Boy Meets Boy (Week 5/52)

Sometimes I forget that young reader fiction can be address mature topics and be well written. This week I read Boy Meets Boy, a novel by David Levithan about the heartache and drama of high school life. The story centres around Paul, an average sophomore high school student who falls in love with the new boy at school and tries not to screw things up with 'the one' as his friends' various life dramas compete for his attention. He inevitably fails and must try and fix things while still meeting all his other friendship obligations. The bare plot itself is familiar and accessible...two young people meet, they fall in love, mistakes are made, friends get involved, more mistakes are made, mistakes are fixed, etc, etc. The difference is that this teenage love story is set in a community where sexuality and gender identity has lost its moral shock factor, where the biggest problem isn't that the star quarterback is a transvestite (she is) but how, as homecoming queen, she is going to both march in the pep rally parade AND announce the football team's entrance. It's not all sunshine and lollipops though, not everyone lives in this gaytopia, and the author is careful to remind the reader of this reality through Paul's best friend Tony, a gay teenager who lives in the confines of his parents' religious fanaticism. It's in these moments where the book really shines, where wish fullfilment literature meets present day reality. Where we are reminded of how far we still are from utopia and how ridiculous and petty the barriers holding us back are. But Levithan's ultimate message is one of hope: that things get better, that people can improve, and that standing up for what we believe in can lead to change. And that's a message we can all get behind.

When God was a Rabbit (Week 4/52)

I'm struggling to put into words how much I enjoyed this week's read, When God was a Rabbit by Sara Winman. I had intended to read this book a few years ago, when I was on my first epic read-a-thon, but as it was the year it was released, I was on such a long waitlist for the book that I didn't get it until the year was over and I was burned out from so much reading. So when NerdBoy and I started this read-a-thon, I made sure it was among the first books I requested from the library.

This book is a coming of age story about a young British girl named Elly and is divided into two sections. The first section covers Elly's childhood, from about four to twelve, and the second section picks up following a span of about 15 years shortly after Elly's twenty-seventh birthday. I like the book most I think for its dry British humour, beautifully delivered by Elly the narrator, and hidden in the youthful naivete of her character. I'm going to share some of my favourite sections in the hopes that you will read this book:

***

 He placed the box down on the table. I could smell the fecund dampness of straw. The box  moved jerkily, but I wasn't scared. My brother opened the flaps and pulled out the biggest rabbit I'd ever seen.
   'I said I'd get you a proper friend.'
   'It's a rabbit!' I said with piercing delight.
   'A Belgian hare, actually,' he said, rather brotherly.
   'A Belgian hare,' I repeated quietly, as if I'd just said words that were the equivalent to love. 
   'What do you want to call it?' he asked.
   'Eleanor Maud," I said.
   'You can't name it after you,' my brother laughed.
   'Why not?' I said, a little deflated.
   'Because it's a boy,' he said.
   'Oh,' I said, and I looked at its chestnut-brown fur and its white tail and the two little droppings that had fallen from his arse, and thought that he did indeed look like a boy.
'What do you think I should call him then?' I asked.
   'God,' said my brother grandly.
...
...

I held up the final picture of my rabbit to the bewildered faces of my classmates.
   '...And so at Christmas, god finally came to live with me,' I ended triumphantly.
   I paused, big smile, waiting for my applause. None came and the room fell silent, unexpectedly went dark; the overhead lights useless and straining and yellow against the storm clouds gathering outside. All of a sudden, the new girl, Jenny Penny, started to clap and cheer.
   'Shut up!' shouted my teacher, Miss Grogney, her lips disappearing into a line of non-secular hatred. Unknown to me, she was the product of missionaries who had spent a lifetime preaching the Lord's work in an inhospitable part of Africa, only to have found that the Muslims had got there first.

 ***

The second section lacks some of the magic and beauty of Elly the child's narration, but the character developments continue to be strong and the relationships meaningful and complicated. The main event of the second section felt like a bit of a stretch, one which was foreshadowed in an earlier chapter but was not necessary (I felt) for the progression of the plot. The strength of the characters saves it for me, but I wonder if others agree. Anyway, you should read the book. It's awesome. I'll end this post with one of my favourite quotes from the book...

'Two gin and tonics and a water for the fish,' said my brother for the fifth time that evening. He was dressed as Liza Minnelli, and looked really pretty until you saw that he hadn't shaved, either his face or his legs. When we left the house both my mother and father had shed a tear as their beloved son walked out into the cold night air dressed as a daughter, unsure as to what he might return as. That, my father would later say, was one of the unexpected gifts of parenthood.

