Green Thumb 2 and a Mommy Moment

Since my garden adventure turned into such a massive nose dive I have undertaken a few projects to get me through the winter. I bought a composter and have been using it to make my own compost. Well, actually I've been putting our produce garbage in there hoping it turns into compost, but that's the same thing really. right? I just collect all my scraps here and then every day or two I go dump them in the composter. No more than 48 hours. This was mandated by DH, who thinks any longer is disgusting. I'm not going to fight him on this because I want to keep a happy home and frankly I'm not sure what arguing that would make of me as a person.

I have also been cultivating these lovely indoor plants, a bunch of ivy, a lily looking thing and a wedding something or other plant that my sister got me for our wedding almost 6 years ago and is the only thing I haven't killed besides actual family members. DH also just bought me an indoor lemon tree and orange tree (Isn't he amazing!?) I am really looking forward to growing these and getting the fruit, I can't wait! I did have to do some serious triage this week on the poor things though. I was in the kitchen doing dishes and the boys were playing quietly in the living room. Seriously, two years now and I still don't remember that playing quietly is usually a bad sign! I finish up my work and go check on my angelic children who are probably reading books, or building replicas of the Empire State building. Nope! My living room was covered, and I mean COVERED in black potting soil. 20'x20' of dirt. and there on the arms of the couch, on either side of my precious trees were the dirty little culprits. They each had found a measuring cup and realized that if you fill it up with dirt and hold on to the handle you can fling the dirt backwards over your head and it goes everywhere! Fun! Like a slingshot for dirt! I just sat there for a minute and then I think I screamed. It's all a little fuzzy. I won't bore you with the details of the 2 hour long cleanup, but I think the plants survived, and so did the kids. I'm hanging in there too. :)

This was taken in October, I don't normally decorate with evil looking pumpkins.

Green Thumb

This is my tomato. Yes it's green, dead and frozen...but it's mine. I grew it! This year was going to be the year of the garden! I was so excited! I saw myself coming in with a big basket of fresh produce on my arm, working in the sunshine in the fresh earth while the boys played with our Saint nearby. Notice in this daydream that they are playing happily instead of flinging rocks at each other while St. Bernard chases the terrified neighbors down the street. That would have been reality, but this was so much more! I would make beautiful whole-foods dinners and we would eat all organic produce that we grew ourselves... amazing! Wonderful! Fulfilling!

Then reality intervened in the form of two things:

1. To grow a garden you have to be physically present for more than a week. Crap.

2. Our house is apparently constructed on a massive slab of clay where not even the most desperate weeds will grow.

 

I thought I could correct problem number two by hauling in topsoil, which I did. This turned out to be slightly fluffier, darker clay. After planting several varieties of lettuce, carrots, onion, cucumbers, watermelon, peppers and cantaloupe- nothing so much as sprouted. They all just stayed tucked away in their own little shells. Millennia from now they will probably develop into big, healthy, thriving produce, but for now they aren't budging! I did however get some hearty radishes and this tomato.. just the one. And actually I didn't get any radishes, but the tops grew, so I got what looked like radishes without the actual radishes. If I had actually been here this summer I might have been able to help the process along, but I'm too much of a travel junkie for that. I should have known something was wrong when I finally came out to check on everything three months later and there weren't even any weeds growing! And yes, I know what you're thinking, I did have them on a watering system. So I will try again next year. I'm planning on bringing in compost by the truck loads, wish me luck!

Thank goodness for store bought!

Master Jimmy-Rigger

I am the cheapest person alive. This is probably one of my biggest flaws/assets, well, one of them. I hate to spend money, and if I do spend, I hate to spend more than I need to. I've always been like this, when all the other girls in highschool were blowing their college savings on a pair of jeans I was shopping at Goodwill. It's amazing I wasn't socially ostracized for such blasphemy! As an adult this trait has given me a rather unusual skill - "Jimmy rigging". I didn't come up with that name, I'm not really even sure where I heard it, but it fits. So what does this look like? It's basically this; rather than buy something when the old one breaks, I just go to any length to fix the old one or make a new one on my own. I'm getting pretty good at it to. It culminated this week when I saw these cloth diaper liners online. They're amazing! You just put the liner in the diaper (cloth diaper obviously) and when it gets soiled just drop it in the toilet and flush it! No more scrubbing diapers! And only $15 per roll! Wait... what? It looks like a roll of toilet paper... for $15. hmmmm. Not happening. So I started jimmy rigging, surely there must be something that would work just as well, right? Tried toilet paper folded in half- that did Not work, then I tried a soft paper towel folded in half. That did work! I'm still perfecting the system but so far so good. Jimmy rigged, but who's gonna know!? I also have discovered white duct tape, it's amazing! You can fix anything and it looks great! Our blinds broke last week, right along the top... white duct tape to the rescue, you'd never even know! It is also the only thing holding our baby gate together at the moment, I mean seriously, I've got two boys and a St Bernard, it's amazing that it's still vertical! I've re-used old canisters as flower pots and am currently making some tin cans into candle holders for Diwali (more on that later). When it became obvious that the boys were going to smash our glass coffee table I took it apart and turned it into a mosaic top with cardboard base. It's funky and functional, not perfect, but better than broken glass! The good news is that all this thriftyness comes in handy when money's tight, and it's better for the environment. That's right- I was green before green was cool! :)

Marriage

So my little sister is talking about getting married- wow! It is such a weird feeling to see your baby sister talking about wanting to get married and have kids. "I'm just ready to grow up" she said. I'm proud of her for being in that place, but wondering what marriage has to do with that. I got married when I was 21 to my best friend and life has been exciting ever since. We have our ups and downs, but usually they're together, which is all you can really ask for out of marriage I think. One thing that has strengthened us a lot is that we both got out and saw the world before we settled down (some people would say that we still haven't "settled down") but baby sis hasn't really done that. Do people need those experiences? For me they have been Vital with a capital V. When I'm walking the house at 2 am with a screaming baby for the 15th night in a row, I mentally check out and there I am on a canal in Venice, in the villa we lived in for 4 months in Tuscany, Barcelona, my beach in Hawaii... wherever I want to go. It keeps me sane and we add to that experience list as much as possible. I would just really hate to think that someone I love might be getting married because that's the only thing to do. When you never leave the place you were born- the world is just so small. On the other hand I have really seen her bloom over the last few years. I don't know if it's because of her boyfriend, who seems really great or just her own process of development, but she has become an even cooler person than I thought she would be. What do you think? Do you need to see the world before settling down, or is that over-rated?

** This image was can be found at http://www.bridalwave.tv they're made by Beaucoup- so cute!**

High Fructose Corn Syrup- Yum!

What is going on with high fructose corn syrup??? I understand that people have differing views on this subject, and I have spent some time researching, and after everything I prefer not to feed it to my family. I think it's downright bad, and I'll explain why in a minute. I had an interesting discussion with my sister in law about it recently because I am getting so irritated. It all started when I was trying to buy raisins for my kids at the grocery store. It took 10 minutes to find the one and only brand that didn't include HFCS. On top of that, all the other dried fruit had it as the second ingredient. It's dried fruit for heavens sake, it doesn't even need a sweetener! By the time I was going through all the Applesauce I thought my head was going to explode! If I fed my kids junk, like pop and candy, I would probably just accept that it's going to be in there. But fruit, dairy, bread, and whole wheat crackers? Is there nothing sacred??? My SIL pointed out that the FDA says that HFCS is both safe and "all natural" and that it's really just a sweetener like sugar. Am I the only one not buying this? This is the same organization that allows 7-Up to be labeled "all natural"! She also showed me a website explaining how natural it is and sure enough, there at the bottom of the page was "sponsored by the corn growers of America". I actually tried to find that site just now and it's not on the main search engines anymore, so it must not have worked out too well for them! I'm all for corn, I like corn, but that is NOT corn!!! So here was the clincher for me, my Aunt has been in nursing for years and she recently attended a seminar to keep up her nursing license. It was all about obesity and nutrition and they devoted a whole hour to the side effects of HFCS. In a nutshell, as a chemically altered substance, your body can't digest it like sugar, so it immediately stores it into fat. It also spikes your blood sugar levels more than regular sugar leading to a whole host of problems. The presenter explained that since HFCS is so common in cheaper foods, they believe this may be one of the reasons that lower income families struggle more with obesity! I'd believe it to, I mean what's cheaper- a 50cent box of Mac n cheese or a bag of organic apples!? Even organic Mac n cheese is about 5 times as expensive, which is really sad. I'm really hoping that as awareness grows we'll be able to use our spending dollars to vote for all natural products and get rid of this stuff. At any rate, even if it didn't hurt you (which is does), I'm pretty sure it doesn't help. I seriously doubt they are going to come out in 25 years and say, "'we've just discovered that people who ate HFCS have higher IQ's and live longer! Doubtful! 

