Uh-oh...

We've got a couple bottles of wine in the house. 

Apparently that's going to be a good thing.

Are we beyond the turn-around point?

One of my dear aunts called me on the phone yesterday, to ask about my brother who just had lung surgery, amongst other topics.  My Aunt really isn't my "aunt" in technical terms.  She is actually my cousin but back in the days when I was a child, we always called those women relatives who were quite a bit (at least 20 yrs) older than we were by the term "Aunt".  That's what I was taught to do back then & that's what I do now... she's my Aunt Shirley & that's that.  My mother had 7 brothers & sisters and Aunt Shirley was the child of my mom's oldest sister, Aunt Julie.  There are only a few years difference between Aunt Julie's child & Aunt Julie's youngest sibling, my Aunt Charlotte.  So if I had to call Charlotte by the term Aunt, then I suspect they figured I might as well call my cousin, who was about the same age, by the term Aunt also. 

Works for me and always has.

The older I get (I'm 54 now... turning 55 this summer) the closer in kindredship I feel towards my "Aunt" Shirley.  She & I have a lot more in common now than we've ever had previously.  Age has a tendency to do that, doesn't it.  We both pretty much run our lives the same, very similar to the way our parents did... homemade suppers, Laundry Day Mondays, calling on the phone to find out how relatives are feeling after surgeries, sending get well cards via the post office rather than cyberspace.  After we got caught up on the medical updates of folks in the family, we ventured to the top of the good ole days... a sure sign that both of us are indeed getting older!!

We talked about the "meal train" that every woman could expect to roll in to her household during the couple weeks after a major surgery or birthing a baby.  That was just something that friends/family did for friends/family.  No one had the money to buy fast food every night for 2 weeks & even if they did, fast food gets pretty tasteless after a couple days of it.  So women would get together with each other (over the telephone) and each signed up for providing a meal on the day of their choice.  When it was our turn to cook, we ALWAYS made our very best... our specialty... to take over to the family in need.  Yes, that was probably a prideful thing but that's simply the way it was then.  All women took pride in their cooking, cleaning & homemaking skills. 

Today things like that simply don't happen.  At least not very often.  My Aunt Shirley & I discussed that awhile, trying to come up with reasons things have changed so drastically in the last 3 decades or less.  I told her I personally think it's money and people having just too dang much of it these days.  She thinks people are spoiled, not wanting to resort to what someone else decided they are going to have for supper.  Another idea was that most people have "virtual" friends & the true, flesh-and-blood friends simply don't exist in folks' world of reality.  It's so easy to send a "get well" email or comment to someone, upon hearing of their surgery, and leave it go at that.  No one really wants to invest their time (time = themselves) in anything other than what they want to do.  Doing something for someone else? Making a self-sacrifice for someone else? 

Don't. Think. So.    

As I told my Aunt Shirley, I don't think people are hungry enough... or destitute enough... or needy enough... or despairing enough... to understand the importance of neighbors, friends, & family.  Times just plainly are not bad enough (yet) to understand what sharing a meal with a neighbor means.  Your own refrigerator has to be empty at home, before you really understand how wonderful it is to sit down at your neighbor's table for a good, wholesome, homecooked meal (complete with dessert).  You have to be without an operational vehicle before you really understand how generous it was for your retired Uncle Joe to pick you up, take you to the doctor's office for your appointment, and wait outside in the car until you're finished.  You have to be without any clothes for your child who just had a growth spurt, and without the money to buy any new ones, before you realize what a true blessing that a bag of hand-me-down clothes from a friend really is.  You have to be in an awful lot of pain after a major surgery, with people in the household whose stomachs are growling & the family purse empty & you just not able to get up to stand at the stove to fry some eggs for sandwiches, to realize how closely a pot of chili delivered to your doorstep by a dear friend really does resemble a meal fit for a King & Queen.

Many folks in our society, of the younger generation especially, feel they don't need anything or anybody in order to survive.  Or sadly enough, maybe they don't even know any better & don't understand that people helping people is the only way any of us survive on this earth.  

Maybe they don't realize because they've never heard of Matthew 25:45 "I can guarantee this truth: Whatever you failed to do for one of my brothers or sisters, no matter how unimportant they seemed, you failed to do for me."

Maybe because, in this land of plenty, most folks don't think they need God either.  I wonder if we're beyond the point of being able to turn that around?

Crunching the ca$h...

