New year musings...

OK, I have 7 minutes.

The kids are gone and I'm cleaning. Well, OK, right now I'm typing. But that's 'cause I did some cleaning and now this is my "reward"! Typing! Er, playing on the internet! For 10 minutes.

As you may know, today is New Years Eve. This is big for me. I like new years. New weeks. New months. Basically new beginnings in general. But a new YEAR... Wow, major stuff.

So, will this end like all other years? Me scrambling around to get everything perfect to enter into the year? Not quite. I will be scrambling around a bit, but more because J. has the kids and I have the house to myself and how can I *not* take advantage of that. And yes, I will be trying to get things ready (note: NOT perfect) for the new year, but I recognize it won't all get done.

So, will tomorrow start off like all other years? Me kicking myself for failing the day before and setting myself up with a mountain of unreasonably high expectations? Not quite. Knowing that I'm giving it my all today will help with the kicking, and while I *do* plan on making some 'resolutions' (for lack of a better word) I plan on doing it in a more thought out manner, going slowly, more practically, and NOT giving up the second I slip up.

OK, last minute.

I hope to put down some of my thoughts for the new year and -. I started to type "A new me" but you know what? I'm not that bad. I could use some tweaks and boosts and what not. But no. A *growing* me. Yeah. I like that...

A car conversation...

ME: Okay hon, this is gonna sound nuts, but here me out.

J: Okay.

ME: Alright. Look, I just don't want to spend so much at napkins anymore! It's nuts, I just paid $7.99 for 600 napkins and they just get thrown out. I know it's nuts but I want to use cloth napkins.

J: Okay.

ME: I mean I know that it seems - what?

J: You're right, they're expensive. That's fine.

ME: ..... Oh. So, that's it? I was already to have to convince you.

J: (Gives me a crazy look out of corner of eye.)

Economics, choices, priorities... all sorts of good stuff.

OK, first things first, if anybody actually reads this (and I'll be shocked if the do! LOL) I don't mean to tick people off. I'm just thinking aloud - er, um, on screen. Yeah.

OK, so here is the deal. I have no major issues with food stamps/WIC, etc. Heck, how do you think my mom managed for awhile. Just keep that in mind.

OK, so it started on some message board where it was mentioned that more all these people use food stamps, and people put in their 2 cents regarding the pros and cons. Good reads, made me think.

Until I ready about the organic carrots and soy milk.

Some lady said she was so glad they qualified because before she couldn't afford her organic carrots and soy milk.

Let me repeat this one more time: there is a mom out there right now using your and my tax dollars to buy organic carrots and soy milk.

If you have no issues with that, please stop reading now.

Let me go back a bit and tell you about my family. If my husband just did his job (teacher) and nothing else, we would soooo easily qualify for assistance. If he just did his job and 1/2 of the extra things he picks up, we would soooooo easily qualify for assistance. But it is our choice to have him take on lots of extra responsibility at work (and for me to do some work on the side too) and it just so happens that that puts us over the edge.

More about us: we have no cable/fancy tech toys/fancy cars (OK, we do have 1 new van, but only because we planned for it). We're boring. I use coupons and live for sales. J. shops meats on sale and bread on clearance and we freeze it. We rent books and movies from the library. We are pretty frugal.

Back to the organic carrots and soy milk.

So as I read this all I can think was, wait a minute. I would *love* to buy healthier alternatives to the foods I get. Really, I would. (Not organic or soy, but nicer fruit bars for the kids, for example.) But, because of the choices that we make regarding jobs and money, that's not an option. So... do I tell my husband to quit his extras so he can be home more AND we can get assistance??!! It truly made me question how we live out life. I mean, seriously, maybe we have this all screwed up.

Think about it:
NOW
- DH gets to work at 5:30, teaches until 2:3o, required to stay until 3:00
- after 3:00 he is either at meetings, doing clubs, taking pictures for yearbook, or bolting off to do a class
- at home after dinner and bedtime he catches up on more class work and does things for the clubs/groups
- goes out for 1 or 2 weeks in the summer and other days during the year to the capitol to work for the State Ed Dept to earn extra money
- also has yearbook late nights/Model UN overnights
- money is snug!

OTHER WAY
- DH could go to school from 7:40 - 3:00
- maybe spend some extra time there or at home doing grades, etc every so often
- get assitance with food/heat/etc

Sigh. I know. I know. Just had to gripe....

Lazy Green Update

So, I think it went fairly well!! I liked it, and now am motivated to get/make:

- hankies
- cloth napkins
- cloth paper towels

Pretty exciting!

Other than that, J and I have been so dang SICK! (And I'm starting PMS time, got the aches and pains of that too. Yes, I'm oh-so-loverly to be around...) Lots to type about, but right now isn't the time. (When is?!?!) My next topic: ecomonics.

Going Green the Lazy Way

OK, so my motivation is laziness. All that matters is it's starting, right? RIGHT?!?

I have no paper towels or paper napkins upstairs, and the fact is I'm too lazy to go downstairs, FIND them, AND then carry them up. (It was a long busy weekend and I have a cold. Cut me some slack!) So, I figured I had all those Dollar Store baby washcloths that were clean... let's use them!

K was kind enough to fold them all and put them in the former napkin basket, so they're ready to use!

Interesting times so far:
- wiping the stove Usually I would do it first with a paper towel, then with the dishes washcloth. Instead, I used a mini one. (And only had to wipe once, a plus.)
- patting dry peirogies A paper towel is easiest, obviously. But I just used a washcloth. (In the future though, this would probably be something I would "splurge" on and use a paper towel for!!)

**Editor's note: Usually lunch is PB&J, very rarely do I go along these extremes. However, the new jar of PB is MIA (thanks Ricky, last I saw you were playing with it) and the sour cream needs to be used up!

Blog plagarizing?

OK, so I stole this from somebody. :) And I'm too tired to italicize all I want to, and I can't figure out how to underline or ununderline so don't pay any attention to that either!

The Big Read reckons that "the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed."

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them ;-)

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo