If you are (ahem) old enough to recall the Ed Sullivan Show, then if I mention the words “Italian acrobats with spinning plates”, you will know exactly what I’m talking about. For the less ‘elderly’ among Aunt Toby’s readers, suffice it to say that this family group had a hilarious act whereby they set up poles with plates spinning at the tops and they ran about the stage, back and forth, making sure the plates were spinning and not falling to smash on the floor. The big finale was their all picking up the poles and catching the plates. Voila!!
Well, sometimes, Aunt Toby feels that way about KCE. I have to make sure to keep some of the ongoing things up in the air and revisiting them from time to time before they..well, they won’t go smash on the floor, but the story may not be fresh or interesting any longer and all of my little buggers might lose interest.
So, this post is a bit of a catch up. (more…)
Aunt Toby has written before about credit cards, their use, abuse, and the almost preternatural ability of people to create large weights of debt with which they can NOT continue to conduct their financial lives. 
I was reading a blog the other day (Aunt Toby reads far, far too many blogs) and the writer was discussing the fact that her hours at work had been cut back to 4 days a week. She did not discuss what that was going to mean to her family in terms of the change in income, but what else she might do with the time. 
Recently, I talked about ‘rehearsing” your brain for job loss. Aunt Toby believes in the pragmatic and salutary effects of working through your own ‘worst case’ scenarios and coming up with answers.
As much as I love traditional chicken soup (aka “Jewish Penicillin”), once I discovered Chinese Hot and Sour Soup when I was in college, I realized what a superior therapy (at least from an upper respiratory standpoint) Hot and Sour Soup is. No matter how clogged up my sinuses get, they can’t withstand the combination of hot liquid, pepper and vinegar that makes up the essence of Hot and Sour Soup. 
Scarlet O’Hara might have said, “I’ll think about that tomorrow,” but Aunt Toby’s readers may also recall the ‘make me a dress out of the green curtains’ scene where she also said, “I’m going to Atlanta for that three hundred dollars, and I’ve got to go looking like a queen.”
This blogging thing can get a little strange at times. Recently, a female blogger from Think Progress was followed by two Orcs from Fox across the entire northern portion of Virginia just so that they could leap out at her and harass her with a camera and questions. I figured I was safe here at Chez Siberia – this is the sort of place The Unibomber would pick to hide out…if he wanted to hide out in plain sight. 
Today, Aunt Toby wants you to think of our little meeting place here as Kitchen Counter Gymnasium. We’re going to talk today about getting more strength into our lives … at home.
I realize this sounds like a version of “Take out your handkerchiefs”, but again, Aunt Toby is going to tell you to make a list. This is going to seem a little bit…weird, but bear with me here. You’ll need paper and at least two colors of pens or markers or highlighters™.
