Buy Nothing Month sins

I thought that the Buy Nothing Month Challenge from Crunchy Chicken would be a breeze. I don't usually feel a "need" to have something. It's funny how much you suddenly "need" as soon as you swear it all off. I have gone to Sunday confessional twice at Crunchy's blog. I thought I would update you as to how I am doing on here as well.

Two days into the challenge, I got a call form the local kitchen store that the pot I have been waiting forever for finally came in. It was a 2-qt stainless steel saucepan. I had a 1-qt and a 3-qt cast iron saucepans, and an 8-qt stainless steel stockpot, but I needed something I could heat tomato sauce in without wasting the energy needed to do it in such a huge pot.

It is also very hard to do this challenge in a month when I have two children's birthdays. When we got them each their own bed, we discovered we owned 3 sets of twin size sheets and had 4 beds. So I took Rowan out for her birthday and got her a set of sheets so each bed could be used. The rest of the sheets are about 10 years old and getting pretty threadbare and elastic-worn. I promised the other kids they could each pick out new sheets for their birthdays, too. We go out today to get Lauren's.

All the rest of my sinful indulgences have been edibles. Ice cream, chocolate, etc. I think I have bought junk food 5 or 6 times this month.

Buy Nothing Month

I have entered Crunchy Chicken's Buy Nothing Challenge for this month. You can read the rules at the link above this post. I confess that I bought a WoW game card yesterday since I was planning on buying one in a week or two. Don't grief me about WoW. It helps me keep my sanity. As the world goes to hell in a handbasket around me, I can pretend to some sort of normalcy when I play. It is my drug of choice right now. When the grid crashes I will have to find a new drug, I know. And I know that the environmental impact of playing WoW is not small, but that and driving 90 miles each direction for my daughter on the weekends are my hugest impacts by far. So check out the challenge and join us.

Hodge Podge

I have several things to talk about today, pretty much all unrelated.

First, the property manager here has given me permission to start a community garden in the small field (huge useless lawn) on site. She even said it used to be a community garden, but they had problems with crime and eventually dropped it. When I asked about reviving it, she said I could be in charge of it. I made up a flyer (pending approval) pointing out the benefits of gardening and inviting everyone to participate. I even promised a potluck dinner at the end of the year with garden grown veggies. The property manager offered to have maintenance do the tilling for us, and I am just waiting on her approval for the date and such. Woo hoo!

Secondly, I cleared out a lot of space in two closets so I can start storing food. I am waiting for a call from the local homemade candy store (wouldn't that be store-made, though? local, anyway) about 5-gallon buckets. I also need to find shelving to fit in the closets. I am very proud of my food shopping thriftiness lately. I visit the food pantry (which is still very well stocked, fortunately) on Wednesdays, then I make up a menu for the next 7 days based on what we got from the pantry. I try to have to put no more than a dozen items on the shopping list. Last week, I had probably 10 things on the list. I was able to buy almost all organic and spent just under $50. I am desperately hoping that the price of organic food won't rise as much as that of conventional food since organic requires less oil inputs. We are down to eating meat about 3-4 times a week now, down from 6-7 times a week, and nearly all of it comes from the food pantry. We still have to buy meat for our cat, but even some of that can come from the pantry. After all, even with 6 mouths to feed every day, there is no way I am serving roast chicken 3 times a week. One, we get other meats as well usually; two, that much chicken causes appetite fatigue in our house; and three, ... well, I can't think of a three. We are purchasing a piglet this month for a local farmer to raise for us, and the price of uncertified organic hamburger at our local farm is $3.39/lb.

Third unrelated item -- a few days ago I took a detour while taking my daughter back to her dad's house to stop by the house in Nostalgia and we were invited in by the same man who bought the house from my folks 20 years ago. It looks so different. He has expanded the second floor to be a full storey instead of a loft, installed a bathroom, a full-fledged kitchen, two bedrooms upstairs and windows downstairs. It looked so much smaller than it did when I was my daughter's age. It was very cozy. The gentleman said that he was struggling with the payments for two reasons. He is a carpenter and work has been slow, and the taxes have gone up from $600/year in 1988 to $3400 now. Ouch. But it was very nice to see the house again. I had just driven up the seemingly shortened driveway (surely the whole property shrank over 20 years) and looked around while staying in the car, but the man came out and I explained who I was and that I just wanted to show my daughter, and he invited in me in for a look-see and a chat. Very talkative gent. I think we spent 45 minutes there chatting, so I had to make up time since my husband had specifically said not to take 5 hours for the 4+ hour trip. I made it home in 4.5 hours. Very little traffic at that time of night helped a lot. The little hill where I used to build my forts turns out to be about half the distance from the house that I thought. The 30-40 feet in my memory turned out to be merely 10-20 feet.