Mommy Moment

When I woke up this morning to a nice thick blanket of snow on the ground (our first snow of the year as a matter of fact!) it took me back to a morning just like this one year ago. My oldest son had just turned two and my baby was only a few months old. I woke up just as dawn was breaking and all was quiet... a little too quiet :) (I couldn't resist). I was taking a few moments of the oh so sweet quiet time, and I could just barely hear my 2 year old talking quietly in his room. After a few minutes I went in to get him ready for the day. I opened the door and WHAM! the smell hit me! You know the smell... that's right... number 2. Not the best part of waking up. The next thing that hit me was the site of my little man, buck naked... bum clean. Hmmmmmm. A little digging unearthed the diaper which was stuffed down the heating vent in the room and was indeed soiled. Cleaned out the heating vent, found the blanket he had used as a wash cloth, ok, crisis solved. No big deal. I walked over to open up the blinds and let the sunlight in... but the beautiful sunlight was blocked, by what looked like a massive chocolate pudding finger painting on the window. Not just on the window, but frozen solid to the window. My poor husband woke up to find me in my pajamas, hair askew, using a hair dryer and spoon to chip frozen poop off the window at the butt crack of dawn! Such is the joy of motherhood! What's your greatest Mommy moment?

Do it yourself Religion!

As I am now a rookie heathen I have been struggling with what to teach my two amazing children. They are still very small, but it won't be long before they will want to know where we come from, why we're here, etc. As I referenced in my last post I feel at home searching for global truths rather than subscribing to one pre packaged religion. However, I haven't been too sure how to raise kids this way. I believe in God, by whatever name, a powerful force of creation and spiritual guidance. I feel there is more after this life, a continual progression. I do however, see this life more as a school of learning than a test to determine pass or fail. So, in an effort to assist my little students I've come up with an idea. I found this calendar online that shows all the major religious holidays in Buddhism, Sikhism, Christianity, Judaism, Islam and Hinduism. Here is the link

http://www.salford-pct.nhs.uk/documents/EnD/ReligiousandCulturalFestivalsCalendar2009.pdf

So we are going through and celebrating every single one of them! This way my children will get a comprehensive overall education in each belief system and be able to pick out the universal truths. If at some point they feel more at home in one faith, that's A-Ok by me! So far we have celebrated Zhong Qiu, the Chinese Moon Festival. We made Chinese paper lanterns (picture) and tried to make our own moon cakes, with mixed results! Then we read the story of Hou Yi and Chang E with the boys! We also celebrated Sukkot by building our own tent and reading the story of the Exodus from Egypt. Several weeks ago we celebrated the Autumn Equinox by having a big dinner and a special fruity "Equinox cake" that I invented! It has been so much fun. Next up is Diwali, the festival of lights and I can't wait! I will keep you updated as we proceed. I think this will be a really fun way to teach our children and will hopefully result in their appreciation and acceptance of all people. I'm also really hoping that it will help them find their spiritual center in a way that feels right for them. How do you teach your children in new or unorthadox ways? I would love to hear any ideas!

