Courage My Love - January 6, 2011

Another sucky rainy day on the wet coast. I keep checking my armpits for moss growth, seriously it is that bad here. Where is global warming? When is it coming here?

Birds are falling from the sky, fish are dying in the water and every conspiracy theorist has broken out in a fever of delight. I have heard everything from "toxic" bombs by the Taliban, to US military tests, and last but not least - the end of days as signified by the seven signs.

I cannot believe the world is ending, for me there would be a clearer sign, like winning the lottery, or waking up to elephants in the backyard. Mere fish and fowl don't scare me. I want a BIG sign, something neon and glowing that says "End of the World - the lineup begins here". But like TS would say, "not with a bang, but a whimper".

So here I am, six days into the New Year and it seems so far, anyway, very much like the old year. Work is mind numbing, bills are piling up, the sun doesn't shine and I seem to be caught on a round about, going in ever decreasing circles (actually that's a spiral isn't it??).

I have so far stuck to my resolutions. No recycling. None. It is such fun to dump everything in the garbage, none of the sort-sort-sort crap I have been doing. It's almost nostalgic, because that is the way we did it when I was a kid. Taking out the garbage was a "JOB" because you had like four trashcans each weighing about eighty pounds and they held everything your family had chucked away in the last week. Coffee grinds mixed freely with dead batteries and old paint tins, empty (but not washed) tins dripped over cardboard and newspapers and almost empty bleach bottles. Ahh the good old days...

Garbage is a business in the western world. Take my town for instance. I have two garbage bins (one for garbage and one for compostable items), 3 large plastic bags (for newspaper, cardboard and mixed paper)and one plastic box (for cans and bottles)into which I am supposed to sort all my trash. Then on the appointed day, I wheel the bins out, along with the presorted and packaged other bits in the plastic bags and box and put them at curbside. Not just any curbside, but exactly according to the instructions on top of the wheelie bins. Six inches from the side walk for the bins, one meter between them and one meter on either side, the plastic bags and box can sit on the side walk.

Lord who thought garbage could be so complicated? After all, it is shit I am throwing away!! I couldn't help myself when the garbage truck came down the road the other day, I just had to watch. It's an automated garbage truck for crying out loud! It is driven (thank goodness) up to the garbage bin, a big automated arm comes out and grabs the bin and chucks it in the truck and another arm pops out and grabs the other bin and dumps it. No guy hanging off the back of the truck, the whole thing took like 3 seconds. What did take time was the recycle truck, it had 3 guys who hopped out, CHECKED the recycle to make sure it was correct, dumped it all, folded the plastic bags nicely, placed them into the plastic box and left it neatly on the sidewalk.

Why can't we just ship it all to that third world country and let them sort it? Here we are doing all the sorting for them, so they can remanufacture tins and cars and gadgets and send them back to us via Walmart. Personally I think the entire state of Ohio could be the central repository for North America's garbage, I mean there is no industry left back east (remember it all moved to the third world) so the fine people of Ohio could store our garbage because basically there is nothing much that is nice about Ohio anyway.

Okay, enough ranting about recycling and garbage, there must be more in the world to talk about than that. Oh yeah, wow, I forgot - Sports. Not freaking likely. We live in a no sports household. We are committed to not watching it on TV, listening to it on the radio or reading about it. Okay we made a little leeway for the Olympics only because it was in town and I had tickets to the hockey game. Other than that, it is verboten. It is probably a good thing I don't have a boy around, cause they tend to like that sort of thing, at least it has become popular since they made the Romans stop throwing the Christians to the lions.

On the positive side of the ledger, I figured out how to bail money out of a locked in fund in Ontario. I did not realize I could get my hands on that money. Right now the fund pays me every month, but that's stupid because I am still working but the way it is set up, it pays out starting at age 55. So I started to read the fiscal rules regarding locked in pensions, and found that this particular pension fell under the jurisdiction of Ontario (as that is where the money was earned) so even if I live elsewhere it is ruled by Ontario rules. Right on, because the rules to the east are better than those here in the west. Ontario lets you remove what is known as "Small amounts" from locked in accounts if they are under 50% of the maximum yearly contribution, which this one was. I got all the relevant forms from the internet, went into my local bank today and educated a very nice young man on the finer points of the variance of laws across the country in regards to pension funds and proceeded to have him (after he checked with the powers that be, to find out I was right) remove the money from the fund and give it to me. Awesome! It's not a great deal of money (the clue was "small amount") but it will pay off some debt.

Between that money and my yearly bonus, I will be debt free and own my vehicle outright by June of this year. I didn't think it would happen that fast, but that is great, because now every dime I earn is mine, mine, mine. I can't wait to retire! The company I work for now, socks away about 12G a year in my current pension plan, plus I match that, so now I should be able to double the contribution.

The only goal for retirement should be "debt free", you actually don't need the million or so dollars the shysters have been telling you that you will need. I will own my home, my car and have cash in the bank, so what more do I need?

I guess all I need is about 40 more years to enjoy the retirement! Retirement takes courage, my love!!