Through Black Spruce (Week 3/52)

My books have finally arrived!

Or more accurately, I have finally made it to the library to pick up some books which are on my "to read" list...so this week, I read Joseph Boyden's Through Black Spruce, a made in Canada novel about the life of one modern anishnabe family living in northern Ontario. It won the ScotiaBank Giller Prize in 2008 and is apparently book two of a loose trilogy about the various members of the Bird family. I only learned of the trilogy after I read this so now I'm going to have to backtrack a little to try and hunt down the first book in the series, Three Day Road, which apparently is the story of Will's dad who fought in World War II. You would be correct in assuming that I enjoyed the book. In fact, I thought it was great! Refreshingly Canadian, honest in its discussion and portrayal of the many challenges faced by our rural Northern communities, but also beautiful in its unpretentious description of a way of life that is rapidly disappearing. Boyden's writing is a pleasure to read and the stoic persona of Will Bird a perfect fit to narrate an otherwise sad and lonely life story, albiet one with a fairly pleasant ending.

Anyway, go forth and read this, internet people! You will not regret it.

Icy Sparks, failure to launch (Week 2/52)

Last week you may have read my post about how I am embarking on a year long read-and-blog-a-thon with my partner-in-crime, NerdBoy, and thought, oh man, RamenGirl really had a rough start. Look at her trying to woo us with her stolen MagicEye image. I'm sure she'll settle into a routine now that she's two weeks in and have a plan for what she's going to read so we can have an actual book review about a book she cares about! Well, only part of that is true: I DO have a reading plan now! And I have books to read!! The problem is that because I am trying to be fiscally responsible with all this reading, so I'm taking most of the books on my read list out from the library, and unfortunately, wasn't able to get the book I was planning to read last week. Instead I ended up reading yet another book I found lying around the house, Icy Sparks by Gwyn Hyman Rubio. 

This book was named as an Oprah's Book Club Selection in 2001 and was left in the house by a friend. I read the cover and was encouraged: Icy Sparks is a coming of age story of a young girl with a difference in rural America. Through my year of excessive reading a few years ago, I realized that I liked coming of age stories, and I really liked reading about people overcoming personal adversity, so this book looked like a good fit. 

Unfortunately, it was not. I am trying to pin point why I didn't like it and I think it comes down to a few things (Warning, spoilers ahead!):

1) The book tries to do too much. Coming of age stories must be hard to write...they are about people at some of the most emotionally confusing times of their lives and usually involve a degree of additional drama. Writing about someone you know well, like yourself, is hard enough, writing about some fictional you just invented is like lighting a cigarette with a blowtorch...a little drama impresses people but too much and it ruins everything. 

COOL BEANS.

NOPE. TOO MUCH.

It felt like the author thought to herself, "Gee, what if I took that little blond girl from Forrest Gump that everyone loves, throw her in a different state, give her a fat friend, kill off a main character, add in some hillbilly religious rituals, oh, and let's give her a disability for good measure." While the first chapter held real promise, it just started feeling like the author had a theme for each chapter from there on in, and that overtook the storyline it self. 


One chapter on 'the treatment of individuals with developmental/mental health issues in hospital systems in rural Kentucky in the 50s', another on 'puberty and sexual discovery'....there is so much effort put into making the story feel authentic to the time period and culture - don't forget to mention JFK's presidential campaign! - that it ends up doing just the opposite, making the information feel forceful and distracting from some of the real strengths of the book, which is the genuine likeability of some of the main characters.


2) If you're going to write a book about a person with a disability...make sure spend just as much time talking about the challenges of living with that disability as you do about how you come to own it. If I had to sum up Icy Sparks in a few sentences, it would be something like this:

A little girl grows up in rural Kentucky and starts getting weird uncontrollable impulses that interfere with her life. She's institutionalized but nothing really happens and then somehow she is released with no real plan. Then she turns 13, learns about mensus, is charged up on hormones and gets sexually assaulted all within about 20 pages. Then someone she loves dies, she discovers church, learns to sing, and suddenly she has graduated from university with a Tourette's Syndrome diagnosis and is friends again with everyone. 

I'd draw you a 10 frame comic strip summary if I could draw. But I can't.