Godless Heathen: Reasoning Religion

Religion has been a hot topic on my mind for the past year now, as I have recently become a heathen. Religion was very important to my family growing up. I was raised Latter-day Saint, LDS aka Mormon. We went to church every Sunday, youth group on Wednesday nights, church dances or service projects on some Saturdays and seminary every weekday morning at 6 am before school. Just writing this now it seems like so much, constant indoctrination. But at the time it was just life, that's just what you did, that's what the other kids in church did and that is what made your parents proud. There wasn't many of us in my high school so I did feel like an odd ball a lot. My main defense however was that I have always been very cerebral, very logical so it was easy for me to come up with logical explanations that made sense to the rest of the kids. Meanwhile I was struggling. I remember getting taken out of Sunday school in primary because I was asking too many questions and being argumentative. I didn't understand why the boys and girls were taught differently. They would be out playing sports, camping, etc and we would be learning to sew or good date ideas. I remember one activity we did was making quilt blocks, but they were worried we'd hurt ourselves with the sewing machines, so they had us glue the pieces together. Meanwhile the boys our age were on a rock climbing trip. I was fascinated by world culture and learned as much as I could. I loved studying Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, and so on. But at church I was being taught that it was our responsibility to spread the gospel throughout the world, to all people. This was the one true religion and they were waiting for it. Now, to me, their way of life seemed pretty great. Not to mention that one western religious philosophy would never truly fit so many diverse people and if it did it would erase all the cultural beauty I so valued. So I disagreed. It never made sense to me that god would only send one messenger to the world and simply ignore millions of people who would live and die never hearing it. Why wouldn’t he send messages to each culture, each grouping of people, each person. It makes complete sense to me that each major religion was inspired. They all point in the same direction. The little differences between them are probably the result of different thought along the way by humanity. So much of my birth religion just never made sense to me. I assumed that it would, as everyone I knew seemed to believe it whole heartedly, but I never could get the answers I needed. I was often told to just live the religion and the truth would one day manifest itself to me. Well, yeah, if you do something long enough it will start to make sense. If someone is a professional hit man or a prostitute it may feel wrong at first, but eventually it will seem normal and right. But here is the thing with religion. If you do this long enough and it doesn't work- then what? By that time you've probably been married in that religion, had children in that religion. Some people even have jobs dependant on that religion. Then you're stuck! I tried very hard for a very long time to believe but within the last few years I have lost track of why. This is a huge part of my journey towards an authentic life. I have realized that there is a divine light inside of each of us that will lead us to truth... and I'm following it. I used to be so scared of death, what if I got up there and hadn't been good enough?? What then? Now I have a strange new confidence in my heart that I can't explain. I have no idea what to expect... and for the first time I don't care, because whatever it is, I'll be ready. And if I walk into heaven and God asks me why I made the decisions I did I will know why, and I might just have a few questions of my own as well. I now have two incredible boys and am married to my best friend. I believe in God. But I am unwilling to allow my precocious little boys to be indoctrinated, to learn that their natural state is inherently wrong. To have their lifes course predetermined. But how do I raise my children to be hopeful, intuitive, intelligent, reasoning adults without the help of a religious community? What next?

Experience your life!

One of my main aims for this blog is to chronicle my journey towards fully experiencing this amazing, incredible world that we live in. Through travel, through religion, and most importantly through my family. I love traveling so much that sometimes I forget to enjoy the in between times, like yesterday. Saturday is our grocery day, a task I usually do alone, with maybe one screaming baby (Hubby and I like to divide and conquer!) Yesterday however T and I went in early with both boys and played raquetball, did the shopping and went out to eat at this little diner that we've always wanted to try. We love eating at new and unique places and this one was great. It was an old 50's style diner with little juke boxes at each table so you could pick out your own music- all the classics. They had waitresses in white shirts and pink poodle skirts and everything! We had such a great time hanging out and talking, something we don't get to do nearly enough. One of the waitresses even came up and said "Do people ever tell you, you look like a really happy family?!" Yeah, she got a big tip! That was a really cool thing to hear from someone else, because, yeah in my mind we are a pretty happy family, and it gets better every day!

Finally we know!

Well, after 4 months of waiting we finally got our answer... no. Grrr. That's life working for the government though, very slow. I just wish the news would have been better, we're ready to go home! This has made me think about what I would want my life to look like when we do get a job closer to home. The biggest thing would probably be our money arrangement. We live in a beautiful house in a beautiful neighborhood and I love it here. But it sucks every last dime out of us. We can afford it, we just can't afford anything else... like not even a snickers bar! So the first thing I would want is to buy an older, smaller fixer upper. Something we could really put our personalities into. It would need a medium to small yard so we have room for the boys to play and a really kickin garden. Then my plan is to put away $200 + every month into a travel fund and also build up our emergency savings to 6-9 months worth. If we had $200 per month, thats $2400 per year, we could do so much with that! Think if we put away $300! The truth is that I like living in one place, but my passion is travel. I would love to be one of those extended traveling families that just moves from place to place more than anything! The Cohen family did that and wrote about it in a book called "One Year Off". This was an incredible read that I would highly recommend to anyone who loves to travel, loves their family or both! This family took their three young children (one in diapers) around the world from Costa Rica to Austrailia, Middle east, and on and on. Incredible! At the very least I intend to take one full month every year and travel with my family.. something that's just not possible when we're paying so much for a house. Really for interest on a house because that's really what most of the payment is going towards! At the end of 30 years when we finally pay off a house we will have paid twice what we bought it for... and then we'll die. I'd rather spend that money on memories and experiences that I can take with me and that my boys will remember after I'm gone! So job #1 get a transfer back home #2 put plan into action!!!