Spring Cleaning?

I have been faithfully reading Casaubon's Book for a while now and she is currently teaching us all about food storage. I was bemoaning to myself that I have no place to store food in this tiny apartment with 7 people in it, when I realized that I do. I will a couple of closets that are not being used to their maximum efficiency. There are clothes sprawled across their floors, boxes that have been opened and look like they have thrown up and all kinds of other fun stuff. So today I am going to start reorganizing and decluttering them. My youngest and last child is now 17 months old and has not used his baby bathtub since he was about 9 months old. I took out the stick-to-the-floor seat when he was 10 months and would stand up in the tub. It wouldn't sitck very well to the bottom of the tub, but it did stick to his behind, making him stand up crooked and smack his sister in the head when he turned around. (They share baths.) Both of those are still in my closet. It is time to Freecycle them. I plan to get rid of most of my baby stuff. Most of it is unnecessary consumer goods. There are a few things I will keep, like the moses basket, for when my grandchildren come along. That basket has been used with my 5 kids, and 2 of friends, and I have only had to redo the handles that wore out. I have just a couple of cute outfits I will keep, too. I had originally planned to have one more child, hopefully a son I could name Boris, but after learning about overpopulation and its troubles, I can only hope vainly that one of my children will give me a grandson named Boris.I will also keep the handmade baby blankets, but donate the rest. Eirik has never really used baby blankets, preferring to sleep in my or his sisters' beds. Once the closets are cleaned, I am calling the local restaurants for 5-gallon buckets and lids so I can see if I can get any whole wheat before it is all sold out across the country.

Nostalgia

I have spent the last few months fighting a hereditary winter depression, but with spring right around the corner, and all my girls' birthdays underway, I am feeling like posting again. I recently posted a question to Greenpa over at his blog about housing design, and today he did his best to answer me. I am so honored.

I thought I would use this post to talk about the house that I consider my childhood home. When I was 2, my parents bought a 5-acre parcel in a backwoods town that was so small it had no traffic lights and a one-lane bridge that went to the next town over. When I was 4, we temporarily lived there in a trailer for a couple of months until my folks found a small house to rent where my youngest brother was born the next year. When I was 8, my parents started building on that property. They had a nice house planned, with a 2-car garage attached by a breezeway. They started the garage first, since it was smaller and the plan was to move into the garage while they built the house so as not to have to pay rent any longer than necessary. The house never got built, and we lived in the garage for just over 3 years, but those were the happiest years of my life.

They built this "house" with their own two hands, and I was proud to help whenever I could. They did have a cement truck come in and pour the floor, but they built the framework for the cement (I don't know what it is called) and leveled it themselves. They did all the framing and putting up the exterior walls themselves, and our church held a work day when it was time to put the roof up. It took several months to complete the house, and we moved in in January 1985, two months before I turned 9.

The house was situated about 300' in from the road. I know our driveway was incredibly long to walk up and down, and impossible to shovel. My folks always hired a plow when the snow came. Being so young at the time, my impressions of size were distorted, but I think I remember my dad telling me that number as the length of the driveway.

Our house was 20'x24', with a 12' loft along the southern 24' wall. The door was on the western 20' wall, and since it was supposed to be a garage, we had two huge windows in the south wall, which were going to be the garage doors after the house proper was built. Those windows had no glass, just two sheets of plastic over them inside and out. Lots of sun, lots of winter warmth. We got upstairs by way of a ladder that was too steep to be called stairs, but just flat enough that we could go down facing forwards if we wanted to be naughty. Upstairs were five windows, three along the south wall, and one each in the eastern and western walls. I have not seen this kind of window anywhere else. They were square, probably 3' to a side, with just one sash, and to open them we pushed them up and out from the bottom and stuck a pole in to hold them out. No screens. My cat used to like jumping out my window, then coming back inside and doing it again. There were no windows in the northern wall, and the roof was saltbox-like. It was two stories high on the south side, went up to a peak, then down to the first floor on the north side. It was covered in asphalt shingles. The walls were insulated, and half of them were sheetrocked, the other half just had clear plastic holding the insulation in so it didn't fall out. None of the sheetrock was painted. The ceiling was also insulated with plastic over it.

