Bored meeting

I rushed home today to attend the annual (and my first ever) co-op board meeting. Not many people gathered in this dingy room in the basement (it'd be perfect to make that into a gym) while this man droned on about the financials. I want to say that it was a waste of time and that I now know to not attend in the future (so boring and all polite talk to keep people somewhat satisfied that they won't move out) but I'm afraid I'd miss something important if I didn't show up.

What was truly a waste of time was the time described on the agenda as "new business." People went off on complaints that the corporation really can't do much about -- noise. Maybe we're lucky to have relatively quiet neighbors, but gimme a break, you live in an apartment building, there is going to be noise. You really don't need to dwell on the issue for longer than 10 minutes. This one woman, though, kept going on, unsatisfied with each suggestion. The management will check the above apartment for the proper carpeting... but what if...? She was told to keep documentation of the noise to make a strong case in court... but how much documentation is enough? Keep a log, write letters, bring in neighbors/super/doorman to be witnesses.... But she wasn't interested in "winning a court case"... ad infinitum.

Then there was a quick, unorganized vote for the new board. When trying to give a description of their work, they did not make the work seem appealing -- they described how they've been deciding between carpet samples for the past several months. In the end, I made an uninformed decision (no one described their qualifications and we were choosing 4 members out of a pool of 5 -- not much choice). It kinda pisses me off about this democracy thing b/c I'm not sure it works. And is there a reason why co-ops are so prevalent in NYC and nowhere else throughout the U.S.? I think it's all a scam. Either that, or liberal NYers just have nothing better to do than to create extra bureaucracy, even where they live. Maybe it's both.

On mothering

I am the worst daughter-(out-law) there is. Instead of celebrating my mother this past Sunday, I asked her to help me sand/paint. That didn't happen because she overslept (or did she fake it just to get out of it, like so many others have?). But worse yet, after having a preemptive Mother's Day dim sum brunch on Saturday, I went food shopping with her, where she gave me the list of things I should do as a daughter-in-law (it was a very long shopping outing!):

• Treat my out-laws as my parents... Boy, what would she think if she knew that I refer to them as out-laws, let alone not calling them "mom and dad" (which I still have major issues with and which she really wants me to do). Don't get me wrong, they are nice, kind people, but I see my *occasional* annoyance at them as being as familiar with them as I can get, like when a child will yell back at his mother but if someone says something bad about her, he'll get defensive and say 'Don't talk to my mother like that!'
  
• Visit my out-laws at least once a week... This seems nearly impossible to me -- there are just 2 days in the weekend, TV to watch during the week (haha, j/k on that one), butt-loads of things to clean each week after returning home from work, plus cooking, etc. We barely have time to do all these things, how can we fit this in? And does that mean never visiting my parents lest we miss the weekly visit to the out-laws?
  
• Bring over fruit when visiting my out-laws... Completely outlandish, especially since I haven't done this in such a long time it would be weird to start up again. Plus I was once chastised for buying bad fruit and now when we try, there is this big to-do about how we shouldn't have, how they have so much fruit already, and the fruit is pushed back and forth for at least 15 minutes total that it's easier to just accept the fruit they got us. I know I'm breaking the Chinese code of being super-polite but we have to stop the insanity!
  
• Help my out-laws with chores around the house... Like the fruit thing, I tried in the past but it just doesn't work. I once washed the dishes while my MIL was on the phone (the only way that I could do so) and afterwards there were exclamations of things being done wrong and in the wrong place.
  

But according to my mother, if I do these things, they will think "What a great daughter-in-law I have." Fat chance, they probably hate me already. Sometimes being Chinese is too restricting -- there are too many expectations and enough guilt to coat _____ (fill in blank here, I can't think of a way to finish the metaphor -- the back of a spoon? a couple of macaroons?). And being American, I get the "visit your in-laws once a month but call them every so often" from magazines like "The Nest." Don't they know Chinese people (or at least I do) have issues communicating? I can't imagine picking up the phone and calling.