I remember when I used to borrow money from my mom back-in-the-day. The amounts would vary and I'd always pay her back, usually on payday. When I'd drive over & hand her the cold hard cash, she'd respond in the same way every time. She'd say: "Ohhh, here we are, Ang... with our high finance again!" and she'd chuckle & take the money from me. I'm not quite sure what that meant but it always struck me as funny too so I'd laugh as well.

I've been thinking a lot about those days since the beginning of this new year. We had a lot of medical bills come up from Oct'09 through Oct'10, the biggest two being my abdominal surgery in Dec'09 (~$34,000) & my bat bite with subsequent rabies vaccination series ending in Oct'10 (~$8,000). Yes, we have insurance but boy, it's not nearly as good ($4,000 deductible) as it used to be & we're paying more for it now than in years gone by. The same ole story for most things we purchase, I suppose. It seems the gap in agreement between insurance companies & medical providers is getting larger & more cavernous by the year. Regardless, when the bottom line is stated it's stated & that's what you owe. Period. The nice thing is that most hospitals have a timed payment plan with no interest accrued. See, there really IS a silver lining to most clouds!

Add the medical bills to the fact that my husband didn't get a raise (no one did, at his place of employment) in 2008. His bonus (which is supposed to compensate him for the miriad of overtime he works on a weekly basis & which we use every year to play "catch up" on any medical bills or outstanding charge card balances) in 2007 was used for our oldest daughter's wedding... then there was no bonus either (in addition to no raise) in 2008... and both the 2009 & 2010 bonuses were used to pay off my mother's funeral (in 2008).

All these things added together mean only one thing: it's time to crunch the numbers & go down to "bare bones" to try & have some $$ leftover at the end of the month to begin to chip away at the outstanding bills that have accumulated. So that's been one of my main focuses, as chief cook & bottle washer & money manager around here, since we rang in the new year of 2011.

The ideas I've come up with & things I've started incorporating into our home & my routine are really nothing foreign or new to me. I had just sort-of laid some of them aside, for various asundry reasons. Luckily I didn't forget where I put them :-) so they were very easy to find once again. I'll share a few of these things with you, in case you might like to try them yourselves. WARNING: some of these things are really rather 'back to the land' - type stuff, which may appeal to you or may not. Take what you can use & let the rest blow away in the wind. Someone who lives downwind will catch what you've cast aside & use it for themselves, so don't worry.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

1. I'll get the most shocking one out of the way first... I've stopped driving! *gasp* I drove one time this year & that was January 3rd. I haven't driven since. I am simply at home. Our youngest daughter went from being homeschooled to attending a church-based learning co-op (which uses A.C.E. paces for their curriculum) from Sept'10 - Dec'10. The co-op being unsatisfactory in every aspect of education, we switched her over to a parochial 'regular' school in the middle of Dec'10 & which she continues with today (& loves). But with the switch from homeschooling to out-of-the-home schooling, my hypertension (which I've had almost all of my adult life) went caflooey with my blood pressure skyrocketing & my head feeling like a solid rocket booster waiting for take-off! Too much tension, too much running, too much everything... and my body began sending out a warning that something had to give. I discussed it with my husband (who works from home - same company for 29 yrs & does same work but from home now instead of at the division building that closed back in 2008) and so now either my husband or our 23 yr old son has taken over transportion of Caboose. They also do any shopping I need done or any errands I need run. Which basically means that only the very minimum of trips are made, off the homestead here, because I don't know about your men but my men don't like going anywhere with a list in their hands. With gasoline over $3/gal now, that translates to less gas used than when I used to drive and also less $$ spent. The men get what's on the list: no more & no less. If they're sent on an errand, it's to accomplish that errand & get home. Period. Which leads to....

2. I'm back to using food & supply storage, buying staples in bulk, making the majority of our food solely from scratch, using dehydrated fruits & vegetables rather than fresh, always eating at home, etc. I was first introduced to this way of living back in the 1980s, when it was most popular for my generation. There were many magazines being published, at that time, that helped women learn to do such things as bake bread, store flour & sugar bought in #25 bags, and find beef by the quarter or half steer for the deep freezer kept in the garage. I soaked up the information like a sponge & never released it, even though I may not have always used it. I had indeed forgotten though the joys of: a.) eating good bread whose number of ingredients you can count on one hand b.) always having toilet paper in the house rather than running out after using the 4-roll pack just purchased a week ago c.) not going into a panic because we're down to the last quart of milk (in the middle of a snow storm) and just whipping up another gallon from the milk powder on the shelf d.) simply having the safe & secure feeling of knowing that my family has everything they need under our roof, to exist comfortably for quite awhile, without having to run to the grocery store first and e.) being self-sufficient in a small sense. Which leads to...