There were no interior walls, either. The ultimate in open-concept living. There was a railing along the edge of the loft so we didn't fall down onto the woodstove. The woodstove was in the center of the house, slightly offset to the north so that the stovepipe went up beside the loft instead of through it. We had a propane stove that we used in the summer when it was too hot for the woodstove or when Mom was baking. Our woodstove was not designed for cooking, though it did work well for it. The northeast corner was the kitchen area with the stove, some salvaged countertop for storage and workspace, and a small table for the two dishpans which constituted our sink. The southeast corner housed the table and chairs, which sat right in front of one of those huge windows. The southwest corner was the living room, with a sofa and an easy chair, and the northwest corner had the ladder upstairs, the woodbin, and some bookcases. Upstairs we visually divided into three "rooms". I hung a blanket from the rafters to segregate my 8'x8' "room". My two younger brothers had the middle 64 square feet, and my parents had the western 64 square feet. The front 4 feet of the loft was for walking, and at the end (down by my room) was the "indoor pot". This was a 5-gallon bucket with a toilet seat set on top. We were only allowed to use it at night or if we were sick. Mom emptied it into the outhouse when it got full.

We heated entirely with wood, and when I was 10 or 11, I used to start the fire each morning. My dad worked second shift, and although my mom stayed home with us kids, she kept his hours. We weren't allowed to wake them up until at least 10 am. Being a kid, I naturally got up at 6 every morning. We were homeschooled, so I would get up, go downstairs and light the fire, have a bowl of cereal for breakfast, then start my schoolwork. I remember the woodstove as a long, cast-iron box on legs. The stovepipe came out a short end, with the door on the other short end, and the long sides had a hunting scene on them. It was a beautiful stove. The top had a single level, so it was easy to cook on it. We always had a big stockpot of water sitting back there to keep the humidity up. It also provided conveniently easy hot water if you weren't going to drink it. If you were going to drink it, we had a teapot so the water would stay clean. I suppose we used the stockpot like the hot water reservoirs I have seen on pictures of wood cookstoves.

We had no electricity or running water. The house was wired for electricity, but my folks never had it run in from the street because they were going to wait until the house was done and do both buildings at the same time. We lit our home with kerosene lanterns, had a fridge only in the winter (the entire outdoors was our fridge then), and had a 13" TV with rabbit ears that ran off of a 12V car battery. We had a well that sometimes worked and sometimes didn't. I don't know why it didn't work in the end, but it was near the bottom of the driveway and had a red pitcher pump on it. I remember watching my mom dig the hole for the outhouse, which is featured in some very funny stories that I tell my children. (Like the time the baby goat jumped down there. Eeew!) The outhouse was situated off the northeast corner of the house, probably 10'-15' away from the house. It certainly wasn't as elaborate as Greenpa's THWASPCO, but it served the purpose.

I have great memories of that house. I wish I could buy it back and move my family back there again. It has probably been brought up to date in the almost 20 years since we moved out, though.