Anyway, while also at this dim sum gathering, we got our first face-to-face, older generation, "Go have children, produce grandchildren for your parents" thing. As if! I don't think we ever really got the "When are you going to get married" thing from the older generation even though we dated for over 6 years, but 6 months into marriage, we get this crap. Is the sole purpose of marriage to have children? Why is there so much interest in having grandchildren -- to see that the family is not dying out? What peeves me most about the incident was that I hadn't met the woman until 5 minutes before she audaciously questioned Dear. Troubling also is how my MIL shook her head and made a face when the stranger said 'grandchildren,' as if she didn't want any (or am I reading too much into it?).

Quick poll: how often do you visit your in-laws?

Hodge podge

Nora Ephron in this Sunday's NY Times Magazine: "Any catastrophe is good material for a writer."

I bought a bunch of used books this weekend (most women can't help themselves when clothes-shopping; Dear can't help himself around pens and kitchenware; I can't help myself around books!). I am looking forward to reading Kite Runner soon.

There is so much to read -- I want to cancel our weekend NY Times. I also have airline miles that are expiring so I ended up getting magazine subscriptions. "Blueprint" is proving to be an interesting read while Lucky magazine is the worst thing out there. It is basically a magazine of advertisements. They recommend so many things to buy each month I really don't know how people don't end up feeling overwhelmed. In just one feature, there are at least 3 different recommendations for a certain color blush -- how is that helpful to anyone (they don't rank which one is best, etc.)?

My mother asked me if I started writing yet, whether I'll be working on material for children or adults. She also was surprised that I don't make my living writing but that I work with websites instead. She wondered whether that was complicated and whether I have the skills for it (I've only been working with websites since I was in college more than seven years ago).

25 really is your body's peak. I never thought I'd get to the day where I realize that it takes me longer to heal from semi-strenuous activity (and longer to complete that activity, at that).

Taxes are taxing

I finally recovered from tax season to blog about it. It was the first time that we had to file taxes together and our styles of organization (or lack thereof) really showed through. I knew about (and have experienced firsthand) the squabbles/discussions newlyweds get into about chores (check), time spent with family (check), finances (check) but it didn't register with me about which filing status to use and more importantly, that you have to really coordinate to get this onerous task done. It didn't help that we had all sorts of statements and attachments (the co-op was a further complication that we're not familiar with). When all was said and done, our federal return was probably 50 pages thick altogether (state was only about 20 pages) and the checks we had to write were enough to pay for a kid's education in the third world. :(

This year was also different because I usually do my taxes manually (that tradition started years ago with a challenge to myself since I suck at math but it turned out to be quite interesting and educational) but Dear likes to use a program and we opted to go that route since we have all these complicated issues. TaxCut was pretty easy to use and I can see it being very useful if you use it every year (it compares and uses the previous year's info). I also liked how it compares all the different methods of filing (whether to itemize or not, whether to file separately or together) but it also got confusing at times since I entered in my info first thinking that I would go back later to adjust some things but there is no function that I know of to keep track of things that I wanted to return to. There were also times that I wish I could see what the IRS really wanted b/c I don't think I needed to fill out all those forms (TaxCut has this function but it's not very user-friendly). I also didn't like that all the pertinent info was not transferred to the state return and we had to enter all that again. But enough of my complaints, I just wanted to warn newlyweds that you should really set aside time to do taxes together (don't wait until the week before -- see story below) or just get a really good accountant that you can trust (not my preference since I haven't found one yet and I'm not sure it's worth paying so much more for anyway; plus I feel like you really own your fiscal situation instead of being clueless about it).

So as if it weren't apparent enough, it's never good to procrastinate! Here's my tax procrastination anecdote: with the two moves in the past few months, plus the wedding and apt. renovations (leaving me in a more disoriented state than usual), and the gathering of important financial documents for the mortgage while switching jobs, I have no idea where my packet of 2005 tax forms are. I usually have one folder that holds all this information but when I searched the usual spot in my parents' house I had every year but 2005. So I reasoned that it must be at my out-laws' since that's where we were living while applying for the mortgage. I thought it was in one of my bags there but couldn't find it. I then thought my backup copy on my computer would suffice. It did, until I realized that I needed the state forms as well. Unlike the federal forms, NYS' fillable PDFs do not save the information so all I had on my computer was a blank IT-201. So what did I do at 1am on April 16 after I thought the hard part was over? I started filling out the 2005 IT-201 from scratch. I was so frustrated that I saved an image of the form that I filled out, just in case. From there, I could fill in that one field needed for this year's return. grrr! Next year I'm hoping things will be less complicated (or we'll at least get used to it) and maybe I'll get organized in time. *sigh*

