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PWB: Downsizing? — We'll Put The Clan MacWee To Work [1]

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Date: 2022-08-26

Expect Christmas presents? Get a job!

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This is a blog entry posted in 2012 by my late partner, Lisa Courtney, reprinted by permission of her estate. You can read more of her interesting takes on life at A Splash of Courtney Ink. Her fiction and non-fiction published works are listed on her Amazon author page

In these challenging economic times, Paul and I’ve been talking about the smartest ways to control our financial outlay, and the potential for bringing in more money. We’re not in trouble, but things are a little tighter than we’d like them to be.

We talked about downsizing. I considered selling one of my guitars, and some of the pieces in my art collection. I shuddered, but thought about it anyway. Did we want to offload some of the stuff we have in storage? Did we want to cut down on the entertainment budget? I mean, how many Netflix movies do you have to have on hand?

We talked about cutting corners. We could cut down on how much we drink; alcohol has gotten a little more than pricey here in Washington State (and we’re both still pissed about that).* We could also cut some of our more expensive preferences out of our diet – we could be healthier and inch toward something close to fitness with less steak and more fish and chicken, and we’d save money if we didn’t buy organic, right? We could cut out our ritual Friday Night Take-Out Dinner and save a little cash there; over the course of a year the savings would be impressive (and we’d be doing our arteries a favor).

Yeah, right. As if. We lost the enthusiasm for this cutting corners and downsizing crap before we’d even warmed to the subject. It’s not likely we’re going to stop drinking our single malt, and after we agreed about that, the rest of the discussion just kind of fizzled out.

Thank God.

We needed a better plan. With Scotch in hand, I sat down in the living room and pondered our situation. And then my eyes rested on a cat, curled up on the couch across the room from me.

At our house, you have to work hard not to find a cat doing one thing or another. That’s normal for us because, of course, there are four of them in residence here.

I looked at the sleeping cat (this one happened to be Duncan). I found myself considering what he could do to support our domestic economic situation.

Duncan is the alpha of our Wee Clan. He’s too smart for his own good. He’s intuitive, affectionate and, when not in the middle of a bath, he likes running the show around here.

He’s the ringleader, he always knows what time it is (when it’s mealtime), and the howling little Siamese bastard knows how to push my buttons and get a “Shut up, Duncan!” out of me whenever he wants to (he is not afraid of negative attention).

He is clever enough to make me mad enough to stomp on him, and then gazes up at me in disarming adoration when I finally come at him carrying something blunt and heavy to drop on him. That he has not been throttled by either Paul or me is not a testament to our self-control (we don’t have much); it is an indication of just how Machiavellian our Duncan is.

So don’t you think he’d make a perfect Program Manager at any company, for any kind of project? I have no doubt he’d get the job done.

This line of thinking made me wonder what kind of work the rest of The Clan MacWee could do to bring in the bucks.

Tristan might make a perfect roadblock. He often walks ahead of me as I’m cruising through the house, and then simply stops … at which point I either fall over him, or stumble so as not to fall over him. I’m going to spend the rest of the day trying to figure out who might want to hire him for this job he does so well. A construction company? A road work team? I’m wondering if I can hire him out as a speed bump; that way he could be in the way, but also get all of his naps in, and still get paid for the function he provides at home for free.

Oh, and our Tristan is also vocal enough to act as either an official town crier (look it up if you don’t know what it is), or maybe a back-up singer for a band I’d be unlikely to ever listen to.

I may be on to something here.

A more traditionally-minded cat, Esmé could bring in great wads of cash by flirting with a photographer. She’s a feline combination of Grace Kelly, Greta Garbo, and Greer Garson — she’s all incandescent beauty, solitary mystery, and courageous vulnerability. I’ll be calling several modeling agencies on Monday morning to see about getting her portfolio viewed.

If, that is, Esmé would deign to cooperate. Too often, she wants to be alone – in a sunbeam.

Getting Abbey a job will be something of a challenge, but I’m feeling pretty optimistic at the moment. She can appear to be hard to play with, although she isn’t really. She’s not easy, in any sense. She’s intelligent, she can be adorable as all get-out when she wants to be, she’s funny as hell, and she’s self-involved and self-entertaining.

The most playful member of The Clan, she spends a lot of time in her own head, and appears to be quite happy there. She knows what she wants — and if you have it, she will either snuggle up with you until you give it to her, or she will simply take it from you and chase you away so she can play with it in peace. She’s got an innovative streak and thinks outside of the box; she has developed new ways of attacking unsuspecting pieces of paper and turning them into mini-confetti, into which she buries her face and falls asleep. Abbey is a master at both verbal and non-verbal communication (you never have to wonder what it is that she thinks or wants). She will do things your way, until she doesn’t.

She moves through her own little world like an empress, and her tenacity knows no bounds -- until she gets bored. She can be something of a diva, but she has duly earned and owns the title, and she wears it well. Still, I think she'd be a great teacher, or blogger, or novelist, or …

Wait a minute …

Abbey sounds a little like me. Oops.

Maybe I’ll spend less time trying to figure out how the cats are going to bring in additional funding for the household, and spend a bit more time at the keyboard, doing what I’m supposed to be doing in the first place …

… unless someone out there is looking to hire a qualified, truly unique PM, a roadblock/speed bump, a reluctant but stunningly pretty model, or a creative diva who knows how to have fun. In which case, Paul and I will send out their resumes, help them prep for interviews, and hope for the best.

Because our favorite brand of single malt is expensive.

*Note: This came about after a voter referendum passed, abolishing the Washington Liquor Control Board’s monopoly on sales of anything other than beer or wine. The resulting victory for “free enterprise” added a substantial (and hidden) tax on liquor, hence raising prices rather significantly. “Be careful what you wish for, voters”

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