Category: Life

Learning to Buy

Money changes everything

A scarcity mindset is hard to shake. It scratches a groove into your psyche that’s hard to haul yourself out of, and it’s never accidental. Mine began as the child of parents who grew up in the shadow of WW II. My sisters and I still remember tales of ration coupons and making do with less — my favourite example was war cake, a miraculous confection somehow made without eggs, milk or butter.

Poverty was never far from my parents upbringing in mid-century industrial Cape Breton. Mom recalled that in 1940s Sydney you knew which families didn’t have much money, because when their kids bent over, “you could see Robin Hood.” That meant their mothers had sewn clothes out of flour sacks, exposing the logo when they leaned over. Or so she claimed.

Thanks to hard work and education, my folks gave our family a solidly middle-class lifestyle, but a scarcity mindset was a constant background. Nothing was willingly thrown out, whether it was old containers, clothes, power cords — you might be able to use them later, and God forbid you’d buy something twice in a lifetime.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

When we wanted a table for the backyard, a giant cast-off cable spool from a construction site magically appeared. Dad was always there to hammer the lesson home, asking where I was going to find the money to get the things I wanted. How was I going to make ends meet on my own? What was I going to do if such-and-such happened? There might have been genuine concern underneath the questions, but instead of preparing me for life, they instilled a fear that it would chew me up and spit me out. When I went out into the world, the mindset tagged along.

I don’t blame mom and dad for how I think — they were wonderful parents, but growing up with those messages had an effect.

The thought of getting new clothes instead of repairing the current ones never occurred to me. Looking back, I wonder how many people actually darned socks in the 21st century instead of simply buying new ones. On trips I stayed in hostels unless it was on the company dime, because why pay for a hotel room when you can get a bed and toilet privileges for a fraction of the price? Why buy lunch or coffee at work when you can bring them from home and save money? Why take an Uber or the subway when you can walk and save a few bucks? Who cares if it’s pouring rain?

Destitute and on the Street

Underneath all that penny-pinching was the irrational belief that if I didn’t scrimp and save, I was going to end up penniless and destitute in my old age. It didn’t matter who pointed out how tremendously unlikely that scenario was, because the worry was too deeply ingrained. It would have been like telling an arachnophobe that tarantulas are actually soft and harmless: the truth is irrelevant when illogical beliefs are running the show.

So I earned and scrimped and saved, investing as much as possible, knowing that each paycheque meant just a little more cushioning between me and my self-inflicted spectre of poverty.

But one day, something changed. It snuck up on me: I realized I was actually likely to retire in the foreseeable future. That was no longer some far-flung horizon: it was years — not decades — away. I looked at my bank account and wondered, “How am I going to spend this money?” That wouldn’t be a challenge for most people: I’m not talking about millions of dollars. But for someone who treated money like a scarce resource to be conserved at all costs, it’s harder than you think.

Embracing your Inner Spend

I decided I needed to be ok with the idea of spending, even if I couldn’t fully embrace it. I feel a little guilty saying that, because we live in a world where the evils of conspicuous consumption and consumer culture are so thoroughly condemned. But I don’t have kids, so unless I want to leave it all to charity, I feel I should learn to enjoy the fruits of my labour while I can. I earned them, after all.

But that might be the hardest part: telling myself I’m worth spending money on, after so many years of denial.

I’m starting small. Once a week it’s now ok to buy lunch, and not pack the 3,000th salad of my career. Buying a latte now and then isn’t going to break the bank. Spending $30 on a tin of luxury tea would have seemed like an irrational indulgence a year ago. Now it feels like a challenge: can I treat myself? Can I actually enjoy spending money on me?

In Search of the Big Ticket

There are bigger-ticket items I’d like: my bike is 25 years old and held together with hockey tape and hope. I’ve kept it going for a quarter century, but its best days are behind it, and I’d like a ride from the current millennium.

So in March I’ll make the rounds of bike shops to see if I can embrace my hard-earned cash as something to be enjoyed, not accumulated for its own sake. After that, who knows? A new laptop? A trip? We’ll see.

I’m trying to accept the idea that I have enough, and I can’t take it with me, so I had better start enjoying it. That means learning to buy.

Tags Money, Retirement, Spending

Life

Life with Keto

Meet my little firiend

If you want something badly enough, you’ll do whatever it takes to get it. Fear something enough, and you’ll do whatever it takes to escape it.

I was parking the car when my doctor phoned with test results that showed elevated blood sugar. I had him on my headset, but almost ran into the wall when I heard.

Diabetes runs in the family. Mom had it, and I remember her bold prediction: “Your sugars were out of whack when you were born. You’re going to get it.” She was a great mother, loving and doting on me. She also had the ability to transform into a dark prophetess of doom at all the wrong times. That was one of them.

After the call, I dove into research and found two things that could reliably improve the situation: diet and exercise. I could wrap my head around exercise, even if I didn’t love it, but diet was another thing completely.

I loved my carbohydrates.

I loved sugar so much, I made honey sandwiches regularly as a kid. I’d lick my finger and stick it into the sugar jar to satisfy my cravings. Dessert was an essential food group, and one of my main joys in life was to visit a fine French patisserie and linger over the oeuvres before selecting the most decadent one to savour.