3. Since my men (I think like most) don't particularly relish being sent on errands with l-o-n-g lists in hand, I've been using Amazon.com quite a bit for my bulk buying. If some of you haven't tried them yet, for groceries, I sure wish you would. The bargains are tremendous (much cheaper than the grocery store, for most things I order and, if not cheaper, then exactly the same) and your groceries get delivered right to your door... for free. They have a beautiful organic section too. I still belong to a food co-op (that uses United National Foods Inc.) which I get many perishable items from like eggs, milk, cheese, yogurt, 25# bags of flour & sugar, etc. But for the other things such as dish soap, bar soap, laundry soap, toilet paper, paper towels, cereal, tea, coffee, waxed paper sandwich bags, shampoo and many other things, I use Amazon exclusively. For my dehydrated fruits, vegetables & milk powder I use Emergency Essentials. Their Provident Pantry-brand of powdered milk is the best we've ever tried! Our 23 yr old son, who is the milk expert in the household, can't tell the difference... and went out of his way to tell me so.

4. Back in the 1980s I learned how very important it is to drink fresh, clean, pure water. If our nation's water supply was polluted back then, imagine what it is now! *sigh* We have well water where we are, out in the county, that I refuse to drink out of the tap. I don't think drinking water out of the ground is good for anyone living anywhere these days. So for the last several years we've been drinking distilled water through a delivery service, which comes to the house here every 2 weeks with 5 gallon containers. It's good water & I feel good about myself & my family drinking it... but it's horribly very expensive... over $100/mo. for the water plus the rental on the dispenser. We're going to be phasing out that delivery service since we just invested in a Berkey Water Purifier, which I remember reading about in my early back-to-the-land days in the 80s. I did some research and it seems that the Berkey filters are just as good today as they were back then, if not better. Gravity drip filtration with no electricity used, which is a plus as well.

5. We're in the process of deciding what to do about these cell phones of ours. Yes, they're handy but are they necessary? Are they worth the cost? I've never seen any statistics that show how many adolescent or adult children have been saved from their kidnappers by being able to use their cell phones from their captor's car truck (which is the scenario we envision when we see our son heading out for the evening or learn of our married daughter walking out to the parking lot after working late). All I ever hear on the news is that police have tracked the cell phone "pings" to specific areas and then lost them, after the person is kidnapped, or they've found that the victim's cell phone has been turned off & therefore is no use to those searching. The only thing we use our cell phones for is to text our youngest, from us in the living room to her in her bedroom, telling her it's time to get ready for bed... or hubby to call me from the grocery store because he can't find the specific item I have on the list he's holding on to for dear life... or son to text me about a song that just played on the radio that he's sure I would absolutely love... or Facebook to update youngest daughter with the lastest news on which one of her friends updated their status last. The only time I can honestly say I was grateful to have my cell phone with me was when I spun out on the highway in Jan'09, with 4-month-old grandbaby in the car, & we were buried deep in a ditch in the median. I called my husband, barely able to talk but physically unharmed (as was grandbaby), and he in turn called the police. I suppose though, if I hadn't had my cell phone, I would have simply done what I would have done before cell phones even existed: I would have rolled down my window, waved a white napkin retrieved from the glove compartment, and waited for a trucker to call the police on his CB radio. The weather was horrible that day, with multiple spin-outs, so the chances are good that a policeman going by would have seen me before the trucker would have even had the chance to call. Our monthly cell phone bill is $145 (no internet, no apps, no games... just plain phone with unlimited texting, free incoming calls, free evenings & weekends, $10 per line after the 1st line) & it kills me every month when I pay it. Our house phone is $32/mo., including tax. Why do we need anything more than that?!

That's where we're at for the time being. We're only 3 weeks into the new year so I'm sure I'll figure out more ways to "cut the fat" around here. For now this is enough. Maybe I'll hunt up my "Tightwad Gazette" books. I know they're around here somewhere.  I love those things... and I love Amy Dacyczyn!

Another day of creativity

Something is in the wind. I can feel it deep inside.  Perhaps it is my Creator urging me on, to experience the joy of creating... even if it is only a minutely miniscule fraction of the joy He felt when creating me.

A treat for today...

Give yourself a real treat today by watching this video.  I believe you'll be inspired to be creative (if you have never been before)... or to be re-creative (if your creativity juices have run a little dry)... or continue to be creative (with whatever outlet you use to express that part of who you are). I believe we often leave our creativity go, as the last piece of ourselves that we nurture, because we feel we don't have the time, the money, the energy, the space. Make the time~ find the money~ save up some energy~ designate a space... to create. It will be one of the lasting legacies we leave on this planet, for those who follow us. 

