Getting Back Onto the Road

We're getting more and more settled into our apartment, but a short trip out to the old house to move my father-in-law's toolboxes to my dad's garage made me remember some of the good times there. Good times picking berries and watching my husband turn them into freezer jam, pushing my son in his swing, and on and on.

We left our house because the furnace broke at the end of last winter and we couldn't afford to buy a new one. We had so many car repairs that needed done during the summer and fall that we couldn't save dollar one to put toward heating. We talked about refinancing the place and getting extra money to buy the furnace, but we didn't had very little equity. We had talked about selling our house but knew we probably wouldn't get enough to cover the mortgage, so we'd been sticking it out to see what would happen. What happened was that the value of our home fell again and we owed more on it than it was worth. That's when my husband agreed that even though we'd put roots down here and we had planted many trees there, we needed to say goodbye.

We moved into an apartment to make sure our son would have a warm place to live this winter and to save money to try our dream again in a few years.

So this is where we start saving for the future. Here is one of our biggest problems though. Even at the house we said no to satellite, internet, and kept our heat at 66 degrees and we have continued that but we still feel we don't have anything left to cut. We're breaking even now, but how do we save money without depriving ourselves of current happiness?

I do not believe in delaying happiness until a future day when everything is perfect because I know the future might never come. But I would like to save some money just in case I am here longer than my job. Especially because I would like to retire while I can still hike to mountain tops.

So my first goal of 2012 is to find out how much money I need to save in order to retire from this life and embark on one where I am a farmer, reader, and writer instead of a library assistant.

Flashbacks

I had a flashback to Middle/High School gym class last night. Not so much the visuals, but the feelings. I didn't do well in gym class. I was one of those kids that never knew the game being played and was always picked last for teams. So why did I get those feelings? I am doing a 30 day trial at a martial arts studio in my hometown and was in a room with people who would never talk to me if they weren't being told to, and I was expected to join in and do the routine even though I had never seen the routine done before. I wanted to go into the corner and cry. I wanted to stop, but I kept going. I'm not sure that continuing to do something that makes me feel like a kid is the way to get more self-esteem.

After I returned home I said to my husband, "I need to weigh whether it's worth it to be away from you guys just to feel like I'm in gym class again."

Am I willing to go back a few more times? Is this a way to find my right path? I won't know until Monday rolls around again.

Green Thumb, Here I Come

I asked myself a question Sunday afternoon, "If I could only study one thing for the rest of my life, what would it be?" Yesterday, while driving home from work, I answered my question: "Plants." Plants make the world go. Everything that happens in this world is because of plants. For far too long I have stood back, watching my husband plant, transplant, build garden boxes, and care for all the plants in our house and on our land. I said I didn't have time, but I now know the truth is that I am afraid of doing something wrong. I am afraid of killing the plant. Why? Am I afraid a great googly-eyed plant monster is going to come after me for killing a seedling? Plants are more forgiving, and tougher, than that. If you've ever tried to kill a burdock or a poke plant, then you know what I'm talking about.

It's time to really slow down, and not just hear my husband when he talks about gardening and plants, but to actually retain what he tells me so I can benefit from it. So the entire family can benefit from it.

We Have the Time

We have the time to do what's important to us. Don't believe me? Look at these examples:

• Jim C. Hines works for the State of Michigan full time so he writes his fantasy novels on his lunch hour.
• Neil Gaiman had several projects with deadlines looming, but he had a story he just needed to get out, so he wrote one page a night before going to sleep.

There are so many things I want to do that it seems impossible, but I'm working on aligning things. This morning, rather than go back to sleep when the dog woke me up a half hour early, I practiced sun salutations. I am currently writing this blog post on my lunch hour. Today I plan to vacuum my truck, which might never have been vacuumed in any of it's 10 years, because it's been driving me crazy for years that I don't have time to stop at the car wash and do it. Well, I do have time, I just need to realize and remember it. I have been getting cd's to listen to in the car because my musical tastes don't match any of the radio stations around this area and I'm tired of listening to Democracts vs. Republicians on NPR. All it takes is 2 minutes to switch out the cd's in my case but I told myself over and over again, "I don't have time, I need to leave right now." It's amazing how much better I feel listening to good music during my daily commute.