The taste that gets left in my mouth is that the author starts off with good solid intentions to write about the challenges of growing up in the 1950s with a mild disability, but then realizes that its hard work to write a book or gets tired writing about the same characters, and then throws together a "happily ever after" ending just to get it done. It's cheap and disrespectful. And from some of the book reviews I've read, those with Tourette's are not thrilled with how their disability is portrayed either.  

 

That being said, there were a few things that the author did well. Characters. Oh man, I wished she had chosen fewer characters and spent more time fostering our relationship with them because she introduced so many interesting and unique personalities that I felt had real potential to drive the story. However, because most were only around for the off chapter or side storyline, her use of them just ended up making the plot feel over crowded and the characters like tea made from overused leaves: weak. Also, food. I have seldom felt as hungry after reading as I did while reading this book. I have been craving fried chicken, dumplings, and other southern treats for a solid week now. God. Bless. American. Southern. Cooking. *drool*...and on that note, I'm off to eat!

GET INTO MY MOUTH! ALL THE CHICKEN! FOREVER!

Reading all the books. And blogging. In tandem.

NerdBoy and I are on a mission!

Or rather, NerdBoy is on a mission and I'm tagging along for the good of the blog. We are going to read (and blog) a book a week for the next year.

Now I love reading and I enjoy blogging, but a few years ago, I completed a completely absurd (and self-imposed) challenge to read 100 books in  a year and since then I've had trouble reading for pleasure. Knowing that it would be a rough start, I thought it would be a good idea to start with something easy and fun, so while on vacation in the land of tapas, I read this lovely little book called The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh which a coworker lent me before my trip. Alas, it turns out that NerdBoy is a stickler for rules and when I announced my intention to blog about this book, he informed me that because I finished reading the book before the read-a-thon officially began (also known as thedatewhenNerdBoyinformedsocialmediaofhisplantoreadandblogallthebooks) I was not allowed to use it towards the project. So, having limited time (and an expired library card) to pick out a new book, I turned to a book which has sat on my shelf for the past three years...Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children.

Confession: I have tried to read this book before. Several times in fact. And each time, I found myself so frustrated and confused by the writing/narration style that I gave up and consoled myself with something easy from Heather's Picks. If you've read or have attempted to read Midnight's Children, or have ever tried to read while inebriated, you'll know what I mean. This is not an easy read. The writing is detailed, dense, and utterly schizophrenic in its construct with regular interjections, interruptions, and interludes. However, with time working against me and motivation/desperation/pride on my side, I committed myself to finishing the book...all of two hours before the post deadline.

STAYING FOCUSED. LIKE A BOSS.

I don't know what people expect when they read a blog about a book some dude just read. Thoughts? Feelings!? ALL THE THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS!? But I googled "book blogs" and it turns out that people (like you!!) will read just about anything in blog format because there are legit internet folks who make a living blogging about the stuff they read in the real world. They even get books to review from publishers! So, since the internet says it's cool (and potentially profitable), I'm going to share some very brief thoughts about this book...

Here goes...

I work in mental health and as such am never fully successful in shutting off my work brain even when reading. So of course, the real puzzle for me while reading Midnight's Children was trying to figure out whether or not the protagonist (look! book words!) Saleem Sanai had a mental health disorder and whether or not his narrative was an extension or expression of his delusions. Now I know that this book is an example of magic realism and that structures which govern and divide our sense of reality are purposely disrupted in this genre. But I guess it speaks to Rushdie's skill as a writer (and my rigidity as a clinician and reader) that I could not read the narrator's story telling without labeling each thought or behaviour as tending towards schizophrenia, narcissistic personality disorder, or some type of delusion disorder.  Over labeling things take some of the fun and escapism out of reading and to be honest, I'm not sure that at the end of the day, I "liked' the book...but it certainly is a good reminder that sometimes, we need to let go of our need to make sense of our world because at the end of the day, reality is just another social construct. Just like this MAGIC EYE IMAGE! WHAT-UP GEN Y!!

** I should probably warn you that I just pulled this off of the internet so I really have no idea what the MagicEye is of and NerdBoy is rushing me to finish this post so I can't even try and dilute my brain to test this image out. Now you've been warned. I apologize ahead of time if it is offensive, lame or non-existent.

It has occurred to me that you might actually want to know what this book is about, so rather than waste time re-writing what way smarter and articulate people have written already, I'm going to redirect you to this link. There's also a movie version of this book for those of you who don't read books (*cough*Britto*cough) but if that's the case you wouldn't likely be reading this blog now would you?