Son-in-love's birthday

It's son-in-love's birthday coming up so I wanted to get his card mailed out today. I wasn't sure what to give him this year because:

#1 - his b/d is so close to Christmas & I pretty much exhausted him his gift suggestion list for that

#2 - 2011 is going to be the Year of Extreme Poverty Frugality around here.

We have a bazillion medical bills we must catch up on (from my major abdominal surgery a year ago & my bat bite with subsequent rabies vaccination series this past summer), a couple charge cards that need to be paid-off, and (2) 15-year-old vehicles that will undoubtedly need some decision-making done about them sometime this year.

I came up with the idea of putting a 2011 Ed Hume Moon Sign Gardening Almanac ($1.79) inside his birthday card envelope, with the free flower seed packet that came with it, and also including a "coupon" for a free overnight babysitting stay for grandbaby. Pete is a stay-at-home husband/daddy so I know he'll really appreciate that, probably more than most son-in-loves. (He also loves to spend time outside, digging in the dirt, like me!)

Rather than simply buying him a Moon Sign Gardening Almanac, I wish we could have bought him the moon itself. But if wishes were horses, beggars would ride... wouldn't they.

Happiness Journal

I love the idea of making a Happiness Journal for 2011. The folks over at Letters & Journals wrote a blog entry about it & the idea has stuck with me.

It's a quite simple project, actually, and can be as elaborate or as plain as suits a person's personality, I suppose. The object is to start a scrapbook-like journal of things that make us happy in 2011: pictures, articles, quotes, memories from the past, people. Whatever it is that "puts a smile on our face & a warm feeling in our heart".

The whole idea of this puts a smile on my face. Does it yours too?

I'm going to do this. I'll post pictures! :-) If you decide to participate as well, leave a comment here... especially if you blog about it & are going to post pictures as well.

What a bit of happiness, to experience & record, for 2011.

Looking ahead to 2011...

On my retired blog I wrote a post about three things I wasn't inviting to follow me into 2011. One was negativism, another was Facebook & the third was other people's rules. I had already changed my mind about Facebook & fully intended on inviting it to usher in 2011 with me. But for some reason it banned me from inviting my friends back to my friends list... something about "inviting too many people I didn't know" (why would I do that??!!). Then, I logged-in on Wednesday night & all the folks I had managed to get back on my friends list were gone! Vanished into thin air & I'm back to having the original 8 kids-neighbors-friends I had started with, on my friends list. So I'm taking that as a sure sign that I'm supposed to stick to my original "not welcoming into 2011" list.... which included Facebook.

Now that I've got the short "not following me into 2011" list finished, I've been really concentrating about the other list... the "things I am inviting back for 2011" list. This may also include things that have never seen the light-of-day in my life but really do want to see present... either for 2011 only or maybe forever. Who knows. Anyway, here's my list of invited things for 2011. Do you recognize any that you would like to follow you into 2011 as well? I bet you do! That's what makes us blogging buddies! That's what makes you come here & read my blog.... because we have ideas, thoughts, beliefs, goals, hobbies, interests in common.

Or maybe you just like to hear what I have to say? That would be an honor if that was the case. You surely will find an eclectic cornucopia of topics discussed here, that's for sure. I'm pretty passionate about what I believe in & I'm old enough to know what I believe in too. My causes are well-rooted in my heart. But causes are not what's going to be on my "invited things for 2011" list. It's other stuff...things that might have been lacking in my life, things that might be non-existent right now in my life, things that I had forgotten about but want to un-forget about for 2011. Let's see what they are (in no particular order):


1. Art-creativity-hobbies: I've read in various outlets that nurturing the artist in ourselves is good for keeping our brain sharp & our mental well-being in a positive state. For his doctoral thesis, psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi studied how visual artists create art & he found that not only artists deeply involve themselves in their work but so does everyone who is concentrating & intent on whatever they're doing... surgeons, chess players, rock climbers, dancers, musicians. Dr.Csikszentmihalyi found they all "forget themselves, the time, their problems" while engaging in their activity. That's why hobbies are so important in our lives, it seems to me. Anytime we are being artistic... letting our creativity juices flow... we are forgetting about our problems for awhile, therefore having a temporary respite from them. This probably makes our adrenaline pump slow down, our blood pressure decrease, our muscles relax, as well as giving us some right-sided brain exercise. I need much more of this in my life than has been present for a long long time. I intend on inviting my hobbies (some known & maybe some not developed yet) back into my life for 2011.

