out, and picking again, I ordered three pairs of glasses from Goggles4U (by far the best selection, price and reputation among online optical shops) with designer frames and photochromic coating for…

are you ready…

$105. US.

That’s a hair more than half of what I paid for one pair that I bought a couple days after my house burnt down in 2006, and that was after I was given a discount because I was replacing fire-damaged glasses. Pre-discount, they were $230. If I’d gotten the darkening coating, they would’ve been at least $350. That’s ten pairs of my nicer, new glasses.

By the way, here are the lucky glasses that get to sit on my face (yes, totally meant that joke):

For biking. I needed a pair of full-rim plastics that could weather a fall or drop.

For dress and every day wear.

Daffy-ass frames just right for living rockstar or to be intimidating on my bike.

I didn’t find another site, even via Glassy Eyes, that offered the pricing and selection that Goggles4U did. A couple others have great frames once you get into the designer range at $50+ and you still have to get the lenses.

Enjoy saving yourself some money. You can thank me at some point with a commission or PayPal donation, or even something from my wishlist. ^__-

Turns out the place I picked for my purple frames are slow and a bit sketchy, so I’m buying from withing the states. I can also get two pairs for the cost of ONE pair, so I’m getting two, by golly!

Here are my five candidates:

The best two of five.

Go!

I have narrowed down many frame choices to four. Criteria were: coolness, had to be full frame (I don’t live in a way that can take half-rims), and, uh,coolness. I would now like opinions:

What do you think? Comment here, send email to divalea @ gmail.com, or Tweet me @DivaLea

Here they are:

After almost two years post move-in, I have put up the pantry shelves!

Total time: 3 hours. This included finding tools (which included tearing shit out of my studio closet), organizing and putting the stuff that had been taken out back in (which including going through stuff to decide what to keep), and cleaning up (which included going through what I’d torn out of the studio closet before putting anything back in).

Cost for four 24″ wide shelves: $48.

Pictures!

Before:

After, what it FELT like:

After, what it actually looked like:

That mop bucket, the broom and dustpan, and the shiny spot to the right, which is a large toolbox, didn’t even fit in the closet before. There were also 50+ freaking packages of ramen. How’d we end up with so much? It often looked like we were out, because ramen would get buried, and we’d buy more.

Now, back to drawing!