It has also occurred to me that you might be interested in reading NerdBoy's read'n'blog-a-thon. Mostly becuase he's sitting next to me going "you should post my link in your blog. have you done that yet? people will want to read this. look, here's my link!" so here you go internet world, the highly nerdy (and often funny) blog words of NerdBoy...

From Madrid, with constipation...

So for those of you who have been checking the blog, you might have noticed that I went MIA for a little while, or rather, I was MIS...Missing In Spain. A few years ago, I went on my first big solo trip across the Atlantic to visit my friend FrauleinBlondie in Austria and since then I've itched the travelbug something bad. Once my student debt was taken care of in 2012, I made it a personal mission (notice a theme here?) to travel all the places and have been slowly chipping away at my travel goals year by year. Last year was a great travel success, I made it to the land of offshore money (Cayman Islands), clam chowda (NE USA), and hobbits (New Zealand), while this year's travel list included Spain, France, and Peru. So although this is not a travel blog, I am going to dedicate a few posts to my travel adventures, because, really, what else am I going to do for hours on a train with no WiFi in a foreign country where I don't speak the language? So, bear with me, and enjoy.

From Madrid:

I am writing this from the dining car of my overnight train as we (NerdBoy and I) brace ourselves for a 9 hour ride through the Spanish countryside enroute to Barcelona*. We just spent the last few days in Madrid...and learning Spanish. As it turns out, people in Spain speak Spanish, not English. I should have probably known this and prepared appropriately but instead I spent the past three months learning how to describe animals wearing clothing, eating different fruits, in French. Because Duolingo teaches languages in strange inexplicable ways, and clothing, colours, and obscure animals (ant = fourmi) are apparently more important things to know than how to ask for directions or order food. That being said, I can't blame Duolingo for the language paux fas becuase I was the genius who decided to refresh my French instead of learning Spanish despite the fact that most of my travels this year will be to SPANISH speaking countries, not French. Sigh. So having arrived in Spain, and coming to the conclusion that "una cerveza por favor, Miguel!" really has very limited usefulness (i.e. surviving Mexican resorts) when travelling in Spain...

...where a) sometimes finding your hotel trumps getting inebriated, and b) not every bartender you meet is named Miguel, and c) you are hungry/lost/thirsty for water, we learned Spanish. Or at least enough to order a limited number of food and drink items, locate bathrooms (aseos, not banas), ask for directions, barter for goods, and cheer on local sports teams...the latter being a super important skill if you want any of the locals to actually help you with the above. Thanks to Aletico Madrid's timely win over Barcelona in the 2014 league championships, I may be forever able to sing (if not understand) Aletico's official football song and various chants. Atleti! Atleti! Atletico Madrid!

Somewhere in here is an Asian girl cheering confusedly in broken Spanish. That girl is me.

 
I also have finally stopped responding in some bastardized combination of French/German/English every time someone speaks to me in Spanish. That did not help anyone and serious confused/baffled NerdBoy. We stayed in the gay neighbourhood in Madrid, which we finally realized on our third day in the city which really helped explain the number of a) designer dogs, b) shoe stores, and c) fancy "Mercatos"...oh, and the seminude male manequins wearing feather boas. I'm starting to realize that we are not particularly observant people. Madrid, from what I can see, seems to be fairly open minded regarding sexuality as there were ample displays of PDA in all parts of the city despite the country's deep preoccupation with churches, and I assume, the practices that happen in churches. To get to know the city, we started off with a couple of walking tours, one, a paid and guided tapas tour, and the other a free city walking tour both run by Sandeman. Our guides for both were local Spanish girls who were quite helpful in education us on Spanish culture, history, and local hotspots. In fact, this was how we found our way to Madrid's "only paella worth eating" - at a restaurant called El Cadero which specializes in Murcian food. There I was able to cross off both paella and pulpo a la gallega (grilled octopus) off of my to eat list. Those of you who have traveled with me before know that I have a "to eat" and "to drink" list for every country/region I travel to. Sometimes, this leads to terrible experiences (I'm remembering a particularly not good bowl of leberknoedelsuppe I had in Salzberg), and sometimes it leads to magical culinary adventures. I am happy to report that most of Spain's "to eat" list were delicious (if lacking in vitamins) and that paparojotes are the most delicious things ever. Essentially, they are deep fried battered lemon leaves which are flambéed in high proof rum and served with lemon gelato. As it was only our second day in Madrid when I ordered it, I was grateful our server spoke enough English to say "no eat leaves. very strong".  Back to paellas. Words of advice from the locals: 1) paella is an expensive dish, so if you are paying less than 15 euros per person then they are not serving you real paella because real paella uses saffron (which is expensive) and your dish should be saturated with rich saffron petals, 2) properly cooked paella can only be made in special pans which are so massive they can only be ordered in servings of at least two, really it should come in a pan or pot which look like it is used to cook for a small army and scare you just a little, 3) real paella takes time to cook so anything that they can serve you from a cart or in less than 45min was nuked in the microwave and therefore garbage. El Cadero was an excellent recommendation and super delicious but ate up my entire day's food budget so I was pretty happy that we prepaid for the tapas tour and that it covered off half of my list of "to eats". It also introduced us to the wacky world of jamón, aka HAM.