2. Time in actual reality: I can hear a lot of you reading this saying "Yessssssss". I think we're all in the same boat regarding our immersion in cyber reality. How did that start... do you know? I remember when we got our first computer & became connected to cyberspace. It was 1996 & I distinctly remember not believing my eyes in how fast information came on my screen & not understanding where it was coming from! From that very first day forward a certain percentage of my day has been spent in cyber reality... a percentage of my day in actual reality sacrificed - exchanged - reassigned... to a tan box with a screen. Lest I make it sound like cyberspace has been a total negative in my life, let me assure you it has not. Far from it!! I have connected with some of the most amazingly awesome people I have ever encountered or would have ever encounter otherwise, on this little two acres of mine out here in the woods. Blogging fits right up there with #1 above in allowing me a creative, artistic outlet & I wouldn't trade it for the world. But I have allowed the tan box, which is now updated to black, to overtake entirely too much of my actual reality & I'm sacrificing way too much because of that. I need more of a balance in my life & I need to reconnect once again with the actual reality things in my life... the things that were all I had before 1996. I've missed them & I want to embrace them once again.

3. Playing in the dirt: I love... completely, with my whole body & soul... dirt - nature - Mother Earth - trees - wind - sky - the changing seasons - sun on my skin - working outside - getting filthy, sweaty & sore - birds chirping - hearing squirrel nails against the bark of a tree - colorful things growing - lawn mowers mowing - grills grilling - clouds rolling in - storms coming... absolutely positively everything about outside I love. I didn't get enough of that in 2010 but that's definitely going to change in 2011. I can't survive without that change.

4. Home improvements: I do my housework each & every week but I (we?! my man & I?!) haven't been keeping up with home improvements... those little (& sometimes big) things that need to be done or they pile up so badly that it then takes thou$and$ of dollar$ & hundreds of hours to make the pile disappear. The kitchen sink & faucet in our side of the house needs to be replaced... many rooms need a fresh coat of paint... some carpet needs to be ripped up & some other flooring put down... and the list goes on. I want to do a few of those things in 2011. I want to notice a few of those things more, in 2011, than I did in 2010 (or 2009 or 2008 or 2007 or....). I think in this category also falls "decluttering". I started that this year but I intend to continue in 2011. Isn't FreeCycle the most wonderful thing?! :-)

5. National/International News: I'm staying out of it in 2011. No DrudgeReport, no CNN, no nothin'. I've decided I don't need to know our nation's or our world's problems. I've got enough of my own. I fully intend on spending 2011 being clueless about everything being played out on the news. If you readers think there's a crisis or calamity I really ought to know about, for my own safety or the safety of my loved ones, put it in the comments somewhere, ok? Thanks. :-)

6. Delving into the interior of myself: Sounds complicated, doesn't it. It does to me too. I think it's just because I don't quite understand what it means but others do & I want what they have - know - can do. No, it's not just reading the Bible & it's not just going to church & it's not just "making time for God" each day & it's not just following rules and regulations & it's not just ______ (fill in the blank yourself). It's much more than that... but I'm not sure what "that" is or how to get there. By the end of 2011 I hopefully will though. I'll share my journey here, on the pages of my blog. Maybe you'll learn to delve into your innards too, if you have such a desire & don't know how already.


That's it. Double the number of things I'm bringing with me into 2011 than I'm leaving behind in 2010. I wonder if that means something?

Probably not.

Time for new beginnings...

January 1, 2011

A time for new beginnings...

...and a new blog.

This is a picture of me & my beloved, taken last evening when we went out for dinner on New Year's Eve.  Son (23) & his girlfriend came with us as did our little Caboose (daughter-13).  Caboose is who took this picture.

I wore this dress on the very first New Year's Eve that my beloved & I were together.  We were both 18 years old at the time & so very much in love.  We wed 4 months later... 10 months after we first met.  We'll be married 35 years this coming April 24th.

I loved this dress the moment I slipped it on, back in 1975.  I love it today just the same.  However, my love for the boy, back then, who bought it for me is very different than my love for the man today.  

I love the man more deeply... more meaningfully... more truly... more unconditionally... more completely... more intimately... more understandingly... more appreciatively... than I could have ever loved the boy who shyly went into The Lady Shop uptown (long ago closed & out-of-business... having gone the way of the uptown itself) & told the clerk that he wanted to buy a dress for his girlfriend.... 

..."and she's about your size".