What are you going to do today that you never had time for before?

Fruits of Summer

The strawberries are done for the year, but we are now enjoying black raspberries by the handfuls during our walks and still being able to collect some for freezer jam. Plus our mulberry trees still have several berries that have barely begun to ripen.

Every night that the weather and mosquitoes permit, we take a walk on the paths in our yard. When we get near the mulberry trees he demands to be let out so he can walk over to the tree and pick himself some berries. He also enjoys eating the black raspberries, but we discourage him from picking those himself--he knows all about thorns.

I love that my son already knows where some of his food comes from. Harvesting the garden this year will be great fun for him, if he doesn't pick all the plants before they have a chance to produce.

I love the physical, fleshy, edible, fruits of summer, and the seeds of knowledge that they are planting in my son's mind. One day soon he will bear those fruits as beautifully as this summer has borne her strawberries, black raspberries, and mulberries.

To Make Life More Like Camping

Yesterday I looked around my house again. My son has too many toys, I have too many unused blank journals, we have too many dishes; there's too much stuff everywhere. I thought, "I don't need this stuff when I'm camping, why do it need it when I'm living?"

When I'm camping I can walk around without tripping over books and papers. When I'm camping, I do what needs to be done when it needs doing. When I'm camping, I am free. I want to make my regular day-to-day life more like camping. So how do I do that?

Step One: Donate everything I no longer need or love.

Step Two: Stop buying things I don't need or love--even if they're $ .49 at the thrift store.

Step Three: Clean something everyday.

Step Four: Enjoy some fires with my family.

I Am a Vegan

I have been a vegan for a few months now and I finally feel like my life is on the right path.

This is the not the first time in my life I’ve called myself a vegan. I was a vegan once before. Being a vegan was a big reason why I left my first husband who was a restaurant owner who wouldn’t take veal off the menu when I asked him to. I had read John Robbins book “Diet for a New America” and “Mad Cowboy: Plain Truth from the Cattle Rancher Who Won’t Eat Meat: by Howard F. Lyman and could not believe the horrors I was reading about and how people could do that, then perhaps the first epiphany I ever had took form and became this thought, “I’m a big part of the problem because I own a restaurant.” I quickly adopted the true, ethical vegan lifestyle. In addition to the foods I ate, none of my clothing, or cosmetics contained animal products either. I stood by my ethics until I met someone I thought I might be in love with.

I let myself forget who I was. I let myself crawl into the dark again and forget everything I knew about the meat, egg, and dairy industries because I was so insecure that I didn’t think this person could possibly love me for who I was. I tremble at the thought that he might not like me, or worse, would even make fun of me for not eating meat.

Even though I went back to eating meat, I still didn’t use cosmetics that contained animal by-products, but I do know I bought leather shoes. It’s no wonder that even though I was with this wonderful person, I was still not happy. I would often tell him, “I’m going to become a vegetarian,” and I would do it for a few weeks, then crave a cheeseburger or chicken strips and run to the bar for dinner. It’s no wonder I spent so much time beating myself up and feeling sorry for myself.

It was just before my 40th birthday when I finally figured out that I had to become at least a vegetarian again or I was going to be miserable. I was in the bathroom rescuing a spider from going down the drain, which I often do, when I had an epiphany much like the one that caused me to become a vegan so many years ago. “How can I say I love animals when I am rescuing a spider, yet continue to eat meat?” So I stopped eating meat.

I was still piling on the cheese though and eating eggs. Until I bought an issue of VegNews and then a book suggested in the magazine: Veganist by Kathy Freston. While reading  Veganist, I was reminded that the dairy and egg industries are often worse than the meat industries. I also found out that study after study shows that vegans are far, far healthier than people who consume a traditional American diet. What a great bonus, I thought.

So here I am a few months later and without even working at it, my body shape is changing and my clothes are starting to fall off me. I know I am doing the right thing and nothing is going to make me crawl back to meat.