Fundamental personal changes

Please bear with me in this post. Ironically, it is about chaos vs. order, but it is vary chaotic in its organization. I have not posted for a while here (big shock, huh?), but it isn't from a lack of thinking about it. Primarily, I have just been spending far less time on the computer in general. This last summer, I decided that my family would benefit from more structure in our lives, and less chaos. I started by simply adding a walk to the mornings. My routine then was to get up, start the laundry in the washer, make breakfast, hang up the laundry and go for a walk. The kids then had the rest of the day to do as they pleased, which usually meant arguing or fighting or being random balls of chaos run amok in the house. I then started taking them outside and actually sitting out there with them the whole time for a few hours each day after lunch. This of course meant I could not turn on the computer at 10 am and spend the rest of the day here surfing and researching. I had to actually sit outside. Now don't get me wrong. I love the outdoors. I just never felt fulfilled doing nothing, and nothing meant not actively thinking with my brain. I didn't know how to really enjoy the moment and just live. I read about living, I daydreamed about living, but I didn't actually live. It is kind of scary now that I think about it. I had noticed this tendency to not live a few years back, but I didn't know how to face the problem. I had always lived inside my head, from the time I was 4 and learned how to read. I read avidly. I even had a job where I could read a novel while I ran my machine (not that I was supposed to, but I was tucked away and had a great view, so I could hide my book if someone was coming). I could put away a short novel in one 10-hour shift, a longer novel could take up to 3 or 4 ten-hour shifts. Even when I wasn't working, I was reading. When I was pregnant with my oldest daughter, I subscribed to Harlequin, and had an ample supply of "bodice-rippers". I would read an entire book while my husband was gone to work and I had nothing to do all day except watch TV or read. Goodness knows I couldn't do housework. Not for lack of capability, but for lack of knowledge. So I spent a good 25 years living in my head. When I was 28, I learned about Rudolf Steiner, and his warnings against living in one's head. But I didn't know any other way to live. Living entirely in my head, I didn't do any real living. So my venture to sitting outside while the kids played was "capital B boring." Then I read Sharon's post called Knitting for the Apocalypse, and decided that I could do some knitting while I sat outside. The weather was gorgeous, I was skilled enough at knitting to do it with my eyes shut, and I could feel like I wasn't just sitting there. Actually, my first sitting outside project was weaving the rug I posted about a few months back, but I quickly got bored of that and gave up before I considered it done. It was "good enough." After spending several afternoons outside, I noticed that I didn't feel so drawn to the computer to read my 300+ daily emails as soon as I got up. Reading was no longer my raison d'etre. I started getting other things done around the house. The first time I noticed a shift in my functioning was when I finished knitting a pair of socks for Eirik and was shocked that they were done that quickly. Every other time I have crafted something, my purpose for doing it was to get it done. I wanted to skip the doing it and just have it done. This often meant that I took shortcuts, finished it when it was "good enough", or just plain quit the project altogether. So I finished the socks and thought, Now what? I found a ball of yarn that I had bought last year to make mittens for a local charity, but I never got around to making any. So I decided to make some mittens. My first pair took only 4 days, and could easily have been done in 2 or 3 if I had committed more time to them. By this point, I was getting on my computer after dinner, and only occasionally turning it on earlier in the day, ostensibly to check the weather. We had also started the school year, and had a more structured day. I got up, started the laundry, made breakfast, started the kids on their chores, hung up the laundry, went for our walk, laid the baby down for a nap, and did lessons before having lunch and going outside. Now, I spend more time doing things around the house and far less time on the computer. It is rarely turned on now before the kids are in bed at 7:30, my email is down to 50 or less usually, and about half of those are usually from Freecycle rather than any discussion lists. I get my blog subscriptions via email, so I don't spend time checking all the blog websites to see if there is anything new, and I only have a small handful (not even) of websites that I visit on a regular basis because they don't have RSS feeds. Sometimes I will look up something specific, like when I wanted a recipe for Pumpkin Soup, and on those days I can get a bit more lost on the web. But usually after those few routine computer stops, I play World of Warcraft with my husband, and that is the extent of my computer use.

Wait, wasn't I talking about chaos vs. order? Oh yes. Sorry, the chaos isn't completely gone. What I have found lately through knitting is grounding. Knitting is a very base activity. It is a very rhythmical process, and I can literally do it with my eyes shut. I had always been curious what people meant by grounding, and I finally know. Knitting is literally a no-brainer. I can give my brain a rest, and get something productive done at the same time. A few days ago, I spent one day standing in the kitchen (my haven, my solace, my refuge) knitting a slipper for Rowan and reading _The Long Emergency_ by James Howard Kunstler. In addition to the normal daily activities of cooking and cleaning and refereeing the kids, I got one entire slipper knitted and 100 pages read. I decided that I am going to read this book before I have to return it to the library, unlike some books I have borrowed. The next day, I read and knitted less. I got about 2/3 of the other slipper knitted, and not nearly so many pages read.