A farewell to carbs

All that went out the window with keto.

The ketogenic diet dramatically cuts carbohydrates, increases fat intake and moderates protein. It fuels your body without the carbs that raise blood sugar. True keto is hard to follow: it cuts out practically every carb from potatoes to rice, bread to pasta, and ups animal fats. So I follow a modestly low-carb version. But following even that version can be socially awkward.

My wife is Italian. Bread and pasta are at her core. She had a minor meltdown on learning about my new reality, and to this day I’m not sure the in-laws fully understand. But I committed to do whatever it took to get my blood sugar back in the green. I became friends with leafy vegetables, nuts and seeds. Cheese blunted the urge for sweets. I reluctantly embraced exercise with the mantra, “I don’t have to love it. I just have to do it.”

My blood sugar came back down to the point where my doctor said, “You know, you can ease up — it’s lower than mine.” But fear doesn’t evaporate when your doctor gives you a pat on the back. I remember mom pricking her finger six times a day to test her sugars, and injecting insulin morning, noon and night. Even then, it was a struggle to keep her blood sugar level.

Diabetes has been one of the leading causes of death in Canada since before I was born. It was effectively a death sentence for those with Type 1 — and for many with Type 2 — until the discovery of insulin a century ago. But insulin is a daily, imperfect treatment, not a cure. So my fear endures.

A voyage of keto discovery

I’ve discovered food substitutes, including a low-carb pasta that’s decent enough for my wife to mooch from when I make it. There are keto bread options that taste passably close to the real thing. There’s low-carb beer, almond crust pizzas and more.

But nothing comes close to the real thing, and I always feel like the odd man out when everyone else at the restaurant is twirling their pasta while I’m waltzing with my old friend, the salad.

My world changed the day I discovered an ice cream with a sugar substitute. It felt like the clouds parted, and God shone a light beam onto my head, whispering “You’ve suffered enough, son.”

I grabbed the chocolate chip mint flavour, dug in, and in one sweet, glorious instant, I was a kid again in Swensen’s ice cream parlour in Halifax. Whenever I got good grades, mom would treat me, and I would invariably order five scoops of chocolate chip mint and do my best to demolish them.

About a year after my beautiful ice cream revelation, research linked the magic ingredient to an increase in heart attack and stroke. My newfound relationship with ice cream ended in bitter divorce.

Hope springs eternal

I know that no matter what I do, my blood sugar isn’t going to improve dramatically anymore. There’s a good chance it’ll head in the opposite direction eventually. But I’m an optimist. There’s a lot of money driving research, and I live in hope that one day we’ll find a cure, not a treatment.

I can see that day clearly in my mind’s eye. I know the ice cream parlour I’ll visit. I can see the scoops of chocolate chip mint lined up. I can taste the first bite, and once more — for one glorious moment — I’ll become a little boy again, with a warm joy spreading through me.

Until then, I’ll keep on keto.

Tags blood, blood sugar, diabetes, diet, keto, ketogenic, life, sugar

Life Thoughts

A Piece of Cake

Illustration By Alex Deadman-Wylie for the Globe and Mail

View this post at the Globe and Mail.
Illustration by Alex Deadman-Wylie.

He said it as if he were a little boy, not an 86-year-old man.

“Are we having chocolate cake?”

My first instinct was to blurt out, “I bought you lunch, set it out nicely, and that’s not enough?!”

I bit my tongue. I’m young enough to lose my cool but old enough to know better. It was the kind of question a little boy or an old man like my father might ask if they don’t understand the subtleties of a situation. The little boy will learn, but the old man has forgotten. The world is opening up for one of them, and they’re picking up on things like social niceties and expressing gratitude. The world is becoming smaller for the other as it coalesces around them, and they’re less able to think and see beyond their immediate circumstances.

I was angry, and it showed, but it had nothing to do with Dad. I had just received a text from my wife about an unexpected $6,000 tax bill. I was frantically trying to think of what had gone wrong, how I managed to miss it, and how I was going to explain all that to my wife. It pushed every other thought out of my head as I walked to pick up lunch. The last thing on my mind was dessert.

Getting takeout was one of the few things I could do for him since I lived so far away. One of my sisters who still lives in town was our family’s boots on the ground, shouldering the weekly slog of dad’s doctor appointments, medical consultations, finances and other responsibilities. Picking up chicken and chips a few times was the least I could do when I was around.

Visits often centred on me fixing his computer problems until dementia stole his ability to operate one. Then our time together focused on watching Blue Jays reruns, until he lost the ability to operate a remote control. At that point, he would get hopelessly mired in on-screen menus until he started falling asleep and I would steal the remote before it slipped to the floor.

In May I got “the call,” the one everyone dreads but can’t avoid. The first call was that he had fallen, broken his hip and was in hospital. The second was about a cancer that had been detected, and that he was considered too frail for surgery. I flew to Halifax two days later.

Funny things go through your head when loved ones are dying. There’s regret, anger, bargaining and all kinds of crazy emotions.