Groceries

OK, so we're probably the only New Yorkers who've never tried FreshDirect before. I have a thing about it being environmentally unsound (every little thing packed neatly in cardboard boxes with lots of packing material to protect it from damage). But with my laziness, I probably would have gone that route long ago if Dear didn't have a thing about touching the food before he buys it. I think he also enjoys food shopping, seeing all the things in person, thinking of the meal possibilities, comparing items. And checking out the weekly ads for each market (Stop N-Shop, Pathmark, Waldbaums, Key Food) is like a sport for him. Like his parents, they spend hours looking at each ad, circling items of interest (even if they have little intention of buying the item). When we were dating, he'd seem distracted on the phone and I'd ask him what he was doing. His response: I'm reading [with the unspoken implication of "I'm really reading the fine print found in the ads"]. And of course, every supermarket ad whore knows that the markets in Manhattan have different items in their circular than the ones in the outer boroughs so somehow or other his father would go to the Pathmark near his workplace to pick one up every week. This obsessive behavior leads his mother to tease his father by calling the ads "his girlfriend" since he spends so much time with these printed materials. Not that she is removed from this obsession. Every Saturday morning used to be this uninterrupted time of "relaxation" where the ads would be passed from one family member to the next. I admit, I too fell victim to this on occasion (it's a great time suck, much like surfing the 'Net) but I usually only look through the ones for stores that I know I will visit and I also prefer the more organized and pretty circulars (such as Target). (Un)fortunately, this activity has slowed a little since our building absconds all the delivered ads before tenants can get to them (they think it looks uncivilized or some snobby thing like that). So Dear has had to resort to viewing the ads online, even though "it's just not the same." I prefer this method better though since he's forced to make a list and I don't have to shuffle through all the pages to remember what to get.

Anyway, this post has totally not turned out the way I thought because I really wanted to find out options for carrying groceries (not a worry for you FreshDirect folks). We recently decided to do the environment a favor by bringing along a few canvas bags with us (plus we have overflowing bags of plastic bags and don't need anymore). I think it works out pretty well except for when we have really heavy stuff (or we forget the bags at home). It is especially a pain to get from the car to the apartment. Things can get really heavy and so we also got an old granny cart (that is one piece of equipment that badly needs a re-design) which helps a lot. Unfortunately, even this so-called heavy-duty cart can't stand up to our burdens and it's on its last wheel, so to speak. We also had this portable folding hand truck that didn't last very long:
So, short of getting delivery or a donkey (not that pets are allowed), do we have any other options? How do you transport your groceries?

Politics stink!

I hate political season, especially when it gets down and dirty. What makes it worse is Crazy Nag at work has to bring politics into the office. I thought she'd stop after the presidential elections back in 2004 (she's a staunch Republican) when she would defend her favorite candidate to me every day. All the mudslinging from the politicians or even the comments that the mostly liberal Democrats at work would utter, she'd come up with a retort but only unleash it on me. Lucky me! And I think no matter what side you're on, you gotta admit, Bush ain't the shiniest apple in the barrel (if you watched any of the debates back then for even a brief instant you'd know) but she refused to acknowledge it by refusing to watch the debates.

I think she was pretty good last year, but today she comes up to me and rants for a while about Democrats offering flu shots to those who register for their party, how that's unethical, blah blah blah. I haven't heard about this previously so I can't say that I've made up my mind about the issue but I wish she'd just keep mum about it and let me be!! Actually I think my defense mechanism has been built to oppose her no matter what, even if I agree with her (or maybe that's the devil's advocate in me). And since that was a convenient segway for her to bring up politics, she asked her friend to bring over a political cartoon that made fun of Kerry. I think I would have found this humorous in any other context but b/c she brought it up, I reserved any show of emotion (I know, not hard for me to do) and wished her to go away.

Now, her friend is also a Republican but she doesn't push it in anyone's face. Why can't Crazy Nag do the same?! Oh the stories I could tell about this Fox News-loving woman!