 

"People do like the way she says "ham"..."

But seriously, the Spanish do not mess around with ham. Ham is such a big part of their culture that there is even a bar/butcher (yes, you read that right) called Museo del Jamón where people mingle with drinks, have tapas, and socialized under a few hundred varieties of cured ham. When we were there on a Wednesday night, the place was so packed packed that you could barely move. Part of Spain's obsession with ham dates back to the time of the Spanish Inquisition, when non-Christians were being driven out and ham was used by people and business alike as a political gesture to prove their non-Jewishness. Of course, this was also used by Jewish people to hide their religious background. Even now, everywhere you look in Madrid, most restaurants and bars will have ham hanging from their windows and ceilings. Anyway, the residual result of all that terribleness is that Spain is the world's leading producer and consumer of ham with some +35million ham shoulders being processed each year. They also make delicious ham, the most expensive of which is made from pigs that have been fed a diet consisting entirely of acorn nuts. When our tapas guide first explained this, I was convinced that I was misunderstanding what she was saying due to her Spanish accent, and that she was saying 'acre ham' because ham made from free-range pigs makes a lot more sense than pigs eating only acorns, but obviously I was wrong. Anyway, I know you're all super fascinated by ham history now so I'll give you some additional reading to do on someone else's blog. Enjoy.

* (Remember this symbol from paragraph two? Probably not. Go back and read that sentence then scroll back here)

 ...

 ...

Have you done it? Okay, good. Here we go...

DO NOT TAKE THE OVERNIGHT FROM MADRID TO BARCELONA. "But RamenGirl!", you ask, "aren't you on said overnight train from Madrid to Barcelona?" Yes. Yes I am. And that's why I'm telling you not to do it. When I booked this trip back at the beginning of the year I thought it would be a time efficient (and cost effective) way to move between the two cities. I had taken trains while traveling in other parts of Europe was looking forward to having some quiet time on the overnight to catch up on reading, blogging, emails, etc. All stuff that lose precedence when traveling a foreign country. Although I am trying my best to do some of these things, the additional "train perks" of a) having sleeper train roommates with bad BO, b) jarring motion sickness from old rickity trains, and c) extremely tight bathroom and sleeping quarters has made me rethink my decision. That being said, there are always silver linings, right?  I'm just debating whether the silver lining here is listening to the train conductor argue with a fortune teller about her hawking questionable services to minors at the booth to my right, or whether it's remembering to buy a litre of tinto de verano before boarding the train. On that note, ¡Salud! y buenas noches!

Let me see your palms, ah pretty lady, your future contains lots of jamón...

More from Spain in the coming days...

Slaying the Debt Kangaroos

Those of you that know me, know that I am pretty type A when it comes to getting shit done. Especially if what needs to get done involves numbers, deadlines, and planning. I love making excel spreadsheets, and what's more, I love updating and maintaining them. So of course, when confronted with debt I took my badass Excel skills and made myself a spreadsheet. In fact, I made two. One to track my repayment progress, and another to track my expenses. After all, I had gone from no debt to lots of debt with very little idea of where the dollars actually went (beyond basic tuition and rent) so I figured learning a bit more about my spending habits was probably not a bad idea. I also realized that having debt was kind of like raising rabbits. The longer you left it, the bigger (and more overwhelming) it becomes to manage.

Me: "That is a lot of fluffy muthafracking debt bunnies..."

Fortunately for you (and in case your exponential bunny math skills are rusty) there are lots of online calculators which can help you figure out how big your debt can grow over time. In Canada, National Student Loan has this nifty little repayment calculator which allows you to compare how much interest you pay over time depending on your chosen repayment time frame. For example, if I paid my debt off in 5 years, compared to the 10 years the national loan program and my bank gives me to repay my debt, I would pay about $25,000 EXTRA in interest taking my overall debt to $110,500, which as we learned in the last post would weigh the same as a full grown cow, 8 kangaroos, or 305 chihuahuas.

