A Pirate's Code: Money for nothing, and your drinks for free

A few years ago we got our financial act together. We were debt free, except for our mortgage, using cash for our daily expenses, and were able to put enough money away to send our kids to private schools.

A new house and a couple years of backsliding later, it was time to right the ship again. Back to a cash budget, could be back to zero debt other than mortgage debt in a matter of weeks, and we are starting to put money away again, and we have a plan to stash even more cash.

Living on cash is important to us. It is harder to spend cash. There is a built in hard stop to spending when you run out of cash. And it just makes our lives less stressful. We no longer wonder if we have the money to buy that new thing; if the money is not in our pocket or purse, then we don't have the money. One less thing to worry about in our anxiety filled lives.

Before you even ask: Yes. We are bound by the Pirate's Code. (That is the subject of a different post)

We have a rule in our home, "He who does the laundry, keeps the money." However, there are certain guidelines that we must all follow for this to work without someone feeling robbed. At some point, when the amount of money is unusually large (say, $20), the money should be returned to its owner. If it belongs to the boys, perhaps that threshold is quite a bit lower.

The cash budget thing has really been a boon to the one who does the laundry. About a two weeks ago, I pocketed $15. The money could have only been mine or Sue's (I was absolutely certain it wasn't mine), so I pocketed it.

Not one to let my new found wealth go to waste, I offered to take my lovely bride to happy hour. We were near the end of our two-week budgeting period, so cash was becoming more scarce and my lovely bride asked, "Can you pay for both of us, because I'm almost out of cash?"

"Of course," I replied.

She queried, "How come you still have cash, but I'm almost out?"

"I just didn't spend as much as you did this week," I replied. "And besides, I held a little back so I could take you out."

We went out; she had a margarita, I had a beer, and we shared some beef fajitas. I spent about $10 more than the $15 I found in the laundry. So our date was essentially dutch.

In case you are counting, that is 3 "brownie points" in this little story.

1. I did the laundry.
2. I asked my wife out on a date.
3. I made it look like I had taken the effort to plan the date.

And I accomplished all this while spending her cash, not mine.

Please don't tell Sue! I'll lose more brownie points than I gained.

A Butterfly Effect

I am a HUGE fan of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. If any of the three LOTR movies comes on television, there are only a few things that will tear me away. And by few, I mean somebody better be dying!

There are a number of scenes that involve butterflies or moths. Moths/butterflies are messengers, in the movies at least, for the eagles. My favorite moth/butterfly scene from the trilogy has got to be the final battle at the black gate. The key moment starts at about the 3:00 mark in this clip.

The eagles are almost always associated with a sudden and unexpected turn of events in Tolkein's books, and they are always on the side of good in the movies.

...

Nearly everyday, our dogs get a nice little walk, usually just over a mile. On our last couple of journeys we were led out of the gate by some brilliant reddish-orange moths. To be honest, I've been a little nonplussed over their consistency in behavior and presence.

My walk this past Wednesday was something a bit different, though.

The dogs were leashed as I walked to the gate. The reddish-orange moth was there again to lead us out the gate. We walked down the road to the end of the block, more reddish-orange moths lined our path. As we approached the corner, a massive Monarch butterfly met up with us, and guided us for almost a quarter mile!

It guided us around the corner.

It led us down the street.

Amazingly, it continued to lead us around another turn.

Finally, it flitted off over a fence.

It was about this time, I started looking up to the skies. I was a little freaked out. At any moment I expected to see the Great Eagles of Middle Earth bringing about a sudden an unexpected turn of events.

But, alas, I was just walking the dogs. And they did not suddenly behave themselves on the walk, so maybe that butterfly omen is one to remain in Middle Earth, and not here and now in this world.

Pity. It was a really magnificent butterfly.

My Mythology of Rain

I went to worship experience different than most I've experienced last week. It was similar to a house church, but also decidedly Methodist, too. From their website:

Kuneo is a new kind of worship gathering. Hosted at the Union Coffee House near SMU, the Village, and Lower Greenville in Dallas, Kuneo seeks to show the love of Jesus in a creative, compassionate, and communal gathering of people on the journey that we call "faith."

During the gathering last week, the theme centered on knowing your story, the church knowing its story, and then living out that story. We all have a story, and as was implied, that story converges, for all, with Christ.
So I left that gathering thinking about my story.

...

I am a little behind on the entertainment phenomenon that is Game of Thrones. We do not have HBO at home, so I have never seen an episode of the series, but I do have a library card. So I checked out the first book in the series.

I'm about a quarter of the way through the book as I write this, and I've come across a recurring theme regarding the Dothraki people in the story: the important things in a man's life always occur under the open sky.

I got to thinking about that, and it occurred to me that our family has a similar mythology. Except our mythology says that the important things in a man's life always occur in the rain.

Here are a few examples:

• When I was a child I had a major surgery that would come to define the things I could and could not do. The day I was released from the hospital, we drove home in a light, steady rain.
• The day of my wedding, a deluge nearly forced us to switch transportation from automobiles to boats.
• On the day we unloaded the moving van when we moved to San Antonio so I could start at my first "real" job, we unloaded the van in the rain.
• On the day we brought our first child home from the hospital, it was raining.
• And there was that camping trip. I think it was the last time we went camping as a family.

There are other moments like these that have graced our family, but these five stick with me most clearly. Each one of them represented a new direction that required new challenges and new skills. 

There is little hope of rain in these parts for the next six weeks or so, but every time it rains, I can't help but wonder what new direction life will take us, what new challenges we will face, what new skills we will need to learn. Rain is our omen of things to come, I just don't know what's coming. 

And that is awesome!