Terry is making us a new trestle table, and it has been quite the experiment. I never realized how much care had to go into designing a table so that it would be stable. The first time he built it, we had to flip it over because we had assembled it upside down on our existing table. I suggested flipping it end over end onto the floor. As soon as its weight was on the end on the floor, that end collapsed and boards fell everywhere. Terry was mightily angry, so I put it back together myself. Then we flipped it over sideways and it stayed together. But it still rocks and I don't trust putting anything heavy on the ends, like my sewing machine. This process of building in the house has been very hard on me. There have been boards everywhere, and tools everywhere, and often times I could not maneuver in the house because it was so full. Disassembling the old table and putting it away helped greatly, but now he has brought more boards home to improve the design so it is more stable. I have boards all along my living room floor, and to top it off, I brought home new chairs from Freecycle yesterday. We had been seating one child in a folding chair that was falling apart, and when the chairs were offered up, it said there were four of them. When I showed up to pick them up, there were six. Our house is tiny to begin with, so when you add a gigantic trestle table (5'x7', it will easily seat 10-12), several 8' and 10' boards and 6 kitchen chairs that won't stack because they all have arms, there is no room to move. I found myself getting very frustrated this morning and asked the kids to take the chairs out onto the patio. They won't be hurt if it rains, which it isn't supposed to do for a couple of days, and Terry said we will finish the table tomorrow, so hopefully I can restore my world to order again after that is done. Being able to sweep is bliss.

I am craving order far more than I ever have before. Oh, I always desired order in my life, but I only gave myself chaos. I couldn't stick to any semblance of order for more than a couple of weeks. The fact that I have done so now for several months astounds me. I am less tolerant of chaos, and I have been getting frustrated much more easily at disorder. I actually cleaned my room yesterday. I have this urge to just take everything and ruthlessly get rid of stuff. I need less clutter, and I need more order. I am leaving behind my title of Queen of Chaos, and although I have a long way to go to become the Queen of Order, I am starting on that journey. I am learning to live in the moment, and when the day comes that I can no longer get on the computer due to the coming economic and social collapses, I will not be completely lost, wondering what to do. I am never bored anymore. It is nice.

Funky funk

What a funk I have been in. I figure it is a combination of several things. First, PO sucks. Being aware of it sucks. Knowing that within 5 years, it is quite likely that die-off will have started sucks. Knowing there is nothing you can do to stop it really sucks. I should have taken the blue pill.

Another factor is that where I live sucks. I live in a project, and it is filled with negative people. Everywhere I turn, my neighbors lead very negative lives and it is contagious. I fought it for a long time, but it is finally catching up to me.

Thirdly, one of my neighbors is a friend. She and her boyfriend split up earlier in the year, and he took their two boys. They are in a legal battle for custody and it is very reminiscent of the battle I went through 10 years ago for my daughter, which I lost. By being friends with her, I am reliving my custody battle, and all the agony and pain that goes with it. I am trying to help her all I can, giving her the knowledge and tools I didn’t have when I went through it. She is very much like me, and it pains me to see her go through this. I guess I have felt like if I can help her get her boys back, then my losing Cait and all its associated pain will not have been for nothing.

And so I find myself in a funk. I get through the day and hope I don’t yell too much at the kids. After they go to bed, I play WoW for a few hours, finally signing off when I start to fall asleep in front of my screen around 11 or 12 at night. Eirik wakes up at 6:30 or so, and my day begins. Not enough sleep hasn’t helped my mood any. I know it is ironic, to be aware of the causes and effects of PO and global warming, and yet playing WoW each night to numb my brain from that awareness.

On the other hand, I have started a productive new hobby. After reading this post by Sharon http://casaubonsbook.blogspot.com/2007/09/knitting-for-apocalypse.html, I picked up my knitting needles. So far I have made a couple pairs of mittens, a pair of socks for the baby, a “mug rug” that I am going to felt up for Rowan, one for Terry, and next on my list is to start slippers that I am going to felt. It is good to have wool between my hands. Until just the last couple of weeks, I have been very impatient with the whole knitting process. I work to make a project, and it takes forever. But I was shocked at how quickly Eirik’s socks came together when I just knitted while sitting outside on my porch watching the kids play since they aren’t allowed out of the house without an adult. I swore I would never turn into a porch monkey, “hanging out” on my porch waiting for some juicy gossip (which is more than abundant here) or just doing absolutely nothing. Then when I had to start accompanying my children every moment they were outside, I needed something to do. I picked up the needles and started clicking away. I’m hooked now. (That was a better pun for crocheting, but it is my feeble attempt at humor right now.)

I’m taking a break from WoW tonight. Terry rented a couple of movies (Blades of Glory and Next), and we are going to spend some time together. And I can knit while watching TV, something I can’t do while playing WoW. J