 

That's depressing. Nobody wants that many chihuahuas around no matter how much you love those weird little rat dogs. Did you click that link? You should. Then you should come back here and LIKE this blog because that tween somehow got almost 8000 fans and I'm a little jelly. Anyway, like I was saying, the only thing worse than debt is more debt. So in case you needed a little extra motivation to bypass that PSL this fall, just re-read this post. Now I'm not going to tell you obvious things like: Get a job that pays real money! Because that's stupid and useless, and possibly beyond your control at this point in your life. But, here are a couple of things that can help you get started and stay on target:

1. TRACK YOUR EXPENSES. This is ridiculously eye-opening. You spend way more money than you think on coffee/takeout/drinking/chips/etsy than you know. For me, it was taxis. I always figured that because I biked through the summer, I somehow earned the right to "take the odd taxi to work or if I was running late". A few months of tracking later and I realized I averaged $75 on taxis per month. Regardless of the season. That's almost $1000 on something that really I didn't need to use since I was paying for a monthly transit pass anyway and live in a ridiculously transit filled part of the city. I just needed to get up 5min earlier in the morning, or spend 5 min less on facebook to avoid the "time crunch" which led to taxi hailing. I have been tracking my expenses now for 3.5years. It took a bit of getting used to, but now its something I do every night so that even small things like buying a chocolate bar from the candy machine don't get missed. I've learned a ton about my spending habits and now find myself being much more aware of my blindspots and in much better control of my wallet.

2. MAKE AUTOMATED WEEKLY OR BI-WEEKLY PAYMENTS. Rather than pay $500/month, split it up into four payments of $125. No extra dollars leaving your pockets, but thanks to how interest accumulation works, this nifty little trick allows you to save tons of interest in the long run. The automated payment trick is also awesome because you can't accidentally overspend if don't have it in your account!

3. ROUND UP. This is my most neurotic quality and possibly also the easiest thing to do on this list. Whenever possible, round up to a whole number when making debt repayments. Repayment calculator says your bi-weekly payment is $241.16? Pay $250 instead. You will almost certainly not notice the extra "payment" but you will definitely chip away at the debt faster.

4. MAKE EXTRA PAYMENTS. Don't fixate on the amount. $5, $10, $500. Whatever you have cash wise in your wallet at the end of the week, or that you get as a gift, or as a tax-return, or find on the street... dump it in. Each dollar counts. Trust me.

5. LINK YOUR REWARDS WITH ACTIVITIES, NOT THINGS. Definitely the hardest part of making debt a priority. I love eating out, having drinks on the patio, splurging on gourmet treats for PrincessSmellyButt. But I also hate being in debt because debt prevents me from doing other awesome things like saving for awesome vacations, feeling financially stable, retiring at 50 (HA! NOPE.). So I got to know my city's free activities and festivals, and became really good at only leaving the house with only my ID, a small per-determined amount of cash, and nothing else. No credit or debit cards = no random splurge purchases.

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but they are things that I learned as I began my debt repayment journey. And they were things that were easy to do, which then increased my buy-in, and eventually led to me getting so excited about tracking my debt repayments that I would make additional payments just so I could track how much more interest I saved. Nerd I was, but with some good fortune (i.e. landing a job that paid above min. wage), and discipline, I am happy to say that I have been debt-free now for over a year. And nothing beats that feeling.

Yup. I felt that. Fully one of those "air-fiving life in the face" kind of moments.

In case you're thinking, "But RamenGirl! I'm not Chinese/Jewish/Brown/Otherracialgroupspositively stereotypedasbeinggoodatmath. I'm not good at math and spreadsheets and budgeting!", don't worry. I didn't always have this skill. In fact, when I was in high school, our career guidance counsellor made us do this career comparability test and the first career the test recommended for me was "rabbi". Now, you may not know me so this might seem like a perfectly reasonable suggestion...except that I'm Chinese, female, and other than having a strong appreciation for Fiddler on the Roof, have little knowledge of Jewish customs and laws. I doubt that Tevye would have come to me to solve any of his family problems. But the thing is...debt sucks, and spreadsheets and budgeting help with that. So google some excel "how to's" on youtube and give it a shot. If I can do it, you can too too! (cue motivational finale). BAM.